SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Next-generation GPS satellite inches closer to space, countdown begins to 2014

2011-12-14T06:50:00.000-08:00

Kvetching about your PND's inability to get a proper lock could soon become a thing of the past, thanks in large part to a fresh breed of GPS satellites designed by the whiz-kids at Lockheed Martin. The program -- which is estimated toeventually cost around $5.5 billion to complete -- is set to hit its prototype phase by 2014, with a pathfinder being recently delivered to the same Colorado facility that we toured earlier this month. The Block III prototype (more accurately known as the GPS III Non-Flight Satellite Testbed), won't actually be hurtled into space, but the Air Force is slated to launch 32 of the final versions over the next few years. The aforementioned birds should improve power, reliability and accuracy, while also promising to be "harder for enemies to jam and easier for receivers to tune in, especially in urban canyons or under thick tree canopies." Moreover, they're expected to enable both denizens and military users to grab a position within three feet, compared to ten feet using today's technology. In other news, they're sure to cause LightSquared all sorts of new headaches.

Twin Xbox 720 tipped: STB and hardcore gaming machine

2011-11-24T12:12:00.001-08:00

Microsoft is readying two next-gen Xbox console variants, insiders suggest, one targeting the entry-level market as a stripped-down option, while a second delivers true hardcore gaming. The strategy would be a broader progression of Microsoft’s current dual-SKU Xbox 360 offering, Digital Foundry‘s sources claim, where both cheaper and more expensive versions of the 360 are on offer, though the difference between the next-gen models would be considerably more extensive.

“A pared down machine is to be released as cheaply as possible, and positioned more along the lines of a set-top box” it’s suggested, targeting streaming media services like Netflix as well as more casual gaming in what’s described as “a Kinect-themed portal.” Meanwhile, those gamers chasing the cutting edge would have the option of a true 360-replacement, with an optical drive and HDD storage, along with backward compatibility with older titles. It would obviously carry a higher price tag and likely deliver more capable graphics performance.

Such a double-headed strategy would certainly fit with previous talk of a Microsoft IPTV push, leveraging the company’s established gamer base that already takes great advantage of media integration. The Xbox LIVE dashboard update will go live on December 6, bringing with it multiple streaming TV and movie options; however there have also been STB-style hardware rumors circulating from early in the year.

They were fueled by a former Microsoft hardware lead being put in charge of the company’s TV project, with a “Santa Fe” device tipped to deliver streamed content and more. More recently, Microsoft was said to be developing the Xbox “Loop” next-gen console, said to be cheaper and smaller than the current console and based on an ARM processor. That could well fit in with the “pared down” hardware mentioned by Digital Foundy.

Microsoft has recently purchased VideoSurf, an intelligent video search company, with the promise of integrating it into its Bing search: that’s something that could certainly be useful on home entertainment devices. Meanwhile, there’s also talk that the company could license its Kinect sensor technology to TV manufacturers, potentially opening the door to a straightforward hardware pairing of a Kinect-enabled display and an affordable Xbox-branded STB that could take on Google TV and Apple TV.

Fixed Galaxy Nexus ready “next week” claims retailer

2011-11-24T12:10:00.001-08:00

Samsung could have new Galaxy Nexus stock – free of the volume fault - ready as early as next week, but is apparently freezing shipments in some locations until the updated phones have been prepared. Having confirmed it was working on a fix yesterday, Samsung has subsequently told Irish resellers that it will be bringing new, fixed stock in next week, one pre-order customer tells us.

“The latest update is that Samsung is bringing new stock into Ireland and that it won’t be in until next week” the Nexus buyer was told by the retailer he ordered the Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone from. “It’s looking like they want to release stock that doesn’t have the fault.”

Some Galaxy Nexus early adopters complained that their smartphones would suffer erratic volume jumps and encounter interference when using the 900MHz 2G band. Neither Samsung nor Google have confirmed whether the issue is a hardware one or a software one, though the fact that unofficial testing has shown it occurs in bootloader mode has led some to suggest that it may be a shielding problem.

Unfortunately, all either company will tell us is that they “are aware of the volume issue and have developed a fix” and that they “will update devices as soon as possible.” The speed at which Samsung apparently believes it can address the issue, at least for phones on sale in Ireland, might suggest that hardware changes have not been required, and that it is merely swapping out existing stock for handsets that have been reflashed with different software.

Engadget's holiday gift guide 2011: tablets

2011-11-02T14:05:00.001-07:00

Holiday Gift Guide! We're well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties surrounding the seasonal shopping experience, so we're here to help you sort out this year's tech treasures. Below is today's bevy of curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the holiday season.

Of all the electronic gifts you could buy someone right now, a tablet seems like one of the safer bets. It's a cheaper way of saying "I love you" than bestowing a $1,000 laptop, and it takes less chutzpah than signing someone up for a smartphone (along with two years of data fees). And let's be real here: what's more festive than flopping onto the couch in pajamas after opening gifts and lazily playing Angry Birdswhile It's A Wonderful Life airs in the background? Yeah, we can't think of anything either.

Sadly, we don't have any webOS-flavored tablets this time around, and we couldn't include some hotly anticipated numbers like the Transformer Prime, since they're not shipping yet and we don't even know much they'll cost. Still, we managed to find a slew of Android tablets (and one iPad) across a range of budgets. Been on the fence about what to get? Skip past the break for some ideas.

ST-Ericsson's NovaThor to power Nokia's Windows Phone devices, loosens Qualcomm's grip

2011-11-02T03:34:00.001-07:00

Earlier this year, as you may recall, we learned that at least some of Nokia's Windows Phone devices would be powered by a dual-core chip from ST-Ericsson. At the time, this report came as something of a surprise, considering the fact that Qualcomm had long enjoyed hegemony over the Windows Phone market. Today, however, it becomes official, as Nokia has now selected ST-Ericsson's NovaThor platform as its Windows Phone supplier. There is no sign, however, that this deal will be exclusive, so it's likely that the manufacturer will continue to use Qualcomm silicon in addition to ST-Ericsson's ARM-based line of U9500, U8500, and U5500 dual-core CPUs. We also have yet to hear any confirmation on the specific devices that these chips will power, or when they'll go into production, though we'll be sure to let you know as soon as we get word. Skip past the break for a really short press release.

Internet responsible for 2 per cent of global energy usage

2011-10-28T04:03:00.000-07:00

(Image: Denis Doyle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

How much energy does the internet use? It's hard to know where to start. There's the electricity consumed by the world's laptops, desktops and smart phones. Servers, routers and other networking equipment suck up more power. The energy required to manufacture these machines also needs to be included. Yet no one knows how many internet-enabled devices are out there, nor how long they are used before being replaced.

That hasn't stopped Justin Ma and Barath Raghavan from trying to answer the question. The pair, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the nearby International Computer Science Institute respectively, estimate that the internet consumes between 170 and 307 GW. Which, of course, raises another question: is that is a big number, or a small one?

Raghavan and Ma came up with their total by conducting a rough internet census. By drawing on previously published research, they estimate that our planet is home to 750 million laptops, a billion smart phones and 100 million servers.

They also put figures on the energy that it costs to produce each of these devices (4.5 GJ and 1 GJ for a laptop and smartphone respectively) and the period for which each is used before being replaced (three years for a laptop, two for a smart phone). Estimates for the energy that cell towers and optical switches use when transmitting internet traffic, plus similar calculations for wi-fi transmitters and cloud storage devices, helped complete the picture.

Their final answer sounds big. A gigawatt is a billion watts, so running and maintaining the internet is like illuminating several billion 100W bulbs simultaneously. But it's a small number compared with global energy use across all sectors. That figure is 16 terawatts, so the internet is responsible for less than 2 per cent of the energy used by humanity.

Raghavan and Ma suggest that attempts to create more energy-efficient internet devices, while worth pursuing, will not do much to lower global energy consumption. Instead, they propose that we should think about how the internet can replace more energy-intensive activities. Their calculations show that a meeting that takes place by video-conference uses an average of one hundredth as much energy as one in which participants took a flight so that they could sit down together. Replacing just one in four of those meetings by a video call, they add, would save as much power as the entire internet consumes.

The research will be presented next month at the Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

iPhone 4S Pictures

2011-10-27T14:42:00.000-07:00

Phone 4S Pictures Introducing the Apple iPhone 4S, the long awaited and eagerly anticipated successor to the iPhone 4.The Apple 4S is finally upon us. After the myriad of rumors, fake reviews, and leaked emails we finally have the lowdown on what to expect from the next outing of iPhone goodness.While....

NASA SPACE RESERCH

2009-10-11T00:47:00.000-07:00

Noctis Labyrinthus

Layers in the lower portion of two neighboring buttes within the Noctis Labyrinthus formation on Mars are visible in this image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Black Holes Go 'Mano a Mano'

This image of NGC 6240 contains new X-ray data from Chandra (shown in red, orange, and yellow) that has been combined with an optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope originally released in 2008. In 2002, Chandra data led to the discovery of two merging black holes, which are a mere 3,000 light years apart. They are seen as the bright point-like sources in the middle of the image.

Scientists think these black holes are in such close proximity because they are in the midst of spiraling toward each other -- a process that began about 30 million years ago. It is estimated that they holes will eventually drift together and merge into a larger black hole some tens or hundreds of millions of years from now.

Finding and studying merging black holes has become a very active field of research in astrophysics. Since 2002, there has been intense interest in follow-up observations of NGC 6240, as well as a search for similar systems. Understanding what happens when these exotic objects interact with one another remains an intriguing question for scientists.

The formation of multiple systems of supermassive black holes should be common in the universe, since many galaxies undergo collisions and mergers with other galaxies, most of which contain supermassive black holes. It is thought that pairs of massive black holes can explain some of the unusual behavior seen by rapidly growing supermassive black holes, such as the distortion and bending seen in the powerful jets they produce. Also, pairs of massive black holes in the process of merging are expected to be the most powerful sources of gravitational waves in the Universe.

Did an ice age boost human brain size?

2009-07-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

IT IS one of the biggest mysteries in human evolution. Why did we humans evolve such big brains, making us the unrivalled rulers of the world?

Some 2.5 million years ago, our ancestors' brains expanded from a mere 600 cubic centimetres to about a litre. Two new studies suggest it is no fluke that this brain boom coincided with the onset of an ice age. Cooler heads, it seems, allowed ancient human brains to let off steam and grow.

Cooler heads, it seems, allowed ancient human brains to let off steam and grow

For all its advantages, the modern human brain is a huge energy glutton, accounting for nearly half of our resting metabolic rate. About a decade ago, biologists David Schwartzman and George Middendorf of Howard University in Washington DC hypothesised that our modern brain could not have evolved until the Quaternary ice age started, about 2.5 million years ago. They reckoned such a large brain would have generated heat faster than it could dissipate it in the warmer climate of earlier times, but they lacked evidence to back their hypothesis.

Now hints of that evidence are beginning to emerge. Climate researcher Axel Kleidon of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, modelled present-day temperature, humidity and wind conditions around the world using an Earth-systems computer model. He used these factors to predict the maximum rate at which a modern human brain can lose heat in different regions. He found that, even today, the ability to dissipate heat should restrict the activity of people in many tropical regions (Climatic Change, vol 95, p 405).

If keeping cool is a problem now, Kleidon says, it would have been even more challenging - perhaps too challenging - 2 or 3 million years ago when temperatures were a few degrees warmer than today and air-conditioning units were harder to come by.

A new study by Schwartzman and Middendorf suggests that a small drop in global temperatures may have made a big difference. The pair used basic equations of heat loss to estimate how fast the small-brained Homo habilis would have been able to cool off. Assuming overheating limited the size of H. habilis's brain, they then calculated what drop in air temperature would have been needed for Homo erectus to be able to support its bigger brain (see diagram). They found that a drop in air temperature of just 1.5 °C would have done the trick (Climatic Change, vol 95, p 439).

Given the timescales involved, it may be near-impossible to match definitively the onset of an ice age with speciation, but a 1.5 °C drop is consistent with the cooling climate of the time, says Middendorf.

"In principle, I'm receptive to the hypothesis," says Dean Falk, a palaeoanthropologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee, "but I need the data." She says that if measurements showed that people living in tropical countries today have smaller brains relative to their body size than people in temperate climates, this would go against expectation and lend support to Kleidon's model.

Being able to cool bigger brains can only be part of the story, however. It would have lifted the brakes on expansion, says psychologist David Geary at the University of Missouri in Columbia, but there has to be something driving the increase.

Over the years, researchers have come up with three broad reasons why bigger brains might have been advantageous: to give their owners the ability to cope with changing climates by exploiting technologies such as shelter, fire and clothing; to deal with the cognitive demands of hunting and gathering; or to help people outsmart their neighbours.

To help narrow this down, Geary collected data from 175 fossil hominin skulls, from 1.9 million to 10,000 years old. Then he looked to see whether brain size was best correlated with climatic variability - a crude measure of biodiversity which could indicate the complexity of hunting and gathering - or the human population size at the time, which could reflect the complexity of social interactions.

Geary's analysis found that population size was the best predictor of brain size, suggesting that our ancestors' need to outcompete their neighbours in order to survive may have been the strongest driver of brain growth (Human Nature, vol 20, p 67).

The case is far from closed - Geary's study does not demonstrate cause and effect, for one thing - but the picture beginning to emerge suggests that an ice age set the stage for a socially driven brain boom. And from that time on, it was the brainiacs who stole the show.

Greenhouse brains

If global cooling allowed humans to evolve their big brains, will today's global warming take them away again? "I'd hate to think that a difference of 1.5 °C might mean the end of humans because our brains cook," says George Middendorf of Howard University in Washington DC, "but I guess it's a scenario that might play out."

It probably won't, though, thanks to what those big human brains made possible: culture.

"When culture comes in, it layers itself on top of the biological constraints," says Tyler Volk, an Earth-systems expert at New York University. Thanks to culture and technology, we now have ways of buffering ourselves against hot climates, not only with air conditioning, but also with basic tools such as fans, thick-walled buildings and reservoirs to ensure we have plenty of water.

Only one thing could destroy that buffer - a total breakdown of society.