Science & Technology

WHO OWNS THE ASTEROIDS?

2012-04-30T15:54:00.000+05:30

One company's plan to mine asteroids may fly in the face of international treaty.

A private company wants to mine asteroids for metals and raw materials.
There is a United Nations treaty that prohibits ownership of celestial bodies by nations, but does not specifically address rights of individuals or companies.

Of all the hurdles facing Planetary Resources, a startup firm that this week unveiled its plan to survey and mine asteroids for water, precious metals and other resources, legal jurisdiction is not at the top of the list.

"We as a U.S. company certainly have the right to go an asteroid and make use of its resources," Planetary Resources co-founder Eric Anderson told Discovery News.

"It is a stated goal of the U.S. government to enable and promote commercial activities and economic activity in space," he said.

enlarge

The 22-mile long asteroid 433 Eros could contain trillions of dollars-worth of precious metals, but who owns it? Click to enlarge this image.
NASA

Trends in the display market

2012-04-28T19:53:00.002+05:30

IDC estimated the total size of the computer display market to be around 7.7 million units in 2011, with a 4.2 million market for stand-alone displays (that is, those not sold as a PC bundle by an OEM). In monetary terms, the Indian display market was estimated to be worth Rs 2,350 crore last year.

In 2012 the number of stand-alone units sold is expected to touch 5 million, while the total number of units is expected to be 7.9 million; this growth in stand-alone sales—17 percent—is the highest growth projected among all stand-alone IT accessories and peripherals.

“Though new technologies are emerging, they are not being disruptive, and the market will grow faster than the DIY market and assembler market because the new technologies are constantly driving customers to upgrade and replace,” reasons Ramprasad Lakshminarayan, GM, Channel Business, Fujitsu India.

In 2011 as many as 15 major players competed for mind space and market share in the segment. Apart from specialized display players such as Samsung, LG, Viewsonic, AOC, Kobian and Philips (through MMD), PC OEMs such as Asus, Acer, Dell, HCL and Fujitsu also are fighting for market share. Other PC OEMs (such as HP and Lenovo) do not position their products in the stand-alone space, but are offering monitors to their partners to protect their turf. There are also new players (including Beetel, Intex, Moser Baer and iBall) which have strong channel connect.

LED replacing LCD

Most monitor makers say that their LED monitor shipments have surpassed their LCD shipments during H22011. They report that LCD shipments today account for just 20-30 percent of their total shipments. The prices of LED monitors are now 10-20 percent more than those of LCD monitors. Says Ajay Sharma, Country Head, Viewsonic India, “We feel that by the end of the year the prices will be on par, which would mean that few vendors will carry LCD monitors.”

“LED displays are superior for many reasons. Most importantly, they offer better contrast, and are sharper as they offer a wider color range when RGB-LED backlighting is used,” says Sanjoy Bhattacharya, GM, Sales & Marketing, IT Products, LG Electronics. “In addition, they offer 20-30 percent better power savings compared to LCD monitors, and are far more reliable.” This reliability is prompting monitor vendors to offer a 3-year warranty on LED displays.

Monitor makers have issued matrices which say that within 3-6 months of usage LED monitors offer enough power savings compared to LCD monitors to negate the price difference of a few hundred rupees. LEDs also create less environmental pollution on disposal compared to CCFL backlit LCDs.

“Thinner products are more efficient, space-saving and aesthetic. LED monitors can be extremely slim, and in our new product lines we have some screens less than a centimeter in thickness,” says Saurav Grover, Sales Head, Monitor Business, AOC India.
Market research firm Display Research has indicated that the contract pricing for LED displays would be cheaper than for LCD by H22012.

In 2011, the 18.5”/19” monitors were the most in demand, and it is expected that in India there will be a shift to the larger 20” monitors during the current year. Remarks Saji Kumar, Director, Product Development, Acer India, “Last year the 18.5” was the highest in demand with a market share of about 45 percent followed by the 15.6” with a market share of approximately 30 percent. At present 20” displays have around 25 percent market share.”

Gautam Raj, Proprietor, GK Sales Corp, Guwahati, offers more insight. “Affordability is the most important factor that defines spikes and dips in the sales of IT peripherals. We have seen that value-conscious buyers who may have spent extra bucks to buy a larger screen chose to budget for a smaller screen while buying a new PC during the HDD shortage as the disk drive accounted for a larger portion of the price. Once HDD prices drop, we will expect bigger sales of the larger screens.”
While monitor makers carry models that have 22”, 24”, 25” and 27” screens, most makers do not see volumes picking up for screens larger than 24” this year.

3D focus

Monitor makers are viewing the 3D monitor market with a lot of interest. The market size is estimated to be around 3,000 units a month, which is too small for some of the vendors to invest in presently.

According to Harish Kumar RP, CEO, Bengaluru-based Connoisseur Electronics, “The 3D monitor market is still limited to gaming and entertainment enthusiasts. 3D gaming is huge abroad, but in India we are still catching on. While there is availability of 3D content, consumers have been reluctant to buy it because of the prohibitive prices.”

There are two types of technologies in 3D monitors—Shutter Glass (SG) and Film-type Patterned Retarder (FPR). SG monitors have been around for three years, and are so far regarded as the industry standard. FPR monitors are expensive, and their street prices are Rs 17,000-19,000 for an 18.5” monitor. Apart from the monitor cost, the customer needs to invest in glasses to experience the content. SG glasses cost Rs 7,000-8,000 depending on the manufacturer. “If you need to play a multi-player 3D game you need to have multiple glasses, which makes it difficult for most consumers,” points out Sharma.

AOC recently launched 3D monitors based on FPR technology at a price of less than Rs 12,000 with the 3D viewing glass price being around Rs 1,500. “We can now build a 3D gaming PC at a lower cost,” says Harish. “Of course, there is still a lot of discussion about SG and FPR, and which is superior.”

Meanwhile Nvidia, which became the pioneer in the 3D gaming market by introducing 3D Vision in 2009, is now facing stiff competition from AMD with its HD3D.

Other trends

Monitor TVs are essentially LED monitors with built-in TV tuner displays. Monitor makers have been reluctant to enter this market because they do not want to compete in a space that is heavily dominated by television vendors and their channels. “The market for TV monitors is less than a percentile. Only LG and AOC are presently focused on this market, and we do not see a huge growth in this space right now,” admits Grover of AOC.

Monitor makers are trying to differentiate their models by adding DVI and HDMI ports. A DVI port model usually costs around Rs 200 more than a model without this port. HDMI is very popular, especially on larger screen models, since these products can be used to connect to home theaters and other electronic devices that support HDMI connectivity.

Another trend being anticipated is that of monitor makers catering to the AIO market. Viewsonic has already launched models, and Asus is expected to offer some soon.

Other segments that monitor vendors see a lot of potential in are CAD/CAM design, medical instrumentation, and print graphics design where color calibration and attention to detail are prime requisites. “We have been addressing this opportunity for long, and with massive IT adoption in niche segments you would see demand growing,” says Bhattacharya. Sharma agrees. “While some of these products are sold through specialized channels, IT channels must not ignore the opportunity.”

Study suggests link between H. pylori bacteria and blood sugar control in adult Type 2 diabetes

2012-03-18T12:50:00.002+05:30

A new study by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center reveals that the presence of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) bacteria is associated with elevated levels of glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c), an important biomarker for blood glucose levels and diabetes. The association was even stronger in obese individuals with a higher Body Mass Index (BMI). The results, which suggest the bacteria may play a role in the development of diabetes in adults, are available online in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

There have been several studies evaluating the effect of the presence of H. pylori on diabetes outcomes, but this is the first to examine the effect on HbA1c, an important, objective biomarker for long-term blood sugar levels, explained Yu Chen, PhD, MPH, associate professor of epidemiology at NYU School of Medicine, part of NYU Langone Medical Center.

"The prevalence of obesity and diabetes is growing at a rapid rate, so the more we know about what factors impact these conditions, the better chance we have for doing something about it," Dr. Chen said. Looking at the effects of H. pylori on HbA1c, and whether the association differs according to BMI status, provided what could be a key piece of information for future treatment of diabetes, she explained.

Type II diabetes causes an estimated 3.8 million adult deaths globally. There have been conflicting reports about the association between H. pylori infection and type II diabetes. To better understand the relationship between H. pylori and the disease, Dr. Chen and Martin J. Blaser, MD, the Frederick H. King Professor of Internal Medicine and professor of microbiology, analyzed data from participants in two National Health and Nutrition Surveys (NHANES III and NHANES 1999-2000) to assess the association between H. pylori and levels of HbA1c.

"Obesity is an established risk factor for diabetes and it is known that high BMI is associated with elevated HbA1c. Separately, the presence of H. pylori is also associated with elevated HbA1c," said Dr. Blaser, who has studied the bacteria for more than 20 years. "We hypothesized that having both high BMI and the presence of H. pylori would have a synergistic effect, increasing HbA1c even more than the sum of the individual effect of either risk factor alone. We now know that this is true."

H. pylori lives in the mucous layer lining the stomach where it persists for decades. It is acquired usually before the age of 10, and is transmitted mainly in families. Dr. Blaser's previous studies have confirmed the bacterium's link to stomach cancer and elucidated genes associated with its virulence, particularly a gene called cagA.

Regarding H. pylori's association with elevated HbA1c, Drs. Chen and Blaser believe the bacterium may affect the levels of two stomach hormones that help regulate blood glucose, and they suggest that eradicating H. pylori using antibiotics in some older obese individuals could be beneficial.

More research will be needed to evaluate the health effects of H. pylori and its eradication among different age groups and in relation to obesity status, the authors noted.

"If future studies confirm our finding, it may be beneficial for individuals at risk for diabetes to be tested for the presence of H. pylori and, depending on the individual's risk factor profile" Dr. Chen.

In an accompanying editorial in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Dani Cohen, PhD, of Tel Aviv University in Israel, pointed out that while previous studies have addressed the association between type II diabetes and H. pylori in small samples, this study analyzed two independent large national samples of the general population. Dr. Cohen agreed with the study authors, suggesting that adults infected with H. pylori with higher BMI levels, even if asymptomatic, may need anti-H. pylori therapy to control or prevent type II diabetes. If the study findings are confirmed, Dr. Cohen wrote, they "could have important clinical and public health implications."

Giant squids' giant eyes: The better to see hungry whales with

2012-03-18T12:46:00.001+05:30

It's no surprise that giant and colossal squid are big, but it's their eyes that are the real standouts when it comes to size, with diameters measuring two or three times that of any other animal. Now, researchers reporting online on March 15 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have used complex computations to explain those massive peepers. Giant squids' 10-inch eyes allow them to see very large and hungry sperm whales from a distance in the pitch darkness of their deep-sea home. According to the researchers' calculations, animals living underwater would have no use for such large eyes if the goal were to see an average object, such as prey smaller than themselves. That's why even the eyes of large whales aren't much more than 3.5 inches across.

"For seeing in dim light, a large eye is better than a small eye, simply because it picks up more light," said Dan-Eric Nilsson of Lund University. "But for animals that live in the sea or in lakes, the optical properties of water will severely restrict how far away things can be seen.

"Through complex computations we have found that for animals living in water, it does not pay to make eyes much bigger than an orange. Making eyes larger than that will only marginally improve vision, but eyes are expensive to build and maintain."

For Nilsson's team, that begged the question of why giant squid bother with their giant eyes. Using a mathematical model of underwater vision, they tested the benefits of very large eyes for a broad range of tasks under various light conditions. Those efforts showed that very large eyes aren't much better than smaller ones unless one wants to see something that is itself very big, like a whale.

Giant squid may also be unique in that they are powerful enough to escape a sperm whale once they've spotted one, Nilsson says. But how can giant squid see a sperm whale at depths beyond daylight's reach?

"The answer is bioluminescence -- light produced by small gelatinous animals when they are disturbed by the whale moving through the water," Nilsson says. "It is well known that bioluminescence can reveal submarines at night, and diving sperm whales will become visible for the same reason."

The findings may also explain the large eyes of prehistoric ichthyosaurs, giant marine reptiles that looked something like dolphins, the researchers say. Although ichthyosaurs lived long before whales came along, they would have had to contend with giant predatory pliosaurs.

Teenagers scoop science awards

2012-03-18T12:44:00.000+05:30

A trio of Britain's brightest youngsters have scooped top honours in science and engineering at the 2012 National Science & Engineering Competition.

Two Cardiff teenagers were voted Young Engineers of the Year for creating a portable device to monitor when mothers are about to go into labour. A third teenager from West Kirby carried off the title of UK Young Scientist of the Year for pioneering work to target specific cancer cells.

The trio, all aged 17, were chosen from a line up of among 360 talented youngsters all with potentially world-beating ideas.

They were singled out by a panel of world-class judges which included Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Sir Tim Hunt, and the Science Museum's inventor in residence Mark Champkins.

Wasim Miah and Jessica Jones, from St David's College, Cardiff, South Wales, were named Young Engineers of the Year. The pair impressed with a mechanical and electrical device called the Contraction Optical Monitoring System, which measures foetal contraction intensity. It provides mothers-to-be with a simple indication of when they are about to go into labour, avoiding the traditional mad dash to hospital.

"This is such a massive honour. It feels so strange and I can't believe that we've actually won," a jubilant Jessica said. "The competition was so fierce. I can't believe I'm the first girl to win the UK Young Engineer of the Year, it makes the achievement all the more amazing."

Co-winner Wasim added: "This is absolutely brilliant but we're both still shell shocked. We didn't even tell anyone that we'd entered the competition because we didn't think we would be nominated. We thought we would get some useful contacts to help develop the project so to win is an amazing bonus."

Kirtana Vallabhaneni said she was overwhelmed at being crowned UK Young Scientist of the Year. She has been involved in groundbreaking work helping to identify the harmful cells that cause pancreatic cancer. The aim of the project is to isolate cells in the pancreas that can be targeted with chemotherapy rather than subjecting the whole body to the treatment.

"Everything that I've worked for over the last year has come together. I'm so happy," she said.

The finals took place at The Big Bang UK Young Scientists & Engineers Fair, the country's largest celebration of science and engineering for young people, at The NEC, Birmingham, and prizes were awarded by Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts.

Google plans major revamp for search engine

2012-03-15T20:09:00.002+05:30

The Web giant has been working on the "next generation of search" over the last couple of years and now it's ready to start rolling it out.
Google is about to embark on its biggest renovation in history. In order to keep up with increased competition and new technology, the Web giant is working to keep ahead of the pack by completely revamping its search function, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Google search executive Amit Singhal told The Wall Street Journal that the new Google search will look more like "how humans understand the world."

Changes are expected to roll out over the next few months, the Journal reports, but the full makeover to "next generation of search" will likely take years. A Google spokesperson told CNET that there is not a specific timeline and the company's philosophy is to launch things when they're ready.

The plan for the revamp isn't necessarily to swap out the current keyword-search system but rather to provide more relevant results. This process will work by using technology called "semantic search." With semantic searches, people's searches will be better matched with "entities"--or people, places and things--which the company has been building over the past two years, reports the Journal.

For example, the Journal reports that people who search for "Lake Tahoe" today get links to the lake's visitor bureau website and a map; whereas with the makeover, they will see key "attributes" about the lake, including location, altitude, average temperature and salt content.

ntel's journey in to cloud computing

2012-03-15T20:06:00.000+05:30

With increasing number of headcounts and ever growing demand for IT and computing resources, Intel had no other choice but to consolidate its internal IT requirements that would help addressing annual IT budgets as well as overall operational costs.

It was back in 2009 that Intel took a very significant step of moving towards cloud computing and reap its benefits in coming years. “In 2009, we started to work on cloud strategy and initiated the use of public cloud for non-core business needs such as e-mail applications through software-as-a-service model,” said Kimberly S Stevenson, Intel Corporation's vice president - IT and general manager - IT Global Operations and Services.

While, Intel used public cloud for non-core business needs, it framed an internal cloud strategy, also know as private cloud. Under the acronym DOMES (Design, Office, Manufacturing, Enterprise, Services), which stands for various organizational departments and functions, Intel slowly started to deploy virtualization within these units.

During the first year, Intel virtualized around 12 per cent environment within the organization with the focus on federated clouds. By 2011, the company virtualized over 62 per cent of its environment that led to semi-automated server provisioning and resource allocations based the on-demand self servicing model.

“Our aim is 75 per cent virtualization by 2012, which will allow fully automated server provisioning and resource allocations along with 80 per cent effective asset utilization rate with zero business impact,” Stevenson opined.

Though working on federated cloud throws key challenges such as security and business model, Stevenson stressed on the business benefits it offered to Intel. “It helped in improving the velocity and availability of IT services, provisioning servers in short time, flexible configurations, secured infrastructure and saving cost to the business.”

Intel claimed that it saved net $9 million through internal cloud efforts. According to Stevenson, during 2008, Intel allocated about 3.8 per cent of its total revenues on IT spends. However, due to the cloud strategy they were able to bring it down to 2.5- 3 per cent in recent years.

Intel's internal cloud profile include over 40 per cent for production work load, 22 per cent for human resource, finance and legal, 13 per cent for enterprise resource planning, five per cent for engineering and 19 per cent for sales and marketing.

For Stevenson, the cloud journey was a tough one as she and her team had to make business case of the proposed cloud strategy, present it to the board and get it approved. However, moving forward to future she said, “We learned many things on our cloud journey – right from cloud technology, leadership support, IT business partnership to short term priorities.”

Alta Devices: Finding a Solar Solution

2012-03-01T13:33:00.000+05:30

Looking to enter a highly competitive solar market, Alta Devices hopes to use a combination of technological advances and manufacturing savvy to succeed where many others have crashed and burned.

Alta Devices is a small but well-funded startup located in the same nondescript Silicon Valley office building that once served as the headquarters for Solyndra, the infamous solar company that went bankrupt last year after burning through hundreds of millions of dollars in public and venture investments. Whether the location has bad karma is still not clear, jokes Alta's CEO, Christopher Norris. But Norris, a former semiconductor-industry executive and venture capitalist, does know that the fate of his company will hinge on its ability to navigate the risky and expensive process of scaling up its novel technology, which he believes could produce power at a price competitive with fossil-fuel plants and far more cheaply than today's solar modules.
On a table in Alta's conference room, Norris lays out samples of the company's solar cells, flexible black patches encapsulated in clear plastic. They look unremarkable, but that's because the key ingredient is all but invisible: microscopically thin sheets of gallium arsenide. The semiconductor is so good at absorbing sunlight and turning it into electricity that one of Alta's devices, containing an active layer of gallium arsenide only a couple of micrometers thick, recently set a record for photovoltaic efficiency. But gallium arsenide is also extremely expensive to use in solar cells, and thin films of it tend to be fragile and difficult to fabricate. In fact, Alta's innovations lie not in choosing the material—the semiconductor has been used in solar cells on satellites and spacecraft for decades—but in figuring out how to turn it into solar modules cheap enough to be practical for most applications.
The company, which was founded in 2007, is based on the work of two of the world's leading academic researchers in photonic materials. One of them, Eli Yablonovitch, now a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, developed and patented a technique for creating ultrathin films of gallium arsenide in the 1980s, when he worked at Bell Communications Research. The other, Harry Atwater, a professor of applied physics and materials science at Caltech, is a pioneer in the use of microstructures and nanostructures to improve materials' ability to trap light and convert it into electricity. Andy Rappaport, a venture capitalist at August Capital, teamed up with the two scientists to found Alta, recruiting fellow Silicon Valley veteran Bill Joy as an investor and, with the other cofounders, building a management team that included Norris. The goal: to make highly efficient solar cells, and to make them more cheaply than those based on existing silicon technology.
It is at this point that many solar startups have gone wrong, rushing to scale up an innovative technology before understanding its economics and engineering challenges. Instead, Alta spent its first several years in stealth mode, quietly attempting to figure out, as Norris puts it, whether its process for making gallium arsenide solar cells was more than a "science experiment" and could serve as a viable basis for manufacturing.

Flexible power: Alta’s solar cells can be made into bendable sheets. In this sample, a series of solar cells are encapsulated in a roofing material. Credit: Gabriela Hasbun

Remnants of the science experiment are still visible in the modest lab at the back of Alta's offices. Small ceramic pots sit on electric hot plates—relics of the company's early efforts to optimize Yablonovitch's technique of "epitaxial liftoff," which uses acids to precisely separate thin films of gallium arsenide from the wafers on which they are grown. Elsewhere in the lab the equipment gets progressively larger and more sophisticated, reflecting the scaling up of the process. Near a viewing window that allows potential investors to peer into the lab without donning clean-room coverings is one of the jewels of the company's development efforts: a long piece of equipment in which batches of samples are processed to create the thin-film solar cells. It's convincing evidence that the early work with pots and hot plates can be transformed into an automated process capable of the yields necessary for real-world manufacturing.
SOLAR LIFTOFF
When Bill Joy, a cofounder of Sun Microsystems and now a leading Silicon Valley venture capitalist, first saw the business plan for what became Alta Devices, he and his colleagues at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers were already looking for high-efficiency thin-film solar technology. Joy keeps a running list—currently about 12 to 15 items long—of desirable technologies that he believes he has "a reasonable chance of finding." Solar cells that are highly efficient in converting sunlight and that can be made cheaply in flexible sheets could provide ways to dramatically lower the overall costs of solar power. Gallium arsenide technology was a natural choice for efficiency, but Alta's economics were what really interested the investors. "Their core competency was how to make it manufacturable," says Joy, who joined Rappaport as an investor within a few months.
Gallium arsenide is a nearly ideal solar material, for a number of reasons. Not only does it absorb far more sunlight than silicon—thin films of it capture as many photons as silicon 100 times thicker—but it's less sensitive to heat than silicon solar cells, whose performance dramatically declines above 25 °C. And gallium arsenide is better than silicon in retaining its electricity-producing abilities in conditions of relatively low light, such as early in the morning or late in the afternoon.
Key to reducing its manufacturing costs is the technique that Yablonovitch helped figure out decades ago. The semiconductor can be grown epitaxially: when thin layers are chemically deposited on a substrate of single-crystal gallium arsenide, each adopts the same single-crystal structure. Yablonovitch found that if a layer of aluminum arsenide is sandwiched between the layers, this can be selectively eaten away with an acid, and the gallium arsenide above can be peeled off. It was an elegant and simple way to create thin films of the material. But the process was also problematic: the single-crystal films easily crack and become worthless. In adapting Yablonovitch's fabrication method, Alta researchers have found ways to create rugged films that aren't prone to cracking. And not only do the thin films use little of the semiconductor material, but the valuable gallium arsenide substrate can be reused multiple times, helping to make the process affordable.
Research by Alta's founding scientists has also led to techniques for increasing the performance of the solar cells. Photovoltaics work because the photons they absorb boost the energy levels of electrons in the semiconductor, freeing them up to flow to metal contacts and create a current. But the roaming electrons can be wasted in various ways, such as in heat. In gallium arsenide, however, the freed electrons frequently recombine with positively charged "holes" to re-create photons and start the process over again. Work done by Yablonovitch and Atwater to explain this process has helped Alta design cells to take advantage of this "photon recycling," providing many chances to recapture photons and turn them into electricity.

Thus Alta's efficiency record: its cells have converted 28.3 percent of sunlight into electricity, whereas the highest efficiency for a silicon solar cell is 25 percent, and commonly used thin-film solar materials don't exceed 20 percent. Yablonovitch suggests that Alta has a good chance of eventually breaking 30 percent efficiency and nearing the theoretical limit of 33.4 percent for cells of its type.
The high efficiency, combined with gallium arsenide's ability to perform at relatively high temperatures and in low light, means that the cells can produce two or three times more energy over a year than conventional silicon ones, says Norris. And that, of course, translates directly into lower prices for solar power. Norris says a "not unreasonable expectation" is that the gallium arsenide technology could yield a "levelized cost of energy" (a commonly used industry metric that includes the lifetime costs of building and operating a power plant) of seven cents per kilowatt-hour. At such a price, says Norris, solar would be competitive with fossil fuels, including natural gas; new gas plants generate electricity for around 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. And it would trounce today's solar power, which Norris says costs around 20 cents per kilowatt-hour to generate.
Such numbers are tantalizing. But Norris is quick to bring up another: it costs roughly $1 billion to build a manufacturing facility capable of producing enough solar modules to generate a gigawatt of power, which is roughly the output of several medium-sized power plants. "I don't see any scenario where we would do this on our own," he says.
GHOST OF SOLYNDRA
Silicon Valley has been infatuated with clean tech since the mid-2000s, but it has yet to figure out something crucial: who will supply all the money necessary to scale up energy technologies and build factories to manufacture them? Venture investors might be skilled at picking technologies, but few of them have the deep pockets or the patience required to compete in a capital-intensive business such as the manufacturing of solar modules. The collapse of Solyndra, which built a $733 million factory in Fremont, California, is just the most recent reminder of what can go wrong.
Alta's lead investor Andy Rappaport says he usually stays away from investments in clean tech, including photovoltaics. Many investors in solar, he suggests, have bet that a startup could lower the marginal costs of manufacturing and thus "capture some market share." That's "a recipe for failure," he says, because "you need to spend hundreds of millions to build a factory before you know if you have anything of value." The strategy is especially risky now, because photovoltaics are becoming an increasingly competitive commodity business and prices continue to plummet, creating a moving target for new production. But rather than trying to create value by building manufacturing capacity, Rappaport says, Alta can profit from its intellectual property: "We have said simply and consistently that we can scale capacity faster and build a much stronger company by leveraging partnerships rather than raising and spending our own capital to build factories."
Current investors in Alta include GE, Sumitomo, and Dow Chemical, which recently introduced roofing shingles that incorporate thin-film photovoltaics (see "Can We Build Tomorrow's Breakthroughs?" January/February 2012). Though these companies have invested in several rounds of funding—Alta has so far raised $120 million—eventually Norris would like to see deals, such as licensing agreements or joint ventures, in which manufacturers build capacity to produce Alta's solar cells or use the solar technology in their products. To do that, he says, Alta first needs to "retire the risk" of the production technology, demonstrating to prospective partners that the gallium arsenide solar modules can in fact be produced in an economically competitive way.
Less than a mile from its headquarters, Alta is gutting and renovating a building where Netflix used to warehouse DVDs, turning it into a $40 million pilot facility to test its equipment. Though the facility is far smaller than a commercial solar factory, it is still no small or inexpensive undertaking. Norris warily eyes the new columns required to reinforce the roof, which will need to hold heavy ventilation and emission-control equipment. But the Alta CEO becomes more buoyant as he approaches the nearly completed back section of the facility. There, in several white rooms, are the large custom-designed versions of the lab apparatus used to make the solar cells.
Whether Alta succeeds will depend chiefly on how well these manufacturing inventions perform. The cost of the pilot facility might pale next to the price tag for a commercial-scale solar factory, but it is still a critical investment for the startup. And even as Alta is busily trying to get the facility up and running by the end of the year, Norris says, it is taking a deliberate, methodical approach to the process of scaling up. That contrasts sharply with earlier solar startups that spent hundreds of millions in venture investments to build factories as fast as possible. But Alta's cautious approach should not be confused with a lack of ambition. The goal, says Norris, is to make this a "foundational, transformative technology."

An Inventor at Heart

2012-03-01T13:26:00.001+05:30

An Inventor at Heart

Inspired by lessons he learned at MIT, Ronald Berger '81 is trying to perfect a painless method of preventing cardiac arrest.

March/April 2012
By Genevieve Wanucha, SM '09

Credit: Michael Northrup

Audio »

At the Boston Museum of Science, audiences gather around the Van de Graaff generator to watch as two million volts crackle between twin metal spheres while the operator, who stands nearby inside a simple cage, remains unaffected. This lightning show demonstrates a Faraday cage, an enclosure that keeps electrical charges from getting in—or out. In 1999, when Ronald Berger '81, SM '83, PhD '87, took his kids to the Boston spectacle, it wasn't just for fun. He was in the midst of a plot to fit a Faraday cage around the human heart.
If Berger can make it work, his device will improve conditions for patients with heart problems. Sudden cardiac arrest, a leading cause of death, results from a severe arrhythmia called ventricular fibrillation. In this emergency, the only way to restore normal rhythm is with a defibrillator, which delivers a chest-seizing wallop of hundreds or thousands of volts. For more than three decades, patients considered at risk for heart attacks have been able to get an internal cardiac defibrillator (ICD) installed beneath the skin to detect irregular heartbeats. A wire that passes from the ICD into the heart through a vein delivers shocks as needed. However, the shocks are painful, and patients often live in dread of them or choose to forgo treatment because of them. "It's an important problem," Berger says. "I've been very interested in making defibrillation painless." And a type of Faraday cage could be the answer.
Berger, who is co-director of cardiac electrophysiology at Johns Hopkins, earned three MIT degrees in electrical engineering and computer science and then completed his MD through the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology in 1987. Mirroring his education, he is both engineer and doctor. More specifically, he is a cardiac electrophysiologist—one who understands that "we can actually fool Mother Nature and interrupt the propagation of the [electrical] impulse in hearts," as he puts it. Berger spends 75 percent of his time at Johns Hopkins teaching, serving as an administrator, and performing procedures to quiet cardiac electrical dysfunction, or arrhythmia. The rest of the time, he researches and invents.
Berger has always invented. For his undergraduate thesis at MIT, he designed a new way to steer and deflect laser beams through crystals. The result, recalls his thesis advisor, EECS professor Cardinal Warde, "was one of the best undergraduate theses ever done in my laboratory." Soon after Berger met his best friend, Joseph Smith, SM '82, PhD '85, in the lab of MIT biomedical engineer Richard Cohen in 1980, they turned a black-and-white handheld TV into an EKG machine capable of reading the heart's electrical activity at the surface of the body. Today, Berger has been issued 25 patents for cardiology methods and equipment.
Fifteen years ago, Berger became fixated on the pain that ICD shocks caused his patients. He knew that the pain wasn't coming from the heart. The organ itself has so little capacity for pain sensation that patients can stay wide awake as cardiologists perform ablation, burning away chronically malfunctioning heart tissue with a wire that's been snaked up through a blood vessel. So Berger concluded that electrical pulses from the ICD must leak out as the nerves and muscles of the chest wall activate.
Something clicked. "I said to myself, wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to keep the electrical activity confined to the heart?" Berger says. That's when he was reminded of a lesson on the Faraday cage from 8.022, Electricity and Magnetism, a class he had taken with Professor Claude Canizares back in 1977. Berger wondered if it would be possible to sheathe the heart inside a Faraday cage to contain a shock that halted arrhythmia.
One problem, however, is that a Faraday cage around the heart would not just keep electricity confined to the heart; it would also block electricity from another source from entering. This meant that patients would be unable to get emergency external defibrillation if their heart failure were extreme enough to require a bigger shock. To deal with that, Berger began to think about a configuration of metal panels that would not be entirely contiguous. They would merely be close enough to act as a Faraday cage when electricity passed through them. He recalls that a research fellow mentioned the idea to his wife, who suggested sewing the metal mesh into a nylon stocking. She even produced a prototype. It was a Faraday cage—or, more accurately, a Faraday sock.

Electric shock: Ronald Berger’s prototype cardiac sock is made of multiple flexible electrodes that are electrically joined together to act as a Faraday cage. The Faraday cage prevents leakage of the electric field to surrounding tissues, reducing the pain caused by the shock of an implanted defibrillator. Credit: Courtesy of Dr. Ronald Berger

In practice, the sock would fit around the heart and serve as one electrode of the shock delivery circuit; when an attached sensor detected abnormal heart activity, an electrical coil implanted inside the heart would deliver the jolt. In 2005, when Berger and his research team tested the prototype in dogs, the device reset the heartbeat using less energy than a standard ICD. Most important, the dogs' chest muscles contracted much less, meaning that less electricity was seeping out and causing pain.
Berger and Johns Hopkins colleagues have refined the design in the past year, using mathematical modeling to find the optimal spacing for the panels. In the most recent version, the panels electrically unite into a contiguous shield and act as a Faraday cage only in the 10 milliseconds right before and during the moment in which the shock is delivered.
Despite the progress, some cardiac experts question the sock's potential. Bioengineer Igor Efimov at Washington University in St. Louis points out that covering the heart with the mesh would require major open-chest surgery. "Who would agree to such a dramatic surgery with unclear clinical benefits?" he says. He also predicts that scar tissue would encrust the device's wire slats and prevent them from opening. "Unless there is a breakthrough in biomaterials, I don't think it could be used," he says. Berger agrees that scar tissue could be a problem, but he holds out hope that his invention can work. He notes that private companies have already invented socks made of elastic mesh to reduce heart muscle stress in patients with heart failure. Berger suggests that his Faraday cage might be built into one of those socks. Heart patients who already need invasive surgery to implant the sock could get a two-for-one solution.
Berger and his friend Smith, who is now chief medical officer for West Wireless Health Institute, have spent many a Baltimore night discussing the Faraday sock and how Berger might bring it to fruition. "It's one of those things that only comes from a bright engineer being able to understand the problem from a physics perspective but also see the clinical applications," Smith says.
These two complementary talents started to meld not long after Berger began at MIT in 1976. One day, he walked into the office of his advisor, George W. Pratt, and noticed a large painting of a horse. He was puzzled until Pratt, a horse-racing enthusiast, began drawing chalk diagrams of electrical resistors and capacitors to model the equine blood system; the heart was acting like a battery and the blood vessels like a charged capacitor. For Berger, these lessons are still a revelation 35 years later. He says, "It's an amazing thing—the principles of electrical engineering underlie how one native impulse in the heart gets from one cell to the next."
Today Berger is trying to improve defibrillation in the very place the technique was born. In 1933, a New York electric company funded efforts by Johns Hopkins researchers to find solutions for the frequent electrocution accidents of the era; after studying what happens when a heart's rhythm is off course, these men were the first to get a dog's heart to stop fibrillating. Hopkins physicians implanted the first ICD into a patient in 1980.
But though the technology has its roots in the Johns Hopkins clinic, Berger says his mind goes back to MIT every day. "I always say that performing ablation reminds me very much of my undergraduate course 6.082, where we would move the probe from point to point within a circuit to debug it," he says. He thinks of those lab projects each time he inches the catheter's tip to the right place in a patient's heart and watches the arrhythmia disappear as he delivers the burn.

The James Webb Telescope

2012-02-23T11:50:00.000+05:30

The James Webb Space Telescope will let NASA peer into deep space to the beginnings of our universe. It will be specially equipped to view infrared light, which escapes from the dust clouds where the first stars and planets formed.

Story: Revolutionary design, runaway cost

Comparing mirrors

Webb’s primary mirror’s resolution is acute enough to see details of a penny at 24 miles.

Packed away for launch

The telescope is folded up at launch and automatically deploys to its full size once in space.

Remaining in place

The Webb telescope must remain cold – around -370 degrees – to best observe infrared light. Its orbit will keep it in place relative to the sun and earth.

Seeing green

Costs for the Webb telescope have mounted to an estimated $8.8 billion. How annual funding has grown (scale in millions):

Note:

The $8.8-billion overall cost includes development, launch and five years of operations and science. Data from 2013 to 2017 estimated.

Sources: NASA, Northrop Grumman. Note: Graphic is schematic, not to scale.

Credits: Graphic by Raoul Ranoa, Graphics reporting by Tom Reinken Programming by Anthony Pesce.

Published: Feb. 20, 2012

NASA's Webb telescope: Revolutionary design, runaway costs

2012-02-23T11:47:00.000+05:30

The $8.8-billion Webb Space Telescope promises to provide a glimpse at the first light in the universe. But its spiraling cost may push NASA into a new era of austerity.

Specialists work on the sun shield for the James Webb Space Telescope at Northop Grumman Corp. in Redondo Beach. (Allen J. Schaben, Los Angeles Times / December 20, 2011)

In deep, cold space, nearly a million miles from Earth, a giant telescope later this decade will scan for the first light to streak across the universe more than 13 billion years ago.

The seven-ton spacecraft, one of the most ambitious and costly science projects in U.S. history, is under construction for NASA at Northrop Grumman Corp.'s space park complex in Redondo Beach.

The aim is to capture the oldest light, taking cosmologists to the time after the big bang when matter had cooled just enough to start forming the first blazing stars in what had been empty darkness. Astronomers have long dreamed about peering into that provenance.

"It is the actual formation of the universe," said Alan Dressler, the astronomer at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena who chaired a committee that proposed the telescope more than a decade ago.

If the James Webb Space Telescope works as planned, it will be vastly more capable than any of the dozen currently deployed U.S. space telescopes and will be a dramatic symbol of U.S. technological might. But for all its sophistication, the project also reveals a deeply ingrained dysfunction in the agency's business practices, critics say. The Webb's cost has soared to $8.8 billion, more than four times the original aerospace industry estimates, which nearly led Congress to kill the program last year.

The agency has repeatedly proposed such technologically difficult projects at bargain-basement prices, a practice blamed either on errors in its culture or a political strategy. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee that controls NASA's budget, said a combination of both problems affected the Webb.

"There was not adequate oversight," Wolf said. "And there were reports that the cost estimates were being cooked a little bit, some by the company, some by NASA."

It could spell a new era for the space agency, in which it will have money for just one flagship science mission per decade rather than one every few years as it has in the past. The Webb's cost growth, along with an austere budget outlook for NASA, is depleting the agency's pipeline of big science missions. A much-discussed mission to return samples of Martian soil to Earth, for example, may be unaffordable, according to the House Science Committee staff.

The Webb telescope was conceived by the astronomy community in the late 1990s as a more modest project with a smaller mirror for about $500 million. Then-NASA chief Daniel Goldin challenged the science community in a major speech to double the capability of the telescope for the same price.

Dressler, who was in the audience when Goldin gave the speech, recalled: "It astonished everybody. It made no sense that you could build a telescope six times larger than Hubble … and have it come in cheaper. We were so stunned, we didn't know what to do."

The early lowball cost figures had no official standing, but they shaped political expectations many years later.

Not surprisingly, the price began to rise, first to $1 billion and then to more than $2 billion when the aerospace industry began submitting estimates. By 2008, when the program was well underway, the cost hit $5 billion.

NASA was running into technical difficulties in manufacturing almost every aspect of the telescope, and it was forced to stretch out the schedule, said Richard Howard, NASA's head of the Webb program and the agency's deputy chief technologist. The agency kept investing in the most difficult technologies for the Webb, leaving other parts of the project out of sync. As a result, some components will be boxed up and stored for years while other pieces are completed.

The delays boosted the cost even more. By last year, the cost estimate to build the telescope hit $8 billion, not including about $940 million in contributions by international partners and about $800 million NASA will spend for five years of operation. The launch date slipped from 2014 to 2018, meaning an army of experts will have to keep working years more on the project. In the past, NASA could tap reserves in its larger budget to get through technical problems, but those funding pools have dried up, Howard said.

The skyrocketing cost infuriated many in Congress. Last year, Wolf led an effort by House Republicans to eliminate all of the Webb's funding, though it was ultimately restored by a conference committee. But to those working on the program, the message was sent.

"It didn't feel good," said Scott Willoughby, Northrop's general manager for the project. "It is costing more than it should. But we didn't make any bad choices. The money was well-spent. We are building the telescope we originally conceived."

Indeed, an independent review panel commended the telescope team last year for its technical merit. The machine has required a whole list of revolutionary developments.

The 21-foot-diameter mirror will be six times larger in area than Hubble, focused by more than 100 motors on its back. Made up of 18 hexagonal segments covered in a thin layer of gold, it is so big that it must be folded up for launch — another innovation.

To withstand the brutal temperature shifts in space and to save weight, the mirror is made of the rare element beryllium. Only a few companies in the world can polish beryllium so finely that mere atoms can be brushed off. One of those companies is L-3 Communications SSG-Tinsley Inc. in Richmond, northeast of San Francisco. The grinding and polishing process took seven years and required the company to build eight custom machines that cost $1 million apiece.

"We had to find a way to do this right," said John Kincade, a vice president with L-3. "The mirrors have to be perfect."

As ancient light traverses the universe, it shifts to the infrared region of the spectrum, requiring the Webb to have mirrors capable of collecting very faint emissions and detecting them with special sensors that must be kept at nearly the lowest possible temperature known to exist. The satellite will rely on four instruments, supplied by a European consortium, Canada, the University of Arizona and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, with other partners.

To achieve those low temperatures, the Webb will have a sophisticated refrigeration system and a five-layer plastic shade to shield the mirror and instruments from the sun. The shade will stretch to the size of a tennis court, keeping temperatures on one side at minus-388 degrees Fahrenheit and the other hot enough to fry an egg at 185 degrees. If it all works, not only will the Webb see the first light of the universe, but it will spot new planets and even determine whether those distant bodies hold water, Howard said.

Howard is confident now that the cost will not increase further and that NASA can execute the program on the new schedule. If the cost does go higher, Wolf admits Congress is not likely to kill the program but says NASA will get hurt in many other ways.

"The real danger is not that [the Webb] will not be funded, but it will consume so many other NASA programs," he warned.

AMD HD7770 Review

2012-02-17T11:55:00.000+05:30

Introduction

If you're a big fan of getting a lot of performance for a reasonable outlay, then the numbers 770 will get you all excited. After all the 4770 and 5770s were both cards with great levels of performance and yet came in at a very reasonable price-point.

Given that the top end cards in the 7 series are both more expensive than we're used to from AMD, and the rejig of their naming conventions with the 6 series, will the HD7770 live up to the lofty expectations of its predecessor?

Technical Specifications

One of the main points of the HD7770 is that it has all the AMD technologies built in to it. Rather than cutting down the featureset as well as the amount of Stream Processors and clockspeed, AMD have solely reduced the performance of the card, but left all the Eyefinity and rendering elements alone.

Deconstructing Dengue: How Old Is That Mosquito?

2012-02-12T11:51:00.000+05:30

Scientists can spend years working on problems that at first may seem esoteric and rather pointless. For example, there's a scientist in Arizona who's trying to find a way to measure the age of wild mosquitoes.

As weird as that sounds, the work is important for what it will tell scientists about the natural history of mosquitoes. It also could have major implications for human health.

Here's why. There's a nasty disease called dengue that is just beginning to show up in the United States. It's caused by a virus, and it's transmitted from person to person by a mosquito. A mild case of dengue is no worse than flu. A serious case can mean death.

Michael Riehle at the University of Arizona is trying to solve a curious puzzle about dengue: why there have been dozens of cases in nearby Texas and none, or virtually none, in Arizona. Riehle thinks the answer has to do with Arizona's geography.

"It's right on the edge of the range where these dengue mosquitoes are found," he says. "It's a fairly harsh environment, and we think that they might not be surviving long enough to efficiently transfer the disease to other people."

So to test his hypothesis, Riehle wants to be able to compare the life spans of mosquitoes in Arizona with those in Texas.

It's not easy to tell how old a mosquito is: It's not as if they carry around birth certificates or government-issued IDs. Right now the tools for measuring the age of mosquitoes are pretty crude. For example, you can look at a female mosquito's ovaries to see if they have produced any eggs. Riehle says if they have, that means the mosquito is at least five days old, since they can't produce eggs before that. "But that's all it can tell us — less than five days, or more than five days," Riehle says.

So Riehle has a new idea. He wants to see if he can use a mosquito's gene to tell its age.

Looking For Clues In Genes

There are ways to tell when a particular gene is switched on or off in a mosquito. Riehle is looking for genes that switch on or off when the mosquito reaches a particular age. He's found one so far. He needs more in order to make more age estimates.

The Continent Where Climate Went Haywire

2012-02-11T15:37:00.000+05:30

From floods to cyclones to fires of unimaginable ferocity, climate  change has unleashed a host of plagues on Australia. But catastrophe has  spawned a national rebirth.

“The river came up to right where we’re sitting, and the waters were more than two feet deep,” Peter Goodwin tells me in the driveway of his ranch-style house perched on the banks of the Balonne River in St. George, a village of 3,500 in eastern Australia. It is a drizzly Sunday afternoon in April, three months after a devastating flood that drenched a landmass the size of France and Germany combined and isolated the town after the rain-swollen river rose to a record 45 feet.

Agricultural areas like St. George were hardest hit by the relentless rains and overflowing rivers that swamped roads, cut off power lines, washed away vineyards and fruit orchards, drowned thousands of head of cattle and other livestock, and covered homes and everything inside them in thick layers of sediment and mud. Shell-shocked residents are still digging out from under the debris.

“That’s the hard part of the flood—the aftermath,” says Goodwin, 60, a crusty, compactly built man with piercing blue eyes and calloused hands who works as an operations manager for the local municipality and has been staying with his grown daughter while he makes his home habitable again. “You get a lot of help during the flood, but then everyone settles back into their routine. There are a lot of houses down there that are still empty,” he adds, gesturing toward the riverbank. “And they will be for a long time to come”...

New 'Cell Assay On a Chip:' Solid Results from Simple Means

2012-02-09T17:59:00.000+05:30

The great artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci once said that "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) research engineer Javier Atencia certainly believes in the wisdom of what da Vinci preached; he has a reputation for creating novel microfluidic devices out of ordinary, inexpensive components. This time, he has combined a glass slide, plastic sheets and double-sided tape into a "diffusion-based gradient generator" -- a tool to rapidly assess how changing concentrations of specific chemicals affect living cells.

Atencia's latest innovation offers a simple and inexpensive way to expose an array of cultured cells to a chemical gradient -- a solution where the chemical concentration changes gradually and predictably across the array. Such gradients are a rapid, high-throughput way to evaluate the effect on cell growth or toxicity.

There are two distinct advantages to the new NIST system over traditional microfluidic cell assay devices. The first is that the gradient is created by diffusion -- the gentle movement of matter from one point to another by random molecular motion. Conventional microfluidic systems usually mix fluids by pumping them in a circular motion or by twisting and folding them together. Diffusion greatly reduces the risk of cells being swept away or damaged by shearing forces in the test fluid.

The second big advantage is simplicity. The gradient generator is built in layers, with each section precisely positioned with an alignment tab. The base is a glass slide, upon which is attached a strip of double-sided tape cut to have a row of four micrometer-sized channels. Atop this goes a polystyrene strip cut to have two lines each of four tiny circular "wells" where each pair lines up with the ends of the channel below it. The next layer is another strip of double-sided tape, this time with a Y-shaped canal cut into it to serve as the flow path for the chemical gradient. Finally, a Mylar strip cut to have an identical Y-canal serves as the cover.

The hinged cover allows access to the wells for adding test cells. Once done, the cover is lowered and affixed, sealing the gradient generator. Fluid flow in and out of the system is accomplished using another Atencia innovation, magnetic connectors. Kept at constant pressure, this flow assures a steady-state stream through the device and creates a diffusion gradient in each buried channel. Cells in the channels are simultaneously exposed to a range of chemical concentrations from high to low.

To test the device, Atencia and his colleagues loaded it with cells genetically engineered to produce large amounts of green fluorescent protein (GFP) and then introduced cycloheximide (CHX), a chemical that shuts down ribosomes, the cell's protein factories. Cells exposed to the toxin quickly stop synthesizing GFP, decreasing fluorescence by an amount directly related to the concentration of CHX.

This is exactly what the researchers observed in the gradient generator assays. The cells were exposed three times to CHX, and each time, the level of GFP fluorescence increased as the concentration of CHX in the gradient decreased, and vice versa.

In his previous microfluidics creations, Atencia turned a simple plastic dish into a "microfluidic palette" for exposing cells to multiple chemical concentrations in a single chamber and then merged donut-shaped magnets and plastic tubes to make a leak-free connector for getting fluids into and out of a microchannel.

You might be a terrorist if you have two cell phones, use Web proxies

2012-02-05T12:20:00.002+05:30

Are you concerned about your digital privacy enough to use proxies and encryption software? Do you voice chat with fellow PC gamers? If so, you might be a terrorist, according to FBI and DoJ. Public Intelligence has discovered a federal document outlining a "Communities Against Terrorism" initative that describes various "suspicious" activities and offers tips on reporting them to the government.

The guideline (PDF) lists many perfectly normal behaviors but tries to validate their inclusion by emphasizing extremes that are completely open to interpretation. For instance, someone involved in terrorist activities might be "overly" concerned about their privacy and attempt to shield their screen from view of others. Such an individual might also travel "illogical" distances to visit an Internet Café.

You might also be a terrorist if you use multiple cell phones, switch SIM cards in the same handset, mask your IP address, download information on "timers, electronics or remote transmitters/receivers", or partake in "suspicious" communications through VoIP services. The list goes as far as to mention logging on to a residential-based Internet provider, such as checking your Comcast or AOL email.

Naturally, it's virtually impossible to define what constitutes being "overly" private, traveling "illogical" distances or making "suspicious" VoIP calls. By making such broad strokes, it could be argued that anyone engaging in such activities is suspect, regardless of how innocuous they may be. Nonetheless, if you feel compelled to report your neighbor or coworker, the FBI and DoJ suggest that you:

Gather information about the suspects without drawing attention to yourself
Log license plates, vehicle descriptions, names, languages spoken and ethnicities
Don't collect metadata, content or search the individuals' electronic communications

Researchers: Don't trust satellite phones, encryption broken

2012-02-05T12:14:00.000+05:30

Two researchers, Benedikt Driessen and Ralf Hund, managed to break the proprietary ciphers used for satellite phones, GMR-1 and GMR-2. In a public talkabout their discovery, the researchers said, "Don't trust satellite phones".

While satellite phones have been mostly replaced by GSM/CDMA phones in consumer markets, such telecommunications devices are still used today by governments, military, relief and non-governmental organizations, businesses and even individuals in remote locations where cell phone towers are not an option. According to the researchers, there are current several hundred thousand satellite phone subscribers.

The researchers were able to reverse engineer the cryptographic algorithms utilized by the phones after analyzing freely-available firmware intended for updating their DSP (digital signal processor) chips. Because the ciphers are completely mathematical and don't employ the use of private keys, anyone who can receive a satellite phone transmission and knows the cipher's algorithm can easily eavesdrop on an intentionally private conversation.

"Even though a niche market compared to the G2 and G3 mobile systems, there are several 100,000 satphone subscribers worldwide. Given the sensitive nature of some of their application domains (e.g., natural disaster areas or military campaigns), security plays a particularly important role for satphones. In this paper, we analyze the encryption systems used in the two existing (and competing) satphone standards, GMR-1 and GMR-2. The first main contribution is that we were able to completely reverse engineer the encryption algorithms employed. Both ciphers had not been publicly known previously. We describe the details of the recovery of the two algorithms from freely available DSP-firmware updates for satphones, which included the development of a custom disassembler and tools to analyze the code, and extending prior work on binary analysis to efficiently identify cryptographic code."

ETSI and Immarsat are the two companies responsible for the GMR-1 and GMR-2 stream cipher standards, respectively. The inherent flaw found within these systems appears to be their disregard for Kerchoff's Principle. This 129-year-old axiom basically states that in order to be truly secure, a cryptosystem should be effectively indecipherable even when the algorithms and processes to generate the obfuscation are exposed. To achieve this, cryptographers have typically employed the use of private keys. Private keys, which are only known by the sender and/or recipient(s), provide a way to "unlock" the encryption so that only intended parties can decipher the information. This thinking also allows open-source cryptosystems to be just as secure as their commercial counterparts even though the inner-workings of such systems are fully exposed to the public.

"The second main contribution lies in the cryptanalysis of the two proprietary stream ciphers. We were able to adopt known A5/2 ciphertext-only attacks to the GMR- 1 algorithm with an average case complexity of 232 steps. With respect to the GMR-2 cipher, we developed a new attack which is powerful in a known-plaintext setting. In this situation, the encryption key for one session, i.e., one phone call, can be recovered with approximately 50?65 bytes of key stream and a moderate computational complexity. A major finding of our work is that the stream ciphers of the two existing satellite phone systems are considerably weaker than what is state-of- the-art in symmetric cryptography."

Comments

Graphics Card Overclocking: Is It Really Worth It?

2012-02-05T12:11:00.000+05:30

Find and Compare the Best Graphics Cards

By Steven Walton on January 26, 2012

Read user comments (58)

Overclocking plays a vastly different role in the computer industry today than it did 10 years ago, a time when overclockers were considered outlaws by manufacturers. Back then even mentioning overclocking could void your warranty and industry leaders like Intel were working to eliminate it all together.

In contrast, nowadays processor and graphics cards manufacturers have embraced the practice, touting high 'overclockability' as a feature and in the process using it to sell enthusiast oriented products at a premium.

Take the popular mid-range GeForce GTX 560 Ti as an example. Base model non-overclocked cards start at ~$229, but finding them isn’t so plain and easy as most manufacturers prefer to push their overclocked counterparts. While the Nvidia specification calls for a 822MHz core clock speed, you shouldn't be surprised to see outgoing models running at 900MHz or more for this particular GPU series.

Sounds too good to be true? It probably is. Often these factory overclocked models cost 10 – 20% more than the standard models, while only offering half that amount in extra performance. The alternative is to overclock manually and thankfully that's easy to do as both AMD and Nvidia drivers provide their own custom overclocking facilities.

Here's another scenario that begs the question of whether overclocking is worth it... You go out to buy a new graphics card, set a budget, and it'd seem that for another $30-60 you can always go with the next step up that performs a little better. Or, you could save those extra dollars, go for the budget model and overclock it and basically match the next step up's performance.

With that in mind, we have hand-picked three graphics cards that represent select price ranges to see just how much extra value can be obtained through overclocking. For the $100+ range we have the Radeon HD 6750, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti has been used to represent the $200+ market. Then at the top of the food chain we have the Radeon HD 6970 going for $300 and up.

Each of these graphics cards will be overclocked to their maximum stable frequency using the stock air cooling. The comparison will be drawn using their non-overclocked results as well as a number of competing products, usually the ones costing a little bit more.

Our test system specs look like this:

- Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition (3.30GHz)
- x4 2GB G.Skill DDR3-1600(CAS 8-8-8-20)
- Gigabyte G1.Assassin2 (Intel X79)
- OCZ ZX Series (1250w)
- Crucial m4 512GB (SATA 6Gb/s)
- Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 64-bit
- Nvidia Forceware 285.62
- AMD Catalyst 11.12

The graphics cards tested include (from least expensive to most expensive):

- Radeon HD 6750 (1024MB) stock and overclocked at 800/1300MHz
- GeForce GTX 550 Ti (1024MB)
- Radeon HD 6850 (1024MB)
- GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1024MB) stock and overclocked at 955/2250MHz
- Radeon HD 6950 (2048MB)
- Radeon HD 6970 (2048MB) stock and overclocked at 955/1470MHz
- GeForce GTX 570 (1280MB)
- GeForce GTX 580 (1536MB

$100+ Price Point

The Radeon HD 6750 comes by default with a core clock of 700MHz and RAM speed of 1150MHz (4.6GHz GDDR5). We were able to reach 800MHz core and 1300MHz (5.2GHz) memory speeds. This means the core was boosted by 14% and the memory 13%, so in the best of scenarios we are expecting a ~14% performance increase.

Playing Battlefield 3 at 1920x1200 the Radeon HD 6750 rendered just 17.1fps. Overclocking provided a frame rate increase of 13% which is just 2fps. While a 13% performance gain sounds substantial, at 19.3fps Radeon HD 6750 owners will still need to turn the visual quality down in this game.

Again we find that the Radeon HD 6750 is too slow to enjoy the latest games in all of their visual glory as it produced just 14.1fps when testing with Crysis 2. When overclocked we saw a 15% performance boost but this represented too little of a change. By lowering the visual quality perhaps that 15% performance gain could come in handy.

Dirt 3 was better able to exploit the benefits from our overclocking efforts. The Radeon HD 6750 saw a 14% performance increase which worked out to be a 4fps gain. Nonetheless, going from 27.8fps on average to the 31.8fps of the overclocked configuration, lag was considerably less noticeable when we pushed for the extra MHz.

The Witcher saw modest gains in our gameplay test. The Radeon HD 6750 averaged 24.9fps which was then increased to 28.1fps, a 13% performance increase that nonetheless went unnoticed.

$200+ Price Point

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti which by default comes with a core clock of 822MHz and a memory frequency of 1002MHz (4.0GHz) reached a core clock of 955MHz and a memory speed of 1125MHz (4.5GHz) when overclocked. This is a 16% core clock increase and a 12% rise in memory frequency.

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti rendered 39.2fps without the overclock, but the 14% gain meant that the GTX 560 Ti was now faster than a standard Radeon HD 6970.

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti went from 28.9fps to 32.6fps in Crysis 2 which worked out to be an additional 4fps on average.

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti was already sitting pretty with an average of 60.5fps, but the additional 10fps were not knocked back as the overclock yielded a 16% performance increase.

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti saw an 11% performance increase as it was able to render 4fps more in The Witcher 2

$300+ Price Point

Finally the Radeon HD 6970 which comes clocked at an already high 880MHz for the core and 1375MHz (5.5GHz) for the memory provided very limited headroom for overclocking. The core maxed out at 955MHz while the memory went on to 1470MHz (5.8GHz) for a 9% core and 7% memory overclock.

Our mild 9% overclock allowed for a shy 6% performance gain as the frame rate increased by just 2fps. This didn’t do a whole lot for the Radeon HD 6970 and still meant that it was much slower than the GeForce GTX 570 in this game.

The Radeon HD 6970 only saw a 1fps performance gain when testing with Crysis 2.

On Dirt 3 the Radeon HD 6970 enjoyed an extra 5fps for a 7% performance gain. This was enough to knock out the GeForce GTX 570 running at stock frequencies.

The Radeon HD 6970 also managed an extra 4fps in The Witcher 2 for a 6% performance increase

Final Thoughts

Is graphics card overclocking worth it? In short, yes it can be. Certain configurations respond well to the change and after all, it's free and mostly safe. However game changing results should not be expected.

In our tests we saw modest gains all along, and the mid-range GeForce GTX 560 Ti seemed to be the card benefiting the most from bumping the stock specs. In the best of scenarios your games will play a bit more smoothly if you are not pushing the GPU beyond its real capabilities. In the worst of cases, you won't gain anything and you can dial things down back to normal.

In the four games that we tested the Radeon HD 6750 delivered on average 3fps more when overclocked, a 14% performance gain. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti averaged an extra 6fps for a 13% increase, and the Radeon HD 6970 averaged 3fps more for a 6% performance boost.

AMD and Nvidia are being extra very careful about how they build their GPU series now. They almost never offer a card that can be overclocked to replace the model above it, you can only close the gap. You might be able to overclock the GPU higher but other factors like memory bus width will always hold the performance back. This goes in stark contrast with the latest CPUs which appear to be wide open to enthusiasts' abuse and potentially huge performance gains.

Going to these extremes for the sake of overclocking is probably not worth your while with the current crop of GPUs -- at least not if all you care about are raw performance gains. Image credit: xtremesystems.org

But back to the GPU world, where overclocking may not make sense is when it is carried out by the manufacturer. Factory overclocked cards almost always cost more than the performance gain provided. For example, last year we reviewed the HIS Radeon HD 6850 IceQ X Turbo which was priced 15% above that of a standard Radeon HD 6850 graphics card, yet only provided a 4% performance improvement.

While it's true that more expensive factory overclocked cards usually come with upgraded coolers, an added bonus that goes beyond raw performance, there are many similar upgraded cards without the overclocking that retail for less.

What's been your own experience? Do you overclock your graphics card these days? Did you use to? (please keep the Crysis jokes to a minimum :)).

Male spiders of one species lose their genitals after sex to increase sperm count in females

2012-02-02T20:34:00.001+05:30

Nephilengys malabarensis female with a severed male palp (red box) lodged in her epigynum after copulation, and a half-cannibalized male at her side. Image

Researchers have known for some time that the male sex organ, called a palp, in orb-web spiders is often broken off during copulation with females; what hasn’t been so clear is why. Now, new research by Daiqin Li of the National University of Singapore and colleagues have found, as they describe in their paper published in Biology Letters, that by breaking off their palp, the male spiders ensure that more of their sperm enters the female after he runs away or is eaten by his partner.

Weaker sun will not delay global warming: study

2012-01-31T15:11:00.001+05:30

A weaker sun over the next 90 years is not likely to significantly delay a rise in global temperature caused by greenhouse gases, a report said Monday.

The study, by Britain's Meteorological Office and the university of Reading, found that the Sun's output would decrease up until 2100 but this would only lead to a fall in global temperatures of 0.08 degrees Celsius.

Scientists have warned that more extreme weather is likely across the globe this century as the Earth's climate warms.

The world is expected to heat up by over 2 degrees Celsius this century due to increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Current global pledges to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are not seen as sufficient to stop the planet heating up beyond 2 degrees, a threshold scientists say risks an unstable climate in which weather extremes are common.

"This research shows that the most likely change in the sun's output will not have a big impact on global temperatures or do much to slow the warming we expect from greenhouse gases," said Gareth Jones, climate change detection scientist at the Met Office.

"It's important to note this study is based on a single climate model, rather than multiple models which would capture more of the uncertainties in the climate system," he added.

During the 20th century, solar activity increased to a maximum level and recent studies have suggested this level of activity has reached, or is nearing, an end.

The scientists used this maximum level as a starting point to project possible changes in the sun's activity over this century.

The study also showed that if the sun's output went below a threshold reached between 1645 and 1715 - called the Maunder Minimum when solar activity was at its lowest observed level - global temperature would fall by 0.13 degrees Celsius.

"The most likely scenario is that we'll see an overall reduction of the sun's activity compared to the 20th Century, such that solar outputs drop to the values of the Dalton Minimum (around 1820)," said Mike Lockwood, solar studies expert at the university of Reading.

"The probability of activity dropping as low as the Maunder Minimum - or indeed returning to the high activity of the 20th Century - is about 8 percent."

Kepler telescope team finds 11 new solar systems

2012-01-31T15:10:00.001+05:30

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has found 11 new planetary systems, including one with five planets all orbiting closer to their parent star than Mercury circles the Sun, scientists said on Thursday.

The discoveries boost the list of confirmed extra-solar planets to 729, including 60 credited to the Kepler team. The telescope, launched in space in March 2009, can detect slight but regular dips in the amount of light coming from stars. Scientists can then determine if the changes are caused by orbiting planets passing by, relative to Kepler's view.

Kepler scientists have another 2,300 candidate planets awaiting additional confirmation.

None of the newly discovered planetary systems are like our solar system, though Kepler-33, a star that is older and bigger than the Sun, comes close in terms of sheer numbers. It has five planets, compared to our solar system's eight, but the quintet all fly closer to their parent star than Mercury orbits the Sun.

The planets range in size from about 1.5 times the diameter of Earth to five times Earth's diameter. Scientists have not yet determined if any are solid rocky bodies like Earth, Venus, Mars and Mercury or if they are filled with gas like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The Kepler team previously found one star with six confirmed planets and a second system with five planets, said planetary scientist Jack Lissauer, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

Nine of the new systems contain two planets and one has three, bringing the total number of newly discovered planets to 26. All are closer to their host stars than Venus is to the Sun.

"This has tripled the number of stars which we know have more than one transiting planet, so that's the big deal here," Lissauer told Reuters.

"We're starting to think in terms of planetary systems as opposed to just planets: Do they all tend to have similar sizes? What's the spacing? Is the solar system unusual in those regards?" he said.

Kepler is monitoring more than 150,000 stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.

The research is published in four different papers in Astrophysical Journal and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Snowy owls soar south from Arctic in rare mass migration

2012-01-31T14:57:00.004+05:30

Bird enthusiasts are reporting rising numbers of snowy owls

from the Arctic winging into the lower 48 states this winter in a

mass southern migration that a leading owl researcher called

"unbelievable."

Thousands of the snow-white birds, which stand 2 feet tall with 5-foot wingspans, have been spotted from coast to coast, feeding in farmlands in Idaho, roosting on rooftops in Montana, gliding over golf courses in Missouri and soaring over shorelines in Massachusetts.

A certain number of the iconic owls fly south from their Arctic breeding grounds each winter but rarely do so many venture so far away even amid large-scale, periodic southern migrations known as irruptions.

"What we're seeing now -- it's unbelievable," said Denver Holt, head of the Owl Research Institute in Montana.

"This is the most significant wildlife event in decades," added Holt, who has studied snowy owls in their Arctic tundra ecosystem for two decades.

Holt and other owl experts say the phenomenon is likely linked to lemmings, a rodent that accounts for 90 percent of the diet of snowy owls during breeding months that stretch from May into September. The largely nocturnal birds also prey on a host of other animals, from voles to geese.

An especially plentiful supply of lemmings last season likely led to a population boom among owls that resulted in each breeding pair hatching as many as seven offspring. That compares to a typical clutch size of no more than two, Holt said.

Greater competition this year for food in the Far North by the booming bird population may have then driven mostly younger, male owls much farther south than normal.

Research on the animals is scarce because of the remoteness and extreme conditions of the terrain the owls occupy, including northern Russia and Scandinavia, he said.

The surge in snowy owl sightings has brought birders flocking from Texas, Arizona and Utah to the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, pouring tourist dollars into local economies and crowding parks and wildlife areas. The irruption has triggered widespread public fascination that appears to span ages and interests.

"For the last couple months, every other visitor asks if we've seen a snowy owl today," said Frances Tanaka, a volunteer for the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge northeast of Olympia, Washington.

But accounts of emaciated owls at some sites -- including a food-starved bird that dropped dead in a farmer's field in Wisconsin -- suggest the migration has a darker side. And Holt said an owl that landed at an airport in Hawaii in November was shot and killed to avoid collisions with planes.

He said snowy owl populations are believed to be in an overall decline, possibly because a changing climate has lessened the abundance of vegetation like grasses that lemmings rely on.

This winter's snowy owl outbreak, with multiple sightings as far south as Oklahoma, remains largely a mystery of nature.

A snowy white owl takes flight in this undated handout photo courtesy of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Bird enthusiasts are reporting rising numbers of snowy owls from the Arctic winging into the lower 48 states this winter in a mass southern migration that a leading owl researcher called "unbelievable" according to Denver Holt, head of Owl Research Institute in Montana. REUTERS/U.S. Fish&Wildlife Service/Handout

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