23/12/2011

reeshma ramesan
Supercomputer simulations at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are giving scientists unprecedented access to a key class of proteins involved in drug detoxification.

Jerome Baudry and Yinglong Miao, who are jointly affiliated with ORNL and the University of Tennessee, have performed simulations to observe the motions of water molecules in a class of enzymes called P450s. Certain types of P450 are responsible for processing a large fraction of drugs taken by humans.

The supercomputer simulations were designed to help interpret ongoing neutron experiments.

"We simulated what happens in this enzyme over a time scale of 0.3 microseconds, which sounds very fast, but from a scientific point of view, it's a relatively long time," Baudry said. "A lot of things happen at this scale that had never been seen before. It's a computational tour de force to be able to follow that many water molecules for that long."

The team's study of the water molecules' movements contributes to a broader understanding of drug processing by P450 enzymes. Because some populations have a slightly different version of the enzymes, scientists hypothesize that mutations could partially explain why people respond differently to the same drug. One possibility is that the mutations might shut down the channels that bring water molecules in and out of the enzyme's active site, where the chemical modification of drugs takes place. This could be investigated by using the computational tools developed for this research.

By simulating how water molecules move in and out of the protein's centrally located active site, the team clarified an apparent contradiction between experimental evidence and theory that had previously puzzled researchers. X-ray crystallography, which provides a static snapshot of the protein, had shown only six water molecules present in the active site, whereas experimental observations indicated a higher number of water molecules would be present in the enzyme.

"We found that even though there can be many water molecules -- up to 12 at a given time that get in and out very quickly -- if you look at the average, those water molecules prefer to be at a certain location that corresponds to what you see in the crystal structure," Miao said. "It's a very dynamic hydration process that we are exploring with a combination of neutron scattering experiments and simulation."

The simulation research is published in Biophysical Journal as "Active-Site Hydration and Water Diffusion in Cytochrome P450cam: A Highly Dynamic Process."

ORNL researchers used simulation to reveal how water molecules (seen in red) move in and out of the active site (seen in blue) of a P450 enzyme. This class of enzymes is responsible for detoxifying a large fraction of drugs taken by humans. (Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Oak Ridge National 

Johny James

Symbian name gets dropped

Nokia is all set to bid adieu to its Symbian branding. In a blog post, the Finnish company announced that its next version of Symbian OS will be called Nokia Belle. The latest move appears to be part of Nokia's drive to bring all its products under the Nokia product brand. Previously, Nokia had renamed its Ovi Store to Nokia Store. However, the company did not elaborate reasons behind the new OS name.

The Nokia Belle will be arriving in several Nokia smartphones including Nokia N8, Nokia E7, Nokia E6, Nokia X7, Nokia C6-01, Nokia C7, and Nokia Oro. The roll-out of the OS will begin in February 2012. The Nokia Belle update comes with various new features including more home screens. In addition, the home screen widgets have been revamped and given more functionality. The Nokia Belle update also makes reading e-mails and other texts on the smartphones easier.

“Launched earlier this year with Nokia 701, Nokia 700 and Nokia 603 smartphones, the UI [Nokia Belle] has received lots of positive feedback from our customers. The enhanced versions of Nokia N8, Nokia C7 and Nokia C6-01 have now started their journey from the factories to the shops with Nokia Belle preinstalled, arriving first in China, then around the world,” says Nokia in the blogpost.

AJAY PAUL

Google Plus Vs Facebook

Social Networking always existed offline. But it was when that jumped to the online domain, things got interesting. According to the latest statistics, 54% of Indians online use the internet for Social Networking. With Facebook being the prime social website of choice and twitter fast catching up, the question begs to be asked is do we need another social network?

Well that question has been answered by Google Plus which is that latest kid on the block.  Giving users a host of never before seen features, great UI and of course Google’s integration; Google Plus comes across as a great alternate to your Facebook loving ways.  Its astronomical growth also tells a compelling story on how well it’s been accepted by netziens. All reasons why I decided to do a bit of digging around to bring you a bunch of interesting stats dolled up infographic style.

http://www.oneclickcustomers.com/infographics/google-vs-facebook-infographic.html


Mithun Mathew


Intel Ivy Bridge

Ivy Bridge is the codename for the 22 nm die shrink of Sandy Bridge
Intel plans for retail sale in 2012. Ivy Bridge processors will be
backwards-compatible with the Sandy Bridge platform, but require a
BIOS/firmware update. Intel also plans a new 7-series Panther Point
chipsets with Ivy Bridge that will come with integrated USB 3.0.

Due to having no significant obstacles during the new 3D gate
development, Intel planned to begin sale of the processors in the last
quarter of 2011, with retail availability from April 2012. Intel
announced production of Ivy Bridge chips in volume, in preparation for
the product launch, starting in the third quarter of 2011.

VIVEK KANISSERY 

22/12/2011

athira

OLED Technology Brings The Flexible Screen
Flexible screens have been in the que for awhile now, but hitting the mainstream market running, has to be difficult. Not since Apple's Iphone have we seen a game changer hit the ground running in the middle of a technology sprint. Now leaders like Samsung are trying to follow up a tough act. At least in the sense of sticking the landing. Much like knowing that the worlds fastest man is in the Olympics, knowing that Samsung has had a viable flex screen created still has to be seen. We want to see if it can enter the market with minimal flaws and show well out of the gates.
The basis is from OLED technology or organic light emitting diode displays. This is a fun technology that you should look up on Youtube here. it will soon allow for a whole new ability to interact with technology and live with it. It seems to me that technology is morphing closer and closer into a life form, merging with our need for it to be one with us, no matter if we consciously want that and all of its scarey implications or not. It is simply the direction we are heading and the inertia is not going to be impeded upon by human conscious-it will only gain speed with human desire.

Bringing this new technology to the surface via smartphones will be smart way of going, at some point I wonder when we are going to find ourselves not just embracing fun new technologies, but also being faced with moral crisis that are tied to it. For now Samsung is bringing out a fun new concept to a key feature of our tech world a flexible display, but we are not far from human integrated technologies that are invasive.  

Johny James

A crack team of engineers at the University of Illinois has developed an electronic circuit that autonomously self-heals when its metal wires are broken. This self-healing system restores conductivity within “mere microseconds,” which is apparently fast enough that operation can continue without interruption.

The self-healing mechanism is delightfully simple: The engineers place a bunch of 10-micron (0.01mm) microcapsules along the length of a circuit. The microcapsules are full of liquid metal, a gallium-indium alloy, and if the circuit underneath cracks, so do the microcapsules (90% of the time, anyway — the tech isn’t perfect yet!). The liquid metal oozes into the circuit board, restoring up to 99% conductivity, and everything continues as normal. This even works with multi-layer printed circuit boards (PCBs), such the motherboard in your computer, too. There’s no word on whether this same technology could one day be used by Terminators to self-heal shotgun blasts to the face, but it certainly sounds quite similar.


reeshma ramesan


Self-repairing electronic chips are one step closer, according to a team of US researchers.

The group has created a circuit that heals itself when cracked thanks to the release of liquid metal which restores conductivity.The process takes less than an eye blink to bring the circuit back to use.The researchers said that their work could eventually lead to longer-lasting gadgets as well as solving one of the big problems of interplanetary travel.The work was carried out by a team of scientists and engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is published in the journal Advanced Materials.The process works by exploiting the stress that causes the initial damage in the chips to break open tiny reservoirs of a healing material that fills in the resulting gaps, restoring electrical flow.

Cracked circuits

To test their theory the team patterned lines of gold onto glass to form a circuit.They then either placed microcapsules 0.01mm wide directly onto the lines or added a thin laminate into which they embedded larger 0.2mm microcapsules.In both cases the microcapsules contained eutectic gallium-indium - a metallic material chosen for its high conductivity and low melting point.This device was then sandwiched between another layer of glass and acrylic and connected to electricity.The researchers then bent the circuit until it cracked causing the monitored voltage to fall to zero.They said the ruptured microcapsules then healed most of the test circuits within one millisecond and restored nearly all of the measured voltage.The smaller capsules healed the device every time but were a little less conductive than the larger ones which had a slightly lower success rate. The team suggested that a mix of differently sized capsules would therefore give the best result.The devices were then monitored for four months during which time the researchers said there was no loss of conductivity.


AJAY PAUL

Windows 8: 5 Questions About Microsoft's New OS

This week 

Jun 2, 2011

, Microsoft revealed a little of what to expect from the next Windows operating system. With its Windows Phone look and touch - literally - and tiles everywhere, it will be a major refresh, but there's a still a number of unanswered questions. Here are my top five:

Can Microsoft keep desktop users happy with Windows 8?

In demonstrations this week, Windows 8 is shown running legacy applications like Office side-by-side with the hip new OS. But the version of Windows 8 that runs on the ARM processor won't have legacy support. That creates an OS quandary.

While Microsoft says Windows 8 is backward-compatible, if I want to take advantage of the most revolutionary features -- namely touch and tablet functionality -- I'll need all new hardware and probably software, too. So where does that leave Windows users who want all the old desktop-oriented bells and whistles that shipped with Windows 7 with the new tablet-oriented Windows 8 OS?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/229233/windows_8_5_questions_about_microsofts_new_os.html

ANTO VARGHESE

A rollable display is a flexible display that can be rolled up into a scroll.

Technologies involved in building a rollable display include electronic ink,Gyricon, and OLED.

Electronic paper displays which can be rolled up have been developed by E ink. At the CES 2006 Philips showed a rollable display prototype whose screen can retain an image for several months without electricity. As of 2007 Philips Polymer Vision expected to launch a 5 inches (130 mm), 320 x 240-pixel resolution rollable display based on E-ink's electrophoretic technology.

Some flexible OLED displays have been demonstrated, Perhaps the first commercially sold flexible display was an Electronic paper wristwatch

A rollable display is an important part of Roll away computer.

Mithun Mathew

Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996) was an
American electrical engineer and supercomputer architect who designed
a series of computers that were the fastest in the world for decades,
and founded Cray Research which would build many of these machines.
Called "the father of supercomputing," Cray has been credited with
creating the supercomputer industry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray
VIVEK KANISSERY
The second revision to the universal serial bus USB is out..
USB 3.0 with a speed of 5gb/s which is above 10 times faster than the existing 2.0 version of the same..
this version is really power efficient when compared to the previous version and is also compatible to the earlier version..altogether a good step..
read more

21/12/2011

 athira

Brave the mall maze with indoor positioning systems

DO YOU ever find yourself in a vast shopping centre or airport wishing you could use something like GPS to help you find your way? That could soon happen with the development of indoor versions of the system.

"Thank the furniture gods," was one tweeted response to news that IKEA's cavernous couch emporia are getting a smartphone-based indoor positioning system (IPS) developed by Google.

The search giant is not alone: Nokia, Sensewhere, based in Edinburgh, UK, and Cambridge Silicon Radio, also in the UK, are all getting in on the IPS act. Each announced offerings last week that use slightly different technological approaches to stop people getting lost indoors.

The new systems are needed as GPS signals can't reliably be received in a building. Google's IPS offering is an extension of its Maps software, which uses GPS, cellphone and Wi-Fi signals to calculate where a user is outdoors.

To ensure a person walking from the street into a large indoor space gets a seamless experience, the latest version of Maps drops the GPS once inside and measures the signal strength from Wi-Fi routers and cellphone towers to triangulate their location. Users of Android-equipped phones can now use the service in number of major airports, branches of Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Home Depot and Ikea - plus the giant Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Wi-Fi signals emanating from businesses throughout a building lets the system work out where you are to within 5 metresNokia's version of IPS, not yet available to consumers, aims for even greater precision. The firm litters buildings of interest with Bluetooth-based radio beacons that switch phones running mapping apps based on GPS to using Bluetooth 4.0 signals once they walk indoors. Because the beacons are at fixed sites and have a short range, they can work out your position to within 30 centimetres - enough to "bookmark" a jacket in a shop window and browse back to it later.

Another approach to accuracy is being taken by Sensewhere, whose smartphone-based IPS is being tested in Edinburgh's Gyle shopping mall. The company says that the main problem with relying on maps of Wi-Fi networks to find your position is that routers get disconnected, thrown out or switched off. To get round this, Sensewhere's app frequently files reports to its database on how the radio environment has changed, meaning its IPS maps "automatically self-improve" says a spokesperson.

A further way to boost IPS accuracy is to use data from phone accelerometers to calculate how far someone has moved since the last radio fix. On 2 November, Cambridge Silicon Radio launched a line of microchipsthat do just that, adding inertial data to that gleaned from Wi-Fi and cellphones. The firm hopes the chips will make IPS adoption by phone makers more likely.

The challenges for all these IPS vendors, says Bob Cockshott, a GPS expert with the UK's National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, is to ensure that physical changes to the environment don't ruin position fixes. "The big issue for indoor positioning is that once you have mapped the radio [signals] in a space, just doing something as simple as moving a metal filing cabinet could change the paths the radio waves take - and that will lower accuracy."

AJAY PAUL

Software glitch in Lumia will have minimal impact in India: Nokia

The discovery of software-related glitch in some units of Lumia 800, the Windows-based phone recently launched by Nokia, will not have any major impact in India, asserts the company.

“India impact will be minimal since we just started shipping. Therefore, if a consumer buys a Nokia Lumia 800 today, there is absolutely no impact. Nokia will go the extra mile to delight their consumers, especially with a flagship product like Lumia 800,” Nokia asserted in a release on Tuesday.

The release comes in the wake of reported instances where the pre-loaded diagnostics tool in the Nokia Lumia 800 was showing lower than expected levels of full battery charge capacity.

http://www.thehindu.com/business/companies/article2732674.ece

reeshma ramesan

Sony has unveiled a paper-powered battery prototype in Japan.

The technology generates electricity by turning shredded paper into sugar which in turn is used as fuel.If brought to market, the innovation could allow the public to top up the power of their mobile devices using waste material.The team behind the project said such bio-batteries are environmentally friendly as they did not use harmful chemicals or metals.The Japanese electronics giant showed off its invention at the Eco-Products exhibition in Tokyo last week.Employees invited children to drop piece of paper and cardboard into a liquid made up of water and enzymes, and then to shake it. The equipment was connected to a small fan which began spinning a few minutes later.

Learning from nature

The process works by using the enzyme cellulase to decompose the materials into glucose sugar. These were then combined with oxygen and further enzymes which turned the material into electrons and hydrogen ions.The electrons were used by the battery to generate electricity. Water and the acid gluconolactone, which is commonly used in cosmetics, were created as by-products.Researchers involved in the project likened the mechanism to the one used by white ants and termites to digest wood and turn it into energy.Their work builds on a previous project in which they used fruit juice to power a Walkman music player."Using a 'fuel' as simple as old greetings cards - the sort of cards that millions of us will be receiving this Christmas - the bio battery can deliver enough energy to power a small fan," said Yuichi Tokita, senior researcher at Sony's Advanced Material Research Lab."Of course, this is still at the very early stages of its development, but when you imagine the possibilities that this technology could deliver, it becomes very exciting indeed."

Eco-friendly

While the battery is already powerful enough to run basic music players, it is still falls far short of commercially sold batteries.The environmental campaign group Greenpeace welcomed the development."The issue that we always have with battery technology is the toxic chemicals that go into making them and recycling batteries is also complicated," John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK."Any way to provide a greener technology could be a potential magic bullet. So from that point of view this is interesting, and I think it's fantastic that companies like Sony are looking to make the generation of energy more environmentally friendly."Sony's engineers are not the only ones exploring the concept of paper-based batteries.In 2009 a team of Stanford University scientists revealed they were working on a battery created by coating sheets of p http://www.technologyreview.in/blog/arxiv/27420/?p1=Aaper with ink made of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires. They said their work might ultimately lead to a device capable of lasting through 40,000 charge-discharge cycles.

Mithun Mathew

IBM Watson

Watson is an artificial intelligence computer system capable of

answering questions posed in natural language, developed in IBM's

DeepQA project by a research team led by principal investigator David

Ferrucci. Watson was named after IBM's first president, Thomas J.

Watson.

In 2011, as a test of its abilities, Watson competed on the quiz show

Jeopardy!, in the show's only human-versus-machine match-up to date.

In a two-game, combined-point match, broadcast in three Jeopardy!

episodes February 14–16, Watson beat Brad Rutter, the biggest all-time

money winner on Jeopardy!, and Ken Jennings, the record holder for the

longest championship streak (75 days). Watson received the first prize

of $1 million.

Watson consistently outperformed its human opponents on the game's

signaling device, but had trouble responding to a few categories,

notably those having short clues containing only a few words. For each

clue, Watson's three most probable responses were displayed by the

television screen. Watson had access to 200 million pages of

structured and unstructured content consuming four terabytes of disk

storage, including the full text of Wikipedia. Watson was not

connected to the Internet during the game.

Johny James

Starting in January 2012, Facebook will be featuring ads or sponsored stories in the main news feed in the web version of the social networking site. Facebook had stopped displaying ads in the main news feed long back in 2008, thus the new move is likely to be a big boost for the advertisers.

"Starting early next year, we will gradually begin showing Sponsored Stories in News Feed," a spokesperson for Facebook said in a statement. "Our goal is to do this thoughtfully and slowly. We hope to show people no more than one Sponsored Story in their News Feeds per day and the story will be clearly labeled.”

The sponsored stories that would appear in the News Feed would be based on stories or Pages that you and your friends have already liked. The new move is aimed at engaging more users with the ads and sponsored items on the social networking. Users may not opt out of seeing sponsored items in the news feed, though they can unsubscribe certain ads. However, users may not remove ads of the Page they have already liked.

Facebook's new move is likely to trigger backlash from many users, who wish not to see the ads or have their news feed. Facebook was recently slammed by the US' FTC for its privacy policies. This is why the company is looking to integrate the ads slowly. Moreover, Facebook is likely to ensure the sponsored stories look similar to the regular news feed content, which will not disturb several users.
Arun Jose

How 3-D Photovoltaics Could Revolutionize Solar Power

Replacing flat panels with three dimensional structures can significantly change the economics of solar power generation, say engineers

Read full news at

 http://www.technologyreview.in/blog/arxiv/27420/?p1=A
ANTO VARGHESE

Stall...

In fluid dynamics a stall is a reduction in the lift coefficient generated by a foil as angle of attack(AOA) increases. This occurs when the criticalAOA of the foil is exceeded. The critical angle of attack is typically about 15 degrees, but it may vary significantly depending on the fluid, foil, and Reynolds number.

Stalls in fixed-wing flight are often experienced as a sudden reduction in lift as the pilot increases angle of attack and exceeds the critical angle of attack (which may be due to slowing down below stall speed in level flight). A stall does not mean that the engine(s) have stopped working, or that the aircraft has stopped moving — the effect is the same even in an unpowered glider aircrsft. Vectored thrust in manned and unmanned aircraft is used to surpass the stall limit, thereby giving rise to post stalltechnology.

Because stalls are most commonly discussed in connection with aviation, this article discusses stalls as they relate mainly to aircraft, in particular fixed wing aircraft. The principles of stall discussed here translate to foils in other fluids as well.

Stall warning and safety devices...

   A stall strip is a small sharp-edged device that, when attached to the leading edge of a wing, encourages the stall to start there in preference to any other location on the wing. If attached close to the wing root, it makes the stall gentle and progressive; if attached near the wing tip, it encourages the aircraft to drop a wing when stalling.

  A stall fence is a flat plate in the direction of the chord to stop separated flow progressing out along the wing.

  An Angle-Of-Attack (AOA) Indicator, also called a Lift Reserve Indicator, is a pressure differential instrument that integrates airspeed and angle of attack into one instantaneous, continuous readout. An AOA indicator provides a visual display of the amount of available lift throughout its slow speed envelope regardless of the many variables that act upon an aircraft. This indicator is immediately responsive to changes in speed, angle of attack, and wind conditions, and automatically compensates for aircraft weight, altitude, and temperature.An angle of attack limiter or an "alpha" limiter is a flight computer that automatically prevents pilot input from causing the plane to rise over the stall angle. Some alpha limiters can be disabled by the pilot.

20/12/2011

 ANTO VARGHESE


Nanomedicine is the medical application of nanotechnology Nanomedicine ranges from the medical applications of nanomaterials, to nanoelectronicbiosenes biosensors, and even possible future applications of molecular nanotechnology. Current problems for nanomedicine involve understanding the issues related to toxicity and environmental impact of nano scale materials. One nanometer is one-millionth of a millimeter. 
Medical use of nanomaterials
Two forms of nanomedicine that have already been tested in mice and are awaiting human trials are using gold nanoshells to help diagnose and treat cancer, and using liposomes as vaccine adjuvants and as vehicles for drug transport. Similarly, drug detoxification is also another application for nanomedicine which has shown promising results in rats. A benefit of using nanoscale for medical technologies is that smaller devices are less invasive and can possibly be implanted inside the body, plus biochemical reaction times are much shorter. These devices are faster and more sensitive than typical drug delivery.
  
reeshma ramesan

New Algorithm Could Substantially Speed Up MRI Scans,ScienceDaily

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) devices can scan the inside of the body in intricate detail, allowing clinicians to spot even the earliest signs of cancer or other abnormalities. But they can be a long and uncomfortable experience for patients, requiring them to lie still in the machine for up to 45 minutes.

Now this scan time could be cut to just 15 minutes, thanks to an algorithm developed at MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics.

MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields and radio waves to produce images of the body. Rather than taking just one scan of a patient, the machines typically acquire a variety of images of the same body part, each designed to create a contrast between different types of tissue. By comparing multiple images of the same region, and studying how the contrasts vary across the different tissue types, radiologists can detect subtle abnormalities such as a developing tumor. But taking multiple scans of the same region in this way is time-consuming, meaning patients must spend long periods inside the machine.

In a paper to be published in the journal Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, researchers led by Elfar Adalsteinsson, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and health sciences and technology, and Vivek Goyal, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, detail an algorithm they have developed to dramatically speed up this process. The algorithm uses information gained from the first contrast scan to help it produce the subsequent images. In this way, the scanner does not have to start from scratch each time it produces a different image from the raw data, but already has a basic outline to work from, considerably shortening the time it takes to acquire each later scan.

To create this outline, the software looks for features that are common to all the different scans, such as the basic anatomical structure, Adalsteinsson says. "If the machine is taking a scan of your brain, your head won't move from one image to the next," he says. "So if scan number two already knows where your head is, then it won't take as long to produce the image as when the data had to be acquired from scratch for the first scan."In particular, the algorithm uses the first scan to predict the likely position of the boundaries between different types of tissue in the subsequent contrast scans. "Given the data from one contrast, it gives you a certain likelihood that a particular edge, say the periphery of the brain or the edges that confine different compartments inside the brain, will be in the same place," Adalsteinsson says.

However, the algorithm cannot impose too much information from the first scan onto the subsequent ones, Goyal says, as this would risk losing the unique tissue features revealed by the different contrasts. "You don't want to presuppose too much," he says. "So you don't assume, for example, that the bright-and-dark pattern from one image will be replicated in the next image, because in fact those kinds of dark and light patterns are often reversed, and can reveal completely different tissue properties."
So for each pixel, the algorithm calculates what new information it needs to construct the image, and what information -- such as the edges of different types of tissue -- it can take from the previous scans, says graduate student and first author Berkin Bilgic.
The result is an MRI scan that is three times quicker to complete, cutting the time patients spend in the machine from 45 to 15 minutes. This faster scan time does have a slight impact on image quality, Bilgic admits, but it is much better than competing algorithms.


AJAY PAUL

Need for Speed: The Run is a racing video game, the 18th title in the Need for Speed franchise, and developed by EA Black Box and published by Electronic Arts. The Wii and 3DS versions were developed by Firebrand Games, the team behind Undercover and Nitro (both DS versions). It was released in North America on November 15, 2011 and November 18, 2011 in Europe.
The game is described as an "illicit, high-stakes race across the country. The only way to get your life back is to be the first from San Francisco to New York. No speed limits. No rules. No allies. All you have are your driving skills and sheer determination".^[5]
Producers Jason DeLong and Steve Anthony have stated during an interview that Black Box is aiming to obtain critical acclaim after their last game received universally poor ratings.^[6] The Run was in production for three years even though previous Black Box titles have had much shorter development periods.^[7]

 www.needforspeed.com/therun

athira

4G Technology

Fourth Generation (4G) mobiles

4G also called as Fourth-Generation Communications System, is a term used to describe the next step in wireless communications. A 4G system can provide a comprehensive IP solution where voice, data and streamed multimedia can be provided to users on an "Anytime, Anywhere" basis. The data transfer rates are also much higher than previous generations.

The main objectives of 4G are:

1)4G will be a fully IP-based integrated system.

2)This will be capable of providing 100 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s speeds both indoors and outdoors.

3)It can provide premium quality and high security.

4)4G offer all types of services at an affordable cost.

4G is developed to provide high quality of service (QoS) and rate requirements set by forthcoming applications such as wireless broadband access, Multimedia Messaging, Video Chat, Mobile TV, High definition TV content, DVB, minimal service like voice and data, and other streaming services.

4G technology allow high-quality smooth video transmission. It will enable fast downloading of full-length songs or music pieces in real time.

The business and popularity of 4Gmobiles is predicted to be very vast. On an average, by 2009, this 4Gmobile market will be over $400B and it will dominate the wireless communications, and its converged system will replace most conventional wireless infrastructure.

Data Rates For 4G:

The downloading speed for mobile Internet connections is from 9.6 kbit/s for 2G cellular at present. However, in actual use the data rates are usually slower, especially in crowded areas, or when there is congestion in network.

4G mobile data transmission rates are planned to be up to 20 megabits per second which means that it will be about 10-20 times faster than standard ASDL services.

In terms of connection seeds, 4G will be about 200 times faster than present 2G mobile data rates, and about 10 times faster than 3G broadband mobile. 3G data rates are currently 2Mbit/sec, which is very fast compared to 2G's 9.6Kbit/sec.

 Vivek Kanissery

hi all,
we all have heard of the term cloud computing somewhere or the other..but don't have much details regarding the same..

cloud computing basically means technology that provides user the liberty to store data somewhere on the net..the exact location is something that concerns him the least..as he will be able to access the data as and when needed..the major use of this technology is that there is no much worry about losing data if the person's computer crashes or is stolen..
all that is needed to avail this facility is an internet access..

read more:: http://www.wikinvest.com/concept/Cloud_Computing
                 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

Johny James

Assistant treasurer Axel Martinez said today that Google will invest $94 million into four commercial solar photovoltaic projects alongside private equity firm KKR. Google is investing equity in SunTap Energy, an entity created by KKR for solar investing.
The projects themselves are operated by Recurrent Energy, a company which specializes in commercial and utility solar photovoltaic projects. With a generating capacity of 88 megawatts, they will produce about 160 megawatt-hours per year, or enough to power 13,000 homes.
The solar farms will feed electricity into the grid run by the Sacramento Utility District, which created a feed-in tariff for renewable energy. A feed-in tariff pays a renewable power producer a higher rate than power from conventional sources, a model that's used in Europe. In the U.S., solar is subsidized with a federal tax credit.
Three of the Sacramento projects will be completed in early 2012 with the fourth coming online later in the year, Recurrent Energy said. "This investment is a clear demonstration of solar's ability to attract private capital from well established investors like Google and KKR," Recurrent Energy CEO Arno Harris said in a statement.

 Mithun Mathew

Iris (Intelligent Rival Imitator of Siri) is a personal assistant application for Android. The application uses natural language processing to answer questions based on user voice request. Iris currently supports Call, Text, Contact Lookup, and Web Search actions incuding playing videos, looking for: lyrics, movies reviews, recipes, news, weather, places and others. It was developed by Narayan Babu and his team at a Kochi based firm named Dexetra in 8 hours. The name is actually Siri spelled backwards, which is the original application for the same use built by Apple Inc. 


Arun Jose

Ultrabooks to replace Laptops by 2013, says Intel

NEW DELHI: Electronic chip maker Intel is betting big on evolution of new form factor of computer notebook, UltraBook, and expects it to replace laptops by 2013. "Our focus for next few years is going to be on energy efficiency, security and connectivity. Ultrabook as category was launched this year. This will change face of computing in next two to three years," Intel South Asia's Director of Marketing Sandeep Aurora told reporters here.

Ultrabooks have sleek and compact design with computing speed that can match computing need of present laptop useRs

"We expect that laptops will be completely replaced by Ultrabooks by 2013," Aurora said.