NEWS ON Thursday, 3 October 2013
Thursday, 3 October 2013
Top 10 Technology Bans
Top 10 Technology Bans
#10 $exy Apple Apps
With apps like these, I’m sure Apple does Care. Well, they cared so much that in 2010 Apple banned apps that were too risqué. One of them was an app called iBoobs that gave users the ability to skim through wobbling breasts. This step was an obvious display of the heavy hand Apple was going to use in its iTunes store.#9 Google Street View
The addition of street maps to online maps like Google has been a great boon to all users, even those with GPS systems. But a few countries see the pictures as an invasion of privacy, namely Greece and Austria. Both countries banned Google from coming to their streets and taking pictures for their street view maps. The ban was enacted in 2009.
#8 Marathons without Music
Those tunes you listen to while running may help keep you in rhythm, interested, and motivated but according to some race officials, they’re also unsafe. In 2007, USA Track and Field banned headphones and other portable audio players from all of its official races leaving runners with nothing but the wind to listen to during their 26 mile treks.
#7 Cuban Cell Phone Ban
Fidel Castro hated the US and all it stood for so much he banned pretty much anything having to do with it and that included cell phones. Eleven million Cuban citizens were banned from even owning cellphones as one of the sacrifices the Cuban people had to make in the disagreement against the US.
#6 iPad Ban in Israel
iPads are useful, but not in Israel, at least not for a time. During a period of 2 weeks in April 2010, if anyone was caught trying to enter Israel with an iPad, it was taken from them and the person was charged a fee for each day it was held. The reason? Apparently the wifi posed a threat to the country due to possible interference with military frequencies. Once they realized they really had no evidence of this threat, the ban was lifted.
#5 Napster Ban in Colleges
Napster is banned in one third of all US colleges and universities across the country. The music trading software cannot be used over campus servers. There are legal and ethical issues related to these restrictions and the fight is still ongoing.
#4 Laser Pointers Ban
It’s all fun and games until someone puts an eye out. Or laser points a soccer goalie’s eye. Or brings down a plane by aiming a laser pointer at the sky. You laugh, but those are two of the reasons Australia and many countries in Europe banned laser pointers in 2008. Apparently someone in the audience of a World Cup qualifier game pointed a laser at a goalie and bam. Laser pointers are banned. That’s how much they love their soccer over there.
#3 Internet Bans in China
China isn’t exactly a bastion of freedom with their strict laws on childbearing, living arrangements, jobs, etc. They upped the ante a bit when the internet came along and they realized that their citizens may realize how much freer other people are in other countries. Since they like to keep their citizens in the dark and make sure they never see a bad thing about their own government or a good thing about any others, they took control of the internet in their country. Many sites are banned and blocked and citizens can only access information their government deems is safe.
#2 Facebook Ban in Pakistan
Facebook users are people from across the world with many different views and opinions. Most of them like to express those views and opinions and use Facebook to do it. This is an affront to some groups of people, namely militant, hard c0re Muslims in Pakistan. So, they banned Facebook so that their citizens couldn’t read other people’s opinions. At least temporarily, since it was allowed once again.#1 BlackBerry Ban in Saudi Arabia and UAE
Blackberries are convenient for many tasks, but according to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, they’re also a threat to national security. What this meant was that they couldn’t monitor all of the transmissions their citizens or visitors were making on the devices, so they banned the devices altogether. They wanted Blackberry to release all information about their users and when Blackberry refused, they banned the device in 2010.
10. Apple’s Sexy Apps
Such applications would have taken the notion of AppleCare to a whole new level. In February of 2010, Apple formally banned applications that were deemed too coarse and lascivious from its iTunes store. Among the applications considered out of bounds was iBoobs; it allowed users to toggle through wobbling bosoms on display. Techies saw the move as a sign that Apple would maintain a heavy hand in regulating its marketplace.
9. Google Street View
8. Music-Free Marathons
Read more at http://realitypod.com/2012/03/top-10-technology-bans/#yTkJqzYcCZeKwwXC.99
10. Apple’s Sexy Apps
Such applications would have taken the notion of AppleCare to a whole new level. In February of 2010, Apple formally banned applications that were deemed too coarse and lascivious from its iTunes store. Among the applications considered out of bounds was iBoobs; it allowed users to toggle through wobbling bosoms on display. Techies saw the move as a sign that Apple would maintain a heavy hand in regulating its marketplace.
9. Google Street View
8. Music-Free Marathons
Read more at http://realitypod.com/2012/03/top-10-technology-bans/#yTkJqzYcCZeKwwXC.99
Smart Billboard That Produces Drinkable Water From Air
Smart Billboard That Produces Drinkable Water From Air
It has been said that the next world war will be fought over water.
Water sources are being depleted at an alarming rate and scientists are
struggling hard to come up with possible solutions to this dilemma.
While their efforts continue, we have a breakthrough in Peru.
Researchers have joined forces with an ad agency to provide a feasible
solution for the shortage of potable water in Lima. To jolt up your
memory, it is the second largest city in the world. The problem of
shortage of drinkable water is a serious one and required urgent
attention.
After some serious work, researchers have a viable solution
that is brilliant and yet quite simple; a billboard capable of turning
air humidity into drinkable water. Let’s take a geography lesson; the
city of Lima lies towards the northern edge of Atacama – The driest
desert in the world, and its surrounding villages hardly get 0.51 inches
of precipitation per year. The capital city relied for a long time on
runoff from glaciers and drainage from the Andes Mountains. However,
climate change has made supply from both sources even scarcer. Here are
statistical values for you to comprehend how bad the condition is; out
of 8.5 million people who are residents of Lima, 1.2 million are faced
with zero availability of running water. Their only options include
drawing water out of wells- that water is polluted and it is a known
fact- or turn to unregulated private water companies that distribute
water via water trucks and charge as high as almost 20 times the normal
price of tap water. Quite aware of this problem and its severity, Lima’s
University of Engineering and Technology started looking for a way to
find a solution to this dire problem. The fact that the city’s average
air humidity is 83% because of where its located- along the Southern
Pacific Ocean, UTEC joined hands with an advertising agency, Mayo
DraftFCB, resulting in the creation and installation of a billboard that
produces water out of air- literally. The billboard is first of its
kind. Let’s take a look at how it works.
This amazing invention is made up of five components which constitute a reverse osmosis system. Step one is capturing humid air, step two is running it through an air filter into the condenser which creates water and that water is then passed through a carbon filter into a central holding tank. One simply has to turn on the faucet that has been installed at the base of billboard and they’ll get their cool water supply which will be drinkable. The video released by Mayo states that this innovation can produce up to a hundred liters of potable water per day. In just a period of three months since it has been installed, the billboard has supplied residents of Lima with 9,450 liters.
The
billboard also serves as a tool to attract more students towards UTEC.
The Creative Director at Mayo DraftFCB, Alejandro Aponte, said, “We
wanted future students to see how engineers can also solve social needs
in daily basis kinds of situations”. As of now, there is only one such
billboard installed at kilometer marker 89.5 on the Pan-American
Highway, however, imagine what a dozen of such billboards will achieve!Discovery of Charged Droplets Could Lead to More Efficient Power Plants
Discovery of Charged Droplets Could Lead to More Efficient Power Plants
Oct. 2, 2013 — In a
completely unexpected finding, MIT researchers have discovered that tiny
water droplets that form on a superhydrophobic surface, and then "jump"
away from that surface, carry an electric charge. The finding could
lead to more efficient power plants and a new way of drawing power from
the atmosphere, they say.
Images such
as this, showing droplets being shed from a superhydrophobic surface
(light band at center), revealed the charging of the droplets. (Credit:
Nenad Miljkovic and Daniel Preston)
The finding is reported in a paper in the journal Nature Communications written by MIT postdoc Nenad Miljkovic, mechanical engineering professor Evelyn Wang, and two others.
Miljkovic says this was an extension of previous work by the MIT team. That work showed that under certain conditions, rather than simply sliding down and separating from a surface due to gravity, droplets can actually leap away from it. This occurs when droplets of water condense onto a metal surface with a specific kind of superhydrophobic coating and at least two of the droplets coalesce: They can then spontaneously jump from the surface, as a result of a release of excess surface energy.
In the new work, "We found that when these droplets jump, through analysis of high-speed video, we saw that they repel one another midflight," Miljkovic says. "Previous studies have shown no such effect. When we first saw that, we were intrigued."
In order to understand the reason for the repulsion between jumping droplets after they leave the surface, the researchers performed a series of experiments using a charged electrode. Sure enough, when the electrode had a positive charge, droplets were repelled by it as well as by each other; when it had a negative charge, the droplets were drawn toward it. This established that the effect was caused by a net positive electrical charge forming on the droplets as they jumped away from the surface.
The charging process takes place because as droplets form on a surface, Miljkovic says, they naturally form an electric double layer -- a layer of paired positive and negative charges -- on their surfaces. When neighboring drops coalesce, which leads to their jumping from the surface, that process happens "so fast that the charge separates," he says. "It leaves a bit of charge on the droplet, and the rest on the surface."
The initial finding that droplets could jump from a condenser surface -- a component at the heart of most of the world's electricity-generating power plants -- provided a mechanism for enhancing the efficiency of heat transfer on those condensers, and thus improving power plants' overall efficiency. The new finding now provides a way of enhancing that efficiency even more: By applying the appropriate charge to a nearby metal plate, jumping droplets can be pulled away from the surface, reducing the likelihood of their being pushed back onto the condenser either by gravity or by the drag created by the flow of the surrounding vapor toward the surface, Miljkovic says.
"Now we can use an external electric field to mitigate" any tendency of the droplets to return to the condenser, "and enhance the heat transfer," he says.
But the finding also suggests another possible new application, Miljkovic says: By placing two parallel metal plates out in the open, with "one surface that has droplets jumping, and another that collects them … you could generate some power" just from condensation from the ambient air. All that would be needed is a way of keeping the condenser surface cool, such as water from a nearby lake or river. "You just need a cold surface in a moist environment," he says. "We're working on demonstrating this concept."
The research team also included graduate student Daniel Preston and Ryan Enright, who was a postdoc at MIT and the University of Limerick and is now at Bell Labs Ireland, part of Alcatel-Lucent. The work received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy through the MIT Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation.
Miljkovic says this was an extension of previous work by the MIT team. That work showed that under certain conditions, rather than simply sliding down and separating from a surface due to gravity, droplets can actually leap away from it. This occurs when droplets of water condense onto a metal surface with a specific kind of superhydrophobic coating and at least two of the droplets coalesce: They can then spontaneously jump from the surface, as a result of a release of excess surface energy.
In the new work, "We found that when these droplets jump, through analysis of high-speed video, we saw that they repel one another midflight," Miljkovic says. "Previous studies have shown no such effect. When we first saw that, we were intrigued."
In order to understand the reason for the repulsion between jumping droplets after they leave the surface, the researchers performed a series of experiments using a charged electrode. Sure enough, when the electrode had a positive charge, droplets were repelled by it as well as by each other; when it had a negative charge, the droplets were drawn toward it. This established that the effect was caused by a net positive electrical charge forming on the droplets as they jumped away from the surface.
The charging process takes place because as droplets form on a surface, Miljkovic says, they naturally form an electric double layer -- a layer of paired positive and negative charges -- on their surfaces. When neighboring drops coalesce, which leads to their jumping from the surface, that process happens "so fast that the charge separates," he says. "It leaves a bit of charge on the droplet, and the rest on the surface."
The initial finding that droplets could jump from a condenser surface -- a component at the heart of most of the world's electricity-generating power plants -- provided a mechanism for enhancing the efficiency of heat transfer on those condensers, and thus improving power plants' overall efficiency. The new finding now provides a way of enhancing that efficiency even more: By applying the appropriate charge to a nearby metal plate, jumping droplets can be pulled away from the surface, reducing the likelihood of their being pushed back onto the condenser either by gravity or by the drag created by the flow of the surrounding vapor toward the surface, Miljkovic says.
"Now we can use an external electric field to mitigate" any tendency of the droplets to return to the condenser, "and enhance the heat transfer," he says.
But the finding also suggests another possible new application, Miljkovic says: By placing two parallel metal plates out in the open, with "one surface that has droplets jumping, and another that collects them … you could generate some power" just from condensation from the ambient air. All that would be needed is a way of keeping the condenser surface cool, such as water from a nearby lake or river. "You just need a cold surface in a moist environment," he says. "We're working on demonstrating this concept."
The research team also included graduate student Daniel Preston and Ryan Enright, who was a postdoc at MIT and the University of Limerick and is now at Bell Labs Ireland, part of Alcatel-Lucent. The work received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy through the MIT Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation.
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