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Submission + - Battery with a billion holes (phys.org)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: A battery which is made up of tiny nanopores has been created by researchers from University of Maryland. Each of the nanopores holds electrolyte to carry the electrical charge between nanotube electrodes at either end, and acts as if a very tiny battery

According to Chanyuan Liu, a graduate student in materials science & engineering, says that it can be fully charged in 12 minutes, and it can be recharged thousands of time, and that the research team has already identified ways to increase the power of the batteries by ten times

The team consists of UMD chemists and materials scientists who collaborated on the project: Gary Rubloff , director of the Maryland NanoCenter and a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and in the Institute for Systems Research; Sang Bok Lee, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemisty and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering; and seven of their Ph.D. students (two now graduated)

Many millions of these nanopores can be crammed into one larger battery the size of a postage stamp. One of the reasons the researchers think this unit is so successful is because each nanopore is shaped just like the others, which allows them to pack the tiny thin batteries together efficiently. Coauthor Eleanor Gillette's modeling shows that the unique design of the nanopore battery is responsible for its success, and the space inside the holes is so small that the space they take up, all added together, would be no more than a grain of sand

The entire design of the battery involves each of its nanobattery components being composed of an anode, a cathode, and a liquid electrolyte confined within the nanopores of anodic aluminium oxide, which is an advanced ceramic material. Each nanoelectrode includes an outer ruthenium nanotube current collector and an inner nanotube of vanadium pentoxide storage material. These together form a symmetric full nanopore storage cell with anode and cathode separated by an electrolyte region. The vanadium pentoxide is treated with lithium at one end to serve as the anode, with pristine vanadium pentoxide at the other end serving as the cathode

Submission + - Logitech Aims To Control the Smart Home (gigaom.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Household devices are getting smarter these days: the so-called internet of things is bringing software-controlled thermostats, lighting, and other appliances into the mainstream. Many companies are fighting for a piece of the pie, but Logitech is taking a different approach. They're mostly known for computer peripherals, but they also make multi-function remote controls, and now they're trying to build remotes that will control all of a home's smart devices. "Logitech doesn’t want to own the device, it wants to own the app experience. But to do that, it had to build a software overlay and a controller that would convince people to put it in their homes. So it’s offering a $100 hub that combines IR, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and RF that will let you use the Logitech Harmony app to control gear that uses those protocols. This means if you have a SmartThings, a Peq or a Lutron hub, the Wi-Fi in the Logitech device will let you control the others’ gear from Logitech, which so far seems to have a much nicer interface." They've worked out partnerships with a lot of companies that are big in the home, like Nest, Honeywell, and Philips, all of whom seem to want this extra layer of control for the user.

Submission + - How To Talk Infosec With Kids

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If you’re a parent, chances are you’re concerned about your kids using the Internet. Many of those working in tech don’t talk about the dangers they see on their screens at work back at home with their kids. Instead, their strategy is a mixture of hope and worry. They hope something bad doesn’t happen to their kids – they don’t click on a bad link – and then they restrict their kids screen time. Often they say their kids won't understand since it’s hard enough to explain tech jobs to most adults. It’s never too early to talk infosec with kids: you simply need the right story.

Submission + - Extending human vision range into near-infrared with Vitamin A

Submitted by asvravi
asvravi writes: A crowd-funded experiment on experiment.com seeks to extend the color range of human vision into near infra-red by only manipulating the amounts of vitamin A1 and A2 in the diet of subjects.
https://experiment.com/project...
It has now reported initial success with human eye response at 950nm as compared to 850nm before the diet modifications. https://experiment.com/u/aAcR2...
How long until full night vision?

Submission + - Intellectual Ventures LLC wins Lawsuit against Canon; Settles with Xilinx

Submitted by asvravi
asvravi writes: Reuters has news of Intellectual Ventures' Lawsuits against Xilinx — http://www.reuters.com/article...

Patent owner Intellectual Ventures has settled a lawsuit against one of its own investors, chipmaker Xilinx, a case that had been closely followed by advocates seeking to change the U.S. patent system. ... Chipmaker Xilinx invested in two Intellectual Ventures funds and licensed a portion of IV's patents, but resisted IV's entreaties to license more patents in 2010, court filings show. Xilinx eventually asked a California federal judge to declare those IV patents invalid, while IV countersued in Delaware, accusing Xilinx of infringement.

More details of the Canon case are over a Image Sensors World — http://image-sensors-world.blo... and http://image-sensors-world.blo...

Intellectual Ventures reports that the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware rendered a verdict finding two Intellectual Ventures’ (IV) image sensor patents valid and infringed by digital camera products of Canon Inc. and Canon USA. Law360.com adds that "the jury held that Canon’s EOS 1DS Mark III, EOS 5D Mark II and Vixia Camcorders infringe at least one claim of U.S. Patent Number 6,023,081, which Canon failed to invalidate for obviousness."

In one account, Intellectual Ventures has been reported to operate out of 3200 shell accounts to either intimidate or protect industry players making use of a broken US patent system. It has raised about $6 Billion and has amassed a vast portfolio of 70,000 patents and counts many of the biggest consumer industry players among its investors and clientele.

Submission + - NASA, French cast doubt on SpaceX reusable rocket project (examiner.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: The drive by SpaceX to make the first stage of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle reusable has attracted the attention of both the media and the commercial space world. It recently tested a first stage which “soft landed” successfully in the Atlantic Ocean. However both NASA and the French space agency CNES has cast doubt that this kind of reusability could ever be made practical, according to a Monday story in Aviation Week.

SpaceX is basing its plan on the idea that its Merlin 1D engines have a lifecycle of 40, thus a Falcon 9 first stage could in theory be reused that number of times. The margins built into the rocket allow for the extra weight involved in using landing legs and the extra fuel that will be needed to execute a powered descent. These margins will still allow them to launch substantial payloads to low Earth orbit and a geo transfer orbit.

However, citing their own experience in trying to reuse engines, both NASA and the CNES have suggested that both the technical challenges and the economics mitigate against SpaceX being able to reuse all or part of their rockets. NASA found that it was not worth trying to reuse the space shuttle main engines after every flight without extensive refurbishment. The CNES studied reusing its Ariane 5 solid rocket boosters liquid fueled and reusable but soon scrapped the idea. Safety issues surrounding flyback boosters were also cites as a show stopper

Submission + - Anti Virus Is Dead (But Still Makes Money) Says Symantec (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: Symantec says anti virus is dead but the company — the world's largest IT security firm — still makes 40 percent of its revenue there. AV now lets through around 55 percent of attacks, the company's senior vice president of information security told the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, other security firms including FireEye, RedSocks and Imperva are casting doubt on AV, suggesting a focus on data loss prevention might be better.

Submission + - India now ranks as the world's third largest economy (arvindkhanna.com)

Submitted by sharmajyoti
sharmajyoti writes: According to World Bank India with 6.4 per cent share of global GDP on a PPP basis becomes world’s third largest economy after United States and China. It helps Planning Commission to take appropriate steps on evolving policies to improve infrastructure across the country.

Comment Re:DOF (Score 4, Informative) 201

A whole lot of hogwash in here - wrong units, dimensionally inconsistent equations, plain ridiculous or missing assumptions but still the post gets modded as insightful just because it *sounds* insightful.

- Larger pixels improve dynamic range. DR is defined as max signal before pixel saturation, divided by noise. Noise is limited by shot noise and electronics so does not scale with pixel size. Larger pixels have more signal range. So DR is higher.
- You calculate DR as if there is only one electron noise. Try several magnitudes higher noise! I am not sure DR is what you think it is.
- QE for most sensors is between 20% and 50%. 10% is nonsense.
- ISOCELL improves color rendition, it has nothing to do with sensitivity.

Following from Samsung should help -


According to Samsung, the ISOCELL sensor design achieves better image quality than is normally possible from the very small CMOS sensors used in smartphones and tablets. ISOCELL uses a backside-illuminated (BSI) photodiode that is unique compared to past designs thanks to its integrated barriers between the individual pixels. Compared to conventional BSI sensors, this reduces electrical crosstalk by about 30 percent. Crosstalk - the bleeding of photons and photoelectrons between neighboring pixels - has been a disadvantage of traditional BSI sensor design, one that can reduce image sharpness and color accuracy because light intended for one particular pixel spreads to its neighbors.

Existing BSI designs, with their photodiodes near the front of the sensor, lack any inherent structures that prevent light bleeding between pixels (a role fortuitously played by the circuitry in front of the photodiodes in older, frontside-illuminated chips). The barriers in the ISOCELL design prevent this bleeding.

How do you equate 10% QE to 5pLumens/pix "sensitivity"? I am not sure Sensitivity is what you think it is. Sensitivity is defined as voltage output from the sensor for a given light input. What is the voltage output assumed here? How does it compare to the camera noise?

Given this, rest of your statements do not make any sense either. When you say "generous" assumptions, it turns out they are actually ridiculous assumptions - you have removed the entire point of analysis and pixel size and even ignored reality, which is what the OP is commenting about. You disagreed with his points that are based on solid reality, but then ended up giving a half-baked proof derived from supposedly "fundamental" limits that are nowhere close to reality.

Submission + - NASA Space Network facing critical technical, cost challenges (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: The network used to secure connectivity between spacecraft operating in low Earth orbit, such as the International Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope and a variety of other commercial and government spacecraft, faces a number of technical and monetary challenges in the next few years.

Submission + - Yahoo Stops Honoring 'Do-Not-Track' Settings (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When web browsers started implementing 'do-not-track' settings, Yahoo got some respect for being the first of the huge tech companies to honor those settings. Unfortunately, that respect has now gone out the door. As of this week, Yahoo will no longer alter their data collection if a user doesn't want to be tracked. They say there are two reasons for this. First, they want to provide a personalized web-browsing experience, which isn't possible using do-not-track. Second, they don't think do-not-track is viable. They say, '[W]e've been at the heart of conversations surrounding how to develop the most user-friendly standard. However, we have yet to see a single standard emerge that is effective, easy to use and has been adopted by the broader tech industry.' It looks like this is another blow to privacy on the web.

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