#lipperysteel provides both durability and antifouling Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of engineering and Applied sciences (SEAS) have developed a new coating for steel,
which they claim is the most durable antifouling and anti-corrosive material ever produced. The coating, made from rough nanoporous tungsten oxide,
It was developed in the lab of materials science professor Joanna Aizenberg, whose team has been working on Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces (SLIPS) since 2011. o far,
The coating is applied using an electrochemical technique that deposits an ultrathin film of tungsten oxide islands on to the steel.
and the steel retains both its durability and its antifouling properties. During testing, the team scratched the material with stainless steel tweezers, screwdrivers, diamond-tipped scribers
and pummeled it with hundreds of thousands of hard, heavy beads. A variety of liquids was applied then to the material to test its repellency,
and biological fluids containing bacteria and blood. According to the researchers, all liquids were repelled, with the tungsten oxide actually making the steel stronger than steel without the coating.
It is claimed the material could have a wide range of applications, including non-fouling medical tools and devices such as scalpels and implants,
as well as nozzle heads for 3d printing. The material could also have larger scale applications on marine vessels
#Electric compressor could double output of hydrogen fuel cells Fuel cells require a constant source of oxygen to sustain the chemical reaction that they use to release positively charged hydrogen ions.
Aeristech CEO. o other motor control arrangement is able to deliver at this pressure with such a high efficiency. he company has yet to release specific technical details,
This allows the motor to be powered directly by the fuel cell without the use of an intermediate voltage regulator.
which creates a bulky system. n 2011 Aeristech was one of 14 uk companies funded by Innovate UK to carry out feasibility studies into the development of disruptive low-carbon vehicle technology.
#Tractor beam lifts and moves small objects Researchers have built a working tractor beam that uses high-amplitude sound waves to generate an acoustic hologram that can pick up
The technique, developed by researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Sussex in collaboration with Ultrahaptics, could be developed for a wide range of applications,
Bruce Drinkwater, Professor of Ultrasonics in Bristol University Department of Mechanical engineering said: e all know that sound waves can have a physical effect.
Sriram Subramanian, Professor of Informatics at Sussex University and cofounder of Ultrahaptics, added: n our device we manipulate objects in mid-air
The tractor beam is said to work by surrounding the object with high-intensity sound and this creates a force field that keeps the objects in place.
The team has shown that three different shapes of acoustic force fields work as tractor beams. The first is an acoustic force field that resembles a pair or tweezers.
and then trapped at the core. Bristol University said that the third could be described as a high-intensity cage that surrounds the objects and holds them in place from all directions.
A paper-Holographic acoustic elements for manipulation of levitated objects by Asier Marzo, Sue Ann Seah, Bruce W. Drinkwater, Deepak Ranjan Sahoo
#Tractor beam lifts and moves small objects Researchers have built a working tractor beam that uses high-amplitude sound waves to generate an acoustic hologram that can pick up
The technique, developed by researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Sussex in collaboration with Ultrahaptics, could be developed for a wide range of applications,
Bruce Drinkwater, Professor of Ultrasonics in Bristol University Department of Mechanical engineering said: e all know that sound waves can have a physical effect.
Sriram Subramanian, Professor of Informatics at Sussex University and cofounder of Ultrahaptics, added: n our device we manipulate objects in mid-air
The tractor beam is said to work by surrounding the object with high-intensity sound and this creates a force field that keeps the objects in place.
The team has shown that three different shapes of acoustic force fields work as tractor beams. The first is an acoustic force field that resembles a pair or tweezers.
and then trapped at the core. Bristol University said that the third could be described as a high-intensity cage that surrounds the objects and holds them in place from all directions.
A paper-Holographic acoustic elements for manipulation of levitated objects by Asier Marzo, Sue Ann Seah, Bruce W. Drinkwater, Deepak Ranjan Sahoo
#New electrode improves solar efficiency to split water Scientists from the Universities of Chicago and Wisconsin have developed a new type of electrode for splitting water with sunlight,
harvesting the hydrogen to be used as clean fuel. Sun-capturing electrodes are designed to absorb as much of the solar spectrum as possible to maximise efficiency.
However, they also need to facilitate the easy movement of electrons. Until now, scientists have had to use separate manipulations to increase photon absorption and electron transfer.
The new electrode, described in Nature Communications, is made primarily from the semiconducting compound bismuth vanadate.
some of which was incorporated into the electrode. This increased the efficiency of both photon absorption and electron transport.
the nitrogen also lowered the energy needed to kick electrons into the state in which they were available to split water.
This meant that more solar energy could be used by the electrode. ow we understand what going on at the microscopic level,
a professor at the University of Chicago Institute for Molecular Engineering. o people can use these concepts ncorporation of a new element
Splitting water into its constituent elements has long been touted as a potential source of clean and sustainable energy,
The researchers hope that their work on the new electrode may act as a building block for other scientists working in the same area. ur study will encourage researchers in the field to develop ways to improve multiple processes using a single treatment,
a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin. o it not just about achieving higher efficiency,
University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have created miniature lenses with vast range of vision. Their new approach is claimed to have created the first-ever flexible Fresnel zone plate microlenses with a wide field of view,
a development with applications ranging from surgical scopes to security cameras to capture a broader perspective at a fraction of the size required by conventional lenses.
Led by Hongrui Jiang, professor of electrical and computer engineering at UW-Madison, the researchers designed lenses no larger than the head of a pin and embedded them within flexible plastic.
An array of the miniature lenses rolled into a cylinder can capture a panorama image covering a 170-degree field of view. e got the idea from compound eyes,
or nanowires. Incoming light bouncing between individual silicon nanowires cannot escape the complex structure, making the material darker than dark.
Rather than laying down layers of black silicon on top of a clear backdrop, Jiang and his team took a bottom-up approach to generate their lenses.
and etched silicon nanowires in the areas between aluminium rings. They then seeped a polymer between the silicon nanowire pillars.
After the plastic support solidified, they etched away the silicon backing, leaving bull-eye patterned black silicon embedded in supple plastic.
This approach is said to have given their lenses unprecedented crisp focusing capabilities plus the flexibility that enables them to capture a large field of view.
Jiang and his team-including postdoctoral scholar Mohammad J. Moghimi, graduate student Jayer Fernandes and recent graduate Aditi Kanhere-are exploring ways to integrate the lenses into existing optical detectors and directly incorporate silicon electronic components into the lenses themselves e
#Aluminium battery can charge phone in one minute, scientists say Scientists say they have invented a new battery that could fully charge a smartphone in just one minute.
The researchers have created an aluminium battery which they hope could replace the lithium models commonly found in laptops and mobile phones.
And as well as the nprecedented charging timesof their aluminium prototype, the team said it was also safer than lithium-ion batteries as it was less prone to catching fire and more environmentally friendly than alkaline models such as AA and AAA.
Publishing the findings in the journal Nature Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford university, hailed it as a breakthrough in battery technology that went further than previous attempts using aluminium.
He said: e have developed a rechargeable aluminium battery that may replace existing storage devices, such as alkaline batteries,
which are bad for the environment, and lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst into flames.
Our new battery won catch fire, even if you drill through it. illions of consumers use 1. 5-volt AA and AAA BATTERIES.
Our rechargeable aluminium battery generates about two volts of electricity. That higher than anyone has achieved with aluminium.
The prototype was said to be more durable, withstanding more than 7, 500 cycles without any loss of capacity and surpassing previous aluminium batteries
which died after just 100 charge-discharge cycles, while a typical lithium-ion battery lasts about 1,
000 cycles. his was the first time an ultra-fast aluminium-ion battery was constructed with stability over thousands of cycles,
the report authors wrote. Dai added that lithium batteries could o off in an unpredictable mannerand cited a ban by US airlines Delta
and United on bulk shipments on passenger planes. And the new design could be used to store renewable energy of the electrical grid, the researchers suggested.
Meanwhile, co-author Ming Gong said: nother feature of the aluminium battery is flexibility. You can bend it
and fold it, so it has the potential for use in flexible electronic devices. Aluminium is also a cheaper metal than lithium. p
#Streaming helps digital music match global physical sales Fuelled by the popularity of streaming, digital music has matched
and will likely soon surpass physical formats in the money it generates, a global industry body has said.
The IFPI, the London-based body for the recording business, described the boom in streaming services as good news for the industry
even though overall revenue still slipped in 2014. For the first time, digital and physical music sales were roughly even with each representing 46%of revenue for the industry, with rights for performances,
films and advertisements making up the rest. think we will be looking in the next couple of years at digital surpassing physical,
said the IFPI chief executive, Frances Moore. e are seeing that streaming is really leading the digital market,
and we can imagine a time when digital will be the majority of music sales. Subscription services still account for a fraction of the industry
but revenue shot up 39%last year to $1. 57bn, according to the IFPI. The group estimated that 41 million people worldwide pay for music subscription services such as Sweden-based industry leader Spotify and France-based Deezer.
In a sign of the expected growth of the market, hip-hop mogul Jay-z recently bought the Tidal streaming service
which he relaunched in collaboration with stars including Madonna and Daft punk. Regional variations Amid the growth in streaming,
physical sales of music as well as permanent downloads on sites such as itunes kept falling. The drops contributed to the overall picture for the global music industry revenue of $14. 97bn in 2014, down a modest 0. 4%from a year earlier.
But the picture had strong regional variations. The US, the world largest music market, saw an overall increase of 2. 1%.Japan,
whose slowdown in music sales has been a drag in recent years on the global industry, saw an increase in digital revenue for the first time in five years as streaming services took hold.
CDS are still far more popular than digital music in Japan which nonetheless saw revenue decline by 5. 5%in 2014,
although it was an improvement from a 16.7%tumble the year before. Physical sales also remain the key format in Germany,
where overall revenue still grew 1. 9%in contrast to declines in Britain and France.
where revenues grew by 19.2%.%South korea along with Nordic nations have been especially enthusiastic about embracing streaming.
Moore said that the IPFI planned a renewed campaign to press Youtube and other sites to license music consistently.
Youtube, owned by search engine giant Google, enjoys so-called afe harbourstatus under US law that lets it avoid liability for copyright infringement as it is considered an internet service provider.
The IFPI, in data released in the report, said that more than half of all internet users accessed music through video sites such as Youtube in the past six months.
The rule ompletely distortsthe market as ervices like Spotify and Deezer have to take proper licenses Moore said.
#Europe is targeting Google under antitrust laws but missing the bigger picture Google it today and youl see that the European commission has turned up the heat in its long-running probe into anti-competitive behaviour by the web most popular search engine.
EC competition chief, Margrethe Vestager, issued formal objections alleging that Google abuses its dominant position in the market of eneral internet search In particular,
the EC claims that Google artificially boosts its own products in returning Google comparison shopping results in its service oogle Shopping
even if those products aren the best or cheapest the ost relevant as the Commission puts it for consumers.
Since taking office in November 2014 Vestager has made the Google inquiry a top priority, signalling a willingness to consider court battles
and hefty fines if Google and other digital giants don fall into line with European competition law.
In this, she has displayed a distinct shift from her predecessor, Joaquín Almunia, whose multiple attempts to achieve private settlement with Google fell apart a year ago,
before descending into a political and economic boxing match. Vestager announcement comes amidst increasing restlessness by European policymakers that omething must be doneabout Google.
Identifying with precision the source of that anxiety, and the appropriate focus of action, is rather more challenging.
And it forces us to ask: what does the artillery of competition law offer? And is it gunning for the right target?
Accelerating complaints-or at least some of them The EC current accusation is extremely narrow. It focuses on the first and clearest of a number of complaints filed in 2009-10 by various Google competitors-from other giants, such as Microsoft, to small, struggling or defunct web businesses.
These complaints range from the EC current focus on Google prioritisation of its own products within vertical search services (currently,
shopping, but this extends to maps, flights and news), to issues with Google scraping and fencing of datasets, often exclusively and at unmatched scale.
Advertisement It is this sheer volume of data matched with the self-reinforcing effect of Google market share (the more people search,
the better search becomes), that makes its de facto monopoly such a concern, but also such a challenge to combat.
Vestager announcement falls short of these broader concerns. She was at pains to point out the preliminary, fact-driven, legally-focused, apolitical nature of her inquiry.
Such an approach is safe it falls clearly within the domain of European competition law,
and it accelerates Google towards addressing some real competitor concerns, even if some of those competitors are interested now more in backward compensation rather than forward innovation.
But while strategic for the track record of the Commission this new development is rather less strategic for the broader digital landscape.
You can Google your way out of a power vacuum Let return to the market in
which Google is dominant: eneral internet search This is a market that didn exist 20 years ago.
And it is a market that cannot be underestimated. It is the marketplace of human knowledge, queries, anxieties, ideas, journeys, hopes, sorrows and dreams.
The sociopolitical problem with search engines and, in particular, the search engine, is worthy of deep Foucaultian analysis. Search engines are sanctioned not officially maps,
nor old-style phone directories or broadcast services all of which may be privatised, but are subject to oversight, transparency requirements and regulation.
Google is our contemporary maker and breaker of truth, commerce and the stuff of life.
As Maryland law professor Frank Pasquale writes in his acclaimed new book The Black box Society:
oogle is not really a competitor in numerous markets, but instead serves as a hub
For Pasquale, the solution lies in greater transparency. oogle secrecy keeps rivals from building upon its methods or even learning from them,
he writes. issing results are an nknown unknown users for whom certain information is suppressed do not even know that they do not know the information.
The irony of the situation is that Google knows so much about us, and we know so little about it.
The transparency conundrum The core of the problem with competition law is that it seems a poor and ill-adapted game of mudslinging
and it is only peripheral to the real problem: power. At best, the European commission initiative may require some marginal reconfiguration of Google algorithms and presentation of results,
and possibly some payouts, with no equivalent benefit in engendering the flourishing of new innovation.
and publicly-owned datasets that permit a variety of services to flourish, favouring instead the creation of black box systems,
The total opacity of search and its interventions make manipulation invisible from the point of view of users.
All users see is the supposedly objective final results, not the interventions by the gatekeeper.
one of the fiercest critics of mass surveillance and tech monopolies, have a proposal for Google to make its search algorithms
Arcep, a body of 170 digital experts. While Google will likely claim that its algorithms are so complex that even its own engineers do not understand their Heath Robinsonesque machinations,
the bold French proposal recognises that Google search did not simply emerge of its own accord.
Algorithms are human creations, and they need to serve human needs
#France launches major anti-racism and hate speech campaign The french government has launched a major campaign to contain the country steep rise in racism
and hate speech, using the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks to tighten the law on hate crime
The french president, François Hollande, vowed to make the fight against racism one of his main personal causes.
and fight atred online assivity on the internet is said over, Hollande. Teacher training will be reinforced, headteachers will be encouraged to report incidents
and pupils will be taken to visit memorial sites. There will also be tougher penalties for crimes deemed to have been fuelled by racism and antisemitism.
Hate speech, already a criminal offence, will be moved to France general penal code. It will no longer be part of a separate specialist criminal code dating back to the 19th century that deals with freedom of expression issues and offences such as incitement to racial hatred and libel.
when in fact there should be broader work to promote equality and end discrimination across society.
including for people who had insulted drunkenly police officers. Dominique Sopo of the campaign group SOS Racisme told the Guardian:
the site of a brutal antisemitic attack last year in which a young Jewish couple were held hostage in their home,
and the attackers ransacked the flat, saying: ou Jews, you have money
#Can the internet of things save us from traffic jams? Traffic is getting worse. It doesn just feel that way,
the stats prove it: commuters in 2014 spent an average 66 more hours stuck in traffic than they did in 2013, according to navigation tech firm Tomtom.
which allow data about individual journeys, routes and vehicles to be monitored centrally, controlled and systematised.
Autonomous intersection management Once computers are in full control of our cars, do need we even traffic lights at intersections?
That the idea behind AIM autonomous intersection management at the artificial intelligence laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin.
Rather than stop at red lights, self-driving cars would schedule a slot through an intersection in real-time,
speeding up or slowing down to ensure theye in the right place at the right time and not smashing into another car.
For the idea to work, it would require roads to be mostly full of autonomous cars, says project leader Professor Peter Stone
and then it wouldn seem so terrifying. hen I show people that video, I tell people to not envision themselves with their foot hovering over the brake or with their white knuckles on the steering wheel,
but rather theye in the back seat with the windows dark, doing a crossword puzzle or reading the newspaper, talking to family or whatever,
he says. nce the driving is not a human task and people grow to trust the software controllers,
people will also get used to the idea of cars going through the intersections. That said, he stressed that driving is now
and will likely always remain a risk and reward equation, but he predicted that with AIM,
and our system will allow the cars to make a much more constant speed, he says,
When a computer doing the driving, even with all the cars going through without stopping, it going to be a lot safer than it is today. re we there yet?
Computers aren driving our cars yet and won be for some time, but there are some connected car projects that already claim to be easing the flow of traffic.
Tomtom collects swaths of traffic data from its satnav devices but also used anonymised data from third party navigation apps, including smartphone maps. e have agreements with a number of smartphone manufacturers,
so they provide us with real time GPS feeds wherever their smartphones are, says Nick Cohn, senior traffic expert at Tomtom.
It also gathers data from telematics units installed in fleet vehicles as well as in-dash systems
giving Tomtom a comprehensive overview of traffic flows. The resulting information on near real-time congestion is shared with customers,
which includes road authorities who use it to plan traffic management as well as consumers. ost have camera data that doesn cover the whole network,
so they use our data to supplement that and for deciding whether they need to switch to a different traffic signal scheme,
Cohn says. When a driver hits a patch of congestion a red zone of a smartphone or satnav map it may be because of data that was collected,
aggregated and distributed from connected cars in weeks or months past. Before ubiquitous connectivity Cohn said the travel times seen by Tomtom were very different than that given by road authorities such as the AA.
As data improves, the numbers are merging, suggesting travel advice has become more accurate. As cars become more connected
whether it through satnav or simply the smartphones in our pockets better data in means we get better data out on the road.
Andy Stanford-Clark, distinguished engineer in IBM global internet of things team, pointed out that we can now pull in all sorts of data:
not only GPS from cars and timings from traffic lights, but also air quality sensor data and images from cameras. n its own, each is of low value,
but when merged together in the internet of thingscloud processing platform, we can make sense of them
and make actionable insights, he says. t might be to turn some traffic lights green quicker
or send a text message to a car, or alert satnavs in the car to quietly change the routing
so theye now going somewhere else. It may seem like a small change, but consider the shift that happened in digital signs.
Highways England used to simply warn there were ueues ahead but now tells drivers it will be 17 minutes to their junction, points out Giles Perkins, business development director for intelligent transport at Mouchel,
which runs the National Traffic information service. ore data in and more data out can only be a good thing.
Unintended consequences Though traffic data makes it possible to see the movement of traffic in real time,
and traffic lights themselves are operated algorithmically, it is still not possible to engineer a way of turning the lights green as you pull up. t easy to change the traffic lights, ssays IBM Standford-Clark. ut...
you get this terrible interconnection of unintended consequences. Your main route into a city may be clear,
but every road feeding into it would be gridlocked. t not a trivial thing to do.
That why most light sequences are set via a longer term algorithm, taking into account other parts of the road network.
As we shift to more autonomous cars, that may have to change. One way self-driving vehicles may be introduced is latooning with a lead car in control of a train or group of followers, handy for giving lorry drivers a break.
Signals couldn be allowed to change midway through a platoon or it would leave stragglers behind. latoons would need to transmit their status to the intersection
and the signal change would need to be advanced or delayed to treat the platoon as a single long vehicle,
said Alan Stevens, chief scientist and research director at transport firm TRL. ither the platoon could signal that it cleared the intersection
or there would need to be infrastructure sensors to check the whole platoon is through.
This is already happening in in a limited sense, noted Stevens. t a local signal level, we can implement priority measures for ambulances,
buses, etc-that a standard feature in some software and has been for years, says Stevens. owever,
giving priority to one vehicle makes things slightly worse for all others. So, there little point in giving one or two connected private passenger vehicles special priority.
There are reasons to give some cars priority, and that being trialled by Newcastle. There, traffic lights are alkingto motorists,
sending messages to a device in car about obstacles or delays ahead, as well as helping them adjust their speeds to hit lights
when theye green. he system might advise a driver that if they travel at 24 miles an hour they will hit the next four sets of traffic lights on green,
says Newcastle University professor of intelligent transport systems Phil Blyte, announcing the project. n more congested areas or particularly busy times of the day,
then vehicles on key roads might be given priority in order to keep the traffic flowing. The system also gives priority to non-emergency vehicles,
such as those transporting people between hospitals, cutting NHS fuel costs and improving patient care. So far, 20 traffic lights are using the system in Newcastle city centre.
Zombies ahead and cyclists As with any tech innovation, one of the biggest challenges is security.
The best example so far is hacked surely construction signs in the US with attackers warning of zombies ahead,
but it easy to imagine how taking out traffic networks could shut down a city or otherwise wreak havoc. s more technology
and software migrates to the cloud and is configurable over-the-air then the number of ttack surfaces (to use the jargon) increase,
saysstevens. imple hacking to clone a bus asking for priority is one level of threat relatively easy
roads aren used only by cars. What about the bicycles, scooters and pedestrians hoping to cross the street?
They have smartphones, so there otential to do something with that, said Tomtom Cohn. think it be great as a pedestrian and a cyclist if
I didn have to push a button to cross and I didn have to wait, that
says IBM Stanford-Clark. The best way to achieve it may not be via smart, reactive traffic lights,
but by sending messages to drivers in cars, giving them useful information to react to
Until computers take over driving, at least
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