9.2 Million Adults In The UK Have Never Been Online
“A whopping 9.2 million UK adults have never been online according to data released by the Office of National Statistics, out of a population of around 62 million or one out of every seven Britons.
The ONS figures show some pretty interesting trends; more than one million UK citizens have used the internet for the first time over the last 12 months, although the OAPs, low income earners and those without qualifications represent an overwhelming portion of those who never used the internet.
97 per cent of those with a degree have used the internet while 98 per cent of those earning over £41,600 have been connected to the web at least once.
More than 30 million UK adults use the internet every day with another eight million being regular internet users instead and nearly a third connecting to the internet though a mobile handset.
A spokesperson for the Office for National Statistics said that “Since 2006 we have seen a significant increase in the number of people using the Internet, with the number of adults accessing the Internet every day almost doubling to just over 30 million, though the UK is some way off from being completely online.”
Notably, 2.7 million people access the internet regularly though Wi-Fi hotspots commonly used at cafes, restaurants, libraries and other public places.”
Read more at IT Pro Portal (Thanks @XxLadyClaireXx)
1.25 Gigawatts of Solar Thermal Power Approved in California in Past Two Days Will Double US Capacity
“There’ve been multiple gigawatts of solar thermal power plants planned for various places in the California desert for some time, but finally some more of them are getting the approvals need so that construction can start: The US Bureau of Land Management has issued a final environmental impact statement for the 1,000 MW Blythe Solar Power Project; and the 250 MW Beacon Solar Energy project has received final California state approval as well.
The smaller of the two first: Renewable Energy World reports NextEra Energy Resources has been given the green light by the California Energy Commission to begin construction on the 250 MW Beacon Solar Energy project.
The $1 billion, 2,000 acre solar thermal power plant will use parabolic troughs to concentrate sunlight and generate electricity. NextEra expects the power plant to come online within the next three years, though as yet it has no power purchase agreement in place. In other words, no electric utility has yet committed to buy the power the plant produces.
And the larger of the two: With the final BLM environmental impact statement completed, and the CEC already saying it will approve the project once public comment closes next month, Solar Millennium Inc. will soon begin construction on the 1,000 MW Blythe Solar Power Project.
The 7,025 acre project, also using parabolic trough technology, is expected to produce enough power for approximately 800,000 homes, and alone will nearly double the installed commercial solar power capacity in the United States.
The price tag and time til completion: $6 billion and six years once construction actually begins.”
Read more at Tree Hugger
Tiny apartment shows the value of a good fit
“WE SIT IN the “cafe area” of Steve Sauer’s minuscule apartment enjoying the view from the home’s only window, street level. Dogs on leashes and legs on humans pass by on a warm Lower Queen Anne evening.
Sauer stands up. This is to demonstrate that at 6-foot-2 he has a no-more-than-needed 2-inch clearance between his head and the ceiling.
Sauer likes this precision. Awkward spaces, wasted places annoy him. Two alarm clocks, two music sources, extra furniture. Needless, needless, needless.
“What I really wanted was one place with exactly what I needed and wanted. Quality is more important than quantity for me, and extra space only a problem,” he has written, describing his nearby too-big-for-him, one-bedroom condo.
To me he says, “I tend to like things in their place.”
And that explains it: The uber-cool, fully functional 182-square-foot home for two on the basement floor of a 102-year-old apartment building that Sauer is finishing after seven years of work. It could also have something to do with his line of work — airplane interiors engineering for Boeing. And education — a master’s degree in whole-systems design.
Sauer’s tiny Seattle home is remarkable.”
Read more at The Seattle Times (Thanks Christopher C)
When getting away means staying in touch
“People used to go on holiday to unplug. Now they’re demanding to be plugged in. That secluded, desert island-type getaway may soon be as dated as the post-vacation slide show as more travelers use e-mails, Facebook and Twitter to nurture the ties that bind even while they get away from it all.
“For many travelers figuring out how to stay connected is as integral to the travel process as packing sun lotion and swimwear,” said Amelie Hurst of travel website TripAdvisor. “In times gone by this just wasn’t an option. Traveling went hand in hand with being disconnected,” she said. Hurst said clients planning their trips routinely factor in the best means of staying in contact. “Travelers ask the quality of cell phone service, international data plans. Staying connected can offer travelers a real comfort,” she explained.
A recent survey of 2000 travelers by American Express found that 77 per cent of Americans intend to stay connected while on vacation via Internet, phone, social media and other channels. The motivation is social, not business. Only 14 per cent said they would stay connected for work. “Eighty-nine percent of people want to talk to family and friends, to be very connected in real time,” said Audrey Hendley of American Express Travel. “Even five years ago that wasn’t the case.”
Connectivity means more than just checking e-mail. “Sharing information, sharing photos, it’s a change in lifestyle, it’s ‘Now I want to tell you about me,’” she said. The poll revealed that 20 percent updated their social media sites while on vacation.”
Read more at Reuters (Thanks @XxLadyClaireXx)
Scheme to ‘pull electricity from the air’ sparks debate
“Tiny charges gathered directly from humid air could be harnessed to generate electricity, researchers say. Dr Fernando Galembeck told the American Chemical Society meeting in Boston that the technique exploited a little-known atmospheric effect. Tests had shown that metals could be used to gather the charges, he said, opening up a potential energy source in humid climates. However, experts disagree about the mechanism and the scale of the effect.
“The basic idea is that when you have any solid or liquid in a humid environment, you have absorption of water at the surface,” Dr Galembeck, from the University of Campinas in Brazil, told BBC News. “The work I’m presenting here shows that metals placed under a wet environment actually become charged.”
Dr Galembeck and his colleagues isolated various metals and pairs of metals separated by a non-conducting separator – a capacitor, in effect – and allowed nitrogen gas with varying amounts of water vapour to pass over them. What the team found was that charge built up on the metals – in varying amounts, and either positive or negative. Such charge could be connected to a circuit periodically to create useful electricity. The effect is incredibly small – gathering an amount of charge 100 million times smaller over a given area than a solar cell produces – but seems to represent a means of charge accumulation that has been overlooked until now.
Dr Galembeck suggests that with further development, the principle could be extended to become a renewable energy resource in humid parts of the world, such as the tropics.”
Read more at BBC News (Thanks @UKgnome)
The 10 Greatest (Accidental) Inventions of All Time
“”Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits,” Thomas Edison once said. But is hustling all it takes? Is progress always deliberate? Sometimes genius arrives not by choice—but by chance.” Head to the PopSci to view their ten favorite serendipitous innovations.
“In 1943, Navy engineer Richard James was trying to figure out how to use springs to keep the sensitive instruments aboard ships from rocking themselves to death, when he knocked one of his prototypes over. Instead of crashing to the floor, it gracefully sprang downward, and then righted itself. So pointless—so nimble—so slinky. The spring became a goofy toy of many childhoods—that is before every kid inevitably gets theirs all twisted up and ruins it. 300 million sold worldwide!”
See more at PopSci (Thanks @XxLadyClaireXx)
New Solar System Discovered
“European astronomers on Tuesday said they had found a distant star orbited by at least five planets in the biggest discovery of so-called exoplanets since the first was logged 15 years ago.
The star is similar to our sun and its planetary lineup has an intriguing parallel with own solar system, although no clue has so far been found to suggest it could be a home from home, they said.
The star they studied, HD 10180, is located 127 light-years away in the southern constellation of Hydrus, the male water snake, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said in a press release.
The planets were detected over six years using the world’s most powerful spectograph, an instrument to capture and analyze light signatures, at ESO’s telescope at La Silla, Chile.
The method consists of observing a star and seeing how the light that reaches Earth “wobbles” as a result of the gravitational pull of a passing planet.
The tiny fluctuation in light can then be used as a telltale to calculate the mass of the transiting planet.
The five detected planets are big, being the size of Neptune, although they orbit at a far closer range than our own gas giant, with a “year” ranging from between six and 600 days.
The astronomers also found tantalizing evidence that two other candidate planets are out there.
One would be a very large planet, the size of our Saturn, orbiting in 2,200 days.
The other would be 1.4 times the mass of Earth, making it the smallest exoplanet yet to be discovered. It orbits HD 10180 at a scorchingly close range, taking a mere 1.18 Earth days to zip around the star.”
Read more at Discovery (Thanks IndyAdvant)
Thought-controlled computers on the way: Intel
“Computers controlled by the mind are going a step further with Intel’s development of mind-controlled computers. Existing computers operated by brain power require the user to mentally move a cursor on the screen, but the new computers will be designed to directly read the words thought by the user.
Intel scientists are currently mapping out brain activity produced when people think of particular words, by measuring activity at about 20,000 locations in the brain. The devices being used to do the mapping at the moment are expensive and bulky MRI scanners, similar to those used in hospitals, but senior researcher at Intel, Dean Pomerlau, said smaller gadgets that could be worn on the head are being developed. Once the brain activity is mapped out the computer will be able to determine what words are being thought by identifying similar brain patterns and differences between them.
Pomerlau said words produce activity in parts of the brain associated with what the word represents. So thinking of a word for a type of food, such as apple, results in activity in the parts of the brain associated with hunger, while a word with a physical association such as spade produces activity in the areas of the motor cortex related to making the physical movements of digging. In this way the computer can infer attributes of a word to narrow it down and identify it quickly.
A working prototype can already detect words like house, screwdriver and barn, but as brain scanning becomes more advanced the computer’s ability to understand thoughts will improve.
If the plans are successful users will be able to surf the Internet, write emails and carry out a host of other activities on the computer simply by thinking about them. Director of Intel Laboratories, Justin Ratner, said it is clear humans are no longer restricted to using a keyboard and mouse, and mind reading is the “ultimate user interface.” He said he is confident any concerns about privacy will be overcome.
While many able-bodied computer users may hesitate to adopt a technology that operates a computer by reading their minds, people who are unable to use a keyboard or a mouse through disability should find the new technology gives them much more freedom and opportunities for communicating.”
Read more at Physorg (Thanks @XxLadyClaireXx)
Scientists develop ‘dry water’
“The substance resembles powdered sugar and is expected to make a big commercial splash. Each particle of dry water contains a water droplet surrounded by a sandy silica coating. In fact, 95% of dry water is “wet” water. One of its key properties is a powerful ability to absorb gases.
Scientists believe dry water could be used to combat global warming by soaking up and trapping the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Tests show that it is more than three times better at absorbing carbon dioxide as ordinary water. Dry water may also prove useful for storing methane and expanding the energy source potential of the natural gas.
Dr Ben Carter, from the University of Liverpool, presented his research on dry water at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston. He said: “There’s nothing else quite like it. Hopefully, we may see dry water making waves in the future.”
Another application demonstrated by Dr Carter’s team was using dry water as a catalyst to speed up reactions between hydrogen and maleic acid. This produces succinic acid, a key raw material widely used to make drugs, food ingredients, and consumer products.
Usually hydrogen and maleic acid have to be stirred together to make succinic acid. But this is not necessary when using dry water particles containing maleic acid, making the process greener and more energy efficient.
“If you can remove the need to stir your reactions, then potentially you’re making considerable energy savings,” said Dr Carter.
The technology could be adapted to create “dry” powder emulsions, mixtures of two or more unblendable liquids such as oil and water, the researchers believe. Dry emulsions could make it safer and easier to store and transport potentially harmful liquids.”
Read more at Yahoo News (Thanks @XxLadyClaireXx)
Recycled Chewing Gum Turned Into Chewing Gum Bins
“Tired of gum-plastered streets, Anna Bullus decided to design and install chewing gum receptacles made, naturally, from recycled chewing gum. Her pink “Gumdrops” now appear in five UK locations and Six Flags Theme Park in New Jersey.
Though she won’t reveal the gum rubber’s exact contents, Bullus told The Guardian that eight months in a lab allowed her to perfect her technique, making gum first into a foam and then a used-gum pellet, before extracting a polymer modestly called BRGP (Bullus Recycled Gum Polymer). Perhaps it’s not surprising that you could turn gum into plastic, since the “nonnutritive masticatory substance” that gives gum its chewiness can include butyl rubber, used in inner tubes.
If her Gumdrops can keep gum off the streets, such bins might save British taxpayers an estimated £150 ($300) million per year–that’s what the government spends now on steam hoses, freezing machines, and corrosive chemical street cleanings. Plus Bullus says the Gumdrops, once full, can provide fodder for more Gumdrops and other plastic products. She told The Guardian: “The amazing thing is you can use it for any plastic product…. I’d love to do some Wellington boots, for example. Gum boots, in fact.””
Read more at Discover Magazine
