Hasta La Gadget!

Transmission lines carry electricity from a thermal power plant in Ube, Japan. Photo: Isado/Flickr

A strange legacy of the Japanese power system’s infancy in the late 1800s is complicating efforts to keep Tokyo supplied with electricity.

The problem, as explained by IDG News Service’s Martyn Williams, is that half of the country uses power whose current alternates at 60 Hz, while the other half gets its power at 50 Hz.

The discrepancy has to do with the founding of electric power in the country. Tokyo Electric Light Co. used German generators, which operated at 50 Hz, while in the west part of Japan, Osaka Electric Lamp Co. used generators from General Electric, an American company, operating at the same 60 Hz standard that is used in the United States to this day.

Unlike the U.S. grid, the Japanese power grid was never unified on a single standard. While it’s possible to connect the two grids, the frequency-changing stations required can only handle up to 1 gigawatt.

When the quake hit, it shut down 11 reactors including three that were in operation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant that is now at the center of Japan’s nuclear problems. With the 11 reactors offline, 9.7 GW was gone from eastern Japan’s electricity production capacity.

And that’s the root of Tokyo’s current electricity problems: Utility companies in west Japan are unable to make up for all of the lost power.

Residents of Japan have faced a crisis of unimaginable proportions, with earthquakes followed by a tsunami followed by a nuclear disaster. The rolling blackouts in Tokyo are, in comparison, a relatively minor problem.

Still, it’s interesting to see how historical decisions from more than a century ago can have unexpected consequences today — all because of a frequency mismatch. Chalk it up to path dependency.

A legacy from the 1800s leaves Tokyo facing blackouts [IT World]

We’ve been hearing about the potential flash killer for years, and now a team of University of Illinois engineers is claiming that its new phase-change technology could make the PRAM of our dreams look quaint by comparison. Like so many groundbreaking discoveries of late, carbon nanotubes are at the heart of the this new mode of memory, which uses 100x less power than its phase-change predecessors. So, how does it work? Basically, the team replaced metal wires with carbon nanotubes to pump electricity through phase-change bits, reducing the size of the conductor and the amount of energy consumed. Still too much technobabble? How ’bout this — they’re using tiny tubes to give your cellphone juice for days. Get it? Good.

[Thanks, Jeff]

New phase-change memory gets boost from carbon nanotubes, puts PRAM claims to shame originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Mar 2011 15:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Your processor may be able to react to your every, fickle demand when it comes to churning out the numbers that make the magic happen, but when it comes to managing its own power it’s a bit more lazy. Chips can throttle an individual core’s consumption back, but do so slowly, a problem that Harvard grad student Wonyoung Kim appears to have solved. He’s created an on-chip multi-core voltage regulator that uses what’s called fast-voltage scaling, a technique of rapidly cutting power that could drastically extend battery life on mobile devices — or, you know, make it so that your gaming rig doesn’t dim the lights quite so badly when you crank it up to the gigahertz. No word on when this regulator will start making an appearance in consumer electronics, but Mr. Kim has achieved a patent for his work, so you can be sure he’ll be making bank whenever it does.

Multi-core voltage regulator uses fast voltage scaling to curb your processor’s wasteful habits originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Mar 2011 01:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re hearing from… well, let’s call them “people familiar with the matter” that HTC’s Thunderbolt — a phone that’s supposed to be Verizon’s first with LTE — is experiencing positively miserable battery life that’s making it difficult for testers to avoid carrying a second phone around as a backup. How bad? Two to three hours from full to empty in some cases. Of course, we wouldn’t be surprised if battery life was really bad with the LTE radio left on — the EVO 4G wasn’t much different at launch with WiMAX lit up — but the word on the street is that the power situation is largely responsible for the delays we’ve been seeing. In fact, our source tells us the phone is currently working on its sixth retail delay at the moment. More on this situation as we get it.

Update: We’ve just heard from another trusted tipster that there’s definitely a new firmware in the works to address battery life and signal issues (which — you guessed it — are interrelated). Thanks, HTC Kid!

HTC Thunderbolt said to have terrible battery life, might explain delay? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We reported on Ossur’s robotic prosthetic back in 2009, and now amputees in Europe and the United States have become the first official recipients of the Power Knee. According to the company, “the world’s first and only motor-powered prosthetic knee” was recently approved for reimbursement by the German National Health System, covered by private insurance in France and the UK, and picked up by select healthcare providers in the US. Power Knee combines “artificial intelligence,” motion sensors, and wireless communication to learn and adjust to the walking style of its users — that’s one small step for real-life cyborgs and one giant leap for prosthetic technology.

Continue reading Power Knee motorized prosthetic officially available in US, Europe — race of cyborgs still in infancy

Power Knee motorized prosthetic officially available in US, Europe — race of cyborgs still in infancy originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Feb 2011 07:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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