Recent Technology

Review Of The Samsung SGH-T239 Cell Phone

2009-10-19T23:53:00.000-07:00

Sum n substance:

Thumbs up: clear and sharp graphics, brilliant battery life, light and comfortable.

Thumbs down: old-fashioned slider look, camera could be improved, ringtone volumes are very low.

Inside the trunk:

technology GSM
Band GSM 850/1900 (Dual Band)
Phone Design Slider
Antenna Internal
Vibrating Alert Yes
Polyphonic Ringer Yes

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: I think Sammy just came up with this phone as a tribute to its slim slider range of phones which it had launched like two years back. The plethora of slider phones that it had launched one after the other slowly died and I assume Sammy is trying hard to reincarnate it with this one. This one isn’t loaded with like awesome features because it is supposed to be a prepaid one, but it definitely offers whatever best it can in the $59 price range.

Razzle- dazzle: A look at the T239 and an air of nostalgia builds up around you. Its got a very retro kind of a look. The midrange display, the keypad, the slider almost everything about the phone reminded me of its older siblings. Its quite sleek and lightweight At 3.78 inches by 1.87 inches by 0.68 inch and 3.34 ounces, though it kind of has a solid grip on the hand. Moving over the boring blacks, this one is available in two colours red and grey.

The display is 2.8 inches in size and supports around 262,000 colours. I was quite fascinated by the sharp graphics and the vibrant colours which was quite unexpected. Though the display is a bit turdy when it is being viewed under direct light it gives awesome results in a room or when not under direct lights. And anyways most of the phones do have this drawback and we are kind of used to it too. The menu can be viewed in two styles: grid and list.

There is a large central OK button on the navigation array along with two other soft keys and the talk and end keys. The navigation array has a pretty comfortable layout. The other buttons on the keypad have a pleasant rubbery feel to it and gives a decent, non daunting experience to the fingers. Plus I hardly committed any mistakes while texting or messaging. the backlighting is bright enough too. One of my woes is that whenever I had to use the clear key I had to open the keypad.

The camera lens is behind the phone and the volume rocker has been placed on the right spine. The left spine has the camera shutter and the headphone/charger port. Other essentials include a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, an alarm clock, a calendar, a task list, a calculator, a world clock, a tip calculator, a unit and currency converter, a timer, and a stopwatch.

Inside dope: The phone book capacity of the T239 is relatively small with just 300 contacts entry. Contacts can be paired up with a photo and a ringer id.

It comes equipped with a VGA camera and which can take pictures in almost four resolutions. Considering that it’s a VGA camera the image quality is quite average. Anyways I didn’t expect any kind of sharp images. The images display some amount of noise which is pretty much expected. It offers you with about 10 MB of storage for photos which is more or less not that great.

Coming to the call quality, it was pretty much decent with minimal static and interference. It was sort of clear and sounded pretty much natural. The volume of the calls was quite low though because of which I could hardly hear anything in crowded and noisy places. The caller to had more or less the same to say. Speakerphone calls were kind of average and the the performance with the Bluetooth headphones was just about satisfactory.

The T239 has a battery life of 7 hours talktime and 12.5 days on standby.

Nitty-gritty: For anyone who is looking out for a basic phone which is worth the money being paid for it. Definitely worth a shot. Link...

Review Of The Sony Ericsson C905a Cell Phone

2009-10-19T23:52:00.000-07:00

Sony Ericsson C905a – Camera First, Phone Second

Sum n substance:

Thumbs up: Brilliant camera, decent battery life, stuffed with features, sleek and slim design.

Thumbs down: Few problems with the keypad, only M2 cards acceptable, the price.

Inside the trunk:
Technology WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone Design Slider
Wireless Interface IEEE 802.11b , IEEE 802.11g
Additional Features aGPS , Melody composer , Radio Data Service (RDS)

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: This one is for all those who love to carry their world along with them in the form of photographs and love to click pictures to keep themselves reminiscent of the memories. This one from Sony Ericsson comes along with a high end 8.1 megapixel camera which is the highest in terms of megapixels offered by any phone in the US. What’s left to be seen is whether this one could survive through the cut-throat smartphone competition.

This one could easily be called a digital camera itself if we take into consideration its weight which is approximately 4.8 ounces. When it comes to size though it’s not as big as the bulk it accounts for measuring 4.09 x 1.93 x 0.71 inch. This one has been designed to work in two ways- vertically like a phone and horizontally like a digital camera.

On the front it has a navigation toggle along with six buttons which have been placed in trios on both the sides of the navigation array. These are the call, end call and turn on/off key along with two selection keys, menu keys and a clear key. The left side houses a memory card slot along with a charger port. The buttons on the right side are especially for the digital camera which gives the feel that an actual digital camera is being used.

I was pretty much content with its slider mechanism which is pretty much smooth with minimal friction and it opens to reveal a black glossy keypad. The buttons are separated by using three thin, metallic bars. The buttons are pretty much flat thee only glitch in this case being that when I tried to type using the upper row of keys I found myself hitting the slider again and again which after some time got highly frustrating.

Opening the camera reveals a 8.1 megapixel camera with a maximum resolution of 3264 x 2448 px. Tuning the phone on the side switches you from the landscape mode to the portrait mode with the help of its accelerometer.

The camera comes with a face detection feature along with an image and video stabilizer. The new feature that this has to offer is called the Bestpic feature which lets you take around 7 pictures at one go and then scroll through the photos to select the perfect one.

What excited me most about this one is the Photo DJ feature which is basically a photo editing feature. You could add climactic effects to your photos by just using this feature.

Also the geo-tagging feature allows the users to tag the photos with the locations and the time when the photo was clicked.

The video quality isn’t as brilliant as the photo quality but is pretty decent if compared with the video quality of the rival phones. Just like the Photo DJ the videos can be edited by using the Video DJ feature.

Coming to screen, it’s got a vibrant and highly animated scratch resistant screen. At 2.4 inch the screen is comparatively smaller to its rival smartphone competitors. It displays about 262K-colors at a 240 x 320 px resolution which is more than sufficient for the normal functioning of the phone.

The audio formats that are supported by the C905a are MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+ and eAAC+. The audio quality offered by this is loud enough to suffice for a small room with around 3-4 people. It also supports radio however to use the radio the users will have to get themselves a separate FM headset. Talk about DJ’s and this one has an Audio DJ as well using which tunes can be created or songs can be edited.

This one supports text messaging, instant messaging and push e-mail and multimedia which mean that along with the text message users could also add recorded sounds and photos.

This one has a memory card slot on the side instead of the awkwardly placed behind the battery memory card slot like in a few of the other cellphones that I ve reviewed earlier. It comes with an inbuilt 93 MB memory which can be expanded to 8GB by using the Sony memory stick micro (M2).

I was pretty much pleased with the call quality with hardly any interference or noise. Speaking through the speakerphone didn’t make much of a difference to the quality of the sound. Even on the side of the callers there were hardly any complaints though they found the incoming sound a bit harsh and tinny at a few occasions.

Coming down to the battery life, this one has a rated battery life of 9 hours talk time in GSM, and 3.5 hours with UMTS which is pretty much impressive for a multifunctional phone.

Nitty-Gritty: This one is definitely the best amongst all the phones that have been launched in the Cyber Shot range till date. I would say that if you are on the look out for a phone and a digital camera then this one would be your best bargain. Go ahead and grab it… Link...

Review Of The Nokia 5130 XpressMusic Cell Phone

2009-10-19T23:51:00.001-07:00

Nokia 5130 XpressMusic – Turn The Music Loud

Sum n substance:

Thumbs up: Good music player, decent functionality, good battery life.

Thumbs down: Speaker output not that great, keypad has a slippery plastic feel to it.

Inside the trunk:

Technology GSM
Band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (Quadband)
Phone Design Candy Bar
Caller ID Yes
Wireless Interface Bluetooth
Operating System Symbian Series 40 OS
Additional Features GPRS support , EDGE , microSD card slot , Micro USB

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: In the past Nokia Express Music has come up with a variety of phones ranging from the suave to the random weird ones. T-mobile is the only carrier in the U.S to be offering the Express Music starting in the year 2006 with the 5300 and then later on it was followed up with 5310 and the 5610. This time around, T-mobile has come up with the latest in the Express Music range which is the 5130. This candybar phone is being offered by the carrier at $29.99 with a rebate and a two-year service contract.

Razzle-dazzle: This one kind of reminded me of the 5310 with the glossy skin and candybar design.

At 4.23 inches by 1.83 inches by 0.58 inches this one is definitely larger and with a weight of 3.10 ounces is not that clunky too. The handset is available in two colours combinations – aqua/silver and red/black.

It’s got a two inch display which supports 256,000 colors. The display is bright and clear and the images are sharp as well. The Series 40 menus were pretty much intuitive but then the it worked better when the transition effects were turned off.

Below the display we have the navigation array which is roomy enough for comfort. Its got a raised square toggle which is a bit raised and has a different colour compared to the OK button and the surrounding keys. The keypad buttons are backlit but they have a slippery plastic kind of feel to it. I personally am not a fan of the plastic keys because it gives kind of a cheap feel to the phone on the whole. The numbers and the letters are also quite small so getting used to the keypad might take some time.

The camera lens is located at the back of the camera and it does not offer flash or a self portrait mirror. The music controls are located on the left spine of the phone while the right spine houses the volume rocker and the microSD card slot. On the top of thee 5130 we have the 3.5mm headphone jack, a charger connection and a micro USB port.

Inside Dope: The phonebook of the of the 5130 is dependent on its shared memory which is 30MB. Each contact can hold upto 6 phone numbers, email addresses, birthdays, notes, a formal name and a nick name. The basic features that this one has to offer are calculator, currency converter, alarm clock, wordlock, stopwatch and a notepad. It also supports a lot of advanced features like stereo Bluetooth, a voice recorder,, instant messaging, USB transfer and mass storage, voice commands, PC syncing and Web-based e-mail. Though it as an internal memory of 30MB it can be extended upto 2GB using a microSD slot.

Being one from the Express music range this one offers the standard Express Music player. The player is user friendly with simple controls. As usual Nokia likes it simple and so do we. The player does support a variety of file types and the tracks can easily be used as ringtones. Transferring music onto the phone is almost a child’s play. It can be done by using the microSD slot or the the USB cable. It also supports an airplane mode using which the user can listen to his playlists even when he is flying. For all those who just cant get enough of the radio this one supports the radio as well. The audio quality of this one is pretty much satisfactory. However I didn’t like the sole external speaker output. I almost had to strain my ears to recognize which track was being palyed. The sound quality from the headphones is pretty much admirable though.

It comes loaded with a 2MP camera which can take pictures in 6 resolutions ranging from 1,600×1,200 down to 160×120. Once the images are taken they can be edited using the standard photo editor which is preloaded in this one. The camcorder offers taking video is two resolutions i.e 176×144 and 128×96. The quality of the images is decent enough though there is a slight display of noise at times and the colours may seem like they have faded a bit. Even the video quality is pretty much mediocre.

For a bit of added entertainment this one also brings along it a few demo versions of games like bejeweled, Pac Man and 5th Grader 2009.

Coming to the call quality of this one… I must say that the call quality of this one is absolutely admirable. No static or interference and the callers sounded just so natural. The volume levels were pretty much satisfactory and the audio was audible even in the most crowded of places. On the callers end, they also didn’t have any problems as such. They were hardly able to differentiate between the speakerphone calls and the normal calls.

This one from the Korean manufacturer has a rated talktime of 6 hours and 12 hours on the standby mode.

Nitty-gritty: This one is one of the low end phones being launched in the Express music category. It’s simple in function and design but still has a lot to offer for the price. This could be your pick if you like to have your music on the move without burning a hole in your pocket. Link...

Samsung SPH –M330 Cell Phone Review

2009-10-19T23:49:00.000-07:00

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up: User friendly controls, impressive functionalities, good call quality.

Thumbs Down: Fragile plastic body, display resolution low.

Inside The Trunk:

Technology – GSM/ UMTS
Band- GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (Quadband) , UMTS 850/1900 (Dual Band)
Phone Design- Slider
Caller ID- Yes
Additional Features- T 9 intelligent typing, Speakerphone

The Whiz Kid Speaks: Samsung SPH M330 is advancement over the M240 model. Essentially designed for basic communication, it comes with the Bluetooth and VGA camera add-ons. What you ultimately see is a handset that scores an impressive rating in functionality but a not up to the mark design. Call quality is fair enough and service is free.

Razzle Dazzle: The SPH M330 comes with a standard slider design. Though the dimensions of 3.37” x 1.78” x 0.59” are so very ordinary these days for a cellphone, the checkered pattern and white color on the rear cover are not so common features. The plastic of the body could have been sturdier for average handling. The sliding mechanism is sturdier with the sliding façade fitting into place on either side.

Though the 2“ display can show 65,000 hues, the pixel resolution being quite low (160 x 120) you don’t expect to get the sharpest or brightest images. The menu interface is really user-friendly and it comes in a list design. Image brightness, font size dialing and backlighting time are all adjustable. The navigation outlay is spacious enough for you to operate comfortably. The usual four way toggle with an OK button in the middle, a pair of soft keys, a separate speakerphone button, Talk-End Power Keys and a back control are what you get to see. Though all controls are not raised for operational convenience, we could not find any instances of fingering the wrong dials or errored navigations. The keypad buttons are level as you’d expect for any slider phone, but they have a comfortable rubber touch. Quick dialing and texting came easily. A more luminous backlighting is recommended, though.

The tactile volume rocker and 2.5 mm headset jack on the left, and Micro USB port and camera shutter on the right are the ones that you get on either side of the body. The single speaker and camera lens are on the rear like any other cell phone. This cell has a camera without a flash or a self portrait mirror. It’s common for any VGA phone, but if camera is a priority I recommend to go for a cellphone with a flash camera. At least you can take proper pictures even when there’s no sufficient illumination.

Inside Dope: The M330 has a contact book of 500 numbers. In each you can save up to 6 phone types, email address, Url, work title, company name etc, instant message handling, address, birthday and any notes you want to write about your contact. You can choose your favorite from a range of 20 beautiful polymorphic ringtones. You can also set your phone in the vibration mode if you don’t want to put the ringtone. The M330 has a calculator, world clock, alarm clock, memo pad, speakerphone, voice dialing, voice messaging, instant message dialing and Bluetooth are the other features that you can expect to find.

With the VGA Camera you can take snaps in 3 resolutions and three levels of quality. The self timer is an interesting feature which allows you to set automatic timing for clicking snaps. You don’t have to always behind the camera; you can be in the snaps too with the self timer. The night mode allows you to take snaps at night. This cell does not allow you to take video shots. The space allotted for visuals is just 12 MB. You can send the pictures to various storage and printing devices with the Bluetooth functionality. The photo quality is clear enough. It’s a handy camera for amateur usage.

Not only are the camera, but personalized screen savers, ringtones import and demo versions of three popular games, such as the American Idol the other attractions of this cellphone.

Call quality is good. There is less interference and the volume is loud. The caller voices sound natural and the receiver can clearly understand whatever the communicator is talking from the other end. However, a bit of wind noise is picked up by the phone from both ends. On the whole the communication is observed to be loud and clear from both ends. Using Bluetooth headsets also the same effects were observed. The battery life is 6.3 hours.

Nitty Gritty: Basically the M330 is a phone that you’d essentially use for communicating verbally. You have a lot of features like alarm clocks, calculator, ringtones and screen savers but which you’d find in other cell phones too. If you are a photography freak, you’d better not go for this because the camera is pretty ordinary and most importantly there’s no video recording facility. I’d rate this as a mid level cellphone meant for basic communication. Link...

Lenovo IdeaPad U350 – An Absolute Headturner

2009-10-19T23:48:00.000-07:00

Sum n substance:

Thumbs up: stunner in the looks department, tight keyboard, good LED, lightweight, less fan noise when running, brilliant audio quality.

Thumbs down: low battery life, lack of an optical drive, underpowered processor.

Inside the trunk: Processor: Intel Pentium (1.3 GHz) ; RAM installed: 4 GB DDR3 SDRAM ; Hard drive size: 320 GB ; OS provided: Windows vista.

The Whiz- Kid speaks: I for one always been playing around with the idea of having a laptop as light as a notebook and hallelujah… Lenovo comes up with this stupendously crafted laptop which almost got me going weak on my knees when I had a look at it. Here I go with the review.

Razzle-dazzle: Certainly one of the sleekest laptops you will find at the price it is being offered for. Slipping it into the messenger bag is damn easy and plus I didn’t even realize that it was there. Well, killer looks says it all for this masterpiece right out of Lenovo’s stable. It’s got a criss cross pattern on the back with the Lenovo logo over it which is definitely a headturner. The 13.3 inch display has a glossy finish to it. No fingerprint magnet this one luckily. The power button has been aesthetically placed over the keyboard along with a one-touch recovery button and a mute button.

The makers of this one have been quite generous when it comes to the keyboard space making typing a pleasant experience. Also the touchpad has been quite aesthetically designed, it offers a bit of friction. Well I had no complains when I was navigating through the desktop but I surely expected more finer movements. Also since the touchpad was located in close proximity to the keyboard at times I just moved the cursor accidentally with the left thumb.

I am still hung over the 13.3 inch display which is almost like a visual treat to the eyes with a resolution of 1366×768 pixels.

Inside dope: It comes loaded with the Intel Pentium processor SU2700 ultra-low voltage processor and 4GB of RAM to run Windows Vista Home Premium. Also I noticed that the boot time of the Vista is comparatively slower by atleast 16 secs than the category average. Real- world performance programs were running at an adequately decent speed and most of the programs opened at a speed of about less than 5 seconds, though at times the Vista circle was spinning for longer than usual.

Coming to the graphics, as was expected Intel graphics was not that impressive. An episode of “how I met your mother” streamed from Hulu ran perfectly alright but when I switched to the full screen mode stuttering could be noticed. On a more positive note the images on google earth were quite crisp and vibrant and it hardly took a few secs for the information to fill up.

The audio quality is louder than most of the notebooks that I’ve heard of late. “other side” by RHCP sounded crisp and astoundingly awesome to fill up a small room without being too tinny.

The Ideapad’s biggest glitch is the battery life which is about hardly 3 hours 30 mins, almost 1 hour 30 mins less than the average for ultraportable notebooks. But the good news is that Lenovo is planning to offer an 8-cell battery in a few weeks just for an additional $40.

Nitty- Gritty: It does offer decent performance, the only drawback being the short endurance period. But with looks like that, I guess I can forgive the shortcomings. Just put in a DVD drive and it could easily give Mac a run for its money. Would recommend it to anyone who wants a Megan Fox kind of makeover at astoundingly low prices. Link...

Review Of The Gateway LT3103u Laptop

2009-10-19T23:46:00.000-07:00

Gateway LT3103u – Mind Blowing Quality At Rock Bottom Price

Sum n substance:

Thumbs up: AMD athlon processor, the keyboard design, awesome wi-fi connectivity, good audio quality, a decent buy at the price it’s being offered for.

Thumbs down: Low battery life, video streaming not that great, uninspiring muse buttons, slow boot-time, fingerprint attracting glossy finish.

Inside the trunk: Processor: Athlon 64 (1.2 GHz) ; RAM installed: 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM ; Hard drive size: 250 GB, 5 in 1 card reader, ATI Radeon X1270 HyperMemory graphics processor, OS provided: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic.

The whiz-kid speaks: Gateway has come up with something truly path- breaking with the launch of this notebook. Though it sounds cheesy I can’t resist saying that finally the netbook is emerging out of the cocoon. Anyways all the cheesy lines apart let me straight away come to the point and start with the review.

Razzle-dazzle: Well, the gateway isn’t known to experiment much with its looks… and the same holds true for this one too. Its got a classy black lid.. kinda boring but then it does look pretty slick. The keyboard and the chassis are matte black. Now the palmpad interested me the most. It’s dimpled like the golfball which offers a totally new experience.

The display is a bit larger than the normal 10 inch notebooks at 11.6inches. as far as the weight is concerned it’s a bit more heavier than the Asus Seashell but is just as snug as bug in a rug when fitted into the messenger bag.

Now the design of the keyboard is almost perfect and provided me with one of the most comfortable typing experiences till date… didn’t have much difficulty writing this review using this it. Though the gateway has tried too come up with something new as far as touchpad is concerned, it’s a single button mouse. but I personally like the older conventional keypad.

Its got three USB ports, VGA, Ethernet, headphone and mic, and a 5-in-1 memory card slot along with a 0.3 megapixel webcam.

Inside dope: Unlike most of the notebooks which use the Intel Atom processor, gateway uses an AMD athlon 64 L110 Single-Core Processor which I found out to be more efficient compared to the Atom. Well, it’s not as fast as the ULV system but it could give the Atom a run for its money anyday.

Also it comes accompanied with the Windows Vista as compared to the Windows XP version which most of the notebooks use and along comes the same sluggishness of the Vista. I tried comparing its boot time with most of the other notebooks and it took almost 30 secs more which was kind of disappointing but then who said that the Vista was fast.

The stereo speakers on the LT3103u provide adequately loud sound for a netbook. While bass was lacking and higher tones are somewhat tinny, the midrange vocals on Weezer’s “Island in the Sun” came through well. Since the speakers are mounted on the underside of the system’s front lip, we found that audio became muffled and distorted when we had the netbook on our lap; placing the system on a hard surface resulted in an improved listening experience.

Also the webcam with a 0.3 meapixel camera wasn’t all that great though its pretty much decent enough for a notebook.

Coming to the graphics, not much impressive. It couldn’t actually play hi definition videos, was almost like watching a slideshow with music.

The wi fi connnectivity is astounding to say the least. The web pages got loaded easily and also video and streaming was quite smooth with no noise at all.

The battery life is a huge dampener. It lasted for almost lasted 4 hours and 38 minutes which is absolutely crappy when compared to the other notebooks in that range.

Nitty- Gritty: Its not a mac nor is it Intel’s baby but for sure its definitely better than both with Athlon. Looks conventionally stylish. I am definitely impressed, the low battery life not withstanding… its definitely got me hooked to it. Kudos to Gateway for this one. Go ahead and give it a shot…definitely worth the money. Link...

Review Of The Hannspree HANNSnote SN10E1 Netbook

2009-10-19T23:44:00.000-07:00

Sum n substance:

Thumbs up: matte interiors avoiding finger print attraction, excellent graphics, comfortable typing experience.

Thumbs down: battery life could have been better.

Inside the trunk:

Price as reviewed / Starting price $379
Processor 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270
Memory 1GB, 533MHz DDR2
Hard drive 160GB 5,400rpm
Chipset Intel 945GSE + ICH7M
Graphics Intel GMA 950
Operating system Windows XP
Dimensions (WD) 12.3 x 8.7 inches
Height 1.3 inches
Screen size (diagonal) 10.1 inches
System weight / Weight with AC adapter 2.9/3.6 pounds

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: Most of the netbooks these days have almost the same configurations, the same looks, and at times if you’re lucky enough there could be a slight change in the features. This is no different from the rest of them. It’s like the same dough being used to probably make the same cake in a different shape and with probably a few extra toppings. Hannspree is relatively new into this world netbooks, well with almost everyone in the market trying its hand out with netbooks, I really don’t blame Hannspree here for having tried its hand too. This is probably just a remake of one of the earlier netbooks which we have seen from many other companies. Anyways moving on to the more technical aspects.

Razzle-dazzle: Available in two colours glossy black and pearl white, I was handed over the glossy black model to play around with. It’s a stunner in the looks department atleast, with a glossy black cover and chrome touches and even with its lid closed it still looks aesthetic with the chrome strip running around it which says ‘find yourself’. Plus it isn’t uncommon nowadays for these glossy netbooks to be fingerprint and grime magnets and it surely is no different in the case of this one too. I guess a bit of that could be avoided if you probably settle down for the pearl white model.

I was pleasantly surprised after taking a look at the matte finished interiors which included a matte finish around the display as well which is quite unusual in most of the netbooks which still follow the glossy finish even after knowing the drawbacks of such a finish.

Anyways coming down to the keyboard, it is pretty much comfortable to type on it. The keys are decently spaced giving enough finger space and I personally had no difficulty in using this one. Talking about the touchpad, it doesn’t have multitouch but still performs wise and has brilliant response. I guess a few other netbooks could learn a lot from this child in the market. The battery has been semi integrated into the bottom and though the hannspree is not even close to being superslim it definitely gives a pleasant lap-type on experience.

It comes loaded with a 10.1-inch LED screen with a resolution of 1,024×600 which is almost anti glare and filled with bright and vibrant colours which could probably get anyone who is going through a dull day back to life.

Inside dope: In terms of the processor being used it has nothing new or different to offer, it’s the same old Intel atom processors like most of the other netbooks. Keeping the processor in mind the Hannsspree did not perform any different from most of the other netbooks which use the same processor. Its perfect from a netbook point of view, offering decent web browsing and regular office document processing.

Though the internal speakers aren’t all that great, the audio quality isn’t all that bad. Plus I wouldn’t recommend this one for any kind of video viewing because the videos are quite grainy and choppy. Also it didn’t seem to be that efficient when it came to multitasking.

The ram can be upgraded upto 2GB, but this can be done only once it has been ordered. The battery life of this one is quite average and it ran for almost 5 hours and 9 minutes on the video playback test. It isn’t truly outstanding and if battery life is the deciding facort for you then you have many other better options to look forward too.

Going to the connectivity, it offers a lock spot and two USB ports on the left, while on the right we have a third USB port, a card reader and a headphone jack along with a VGA port and Ethernet port.

Nitty- gritty: After a not so promising era in electronics, Hannspree has very carefully ventured into the netbook arena. I guess it just tried to be overtly cautious about not coming up with anything new and just fiddled around with what was already available. But I must add that probably its first step into this field is worth all the talk. It is definitely good and is also amongst one of the most promising netbooks around. Finally a company which lives upto its claims. Link...

Review Of The Samsung Q320 Laptop

2009-10-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

Sum n substance:

Thumbs up: good processing power, excellent graphics performance, conventional but classy design, well spaced keyboard.

Thumbs down: low battery life, slow hard drive, media player features are also pretty much average.

Inside the trunk:

CPU Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 2.53GHz
RAM Included 4GB RAM Upgradable4GB
Hard Drive Size 320GB
Hard Drive Speed 5,400rpm
Hard Drive Type SATA
Graphics Card Nvidia GeForce G105M
Video Memory 256MB Wi-Fi802.11a/b/g/n

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: Expect Samsung to come up with something new compromising on a few of the other features atleast that’s what we ve noticed in most of the cases. And in this case it’s the endurance of the laptop which has been compromised on. Anyways, lets move on to the review and see what exactly this has in store for us…

Razzle-Dazzle: Looks like Sammy has decided to keep it to the minimal as far as the looks department is concerned. Its got a rather conventional glossy black lid with a chrome hinge and blue and orange status lights around the corner. The interior has tastefully been given a matte finish to avoid attracting fingerprints and grime on it.

Samsung does prefer to call it thin and lightweight but with 4.8 pounds and 1.4 inches thick I definitely beg to differ. I have definitely seen many more portable laptops which even have a thinner frame.

Its got the traditional 87-key non island keyboard in which the keys are properly spaced out offering a good speed of atleast 80 words per minute. The only complain I have with this one is that at times the left wrist rest used to get heated up which was kind of a hindrance to the typing speeds. The touchpad is reasonably spacious and also offers very less friction. Even the double rocker button provided some tactile clicks. Anyways I always the double rocker buttons compared to the single rocker ones.

It exhibits a 13.4 inch screen along with 1366 x 768-pixel resolution. The screen is pretty much bright and also displays good colour contrasts. On the right side it has a slot for a DVD player along with a 2.1 USB port. The left side houses an ExpressCard/34 slot, an eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port, another regular USB 2.0, Ethernet, HDMI, VGA,headphone and mic ports, and a Kensington lock bay. Its got a 3-in-1 memory card reader in the front.

Inside dope: Well, I found the speaker quality the most unimpressive among all the other stuff it has been packed with. The sound was barely audible, tinny and even high pitched at times. Also the video quality was not that great not only during video streaming but also while playing the video through video streaming. The images from the 1.3 megapixel webcam were not impressive enough as well. The images displayed a lot of flicker along with some noise at the edges. Surely this one isn’t your best option if you’re looking forward for some great entertainment.

Coming back to what we talked about earlier, the temperature, according to our lab tests this exhibited a temperature of 94 degrees Fahrenheit between the G and H keys, and around 97 degrees on the left wrist rest whereas nothing more than 95 degrees is actually acceptable so I hope Samsung looks into this matter and does something about it.

Putting the Q320 through the PCmark vantage test which assesses the overall performance of the system, this one scored a decent 3,799 as compared to the average for such notebooks which is 3,048. Also it scored way ahead of the category average in the 3DMark06 test which assesses the performance of the graphics, all thanks to the Nvidia GeForce G105M graphics chip it comes packed with.

However the Hitachi 5,400-rpm hard drive didn’t prove to as impressive as the graphics card and the CPU. It recorded a low transfer rate of 14.9 MBps in the file transfer test which is very low as compared to the category average of 19.6 MBps. It took almost 60 secs to boot the Vista which is decent enough for its category.

Coming to the battery life, if you are going to be on the move with this one as your saviour then you better be carrying the charger along with you. The battery life that this one displays is astoundingly less and it surely could have done much better if provided with a better battery life. However this one has a unique feature called the capacity meter which lights up whenever the button on it is pressed and lets you know how much charge is left in the system. This one is pretty much power efficient and hardly takes around 2 hours 6 minutes to fully recharge consuming around 50.4 watts during that period.

Nitty- gritty: With a low battery life and a heavy frame this one isn’t exactly the portable notebook that you’d be looking for. But the price along with the other features that it has to offer make it a pretty much compelling choice. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking out for a 13-incher with good graphics performance and liberal processing power at a rate which is not heavy on the pocket. Link...

Review Of The iBuyPower Battalion 101 M865TU Laptop

2009-10-19T23:40:00.000-07:00

Sum n substance:

Thumbs up: Killer graphics, good CPU performance, offers a lot of gaming force.

Thumbs down: Speakers aren’t that great, low battery life.

Inside the trunk:

CPU 3.06-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9900
RAM Included 4GB RAM Upgradable 4GB
Hard Drive Size 500GB
Hard Drive Speed 7,200rpm
Display Size15.4
Native Resolution1680×1050
Graphics CardNvidia GeForce GTX 260
Video Memory1GB

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: This one brings in loads of good stuff for all the gamers for battling the bad guys when on the move, atleast that’s what the makers claim. I believe apart from all the juice it has to offer this one should have paid a little more attention on the designing front.

Razzle- dazzle: When the Battalion came to office I wasn’t all that impressed by its looks. And what totally put me off is the total plastic chassis. I don’t think this kind of a mellow look is suitable for a high end gaming laptop. Not that I am being shallow but then again as a gamer the look and the feel of the machine surely does matter. Anyways moving ahead with the review the unit that was left at our office was a dark brown one adorned with a few silver coloured accents around the hinges. The dark brown matte finish at the back continues throughout the keyboard and at the end of the keyboard it has some black metallic finishing which houses the power buttons. This 15- inch system weighs 7.1 pounds and measures 10.6 x 14.3 x 1.9 inches and can easily slip into the haversack.

The keys on the keyboard are spaced comfortably without causing too much hindrance when typing. But at times it failed to register a few key hits when I was typing fast. The touchpad design is gritty as well with the same texture as the keyboard. At times when pressed down the plastic area would tend to bend. I would recommend using an external mouse while playing games.

This one has a 15.4-inch display with a high-definition 1680 x 1050 pixel resolution. The display was vibrant enough to make even the dullest of colours come alive. The glossy finish though added a bit of glare at times. Unlike many other systems the viewing angles were pretty good and an extra person could clearly see what’s happening on the screen without having to shift his eyes much. The left side of the Battalion houses a DVD burner and the power switch is on the back along with DVI, HDMI and two USB ports. On the right side is there are two extra USB ports, Ethernet jack, modem port, a 7-in-1 memory card reader with an Express card slot.

Inside dope: Talking about the audio performance, the inbuilt speakers aren’t all that great and tend to be harsh and tinny at times. Though are loud enough for a small room, I would still recommend using a headset. During calls made through Skype the audio quality was pretty much decent and was clearly audible using the inbuilt microphones.

The 2-megapixel camera also displayed satisfactory performance during the skype call test. Though the pictures were pretty clear the callers complained of a bluish tint around the edges.

As far as our benchmark tests are concerned the Battalion performed pretty well in most of our tests. Programs like Mozilla Firefox almost opened instantenously and the others like the media player took not more than two secs to open. Also when it came to duplicating media files this one scored really well against most of its other competitors.

Its most amazing feature the Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 graphics chip packed in enough punch to almost have me down on my knees. The only 15-inch competitor better than this one as far as the graphics were concerned is the Sager NP8662.

According to me the GPU is really worth all the talk. The frame rates when playing a game of Call of Duty: World at War were quite smooth and also there was not a single glitch noticed in this case. The frame dropped down very rarely infact hardly I must add.

I was almost blown away by the fantabulous graphics while playing a game of Batman: Arkham Asylum. Stupendous graphics to get any gamer wagging his tongue asking for more.

Coming to the battery life offered by this one which is 2 hours and 21 minutes it is quite when compared to the other 15 inch systems but quite decent if we compare it to the other gaming systems in the category. Also this one quite unsurprisingly doesn’t have much to offer as far power efficiency is concerned. It took almost 2 hours and 11 minutes to fully recharge it and it used up around 81.1 watts of power during that time.

Nitty-gritty: The iBuyPower has deifinitely paid more attention to the hardware and has definitely succeeded in accomplishing what it set out to do by coming up with a high-end gaming system. However I seriously wish that they had come up with a more a dandy and efficient design. Obviously when I pay over 2 grands for something I’d surely love to have a headturner in ma hands. Alright if not make a headturner they could have atleast come up with a nice and sturdy system. Anyways all said and done if the gamer in you wants a laptop to play games when on the move then this one surely deserves a look. Link...

Review Of Malibal Veda Series

2009-10-19T23:38:00.000-07:00

Malibal Veda Series Laptop – The only alternative to a gaming desktop

Sum n Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Gaming performance as good as desktop
Top class service
Ace support and pricing norms

Thumbs Down:

Speaker performance not up to the mark
Fingerprint Magnet
Keyboard and touch pad too small

Inside the Trunk:

Processor – 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9300
Memory- 8GB, 1,066MHz DDR3
Storage -240GB SSD (3 x 80GB)
Chipset – Nvidia MCP79
Graphics- 512MB Nvidia GeForce GTX280M (2)
Operating System -Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit)
Dimensions- (WD) 17.3 x 11.8 inches Height 1.7 inches
Screen size (diagonal)- 18.4 inches System weight / Weight with AC adapter 13.1/16.1 pounds
Category – Desktop substitute

The Whiz Kid Speaks: The Malibal Veda series seems to be the best alternative to your gaming desktops to the extent of extinction. This company specializes in making desktop replacements. They are not specifically focused on the thickness, weight, or portability issues. Neither are they really out to make some mind blowing offbeat products. The components are ace. But the designing could still improve with an expert touch. Primarily in this laptop what you can see is that much functionality is not well under control. Most things are good for this OEM/ODM Clevo designed laptop, including its service quality ,its component organization and number of components, and a purchase policy that does not involves minimum risks; you might actually find the price of $2, 272 – $ 5, 242 tad expensive.

Razzle Dazzle: The Veda’s a stud! The design is remarkable. This biggo laptop is really good to look at. You don’t see branding, but there is lighting all over. The display is not the only luminous part like in many computers. The fan vents, speaker grills and a tattoo design on the front are attractively illuminated. You can rotate the colors by simply touching upon a touch sensitive screen above the keyboard, and yes, at times when you don’t’ want any lights at all, you have the option of shutting them off completely. The lustrous plastic cover of the keyboard and other external components is pretty impressive. But after using only for about a few seconds these surfaces were noticed to have fingerprints or handprints on them.

The ports are laid out on either side of the laptop, but they look a bit cluttered together. A bit more spacious arrangement is recommended. Also if you connect with these ports you’ll have a whole lot of cables jutting out from either side which is not a very good sight. The small keyboard seems to be apt for gaming, but not for typing. The touch pad doesn’t have a physical demarcation but just a blue light marking the border. Do you really need 80 programmable key buttons on your laptop ? I don’t think so. They simply add up to the space overhead.

The LCD display comes with a 1,920 X 1080 resolution. Good in color and contrast with a wide view angle, this 18.4 inched screen with a glass-view option is a good performer. The 3 mega pixel Web camera works well.

You’ll not really vouch for the speaker system. It essentially lacks depth. Your games, music and movies don’t sound rich despite the presence of a system of five speakers along with a subwoofer. You’ve got to attach external audio aids for that enriched sound effect.

Inside Dope: The lower priced laptops of the series don’t come with an operating system. You can get it installed after you purchase the system. But don’t expect the prices to be lower for a system without the OS, because the Nvidia graphic cards compensate for the lowered price due to absence of OS. The Veda seems to be better than its counterparts when it comes to PC gaming. It’s seen to be better than Alienware which comes in with the same functionalities. The frame shift rates of the Veda were impressive at 1,920 X 1,200 which ensured that the games ran graphically smooth.

The battery life at just 58 minutes looks quite short to me. Well, you might say that one shouldn’t depend on a battery for operating any of the high performance components of the laptop, but it’s been observed that comparable gadgets had more battery life than the Veda gadgets. You can always add an additional battery to the system but the operation is cumbersome as you’ve got to remove three screws to replace the drained battery.

Nitty Gritty: You get a one year warranty for the parts and labor. For only $ 149 and $ 249 you get two and three years warranty respectively. You can call up for technical assistance at a toll-free number or you can also access the live online chat. The online resources are also available in plenty. You get a full refund on notebooks within 30 days of purchase. Link...

Review of Samsung Instinct HD SPH-M850 Cell Phone

2009-10-19T23:35:00.000-07:00

Samsung Instinct HD SPH-M850 : A feature-packed, reasonably good performer with impressive design that falls a little short of a full blown smartphone at a lesser price.

Sum n Substance:

Thumbs Up: Impressive design and user interface with a too good display. Mindblowing features of which a HD camera that gives sharp snaps and videos is the most attractive. Another feature worth noting is Wi-Fi.

Thumbs Down: Occasionlly slow and call quality not sharp, Opera 9.7 browser adjustment time-taking, memory card difficult to operate owing to location in the rear of the battery cover, too high pricing.

Inside The Trunk:
Technology – CDMA
Band – CDMA 800/1900( Dual Band)
Phone Design – Candy Bar
Caller ID – Yes
Wireless Interface- Bluetooth
Extra Features- Touch Screen technology, Voice Recognition and Global Positioning System

The Whiz Kid Speaks: Remember the CTIA event last year when Samsung’s Instinct was the center of attraction? Well, you might have expected its successor Instinct S30 to be as impressive, but might’ve been tad disappointed. First the design was slimmer and a lot of features found in the former were missing. But do you expect a technological giant like Samsung to displease you for long? Samsung came up with the Instinct HD SPH –M850 which comes with upgraded and improvised features. To start with the design is chic and the display really bright. Essentially a multimedia phone that you cannot resist the temptation of owning, it is an impressive performer in many aspects.

If you compare the price of $ 249 under the Sprint Everything plan and $100 mail-in discount, this phone costs you more than HTC Hero of Google Android- a smartphone you’ll to vouch for, for its excellent quality. The pricing is mostly because of the multimedia of the Instinct HD. Well, I can buy a separate camera with better features. If it’s the phone that I basically need, then I prefer to not get baited by the multimedia and go for a phone that costs much less.

Razzle Dazzle: The phone is bigger than both the earlier versions of Instinct, but you can carry it in your bag or pocket. The larger dimensions make it just the right size to hold in your hand- it’s neither too small to slip off nor too big to not fit in your palm. The shape looks good and the classy silver and black body is impressive.

The 3.2 inch display with resolution of 480×320 pixels displays your pictures as a blend of 16 million hues. The pictures are bright and vibrant. The touch screen is small but kind on the eye. The brightness and backlight time are adjustable but text size cannot be altered. Touch interface was fast when selecting items, but slow when operating scroll bars and long lists. Adjustable touch sensitivity with feedback and proximity sensor for display is an advantageous feature. Personalization of menu features is one of the preferred features of the Instinct HD which has menu interface similar to the earlier versions. At the highest level the menu is categorized into Main, Fun and My Stuff. Microsoft Live Search and social networking with facebook are enabled via these menus. Alphanumeric touch activation, speakerphone and contacts access are other features that you can see.

A big spacious QWERTY keyboard is present. But you’ve got to keep toggling between different keyboards for numbers and symbols. Also the keyboard is not arranged exactly in the QWERTY mode. You can also hide the keyboard to expose more writing surface. The top location of the power control makes it convenient to operate. Most controls other than the memory card slot are located conveniently.

Inside Dope: The Instinct HD comes with a smaller contact phone book. It has all the essential elements of a phone book, the calendar and world clock being easier to handle. This phone comes with a lot of smartphone features like Bluetooth Functionality, Sprint Navigation, gesture manipulation of controls and Wi Fi.

Working with Internet is quite interesting on Instinct HD. It comes with a lot of email options. It allows you to sync with a number of POP3 accounts. Oprah 9.7 gives a rich browsing experience; but redundant features make it cluttered. Opening multiple windows simultaneously is good, but toggling between pages is inconvenient. No browser panning is found as in the original.

The HD 5 mega pixel camera is truly remarkable. Apart from normal functionalities high definition video recording is also possible with this. The picture is sharp and bright. Not comparable to a HD camcorder, which is an unasked for comparison, the Instinct HD does not have very good editing options. The HD video occupies a lot of memory and you’ll need a microSD card to accommodate that. Self timer and recording video resolutions are other features. Adjustable brightness, contrast, sharpness are other features of the phone.

Other multimedia features include connecting to Television channels, MP3 player and accesses to online music stores, social networking, and phone beautification applications like screensavers and wallpapers. Personalized ring tones are an added advantage.

The call quality assessment noted the following features. Good call quality, good volume and strong signal with a bit of noise interference at times. There was a nagging background disturbance and the voices sounded a bit rough. The recipients also encountered background noise while talking to us but they found the audio quality pretty satisfactory. Speakerphone audio was just up to the mark but not remarkable. The same was with Bluetooth headsets. Original EV-DO and good audio streaming quality were observed. Media files could be downloaded fast and without interruption.

The phone is slow on multimedia operations and it hung at times. The phone has a battery life of 5.8 hours with a digital SAR of 1.16 watts.

Nitty Gritty: This instinct HD is on the whole a phone with good multimedia features but the phone quality is just average. I think if your priority is for a talking device and not a multimedia box, you can go for a cheaper and better phone which is essentially meant for conversations. Link...

Review Of Lexmark Platinum Pro 905 Printer

2009-10-19T23:33:00.000-07:00

Sum n Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Impressive printer speed
Two independent paper trays
Convenient wireless setup
All-inclusive diver features
Fail-safe Smart Solutions Widgets

Thumbs Down:

Bluetooth Support Absent
Pricey at $ 341.99- $ 399.99
Non-adjustable auto document feeder

The Whiz Kid Speaks: The Lexmark Platinum Pro 905 is one printer where all your business printing requirements can be taken care of. However, its touch screen is something that you might not like very much. Though the Smart Solutions widgets allows you to customize virtually, a bit of physical control is recommended. It’s the best of Lexmark creations, but we feel HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless is more efficient at the job.

For your business requirements you might not really want a multi-functionality printer with a touch screen, but you’ll find that most of the lot being manufactured today comes with touch screens. Lexmark Platinum Pro 905 comes with virtual controlling enabled by Smart Widgets. This is a desirable feature, but the model could have done better with some hard button controls. Its like a building having an escalator facility without the conventional staircase or elevator for commuting up and down. The escalator is a more convenient feature, but would you really want the building to have only one option for climbing up and down? What about the risk factors?

The virtual shortcut keys can be more convenient, but when the printer suffers from the iPhone syndrome, you might just long for some good ol’ physical buttons that. The HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless also has a touch screen, but it has other options also open so that in terms of efficiency, we prefer to name it as our first priority item in comparison to the Lexmark Platinum Pro 905 .

Razzle Dazzle: Dimensioned at 12.1 “ h X 18.31 “ w X 15.42 “ l the Lexmark Platinum Pro 905 is the usual size of a business gadget . It’s an all-in-one printer, scanner, copier and fax machine. This is no more an Apple-type,white colored machine. The dark exterior gives a more formal look to the machine. You’ll not find any sharp edges anywhere.

Less hard buttons though indicate less physical control on the flip side, they make your operational surface less cluttered which is really convenient to handle. On the front side you’ll find the “My Touch” button which is an LCD power button with a Wi-Fi power status indicator and a PictBridge USB port. The paper tray places the Pro 905 a class apart from the rest. I really like this feature. A silo drawer adds support to the 150 sheet paper container adding to the heftiness and durability of the tray. Apart from that, a second tray of 150 sheet capacity supplements the primary tray. So can you go ahead and print 300 pages in a lot without any hassles? Well, not really, the arithmetical logic does not quite convert that. In the lower tray, unlike the upper which accommodates 4X6 inch photo paper, you can only rest letter and legal sized paper. The lower tray is detachable, which is a plus feature when it comes to saving space. The screen of the display is bright and conveniently read, but an adjustable display angle is recommended. Now you only read it by standing straight over the printer.

The printer comes with Smart Solutions Widgets which enable the virtual function keys. Total dependence on virtual keys is not advisable because in case of a software crash, you are totally decapacitated. Presence of alternate hardware keys can really help in such crises. Bluetooth inclusion could have been an added advantage. But the built-in setup utility allows you to connect wirelessly. Smart Solutions consists of short keys to applications that you can activate to perform certain tasks like activate Photo-bucket and Picasa, scanning-to-emailing, scan-to-faxing and copying etc. The solutions can be customized according to your requirements. At present the application reserves can do much better with a lot more features to come. The Eco Copy feature is worth mentioning. It enables you to print on either side of the paper simultaneously. But the quality is low, though less ink is used. The Pro 905 could do with a cartridge finder inclusion.

Inside Dope: The Pro 905 performs very fast. Rather its one amongst the fastest which should actually be the fastest for a price of $ 400. But it just happens to be the runner up to HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless which peroforms at twice the speed of the Pro 905. Epsom Artisan 800 also seems to be superior to the Pro 905 in so many aspects.

Nitty Gritty: The separate paper trays which can accommodate different types of paper, an easy to set up wireless system and a multi-functional driver with a foolproof Smart Widgets application are the points on which you can vouch this computer. Link...

Review Of The Sony Handycam DCR-SX41

2009-10-19T23:30:00.000-07:00

Sum ‘n’ substance:

Thumbs up: User-friendly interface makes it easy to operate; light in weight; 60x zoom lens; compact design.

Thumbs down: Images are not sharp; purple fringing of object matter.

Inside the trunk: Digital Zoom 2000 x; Optical Sensor Size :1/8inch; Type of Optical Sensor :Advanced HAD CCD; Min Illumination: 6 lux; NTSC Analog Video Format; MPEG-2 Digital Video Format; Min Shutter Speed: 1/4 sec; Camcorder Effective Still Resolution: 0.68 megapixels; 8 GB Flash – Integrated Memory; Media Type Flash card; 60 x Optical Zoom; Carl Zeiss Zoom lens; in built lens shield; Manual and Automatic Focus Adjustment; Face detection , Touch-screen control , USB 2.0 compatibility , Dolby Digital AC-3 (2 channel) recording Type 2.7 inch LCD Color display having TFT active matrix. Connector Type: 1 x Composite video/audio output , 1 x USB , 1 x S-Video output; Viewfinder: Display Form Factor Rotating; Display Format 123,000 pixels; battery: Sony NP-FH30 Lithium ion rechargeable battery; weighs 10 ounces.

The whiz-kid speaks:

Razzle-dazzle: The DCR-SX41 is a flash-memory-integrated standard-def handy-cam. It’s main features being, its compact size, an internal memory of 8GB as well as a memory stick slot for expansion, 60x mega-zoom lens. The SX41 is not very attractive to look at, it has a rectangular shape and somewhat resembles a scale model of a metro. Although there are no shapes to choose from, there are a couple of colours, blue, silver and red. The size of the entire cam is no more than an average beer can.

The controls on the SX41 are pretty standard; there is the start/stop button right at the back and up top you have an easy to use zoom rocker. On the left hand side, there is a Mode button for toggling between shooting stills or movies.

The hand strap is not all that comfortable; it would have been if, it was slightly lower. To the right side, where the strap is joined to the back of the body is a flip-down opening that covers a DC input for power and the AV jack.

The battery sticks out from the rear end and just below it, is the Memory Stick Pro Duo card slot and power input. On flipping out the 2.7 inch touch-screen display, are five buttons in the body, for power; turning the display on and off displaying info; recording direct-to-DVD using Sony’s VRD-P1 DVDirect DVD burner which costs about $149; for simple point-and-shoot recording there is also an Easy button that locks down the cam few advanced features; and to correct exposure of backlit subjects there’s a Backlight option. Also in the cavity, are the Mini-USB port and the covered Memory Stick Pro Duo card slot.

The remaining controls are covered by the menu system on the touch-screen. The Menu grants you access to shooting options that are context-sensitive while the Home mode permits you access to all other options.

Inside dope: The DCR-SX41 was designed for user-friendly recording and doesn’t pack a lot of extra shooting features.

When set to Auto, the SX41 adjusts the focus, white balance, and even scene selection automatically, to give the best picture it can. But if you want to do things yourself then, there are scene options and the white balance can also be adjusted. There also is a focus and exposure controller. What you cannot do is control the amount of zoom with the screen, making it difficult to use if the cam is supported on to a tripod.

The SX41 also has an ‘Instant-On’ option that gets the fires up the cam to record very fast simply by opening the LCD, although this feature is common it functions smoothly. The auto-focus is very responsive too. The battery life for the power pack, which is included, is an estimated 100 minutes of continuous operation; expect the minutes to drop if frequent switching between on and off is done, actively operating the zoom functions and the touch screen or reviewing through clips and images. According to Sony, extended life batteries of up to 13 hours of continuous shooting are also available.

The overall performance of the SX41 was average. The video quality lacked sharpness. The clips also displayed a sizeable amount of noise that includes a very obvious purple-fringing around object matters. But, I will say that the video colors very vivid and the white balance was decent. Then again, the camcorder was really bad at capturing still shots.

Nitty-gritty: This camcorder has Sony’s same ol’interface and also has the much familiar location of buttons. It is priced somewhere around $269.99 – $499.95. If you want to capture your videos no matter what and have a tight budget, then the DCR-SX41 might be the way to go. Link...

Japan launches its first space cargo ship

2009-09-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

H-2 Transfer Vehicle is bringing supplies, equipment to space station

Japan's first space cargo ship soared into orbit Thursday to begin its maiden cruise to the International Space Station.

The inaugural H-2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV-1) blazed into a predawn sky above its seaside launch pad at the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan, where the local time was 2:01 a.m. Friday at the time of liftoff. It was still Thursday in the United States, where NASA officials at space station Mission Control in Houston and other centers monitored the launch.

The launch occurred at 1:01 p.m. EDT, just hours before the planned evening landing of NASA's space shuttle Discovery and a crew of seven astronauts in Florida. The shuttle is returning from its own delivery mission, but its touchdown was postponed from Thursday to Friday at the earliest"HTV-1 is opening up new horizons for JAXA's undertaking of human spaceflight," Masazumi Miyake, deputy director of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Houston office, said before launch. "I like to say that JAXA is now entering a new era."

Built for JAXA, HTV blasted off atop a brand new H-2B rocket, the country's most powerful booster to date. About 15 minutes after liftoff, the cargo ship separated from the rocket's second stage and began the weeklong trek to the space station.

"HTV separation!" JAXA's Mission Control reported in a broadcast as applause rang out.

If all goes well, the cargo ship should arrive at the orbiting laboratory on Sept. 17 after a series of rendezvous and abort system tests.

Japan's HTV spacecraft is about 33 feet (10 meters) long, 14 feet (4.4 meters) wide and designed to haul up to six tons of supplies to the space station. It is covered in solar panels for power and designed to fly on the equally new H-2B booster rocket, which is derived from Japan's workhorse H-2A rocket family.

Japan’s space firsts
The $220 million HTV spacecraft has been in development in Japan since 1997, and JAXA has spent about $680 million overall to bring it to reality, the agency's officials have said. It is the latest in a series of international cargo ships from Russia and Europe that haul vital supplies to the space station.

"It's an amazing vehicle, and it's a pleasure to have it in the fleet," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager. link..

Simulated black holes may prove theory

2009-09-14T12:36:00.000-07:00

Tests try to measure Hawking radiation, which has been difficult to detect

A supermassive black hole appears at the center of a galaxy. Because real black holes are such a challenge to study, scientists are hoping to simulate a black hole to better understand ever-elusive -- and yet undiscovered -- Hawking radiation.By cramming several thousand superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDS), which guide light down a track much like a rail guides trains, scientists hope to simulate the effects of a black hole.

The research could help prove a 35-year-old theory originally proposed by physicist Stephen Hawking and cement humanity's fundamental understanding of the universe.

"This is not a black hole that we are creating; this is analogous to a black hole," said Miles Blencowe, a physicist at Dartmouth College and co-author on a paper in the journal Physical Review Letters that describes the proposed experiment. link..

Moon rocket engine passes test in Utah

2009-09-14T12:32:00.000-07:00

Full-scale firing succeeds after earlier snag, but rocket’s fate is uncertain

PROMONTORY, Utah - The first test of NASA's powerful moon rocket went off without a problem Thursday as more than a million pounds of propellant ignited in a split second, sending a towering plume of sand and dust high into the Utah sky.

For more than two minutes, flames roared out the end of the 154-foot Ares I rocket, which was anchored horizontally to the ground on a hill above the Great Salt Lake.

"That was something, wasn't it?" said a grinning Charlie Precourt, a former shuttle astronaut and vice president of Alliant Techsystems Inc.'s space launch systems. More than 4,000 people witnessed the test, and many others watched it on live television.

Powerful alternative
The rocket, capable of producing 3.6 million pounds of thrust, is intended as a more powerful alternative to the two solid rocket boosters used to launch the space shuttle. Precourt called it "the most powerful rocket on the planet."

Thursday's test was the second attempt in two weeks after a similar one was scrubbed Aug. 27 because of problems with a computer component on the ground test system.

The test of the $75 million in equipment in northern Utah comes amid new questions about funding for the space program.

The Ares I has been a centerpiece of NASA's $100 billion return to the moon plans, first suggested by President George W. Bush in 2004. The idea was that the Ares I would take the Orion crew capsule to the international space station in Earth orbit and to the moon, with the big equipment coming from a heavy lift rocket, still to be built, called Ares V.

But after money problems, delays, and technical issues, President Barack Obama appointed a special outside panel of experts to review NASA's future space plans. The committee's preliminary summary, issued Tuesday, said there wasn't enough money in the current budget to go to the moon and also suggested that the Ares I may not be the best option. If NASA could secure funds, the report said, it should consider abandoning Ares I in favor of just using Ares V because it is more cost effective and flexible.

However, much of the $7.7 billion NASA has spent on the moon return program has been on the Ares I and a full-scale rocket is at the Kennedy Space Center scheduled for a Halloween test.

"We clearly present an alternative to building Ares I," MIT professor Ed Crawley, a member of the panel, told The Associated Press this week.

No decision yet
NASA and the White House have not made a decision about what to do next. They are waiting for the full report to be submitted, which is a few weeks away.

NASA and Alliant officials said they were pleased with Thursday's test — and happy to resolve the problem that plagued last month's attempted test.

The culprit was a 30-year-old component in the ground control unit that helps move nozzle controls, which steer a rocket in flight. The piece has been replaced though it still isn't exactly clear why it failed, said Pat Lampton, NASA's chief engineer for the Ares first stage test.

At 1 p.m. Thursday, a giant flame shot down the rocket's interior and ignited 1.5 million pounds of propellant — a solid chemical mixture the consistency of a pencil eraser — coating the booster's interior.

The blast from the test could be heard for miles and scoured a deep hole in the hillside. Blazing heat turned a layer of sand into a glasslike material.

"After witnessing what we just saw, it's pretty easy to become speechless," Alex Priskos, NASA's Ares I first stage manager, said after Thursday's test.

Once the test finished, a crowd gathered in a VIP area about a mile away to cheer and congratulate officials from NASA and Alliant. link..

NASA finds a moon crater to slam into

2009-09-14T12:29:00.000-07:00

LCROSS probe will impact Cabeus A at about 5,580 mph on Oct. 9

When NASA's LCROSS lunar probe slams into the moon next month as planned to look for signs of water, it will aim for the south polar crater Cabeus A, the agency announced Friday.

The $79 million moon-impacting spacecraft is carrying an empty Centaur rocket stage, which has about the same mass as a sports-utility vehicle and will be hurled into the lunar surface on Oct. 9.

Professional astronomers and backyard skywatchers will be watching the spectacle. The purpose of our missions is to see if there may indeed be some water ice located in some permanently shaded crater positions on the south pole of the moon," said LCROSS project manager Daniel Andrews. Other missions have provided tantalizing but so-far inconclusive evidence for water ice there.

At the announcement of the crater target, the LCROSS team dedicated the mission to the late journalist Walter Cronkite.

"It's a great honor, thank you very much. Dad would be pleased to be part of this ongoing process," his son, Chip Cronkite, said at a NASA press briefing.

What will happen
LCROSS will first release its Centaur stage rocket to impact the crater, then LCROSS itself will impact the lunar surface at about 5,580 mph (8,980 kph), and the resulting ejecta can be examined for signatures of water.

"It will kick up whatever is on the floor of the crater; that may very well include water ice," Andrews said.

More than a decade ago, the Lunar Prospector mission detected hydrogen deposits around the moon's south polar region, suggesting that some form of water ice may exist where the sun never shines.

Finding water on the moon would be a boon for future manned missions because it would eliminate the need to haul it up from Earth. The ice could be melted for drinking water, and hydrogen could be extracted for fuel.

Cabeus A was one of several finalist craters — including Shackleton, Shoemaker and Hayworth craters — examined by the team for many months. The crater sits at 81 degrees south on the moon and is relatively large (about 40 kilometers across).

The crater also meets other criteria to achieve a successful impact that throws up ejecta in a way that telescopes will be able to see it: "We want to hit a nice flat, fluffy place," said LCROSS principal investigator Anthony Colaprete.

Cabeus A seems to fit the bill, with plenty of flat areas for the spacecraft to smash into.

Data from LCROSS's sister craft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Lunar Prospector show a spot along the rim of the crater that seems to have a relatively high concentration of hydrogen, and so potentially, water.

"That is where we think the sweet spot exists," Colaprete said.

Who'll be watching
The impact will be observed by LRO, the newly refurbished Hubble Telescope, a few other space-based telescopes, and several ground-based observatories.

"This is very observable from earth," Colaprete said. "So we'll have lots of eyes on it."

NASA will even be soliciting amateur observations, said Jennifer Heldmann, lead for the LCROSS observation campaign.

LCROSS was launched in June along with LRO, which will map the lunar surface in unprecedented detail.

The team reported that the spacecraft is in good health, despite a malfunction that caused the craft to burn through half of its propellant a few weeks ago, and everything looks good for impact.

"At this point, 28 days out, we have every expectation of finishing the mission with full success," Andrews said. link..

Which way for NASA? A step-by-step path

2009-09-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

Flexible Path’ concept may work out better than fixation on moon or Mars

HOUSTON - As a retired rocket scientist and avid space historian and strategist, I’ve been watching the debate over NASA's future in human spaceflight with great interest. I've been quite impressed by the questions coming from the independent panel charged with laying out the options for that future.

Now that the panel's members have released a report summarizing the options available to the White House, I have even more respect for their analysis.

Next, it's going to be up to the Obama administration, and those deliberations will follow a logic I'm not familiar with. None of us really knows what criteria the White House will use to select NASA's future course, or how policymakers will mix and match among the options. In all my years of experience observing the Space Age, working within the heart of it, and writing and speaking widely about it, I've found that expecting rationality in the debate over space policy is often a folly that ends in tears.I do want to make one plea, however. My own contribution to the national debate is going to be a defense of the much-maligned “look but don’t touch” option — what the panel calls "Flexible Path." I think it deserves more respect than it’s been getting, and I'd be content to see it emerge from the process. But I'm not getting my hopes up (see "folly," above).

I deeply respect the parade of "planetary partisans" who have argued for the moon next, or Mars next, or an asteroid next. Many are old, old friends of mine and I wish them all well. But whenever the answer comes before the logic, the argumentation is bound to be a little suspect.

So, suppose a strategy emerges that does not call for big-world surface footsteps anytime soon. Imagine astronauts flying up to another world, but not immediately descending down onto its surface. link..

Shuttle touches down in sunny California

2009-09-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

Bad weather rules out Florida landing at end of Discovery’s 14-day mssion

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. - The space shuttle Discovery and its seven astronauts took a cross-country detour and landed safely in California on Friday after stormy weather kept them from returning home to Florida for the second day in a row.

Discovery swooped through the sky and touched down at Edwards Air Force Base an hour before sunset, ending its delivery trip to the international space station.

“Welcome home, Discovery,” Mission Control radioed. “Congratulations on an extremely successful mission.”Stormy weather made it too risky to bring Discovery back to its home port Thursday, and conditions were even worse Friday. So flight director Richard Jones opted for the sunny skies of the Mojave Desert.

NASA generally prefers Florida landings because the cross-country ferry trip, which involves transporting the shuttle atop a modified jumbo jet, costs $1.8 million and takes more than a week.

Thunderstorms also delayed the beginning of Discovery’s mission. The shuttle blasted off Aug. 28 and logged 5.7 million miles (9 million kilometers).

Discovery and its crew, led by commander Rick Sturckow, dropped off tons of supplies and equipment, including a $5 million treadmill named after Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert. That was his consolation prize after pushing for naming rights to a new space station room. NASA chose Tranquility for the yet-to-be-launched room, even though Colbert won the online vote.

The treadmill will be assembled later this month. The space station’s newest resident, Nicole Stott, who rode up on Discovery, is expected to break it in as the first runner. link..

Lunar lander qualifies for prize

2009-09-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

William Pomerantz / X Prize Foundation

Armadillo Aerospace's Scorpius rocket fires its engine above a mock lunar landing
pad on Saturday while a ground crew member looks on from a distance.

Armadillo Aerospace qualified to win a million dollars of NASA's money today by accomplishing a rocket-powered round trip modeled after a moon landing. The team's remote-controlled Scorpius rocket (formerly known as the Super Mod) blasted off from its Texas launch pad, rose into the sky and floated over to set down on a mock moon landing pad. After refueling, Scorpius blasted off again for what one observer called a "perfect flight" back to the original launch pad.

The judges confirmed that Armadillo satisfied all the contest requirements. Scorpius made pinpoint landings within a meter of each landing pad's center target, according to William Pomerantz, the director of space prizes for the X Prize Foundation.

That means the million-dollar top prize in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge will definitely be given away this year. But Armadillo's rocketeers will still have to wait another month and a half to find out if they won, while other entrants in the competition try to do the same feat better.

Rainy conditions posed a challenge for the flight, and for a while it looked as if the prospects for flying today were slim. A fortunate break in the weather gave Armadillo a chance to go for the gold.

William Pomerantz / X Prize Foundation

Members of the Armadillo Aerospace team celebrate after Saturday's flight.

You can follow Armadillo's progress via this Twitter news feed. Read on for the full story behind the Lunar Lander Challenge and its payoff:

First posted 8:40 p.m. ET Sept. 11: Video-game millionaire John Carmack is aiming to win a million dollars of NASA's money when he and his Armadillo Aerospace teammates take the field this weekend for the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. And the way he sees it, the biggest thing standing in his way is an obstacle that's become quite familiar to NASA's space jockeys of late: the weather.

"It looks bad all weekend," Carmack told me via telephone from Caddo, Texas. "We need two hours without precipitation, basically, to get this done."

NASA faced its own weather problems this week at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the weather was so unstable that mission planners diverted the shuttle Discovery to a California landing site instead. Carmack doesn't have that kind of option available to him: For better or worse, he and his Armadillo team have to launch and land their Super Mod lander prototype at their Texas test site at least twice sometime in the next couple of days, or pass up this year's chance to win a million-dollar prize.

"I'm really most worried about the weather, all things considered," said Carmack, who has steered Armadillo's remote-controlled rocket through prize-worthy practice runs more than a dozen times. "It's just business as usual now. As long as my nerves stay together for another 30 hours or so, I think we're going to be OK."

How the challenge works
NASA set up the Lunar Lander Challenge three years ago, ostensibly to promote the development of rocket technologies that could come into play during future moon landings. What the competition has actually done is give a new generation of rocketeers something to shoot for - just as the $10 million Ansari X Prize encouraged the rise of private-sector spaceflight.

The contest, backed by $2 million in prizes provided by NASA, is set up with two levels. Last year in New Mexico, Armadillo took the top prize for the easier level, netting $350,000. Controlled via Carmack's laptop, the Mod rocket blasted off and rose to a height of more than 160 feet (50 meters), hung in the air for a minute and a half, then landed on another launch pad. After a pause for refueling, the Mod retraced its course back to the original pad for the win.

This time, Armadillo's Super Mod faces a tougher task in the Level 2 competition: The alcohol-fueled, pressure-tank-equipped rocket has to hang in the air for a minimum of 3 minutes during each leg of the round trip, and it has to land on a pad that is strewn with mock lunar boulders.

The judges will give Carmack and the rest of the ground crew just 135 minutes to fuel up, fly, refuel, fly again and secure the Super Mod after the flight. There will be built-in holds along the way, however, so the whole exercise could take longer than 135 minutes - in fact, Carmack is wondering whether the clock can be stopped if it starts raining.

"Will the judges stop time and let us pick up later?" he asked. (The answer, we found out later, is yes.)

The funny thing about this contest is that the Armadillo team may not know for sure until October whether it's won a prize. That's because, unlike past years, the 2009 Lunar Lander Challenge is a traveling road show.

Masten Space Systems is due to try for the Level 1 second prize ($150,000) next week at its home base in Mojave, Calif. It will also shoot for Level 2 on Oct. 7-8 and Oct. 28-29. Another competitor, Unreasonable Rocket, will shoot for Level 1 as well as Level 2 at its launch site in Cantil, Calif., on Oct. 30-31.

If multiple teams guide their rocket through the required course successfully, the prize goes to the rocketeers with the best average accuracy. Thus, Armadillo could conceivably accomplish the Level 2 flight and still miss out on the $1 million first prize as well as the $500,000 second prize.

"To wait another month and a half to find out what place you got - that's a little bit odd, but it's understandable," Carmack said.

The challenge's prime payoff
A million dollars would go a long way toward accelerating Armadillo's progress - or progress at Masten, or Unreasonable Rocket, for that matter. Carmack's team may be a little better off, in light of the fact that the company where he works, Id Software, was recently acquired by ZeniMax Media. "I have a bit more personal resources at my disposal," he said. In any case, he's planning to expand Armadillo's team of three full-time employees and four hourly workers sometime soon.

It's safe to say that the folks at Armadillo, Masten and Unreasonable Rocket aren't thinking about building an actual lunar lander right now - so the current wave of second thoughts over NASA's moon plans won't affect their business plans at all. The Lunar Lander Challenge is just one small step in the long march of private-sector commercial spaceflight. Armadillo, for example, is continuing to work on a rocket engine program for the Rocket Racing League - and on some other projects that Carmack can't talk about quite yet.

"Eventually we're hoping to go all the way to orbit," Carmack said. But that milestone is still many small steps ahead. For now, he's just worried about getting a couple of hours without rain this weekend - and getting a chance to deliver on the true promise of the Lunar Lander Challenge.

The X Prize Foundation, which is managing the challenge with sponsorship from Northrop Grumman, estimates that the contest has generated more than 70,000 hours of skilled work on advanced rocket technologies, with just $350,000 paid out to date. In the long run, that payoff may dwarf the million dollars as well as the rocket ships built to win that cash.

"I think the government is getting a tremendous return on what they've put into this," Carmack said. "When it gets to the point where we have to go and find more great people, we know exactly which people have demonstrated the right type of thinking, the right skill sets and the right determination." link..

Moon rocks lost in space? No, lost on Earth

2009-09-14T12:09:00.000-07:00

More than 130 countries received gifts of lunar rubble from Apollo missions

An alleged piece of moon rock acquired during the first manned mission to the moon which was bequeathed to the Rijksmuseum on the death of former Dutch Prime Minister Willem Drees. AMSTERDAM - Attention, countries of the world: Do you know where your moon rocks are?

The discovery of a fake moon rock in the Netherlands' national museum should be a wake-up call for more than 130 countries that received gifts of lunar rubble from both the Apollo 11 flight in 1969 and Apollo 17 three years later.

Nearly 270 rocks scooped up by U.S. astronauts were given to foreign countries by the Nixon administration. But according to experts and research by The Associated Press, the whereabouts of some of the small rocks are unknown.

"There is no doubt in my mind that many moon rocks are lost or stolen and now sitting in private collections," said Joseph Gutheinz, a University of Phoenix instructor and former U.S. government investigator who has made a project of tracking down the lunar treasures.

The Rijksmuseum, more noted as a repository for 17th century Dutch paintings, announced last month it had had its plum-sized "moon" rock tested, only to discover it was a piece of petrified wood, possibly from Arizona. The museum said it inherited the rock from the estate of a former prime minister.

The real Dutch moon rocks are in a natural history museum. But the misidentification raised questions about how well countries have safeguarded their presents from Washington.

Genuine moon rocks, while worthless in mineral terms, can fetch six-figure sums from black-market collectors.

Of 135 rocks from the Apollo 17 mission given away to nations or their leaders, only about 25 have been located by CollectSpace.com, a Web site for space history buffs that has long attempted to compile a list.

That should not be taken to mean the others are lost — just that the records kept at the time are far from complete.

The AP reviewed declassified correspondence between the State Department and U.S. embassies in 1973 and was able to locate ten additional Apollo 17 rocks — in Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Barbados, France, Poland, Norway, Costa Rica, Egypt and Nepal.

But the correspondence yielded a meager 30 leads, such as the name of the person who received them or the museum where they were to be initially displayed. Ecuador and Cyprus are among several that said they had never heard of the rocks. Five were handed to African dictators long since dead or deposed.

The outlook for tracking the estimated 134 Apollo 11 rocks is even bleaker. The locations of fewer than a dozen are known.

"NASA turned over the samples to the State Department to distribute," said Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, a NASA historian, in an e-mailed response to questions. "We don't have any records about when and to whom the rocks were given."

"The Office of the Historian does not keep records of what became of the moon rocks, and to my knowledge, there is no one entity that does so," e-mailed Tiffany Hamelin, the State Department historian.

That may seem surprising now, but in the early 1970s, few expected Apollo 17 would be the last mission to the moon. With the passage of time, the rocks' value has skyrocketed.

NASA keeps most of the 382 kilograms (842 lbs) gathered by the Apollo missions locked away, giving small samples to researchers and lending a set of larger rocks for exhibitions.

Apollo 11 gift rocks typically weigh just 0.05 grams, scarcely more than a grain of rice. The Apollo 17 gift rocks weigh about 1.1 grams. Both are encased in plastic globes to protect them and ease viewing.

Each U.S. state got both sets of rocks, and Gutheinz said he and his students have accounted for nearly all the Apollo 17 rocks, though some are in storage and inaccessible. They have only just begun researching Apollo 11 rocks in the states.

In one known legal sale of moon samples, in 1993, moon soil weighing 0.2 grams from an unmanned Russian probe was auctioned at Sotheby's for $442,500.

Gutheinz, the former U.S. investigator, says ignorance about the rocks is an invitation to thieves, and he should know.

In 1998, he was working for the NASA Office of the Inspector General in a sting operation to uncover fake rocks when he was offered the real Apollo 17 rock — the one given to Honduras — for $5 million.

The rock was recovered and eventually returned to Honduras, but not before a fight in Florida District Court that went down in legal annals as "United States vs. One Lucite Ball Containing Lunar Material (One Moon Rock) and One Ten Inch By Fourteen Inch Wooden Plaque."

The case is not unique.

Malta's Apollo 17 rock was stolen in 2004. In Spain, the newspaper El Mundo this summer reported that the Apollo 17 rock given to the country's former dictator, Francisco Franco, is missing.

Franco died in 1975. The paper quoted his grandson as denying the rock had been sold. He said his mother had lost it, but claimed it was the family's personal possession, to sell if it wished.

Gutheinz says Romania's Apollo 17 rock disappeared after the fall and execution of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989.

According to Gutheinz and other reports, Pakistan's Apollo 17 rock is missing; so is Nicaragua's, since the Sandinistas came to power in 1979. Afghanistan's Apollo 17 rock sat in Kabul's national museum until it was ransacked in 1996.

In fact, the Netherlands is one of the few countries where the location of both the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 gift rocks is known. Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand are others — though none has rocks from both missions on permanent public display and some have been kept in storage for decades.

The Amsterdam case appears to be not fraud but the result of poor vetting by the Rijksmuseum.

Spokeswoman Xandra van Gelder said the museum checked with NASA after receiving the rock in 1992 from the estate of the late Prime Minister Willem Drees. NASA told the museum, without seeing it, that it was "possible" it was a moon rock. link...

The Cliq: Motorola's first Android phone

2009-09-13T06:15:00.000-07:00

On Thursday morning, Motorola officially introduced its first Google Android device: the Motorola Cliq. The announcement was made by Motorola's co-CEO Sanjay Jha at the Mobilize 09 conference here in San Francisco, who was later joined by Cole Brodman, T-Mobile's chief technology and information officer, to show off the Cliq.

Long-rumored as the Morrison, the Motorola Cliq will be available from T-Mobile later this fall, just in time for the holidays, but pricing was not revealed during its introduction. T-Mobile will offer the phone in two colors: titanium or winter white, and it will be sold worldwide in 2010 as the Motorola Dext. Unfortunately, Motorola did not unveil the Sholes but did say that it would announce a second Android phone in the coming weeks.

he Cliq measures 4.49 inches tall by 2.28 inches wide by 0.62 inch thick and weighs 5.6 ounces. It features a 3.1-inch HVGA touch screen with a 320x480 pixel resolution and has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard as well as a soft keyboard. It's also equipped with a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack.

The phone will run Android 1.5 Cupcake and offer access to Google's various services, including Google Maps with Street View, Google Voice Search, Picasa, and GTalk. The smartphone supports a number e-mail clients, such as Yahoo, Windows Live, and other POP3 and IMAP services, and syncs with Microsoft Exchange, including calendar. The QuickOffice Suite is also onboard for document viewing.

The quad-band Cliq is 3G-capable and offers a full HTML Google browser, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. Multimedia features come in the form of a 5-megapixel camera with video recording capabilities and a built-in music and video player. The smartphone also comes preloaded with the Amazon MP3 Store, a dedicated YouTube app, Shazam, Last.fm, and Imeem. Rated talk time is 6 hours and up to 13.5 days of standby time.

Obviously, it's a pretty full-featured phone, but it's not any different from a lot of smartphones today, which is why Motorola hopes its Motoblur user interface will help differentiate it from the rest of the pack. As discussed in thekeynote today, Motoblur syncs information from different sources, such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and your personal and work e-mail accounts, and automatically streams updates to your home screen. The idea behind it is that this constant stream of information will mean you have to spend less time opening and closing applications.

Motoblur is certainly nice in that it brings together all your information, much like Palm's Synergy feature, but it'll be interesting to see the real-life user experience of it. Will it be really useful to have all that data on your home screen or will it just be a jumbled mess? Also, while the specs are good enough, they're not exactly mind-blowing either.

We'll be getting some hands-on time with the Cliq later this afternoon, so we'll be able to tell you more then. We'll also have photos and videos. In the meantime, please chime in and tell us what you think of the device. Link...

The Mobile Technologies Group

2009-09-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

The Mobile Technologies Group at Georgia Institute of Technology is a research group and project studio focused on exploring the social impact of current and next- generation mobile technologies. As mobile and wireless devices become ubiquitous elements within our everyday lives, we seek to actively understand, challenge, and advance new and experimental applications for these technologies. link..

Motorola shares jump on hopes for Google phone

2009-09-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Motorola Inc shares rose 6.5 percent on Friday on hopes the company could turn around its loss-making handset business with the new cellphone it developed with Google Inc. link..

KATO NK-500 VR mobile equipment

2009-09-11T10:17:00.000-07:00

mobile equipment
Brand: KATO
Capacity: 50 Ton
Made in 2006
Origin: Japan
Engine: Mitsubishi
Chassis: Mitsubishi...

link..

CHINA mobile LCD

2009-09-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

T-Mobile USA Unveils the Motorola CLIQ With MOTOBLUR

2009-09-11T09:47:00.000-07:00

[T-Mobile unveils Motorola's first Android powered device - the CLIQ with MOTOBLUR. The MOTOBLUR solution manages and integrates communications – from work e-mail to social networking activity – on your CLIQ.]

San Francisco -- T-Mobile USA, Inc. anounces the upcoming availability of the Motorola CLIQ™ with MOTOBLUR™, the first Android-powered device from Motorola, Inc. and the first device to feature the innovative MOTOBLUR solution. The CLIQ will be available exclusively in the U.S. from T-Mobile later this fall.

Developed by Motorola, MOTOBLUR is an innovative solution that manages and integrates communications – from work e-mail to social networking activity – on your CLIQ. Updates to contacts, posts, messages, photos and more are streamed together and synced from sources including Facebook®, Twitter™, MySpace®, Gmail™, and work and personal e-mail. MOTOBLUR automatically delivers these updates to the home screen in easy-to-view streams so there is no need to open and close different mobile applications to keep up with the latest content. A 3G-capable smartphone featuring a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a full touch-screen display, the CLIQ is designed to keep the conversation moving, enabling fast messaging on the fly and easy navigation through MOTOBLUR’s streams and widgets. link..

The Year in Energy

2009-09-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

When oil prices shot to $145 per barrel this year, supporters of alternative-energy technologies of all kinds cheered. Spirits fell, however, especially at some advanced biofuels companies, after oil prices plummeted to $40, a contingency considered at the beginning of this year in our realistic assessment of biofuels.

Capturing more light: A startup called 1366 Technologies says that it has found a way to significantly increase the efficiency of silicon solar cells. Ordinarily, the flat wires on the surface of solar cells that are used to collect electrical current prevent light from reaching the active material in a cell, reducing efficiency. The company’s new design traps much of the light that would have been reflected. In the picture, some of the red light from a laser is redirected from the wire to areas on the cell where the light can be absorbed. The new approach dramatically helps improve the performance of solar cells without increasing costs.
Credit: 1366 Technologies

Yet the year has seen some remarkable advances in energy technology, and many of the innovators in this area remain hopeful that the coming decade won't be like the 1980s, when a drop in oil prices snuffed out interest in alternative energy.

A number of improvements to wind turbines could increase the amount of power that they produce and make wind power cheaper. Among the improvements were new blade designs inspired by whales, as well asbetter generators and a new enclosed design that could double power output.

Electric vehicles and plug-ins also took steps forward with better batteries, as well as with an ambitious planby a company called Better Place to develop a vehicle-charging and battery-swapping network that will begin in Israel and Denmark. More recently, the same company has announced projects in Australia, California, and Hawaii. One of the cars that could be a part of this system was announced by Renault--indeed, all of the major automakers have confirmed projects for plug-in hybrids or electric cars.

Solar panels continue to improve. Experimental solar concentrators could make solar power as cheap as electricity from coal. Modifications to conventional solar cells could lower prices even sooner. A basic research finding could lead to a cheap way to store solar power--and, for that matter, any other source of electricity. That could be a boon to the power grid and allow renewable sources to supply much more of our electricity. (See David Talbot's "Lifeline for Renewable Power.") link..

More AC Power from Solar Panels

2009-09-03T14:51:00.000-07:00

There's more to solar power than blue glassy panels shimmering on rooftops. Just as important are the inverters that convert DC power created by the solar panels into grid-ready AC power. Typically, all the panels in a rooftop PV system are connected to one large inverter mounted on the side of a house.

Behind the scene: Small micro-inverters, such as the one shown above, can be attached behind each solar panel to convert DC power into AC and improve the system’s overall efficiency.
Credit: Enphase Energy

Startup Enphase Energy of Petaluma, CA, is now making the first micro-inverters. These smaller inverters can be bolted to the racking under each solar panel, to convert DC power into AC for each panel individually. The company claims that the devices will increase a PV system's efficiency by 5 to 25 percent and decrease the cost of solar power.

Enphase has raised more than $20 million in its latest round of funding. The company has teamed up with various distributors and partners, including solar-module manufacturer Suntech Power Holdings and installerAkeena Solar, to bring its device to customers. The micro-inverters could be used on residential, commercial, or even utility-scale PV systems, says Todd Wilson, a general partner at RockPort Capital Partners, one of the leading investors in Enphase's technology.

In addition to DC-to-AC conversion, inverters are in charge of getting the most power from solar modules. They have a logic circuit that constantly searches for the best voltage and current levels at which the panels can operate. (Power is the product of voltage and current.link..

Chasing the Sun

2009-09-03T14:49:00.000-07:00

The federal government is about to spend billions of dollars on renewable energy. In Part II of our series on the federal stimulus bill, we look at the impact the spending will have on the future of solar power.

By David Rotman

This is the second of two articles by David Rotman on technology and the federal stimulus package. The first, "Can Technology Save the Economy?," appeared in the May/June 2009 issue and examined the economic consequences of the U.S. government's plans to spend $100 billion on technology.

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Solar Thermal Heats Up

2009-09-03T14:48:00.000-07:00

The hitch with solar power has always been its sky-high cost: the sun may be free, but the materials and the equipment needed to convert rays into electricity certainly aren't. That's why entrepreneurs have long been searching for a way to create a solar company with an economic model that resembles a software startup--selling a sophisticated computer program that drives cheap, commodity hardware.

Power mirrors: ESolar's solar thermal test bed in Lancaster, CA, is set to start producing power for the grid later this summer. The field's 24,000 mirrors can produce five megawatts of electricity by reflecting solar radiation to tower-based water boilers that drive turbines.
Credit: eSolar

Bill Gross, founder of the startup incubator Idealab, based in Pasadena, CA, believes that he's got it: an enterprise designed to kick off what he calls a "disruptive revolution" in carbon-free energy. A serial entrepreneur who has launched more than 30 tech companies, Gross is CEO of eSolar, a Pasadena-based solar thermal venture that will go live with a five-megawatt test bed of its utility-scale technology on the grid later this summer.

But that's only a tiny fraction of what's to come. The privately held eSolar and its power plant operating partner, NRG Energy, have announced agreements with three electric utilities to install 500 megawatts of thermal solar capacity over the next few years.

To put that into perspective, that is more than the current 450 megawatts of solar thermal capacity that's online in the United States today, says Daniel Englander, a solar energy analyst with GTM Research, in Cambridge, MA. And it's a significant fraction of the total of 1.5 gigawatts of photovoltaic solar capacity currently link...

Solar for Dark Climates

2009-09-03T14:47:00.000-07:00

Cool Energy, a startup based in Boulder, CO, is developing a system that produces heat and electricity from the sun. It could help make solar energy competitive with conventional sources of energy in relatively dark and cold climates, such as the northern half of the United States and countries such as Canada and Germany.

Solar generator: A prototype of a Stirling engine that's powered by a solar water heater.
Credit: Cool Energy

The company's system combines a conventional solar water heater with a new Stirling-engine-based generator that it is developing. In cool months, the solar heater provides hot water and space heating. In warmer months, excess heat is used to drive the Stirling engine and generate electricity.

Samuel Weaver, the company's president and CEO, says that the system is more economical than solar water heaters alone because it makes use of heat that would otherwise be wasted during summer months. The system will also pay for itself about twice as quickly as conventional solar photovoltaics will, he says. That's in part because it can efficiently offset heating bills in the winter--something that photovoltaics can't do--and in part because the evacuated tubes used to collect heat from the sun make better use of diffuse light than conventional solar panels do.

The system is designed to provide almost all of a house's heating needs. But the generator, which will produce only 1.5 kilowatts of power, won't be enough to power a house on its own. The system is designed to work with power from the grid, although the power is enough to run a refrigerator and a few lights in the event of a power failure.

The company's key innovation is the Stirling engine, which is designed to work at temperatures much lowerthan ordinary Stirling engines. In these engines, a piston is driven by heating up one side of the engine while keeping the opposite side cool. Ordinarily, the engines require temperatures of above 500 °C, but Cool Energy's engine is designed to run at the 200 degrees that solar water heaters provide. link..

Q&A: Mark Little, Head of GE Global Research

2009-09-03T14:45:00.000-07:00

Mark Little, head of the $6 billion-a-year research effort at GE, sat down with Technology Review recently to talk about his company's latest technologies and how GE will respond to pending carbon emissions caps, such as those proposed in the Waxman-Markey energy and climate-change bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Global research: Mark Little, the head of research at GE.
Credit: Kevin Bullis, Technology Review

Little is the director of GE Global Research, a massive, 2,600-person research organization based in Niskayuna, NY, that employs about 1,000 PhDs. The company's research funding includes nearly $1.5 billion directed toward "clean tech," such as wind turbines and hybrid locomotives. Little says that advances at GE in thin-film solar, the smart grid, coal gasification, and capturing carbon dioxide emitted by power plants will prove key to meeting future emissions goals.

The company also has a heavy investment in nuclear power, including an improved design now working its way through the regulatory process. But the company's latest models are essentially simplified and less-expensive versions of existing reactors, not radical departures such as pebble-bed nuclear reactors orsmaller reactors that can be manufactured and shipped to power-plant sites. Those more advanced designs still don't look financially attractive, Little says.

While impending carbon caps are helping to drive research at GE, direct federal funding is helping too. Little describes two projects--a $2 million stimulus-funded smart-grid demonstration and a $100 million battery factory--that GE hopes to receive funding for this year. link...

Cheaper Solar Thermal Power

2009-09-03T14:44:00.000-07:00

Stirling Energy Systems (SES), based in Phoenix, has decreased the complexity and cost of its technology for converting the heat in sunlight into electricity, allowing for high-volume production. It will begin building very large solar-power plants using its equipment as soon as next year.

Sun catchers: This is the latest design of a system for focusing sunlight on a Stirling engine to generate electricity.
Credit: Sandia National Laboratories/Randy Montoya

The company is currently building a 1.5-megawatt, 60-unit demonstration plant that will use the company's latest design. Stirling expects to finish that project by the end of the year. It also has contracts with two California utilities to supply a total of 800 megawatts of solar power in Southern California. The first of the plants that will supply this power could be built starting the middle of next year, pending government permits and loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The projects are part of a resurgence in what's known as solar thermal power. Various solar thermal technologies were developed starting in the 1970s, but a breakdown in government funding and incentives caused them to stall before they reached a scale of production large enough to drive down costs and allow them to compete with conventional sources of electricity. "It was a classic problem with solar. The market support to bring solar to high volume wasn't there," says Ian Simington, the chairman of SES and chief executive of the solar division of NTR, a company based in Dublin, Ireland, that bought a controlling share of SES last year.

Recent state mandates and incentives for renewable energy have led to a new push to commercialize the technology. There are over six gigawatts of concentrated solar power under contract in the southwestern United States right now, says Thomas Mancini, program manager for concentrated-solar-power technology at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM. That's equivalent to about six nuclear-power plants. BrightSource Energyhas contracts to provide 2.6 gigawatts of solar power with concentrated solar power (a previous version of this story cited only one of two 1.3 gigawatt contracts), and Solar Millenium has announced a project that would generate nearly one gigawatt of power. link...

Solar Industry: No Breakthroughs Needed

2009-09-03T14:43:00.000-07:00

The federal government is behind the times when it comes to making decisions aboutadvancing the solar industry, according to several solar-industry experts. This has led, they argue, to a misplaced emphasis on research into futuristic new technologies, rather than support for scaling up existing ones. That was the prevailing opinion at a symposium last week put together by the National Academies in Washington, DC, on the topic of scaling up the solar industry.

Cheaper solar: First Solar’s improvements in manufacturing photovoltaics have helped lead to big drops in cost. A worker at a First Solar factory in Frankfurt, Germany, moves one of the company's solar panels.
Credit: First Solar

The meeting was attended by numerous experts from the photovoltaic industry and academia. And many complained that the emphasis on finding new technologies is misplaced. "This is such a fast-moving field," said Ken Zweibel, director of the Solar Institute at George Washington University. "To some degree, we're fighting the last war. We're answering the questions from 5, 10, 15 years ago in a world where things have really changed."

In the past year, the federal government has announced new investments in research into "transformational" solar technologies that represent radical departures from existing crystalline-silicon or thin-film technologies that are already on the market. The investments include new energy-research centers sponsored by the Department of Energy and a new agency called ARPA-Energy, modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Such investments are prompted by the fact that conventional solar technologies have historically produced electricity that's far more expensive than electricity from fossil fuels.

In fact, Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said that a breakthrough is needed for photovoltaic technology to make a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gases. Researchers are exploring solar cells that use very cheap materials or even novel physics that could dramatically increase efficiency, which could bring down costs. link..

Biological Solar

2009-09-03T14:42:00.000-07:00

Combining synthetic biology and solar technology could provide a way to trap carbon dioxide and produce fuel.

By David Berry

By harvesting and burning fossil fuels, human beings essentially provide the tail end of a cycle hundreds of millions of years long. Plants and algae that grew by taking in carbon dioxide eventually turned into the deposits of coal and petroleum that we use to power our lives, rereleasing into the atmosphere the same carbon dioxide that nature had previously sequestered. Reducing these emissions will require us to change the way we think about both energy and carbon.

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Shade Power

2009-09-03T14:40:00.000-07:00

Photovoltaic cells made from organic polymers, rather than crystalline silicon, could make solar power much cheaper. Last year Konarka, a startup based in Lowell, MA, opened a factory for such solar panels, which are flexible and produced in a process akin to printing (see "Mass Production of Plastic Solar Cells"). The first application of Konarka's potentially transformative technology? Umbrellas. SkyShades, based in Orlando, FL, is incorporating the panels into umbrellas designed for outdoor seating areas in places like restaurants and bars. Patrons can recharge mobile devices such as laptops and cell phones from outlets built into the stem of the umbrella. The four-meter-wide Powerbrella can generate up to 128 watts of electricity, which charges a bank of batteries located in its base. link...

Toyota to Deliver Plug-In Hybrids

2009-09-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

The new Prius is designed so that its battery pack can be swapped out for a plug-in lithium-ion battery.Today at the North American International Automotive Show, in Detroit, Toyota announced that later this year, it will release a version of the Prius hybrid car whose battery can be recharged from an ordinary power outlet. By moving up the delivery data of the plug-in vehicle--originally scheduled for 2010--Toyota has slipped ahead of GM, whose Chevy Voltplug-in is promised for late 2010.

Plug-ready Prius: Toyota will roll out 500 plug-in hybrid cars later this year by adding lithium-ion batteries to the 2010-model Prius unveiled yesterday at the Detroit auto show. Toyota is a full year ahead of GM’s schedule for the Chevy Volt plug-in but behind China’s BYD, which launched its F3DM plug-in sedan in China last month.
Credit: Toyota Motor

Toyota's fidelity to hybrid technology marks a sharp contrast with rivals such as Renault and Mitsubishi, which are planning to leapfrog the hybrid in favor of fully battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs). At the auto show, several U.S. automakers appear to be leaning in the same direction, with Ford Motor, in particular, vowing to release an EV commercial van next year and an EV commuter car in 2011.

Even Toyota is hedging its bets, presenting a battery-powered EV based on its four-seat iQ and promising to begin selling a similar EV commuter car in the United States by 2012. But Toyota explicitly ruled out abandoning hybrid technology anytime soon, issuing a definitive statement on the eve of the Detroit show calling hybrids its "long-term core powertrain technology."

The 2010 Prius available to consumers will still come equipped with a nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) battery pack and no plug, but Toyota says that it is "plug-in ready"--designed and engineered to accept a lighter and more energy-dense lithium-ion battery pack that can be charged from the grid. Toyota will also produce 500 lithium-powered plug-in Priuses for its commercial and government leasing customers starting later this year. Toyota-Panasonic joint venture Panasonic EV Energy will supply the lithium batteries.

The fact that the plug-in battery pack can be swapped in for an ordinary hybrid battery suggests that it will be relatively small, and that the plug-in Priuses will have a smaller electric-only range than the Volt and the Chinese-built BYD F3DM. The plug-in vehicles that Toyota has been testing in Japan, France, California, and the United Kingdom are Priuses equipped with a second NiMH battery pack that gives them less than 10 miles of electric-only range. link..

A Gas-Sipping Van

2009-09-03T14:36:00.000-07:00

A spinoff from the Rocky Mountain Institute has developed a 100-miles-per-gallon plug-in hybrid.Last week, Bright Automotive, a startup based in Anderson, IN, unveiled a plug-in hybrid utility van designed to travel 50 miles on half a gallon of gasoline. The company plans to start producing the Idea vehicle in large volume by the end of 2012, and it hopes to sell 50,000 a year starting in 2013.

Bright Idea: A plug-in hybrid from Bright Automotive called the Idea.
Credit: Bright Automotive

At a time when dozens of automakers are developing new hybrids and electric vehicles, Bright is notable because of its history. Its CEO, John Waters, designed the battery pack for the EV-1, GM's first electric vehicle, and the company is a spinoff from the Rocky Mountain Institute, a highly regarded nonprofit based in Boulder, CO. The institute is famous for proposing in the mid-1990s to radically change the design of cars to make them more efficient. The Idea is the partial realization of its Hypercar concept, a hybrid vehicle that would use as little as one-fifth the amount of fuel that today's vehicles use. It does so by combining a hybrid of gas and electric propulsion (and eventually fuel cells instead of the gas engine) with lightweight composite materials, an aerodynamic design, and more efficient electronic accessories. The Rocky Mountain Institute had started another company to develop the Hypercar, but that vehicle never made it into production.

Bright thinks that its new business model, which involves selling vehicles to commercial and government fleets rather than to the public, could help make things different this time. Fleet customers look at the total cost of ownership, Waters says, not just the up-front cost, which is higher for plug-in hybrids, since they incorporated both a gas engine and an electric motor and also require a costly battery pack. He says that over the life of the vehicle, fuel savings will make up for the higher initial cost. Several potential customers have already signed letters of intent to purchase the vehicle once it's in mass production, says Lyle Shuey, Bright's vice president of marketing and sales. The van was designed in cooperation with a number of potential customers, including Duke Energy--an investor in Bright--and Cox Communications. link..

IBM Invests in Battery Research

2009-09-03T14:34:00.000-07:00

IBM Research is beginning an ambitious project that it hopes will lead to the commercialization of batteries that store 10 times as much energy as today's within the next five years. The company will partner with U.S. national labs to develop a promising but controversial technology that uses energy-dense but highly flammable lithium metal to react with oxygen in the air. The payoff, says the company, will be a lightweight, powerful, and rechargeable battery for the electrical grid and the electrification of transportation.

Waterproof power: This protective casing envelops a functioning lithium-metal battery electrode, excluding water but letting lithium ions pass. It’s part of a prototype battery made by PolyPlus Battery of Berkeley, CA.
Credit: PolyPlus

Lithium metal-air batteries can store a tremendous amount of energy--in theory, more than 5,000 watt-hours per kilogram. That's more than ten-times as much as today's high-performance lithium-ion batteries, and more than another class of energy-storage devices: fuel cells. Instead of containing a second reactant inside the cell, these batteries react with oxygen in the air that's pulled in as needed, making them lightweight and compact.

IBM is pursuing the risky technology instead of lithium-ion batteries because it has the potential to reach high enough energy densities to change the transportation system, says Chandrasekhar Narayan, manager of science and technology at IBM's Almaden Research Center, in San Jose, CA. "With all foreseeable developments, lithium-ion batteries are only going to get about two times better than they are today," he says. "To really make an impact on transportation and on the grid, you need higher energy density than that." One of the project's goals, says Narayan, is a lightweight 500-mile battery for a family car. The Chevy Volt can go 40 miles before using the gas tank, andTesla Motors' Model S line can travel up to 300 miles without a recharge.

One of the main challenges in making lithium metal-air batteries is that "air isn't just oxygen," says Jeff Dahn, a professor of materials science at Dalhousie University, in Nova Scotia. Where there's air there's moisture, and "humidity is the death of lithium," says Dahn. When lithium metal meets water, an explosive reaction ensues. These batteries will require protective membranes that exclude water but let in oxygen, and are stable over time. link...

A Better Battery for Laptops

2009-09-03T14:32:00.000-07:00

Boston-Power says that it's poised to enter the market for portable power, with a notebook battery the company claims is safer, lasts longer, and can be charged faster. The Westborough, MA, startup recently announced that it is more than tripling production of its high-performance battery, called the Sonata, after receiving $45 million in a third round of venture financing. The move puts the company in a position to mass-produce and commercialize its next-generation lithium-ion battery within months.

Staying power: These battery cells are capable of recharging up to 80 percent of their capacity in 30 minutes, and they retain 80 percent of their strength after three years. The image on bottom shows a side-by-side comparison of the heat given off by two batteries generating the same level of energy: on the left is a battery from a current market leader, and on the right, Boston-Power’s Sonata battery. The green colors represent cooler temperatures. High temperatures can lead to explosive battery malfunction. (The brightly colored section outlined in black represents the batteries. The remaining area shows heat emitted by the laptop.)
Credit: Boston-Power

"In partnership with GP Batteries, one of Asia's largest battery manufacturers, we now have our second factory up and running in the greater China region," says Christina Lampe-Onnerud, the company's founder and CEO. In 2002, Technology Review named Lampe-Onnerud one of its top innovators under the age of 35 for her efforts to develop better-performing lithium-ion batteries with less volatile substances. Based on that research, she founded Boston-Power in 2005. Now, after raising $68 million in total, she says that her company will be able to manufacture a million battery cells per month by the end of 2008.

Oak Investment Partners, based in Westport, CT, provided this latest infusion of capital, building upon earlier investments by Venrock Associates, Granite Global Ventures, and Gabriel Venture Partners.

Although the Sonata will not offer greater energy capacity per use--with a four-hour run time, its performance will be average for the market--the company hopes that the battery's three-year life span, innovative safeguards, and ability to recharge quickly will help it gain a foothold in the battery market. As opposed to existing notebook batteries, which can take an hour to recharge to 80 percent capacity, the Sonata can reach that same level in just 30 minutes, according to Boston-Power. And whereas current batteries degrade very quickly, permanently losing up to 50 percent of their capacity within months, the Sonata retains up to 80 percent of its capacity over three years. In fact, since the typical laptop battery tends to degrade very rapidly, the Sonata will have a greater per-use capacity in the long run. link...

John McCain, Battery Booster

2009-09-03T14:31:00.000-07:00

The senator's proposed $300 million prize for an electric-car battery prompts excitement, skepticism.Earlier this week, Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, proposed a $300 million federally funded prize to spur the development of a vastly improved battery for electric cars and plug-in hybrids. While McCain offered few specifics, industry experts say that in targeting battery costs, he has identified a major obstacle to reducing fuel consumption in cars.

Credit: Technology Review

"Current vehicle-battery developers all recognize that reducing battery cost is instrumental in the adoption of hybrid-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles" that recharge from the power grid, says Yet-Ming Chiang, founder of A123 Systems, a Watertown, MA, company that develops advanced lithium-ion batteries and is working with several carmakers on plug-in hybrids. "Offering this prize is a great way to focus attention on the problem and get the dialogue going on how we will solve it. I would love to compete for this prize, and the wheels are turning in my mind."

McCain said that new batteries should "leapfrog" the size, capacity, and power of commercially available models, and at 30 percent of current costs. But since plug-in hybrids are not on the market yet, there is no clear basis for estimating a cost savings. "It's hard to measure without a benchmark," says Gerbrand Ceder, a professor of materials science and engineering at MIT. Ceder calls the McCain statement a "political stunt" and says that the money would be better invested in R&D than in an after-the-fact prize. The McCain campaign did not return a phone call seeking more specifics.

Ceder estimates that it will cost around $5,000 to manufacture a plug-in-hybrid battery that holds 10 kilowatt-hours of electricity. But 10 kilowatt-hours doesn't get you very far; the Volt, a plug-in hybrid being developed by Chevrolet, lists an electric-drive range of 40 miles on a battery that holds 16 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Cutting battery costs by 70 percent--while further boosting capacity and range in a battery of manageable size--"will require a serious amount of innovation, new materials, and new manufacturing procedures," Ceder says. link..

A Blended Battery Pack for Cars

2009-09-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

Combining different battery technologies could improve vehicle performance and reduce costs.The race is on to find the ideal battery chemistry for plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles, but a startup in Indiana believes that a combination of different storage technologies might be the best way to improve vehicle performance and reduce cost. The company's technology allows vehicles to run on a combination of fuel cells, ultracapacitors, and old-fashioned lead-acid batteries.

Smart switch: Indy Power Systems has developed the Multi-Flex Energy Management System, a laptop-size power converter. The system allows makers of plug-in electric vehicles to use a combination of power sources--including lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries and ultracapacitors--and optimizes the blend to increase battery life, improve performance, and reduce cost.
Credit: Steve Tolen

Noblesville-based Indy Power Systems has developed an energy management system for vehicles that can quickly switch between two or more energy sources, even when their voltages are different. "It's basically a switch that directs energy in any amount and any direction," says Steve Tolen, chief executive officer and founder of Indy Power, which operates out of Purdue Research Park. "The hardware handles the switching, and the software handles the timing and amounts."

Tolen says that the power electronics package--called the Multi-Flex Energy Management System--is only slightly larger than a laptop computer. He describes it as a custom, software-controlled, DC-to-DC converter that's bidirectional and variable.

"Imagine adding hot and cold water to a tub. We can add a variable amount of hot and a variable amount of cold in different volumes to match the outflow of the drain, which can also be variable," Tolen explains. "In other words, the motor can ask for different amounts of current, and we can provide that, and in different ratios from the two (or more) power sources, regardless of the voltage of the power sources."

link..

Waterproof Lithium-Air Batteries

2009-09-03T14:27:00.000-07:00

A company based in Berkeley, CA, is developing lightweight, high-energy batteries that can use the surrounding air as a cathode. PolyPlus is partnering with a manufacturing firm to develop single-use lithium metal-air batteries for the government, and it expects these batteries to be on the market within a few years. The company also has rechargeable lithium metal-air batteries in the early stages of development that could eventually power electric vehicles that can go for longer in between charges.

Water power: A prototype battery made by PolyPlus uses lithium metal as the anode and salt water as the cathode to power an LED. As the battery discharges, lithium ions diffuse into the water, but the device doesn’t harm the surrounding clown fish.
Credit: PolyPlus

Interest in lithium metal-air batteries has been growing in recent years, along with the demand for lighter power sources for devices ranging from plug-in hybrid vehicles to laptops. In lithium-ion batteries, the electrodes are made of materials such as graphite, while in a lithium-metal battery, the anode is made up entirely of lithium metal, and the surrounding air can act as the cathode.

Lithium-metal batteries approach the energy density of fuel cells without the plumbing needed for these devices; in theory, the maximum energy density is more than 5,000 watt-hours per kilogram, or more than 10 times that of today's lithium-ion batteries. Lithium metal-air batteries are also very lightweight because it's not necessary to carry a second reactant. Lithium metal is "the holy-grail battery material," says Steven Visco, chief technical officer and founder of PolyPlus.

IBM recently announced that it would develop lithium metal-air batteries for the energy grid and for transportation. "Lithium ion is the gold standard, but what can beat it is lithium metal," says Paul Beach, president of battery manufacturer Quallion of Sylmar, CA.

Using lithium metal as a battery electrode, however, has proved problematic, mainly because the material reacts rapidly and violently with water. "People have thought about lithium-air batteries for decades, but there's always water in the air," says Visco. Exposure to even traces of water rapidly degrades the material link..

NASA's New Spaceships Could Tag-Team Asteroid

2009-09-03T14:25:00.000-07:00

A manned asteroid mission using two Orion spacecraft, docked nose-to-nose to form a 50-ton deep space vehicle, is being studied by Lockheed Martin Space Systems as an alternative to resumption of U.S. lunar landing missions.

The Orion asteroid mission concept is being unveiled just as the Presidential committeereviewing U.S. human space flight is citing asteroid missions after 2020 as a less costly alternative to NASA's proposed lunar landing infrastructure. Results of the review will be briefed to President Obama by Norman Augustine, committee chairman, by the end of August.

The docked Orion configuration as shown in a Lockheed Martin graphic (above) would have a total of four large solar arrays and two service modules as well as two command modules for extra space on the several week flight. Single 25-ton Orion spacecraft would first be used to replace the space shuttle for servicing the International Space Station. But use of them for asteroid missions and other deep space sites would maximize utilization of the Orion system if lunar landings are deleted as a near term goal.

If one looks closely at the graphic, a space suited astronaut deployed from the Orion, is standing atop the asteroid. The graphic is from a Lockheed Martin promotional movie that shows concepts under study by the Orion prime contractor.

Under the Bush Administration strategy, NASA had planned a resumption of lunar landing missions by about 2020 using the Orion as a lunar orbiting command ship while its crew descended to the moon in Altair landers for lengthy stays on the surface.

The official NASA line has been solidly "all moon" for the last several years, while more realistic assessments over the same period have shown that is not feasible. NASA more recently, however, had become more open about an asteroid mission capability for Orion after space scientists and planners meeting before formation of the committee began to criticize the lunar goal as too fragile.

Development and cost problems with the Ares 1 and Ares 5 launch vehicle programs have also become increasingly apparent since about 2007.

Augustine and other committee members such as former astronaut Sally Ride have already reported publicly that NASA's current plan to retire the shuttle, finish the space station and return to the moon by the early 2020s is not even remotely feasible under NASA's current funding profile. link..

A More Sensitive Cancer Breathalyzer

2009-09-03T14:24:00.000-07:00

Lung cancer is a brutal disease, often not caught until it's too late for treatment to do much good. Now researchers are building an electronic nose that could help physicians detect the disease during its initial stages. Using gold nanoparticles, scientists at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have created sensors with an unprecedented sensitivity for sniffing out compounds present in the breath of lung-cancer patients.

Breath check: A new device, based on gold-nanoparticle sensors, can detect a mix of volatile organic compounds on the breath that are characteristic of lung cancer.
Credit: Nature Nanotechnology

Other attempts to do this have yielded promising results (see Lung-Cancer Breathalyzer and Cancer Breathalyzer), but those devices require a higher concentration of the telltale biomarker chemicals than the Israeli device. The chemicals, called volatile organic compounds (VOCs), are metabolic products present in the vapors that we breathe out, but they occur in such small amounts that researchers have had to find ways to increase their concentrations before testing. Now,Hossam Haick and his colleagues have built sensors using an array of gold nanoparticles that can detect these VOCs in their natural concentrations and under the humid conditions characteristic of human breath. Their research was recently published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Other devices used for the same kinds of tests depend on expensive means of VOC detection, such as optical sensors, mass spectrometry, and acoustic sensors. These systems aren't always portable, either. Gold-nanoparticle sensors, however, have the potential to be small and inexpensive--the only problem has been getting the VOCs to stick to the gold. "It was quite a lot of work to get them to stick," says Haick, a 2008 TR35 winner. "We're the first to do so, as far as I know." Because of an impending patent, Haick declined to explain how he achieved the desired stickiness. link...

Engine Test for New NASA Rocket Targeted for Sept. 10

2009-09-03T14:23:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON — A test firing of the first stage motor of NASA's new Ares I rocket will take place no earlier than Sept. 10 as NASA and its contractor, Alliant Techsystems (ATK), continue to investigate the glitch that forced the postponement of an earlier test, ATK said in a statement.

Engineers have ruled out the possibility that booster hardware or software was at fault during the aborted Aug. 27 test, and the focus of the investigation has shifted to ground test hardware, ATK said.

"Specific suspect circuitry and components have been identified and are being methodically investigated, utilizing a systematic, detailed fault tree approach," the company said. "The team is assessing removal and replacement plans for potential suspect items."

The $75 million test of the five-segment motor, based on the space shuttle's giant solid-rocket boosters, was aborted with 20 seconds left in the countdown Aug. 27 when a power system used to point the motor's nozzle failed. Engineers initially suspected a fuel valve in an auxiliary power unit on the booster had failed.

The test will take place at ATK's facilities in Promontory, Utah.

NASA's Ares I rocket is a two-stage booster designed to use the ATK-built solid-fueled first stage and a liquid-fueled upper stage to launch the new Orion crew-carrying spacecraft into orbit. Orion, NASA's replacement for its retiring space shuttles, is slated to begin operational flight no earlier than 2015. The first test launch of the Ares I rocket concept, called Ares I-X, is slated to lift off on Oct. 31.

A White House-appointed committee has reviewed NASA's plans for future human spaceflight and is expected to submit a report to President Barack Obama's administration in upcoming weeks. link...

A Simulator for Brain Surgeons

2009-09-03T14:21:00.000-07:00

A new simulator that lets neurosurgeons rehearse before operating--like pilots on a flight simulator--could revolutionize how doctors train for and handle brain surgery.

Virtual incision: A team member demonstrates the new simulation system.
Credit: NRCa

NeuroTouch, the prototype simulator developed by Canada's National Research Council (NRC) and several other research groups, gives surgeons a dry run in virtual reality before entering the operating room, potentially reducing mistakes.

First, patient data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is rendered into a 3-D, high-resolution model of an individual's brain. After the model is loaded into the system, doctors can touch and manipulate tumors and other virtual objects on screens in real time using a physical instrument resembling a scalpel. The instrument has six degrees of freedom and re-creates the force-feedback of the real tool and the varying resistance of tissue in brain regions with differing toughness. Meanwhile, photo-realistic on-screen imagery shows the simulated surgery, including bleeding and pulsing gray matter.

"This is the first simulator to fully integrate medical image processing, material models, finite element modeling, graphics, and haptics technologies to create a patient-specific simulation," says Ryan D'Arcy, an NRC neuroscientist who helped develop NeuroTouch. "One other notable feature is the incorporation of functional brain mapping data from fMRI." This allows critical brain regions, such as speech areas, to be imaged more accurately, D'Arcy says.

The $9.1 million, three-year project to develop a neurosurgery simulator began in April 2008 and involves some 50 clinicians and engineers from across Canada. The project marked a milestone last month when surgeons in Halifax, Nova Scotia, used it to rehearse before operating on a 48-year-old woman with a benign tumor near the speech center of her brain. The five-hour operation was successful, and the woman was discharged the following day. Though the procedure was relatively simple, it was the first time a simulator had been used to run through such an operation. link..

Chinese Rocket Launches Satellite to Wrong Orbit

2009-09-03T14:19:00.000-07:00

Breaking a 13-year streak of successful launches, a Chinese Long March rocket failed to deliver an Indonesian communications satellite to its planned orbit Monday.
Carrying the Palapa D telecommunications satellite, a Long March 3B rocket blasted offfrom the Xichang launch base in southwestern China at 0928 GMT (5:28 a.m. EDT) Monday.
The three-stage launcher, boosted by four liquid-fueled strap-on engines, flew as expected during the first few minutes of the flight.
But a failure occurred about 20 minutes after liftoff as the third stage was scheduled to ignite for its second burn of the mission, according to the official state-run Xinhua news agency.
The third stage is powered by two YF-75 engines fueled by a mix of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, according to China Great Wall Industry Corp., the international marketing arm of the country's launch industry.
The engines apparently completed the first of two burns to place the rocket and Palapa D into a parking orbit.
Xinhua reported the third stage encountered problems during the second ignition, but it was not clear if the engines failed to fire or shut down early.
"Experts are investigating," the Xinhua report said.
The 41-foot-long third stage produces about 35,000 pounds of thrust in flight, first to send payloads into low-altitude parking orbits and then to propel spacecraft into egg-shaped geosynchronous transfer orbits. link...

An Operating System for the Cloud

2009-09-03T14:17:00.000-07:00

They believed it would help make personal computing less expensive, because Google would give away the software free of charge. They wanted to shrug off 20 years of accumulated software history (what the information technology industry calls the "legacy") by building an OS and browser from scratch. Finally, they hoped the combined technology would be an alternative to Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer, providing a new platform for developers to write Web applications and unleashing the creativity of programmers for the benefit of the masses.

But despite the sublimity of their aspirations, Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, said no for six years. Google's main source of revenue, which reached $5.5 billion in its most recent quarter, is advertising. How would the project they envisioned support the company's advertising business? The question wasn't whether Google could afford it. The company is wonderfully profitable and is on track to net more than $5 billion in its current fiscal year. But Schmidt, a 20-year veteran of the IT industry, wasn't keen on shouldering the considerable costs of creating and maintaining an OS and browser for no obvious return.

Finally, two years ago, Schmidt said yes to the browser. The rationale was that quicker and more frequent Web access would mean more searches, which would translate into more revenue from ads. Then, in July of this year, Schmidt announced Google's intention to launch an operating system as well. The idea is that an OS developed with the Internet in mind will also increase the volume of Web activity, and support the browser. link..

Shuttle Discovery Arrives at Space Station

2009-09-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

After a two-day orbital chase, space shuttle Discovery linked up with the International Space Station late Sunday to deliver a new crewmember and a cargo pod full of vital supplies.

Discovery commander Rick Sturckow docked the 100-ton shuttle with the space stationas both spacecraft flew more than 200 miles (341 km) above the Atlantic Ocean.

"It's great to hear your voices," station astronaut Michael Barratt radioed Discovery's crew as the two spacecraft drew close. "We can't wait to see you."

Sturckow flew Discovery without the aid of six small thrusters, which are usually extensively used during docking, because one had a leak. Instead, he used Discovery's larger, more powerful thrusters, which use more propellant and can make for a louder ride and more challenging docking.

"He just flew it like a champ today," shuttle flight director Tony Ceccacci told reporters after docking.

A rendezvous first

Sturckow has trained to use the larger thrusters during docking, but NASA never had to try it until today, Cain said. The smaller thrusters will not be used for the duration of Discovery's 13-day mission, he added. Sturckow also had to compensate for a slight misalignment of the space station, which was 1 degree out of position during tonight's docking, NASA officials said.

Before docking at the space station, Sturckow flew Discovery through an orbital back flip so station astronauts could photograph the shuttle's tile-covered belly in a routine heat shield check. Analysts on Earth will review the images once they are sent to Mission Control.

Discovery docked at the station about 10 minutes early at 8:54 p.m. EDT (0054 Aug. 31 GMT). Hatches between Discovery and the space station opened just over 90 minutes later with the seven shuttle astronauts boosting the station's six-person crew up to 13 people - a record-tying high - for only the second time. link..

Mouse Hotel Opens on Space Station

2009-09-03T14:12:00.000-07:00

A team of six intrepid mice is going where no rodents have gone before: The International Space Station.

The small rodents are part of an Italian study investigating the effects of bone loss in space, and researchers have set the mice up in orbital style.

"Basically, it's a little hotel," said Joe Delai, Discovery's payload manager, of the cages holding the space mice. "They have a room and a place to eat and sleep."

That creature comfort is key, he said. After all, the little mice will be living in space for at least three months before hitching a ride back home.

Mice have flown in space countless times before, even on space shuttles headed for the International Space Station. But the critters always stayed aboard those shuttles and returned home, said NASA's space station program scientist Julie Robinson. The longest any mouse has lived in space has been about 30 days, and that was while flying on an unmanned satellite, she added.

"This is a brand new technology for carrying rodents into space," Robinson said of the mouse enclosure. "This will be, by far, the longest period of time that mice have been maintained in the space station environment in an experimental setting."

Mouse house in space

The mice are living in a special experiment drawer delivered to the station late Sunday by astronauts aboard NASA's space shuttle Discovery. The drawer is split into partitions to give each mouse ample living room.

"Each mouse is in its own little compartment," Robinson told SPACE.com. "The compartments have screens around them so the mice can hold on with their feet so that they're in control of their environment...so they're not stressed out."

The mice get food and water through automated systems, which astronauts can refill when needed. A different system turns on lights to simulate day and night, and cameras will monitor their progress, Robinson said.

"We take good care of them," she added. link...

Raging fire threatens century-old observatory

2009-09-03T14:10:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES - Mount Wilson opened the heavens and then became a modern hub for communications on Earth. Now it is threatened by a force of nature that humans may be powerless to control.

The wildfire ravaging the mountains north of Los Angeles drew within a half-mile of the revered Mount Wilson Observatory Monday, threatening the birthplace of modern astronomy as well as a virtual forest of communication towers that serve the region.

Firefighters protecting Mount Wilson retreated Sunday but continued to dump flame retardant around the towers, transmitters and telescopes from the air. They said little could be done to stop the advancing flames, or predict how much damage would be done if the blaze ascends the 5,700-foot peak. link...

Why Sun's Atmosphere Is 'So Darned Hot'

2009-09-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

Small, sudden bursts of heat and energy, called nanoflares, are responsible for the million-degree temperature of the sun's tenuous atmosphere, a new study reveals.

The mystery of why temperatures in the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, soar to several million degrees Kelvin (K) — much hotter than temperatures nearer the sun's surface — has puzzled scientists for decades.

"Why is the sun's corona so darned hot?" said study member James Klimchuk of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

To answer this question, Klimchuk and colleagues constructed a theoretical model of the nanoflares, which are components of the loops of hot gas that arch high above the solar surface to make up the corona.

"Coronal loops are the fundamental building blocks of the corona," Klilmchuk said. "Their shape is defined by the magnetic field, which guides the hot flowing gases called plasma."

These loops are made up of bundles of smaller, individual magnetic tubes or strands that can have temperatures reaching several million degrees Kelvin (K), even though the sun's surface is only 5,700 degrees K (9,800 Fahrenheit). (One million degrees K would be about 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit.)

Nanoflares are small, sudden bursts of energy that happen within these thin magnetic tubes in the corona.

Unlike the bigger solar flares, which can be viewed through satellites and ground-based telescopes and can disrupt electronics and communications networks on Earth, nanoflares are so small that they cannot be resolved individually, so until now, no direct evidence of nanoflares was seen. Only see the combined effect of many of them occurring at about the same time is visible. link...

3,700-year-old wall discovered in Jerusalem

2009-09-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

JERUSALEM - Archaeologists digging in Jerusalem have uncovered a 3,700-year-old wall that is the oldest example of massive fortifications ever found in the city, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Wednesday.

The 26-foot-high wall is believed to have been part of a protected passage built by ancient Canaanites from a hilltop fortress to a nearby spring that was the city's only water source and vulnerable to marauders.

The discovery marks the first time archaeologists have found such massive construction from before the time of Herod, the ruler behind numerous monumental projects in the city 2,000 years ago, and shows that Jerusalem of the Middle Bronze Age had a powerful population capable of complex building projects, said Ronny Reich, director of the excavation and an archaeology professor at the University of Haifa.

The wall dates to the 17th century B.C., when Jerusalem was a small, fortified enclave controlled by the Canaanites, one of the peoples the Bible says lived in the Holy Land before the Hebrew conquest. The kingdom thought to have been ruled from Jerusalem by the biblical King David is usually dated to at least seven centuries later. link...

African tree acts as 'fertilizer factory' for crops

2009-09-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

A unique African tree could dramatically improve the yield of crops planted under its canopy by providing natural, renewable fertilizer, says a new study.

The tree has the potential to aid farmers throughout Africa, South America, and much of south and Southeast Asia, according to the researchers.

"Soil fertility is one of the major constraints to food production in sub-Saharan Africa, and nitrogen is one of the most limiting elements," said Lou Verchot of the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor, Indonesia, who was not a part of the new study. link...

Mars Canyon Formed When Plug Was Pulled, Study Suggests

2009-09-03T14:05:00.000-07:00

Mars' great canyon complex, Valles Marineris, dwarfs the size and splendor of Earth's own Grand Canyon. But while geologists have a formed a fairly complete picture of how the Grand Canyon formed, the mechanisms that carved out Valles Marineris and its component canyons have been a longstanding mystery, with explanations ranging from massive floods to tectonic processes like those that cause earthquakes and build mountains on Earth.

"How did these gigantic canyons really form? Were they all formed by floods, or were other things going on?" asks John Adams of the University of Washington in Seattle and lead author of a new study that seeks to answer the questions. "These have been controversial questions going back to the very first Mariner pictures of Mars. And they're still controversial questions, which means we don't really fully understand what's going on yet."

The answer for how at least parts of the canyon complex formed may lie in Hebes Chasma, a 190-mile-long (310-kilometer) scar cut into the Martian surface and connected to the main body of Valles Marineris.

Adams and his colleagues, Alan Gillespie and David Montgomery, think that Hebes, and other chasms, might have formed after salts in the surface layers were heated up, causing water to melt out below the surface. This water then rushed out through underground plumbing, causing the layers of dirt and rock above to collapse, creating the canyon scar in the surface. link...

MUSIC MADE FOR MONKEYS

2009-09-03T14:04:00.000-07:00

Cotton-top tamarin monkeys grew calmer after they heard music based on their
own calm, friendly calls. But the monkeys became more agitated when researchers
played music that contained elements of their own threatening or fearful calls.
Listen to arousing monkey music and calming music (Copyright David Teie).

Music may have charms to "soothe the savage breast," but that doesn't mean the same music that soothes humans will charm other species. Monkeys, for example, aren't much affected by human music.

To find out whether any kind of music could affect a monkey's mood, a musician and a primatologist created tunes tailor-made for cotton-top tamarins. They report that the experiment worked - but the melodies are unlike anything you've ever heard.

The music that mellows out a monkey consists of long, high-pitched tones that sound squeaky to human ears. "To me, that sounds like fingers scratching on a blackboard," said Charles Snowdon, a primate researcher from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

At the other extreme, the monkeys' equivalent of a thriller-movie soundtrack sounds like a fast-stuttering engine, overlaid with string-quartet screeches. "I can't even imagine dancing to it," Snowdon said.

But based on the reviews reported in this week's issue of the journalBiology Letters, the tamarin tunes were a certifiable hit. link..

New Moon Photo Reveals Tracks from Tough Apollo Moonwalk

2009-09-03T14:02:00.000-07:00

A new snapshot from NASA's newest moon probe has revealed the 38-year-old tracks leftover from a grueling moonwalk by two Apollo astronauts who tried, and failed, to reach a tantalizing crater.

The photograph was taken by a camera on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and shows the terrain surrounding the landing site of Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell, who touched down on the moon Feb. 5, 1971 in their Antares lander. It was released Wednesday and confirmed that the astronauts came just 100 feet (30 meters) from the rim of their target, Cone Crater, before they turned back, LRO researchers said.

At first glance, the image appears to depict a stark lunar surface devoid of any evidence that humans were there. But a closer inspection can reveal the glints of the Antares lander and a nearby experiment deployed by the astronauts, which appear at the lower left of the snapshot. The tracks from the boot prints of Shepard and Mitchell appear as wispy, winding lines that are a slightly darker shade of gray from the surrounding terrain.

The region of the moon explored by Shepard and Mitchell on the Apollo 14 mission is a rocky, hilly area known as the Fra Mauro highlands. The mission was the third of six Apollo moon landings between 1969 and 1972.

LRO has beamed home an earlier view of the Apollo 14 landing site, as well as snapshots of Tranquility Base, the first manned landing site visited by Apollo 11 astronauts on July 20, 1969. Researchers overseeing the probe's main camera, called LROC, from Arizona State University released the new images. link..

Newfound Planet Might Be Near Death

2009-09-03T14:01:00.000-07:00

A newly discovered planet that whips around its star in less than a day may have been found mere cosmic moments before its demise.

The planet, WASP-18b, is one of the "hot Jupiter" class of planets that are huge in size (10 times the mass of Jupiter in this case), but orbit very close to their stars. Their very existence was surprising to astronomers when the first of them were found a few years back. Now they've become common discoveries.

But this scorched, gaseous world is only one of two known exoplanetsthat orbits its star in less than one Earth day (0.94 days to be exact). Coupled with its hefty mass, this leads to strong gravitational tugs between the planet and its star, WASP-18. (WASP stands for the Wide Angle Search for Planets, run by several universities in Britain.)

These gravitational interactions create tides thought to squeeze and stretch the planet and even alter its orbit: If the planet orbits faster than the star spins, the planet should be pulled inward toward the star; if the star spins faster, the planet should be pushed outward (the latter is the case with the moon's orbit around Earth; the moon is moving away from us as you read this).

Given what astrophysicists know about the dynamics involved, astronomers think WASP-18b is moving toward its host star, but that would make observing the planet a 1-in-1,000 shot: While planets spend most of their lives sort of growing up, they perish in a cosmic blink of the eye. And so there is only a small time window where a planet would be in this position of impending demise — it would be statistically more likely to have found it much earlier in its lifetime, or after its destruction (which means it wouldn't have been seen at all).

"Either the odds of finding it are really small, and we just got lucky," or there's something fundamental about the tidal interactions between stars and their planets that astronomers are missing, said Douglas Hamilton, an astronomer at the University of Maryland in College Park who was not involved with the finding. link..

New Origin of Life Proposed: Zinc & Zap

2009-09-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

The Miller-Urey experiment, conducted by chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1953, is the classic experiment on the origin of life. It established that the early Earth atmosphere, as they pictured it, was capable of producing amino acids, the building blocks of life, from inorganic substances.

Now, more than 55 years later, two scientists are proposing a hypothesis that could add a new dimension to the debate on how life on Earth developed.

Armen Mulkidjanian of the University of Osnabrueck, Germany and Michael Galperin of the U.S. National Institutes of Health present their hypothesis and evidence in two papers published and open for review in the web site Biology Direct.

The scientists suggest that life on Earth originated at photosynthetically active porous structures, similar to deep-sea hydrothermal vents, made of zinc sulfide (more commonly known as phosphor). They argue that under the high pressure of a carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere, zinc sulfide structures could form on the surface of the first continents, where they had access to sunlight. Unlike many existing theories that suggest UV radiation was a hindrance to the development of life, Mulkidjanian and Galperin think it actually helped.

"The problem of the origin of life is such that you have to answer a set of different questions to explain how life has originated," says lead author Mulkidjanian. "We just provide answers to the problem of energetics of the origin of life."

Altering the Early Atmosphere

According to Mulkidjanian, the debate about whether life could arise from chemical reactions began to change when scientists started to question the atmospheric conditions used by Miller and Urey. In their famous experiment, Miller and Urey replicated the early Earth atmosphere with a mixture of methane, hydrogen, ammonia and water vapor. This mixture, along with some "sparks" which simulated lightning, led to the formation of amino acids. With this setup, Miller and Urey assumed that the early Earth had a reducing atmosphere, which meant it had large amounts of hydrogen and almost no oxygen. link...

Solar Systems Warped by Interstellar Wind

2009-09-03T13:57:00.000-07:00

Close encounters with interstellar gas could have given the dust-filled disks of solar systems — where planets are thought to form — the odd shapes that some of them have taken on, a new study suggests.

Stars across the galaxy have disks of dusty debris generated by the collisions of small comet- and asteroid-like bodies orbiting each star.

Astronomers have noticed that many of these debris disks are a bit wonky-looking, with lobes of dust sticking out in odd directions. One team noticed just such an oddly-shaped disk while using the Hubble Space Telescope to investigate the composition of the dust around the star HD 32297, which lies 340 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Orion.

John Debes of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., noticed that the interior portion of this star's dusty disk — a region comparable to the size of our own solar system — was warped in a way that was similar to other distant star systems.

Astronomers have previously attributed these warped shapes to the presence of undiscovered planets or past encounters with another star. But Debes and his colleagues used a model to show that the odd shapes aren't likely due to one of these exotic factors, but instead are likely caused by the interstellar environment that the star and its attendant disk are moving through.

"It's important to consider the ecology of these debris disks before running to such conclusions, and this model explains a lot of the weirdly shaped disks we see," Debes said. link...

Big Squeeze Creates New Stars in Cosmic Cloud

2009-09-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

New photos of a cosmic cloud rich with young stars offer tantalizing clues about how those stars came to be.

Scientists recently combined images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope to zoom in on the cosmic cloud Cepheus B, located in our galaxy about 2,400 light years from Earth.

This cloud of mostly hydrogen gas and dust contains a host of bright young stars whose birth could have been triggered by a nearby massive star outside the cloud. This star, called HD 217086, is bombarding the region with strong radiation. While this energetic flow is likely to have evaporated the cloud's outer layers, it also could have pushed a compression wave into the cloud that may have driven star formation by increasing the density of gas in the cloud's interior.

The new observations, which help astronomers estimate the ages of many of the young stars, support this model of star formation.

In the inner layer of Cepheus B, the scientists found most of the stars are about 1 million years old, and about 70 or 80 percent of them have "protoplanetary disks" of matter expected to be on their way to forming planets - another sign of a young star. In the middle and outer layers of the cloud, stars are older (between 2 million to 5 million years old) and much less likely to have protoplanetary disks. link...

Life's Evolution May Depend on Galaxy

2009-09-03T13:41:00.000-07:00

Intelligent life beyond Earth might not be as dim a hope as many scientists think, according to a new study challenging a widely held anti-ET argument.

Many skeptics tout an idea called the anthropic argument that claims extraterrestrial intelligence must be very rare because the time it takes for intelligent life to evolve is, on the average, much longer than the portion of a star's existence that is conducive to such life.

But now astrobiologist Milan M. Cirkovic and colleagues say they've found a flaw in that reasoning.

The anthropic argument, proposed by astrophysicist Brandon Carter in 1983, following on his pioneering work on anthropic principles in 1970s, is built on the assumption that the two timescales - the lifecycle of a star and the time required for evolution of living and intelligent creatures - are completely independent. If this is true, Carter argued, it's extremely unlikely that these two windows of possibility would last roughly the same amount of time, and would occur at the same time.

But that mode of thinking is outdated, Cirkovic claims. In fact, he says the relevant timescales are not independent; they are deeply entwined. "There are many different ways in which planets in our solar system are not isolated," Cirkovic said. "We must not regard habitable planets as closed boxes. If you abandon that assumption of independence, then you have a whole new background in which you can set up various models of astrobiological development."

Cirkovic points to gamma ray bursts, nearby supernovae, and perturbations of comet clouds as possible events in the astrophysical environment of the star that can influence the biological environment on a planet. For example, when a star travels through one of the dense spiral arms of the Milky Way, both its own development and that of its planets could be disrupted by higher levels of interstellar electromagnetic radiation and cosmic rays, due to the higher frequency of star-forming regions and supernova explosions.

All these connections conspire to rule out the independence suggested by Carter and connect the life of a star and the evolution of life on a planet, Cirkovic argues link...

HOW GAMES CHANGE YOUR BRAIN

2009-09-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

The effects of video-game playing on your brain have been studied for aquarter-century, but the latest research reveals that there are deep puzzles yet to be solved.

One of the earliest and most noted studies in the field was conducted back in 1992 by neuroscientist Richard Haier at the University of California at Irvine, who looked at how frequent sessions with the Tetris video game changed the players' brains. The game requires players to fit colorful puzzle pieces together at a quickening pace as they fall from the top of the screen.

Back then, Haier used brain scans to discover that some parts of the brain actually used less glucose as the players became more skilled at the game. The "Tetris effect" illustrated how video-game training could make brains work more efficiently - an idea that eventually led to a whole host of brain-training games.

Now Haier serves as a consultant to Blue Planet Software, the company that markets Tetris, and he was asked to follow up on his 17-year-old research using the new tools available to neuroscientists.

Haier recruited three colleagues - Sherif Karama from the Montreal Neurological Institute, Leonard Leyba from the New Mexico-based Mind Research Network and Rex Jung, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of New Mexico. They came up with an experiment that budgeted out at "under $100,000," with the expense picked by Blue Planet, Haier said. link...

Tropical Storm Spotted on Saturn's Moon Titan

2009-09-03T13:38:00.000-07:00

A tropical storm was not what astronomers expected to see when they pointed their telescopes toward the equator of Saturn's moon Titan last summer.

But that's exactly what they found on this beguiling moon, home to a weather system both eerily familiar and perplexingly strange. The discovery was announced today.

In many ways Titan's climate resembles that of Earth, but instead of a water cycle, Titan has a methane cycle. Clouds, rain and lakes all exist on Titan, but they are all made of methane. In the moon's frigid climate, any water is frozen into rock-hard ice.

Shouldn't be there

Clouds of vaporized methane are not uncommon on Titan, though they have never before been observed in Titan's tropics. But in April 2008, astronomers using the Gemini North telescope and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii spotted a severe storm covering 1.2 million square miles (3 million square kilometers) over the equator.

"The models predicted that the equatorial region should be very dry and should not support cloud formation," said astronomer Henry Roe of Lowell Observatory in Arizona. "But this episode created clouds over both the equator and the south pole. We don't know what set off that sequence, but something gave a pretty good kick to the atmosphere."

Scientists suspect the storm's trigger may have been some kind of geologic activity on the moon's surface, such as a geyser or new mountain range forming. Atmospheric effects may also have set off the storm.

Whatever the cause, once the clouds were established they seem to have spread throughout Titan's atmosphere in waves.

The situation is a new wrinkle in the study of this complex moon.

"It's an amazing place because it is deeply familiar to us, being from Earth, in terms of the processes - clouds forming, rainfall, carved out channels on the surface, huge fields of what look like sand dunes," Roe told SPACE.com. "But the materials that are involved are quite alien." link...

Giraffe of the Mesozoic’ unearthed in China

2009-09-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

Dinosaur stood about 39 feet long, nearly 10 feet tall and weighed 10 tons

Remains of a dinosaur, nicknamed the "giraffe of the Mesozoic" due to its long neck and forelimbs, were recently discovered in China, according to a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The dinosaur, Qiaowanlong kangxii, is the firstEarly Cretaceous brachiosaur ever found in China.

Its name refers to a famous Qing Dynasty emperor, Kangxi, and also contains the words for "bridge," "bend in a stream," and "dragon," references to the site as well as a dream the emperor is said to have had. link..

Astronauts complain of stuffy heads in space

2009-09-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery have got a case of stuffy heads, but NASA doesn't think they're sick.

More likely, the effects reported by the astronauts have more to do with crowd control and the pockets of carbon dioxide generated when they gather in groups, space station flight controller Heather Rarick said.

"I don't think they have any ill health whatsoever," Rarick told reporters in an early morning briefing.Discovery commander Rick Sturckow radioed Mission Control early Wednesday to say his crew was complaining of stuffiness and that it was a new experience when compared to his three previous spaceflights.

He reported it because Mission Control should know, but stressed that the discomfort was relatively low and would have no impact "on our ability to function fully and complete the mission successfully."

Rarick said that the symptoms reported by the crew could be due to poor ventilation in certain spots between Discovery and the International Space Station.

A similar situation has happened before. In 1999, higher than expected carbon dioxide levels in the space station's Russian-built Zarya module were thought to have contributed to ill effects reported by astronauts who complained of headaches and nausea. The symptoms eased after the astronauts returned to their shuttle. link...

Full Moon Friday: What You Can See

2009-09-03T13:30:00.000-07:00

Talk to most astronomers, and you'll find that they have a thing about the full moon. The reason is that a full moon is the No. 1 cause of natural light pollution. Its brilliant light floods the night sky, dimming all the stars and nebulae, causing astronomers to pack away their telescopes and watch television instead.

However, to dedicated skywatchers like us, the moon has its own fascination, especially when it is full, as it will be Friday, Sept. 4. After all, this is the only object in the solar system on which we can see a wealth of detail without any optical aid whatsoever.

The full moon is particularly appealing at this time of year when it rises just around sunset and hovers low in the southern sky most of the night.

The first thing to look for is the man in the moon, or perhaps you can more easily see the woman in the moon or even the rabbit in the moon. One way or another, you can probably see a pattern of some sort in the play of bright and dark markings across the moon's face. The darker areas are known as maria (singular mare, Latin for sea), though they have never seen a drop of water in the last four billion years. The lighter areas are mostly cratered highlands, where relatively recent asteroids have crashed into the moon's surface, exposing bright rock beneath the surface.

The largest dark area on the moon, on the left side, is actually called an "ocean": theOceanus Procellarum or Ocean of Storms. Just above it, and almost as large, is theMare Imbrium or Sea of Showers. Opposite Imbrium on the right side of the moon is a triangle of three smaller "seas": the Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity), Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility) and Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises). link...

Jupiter’s moons to vanish from view

2009-09-03T13:28:00.000-07:00

An unusual celestial vanishing act will take place the night of Sept. 2 when all four of Jupiter's largest moons will be hidden from our view.

The event will occur on a night when Jupiter happens to be positioned very close to Earth's moon in the southeastern sky. The two objects, though very far apart in space, will be about 5 degrees from each other in our sky (your fist on an outstretched arm covers about 10 degrees of sky). This pairing makes Jupiter, which outshines all stars and so is easy to spot, even easier for anyone to locate. link..

Soviet-Era Spaceships to Fly Commercial Space Missions

2009-09-03T13:26:00.000-07:00

An international spaceflight company plans to launch paying passengers on week-long orbital trips by 2013 using vehicles based on Soviet-era spacecraft built for classifed military space stations.
The company, Excalibur Almaz Limited based in the Isle of Man, has acquired several Reusable Return Vehicles (RRVs), spacecraft initially designed for flying cosmonauts to the former Soviet Union's super-secret Almaz space stations of the 1970s, the firm announced Tuesday at the Moscow Air Show in Russia.
"With this announcement, the dream of private orbital space exploration may become a reality in the very near future," said veteran Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Titov, an advisor to Excalibur Almaz, in a statement.
To date, wealthy space enthusiasts have been able to book trips to orbit by riding as paying passengers on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft headed for the International Space Station during crew change missions. Those trips, arranged by the Virginia-based firm Space Adventures and Russia's Federal Space Agency, currently cost more than $30 million.
Excalibur Almaz did not reveal its anticipated price per trip in Tuesday's announcement, but did detail plans to update the RRV spacecraft design with modern technology to support independent flights to orbit.
The spacecraft consists of two sections, the cone-shaped RRV for launch and re-entry, and an expendable service module designed to offer more room to live and work in space. The vehicles can carry three people - a commander and two passengers - or about 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of cargo and are designed to stay aloft for at least a week, officials said.
"A critical feature of the RRVs is their reusability, which will reduce logistical, overhead and program costs for commercial access to space," Excalibur Almaz officials said, adding that the spacecraft will be designed to fit atop a variety of launch vehicles in order to lift off from different sites around the world. link..

Science Fiction's Robotics Laws Need Reality Check

2009-09-03T13:11:00.000-07:00

Artificial intelligence researchers often idealize Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics as the signpost for robot-human interaction. But some robotics experts say that the concept could use a practical makeover to recognize the current limitations of robots.

Self-aware robots that inhabit Asimov's stories and others such as "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Battlestar Galactica" remain in the distant future. Today's robots still lack any sort of real autonomy to make their own decisions or adapt intelligently to new environments.

But danger can arise when humans push robots beyond their current limits of decision-making, experts warn. That can lead to mistakes and even tragedies involving robots on factory floors and in military operations, when humans forget that all legal and ethical responsibility still rests on the shoulders of homo sapiens.

"The fascination with robots has led some people to try retreating from responsibility for difficult decisions, with potentially bad consequences," said David Woods, a systems engineer at Ohio State University.

Woods and a fellow researcher proposed revising the Three Laws to emphasize human responsibility over robots. They also suggested that Earth-bound robot handlers could take a hint from NASA when it comes to robot-human interaction.

Updating Asimov

Asimov's three laws of robotics are set in a future when robots can think and act for themselves. The first law prohibits robots from injuring humans or allowing humans to come to harm due to inaction, while the second law requires robots to obey human orders except those which conflict with the first law. A third law requires robots to protect their own existence, except when doing so conflicts with the first two laws.

South Korea has used those "laws" as a guide for its Robot Ethics Charter, but Woods and his colleagues thought they lacked some vital points.

Woods worked with Robin Murphy, a rescue robotics expert at Texas A&M University, to create three laws that recognize humans as the intelligent, responsible adults in the robot-human relationship. Their first law says that humans may not deploy robots without a work system that meets the highest legal and professional standards of safety and ethics. A second revised law requires robots to respond to humans as appropriate for their roles, and assumes that robots are designed to respond to certain orders from a limited number of humans.

The third revised law proposes that robots have enough autonomy to protect their own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the first two laws and allows for smooth transfer of control between human and robot. That means a Mars rover should automatically know not to drive off a cliff, unless human operators specifically tell it to do so. link...

All systems go for spacewalk, despite junk

2009-09-03T13:04:00.000-07:00

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A spacewalk by two astronauts is still on for Thursday evening even though a large piece of space junk is headed their way.

Part of a three-year-old spent European rocket is expected to pass within 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of space shuttle Discovery and the international space station late Friday morning. NASA officials say that should be a safe distance and they do not expect the linked spacecraft to change course. But if the projections change, the astronauts would complete the spacewalk before steering out of the way.

The debris is believed to have an area surface of 200 square feet. link...