Standards Set for Energy-Conserving LED Lighting

These solid-state lights are powered by energy-efficient light emitting diodes and are among the first ones of a new generation expected to cut energy needed for lighting by 50 percent by 2027.

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in cooperation with national standards organizations, have taken the lead in developing the first two standards for solid-state lighting in the United States. This new generation lighting technology uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of incandescent filaments or fluorescent tubes to produce illumination that cuts energy consumption significantly.

Solid-state lighting is expected to significantly reduce the amount of energy needed for general lighting, including residential, commercial and street lighting. “Lighting,” explains NIST scientist Yoshi Ohno, “uses 22 percent of the electricity and 8 percent of the total energy spent in the country, so the energy savings in lighting will have a huge impact.”


NIST is working with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to support its goal of developing and introducing solid-state lighting to reduce energy consumption for lighting by 50 percent by the year 2025. The department predicts that phasing in solid-state lighting over the next 20 years could save more than $280 billion in 2007 dollars.

The Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) published a documentary standard LM-79, which describes the methods for testing solid-state lighting products for their light output (lumens), energy efficiency (lumens per watt) and chromaticity. Details include the environmental conditions for the tests, how to operate and stabilize the LED sources for testing and methods of measurement and types of instruments to be used.

“More standards are needed, and this will be the foundation for all solid-state lighting standards,” Ohno says. The standard is available from the IESNA.

The solid-state lights being studied are intended for general illumination, but white lights used today vary greatly in chromaticity, or specific shade of white. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) published the standard C78.377-2008, which specifies the recommended color ranges for solid-state lighting products using cool to warm white LEDs with various correlated color temperatures. The standard may be downloaded from ANSI’s Web site.

DOE is launching the Energy Star program for solid-state lighting products this fall. NIST scientists assisted DOE by providing research, technical details and comments for the Energy Star specifications. The Energy Star certification assures consumers that products save energy and are high quality and also serves as an incentive for manufacturers to provide energy-saving products for consumers.

The solid-state lighting community is continuing to develop LED lighting standards for rating LED lamp lifetime and for measuring the performance of the individual high-power LED chips and arrays. NIST scientists are taking active roles in these continuing efforts.

Toshiba's New 1.8-inch SATA HDD Achieves 160GB

Toshiba Corporation today announced a new line-up of 1.8-inch hard disk drives adopting a serial ATA interface, including the industry's first drive of this type with a capacity of 160 gigabytes. The new 160GB drive, MK1617GSG, and an 80GB drive, MK8017GSG, will enter mass production in August.

Toshiba's new 1.8-inch HDDs boost interface speed to 1.5Gbps and offer a rotation speed of 5,400 rpm, faster than the current generation of Toshiba 1.8-inch HDD (MK1214GAH, parallel ATA, 120GB).

By realizing the industry's first 160GB 1.8-inch drive with a serial ATA interface, Toshiba assures that mobile PCs will be able to meet the most demanding user needs.

The new MK1617GSG drive is more environmentally efficient than Toshiba's current MK1216GSG (120GB) model, and raises energy consumption efficiency, as defined under the Japanese legal standard, to 0.00281W/GB, a 25% improvement. The drive improves the maximum internal data transfer rate by approximately 17%, and supports faster data access in reading and writing that enhances overall performance.

Alongside Toshiba's 1.8-inch HDD of 80GB and 120GB serial ATA interface drives already in the market, the new drives will provide product manufacturers with a broad line-up that supports diverse applications. The new drives will also contribute to achievement of environmentally conscious products in full compliance with the EU's RoHS directive.

OSU's Transparent Electronics Key to Solar Energy Breakthrough

Transparent transistors and optoelectronics created by researchers at Oregon State University and HP have found their first key industrial application in a new type of solar energy system that its developers say will be four times more cost-efficient than any existing technology.

Xtreme Energetics, Inc., of Livermore, Calif., announced they will use the OSU inventions, on which HP holds the exclusive licensing rights, in technology they believe will convert sunlight to electricity at twice the efficiency and half the cost of traditional solar panels.

OSU and Xtreme Energetics are pursuing continued collaborative research on this solar technology. HP has funded some of OSU’s research in advanced materials, collaborated with the university to invent transparent transistor technology, and is now making this technology available worldwide through its intellectual property licensing group.

Although this is one of the first applied uses of transparent electronics, it had not even been envisioned when OSU researchers in recent years developed the world’s first completely transparent integrated circuit from inorganic compounds.

“After the first discoveries with transparent electronics, we were thinking of applications like transparent displays or consumer electronics,” said John Wager, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at OSU. “But as with any breakthrough, sometimes at first you can’t even see all the possible uses. The potential to create solar energy technology that’s far more efficient and affordable is very exciting.”

Wager said that the concepts being developed by Xtreme Energetics should be an excellent fit with the capabilities of transparent electronics and integrated circuits.

“The approach being used by Xtreme Energetics is innovative, it involves a very new way to optimize solar energy collection,” Wager said. “Clearly there will be some challenges we will have to work through, but there do not appear to be any major problems. We’re all optimistic that this system is going to work. And there are still many other potential applications of transparent electronics as well.”

Most advanced solar energy systems use mechanical means to track the sun and optimize the concentration of energy. The system developed by Xtreme Energetics - which the use of transparent electronics will facilitate - has an optical approach to tracking and focusing the light. By eliminating mechanical tracking and using a flat design that could be implemented either on rooftop panels or central utilities, company officials say they can achieve an “ultra-high” level of solar energy efficiency that will be far more cost-competitive with other energy forms.

OSU announced just two years ago that it had created the world’s first transparent integrated circuit, based on fundamental materials science research in the College of Engineering and the College of Science at the university. The work is also affiliated with the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute, an Oregon-based collaboration of universities, private industries and the state.

The work has moved rapidly from fundamental development of new compounds – amorphous oxide semiconductors – to applied uses, in part because researchers were quick to cast aside approaches that might have been scientifically interesting but impractical for real use.

“We didn’t even try to work with some metals such as gold and silver which are too expensive, or others such as mercury or lead that might have environmental concerns,” Wager said. “We knew all along it would be important to create transparent electronic materials that were stable, environmentally friendly, and able to be manufactured at reasonable costs. We wanted systems that would work, not just be laboratory curiosities.”

According to OSU researchers, some of the research that could bring transparent integrated circuits into applied use may be accomplished in a period of a few years, OSU researchers said, compared to decades in the evolution of conventional electronics. Licensing to HP of the exclusive rights to develop and market products based on this technology has also helped the inventions move ahead quickly. HP officials have said they envision applications in the display, printing, medical and automotive industries – not to mention solar energy.

New industries, employment opportunities, and more effective or less costly consumer products are all possible as the era of transparent electronics evolves, OSU researchers say.

OSU scientists also just published the first-ever book in this field, titled “Transparent Electronics,” through Springer Science and Business Media.

Source: Oregon State University

In 2050, your lover may be a ... robot

A humanoid robot Asimo, developed by Japanese company Honda, is pictured guiding a woman. David Levy, a PhD in gender studies and artificial intelligence, predicts that by mid-century getting it on with an electronic femme-fatale or a superstud sexbot will become an accepted part of the human landscape.

Romantic human-robot relationships are no longer the stuff of science fiction -- researchers expect them to become reality within four decades. And they do not mean simply, mechanical sex.

"... when there are robots that have also emotions, personality, consciousness. They can talk to you, they can make you laugh. They can ... say they love you just like a human would say 'I love you', and say it as though they mean it ..."

Robots as sex toys should already be on the market within five years, predicted Levy, "a sort of an upgrade of the sex dolls on sale now".

These would have electronic speech and sensors that make them utter "nice sounds" when a human caresses their "erogenous zones".

But to build robots as real partners would take a bit longer, with conversation skills being the main obstacle for developers.

Scientists were working on artificial personality, emotion and consciousness, said Levy, and some robots already appear lifelike.

"But for loving relationships -- that is something completely different. In loving relationships there are many more things that are important. And the most difficult of all is conversation.

"You want your robot to be able to talk to you about what is interesting to you. You want a partner who has some similar interest to you, who talks to you in a manner that pleases you, who has a similar sense of humour to you."

The field of human-computer conversation is crucial to building robots with whom humans could fall in love, but is lagging behind other areas of development, said the author.

"I am sure it will (happen.) In 40 years ... perhaps sooner. You will find robots, conversation partners, that will talk to you and you will get as much pleasure from it as talking to another human. I am sure of it."

Levy's bombshell thesis, whose publication has had a ripple-effect way beyond the scientific community, gives rise to a number of complicated ethical and relationship questions.

British scholar Dylan Evans pointed out the paradox inherent to any relationship with a robot.

"What is absolutely crucial to the sentiment of love, is the belief that the love is neither unconditional nor eternal.

"Robots cannot choose you, they cannot reject you. That could become very boring, and one can imagine the human becoming cruel against his defenseless partner", said Evans.

A robot could conceivably be programmed with a will of its own and the ability to reject his human partner, he said, "but that would be a very difficult robot to sell".

Some warn against being overhasty.

"Let us not exaggerate the possibilities!" said Dutch researcher Vincent Wiegel of the Technological University of the eastern town of Delft.

"Today, the artificial intelligence we are able to create is that of a child of one year of age."

But Levy is unyielding. He is convinced it will happen, and predicts many societal benefits.

"There are many millions of people in the world who have nobody. They might be shy or they might have some psychological hang-ups or psycho-sexual hang-ups, they might have personality problems, they might be ugly ...

"There will always be many millions of people who cannot make normal satisfactory relationships with humans, and for them the choice is not: 'would I prefer a relationship with a human or would I prefer a relationship with a robot?' -- the choice is no relationship at all or a relationship with a robot."

They might even become human-to-human relationship savers, he predicted.

"Certainly there will be some existing human-human relationships where one partner might say to the other partner: 'if you have sex with a robot I'm leaving you'.

"There will be others who say: 'when you go on your business trip please take your robot because I happen to worry about the red light district'."

Microchip sets low-power record with extreme sleep mode

A low-power microchip developed at the University of Michigan uses 30,000 times less power in sleep mode and 10 times less in active mode than comparable chips now on the market.

The chip consumes just 30 picowatts during sleep mode. A picowatt is one-trillionth of a watt. Theoretically, the energy stored in a watch battery would be enough to run the Phoenix for 263 years.

Scott Hanson, a doctoral student in the U-M Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, will present the design June 20 at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Symposium on VLSI Circuits. Hanson jointly leads this project with Mingoo Seok, a doctoral student in the same department.

Phoenix measures one square millimeter. There's nothing special about its size, as chips in many modern sensors and electronics are one square millimeter and smaller. But Phoenix is the same size as its thin-film battery, marking a major achievement.

In most cases, batteries are much larger than the processors they power, drastically expanding the size and cost of the entire system, said David Blaauw, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. For instance, the battery in a laptop computer is about 5,000 times larger than the processor and it provides only a few hours of power.

"Low power consumption allows us to reduce battery size and thereby overall system size. Our system, including the battery, is projected to be 1,000 times smaller than the smallest known sensing system today," Blaauw said. "It could allow for a host of new sensor applications."

A group of U-M researchers is putting the Phoenix in a biomedical sensor to monitor eye pressure in glaucoma patients. Engineers envision that chips like this could also be sprinkled around to make a nearly invisible sensor network to monitor air or water or detect movement. They could be mixed into concrete to sense the structural integrity of new buildings and bridges. And they could power a robust pacemaker that could take more detailed readings of a patient's health, researchers say.

To achieve such low power, Phoenix engineers focused on sleep mode, where sensors can spend more than 99 percent of their lives. Sensors wake only briefly to compute at regular intervals.

"Sleep mode power dominates in sensors, so we designed this device from the ground up with an efficient sleep mode as the No. 1 goal. That's not been done before," said Dennis Sylvester, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

The system defaults to sleep. A low-power timer acts as an alarm clock on perpetual snooze, waking Phoenix every ten minutes for 1/10th of a second to run a set of 2,000 instructions. The list includes checking the sensor for new data, processing it, compressing it into a sort of short-hand, and storing it before going back to sleep.

The timer "isn't an atomic clock," Hanson said. "We keep time to 10 minutes plus or minus a few tenths of a second. For the applications this is designed for, that's okay. You don't need absolute accuracy in a sensor. We've traded that for enormous power savings."

A unique power gate design is an important part of the sleep strategy. Power gates block the electric current from parts of a chip not essential for memory during sleep.

In typical state-of-the-art chips, power gates are wide with low resistance to let through as much electric current as possible when the device is turned on. These chips wake up quickly and run fast, but a significant amount of electric current leaks through in sleep mode.

Phoenix engineers used much narrower power gates that restrict the flow of electric current. That strategy, coupled with the deliberate use of an older process technology, cut down on energy leaks.

"A power gate of such a small size is unheard of in traditional design since it severely limits the performance of the chip," Seok said.

To address this performance loss, the Michigan team increased the chip's operating voltage, increasing the baseline power by approximately 20 percent when the chip is awake. But Phoenix still runs at 0.5 Volts, rather than the 1 to 1.2 Volts typical chips require.

Microsoft Surface computers hit Las Vegas party scene

Microsoft's touch-screen Surface computers, seen here, have debuted in a Las Vegas casino bar giving Sin City partiers high-tech tools for flirting and concocting cocktails

Microsoft's touch-screen Surface computers have debuted in a Las Vegas casino bar giving Sin City partiers high-tech tools for flirting and concocting cocktails.

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Harrah's Entertainment Inc. became the second business, behind telecom giant AT&T, to deploy Microsoft's computer technology which essentially turns table tops into touch-controlled computer displays.

Harrah's said it put six customized Surface computers in a bar at its Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino.

Harrah's crafted its own software for the machines and equipped them with cameras so people can send pick-lines, drinks or both to bar-goers they are interested in connecting with in real life.

"People continue to be excited about the endless possibilities of Surface technology and how it can transform everyday scenarios, including the social and entertainment space," said Microsoft Surface general manager Pete Thompson.

"We're now bringing some of those possibilities to life."

A "Flirt" feature in the Surface computers lets people exchange original messages or choose from suggested come-on lines.

Patrons can create drink recipes and then have the cocktails delivered to themselves or others.

People can use the computers to play games, watch online videos, or take a virtual stroll along the renowned Las Vegas strip without leaving their seat at the "iBar," according to Harrah's.

This is the first time Surface computers, which Microsoft sells for approximately 10,000 dollars each, have been put to use in an entertainment venue. AT&T uses Surface in some of its retail stores.

Harrah's vice president of innovation, gaming and technology Tim Stanley said investment in the technology is aimed at giving "a new genre of guests" chances to discover "uninhibited excitement"

future computers

What do u think these are?












look closely n' guess what they cud be...




PENS WITH HIDDEN CAMS????? OMG!!! NAH...rofl


any wild guesses now?

no clue?...









ladies and gentlemen... congratulations! you've just now looked into the future...

yep that's right! no booing now...
you've seen something that would replace your PC in the near future....











NOW SEE THIS...











In the revolution of miniature of computers, the scientists are ahead with bluetooth technology... See the forthcoming computers within ur pockets ..













This pen sort of instrument produces both the monitor as well as the keyboard on flat surfaces from where you can just carry out the normal operations you do on your desktop.










MIND BLOWING IS'NT IT???