Sounds like fiction huh?
The revolutionary STAIR (St Andrews Air) battery can recharge itself as it is being discharged. These batteries draw oxygen from the surrounding air onto an open mesh section of the battery. The oxygen reacts with a porous carbon component inside the battery which recharges this battery.
Unlike traditional batteries these batteries do not have any chemical constituent. It has only a porous carbon layer and makes use of atmospheric oxygen, so these cells are lighter. And since these cells are recharged as they are discharged they last longer and have greater storage.
These light and small sized batteries are expected to find their place in electric cars, laptops, mobile phones etc.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
History of Packet Switching
It has often been said that change is the only constant in the 21st Century.
And there is little doubt that the restless tone of these times is something that the web has helped to accelerate.
But the only reason that the net and the web can cope with that punishing pace is thanks to work done four decades ago by British mathematician Donald Davies at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL).
On 5 August 1968 Dr Davies gave the first public presentation of work he had been doing on a method of moving data around computer networks called "packet switching".
The idea may sound mundane but, said John Pethica, chief science advisor at the NPL, the modern world would be a lot slower without it.
The internet, mobile phone networks and fixed line phones now all use the principles Davies and his team established to cram as much data as they can down the cables and wires making up the world's telecommunication networks.
Dr Pethica said the urge to find a better way to handle data emerged when computer networks were almost unheard of.
Donald Davies, NPL
At that time making a phone call involved creating a dedicated circuit between the handset of a caller and the person they wanted to chat to.
"A lot of people realised that point-to-point was going to be a big problem, even for telephones even before they thought about computers," said Dr Pethica. "The problem was how you turn it away from that."
The problem with human speech is that most of it is made up of silence - be that the pauses between words, time taken to breathe or gaps when one person waits for another to speak.
Using most of a telephone network to transmit silence is not a very efficient use of that resource. Far better would be to find a way to fill the blank spots with the moments from others calls when those folk were speaking.
Dr Pethica said many in the computer world in the late 60s were thinking about how to solve this problem.
"There were other ideas around, like Paul Baran at Rand, but they were nowhere near as useful as what Donald Davies did in terms of size of packets and nodes," said Dr Pethica.
"It was Donald who had the idea of making a set of nodes that you send packets of data to that find their own way through," said Dr Pethica.
The insight of Dr Davies and his team was to slice data, be that a chat on the phone, an e-mail or a picture, into separate pieces or packets. These are then put on the network and rely on the intelligence of nodes in the network to help them wend their way to their destination. Once there they are re-assembled into the right order.
Future proof
Dr Pethica said Davies' team worked out the mathematics that optimised such an approach - an idea that has proved its usefulness by still being in use today.
Computer research at NPL, NPL
Error correction schemes included in the technology helped it cope with the poor quality of phone lines in use in the late 1960s, said Dr Pethica. In more modern times those schemes help ensure data makes it across the busy lanes of the internet.
Davies and his colleagues went further than just establishing the concept for packet switching - they also build the first computer networks and proved their ideas could work.
"They had a whole series of early computers at NPL that they turned in to a local area network (Lan)," said Dr Pethica. He pointed out that the NPL scientists built such a network far in advance of the day when such things would become the common way to link up machines in an office.
"The important breakthrough that he and his team made was to build the Lan and make it work," he said.
Even before Dr Davies presented his work publicly, news of it had spread through the international computer science community.
As a result he was invited to talk about it to a team from the US Advanced Research Project Agency (Arpa) working on the fledgling internet. The principles he established were rolled in to the technology to make that network function.
Dr Pethica said packet switching idea was developed with an eye on the future and how a computer network might grow. Forty years on the scalability in the Dr Davies insight is still proving its worth, he said.
Courtesy : BBC News
And there is little doubt that the restless tone of these times is something that the web has helped to accelerate.
But the only reason that the net and the web can cope with that punishing pace is thanks to work done four decades ago by British mathematician Donald Davies at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL).
On 5 August 1968 Dr Davies gave the first public presentation of work he had been doing on a method of moving data around computer networks called "packet switching".
The idea may sound mundane but, said John Pethica, chief science advisor at the NPL, the modern world would be a lot slower without it.
The internet, mobile phone networks and fixed line phones now all use the principles Davies and his team established to cram as much data as they can down the cables and wires making up the world's telecommunication networks.
Dr Pethica said the urge to find a better way to handle data emerged when computer networks were almost unheard of.
Donald Davies, NPL
At that time making a phone call involved creating a dedicated circuit between the handset of a caller and the person they wanted to chat to.
"A lot of people realised that point-to-point was going to be a big problem, even for telephones even before they thought about computers," said Dr Pethica. "The problem was how you turn it away from that."
The problem with human speech is that most of it is made up of silence - be that the pauses between words, time taken to breathe or gaps when one person waits for another to speak.
Using most of a telephone network to transmit silence is not a very efficient use of that resource. Far better would be to find a way to fill the blank spots with the moments from others calls when those folk were speaking.
Dr Pethica said many in the computer world in the late 60s were thinking about how to solve this problem.
"There were other ideas around, like Paul Baran at Rand, but they were nowhere near as useful as what Donald Davies did in terms of size of packets and nodes," said Dr Pethica.
"It was Donald who had the idea of making a set of nodes that you send packets of data to that find their own way through," said Dr Pethica.
The insight of Dr Davies and his team was to slice data, be that a chat on the phone, an e-mail or a picture, into separate pieces or packets. These are then put on the network and rely on the intelligence of nodes in the network to help them wend their way to their destination. Once there they are re-assembled into the right order.
Future proof
Dr Pethica said Davies' team worked out the mathematics that optimised such an approach - an idea that has proved its usefulness by still being in use today.
Computer research at NPL, NPL
Error correction schemes included in the technology helped it cope with the poor quality of phone lines in use in the late 1960s, said Dr Pethica. In more modern times those schemes help ensure data makes it across the busy lanes of the internet.
Davies and his colleagues went further than just establishing the concept for packet switching - they also build the first computer networks and proved their ideas could work.
"They had a whole series of early computers at NPL that they turned in to a local area network (Lan)," said Dr Pethica. He pointed out that the NPL scientists built such a network far in advance of the day when such things would become the common way to link up machines in an office.
"The important breakthrough that he and his team made was to build the Lan and make it work," he said.
Even before Dr Davies presented his work publicly, news of it had spread through the international computer science community.
As a result he was invited to talk about it to a team from the US Advanced Research Project Agency (Arpa) working on the fledgling internet. The principles he established were rolled in to the technology to make that network function.
Dr Pethica said packet switching idea was developed with an eye on the future and how a computer network might grow. Forty years on the scalability in the Dr Davies insight is still proving its worth, he said.
Courtesy : BBC News
Thursday, May 14, 2009
If you ve never failed you ve never lived
Are you in the midst of failures....
Watch it... Get inspired....
Watch it... Get inspired....
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish
Steve Jobs giving a speech at Stanford University graduation.
The text of the speech is here.
One of the best speeches i ve ever listened to....
The text of the speech is here.
One of the best speeches i ve ever listened to....
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Google - Go Green... Leading by example...
Recently (not exactly, in January ;) ) there was a lot of speculation about Google and its stature as a green company. There were a lot of reports about its contribution to global warming and Google has come back hard at those reports
It all started with an article which estimated that 5-15 g of CO2 are released into the atmosphere every time you hit search in Google. The research was made using data that is available in open. The reason that it stated was that any google search was sent to several servers stationed across the globe and the result of the fastest server was sent back to the user.
Google hit back at these reports by saying that these reports where hyped up and were not true. Google has come out with its own set of statistics which suggest that the company has the greenest data centres and the figures given by the reports are way too high. Google claims to have conducted its own research in this regard and states that on the average a google search causes the release of only o.2 g of CO2. Google also claims to have invested $45 million in developing clean energy technologies.
Google further quotes that Wissner-Gross (who did a research on carbon footprint by the web in Harvard, based on which all these stories were developed) in the InternetNews saying that Google was by far the leader in the green and clean energy usage. Google also uses bio-diesel powered cars for its shuttles from its headquarters. It depends on recyclable material through out its buildings.
Its the responsiblity of every individual to take care of mother earth. We should, by all means possible try to reduce our carbon footprint.
Go Green!!!
Save Mother Earth!!!
It all started with an article which estimated that 5-15 g of CO2 are released into the atmosphere every time you hit search in Google. The research was made using data that is available in open. The reason that it stated was that any google search was sent to several servers stationed across the globe and the result of the fastest server was sent back to the user.
Google hit back at these reports by saying that these reports where hyped up and were not true. Google has come out with its own set of statistics which suggest that the company has the greenest data centres and the figures given by the reports are way too high. Google claims to have conducted its own research in this regard and states that on the average a google search causes the release of only o.2 g of CO2. Google also claims to have invested $45 million in developing clean energy technologies.
Google further quotes that Wissner-Gross (who did a research on carbon footprint by the web in Harvard, based on which all these stories were developed) in the InternetNews saying that Google was by far the leader in the green and clean energy usage. Google also uses bio-diesel powered cars for its shuttles from its headquarters. It depends on recyclable material through out its buildings.
Its the responsiblity of every individual to take care of mother earth. We should, by all means possible try to reduce our carbon footprint.
Go Green!!!
Save Mother Earth!!!
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