Education Advancements

An improved way of learning has come to take place the old and boring traditional learning. IPods are not just for music and games anymore. Educational applications have been making students go haywire. I always wondered when a new type of learning was going to come in par. I was always bored with the old type of learning and traditional classes. Spicing it up with iPod learning applications is a great idea. The students at Somerset Elementary School in Minnesota have become very interested in Apple touch-screen media and handheld computers. IPods are starting to get more popular in U.S. schools for learning. For kids tapping, scrolling and swiping are more fun on a device rather than activities for math and spelling that are “boring”. Students show to be more engaged in learning suddenly when it is not paper and pencil. At the school the teacher passes around a laptop to have students download educational apps. The teacher one or more times during the week passes out the charged iPods and the students are excited because to them it is like playtime. Some people argue and are not convinced that students will not have a lasting educational value. Alex Silverman, a man who has thought high school students, is now an app developer has created a new app called eClicker. It allows the teachers and students to communicate with each other through the classrooms Wi-Fi network. This may also create a more interaction through class participation. The app only cost $25 for the teacher and its free for the students. "His students have a variety of learning disabilities that often cannot be overcome with regular teaching methods. But something as simple as a flash-card slide show on touch-screen iPods, with finger swipes for moving from one digital photo to the next, tends to electrify the kids." Suddenly a class of boring students turns into an interested and eager class to learn.
I am glad a new way of learning has finally come. I am already getting some of this new learning in my school now. A program called ISP. I hope we can integrate iPods in our class to.

Hacking!!!

Hacking, sounds fun! Not when it’s illegal and you can get arrested for it. That’s what happened to three Spaniards that were suspected of infecting 13 million computers that contained a suspicious program. The program allowed them to steal information. It would have been able to steal personal and financial data worldwide. This was reported by Spain’s Civil Guard on Wednesday. Teaming up the Civil Guards worked with the FBI and computer security firms in Canada, The United States and Spain to inspect. A Spanish official even called it the world’s biggest network of virus-infected computers. The Civil Guards’ statement read that the suspects "copied personal and financial data of individuals, companies and official institutions in more than 190 countries." Additionally, the virus would have those who were controlling the system to mount a large cyber attack from the infected computers. Let me remind you that the virus already is able to gain access to personal and financial information. While searching through the computers the police found computer and personal information from more than 80,000 users. The suspects are the ages of 31, 30, and 25. They were arrested last week. They were arrested in Spain’s northern Vizcaya province, northwest Coruna province and southeast Murcia province, respectively. There were no identities released by authorities or any other details about them. May was when the computer hacking was first detected by the Canadian firm Defence Intelligence, the statement says that they quickly enlisted the aid of Spain’s Panda Security firm and the Georgia Tech Information Security Center located in Atlanta, Georgia. Sooner or later the FBI determined that there was a Spanish Citizen involved. They alerted the Civil Guards. The suspects had brought virus software to use in their alleged scheme, authorities concluded. Investigators had identified basically all of the control channels for the pirated computer network, by December. They also “proceeded in a coordinated way internationally to block the domains that were being used," the statement said. Two U.S. and one Spanish service providers were mainly used. An act of revenge took place, when a cyberattack against the Canadian firm investigating them. This attack that was preformed, seriously affected its internet service provider and left numerous of clients without connection, this also included Canadian universities and government offices. The counterattack helped in a way. This allowed the investigators to figure out the remaining of the control channels for the alleged scheme, and this was able to be blocked also finally. Only thing that was not blocked were a fairly small number of computers. First to be found was the 31 year old suspect, discovered while using the name “hamlet1917.” He was arrested in the town of Balmaseda, Vizcaya. “A search of the computers found there led to the other two suspects, the statement said.” The suspects will appear in front of Judge Baltasar Garzon at the Spain National Court in Madrid, this is because of the board implications of the virus-infected computers. Authorities are still investigating whether or not a fourth suspect might be involved.

Flying Hotel?

I always wonder how and what the future will be. Well it seems London knows where they are going to be. Can you image going on vacation and spending your time in a huge vertical airship that is floating thousands of meters over the ground? Well experts are coming together to design a concept and make it reality. Seymourpowell designers say the “Aircruise” claims to be a great new design that can accommodate their guests inside of a 265-meter tall hotel that can float over top beautiful landscapes or city skylines. Nick Talbot states, "The Aircruise concept questions whether the future of luxury travel should be based around space-constrained, resource hungry, and all too often stressful airline travel." This type of transportation may attract more people because it will be like a vacation where people experience a more serene and more reflective journey. They will not worry about getting from A to B quickly. The Aircruise for now is only a concept, they have developed a plan so that their great ideas will be able to be built in the future. Their design includes the Aircruise will be able to hold a maximum of 100 guests and crew and will only allow 10 luxury apartments available for rent. The Aircruise will contain a dining area, a bar, and a lounge area for everyone on board. This is something good to look for in the future and there isn’t another way you can imagine to experience luxury travel like this. The design will use hydrogen gas to be the primary lifting gas and it will be able to lift around 1.2 kg per cubic of volume. Also large hydrogen fuel cells can provide on board power and some drinking water. The speed of the Aircruise would be around 100 to 150 kilometers an hour, so if you wonder how long it would take you to get from London to New York, it will be somewhere around 37 hours. I hope that this type of technology will be around when I am alive because I would love to stay in a floating hotel.

Algae into Crude Oil

The manufacturer of this project is Sapphire Energy and they claim they have developed diesel, jet fuel and premium-grade gasoline
The cost and process of manufacturing algae to crude oil is the same amount of work as extracting petroleum from oil sands or deep-water reserves.
The reason why this was invented was because it was a good way to get fuel and also since the process of making crude oil from algae requires non-portable water and carbon dioxide then this will hypothetically balance out the produced carbon dioxide from when its burned. This will help the environment a whole lot.
This is also good to use because it pollutes less than the regular gasoline, this reason because it does not contain either nitrogen or sulfur.
This has not been applied yet but will hopefully be successful and commercially used in three years.

LIQUIDMETAL Technologies

If you want to redefine performance and cost paradigms then you may want to consider Liquidmetal alloys. Made possible by revolutionary scientific and technological innovations the superior properties. Since the creation of thermoplastics, Liquidmetal alloys represent the first enabling materials technology. It possess characteristics that make them better in numerous ways to other commercially-viable materials.
The Liquidmetal technology offers many benefits including an “amorphous” atomic structure, that is extraordinary for structural metals. Additionally, they contain a multi-component chemical composition. This means it can be made for different properties and processes. Also, they lend themselves to process technology that is sort of like that possessed by plastic.
This technology allows you to optimize the material to follow specific applications by tailoring the combination of process, chemistry and atomic structure. The atomic structure is very different and impressive compared to other metal alloys

Trabecular Metal Revision Shell

Trabecular metal has a cellular structure that resembles a bone. It also has the ability to approximate its mechanical and physical properties more closely that other materials that are used for prosthetic. The Trabecular configuration, which is unique and very porous, is beneficial to bone formation . It enables rapid and extensive tissue infiltration and strong attachment. This new type of metal consists of interconnecting pores. This means the structural biomaterial is 80% porous. This leads to 2-3 times better bone in growth which is compared to “conventional porous coatings and double the interface shear strength.”
These Trabecular metals are implants that are made using elemental tantalum metal and created with techniques using vapor deposition. Strength and corrosion resistance with great biocompatibility are why elemental tantalum is a great new technology. Trabecular metal is very strong and has a great strength-to-weight ratio. What is very impressive about this metal is that when it is inside the body it has a bone-like physical and mechanical properties. It was proven that after the surgery, 8 weeks later the bone grew and filled in most of the available pore space.

Plastic Solar Cells

We always hear about solar panels to provide energy for houses and plants that sit on top of rooftops and so on. But wouldn’t it be great to have portable solar cells on the back of your cell phone or on any electronic device. These silicon-based solar cells are low-cost and flexible. If they are able to create solar devices for other things then there shouldn’t be a problem.

A professor and student at the University of Chicago have been together studying and developing a new semiconducting material that is called PTB1. This material coverts sunlight into electricity just like solar panels do. They sold their patent rights to Solarmer Energy Inc. The prototype will soon be completed. It will be eight square inches (50 square centimeters) and will have a lifetime of three years. They claim that the device will have the efficiency of eight percent. While everyone else is in the industry is in 5 percent to 6 percent range.

The material is even higher efficiency because they have semiconducting material that works great. The silicon-based solar cells have an active layer of PTB1 is about 100 nanometers in thickness. And the width is about 1,000 atoms. To create a produce a small amount of the PTB1 material, it takes a lot of time and it is a multi-step process.