The Electric Cooling Battery Test

Later this month, two new electric cars?the GM Volt and the Nissan Leaf?will start appearing in eco-conscious driveways across the United States.

Battery included: Technicians load a battery into a preproduction Chevrolet Volt.
Credit: GM

The Nissan Leaf promises 73 miles per electric charge, while the GM Volt gets 35 miles per charge, although it also has a backup gasoline engine for longer trips. But GM and Nissan are taking different approaches to ensuring that the batteries in these cars last and remain safe. The way these batteries perform over the next few years will suggest which approach is better, and could shape the design of future electric cars and plug-in hybrids, which all major automakers have promised. Some critics say that Nissan's battery-pack design, which uses a relatively simple cooling system, could allow the batteries to overheat, decreasing the life of the battery and posing a safety concern.

Both GM and Nissan use lithium-ion batteries (a technology that's long been used in laptops and mobile phones) as opposed to nickel-metal hydride batteries, which have proved reliable in gas-electric hybrids such as the Toyota Prius, but which are bulky and heavy.

In choosing lithium-ion over nickel-metal hydride, GM and Nissan are taking a risk because such batteries haven't yet proved reliable in the demanding role of powering a car. Car batteries must endure temperature extremes, harsh jolts, and continuous vibrations from the road, and have to perform well for about a decade. In a few rare cases, lithium-ion batteries can overheat and catch fire, a problem that has required massive recalls of some laptop batteries. The batteries needed for electric vehicles must also store far more energy?so a fire caused by auto batteries could be particularly dangerous.

Another drawback of using lithium-ion batteries is that they quickly lose their ability to hold charge. After a couple of years of use, it's not unusual for them to store half as much power as they did when they were new. Automakers want car batteries that will last for the life of a vehicle?about eight to 15 years.

To address these issues, GM and Nissan have made significant changes to the lithium-ion batteries they're using. Instead of using lithium cobalt oxide ?the material preferred in laptop batteries because of its high energy density?as the electrode, they're using lithium manganese oxide, which stores a relatively large amount of energy, but is more stable, in part due to the arrangement of its atoms. In a manganese-oxide electrode, atoms form a three-dimensional structure that maintains its shape even as lithium ions move in and out of the electrode as the battery is charged and discharged. The less stable structure of conventional battery electrode materials can be damaged as lithium ions move in and out, which shortens the useful lifetime of a battery.

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Jolicloud Now available in the Chrome Web Store. Wait. What? [TNW Apps]

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that Google has finally made its forthcoming Chrome OS official. The company also unveiled the Chrome Web Store, further demonstrating the company?s desire to crack the netbook market.

Also announced was Google?s official Chrome OS netbook, the a device that is black, 12.1 inches and available by application via Google?s pilot program. You would think that with all of today?s announcements by the search giant, major players in the netbook operating system market would be just a little worried.

One of those companies, Jolicloud, has taken it all in its stride. Not worried about the pending release of a rival netbook and the launch success of the Chrome Web Store, the company has decided to integrate its cloud platform inside the Chrome browser.

Yes, you read that right. The Jolicloud platform is available on the Chrome Web Store. Chrome users can install the application by heading to this link.

Jolicloud advertises its Chrome Web Store application as being able to do the following:

Jolicloud is the new computing platform built around your life in the cloud. Jolicloud connects you to all of your favorite online apps, social media, videos, photos and files from any computer in the world.

Pretty bold stuff.

We?re digging into how it all works now but on the face of it is seems to be merely a pretty interface of links to particularly sites, apps and desktop applications. You are able to add a number of shortcuts popular applications to your dashboard that are associated to the same apps that you have installed on your computer. Add Spotify, click the link and the application launches.

?-

We managed to snag Tariq Krim, the founder of Jolicloud and ask him a few questions about this move to be included in the Chrome App Store:

For background?s sake, why did you build Jolicloud?

While all of us are enjoying new tablets and Iphones, most of the people are stuck with obsolete computer experiences.  Jolicloud mission is to bring a quality computing experience to them. All they need to do is to install jolicloud on any machine and we provide a fast, simple experience. The installation requires no technical expertise. Until 1.1 we focused on netbook, now we expanded the support of jolicloud to any computer.

How does Jolicloud work?

Why have you completed this recent implementation of Jolicloud?

There are 300 millions computers that are sleeping somewhere in the world. With jolicloud we want people to recycle them and use them, or donate them to schools or family. While Ipad, Iphone and Chrome OS is about buying new machines, we are focusing on recycling.

Tariq also wanted us to let you know that Jolicloud 1.1 is available, and to remind you that ?that?s not the case of Chrome OS ;)?

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/12/07/jolicloud-now-available-in-the-chrome-web-store-wait-what/

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Toshiba readying three new tablet PCs for Q1 2011

With CES 2011 only a few weeks away now, it's becoming apparent that Toshiba is planning to debut three tablet computers in the next quarter. One will run Windows 7, one will be powered by Android, and one will feature Chrome OS, according to DigiTimes.

Two of the tablets will have displays that are 10.1-inches wide, with the third one measuring 11.6-inches. Unfortunately, the sizes haven't been assigned to their respective operating systems just yet. There are also reportedly plans for new 7-inch slates as well, but details are even scarcer for those. They will be handled by the company's handset department, however, suggesting that the devices will be more smartphone than PC.

It's becoming quite clear that OEMs are not sure what the best OS is for tablets. Windows is the market leader, but it doesn't have particularly great touch controls. Android isn't supposed to be any good for tablets until version 3.0 is released; Lenovo, for example, is refusing to release any device running on Android 2.x. Last of all, Chrome OS isn't even expected to be finalized till next year, and even then it will be at a very early version 1.0.

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Quantum Dot Displays Start to Shine

Few display technologies rival the visual brilliance and energy-saving potential of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Yet OLED displays are mostly found in smaller applications like mobile phones. The manufacturing technology for OLEDs has struggled to scale up for mass producing computer monitors or televisions.

Now QD Vision, an MIT spinoff, has announced a display technology based on quantum dots that could not only be easier to manufacture than OLEDs, but also be even brighter and more energy-efficient.

Last week, the Massachusetts company announced a partnership with major manufacturer LG Display to develop displays that use quantum-dot light-emitting diodes (QLEDs) as their pixels. In early November, QD Vision also partnered with Solvay, a Belgium-based chemical company, to build a platform for printing QLEDs.

Quantum dots are nanometer-sized semiconducting crystals that can shine a bright, spectrally pure color when exposed to either light (photoluminescence) or electrical current (electroluminescence). QD Vision's first product, a quantum dot optic that warms the normally harsh glow produced by LED lamps, relies on photoluminescence; the quantum dots emit color when light from the LEDs excites them.

Silicon Valley-based Nanosys, another company working with quantum dots, expects to have its own product available in early 2011. Nanosys adds a strip of quantum dots to a liquid-crystal display's backlight to improve color quality and energy efficiency. QD Vision is developing a similar product.

To use quantum dots as the main element in a display, the crystals need to be excited by electrons, not photons. "[Electroluminescence of quantum dots is] something we've been working on a very long time, and now it's getting to this point of commercial traction," says Seth Coe-Sullivan, QD Vision's chief technology officer.

The target is the OLED market. "Small OLED displays are getting very good market traction," says Coe-Sullivan, "but there are still some unresolved challenges with OLEDs, and we see QLEDs as a way to solve them." The main benefit of QLEDs over OLEDs, he says, is in manufacturing. "There's been lots of proposals for manufacturing OLEDs at a larger scale, but none of them have worked out."

OLEDs need to be patterned as they are deposited, something that's traditionally been done with something called a shadow mask. But due to the chemical properties of OLEDs, the shadow mask technique isn't accurate at larger sizes. QLEDS, in contrast, don't need a shadow mask. They can be suspended in a liquid solution, which allows them to be deposited using any number of scalable techniques, including ink-jet printing.

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US Copyright Group drops 97% of cases against torrent users

The US Copyright Group (USCG) has dropped some 97 percent of the cases against torrent users for having allegedly downloaded copies of Far Cry. 4,437 individuals were dismissed without prejudice, leaving only 140 in the lawsuit, according to TorrentFreak.

The reason given was personal jurisdiction, meaning that most of the people either couldn't be identified or they lived outside of the court's jurisdiction. Most were just listed as IP addresses, and even those who were linked to their owners' names could only be targeted by the USCG if they live in the District of Columbia, where the case was filed. Unfortunately, since the suit was dropped without prejudice, the USCG is free to file again, including in another district.

This is all thanks to District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer, who ordered the USCG to limit their case only to those defendants who the Court has jurisdiction over. This means the thousands of people who have been pressured to pay up in settlements merely have to check if they are in the Court's jurisdiction, and if not, ask to have their case dropped. This apparently new rule seriously limits the profitability of antipiracy law firms; In other words, fighting piracy is no longer a relatively easy revenue stream.

The news is hot on the heels of the story from last week that torrent users were suing the USCG for extortion, fraudulent omissions, mail fraud, wire fraud, computer fraud and abuse, racketeering, fraud upon the court, abuse of process, fraud on the Copyright Office, copyright misuse, unjust enrichment, and consumer protection violations. Dmitriy Shirokov accused Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver, the Washington law firm that sent threatening letters to thousands of alleged downloaders of Far Cry, of knowingly breaching copyright law to make money. His argument is that the lawyers made a business of threatening people with expensive litigation and fines unless they pay settlement offers, but the firm was apparently never interested in actually litigating the claims.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41466-us-copyright-group-drops-97-of-cases-against-torrent-users.html

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Google Officially Unveils Its Long Awaited Operating System: ?Chrome OS is nothing but the web.? [TNW Google]

This morning we posted the news of two leaked videos from Google Chrome?s YouTube channel that confirmed the long awaited arrival of Chrome OS and the Chrome Web Store.

At today?s official launch in San Francisco, Google?s Head of Project Management unveiled updates for three of its leading endeavors- Chrome, Chrome Web Store and Chrome OS.

Chrome, which launched two years ago represented a profound shift from simple web pages to a modern OS for web applications. With a focus on speed, simplicity and security, Chrome has grown 300% since January to a total of 120 million users, worldwide. And thanks to ?Crankshaft? technology, Google is now 50 times faster than browsers were 2 years ago and 100 times faster than IE was in 2008.

Chrome Web Store, which was announced about 6 months ago at Google I/O, features a gallery as its landing page. ?It is meant for discovery,? Google says. The Web Store, ?like a phone app store,? focuses on photos, music, games, news, including an app from the NYTimes and shopping, including apps from Amazon.com like WindowShop, which looks a lot like Window Shop for the iPad, shown below. Kindle for Chrome Web will launch next year. The Chrome Web Store launches today in the U.S. Read our full story on the Web Store here.

Finally, the majority of today?s event focused on Chrome OS, which was announced a year ago at Google I/O as an open sourced project.

?When we launched Chrome, we noticed that based on all available data, people live within a browser. Since 2004, on your computers it?s hard to name a traditional desktop application which is scaled to millions of users?Most operating systems today on personal computers were designed before the web existed. We wanted to re-think the PC experience for the modern web. Chrome OS is nothing but the web.?

When you first get a brand new Chrome notebook, it takes less than a minute to set up. First, users will choose their Internet connectivity.

Instant. Choose a profile image and in less than 60 seconds you?re in. With Google Chrome OS, users will be online instantly. ?In fact the delaying factor is for the user to move their hands and type in the query on their keyboard.? Booting and resuming play on Google Chrome OS is instant. Google says, it?s so fast, it?s hard to capture on camera.

Everywhere. Google Chrome OS makes it possible for users to get ?the same experience everywhere,? by propagating user data everywhere. It pulls all your Chrome themes and settings from the cloud. ?It is a true cloud computing device.?

Sharing. Google Chrome OS offers guest mode to enable users to share computers with friends with ultimate privacy through their ?Friends Let Friends Log-In Feature.?

Connectivity. What if you?re not connected to the Internet? Users can still continue to be productive in apps, for example, Google Docs. Changes are saved and synced as soon as connectivity is reach again. Want to have fun? A whole set of apps, particularly games on the Chrome web store will work offline. Want to read news? NYTimes? apps work offline.

But Google wants you to always be connected. Every Chrome notebook includes cellular (3G) and Wi-Fi connectivity. How did they do this? Google has partnered with Verizon. The plan? No contract. 100 MB free data every month for 2 years with purchase price. You can also just access a day pass and buy plans in data chunks.

Security. Google Chrome OS security is built from the ground-up. Google sandboxes the browser and the OS, so if malware leaves the browser, it doesn?t get into the OS.

Business. What is great about Chrome OS for businesses? ?Safety, simplicity and productivity applications on Chrome Notebooks.? Citrix Receiver works with Chrome OS. Applications will include spreadsheets, SAP and other enterprise apps with search-centric interfaces.

The Notebook. Computers get slow over time. But Google?s Notebooks actually get better over time because a new OS is automatically updated every 6 weeks. No hard drives, no spinning discs and a built in jail breaking mode make this Chrome notebook every geek?s dream machine. See additional details below.

Think you may be an ideal candidate for the Chrome notebook? The current referential hardware devices are not for sale. Find out how to apply for the pilot program here.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/google/2010/12/07/google-officially-unveils-its-long-awaited-operating-system-chrome-os-is-nothing-but-the-web/

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Blog - Physicists Solve Cloud Formation Puzzle

One of the biggest challenges in atmospheric physics is to explain how clouds form.

Physicists know the basics, of course: that at a certain temperature and pressure, water vapour condenses into droplets which combine to form rain drops heavy enough to fall to Earth.

The devil is in the detail. This process of droplet aggregation sometimes happens so quickly that it defies explanation. Most people will have seen clouds form in a matter of minutes and rain appear almost from nowhere.

Researchers have even measured this process. They commonly see droplets with a diameter of 15 micrometres--too small for rain--grow to 50 micrometres or more in less than half an hour. That's big enough to trigger a downpour.

The question is how this growth occurs. No standard models of droplet formation can explain it ( (at least, in the absence of ice formation). But today we have a solution thanks to the work of Vassilios Dallas and Christos Vassilicos at Imperial College, London.

When the Stokes number is small, a droplet follows the flow of the gas as it moves around another droplet and so they rarely collide. When the number is large, the droplets have greater inertia and so cannot avoid banging into each other.

Here's the problem. Before clouds form, the droplets are small and the Stokes number is tiny. Therefore the droplets rarely collide. After clouds form, the droplets are large and the Stokes number is huge, meaning that the particles easily combine, creating rain. But how does this transition occur?

There's a chicken and egg problem here. The droplets cannot grow quickly unless the Stokes number is large but the Stokes number cannot be large unless the droplets are big.

The breakthrough that Dallas and Vassilicos have made is to show how turbulence changes this relationship. They say that turbulence occurs over a huge range of scales, including the micrometre scales at which droplets form. The effect of this turbulence is to create big variations in the Stokes number on the micrometer scale. This, they say, is what makes the tiny droplets to collide more often.

Essentially, Dallas and Vassilicos are saying that micrometer scale turbulence accelerates cloud formation and triggers rain showers.

That's an interesting, although not entirely unexpected result that should lead to better weather forecasts. Perhaps more significantly, it could also have a big impact on climate models. Clouds have a big effect on the amount of light Earth reflects back into space. Being able to better calculate when they form is important.

And it plugs an embarrassing hole in our understanding of one of the most basic atmospheric phenomena.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1012.0578: Rain Initiation In Warm Clouds

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Quantum Dot Displays Start to Shine

Few display technologies rival the visual brilliance and energy-saving potential of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Yet OLED displays are mostly found in smaller applications like mobile phones. The manufacturing technology for OLEDs has struggled to scale up for mass producing computer monitors or televisions.

Now QD Vision, an MIT spinoff, has announced a display technology based on quantum dots that could not only be easier to manufacture than OLEDs, but also be even brighter and more energy-efficient.

Last week, the Massachusetts company announced a partnership with major manufacturer LG Display to develop displays that use quantum-dot light-emitting diodes (QLEDs) as their pixels. In early November, QD Vision also partnered with Solvay, a Belgium-based chemical company, to build a platform for printing QLEDs.

Quantum dots are nanometer-sized semiconducting crystals that can shine a bright, spectrally pure color when exposed to either light (photoluminescence) or electrical current (electroluminescence). QD Vision's first product, a quantum dot optic that warms the normally harsh glow produced by LED lamps, relies on photoluminescence; the quantum dots emit color when light from the LEDs excites them.

Silicon Valley-based Nanosys, another company working with quantum dots, expects to have its own product available in early 2011. Nanosys adds a strip of quantum dots to a liquid-crystal display's backlight to improve color quality and energy efficiency. QD Vision is developing a similar product.

To use quantum dots as the main element in a display, the crystals need to be excited by electrons, not photons. "[Electroluminescence of quantum dots is] something we've been working on a very long time, and now it's getting to this point of commercial traction," says Seth Coe-Sullivan, QD Vision's chief technology officer.

The target is the OLED market. "Small OLED displays are getting very good market traction," says Coe-Sullivan, "but there are still some unresolved challenges with OLEDs, and we see QLEDs as a way to solve them." The main benefit of QLEDs over OLEDs, he says, is in manufacturing. "There's been lots of proposals for manufacturing OLEDs at a larger scale, but none of them have worked out."

OLEDs need to be patterned as they are deposited, something that's traditionally been done with something called a shadow mask. But due to the chemical properties of OLEDs, the shadow mask technique isn't accurate at larger sizes. QLEDS, in contrast, don't need a shadow mask. They can be suspended in a liquid solution, which allows them to be deposited using any number of scalable techniques, including ink-jet printing.

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AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition CPU Review

With Christmas right around the corner, we're sure many of you will be treating yourselves to a new computer. Realizing that, AMD is doing its best to tempt you with a shiny new hexacore CPU with today's release of the Phenom II X6 1100T, their new six-core flagship processor.

In true AMD fashion, the company has priced its latest entry at a very reasonable $265. That's the same rate as the older Phenom II X6 1090T, which has been lowered to $230 to make room for the new 1100T model.

While today's review is focusing on the launch of the new Phenom II X6 1100T, which brings a mere 100MHz speed bump, we suspect most of you will be more excited about the prospect of a six-core Black Edition processor for a little over $200. After all, the new 1100T is only clocked 3% higher than the 1090T, while both feature fully unlocked clock multipliers, essentially making them one in the same.

The Phenom II X6 1090T was the only unlocked hexa-core processor in AMDs arsenal, as the 1055T and 1075T both feature fixed clock multipliers making them less effective overclockers. Pricing between these processors couldn't be any tighter with just $50 separating the 1055T and the 1090T Black Edition model.

Released last April, AMD's Phenom II X6 range has been surprisingly successful. It's not that they aren't worth purchasing, but they are somewhat overkill for the average user as most applications are only just beginning to take full advantage of quad-core processors and there are very few that can utilize more than four cores.

For the most part, gaming with the Phenom II X6 will deliver the same experience as the Phenom II X4, making it somewhat of a pointless option for gamers. Additionally, the Phenom II X6 is designed for heavily-threaded workloads, so it would be a waste for people that use their computer for basic tasks compared to a chip with fewer, but more efficient cores.

Generally, only professionals require this kind of grunt and that's probably why Intel has turned its six-core processors into cash cows by specifically targeting the high-end market with exuberant pricing. That said, there is surely a strong demand for modestly priced processors that can tackle heavily-threaded workloads, and that's precisely where AMD's offering steps in.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/review/345-amd-phenom2-x6-1100t/

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AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition CPU Review

With Christmas right around the corner, we're sure many of you will be treating yourselves to a new computer. Realizing that, AMD is doing its best to tempt you with a shiny new hexacore CPU with today's release of the Phenom II X6 1100T, their new six-core flagship processor.

In true AMD fashion, the company has priced its latest entry at a very reasonable $265. That's the same rate as the older Phenom II X6 1090T, which has been lowered to $230 to make room for the new 1100T model.

While today's review is focusing on the launch of the new Phenom II X6 1100T, which brings a mere 100MHz speed bump, we suspect most of you will be more excited about the prospect of a six-core Black Edition processor for a little over $200. After all, the new 1100T is only clocked 3% higher than the 1090T, while both feature fully unlocked clock multipliers, essentially making them one in the same.

The Phenom II X6 1090T was the only unlocked hexa-core processor in AMDs arsenal, as the 1055T and 1075T both feature fixed clock multipliers making them less effective overclockers. Pricing between these processors couldn't be any tighter with just $50 separating the 1055T and the 1090T Black Edition model.

Released last April, AMD's Phenom II X6 range has been surprisingly successful. It's not that they aren't worth purchasing, but they are somewhat overkill for the average user as most applications are only just beginning to take full advantage of quad-core processors and there are very few that can utilize more than four cores.

For the most part, gaming with the Phenom II X6 will deliver the same experience as the Phenom II X4, making it somewhat of a pointless option for gamers. Additionally, the Phenom II X6 is designed for heavily-threaded workloads, so it would be a waste for people that use their computer for basic tasks compared to a chip with fewer, but more efficient cores.

Generally, only professionals require this kind of grunt and that's probably why Intel has turned its six-core processors into cash cows by specifically targeting the high-end market with exuberant pricing. That said, there is surely a strong demand for modestly priced processors that can tackle heavily-threaded workloads, and that's precisely where AMD's offering steps in.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/review/345-amd-phenom2-x6-1100t/

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