News.com Mobile
for PDA or phone
Login: Forgot password? | Sign up

A News.com report on advances in science.

December 5, 2005 10:09 AM PST

World Economic Forum salutes tech pioneers

The World Economic Forum--an annual conference that brings together world leaders to discuss important issues and, according to past attendees, drink late into the night-- unfurled a list of 36 start-ups that it says are tech visionaries. (To attend the Davos, Switzerland gatherings, winners will have to cough up $15,000.)

Many have been profiled on News.com before. One, the two-person Ecology Coatings has developed waterproof paper and fast-drying paint that requires fewer toxic chemicals. Matrix Semiconductor, recently acquired by , designs 3D semiconductors. Another, Amyris, founded by Lawrence Livermore Labs scientist Jay Keasling, has created a way to artificially produce a naturally occurring antimalarial drug.

Posted by Michael Kanellos
November 28, 2005 8:30 AM PST

Sun-powered data center beats the heat

A California hosting company has adopted "green building" designs and solar power to keep its energy costs low and market itself to environmentally aware customers.

Affordable Internet Services Online (AISO) on Sunday issued a press release which details the energy-efficient upgrades it has made to the company's building and data center.

AISO is powering its computing gear entirely with solar power from over 120 photovoltaic panels. The company has also adopted a few green building techniques to reduce its overall power consumption.

The data center itself has been reconstructed using steel studs, which the company considers the best material from an environmental point of view, and the building has several layers of insulation to improve energy efficiency. It uses "solar tubes" which bring light in from the outside, creating the equivalent of 300 watts of electricity from lamps used during working hours.

AISO has also chosen to run servers that use AMD Opteron servers, which cut down on AISO's energy consumption by 60 percent.

AISO is one of handful of hosting companies that has adopted environment-friendly practices to market its services. Other companies include Solar Data Centers, as well as Sustainable Marketing and Elfonwhich both use wind-generated electriticy.

Posted by Martin LaMonica
November 21, 2005 12:06 PM PST

Oil expert Daniel Yergin says the end is not near

Despite all the fears about oil reserves running out, it won't happen anytime soon, said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and author of "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power.

"This is not a world running out of oil anytime soon. It is a compelling image, but not the right image," he told an audience at the International Petroleum Technology Conference in Doha, Qatar.

The problem, he said, is that skeptics often discount the role of technology in allowing oil companies to tap new reserves. In the '70s, offshore oil drilling only went down 600 feet. Now drillers go 1,100 feet.

Just as important, companies are working, often successfully, to create untraditional oil sources, such as Gas-to-Fuel, a form of natural gas distilled into diesel fuel that is just coming out, and things like ethanol. Untraditional sources now account for 23 percent of oil production and will account for 35 percent by 2015.

As a result, overall production will rise from 87 million barrels a day today to 108 by 2018.

One big change for the industry, however, has been the rise of India and China. In 2004, Asia, for the first time, consumed more oil than North America.

Posted by Michael Kanellos
November 15, 2005 10:21 AM PST

IBM gets national medal of technology for chips

IBM received the National Medal of Technology, one of the premier awards in engineering, for advances in semiconductors, including breakthroughs in silicon-on-insulator, copper manufacturing technologies, and dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips.

Although Big Blue has had trouble in recent years making money off of its chip division, IBM's research often receives high praise. Over the past few years, it has begun to line up partnerships with companies such as Advanced Micro Devices, Sony and Microsoft. In these deals, IBM provides R&D; and chip design for a fee.

The award often goes to individuals such as Caltech's Carver Mead, but IBM isn't the first organization to get the medal. DuPont, among other institutions, has received it as well.

Posted by Michael Kanellos
November 9, 2005 11:38 AM PST

Start-up creates tools for verifying, managing online reputation

Reputations can be a slippery thing. If Attila didn't have a reputation for ruthlessness, for instance, Rome may not have fallen so easily. And it's a problem in the online world too. Burk1185 might be one of the best sellers of bike parts on eBay, but Burk 1185 on Yahoo auctions might be a thief.

San Jose-based Opinity has created a service that lets web sites and users get information on a person's reputation, even if that person use several pseudonyms, said CEO Ted Cho at the Dow Jones Consumer Venture Conference taking place in San Jose. Individuals submit data on themselves--educational background, peer reviews, testimonials, professional credentials, etc. The data is consolidated in one file and then associated with his or her various pseudonyms, thus making it easier to take a reputation on one site ("One of the premier blowhards on SQL chat rooms.") to another. Opinity will also verify that the information.

It's not like a Dun and Bradsteet investigation. Individuals chose what information they want to share, so you can always leave off felony convictions. But if you want to tout yourself as an expert on databases, Opinity will certify that you do seem to have some credentials in that area.

The service launched in beta in April.

Posted by Michael Kanellos
November 7, 2005 9:35 AM PST

Samsung shows off fuel cell for notebooks

Samsung unveiled a prototype of a fuel cell that can run a laptop for 15 hours or more and may come to the market in 2007.

Like fuel cells for MP3 players devised by Toshiba and others, the Samsung fuel cell runs on liquid methanol. The methanol passes through a specialized membrane, which extracts electrons.

The fuel cell has an energy density of 200 watt hours per liter. Since notebooks consume around 15 watts to 10 watts on average, which means around a 15 hour run time. (200 watt hours divided by average watts.) It can provide a maximum output of 50 watts.

Samsung's fuel cell, however, is big. While Toshiba's is smaller than an asthma inhaler, Samsung's holds around 200 cubic centimeters, roughly the same volume as a small milk carton.

Toshiba's fuel cell is also passive, meaning it doesn't have a fan. So far, other notebook fuel cells developed by other companies have required fans to circulate the methanol. It is unclear if Samsung's has a fan.

The news of Samsung's presentation was reported by The Joon Gang Daily, a business newspaper.

Posted by Michael Kanellos
November 4, 2005 2:28 PM PST

A notebook-sized screen created by a printer

Britain's Cambridge Display Technology said it has produced screens illuminated by organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) that measure 14-inches across, a milestone in the effort to bring these types of displays to the mass market.

The 14-inch display, which has a resolution of 1280 pixels by 768 pixels, is functional. Moreover, more than one has been made, the company said. Earlier this year, Cambridge Display showed of a prototype measuring 5.5 inches in diameter.

OLED is viewed as a potential successor to liquid crystal displays, used in many flat-panel TVs and computer monitors. Materials in an OLED display emit light when an electrical current is applied. The displays can function without a backlight, which cuts down on power consumption, screen thickness and cost. OLED displays also offer higher resolution than LCDs.

The screens, potentially, also cost less to produce. Cambridge sprays its pixels on with multi-nozzle inkjet printers. The printers can sport 128 nozzles and come from a company called Litrex, which is half owned by Cambridge.

Small OLED screens, measuring around 2 inches across, can already be found in some cell phones. Manufacturers, meanwhile, have been showing off prototypes of larger screens this year to demonstrate the potential commercial viability of the technology.

Samsung, for instance, showed off a 21-inch diameter OLED that could be used in TVs.

Like Samsung's prototype, the backplane of Cambridge's 14-inch monitor consists of amorphous silicon. Some smaller OLEDs are printed on polymers, leading to flexible screens.

Posted by Michael Kanellos
November 3, 2005 1:07 PM PST

Japanese tech tycoon next space tourist

Hong Kong resident and Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke Enomoto will become the world's fourth space tourist in October, Space Adventures announced today. Space Adventures has already taken Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth and Greg Olsen on galactic joy rides.

Enomoto was formerly the chief strategic officer of Livedoor, a publicly traded Japanese IT company. Currently, he is an independent investor.

Space Adventure crafts tours and activities for well-heeled adventurers with an interest in space. The company doesn't launch its own rockets. Instead, its customers hitch a ride on commercial launches. The training is somewhat intense and takes months.

The company also offers flights on MiG fighter jets, cosmonaut training and spaceflight qualification programs.

Posted by Michael Kanellos
October 25, 2005 9:19 AM PDT

The world's biggest problem? Dirty water, say some

What's the biggest hazard for the future? Global warming? Oil shortages?

A small, but growing number of people think that a looming shortage of drinking water constitutes a much larger crisis. Water consumption is doubling every twenty years, but the supply isn't growing at the same rate, according to Kevin McGovern, chairman of venture firm McGovern Capital, quoting U.N. statistics.

"We have a crisis," he said at the Foresight Nanotechnology Conference taking place in Burlingame, Calif. this week.

Many of the world's health problems are already apparent. "About half of the world's hospital beds in the world are occupied by people with water borne diseases," he said. Three billion people in the world don't have easy access to a toilet and thousands of kids die a day from water-related complications.

McGovern, of course, is not just a disinterested observer. As a nanotech investor, he is putting money into water purification ideas. One company, KX Industries, will soon show off a filtration system that can eliminate both dangerous chemicals and viruses. Better yet, the replaceable filter element will only cost a dollar or so, so people in India will be able to buy it.

Another company, Argonide, meanwhile, has come out with water filters made with electropositive alumina fibers. "The nano alumina particles act like a dirt magnet," said president Fred Tepper. The filters also get rid of viruses.

A filter that can suck out arsenic, a big problem in Bangladesh, will arrive from Argonide in 2007.

Posted by Michael Kanellos
October 24, 2005 10:36 AM PDT

Half a million in U.S. lose power a day

If you're sitting in the dark at the moment and running on laptop battery, you're not alone.

Roughly 500,000 people a day in the U.S. don't have electric power, according to Clark Gellings, vice president of innovation at the Electric Powe Research Institute. The power infrastructure is old and weak-that's one of the main problems.

Worldwide, of course, the picture is worse. Nearly 2/3 of the people in the world don't have access to electricity.

Gellings spoke at the Foresight Nanotech Institute's conference on Nanotechnology taking place in Burlingame, California this week.

Posted by Michael Kanellos
advertisement
Click Here

RSS Feed for News.blog for News.blog Future tech


Add this blog to Newsburst

December 2005 archive

SMTuWThFS
« November 
    123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
advertisement