Hasta La Gadget!

Scientists and researchers all around the world are constantly looking at our universe and trying to learn new details about our solar system and what’s going on beyond our solar system in the universe. Recently researchers from MIT published the results of an experiment that demonstrates that Mercury may have had an ocean of magma on its surface. The experiment demonstrated that Mercury could have had its lava ocean approximately 4,000,000,000 years ago.

During the study, the scientists looked at data gathered by the NASA Messenger probe concerning the composition of Mercury’s surface. During the study, the scientists were interested to find that the surface of Mercury is composed of two massively different rock compositions. The scientists began an investigation to determine what geological process could’ve made the surface be comprised of two such fundamentally different types of rock.

The researchers then use the data from Messenger to reconstruct two different types of rock found on Mercury and then subjected those rocks to different temperatures and pressures allowing them to simulate processes the could’ve occurred on the surface of Mercury. The scientists say that after their experiments they determined that the only process that could have occurred on the surface of Mercury that would’ve caused such radically different types of rock would have been if the planet once had an ocean of magma on its surface.

Timothy Grove, a geologist from MIT, said that the process would’ve occurred billions of years ago because Mercury’s crust is “probably more than 4 billion years old.” Scientists estimate that the magma ocean on the surface of Mercury would’ve existed during the first 10 million years after Mercury’s formation. While using a geological experiment to explain a finding on the surface of the planet is not unheard of, it is rather uncommon in the astronomy world.

[via Forbes]

Mercury once boasted an ocean of boiling hot magma says researchers is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Via Licensing is amassing quite a deep well of patents from which its members able to pull. All in the name of keeping standards-essential LTE technology accessible to those willing to play ball. Now China Mobile and Deutsche Telekom are joining the ranks of industry giants like AT&T and NTT DoCoMo in an effort to guard themselves against litigation and ease the act of licensing each other’s patents. Others have tried and failed where Via Licensing seems to be succeeding in building a coalition around sharing standard-essential patents. Though, while plenty of big names have signed on, there are still quite a few notable holdouts.

Filed under: Wireless, Mobile

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Source: TechCrunch

Toshiba has announced a new breakthrough that has to do with embedded hardware for the smartphone and mobile product market. Toshiba has announced the development of a new low-power technology for embedded SRAM. The new technology promises to extend the battery life for smartphones and other devices.

Toshiba says that the new technology is able to reduce active and standby power in temperatures ranging from room temperature to high temperatures using a bit line power calculator and a digitally controllable retention circuit. Toshiba has been able to prototype the new system and confirm significant active and standby power consumption reductions.

At 25°C, the new technology is able to reduce active power consumption by 27% and standby power consumption by 85%. Toshiba has been presenting its new technology at the 2013 International Solid-State Circuit Conference in San Francisco. The company points out that increasing battery life requires lower power consumption in both high performance and low performance modes.

Toshiba says low performance applications require only tens of megahertz to operate and SRAM temperatures remain around room temperature where active and leakage power consumption are comparable. Toshiba says that fact makes reducing active and standby power consumption from room temperature to high temperatures important. The new technology uses the bit line power calculator and the digitally controllable retention circuit together with the BLPC able to predict power consumption of bit lines using replicated bit lines to monitor the frequency of the ring oscillator. The DCRC decreases standby power in the retention circuit by periodically activating itself to update the size of the buffer of the retention driver.

[via Toshiba]

Toshiba develops low-power technology for embedded SRAM for smartphones is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Facebook accounts have become a depository for pictures of ourselves from many different places – our phones, digital cameras, tagging from friends, randomly from our hard drives, etc.
Have you ever wanted to have nice prints of some of your pictures? In Japan, camera/film stores such as Fuji Film stores have kiosks where you can print pictures from data cards, DVDs, etc. Now you can login to your FB account at the kiosk, access your pictures and print them.
Making a nice photo album …

LTE smartphones all but locked to specific carriers because they don’t support the profligate array of 4G frequencies in use could be a thing of the past, with Qualcomm promising its new RF360 radio chipset will play happily across 40 different bands. The Qualcomm RF360 Front End Solution can cope with all 40 of the different LTE frequenties carriers have deployed around the world, in addition to older HSPA+ and EVDO connections for when you’re outside of fledgling 4G coverage. Meanwhile, Qualcomm also promises that phones and tablets using the RF360 will be faster than their regular counterparts, as well as potentially smaller.

That’s down to a selection of chips that are actually up to 50-percent smaller than the current models, despite adding in far more band support. Power consumption has also been reduced, with Qualcomm claiming up to a 30-percent saving, while heat output is also cut.

Radio performance takes advantage of Qualcomm’s new dynamic antenna matching tuner (QFE15xx), which is the first ever to be able to automatically adjust the antenna performance depending on environmental constraints and how the user is actually holding the device. Effective not only for 4G use but 2G/3G, across the 700-2700MHz bands, the new tuner works alongside an integrated power amplifier and antenna switch that’s easier to install and accomodate on tight circuit boards.

Finally, there’s the RF POP QFE27EE, a stacked chipset combining a multiband power amp and antenna switch, the SAW filters, and duplexes. It will be interchangeable, too, allowing for manufacturers to choose between creating devices that work on a smaller subset of LTE frequencies – such as for specific carriers or regions – or a broad, global-roaming LTE implementation.

The huge increase in frequencies selected by 4G carriers worldwide has broken the market for devices down into an array of incompatible phones. Handsets like the iPhone 5, for instance, come in three different variants – outwardly identical, but with differing radio and antenna implementations – suited to different sets of networks, and the expectation that 3G device users had of being able to simply swap SIM cards and get up and running on a different carrier no longer applies.

For Qualcomm and manufacturers, meanwhile, the new RF360 radio is a way to simplify production: now a single SKU can be offered – potentially tailored by software and RF POP selection to suit the whims of carrier lock-down – rather than multiple iterations of the same device. The first products to use the RF360 Front End Solution will show up in 2013.

Qualcomm banishes LTE fragmentation with global RF360 radio: roaming ahoy! is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.