Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re the fidgety type, new research from Georga Tech may one day turn your nervous energy into a fully charged cellphone. The scientists, who previously borrowed piezoelectric power from walking, created static electricity generated from movement between plastic and metal, similar to the way a balloon can be electrified by rubbing it on your hair. The charging area was greatly increased by patterning the surfaces on a nanoscale level, allowing this “tribolectric effect” to be multiplied and converting up to 15 percent of the mechanical energy into electricity (so far). About 50 common materials could be paired to create the material, and a 2 x 2-inch patch could conceivably be worn as an armband and used to charge up a cellphone battery. So far the tech works fine in the lab, but it remains to be seen if real world vibrations can generate enough energy to make it practical. While you’re waiting, though, feel free to stock up on coffee.

Filed under: Cellphones, Science, Mobile

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Via: MIT Technology Review

Source: Nano Letters

It’s been said that we know more about space than we do about our own ocean, and now a group of scientists have quantified what sea creatures we may still not know of. After compiling an open access, online database of known marine species with the help of more than 270 experts, researchers estimate that the briny depths may be home to a total of one million species, with one third of them potentially remaining entirely unknown. Of the grand total, humans have described roughly 226,000 — more than 20,00 of which in the past decade — with another 65,000 tucked away in collections awaiting a write-up. Since previous estimates have been based on rates of species identification and other factors, these latest figures are considered more accurate. The effort’s researchers hope that this data will be used as a reference for extinction rates and conservation. Hit the first source link below to dig through the compendium, aptly-named the World Register of Marine Species, for yourself.

[Image credit: NOAA’s National Ocean Service, Flickr]

Continue reading Scientists estimate at least one third of marine species remain unknown to humans

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Scientists estimate at least one third of marine species remain unknown to humans originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Nov 2012 03:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You spent hours tweaking your Xbox or Nintendo avatar to look exactly like you, but researchers at the EPFL are taking things one step further with a Kinect-based system that can translate your facial expressions and emotions to your online persona. So the next time you’re cursing into your headset after a loss in Halo, your character won’t look so serene. More »

Samsung’s bada platform may be less well known than Windows Phone, but it’s still outselling Microsoft platform in worldwide smartphone sales. While the big movement may be up at the iOS and Android end, bada’s 3-percent of the worldwide market share in Q3 2012 is, according to the latest clutch of stats from analysts Gartner, enough to eclipse Microsoft’s OS at 2.4-percent. However, that could well change as Windows Phone 8 sales begin.

“Windows Phone’s share weakened year-on-year as the Windows Phone 8 launch dampened demand of Windows Phone 7 devices” Gartner suggested, though the new version of the platform may not be the instant good news OEMs like Nokia are hoping for. In fact, Nokia’s new Lumia devices will only “help to halt the decline in share” in Q4, with no “significant improvement” predicted until 2013.

Nokia isn’t the only firm having a tough quarter. RIM and HTC dropped to third and fourth places in the manufacturers chart respectively, and there are fears that even retaining those positions may be untenable. “The challenges might prevent them from holding on to their current rankings in coming quarters” Gartner’s Anshul Gupta said of the firms.

On the up, meanwhile, are Samsung and Apple. Samsung has the Q3 2012 top spot, with 22.9-percent of the market, while Apple has 5.5-percent of the market; Android has 72.4-percent market share, according to Gartner’s figures, a sizable jump year-on-year from 52.5-percent. In contrast, iOS market share declined slightly, from 15-percent a year ago to 13.9-percent, though it’s RIM and Symbian which saw the biggest falls.

Apple’s Q4 2012 is likely to be a good one, Gartner concludes, with the new iPhone 5 and fledgling sales in various new locations meaning the holiday quarter should end positively. Many iPhone 4S/4 owners held off upgrading until the new handset was released, the analysts point out, something which Apple itself has suggested.

The holiday season overall, however, may not be the salvation many firms hope for. Gartner predicts smartphone sales will not get the traditional kick, as shoppers look to other devices such as tablets for potential gifts.

Remember bada? Well, it’s giving Windows Phone a kicking is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Dark energy, time-traveling star gazing, and a telescope that looks like a Bond villain’s ray gun: when it comes to hunting down the reasons why the universe is expanding, it’s hard to know what aspect is cooler. The BOSS (Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey) team in New Mexico, US, has been peering into the depths of distant galaxies with the Sloan telescope, tracking the movement of quasars so as to measure how the universe has been changing since the Big Bang.

In a new paper submitted by the BOSS team to the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal, the researchers describe a new technique for tracking more distant galaxies than has previously been attempted. Rather than spotting the galaxies themselves, which are too dim for the Sloan telescope to keep its metaphorical eye on, BOSS has been eyeing nearly 50,000 quasars to put together a 3D map of their distribution and movement with those galaxies.

That alternate view means the BOSS astronomers can follow movement up to 11 billion light years away from Earth. Because of the speed of light, the quasars that are being seen today are as they were many, many years ago: two billion years after the Big Bang itself, in fact.

“From the Big Bang, the expansion of the Universe was decelerating,” Dr Matthew Pieri of the BOSS team said, ”and then we crested the hill about seven billion years ago, and it was like something putting the foot on the pedal and the acceleration occurred.”

Dark energy is science’s answer to why gravity alone can’t explain the movement of galaxies, an invisible force that pushes matter apart and thus continues the expansion of the universe. As much as 73-percent of the universe is dark energy, it’s theorized, with 23-percent being dark matter; special cameras, such as the 570-megapixel DECam, have been developed to better study it.

[via BBC]

Dark energy spotted driving universe expansion is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.