82868387
submission
Lucas123 writes:
A new study by international certification body DNV GL has found that the resiliency of photovoltaic modules can vary widely among manufacturers with some panels dropping below acceptable standards of efficiency when subjected to environmental tests. The number of photovoltaic module manufacturers taking part in the research varied from 17 to 22, depending on which of five tests administered to the panels that participated in. The study found that solar module efficiency could drop by up to 58.8% depending on the manufacturer and the test. However, "many PV modules performed well across all tests," according to the report. For example, eight manufacturers' products degraded less than 3% in solar conversion efficiency after undergoing a thermal cycling test four times. Somewhat surprisingly, where the panels were manufactured had little to do with their quality. From 55% to 60% of the top performing modules were manufactured in China, according to the study. "This demonstrates that manufacturing location is not a good proxy for reliability," the study stated.
82625699
submission
Lucas123 writes:
A federal study has revealed that if solar panels were installed on all suitable rooftops throughout the U.S., it could generate 39% of the country's energy needs. Researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) spent three years studying 128 cities and found 83% of small buildings have a suitable location for PV installation, but only 26% of the total rooftop area on those buildings is suitable for development. The researchers then extrapolated the findings to the entire continental U.S. Even using just 26% of the total rooftop area, the potential for power generation is enormous. The total national potential of rooftop solar power is 1,118 gigawatts (billion watts or GW) of installed capacity and 1,432 terawatt-hours (trillion watt hours or TWh) of annual energy generation.
82553221
submission
Lucas123 writes:
The DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has developed a wireless charging system for vehicles that can provide a 60% charge to a Chevy Volt with a 10kWh battery in 18 minutes and a Nissan Leaf with a 20kWh battery in 36 minutes. The research is the first step in creating a 50KW, that would more than cut stationary charging time in half, and then a 100KW wireless charging system that could allow roadways to power vehicles while they are being driven. With ORNL's current 20kW charging system, about 37.5% of each one mile road segment (assuming 50 mph constant speed) would have to emit wireless power in order to drive your electric vehicle in a charge-sustaining mode. With a 100kW charging system, however, only 7.5% of a one mile road segment would need to emit power in order to sustain an EV's battery charge, the researchers said.
82322983
submission
Lucas123 writes:
Power engineering researchers at MIT have discovered that by arranging photovoltaic arrays in a zig-zag pattern on towers or into cubical designs can increase energy collection from two to 20 times. MIT's research, the findings for which are based on both computer modeling and outdoor testing of real modules, were published in the journal" Energy and Environmental Science. While the cost of the so called "3D solar towers" or cubes exceeds that of ordinary flats solar panels, the expense is partially balanced by a much higher energy output for a given footprint, as well as much more uniform power output over the course of a day and over the seasons when panels face less light and more cloud cover, the researchers stated.
82182281
submission
Lucas123 writes:
An MIT study based on mathematical modeling demonstrated a likely scenario in which high-tech vehicles using sensors to remain at a safe distance from each other as they move through a four-way intersection can eliminate the need for traffic lights in the future. By removing the waits caused by traffic lights, these so-called Slot-based Intersections speed up traffic flow.The study claims this kind of traffic-light-free transportation design, if it ever arrives, could allow twice as much traffic to use existing roads.
82156775
submission
Lucas123 writes:
The top 20 automakers have pledged to make automatic emergency breaking a standard feature in all new cars by 2022. The automakers represent 99% of the U.S. auto market, meaning AEB will be standard on all new all new light-duty cars and trucks with a gross vehicle weight of up to 8,500 lbs. within six years. The automakers said AEB will be standard on virtually all trucks with a gross vehicle weight between 8,501 lbs. and 10,000 lbs. beginning no later than Sept. 1, 2025.
82131969
submission
Lucas123 writes:
By 2022, using a thumb drive or taking your vehicle to the location you bought it for a software update will seem as strange as it would be for a smartphone or laptop today. By 2022, there will be 203 million vehicles on the road that can receive software over-the-air (SOTA) upgrades; among those vehicles, at least 22 million will also be able to get firmware upgrades, according to a new report by ABI Research. Today, there are about 253 million cars and trucks on the road, according to IHS Automotive. The main reasons automakers are moving quickly to enable OTA upgrades: recall costs, autonomous driving and security risks based on software complexities, according to Susan Beardslee, a senior analyst at ABI Research. "It is a welcome transformation, as OTA is the only way to accomplish secure management of all of a connected car's software in a seamless, comprehensive, and fully integrated manner," Beardslee said.
82107035
submission
Lucas123 writes:
GM today announced of a short-term vehicle rental program exclusive to the Lyft ride-sharing service, but it also made clear a longer-term goal to create a fleet of autonomous vehicles that could be summoned by Lyft's automated ride matching mobile app. The new Express Drive rental program will make cars available to Lyft drivers starting at $99, a price that includes insurance and vehicle maintenance. The new rental program comes just two months after GM struck a strategic partnership with Lyft to develop autonomous vehicles and invested $500 million as part of Lyft's $1 billion Series F funding round. More than 400 million people will rely on robotic car sharing by 2030, according to a new report by ABI Research. "We see the future of personal mobility as connected, seamless and autonomous," GM president Dan Ammann said. "With GM and Lyft working together, we believe we can successfully implement this vision more rapidly."
82081433
submission
Lucas123 writes:
The U.S. solar market is expected to grow 120% this year" with 16GW of new solar power, more than double the record-breaking 7.3GW installed in 2015. The total operating solar PV capacity in the U.S. is expected to reach 25.6 gigawatts (billion watts or GW) of direct current (DC) by the end of the year, according to GTM Research's U.S. Solar Market Insight Report 2015 Year in Review. When accounting for all projects (both distributed and centralized), solar accounted for 29.4% of new electric generating capacity installed in the U.S. in 2015, exceeding the total for natural gas for the first time and it will put the U.S. ahead of all other nations with regard to new solar installations for 2016.
81917051
submission
Lucas123 writes:
Several key technologies are coming to market in the next three years that will ensure data storage will not only keep up with but exceed demand. Heat-assisted magnetic recording and bit patterned media promise to increase hard drive capacity initially by 40% and later by 10-fold, or as Seagate's marketing proclaims: 20TB hard drives by 2020. At the same time resistive RAM technologies, such as Intel/Micron's 3D XPoint promise storage-class memory that's 1,000 times faster and more resilient than today's NAND flash, but it will be expensive — at first. Meanwhile, NAND flash makers have created roadmaps for 3D NAND technology that will grow to more than 100 layers in the next two to three generations, increasing performance and capacity while ultimately lowering costs to that of hard drives."Very soon flash will be cheaper than rotating media," said Siva Sivaram, executive vice president of memory at SanDisk.
81732809
submission
Lucas123 writes:
Samsung announced it is now shipping the world's highest capacity 2.5-in SSD, the 15.38TB PM1633a. The new SSD uses a 12Gbps SAS interface and is being marketed for use in enterprise-class storage systems where IT managers can fit twice as many of the drives in a standard 19-inch, 2U rack compared to an equivalent 3.5-inch drive. The PM1633a sports random read/write speeds of up to 200,000 and 32,000 IOPS, respectively. It delivers sequential read/write speeds of up to 1,200MBps, the company said. The SSD can sustain one full drive write (15.38TB) per day, every day over its life, which Samsung claims is two to ten times more data than typical SATA SSDs based on planar MLC and TLC NAND flash technologies. The SSD is based on Samsung's 48-layer V-NAND (3D NAND) technology, which also uses 3-bit MLC flash.
81728409
submission
Lucas123 writes:
In its rush to gather information, the FBI blew its chance to retrieve data from the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino terrorists when it ordered his iCloud passcode to be reset shortly after the attacks. Now in its fervor to force Apple to create software that can break its own encryption algorithm, the FBI may be opening a security hole to federal agencies . Over the past four years, the federal government has changed over from Blackberry devices to iPhones, one major reason for that is... you guessed it: the strong native security. If Apple creates an iPhone skeleton key, it not only threatens the public's privacy, but the security of the federal government as well.
81721605
submission
Lucas123 writes:
By 2020, surgical robotics sales are expected to almost double to $6.4 billion, at the same time robots are becoming easier to use. One new robot is so easy to use that even med students can achieve proficiency with a few tries, according to Umamaheswar Duvvuri, director of head and neck surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The robot, a snake-like endoscope that can be directed into any shape through the relative orientations of its linkages, requires only one incision, reducing the number from several involved in typical laparoscopic procedures. Older, and more popular surgical robotic systems, such as the da Vinci Surgical System, are now being tested by physicians who are at controls more than 1,000 miles away. Since the Affordable Care Act of 2010 created both the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program and a new pay-for-performance system based on quality of care — not the number of procedures — robots could not only help healthcare facilities purchasing the $1 million-plus systems could achieve compliance faster and attain a return on their investment within two years.
81596345
submission
Lucas123 writes:
With the price of lithium-ion batteries continuing to plummet, already dropping 65% since 2010, electric vehicles will become cheaper to own by the mid-2020s, according to a new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The report also forecasts that sales of EVs will hit 41 million by 2040, up from 462,000 in 2015. By 2040, EVs will make up 35% of new light-duty vehicle sales, even if the price of crude oil goes back up from $33 today to $70 in the future. The adoption of EVs will displace about 13 million barrels of oil per day by 2040, when the clean-energy cars represent about one-quarter of cars on the road.
81312133
submission
Lucas123 writes:
Researchers have demonstrated a method of femtosecond laser writing in self-assembled crystaline nanostructures that can withstand temperatures up to 1,000 degree Celsius and last Indefinitely at room temperature. The storage method enables up to 360TB of capacity on a single disc. Data is written to a file comprised of three layers of nano-structured dots separated by five micrometres. The technology was first demonstrated in 2013 when a 300 kilobit digital copy of a text file was successfully recorded in what is being called 5D digital data by femtosecond laser writing. Major documents from human history such as Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Newton’s Opticks, Magna Carta and Kings James Bible, have been saved as digital copies that could survive the human race.Coined as the ‘Superman memory crystal’, as the glass memory has been compared to the “memory crystals” used in the Superman films, the data is recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz.
