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Comment Re:Is the expense of electrolysis the main inhibit (Score 2) 113

There are a few changes that jump out at me as being significant:

    • 1. This process works at atmospheric pressure (so there is no need for it to be pressurized)
    • 2. The resulting hydrogen can be stored in the liquid sponge, so it too would not need to be pressurized (this is probably good for transporting it)
    • 3. This process requires less electricity than current methods using PEME's (unless I misread something)
    • 4. The extraction is much faster using this method (so it will probably scale up much more easily)

Submission + - Ant-sized radio runs on radio waves (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Researchers have created a radio so tiny that almost seven would fit on the face of a penny. The device runs without a battery; instead it uses “power harvesting,” a process by which it recovers and uses energy from the same waves that carry signals to its antenna. Even if the radio chip did need a battery, a single AAA battery has enough power to run it for more than a century, researchers report. Many components of the radio had to be scaled down to fit onto the tiny silicon chip; the antenna, for example, is one-tenth the size of a Wi-Fi antenna—and yet, it runs at a fast speed of 24 billion cycles per second. The tiny radios cost only a few cents to manufacture, the researchers say, and such devices are key to the next wave of wireless devices; eventually they could link together gadgets like smart phones with everyday objects, which will then be able to make decisions with minimal human intervention.

Submission + - Italy: High Court shoots down Windows tax (fsfe.org)

jrepin writes: Italy's High Court has struck a blow to the practice of forcing non-free software on buyers of PCs and laptops. The judges sharply criticised the practice of selling PCs only together with a non-free operating system as "a commercial policy of forced distribution". The court slammed this practice as "monopolistic in tendency". It also highlighted that the practice of bundling means that end users are forced into using additional non-free applications due to compatibility and interoperability issues, whether they wanted these programs or not.

Submission + - Liquid Sponges Extract Hydrogen from Water (bbc.com)

gaelfx writes: Researchers at Glasglow University have an interesting method of separating the hydrogen out of water: Liquid Sponges. Most methods of extracting the hydrogen involve some form electrolysis, but these generally require some pretty expensive materials.The researchers claim that they can accomplish this using less electricity, cheaper materials and 30 times faster to boot. With both Honda and Toyota promising hydrogen fuel cell cars in Japan within the next few years (other manufacturers must be considering it as well, if not as publicly), does this spell a new future for transportation technology?

Submission + - LA TV stations free up airwaves for wireless broadband

alphadogg writes: An effort to free up some of the airwaves used by TV broadcasts and make them available for wireless broadband took a big step forward this week in the U.S. Two TV stations in Los Angeles, KLCS and KCET, have agreed to share a single frequency to deliver their programming, http://www.kcet.org/about/pres... freeing up a channel that can be auctioned off to wireless carriers next year. The change, which the Federal Communications Commission calls “repackaging,” is possible because digital TV broadcasts don’t need the full 6MHz of broadcast spectrum that was used for analog TV.

Submission + - 3.8 Gbps LTE speed achieved (mybroadband.co.za)

slash-sa writes: Nokia and SK Telecom have set a new world record for LTE with a throughput of 3.8Gbps, a speed that would allow mobile broadband users to download a full-length 5GB high-definition movie in 11 seconds. This was achieved by converging the TDD and FDD LTE spectrum, aggregating 10 frequencies allocated for both LTE variants to provide 200MHz of bandwidth. The demonstration was made during the Mobile Asia Expo in Shanghai, China, in June.

Submission + - Woman of 24 found to have no cerebellum in her brain (gizmocrazed.com)

Diggester writes: DON'T mind the gap. A woman has reached the age of 24 without anyone realising she was missing a large part of her brain. The case highlights just how adaptable the organ is.

The discovery was made when the woman was admitted to the Chinese PLA General Hospital of Jinan Military Area Command in Shandong Province complaining of dizziness and nausea. She told doctors she'd had problems walking steadily for most of her life, and her mother reported that she hadn't walked until she was 7 and that her speech only became intelligible at the age of 6.

Comment Tell me.... (Score 2) 249

The only percentage regarding Windows that I care about is what percentage of a reasonably priced SSD it will take up. Now, I realize that metric is subjective ("reasonable" being relative), but honestly, that's the worst part of the Windows tax: on a 240GB SSD, the footprint is something like 10%. Am I the only one who feels that's absurd?

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