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Category: energy – Page 385

New Metal Glass Oxide Can Protect Living Cells From Ultraviolet Rays

China’s improved glass for space.

Chinese scientists developed a method to create a transparent, glass-based material with the power and lifespan to absorb ultraviolet rays. The metal oxide-based special glass is expected to not break down under prolonged UV radiation exposure. (Photo : John T. Clarke (University of Michigan), ESA, NASA | Wikimedia Commons)

Chinese scientists have discovered a special glass that can absorb and block dangerous ultraviolet rays.

UV light can harm living cells, and out in space where radiation from the sun is even greater, sensitive electronics on board a spacecraft can suffer even more damage.

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Google’s new algorithm will make Chrome run much faster

Chrome is about to load web pages a lot faster than you’ve experienced up until now. Thanks to a new compression algorithm called Brotli, which Google introduced last September, Chrome will be able to compress data up to 26 percent more than its existing compression engine, Zopfli, which is an impressive jump.

According to Google’s web performance engineer Ilya Grigorik, Brotli is ready to roll out, so Chrome users should expect to see a bump in load times once the next version of Chrome is released. Google also says Brotli will help mobile Chrome users experience “lower data transfer fees and reduced battery use.” The company is hailing Brotli as “a new data format” that Google hopes will be adopted by other web browsers in the near future, with Firefox seemingly next in line to adopt it. But for now, expect to notice your web pages loading a bit faster in the coming weeks.

Update: January 20th 10:30AM: Updated to note that Firefox will also adopt Brotli in a future update.

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Microsoft’s HoloLens will be ‘totally wireless’ with up to 5.5 hours of battery life

Microsoft technical evangelist Bruce Harris has unveiled new details for Microsoft’s augmented reality headset, HoloLens. At an event in Tel Aviv, Harris was recorded (via Petri) saying that that any universal Windows 10 app will run natively on the device, as we’ve already heard, and that developers will naturally need to create 3D apps to realize the HoloLens’ full potential.

But Harris also talked about how the device features Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, describing it as “totally wireless.” In fact, he said a wired version of the HoloLens would not be available.

This brings up the question of battery life. Apparently in this department, the HoloLens will be “very much like a laptop.” That means up to 5.5 hours of basic use, and 2.5 hours of high-intensity use.

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Machines ‘will have the power of a human brain by 2025’ — Gerd Leonhard

Gerd predicts that machines will have the same power of a human brain by 2025.

By the year 2025, machines will have the same power as the human brain and in 2051 they will have the power of the entire global population. Does is sound far-fetched? It is certainly a grand claim, but who better to make these kinds of observations than Gerd Leonhard, Futurist, Keynote Speaker, Author and CEO of The Futures Agency.

This was one of the many observations Mr Leonhard spoke to The Malta Independent about ahead of his Keynote Address for The Economist at their ‘The World in 2016 Gala Dinner’ tonight at the Hilton, St Julian’s; where every year they invite experts and innovators from all over the world to share their ‘predictions’ for the coming year.

Mr Gerd Leonhard is a futurist, which means that his main role is to observe and deduce plausible scenarios for the future of an industry, an organization or even a country. He does not call his observations ‘predictions’, but ‘foresight’ which, according to Mr Leonhard, everyone can do but while everyone tends to look at “95% today, while [he looks] at 95% tomorrow.”

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Think Like a Workplace Futurist

It truly takes more than 10 year products and services roadmap to retain a company’s competitive edge these days especially with the current sophisticated and high demand consumers. Futurists truly are the NextGen Disrupters.

In the first quarter of 2015, Millennials finally overtook Generation X as the largest cohort in the workplace — there are more than 53.5 million of them working today. Their massive size and economic power has had marketers and business leaders tracking the “Millennial mindset” for years.

And yet, nipping at their heels, here comes Generation Z, the oldest of who are just starting to come of age. The U.S. Census estimates that Generation Z will include close to 80 million members — a number that eclipses the conversation-dominating Millennials.

It’s time to stop thinking in terms of generations; such thinking makes it too easy to buy into assumptions. For example, Millennials aren’t necessarily tech geniuses any more than anyone over the age of 40 is categorically a Luddite.

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The LA Gas Leak Is Scarier Than We Thought

Since a gas leak erupted outside LA on October 23rd, over 83,000 metric tons of methane have escaped to the atmosphere, prompting public officials to evacuate the neighboring community of Porter Ranch. But as a disturbing new analysis shows, a much broader swath of LA is now drowning in methane.

The Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET) is a Cambridge-based nonprofit that’s been shedding light on leaky natural gas infrastructure for years. Last week, HEET sent Boston University Professor Nathan Phillips and Bob Ackley of Gas Safety out to LA to measure pollution in the air surrounding Porter Ranch.

Armed with a laser gas analyzer that can sniff out airborne methane with parts-per-billion precision, Phillips and Ackley drove around the LA area measuring methane concentrations for a period of five days. Every time their analyzer detected elevated gas levels, it plotted the numbers to Google Earth. The red bars on their maps indicate where they drove, with higher bars corresponding to higher methane concentrations.

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Cyber Threats 2016: Killer Robots, US Presidential Race, Critical Infrastructure, Mobile Payments And More

As I have mentioned in some of my other reports and writings; infrastructure (power grids, transportation, social services, etc.) is a key area that we need to modernize and get funding soon in place given the changes that are coming. As Russia’s own power stations were hacked; it will not be anything to when the more sophisticated releases of the Quantum Internet and Platforms are finally releasing to the main stream. Someone last week asked me what kept me up at night worrying; I told them our infrastructure and we have not been planning or modernizing it to handle the changes that are coming in the next 5 years much less the next 7 years.

With cyberattacks gaining in sophistication and volume, we can expect to see a range of new targets in the year ahead.

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