Scientists create first solar cell with over 100 percent quantum efficiency. How You Can Make Good Use Of Your Old Machines. Almost everyone reading the articles on this site will have spare computers languishing about. The rapid growth and improvements in hardware means that we cycle through a whole machine in only a few years. If you have spare machines and parts languishing about, you can put them to good use! In this article I have outlined some of the purposes your old hardware can serve. Like the article? Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter to stay up on recent content. Local File Server Everyone secretly wants one, and if you have the resources kicking around then why not have one? There are so many reasons to have a personal server. If you set up a Windows Share correctly, then you needn’t use FTP programs like FileZilla to conduct transfers.
I am connected to my local server, and streaming music to my Windows box. Web Server This uses pretty much the same software and simple tech as the Local File Server. BOINC Node Here is Rosetta@Home running away. Torrent Box Proxy Server. Space Shuttle Discovery - 360VR Images. Seismic Monitor. Fibonacci's Fractals. DaylightMap. World's largest solar plant powers up - Green Living - Environment. Big almost beyond belief, it is powerful, clean and looks unlike any power station you could ever imagine. Spread over terrain which covers the equivalent of 210 football pitches, there is nothing to see behind the security fences and drainage ditches but interminable lines of gleaming, eerily silent, parabolic mirrors.
They gyrate simultaneously to follow the sun's path through the sky – for all the world like an enormous Star Wars android army awaiting orders from above to destroy the local populace. The bleak, empty flatlands of the Guadix plateau, 30 miles from Granada, were chosen by the backers of Andasol, a joint venture by four German companies, as the location for their €350m (£293bn) investment because, at 1,100 metres above sea level, Guadix's atmosphere is clearer and less turbulent than lower altitudes.
Purely because of that, it captures more solar energy than the entire Saudi Arabian peninsula. "In the future, we know that tariffs will go down. Best Chrome Extensions. 'Wikipedia of Maps' Challenges Google. OpenStreetMap is exactly what its name implies—a wiki of maps and location data to which anyone can contribute, just like Wikipedia. With the help of some deep-pocketed boosters, including MapQuest and Microsoft, it’s suddenly a legitimate challenger to the hegemony of Maps.Google.Com. Google announced two months ago that it was going to start charging the heaviest users of its Maps API, which countless sites use to geo-locate their data.
Then its sales team fanned out to contact those websites, which Google publicly estimated would represent only 0.35 percent of the users of its Maps API. In what seems to have been a surprise to everyone, the prices that Google asked of its heaviest Maps users apparently dwarf the revenue of at least some of those sites, which is leading to a very public move away from Google and to OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap’s great strength is that anyone can contibute. That doesn’t mean that OpenStreetMap is necessarily free. The Data-Crunching Powerhouse Behind 'Avatar' A look at some of the high-density server and networking gear inside the Weta Digital data center used to render the animation for the new James Cameron movie "Avatar.
" (Photo: Foundry Networks Inc.) It takes a lot of data center horsepower to create the stunning visual effects behind blockbuster movies such as King Kong, X-Men, the Lord of the Rings trilogy and most recently, James Cameron’s $230 million Avatar. Tucked away in Wellington, New Zealand are the facilities where visual effects company Weta Digital renders the imaginary landscapes of Middle Earth and Pandora at a campus of studios, production facilities, soundstages and a purpose-built data center. The 10,000 square foot server farm manages thousands of work orders and a serious amount of data. Information Management magazine reports on the creative artists and rendering done for the movie, as well as the thoroughbred data center supporting it. Projects - mini-itx cluster. The "Mini-Cluster"By Glen Gardner, USA - Posted on 25 February, 2004 Introduction Early supercomputers used parallel processing and distributed computing and to link processors together in a single machine.
Using freely available tools, it is possible to do the same today using inexpensive PCs - a cluster. Glen Gardner liked the idea, so he built himself a massively parallel Mini-ITX cluster using 12 x 800Mhz nodes. The machine runs FreeBSD 4.8, and MPICH 1.2.5.2. After working with his machine and running some basic tests, Glen's cluster looks to be equivalent to at least 4 (maybe 6) 2.4Ghz Pentium IV boxes in parallel on a similar network - achieving a performance of around 3.6 GFLP.
The "Mini-Cluster" I built a Mini-ITX based massively parallel cluster named PROTEUS. The construction is simple and inexpensive. The controlling node has a 160 GB ATA-133 HDD, and the computational nodes use 340 MB IBM microdrives in compact flash to IDE adapters. The original 6 node configuration.
Debris Field The Size Of California From Japanese Tsunami Begins To Litter West Coast. National Geographic Magazine - NGM.com. Radiation Dosage Chart. Astrodigital: Home of Explore Mars, Space Exploration, Astronomical Adventures, Digital Excursions, and the Chicago area chapters of the National Space Society and Mars Society. Finally! A Low Cost Solar Panel that Can See in the Dark. Clean Power Published on January 26th, 2011 | by Tina Casey Well…it can almost see in the dark. Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have just announced that they’ve been able to confirm a new high-efficiency solar cell design that handles pretty much the entire solar spectrum. To ice the solar cake, the new technology can be manufactured using ordinary low-cost processes that are currently in use.
Harnessing the Full Spectrum for Solar Power A conventional solar cell uses one kind of semiconductor, which captures light from one part of the spectrum. Lowering the Cost of Full Spectrum Solar Cells In earlier trials, the researchers used different alloys that achieved full spectrum responses but involved very high production costs. Full Speed Ahead to Full Spectrum Solar Cells The Lawrence Berkeley breakthrough represents just one path to increasing the efficiency and lowering the cost of solar cells. Image: Moon by r w h on flickr.com. About the Author.
'Sunbelievable' Solar Paint Could Power Home Appliances, Scientists Say. Green homeowners may soon be able to say goodbye to unwieldy solar panels thanks to a new paint that generates electricity by harnessing energy from "power-producing nanoparticles, researchers have announced. The paint, dubbed "Sunbelievable" by developers at the University of Notre Dame, looks no different from any other paint used to coat home exteriors and other surfaces.
But when hit by light, the semiconducting particles within Sunbelievable produce small amounts of electricity that researchers hope they can magnify in great enough amounts to power home appliances, Science Daily reported. "We want to do something transformative, to move beyond current silicon-based solar technology," research leader and Notre Dame professor Prashant Kamat said. "By incorporating power-producing nanoparticles, called quantum dots, into a spreadable compound, we've made a one-coat solar paint that can be applied to any conductive surface without special equipment. " Nanotechnology News - Nanoscience, Nanotechnolgy, Nanotech News. Stephen Hawking asks big questions about the universe. Technology Review: The Authority on the Future of Technology. Seven Amazing New Animals Discovered in 2011. 2011 was an exciting year for animal discovery. Unusual frogs, snakes, a bat and even a monkey named after the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll are just a few of the extraordinary animals who are taking the scientific world by storm.
Read on to learn more about these amazing creatures. Nicknamed the “Elvis Monkey”, due to their pompadour-like head of fur, Myanmar’s Snub Nose Monkey has a nose that’s so short, it is believed that rainfall causes the animal to sneeze. While there are other known snub nose monkeys, the species located in Myanmar has a white beard, ear tufts and an unusually long tail. While primatologists are just learning of these incredible monkeys, it seems that the locals are familiar with the animals.
Hunters often prey upon the helpless creatures during the rainy season when they lay still and tuck their heads between their knees to protect their noses from the rain. The only known photo of R. strykeri was taken by hunters who had slaughtered one animal for food. Scientists make solar cycle, stratosphere and ocean connections. BOULDER-Subtle connections between the 11-year solar cycle, the stratosphere, and the tropical Pacific Ocean work in sync to generate periodic weather patterns that affect much of the globe, according to research appearing this week in the journal Science.
The study can help scientists get an edge on eventually predicting the intensity of certain climate phenomena, such as the Indian monsoon and tropical Pacific rainfall, years in advance. An international team of scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) used more than a century of weather observations and three powerful computer models to tackle one of the more difficult questions in meteorology: if the total energy that reaches Earth from the Sun varies by only 0.1 percent across the approximately 11-year solar cycle, how can such a small variation drive major changes in weather patterns on Earth?
The answer, according to the new study, has to do with the Sun's impact on two seemingly unrelated regions. Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas. Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region. The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years. In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.
“Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we’ve found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It’s amazing,” Dr Semiletov said. Source. German village generates 321 percent more renewable energy than it needs, earns millions selling it back to national power grid. (NaturalNews) Developing a renewable energy system that creates energy independence and even a considerable new source of revenue is not some sort of sci-fi pipe dream.
BioCycle reports that the German village of Wildpoldsried, population 2,600, has had such incredible success in building its renewable energy system. Wildpoldsried generates 321 percent more renewable energy than it uses, and it now sells the excess back to the national power grid for roughly $5.7 million in additional revenue every single year.
By utilizing a unique combination of solar panels, "biogas" generators, natural wastewater treatment plants, and wind turbines, Wildpoldsried has effectively eliminated its need to be attached to a centralized power grid, and created a thriving renewable energy sector in the town that is self-sustaining and abundantly beneficial for the local economy, the environment, and the public. Somebody’s hijacked Project Tiger! This sunday, over 70 parliamentarians came out in support of Save Our Tigers campaign and took part in the 2nd JK Tyre Constitution Club of India Car Rally for MPs in the capital (read a report here). This occasion calls for a re-run of a column we published in the magazine and also on the web early last year.
Little seems to have changed -- except the minister, of course. Please step aside. Telecom giant Aircel has taken it upon itself to save the Indian tiger; and it will brook no interference from any quarter. A few elementary questions, however, persist in the mind. Now, visualise this: somewhere in the deep jungle, a group of five forest guards with antiquated guns are huddled under a shaky watchtower.
They are the real saviours of our tigers. They are the people whom Aircel or Ramesh will never find. The government – and the Environment Ministry in particular – can be faulted on several counts for letting a private entity hijack the tiger conservation movement. Renewable Power Trumps Fossils for First Time as UN Talks Stall. Renewable energy is surpassing fossil fuels for the first time in new power-plant investments, shaking off setbacks from the financial crisis and an impasse at the United Nations global warming talks.
Electricity from the wind, sun, waves and biomass drew $187 billion last year compared with $157 billion for natural gas, oil and coal, according to calculations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance using the latest data. Accelerating installations of solar- and wind-power plants led to lower equipment prices, making clean energy more competitive with coal. “The progress of renewables has been nothing short of remarkable,” United Nations Environment Program Executive Secretary Achim Steiner said in an interview. “You have record investment in the midst of an economic and financial crisis.” The findings indicate the world is shifting toward consuming more renewable energy even without a global agreement on limiting greenhouse gases. Subsidizing the Boom ‘Paralyzed’ ‘Bewildering’ Rules Pollution Price.
Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he's from the future. A would-be saboteur arrested today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made the bizarre claim that he was from the future. Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world. The LHC successfully collided particles at record force earlier this week, a milestone Mr Cole was attempting to disrupt by stopping supplies of Mountain Dew to the experiment's vending machines. He also claimed responsibility for the infamous baguette sabotage in November last year. Mr Cole was seized by Swiss police after CERN security guards spotted him rooting around in bins. He explained that he was looking for fuel for his 'time machine power unit', a device that resembled a kitchen blender. Police said Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age, would not reveal his country of origin.
This isn't the first time time-travel has been blamed for mishaps at the LHC. Dimensional Bliss » Follow Your Heart, it is Smarter Than You Think. Sustainable Fertilizer: Urine And Wood Ash Produce Large Harvest. Results of the first study evaluating the use of human urine mixed with wood ash as a fertilizer for food crops has found that the combination can be substituted for costly synthetic fertilizers to produce bumper crops of tomatoes without introducing any risk of disease for consumers. In the study, Surendra Pradhan and colleagues point out that urine, a good source of nitrogen, has been successfully used to fertilize cucumber, corn, cabbage, and other crops. Only a few studies, however, have investigated the use of wood ash, which is rich in minerals and also reduces the acidity of certain soils.
Scientists have not reported on the combinaton of urine and wood ash, they say. The new study found that plants fertilized with urine produced four times more tomatoes than nonfertilized plants and as much as plants given synthetic fertilizer. Artificial Sweetener Disease; a new breed of sickness. Imprisoned and Poisoned at SNBL: A Whistleblower Case. FanWing. Worldclock.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object) Mammoths May Be Roaming the World In Five Years. The Energy Lie (Suppression of Technological Evolution) - Home. The Brain—Information about the Brain. Becoming Human. Lucid Dreaming Frequently Asked Questions Answered by The Lucidity Institute. Your Likes.