A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference. The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices over many metres. Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford. He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries. ‘There is something like 40 billion disposable batteries built every year for power that, generally speaking, is used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power,’ he said. Trillions of dollars, he said, had also been invested building an infrastructure of wires ‘to get power from where it is created to where it is used.’ Witricity claims to be able to charge gadgets large and small ‘We love this stuff [electricity] so much,’ he said. Mr Giler showed off a Google G1 phone and an Apple iPhone that could be charged using the system. Witricity, he said, had managed to pack all the necessary components into the body of […]
LANDRUM, S.C. — Charles Martin’s been in manufacturing for more than 30 years, and over those years faraway Las Vegas has always served as an important, if not odd, barometer for his company that makes commercial-grade door hinges. Even in bad times, casinos were still going up in Nevada. Not so today. ‘When gamblers aren’t building, forget about people who make rational decisions,’ said Martin, president of Bommer Industries, the last completely American manufacturer of door hinges for hotels, malls, universities and other big commercial buyers. ‘I think that says as much about the U.S. economy as anything I can say. The gamblers have quit building, and they’re always optimistic.’ The U.S. manufacturing sector is clawing back from a deep downturn, and manufacturing globally is on the skids. The climb back will be long and painful because the situation facing the sector isn’t just bad. It’s awful. The Federal Reserve’s latest measure of industrial output shows that in June, U.S. manufacturers were operating at 64.6 percent of their installed capacity. It means they are producing at more than a third below their potential, and this is the worst rate since these records began being kept in […]
The swine flu virus has reached 160 countries and could infect two billion people within the next two years, the World Health Organization has said. A senior WHO official, Keiji Fukuda, said the virus was still in its early stages and would continue to spread for some time. Mr Fukuda said work on a vaccine was intensifying but safety could not be compromised by rushing the process. The virus is thought to have killed almost 800 people in recent months. Mr Fukuda, the WHO’s Assistant Director General for Health Security, said the agency had been reporting only laboratory-confirmed cases, but that this was always going to be ‘only a subset of the total number of cases’. ‘Even if we have hundreds of thousands of cases or a few millions of cases, we’re relatively early in the pandemic,’ he told the Associated Press news agency. ‘One of the things that is relatively clear is that we will continue to see spread of the virus; even though we are now three to four months into the pandemic, this is still pretty early into the overall period,’ he said. Mr Fukuda said the WHO estimates two […]
Ancient Humans Left Evidence from the Party that Ended 4,000 Years Ago MU researchers extract starch grains from gourd and squash artifacts and learn about ancient feast July 21, 2009 Story Contact: Kelsey Jackson, (573) 882-8353, JacksonKN@missouri.edu COLUMBIA, Mo. – The party was over more than 4,000 years ago, but the remnants still remain in the gourds and squashes that served as dishware. For the first time, University of Missouri researchers have studied the residues from gourds and squash artifacts that date back to 2200 B.C. and recovered starch grains from manioc, potato, chili pepper, arrowroot and algarrobo. The starches provide clues about the foods consumed at feasts and document the earliest evidence of the consumption of algarrobo and arrowroot in Peru. ‘Archaeological starch grain research allows us to gain a better understanding of how ancient humans used plants, the types of food they ate, and how that food was prepared,’ said Neil Duncan, doctoral student of anthropology in the MU College of Arts and Science and lead author of the study that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) this week. ‘This is the first study to analyze residue […]
PASADENA, Calif — The recession-fueled advertising downturn underlines the urgency of using the Web to glean data and target consumers directly, rather than blasting them with a barrage of TV-style ads, media executives say. At the Fortune Brainstorm: TECH conference in Pasadena this week, Walt Disney Co Chief Executive Robert Iger opened a discussion about new ways to market to consumers, when he described himself as, ‘pretty bullish about what technology is going to allow in terms of behavioral tracking.’ Executives from AOL, a division of Time Warner Inc, News Corp and IAC/InterActiveCorp echoed similar hopes about the potential to reach consumers online. As advertising dollars grow ever more scarce, companies have been forced to rethink how they reach consumers and have moved away from the traditional 30-second spot to the kinds of targeted, Internet-driven marketing campaigns that have been talked about for years. Internet advertising in the United States — a $23.4 billion market in 2008 — was down 5 percent in the first quarter of this year and Iger and other executives say the sector may not return to the historic growth trajectory seen before the recession. Jonathan Miller, head of News Corp’s […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
