After offices and homes, now it’s the turn of a stadium to go solar. The world’s largest solar stadium named Stade De Suisse has shown the path that all stadiums should follow.
Located in Bern, Switzerland, the stadium originally had 7930 solar panels made by Kyocera installed, but recently an additional 2808 solar cells have also added. This addition in solar panels made the stadium generate an overall output of 1.3 Megawatts. Stadium authorities also expect the stadium to generate a whooping 1.13 Gigawatts of electricity per year.
The amount of electricity being generated in the stadium is equivalent to the power used by 350 local house holds. Not only is the stadium generating its own electricity, but in the process it is also saving 630 ton CO2 emissions from lingering in the atmosphere.
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Lunar-Resonant Streetlights Syncs with the Moon to Preserve Energy
Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor delivers enough light when it’s shining at its full potential. During a full moon night about 10% of the light of the sun is reflected to our planet, which means we don’t need a streetlight in those days.
But all the lights that are shining on full moon nights are doing nothing but wasting useful energy. They cannot be programmed according to the status of the moon. However, Lunar-Resonant Streetlights will soon be changing that trend. These lights somehow sync with the moon and dim down and turn off completely as the moon waxes. When it’s a new moon, it’ll be fully lit up, showing you the path to go back home. This technique results in an energy-saving of 90-95%.
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A team of HHMI researchers has prompted female mice to behave like male mice in the lab by depriving them of gene called TRPC2, responsible for functioning of pheromones-sensing organ present in nose called the vomeronasal organ.
After researchers genetically switched off the VNO, the female mouse started engaging in sexually aggressive behavior, such as chasing a male mouse, engaging in foreplay, mounting, pelvic thrust, solicitation and complex ultrasonic vocalization shown by males.
Not only this, they abandoned the newly born babies and came out of the nest unlike female mice, who are good at nursing.
Biologist, have long searched for the root cause of sexually dimorphic behavior. They looked at everything from influence of hormones such as testosterone, positing that there may be a region of brain behind dimorphic behavior.
The finding, published in British Journal Nature, is important as it disapproves the decade old studies relating the difference in male and female sexual behavior to difference in brain structure.
Neuroscientist Marc Breedlove at the Michigan State University said,
Until now it was thought that female brains produce feminine behaviour while male brains can produce masculine behaviours, with little cross or no cross talk between them.
The new research will pave way for further studies into the mechanism that governs sexual behavior in animals and signaling events in the brain to see areas controlling sex-specific behavior.
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The hottest news around the corner reveals that Apple’s iPhone is again encircled in a tight spot and this time the company is prosecuted by a Florida-based company over patent used in its touchscreen display.
The complaint was filed in a federal court of Tyler, Texas which claims that Apple was informed earlier that the iPhone violate on a patent issued in 2004 by SP technologies LLC.
The patent defines a ‘method and medium for computer readable keyboard display incapable of user termination’ and as Apple didn’t gave any heed to the earlier warning, it now has to pay the ‘reasonable royalties’ for each iPhone sold. Moreover, Apple also has to stop using this intellectual patent in their mobile devices.
Now, if Apple is found culpable of “willful and deliberate” patent breach, he has to pay disciplinary damages equal to three times the monetary loss that the petitioner suffered. It is worth mentioning that since years, Apple has filed dozens of patents related to its iPhone embedded touch-screen and gesture technology.
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Applehas just unveiled that the company has reorganized their Mac Mini line with Intel Core 2 Duo processors. Now, the $799 model comes with a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, SuperDrive and a 120GB hard drive, whereas $599 model offers you a 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, Combo Drive and a 80GB hard drive.
The detailed specs of new 1.83GHz Mac Mini, encompass:
* 1GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, expandable up to 2GB;
* a slot-load Combo (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) drive;
* 880GB Serial ATA hard drive clocked at 5400 rpm;
* Intel GMA950 graphics processor;
* integrated AirPort Extreme wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.0+EDR;
* Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000 BASE-T);
* four USB 2.0 ports;
* one audio line in and one audio line out port and each sports both optical digital and analog;
* DVI-out port for external display (VGA-out adapter included, Composite/S-Video out adapter sold separately);
* the infrared Apple Remote.
The detailed specs of new 2.0GHz Mac Mini comprises:
* 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor;
* 1GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable up to 2GB;
* a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
* 120GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm;
* Intel GMA950 graphics processor;
* built-in AirPort Extreme wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.0+EDR;
* Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000 BASE-T);
* four USB 2.0 ports;
* one audio line in and one audio line out port, each supporting both optical digital and analog;
* DVI-out port for external display (VGA-out adapter included, Composite/S-Video out adapter sold separately);
* the infrared Apple Remote.
Both the models are available now at the Apple Store.
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New law REACH, (Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals) will require up to 30,000 chemicals manufactured or imported into the EU to be tested for safety. To provide this safety data lives of millions of innocent laboratory animals are on the line.
Before 1981, chemicals did not have to be tested before being put on the market. However, the new REACH law will require the systematic testing of all chemicals that were put on the market prior to 1981, as well as all new chemicals manufactured or imported in quantities greater than 1 tone a year.
RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) fears that it will result in many more laboratory tests being carried out on animals to assess whether chemicals pose a safety threat.
The RSPCA is urging the chemicals industry to help keep animal tests to a minimum by following pharmaceutical companies’ lead and share information about substances. A successful joint project between animal welfare charities and pharmaceutical companies has already shown this can be done.
The Society, FRAME and a consortium of major European pharmaceutical companies joined forces with UK charity Lhasa Limited to construct a database, which will allow companies to share the results of chemical tests on animals. This information often goes unpublished and other organizations may repeat the same distressing tests on laboratory animals unnecessarily.
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There are many wildlife species that have not fared well in the changing Iowa landscape and have been listed as endangered or threatened.
Endangered species are animals and plants that are in danger of becoming extinct and threatened species are animals and plants that are likely to become endangered in the near future.
No, doubt that bald eagle which was once listed in the endangered species list is flying off the list. But still there are many species that remain on the list.
The Interior Least Tern and the Piping Plover are among the two species that are there in the list of endangered species and are facing the challenges. This means if steps are not being taken, they can become extinct.
Interior Least Tern:
Interior least tern is the interior population of the least tern which tops the list of endangered species. Dams, reservoirs, and other changes to river systems have eliminated least tern habitat. Least terns prefer the wide channels dotted with sandbars and these have been replaced by narrow forested river corridors.
Piping Plovers:
A resident of sand-flats and shorelines east of the Rocky Mountains, the population of Piping Plovers has declined dramatically due to human actions. There have been continuous loss of habitat and predation of their young.
Development and recreational activities along shorelines are the primary causes of these declines. Commercial, residential, and recreational development have decreased the amount of coastal habitat available for piping plovers to nest and feed.
Human disturbance often restricts breeding success. Foot and vehicular traffic crush the nests or young ones. Interruption of feeding stresses young birds during critical periods in their development. The human activities are causing much harm to the environment and the wildlife species.
Various steps are being taken to save the wildlife. MidAmerican Energy Company has worked with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to protect the Iowa nesting areas and help these species to survive.
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The drought-struck Australia seems to be up with arms to hunt for alternative solution to global warming – the root of droughts prevailing in the country’s major cities. Presently, the driest inhabited continent on earth needs to derive solution from its immediate abundant resource – the sea water.
Cuing this source of energy, scientists have come up with a new technology that can harness electricity and drinking water from wave energy, to serve the major cities of Australia.
The US $636 million technology works through fields of submerged buoys tied to seabed pumps. These buoys are made to move in harmony with the passing waves’ motion. In the process, the technology pumps pressurized seawater to shore, where it runs turbines passing through a desalination plant.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Industry Minister Ian MacFarlane said,
Thanks to the Perth-based Carnegie Corporation for developing the technology. Once its functioning is successfully kicked up, the “Wave Farms” would be capable of generating around 300 megawatts power, which is also emission-free. This eco-friendly production of power can serve about 300,000 householdsThe constancy of the waves even when the surface is dead calm means that you can build a base load renewable energy power station and that is really the holy grail for us, if you can produce renewable energy 24/7.
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What if some machine never stops running to produce an unlimited clean power everlastingly! I think it will be amazing. Now, to accomplish the same task to produce clean eco-friendly power continuously an outsized Irish company, Steorn has developed an avant-garde perpetual motion machine-Orbo that produces free energy or energy from nothing.
Perpetual motion machine:
However, we have many other machines that produce energy via water, sun and air but this free energy producing device is so unique that it can also help to solve the world’s energy predicament one day.
How Orbo functions:
Firstly, to generate free energy it utilizes power of magnetism and functions completely on the theory of time variant magneto-mechanical interactions. Secondly, the mechanical energy produced can also be converted into electrical energy by exploiting standard generator technology and by amalgamating this technology directly with Orbo or by linking the mechanical output from Orbo to the generation technology.
But it is noteworthy that the effectiveness of such mechanical/electrical conversions methods are based on the components used and is also a function of size.
Cost to develop this ultramodern machine:
To develop this machine Steorn spent more than $5.7 million in Orbo and $160,000 to place its ad on The Economist. Now, after 10 months to check Steron claims, an unnamed panel of 22 scientists is testing this technology but we will get the results sometimes at the end of this year whereas to make this machine known publicly this energy producing magical device was demonstrated at East London’s Kinetica Museum on Wednesday and on Internet too.
And as according to Steorn CEO Sean McCarthy statement that he said in a promotional video on his company’s website that ‘I have no doubts about the results’, it seems that Steorn is so confident in its innovation that it will definitely put the name of this perpetual motion machine in golden words to produce clean and unlimited power from nothing, thanks Steorn.
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MIT biochemists have identified a molecular mechanism behind fear, and successfully cured it in mice, according to an article in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Researchers from MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory hope that their work could lead to the first drug to treat the millions of adults who suffer each year from persistent, debilitating fears - including hundreds of soldiers returning from conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Inhibiting a kinase, an enzyme that change proteins, called Cdk5 facilitates the extinction of fear learned in a particular context, Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and colleagues showed.
Conversely, the learned fear persisted when the kinase's activity was increased in the hippocampus, the brain's center for storing memories, the scientists found.
Cdk5, paired with the protein p35, helps new brain cells, or neurons, form and migrate to their correct positions during early brain development, and the MIT researchers looked at how Cdk5 affects the ability to form and eliminate fear-related memories.
"Remarkably, inhibiting Cdk5 facilitated extinction of learned fear in mice," Tsai said. "This data points to a promising therapeutic avenue to treat emotional disorders and raises hope for patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or phobia."
Emotional disorders such as post-traumatic stress and panic attacks stem from the inability of the brain to stop experiencing the fear associated with a specific incident or series of incidents.
For some people, upsetting memories of traumatic events do not go away on their own, or may even get worse over time, severely affecting their lives.
A study conducted by the Army in 2004 found that one in eight soldiers returning from Iraq reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
According to the National Center for PTSD in the United States, around eight percent of the population will have PTSD symptoms at some point in their lives. Some 5.2 million adults have PTSD during a given year, the center reports.
In the current research, genetically engineered mice received mild foot shocks in a certain environment and were re-exposed to the same environment without the foot shock.
The team found that mice with increased levels of Cdk5 activity had more trouble letting go of the memory of the foot shock and continued to freeze in fear.
The reverse was also true: in mice whose Cdk5 activity was inhibited, the bad memory of the shocks disappeared when the mice learned that they no longer needed to fear the environment where the foot shocks had once occurred.
"In our study, we employ mice to show that extinction of learned fear depends on counteracting components of a molecular pathway involving the protein kinase Cdk5," Tsai concluded. "We found that Cdk5 activity prevents extinction, at least in part by negatively affecting the activity of another key kinase."
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Designer/Company: Sunman Kwon from Hongik University
Embedded Technology: Finger touching wearable mobile device
This new technological advancement would theoretically convert your hand into a cell phone.
Researcher, Sunman Kwon from Hongik University, has been able to manufacture a “finger touching wearable mobile device” that enables you to make calls just as if we do through a cell phone. This idea is not at all bad as you may have a 3.5G and 4G technology readily available.
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