Zothecula writes “Scientists based at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, have set a new efficiency record for thin-film copper indium gallium (di)selenid (or CIGS) based solar cells on flexible polymer foils, reaching an efficiency of 20.4 percent. This is an increase from a previous record of 18.7 percent set by the team back in 2011.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Swiss Federal Lab Claims New World Record For Solar Cell Efficiency
hypnosec writes “Korean scientists have developed a ‘fluid-like’ polymer electrolyte used in lithium-ion batteries that would pave way for flexible batteries and flexible smartphones. The discovery was made by a joint team of researchers that was led by Professor Lee Sang-young of Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology. The new electrolyte, though flexible, is made of solid materials hence making the batteries more stable than the lithium-ion batteries used today.” Paper, but full text is paywalled. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Researchers Develop Solid But Flexible Electrolyte For Bendable Batteries
A fascinating project is making the rounds this weekend that could change the way we think of 3D printers. The Filabot is a robot that can turn scrap plastic into 3D printer filament, thereby allowing an almost endless supply of material for prototyping and manufacturing. While it’s probably not that exciting for non-hobbyists, the Filabot is essentially a way to make the raw materials used in products like Makerbot out of stuff you’d throw away. The creator, Tyler McNaney, ran a Kickstarter campaign last year and he is slowly but surely bringing the devices to market this year. Obviously you’re going to run into problems with such a small system – the impurities in the plastic and bubbles being of primary concern – but at about $50 a spool, PVC isn’t cheap and if you’re printing quite a bit of prototype hardware there’s room for a bit of error. Kickstarter backers paid $350 for their Filabots and a “public” price isn’t yet set. While there are problems with any recycling technology, the Filabot is a fascinating study at the potential for in-home 3D printing. Imagine, for example, printing out repair parts or toys using stuff that you would normally recycle? It’s a wonderful example of technology finally digging us – imperceptibly slowly, I’ll grant you – out of the plastic waste problem.
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The Upcycling Filabot Turns Regular Plastic Scrap Into 3D Printer Filament
kkleiner writes “A German company has brought us one step closer to the kinds of shootouts only seen in Sci-Fi films. Düsseldorf-based Rheinmetall Defense recently tested a 50kW, high-energy laser at their proving ground facility in Switzerland. First, the system sliced through a 15mm- (~0.6 inches) thick steel girder from a kilometer away. Then, from a distance of two kilometers, it shot down a handful of drones as they nose-dived toward the surface at 50 meters per second.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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German Laser Destroys Targets More Than 1Km Away
Nerval’s Lobster writes “Netflix has released ‘Janitor Monkey,’ an open-source tool for killing old Amazon Web Services (AWS) instances that began life as an in-house product. While those hosting a private data center will have little use for this scrubbin’ simian, those enterprises with a public cloud can add Janitor Monkey to their administrative bag of tricks. The premise behind the tool is a simple one: while AWS allows for easy (and cheap) experimentation, it’s easy for even the most diligent IT pro to rack up unnecessary costs when they forget to shut off a particular instance. While Netflix’s Asgard tool—open-sourced in June, because this is how the company rolls—allows administrators to delete unused resources, Janitor Monkey takes things one step further by allowing those instances to be automatically found so that Asgard can clean them up. Over the past year, Janitor Monkey has deleted more than 5,000 resources running in the Netflix production and test environments, the company said. Janitor Monkey detects AWS instances, EBS volumes, EBS volume snapshots, and auto-scaling group.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Netflix Open-Sources “Janitor Monkey” AWS Cleanup Tool
coondoggie writes “Toyota is going to show off its autonomous car/accident avoidance technology at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas nest week. The 2013 Lexus LS uses what the car company calls its Intelligent Transport System and is fitted with on-board radar, video cameras and sensors to monitor the road, surroundings, and the driver all with the goal of preventing accidents and avoiding problems.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Toyota To Show Off Autonomous Prototype Car At CES Show
An anonymous reader writes “YouTube has dropped 2 billion fake music industry views and their offending videos. From the article: ‘Google made good on its promise to weed out views inflated by artificial means last week, according to Daily Dot. Record company sites impacted included titans like Universal Music Group, which reportedly lost 1 billion of its 7 billion views, and Sony, who lost 850 million views. The cuts affected marquee names like Rhianna, Beyonce and Justin Bieber. YouTube said in a statement that the figures had been deliberately, artificially inflated. “This was not a bug or a security breach. This was an enforcement of our view count policy,” the company, which is owned by Google, wrote.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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YouTube Drops 2 Billion Fake Music Industry Views
An anonymous reader writes with a story about the possibility of genetically engineered salmon showing up on your table. “A controversial genetically engineered salmon has moved a step closer to the consumer’s dining table after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Friday the fish didn’t appear likely to pose a threat to the environment or to humans who eat it. AquAdvantage salmon eggs would produce fish with the potential to grow to market size in half the time of conventional salmon. If it gets a final go-ahead, it would be the first food from a transgenic animal – one whose genome has been altered – to be approved by the FDA.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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FDA Closer To Approving Biotech Salmon
MrSeb writes with news on the happenings with next generation fabrication processes. From the article: “… Intel’s 22nm SoC unveil is important for a host of reasons. As process nodes shrink and more components move on-die, the characteristics of each new node have become particularly important. 22nm isn’t a new node for Intel; it debuted the technology last year with Ivy Bridge, but SoCs are more complex than CPU designs and create their own set of challenges. Like its 22nm Ivy Bridge CPUs, the upcoming 22nm SoCs rely on Intel’s Tri-Gate implementation of FinFET technology. According to Intel engineer Mark Bohr, the 3D transistor structure is the principle reason why the company’s 22nm technology is as strong as it is. Earlier this year, we brought you news that Nvidia was deeply concerned about manufacturing economics and the relative strength of TSMC’s sub-28nm planar roadmap. Morris Chang, TSMC’s CEO, has since admitted that such concerns are valid, given that performance and power are only expected to increase by 20-25% as compared to 28nm. The challenge for both TSMC and GlobalFoundries is going to be how to match the performance of Intel’s 22nm technology with their own 28nm products. 20nm looks like it won’t be able to do so, which is why both companies are emphasizing their plans to move to 16nm/14nm ahead of schedule. There’s some variation on which node comes next; both GlobalFoundries and Intel are talking up 14nm; TSMC is implying a quick jump to 16nm. Will it work? Unknown. TSMC and GlobalFoundries both have excellent engineers, but FinFET is a difficult technology to deploy. Ramping it up more quickly than expected while simultaneously bringing up a new process may be more difficult than either company anticipates.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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TSMC and Global Foundries Plan Risky Process Jump As Intel Unveils 22nm SoC
hattig writes “US researchers say they have developed a new type of lighting that could replace fluorescent bulbs. The new light source is called field-induced polymer electroluminescent (Fipel) technology. It is made from three layers of white-emitting polymer that contain a small volume of nanomaterials that glow when electric current is passed through them. The developer is promising cheap, hard-to-break, mercury-free, highly efficient bulbs from 2013.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Researchers Create New Cheap, Shatterproof, Plastic Light Bulbs