Hasta La Gadget!

Harnessing the awesome power of the Sun isn’t just dependent on the efficiency of solar cells, but also on making them affordable. Current techniques aren’t exactly cheap, but researchers from Stanford University think they’ve made a bit of a breakthrough by producing a relatively inexpensive photovoltaic cell using nothing but carbon. We’re sure other scientists might disagree with the ‘world’s first’ claim, but those at Stanford think it’s a matter of language, and that these other pretenders are “referring to just the active layer in the middle, not the electrodes.” The team selected a trio of carbon types to use in their cell: a mixture of nanotubes and buckyballs make up the light-absorbing layer, while graphene is being utilized for the electrodes.

The carbon amalgam can be applied from solution using simple methods, meaning the flexible cells could be used to coat surfaces, although you won’t be seeing it smeared over anything too soon. The prototype only touts a “laboratory efficiency of less than 1 percent,” so it can’t compete with traditional solar cells just yet. Also, it only absorbs a sliver of the light spectrum, but the researchers are looking to other forms of the wonder element which could increase that range. They are hoping that improving the structure of the cells will help to boost their efficiency, too. They might never generate the most energy, but the all-carbon cells can remain stable under extreme conditions, meaning they could find their calling in harsh environments where brawn is a little more important than status, or looks.

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Stanford researchers create ‘world’s first’ all-carbon solar cell, do it on the cheap originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Nov 2012 19:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NASA’s Martian rover, Curiosity, has beamed back early results from its first mouthful of red soil, with signs that the Mars dust is similar in composition to Hawaiian volcanic basalt. X-ray diffraction testing of an accuracy previously unseen on Mars was used on a sample gathered earlier this month, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced, with the soil believed to be much younger than that which suggested evidence of historic water on the planet’s surface several weeks ago.

Then, Curiosity was believed to have been in an area of Mars that would previously have been a riverbed, with conglomerate rocks estimated at several billion years old. Those were consistent with the presence of flowing water; however, the newer samples are more in line with soil that has had “limited interaction with water” the JPL says.

“Much of Mars is covered with dust, and we had an incomplete understanding of its mineralogy,” David Bish, CheMin co-investigator with the Indiana University in Bloomington said of the new results. “We now know it is mineralogically similar to basaltic material, with significant amounts of feldspar, pyroxene and olivine, which was not unexpected.”

“Roughly half the soil is non-crystalline material, such as volcanic glass or products from weathering of the glass” Bish concluded. “So far, the materials Curiosity has analyzed are consistent with our initial ideas of the deposits in Gale Crater recording a transition through time from a wet to dry environment.”

As Bish says, the results aren’t exactly coming as a huge surprise to the Mars researchers. The X-ray diffraction basically confirmed much of the previous inference and assumption about the surface of the planet, while the CheMin (Chemistry and Mineralogy Instrument) also identified some previously unexpected minerals in the sample.

Still, it’s early days yet. Curiosity is expected to take two years to implement its ten instruments and help scientists figure out whether microbial life would ever have been feasible on Mars.

Curiosity finds Mars soil a distant cousin of Hawaii is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NASA has temporarily repurposed its tropical rainfall monitoring satellite to grab a 3D view of the eye at the center of Hurricane Sandy, while the International Space Station has recorded its progression along the East Coast of the US. The 3D graphics from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) show that Sandy, despite having a relatively small eye, is carrying a whole lot of power, with the space footage showing the extent of the 85mph+ winds approaching the southern New Jersey coast.

“TRMM-observed properties of Hurricane Sandy’s eyewall are evidence of remarkable vigor. Most hurricanes only have well-formed and compact eyewalls at category 3 strength or higher. Sandy was not only barely a category 1 hurricane, but Sandy was also experiencing strong wind shear, Sandy was going over ocean typically too cold to form hurricanes, and Sandy had been limping along as a marginal hurricane for several days” NASA

As for the ISS view, the space station astronauts have a privileged view of the top-down perspective of Sandy as it gathers steam. The video below shows the live feed from NASA’s cameras, though since the ISS is moving, the correct portion of the US isn’t always in view. NASA says the next clear view will be at 12:45 ET.

NASA isn’t leaving hurricane exploration to the occasional re-use of TRMM, however. The space agency is also midway through preparations for the Global Precipitation Measuring (GPM) satellite mission, launching in 2014, and set to increase the accuracy of extreme weather prediction as well as help meteorologists understand what causes such events.

Of course, while NASA’s imagery is certainly interesting, it’s not especially useful for people on the ground. For that, it’s best to turn to Google’s crisis map which shows the coming storm, active shelters, traffic conditions, and more.

NASA shows Hurricane Sandy in 3D and from Space Station is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been upgraded, tackling complex climate change calculations with 20 petaflops worth of new processors. Under the (considerable) hood its NVIDIA’s “Kepler” GPUs and AMD Opetron 6274 processors doing the heavy lifting, though NVIDIA can’t resist pointing out that its graphics chips are in fact carrying 90-percent of the overall load. The GPUs, more commonly found powering gaming rigs, help make Titan “the world’s fastest supercomputer for open scientific research.”

That research will include simulating physical systems, such as weather patterns, or progressions in energy, climate change, efficient engines, materials, and other fields. However, unlike most supercomputers, where access is jealously guarded, Titan takes a more open approach to access.

Researchers from schools and universities, government labs, and private industry can access Titan – by arrangement, of course – to crunch their own data. Final testing is still underway by the laboratory and Cray, and the supercomputer’s first year will be dominated by work on the Department of Energy’s Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program.

“The improvements in simulation fidelity will accelerate progress in a wide range of research areas such as alternative energy and energy efficiency, the identification and development of novel and useful materials and the opportunity for more advanced climate projections” James Hack, director of ORNL’s National Center for Computational Sciences, said of the new machine.

In total, there are 299,008 CPU cores, sixteen to each of 18,688 nodes; each node also has an NVIDIA Tesla K20 graphics accelerator. The cores are used to guide the simulations, while the GPUs are relied upon to do the actual data crunching; altogether, it’s more than 10x faster and 5x more power efficient than the Jaguar supercomputer Titan replaces.

In fact, Titan can simulate 1-5 years per day of computing time, whereas Jaguar took a day to work through around three months worth of data. ORNL says it’s the equivalent of “the world’s 7 billion people being able to carry out 3 million calculations per second.”

Titan supercomputer goes live with potent CPU/GPU tag team is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Nintendo may have left its Vitality Sensor by the wayside, but researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital are using heart rate monitoring in a video game to teach children with anger issues how to temper their emotions. Dubbed RAGE (Regulate and Gain Emotional) Control, the game tasks players with blasting hostile spaceships while keeping their heart rate from exceeding a predefined limit. If a gamer’s pulse rises above the ceiling, they’ll lose the ability to shoot until they can ease their pulse back down. A group of 18 kids who received standard treatments and played the game for five, 15-minute-long sessions had better control of their heart rate and lower anger levels than a group that only used traditional treatments. Currently, a controlled clinical trial of RAGE Control is underway and there are plans to take the concept a step further with toys and games suited for younger children. Look out below for the full press release or tap the second source link for the team’s paper in the Journal of Adolescent Psychiatry.

[Image credit: Thirteen of Clubs, Flickr]

Continue reading Researchers create video game that monitors heart rate to keep children’s anger in check

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Researchers create video game that monitors heart rate to keep children’s anger in check originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Oct 2012 10:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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