Wires smaller in diameter than light waves boost solar cell efficiency

Electron micrograph of indium phosphide (InP) nanowires. Each is 180 nanometers in diameter; this diameter allows them to capture more light, making them effective in a photovoltaic solar cell. Wallentin et al. In the continuing quest to create solar cells, researchers seek new materials, use clever techniques, and look for novel physical phenomena to extract the maximum electricity out of sunlight for the lowest cost. One method of extracting more power at a lower cost relies on creating arrays of nanowires that stand vertically on inexpensive substrates. In contrast to the material in ordinary solar cells, nanowires use less material, can potentially be built with less costly materials, and in principle trap more light thanks to the geometry of the arrays. However, most nanowire solar cells are currently outperformed by their conventional counterparts. A new effort used indium phosphide (InP) nanowires with diameters smaller than the wavelength of the light they were trapping. That trick enabled Jesper Wallentin and colleagues to reach comparable efficiencies and slightly higher voltage than a conventional InP solar cell. While the wires only covered 12 percent of the surface area, they exploited a principle known as resonant trapping to extract over half as much current as a full planar cell of InP. This approach could lead to even greater efficiency at lower cost for solar cells. Many candidates for the next generation of photovoltaic (PV) solar cells are being investigated. Research in this area has two goals that don’t always overlap: maximizing the efficiency of converting sunlight into electric current, and reducing cost per unit of electricity. The advantage of nanowire-based cells lies in using a lot less material, since the entire surface need not be covered in PV material. Additionally, the wires themselves can be fabricated from relatively inexpensive semiconductor materials. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Wires smaller in diameter than light waves boost solar cell efficiency

FCC adds spectrum to Wi-Fi—but you likely need a new router to use it

Jason Alley The Federal Communications Commission last week said it will add 195MHz of spectrum to Wi-Fi’s 5GHz band. This move is designed to relieve congestion in Wi-Fi networks, particularly in areas of widespread simultaneous usage like airports and sports stadiums . It could help your home network too, but not right away—routers available in stores today may not be able to use the new spectrum at all . Finding out definitively whether today’s routers will support the new spectrum is difficult, partly because the FCC still has to issue specific rules governing its use. We’ve hit up router vendors and other industry people to find out whether software updates might let current routers access the new spectrum. While the results were a bit muddled, it seems safe to say no one is guaranteeing today’s routers will get the benefit of the new 195MHz. Even the latest routers supporting the ultra-modern 802.11ac standard may be left behind. Cisco refused to comment at all, telling us only “Cisco has not made any announcements about this so cannot discuss at this time.” Buffalo told us “the chip vendors will need to work on it” and that “they will at least to have to make changes to the hardware driver. … The magnitude of that change will determine if Buffalo is able to use the same hardware.” Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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FCC adds spectrum to Wi-Fi—but you likely need a new router to use it

Samsung’s new eight-core Exynos 5 Octa SoC promises not to hog battery

Not to be outdone by Nvidia’s Tegra 4 announcement and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800-series announcement, Samsung took to the stage today to announce the next processor in its Exynos 5 lineup: the Exynos 5 Octa is an eight-core SoC destined for tablets and high-end smartphones. Not all of these CPU cores are created equal: four of them are high-performance Cortex-A15 cores, the very same found in the Exynos 5 Dual that powers the Nexus 10 and Samsung’s ARM Chromebook . The other four are Cortex-A7 CPU cores—these have the same feature set and capabilities as the A15 cores, but are optimized for power efficiency rather than performance. This makes the Exynos 5 Octa one of the first (if not  the first) products to actually use ARM’s big.LITTLE processor switching technology, something we outlined back in October of 2011 . The SoC is designed to dynamically split the workload between the high-performance and the high-efficiency CPU cores based on the task at hand—less strenuous activities like browsing an app store or checking e-mail might be done on the A7 cores, for instance, while gaming and number crunching could be handed off to the A15 cores. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Samsung’s new eight-core Exynos 5 Octa SoC promises not to hog battery

Satellite Internet: 15Mbps, no matter where you live in the US

billrdio America is a land of haves and have-nots when it comes to broadband Internet. While many of us enjoy downloads speeds of 50 or even 100 Mbps, 119 million Americans lack broadband access (defined as 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up). Out of those 119 million, 19 million live in areas where there is no option to buy a wired broadband connection, according to government data. Wouldn’t it be great if we could provide broadband speed to nearly every American, without costly construction projects to bring cables to the home? Apparently, we already can . At least that’s what providers of satellite broadband Internet services said today in a panel at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Latest-generation satellites operated by HughesNet and ViaSat offer 10 to 15 Mbps down and 1 to 3 Mbps up to nearly any home in the US, representatives of those companies said. They believe the industry simply suffers from an awareness problem. Previous-generation satellite products offered only a fraction of that speed, and even people who realize satellite is available to them may not know that the latest products are as fast as they are. Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Satellite Internet: 15Mbps, no matter where you live in the US

Lenovo talks up new 27-inch “table PC” at CES

Lenovo’s IdeaCentre Horizon 27 Lenovo Lenovo is just one of the many PC makers bringing new designs to CES this week. Many of these will simply be refreshed or refined versions of the first round of Windows 8 computers—either convertible laptops or more traditional desktops and laptops with integrated touchscreens—but a few particularly interesting designs may yet rise above that fray. One of these PCs is Lenovo’s IdeaCentre Horizon 27, a 27-inch all-in-one desktop PC with an integrated battery and 1080p ten-point touchscreen. Lenovo is marketing the device as a “table PC.” Sure, a kickstand can be unfolded to allow the computer to sit on a desk as would any all-in-one. But this PC can also be laid flat on a table for use by multiple people, or mounted on the pictured roller table for use while standing. (We’ve previously stated  a touchscreen all-in-one makes the most sense ergonomically while positioned at about waist height on a standing person.) Enlarge / A roller table will change the Horizon into a standing workstation, when needed. Lenovo In concept the Horizon is quite similar to Sony’s Tap 20 , a smaller all-in-one that also included an integrated battery and foldable kickstand allowing it to be laid flat on a table. The Horizon’s larger size will mean more people can gather around it at once (and the roller table may make it more useful for people who prefer to stand at their desks), but the two machines are definitely cut from the same cloth. Like the Tap 20, multiplayer touch-enabled games figure heavily into Lenovo’s promotional material for the device. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Leader of BitTorrent piracy ring sentenced to five years in prison

The leader of the notorious IMAGiNE BitTorrent piracy ring, Jeramiah Perkins, was sentenced on Thursday to five years in prison, the largest sentence for the group’s five top administrators. In August 2012, Perkins pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. After being given the maximum sentence today, Perkins was also ordered to serve three years under “supervised release” and must pay $15,000 in restitution. As we reported in April, the group used infrared and FM receivers and camcorders to capture new releases in movie theaters. In a statement , the Department of Justice cited testimony from the Motion Picture Association of America, calling the group “the most prolific motion picture piracy release group operating on the Internet from September 2009 through September 2011.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Leader of BitTorrent piracy ring sentenced to five years in prison

University wins record $1.17 billion verdict against Marvell Semiconductor

flickr / BestBoyZ GmbH A Pittsburgh jury found that hard drive control chips made by Marvell Semiconductor infringe two patents owned by Carnegie Mellon University. Following a four-week trial in federal court, nine jurors unanimously held that Marvell should have to pay $1,169,140,271 in damages—the full sum that CMU’s lawyers had asked for. If the verdict holds up on appeal, it would wipe out more than a year of profits at Marvell, which made a bit over $900 million in 2011. It would also be the largest patent verdict in history, beating out this summer’s $1.05 billion verdict against Samsung for infringing patents and trademarks owned by Apple. The two CMU patents describe a way of reducing “noise” when reading information off hard disks. The jury found that Marvell’s chips infringed claim 4 of Patent No. 6,201,839 and claim 2 of Patent No. 6,438,180 . At trial, Marvell hotly contested that CMU had invented anything new; they argued that a Seagate patent , filed 14 months earlier, describes everything in CMU’s invention. Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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University wins record $1.17 billion verdict against Marvell Semiconductor

Steam for Linux beta now open to the public

Good news for those who didn’t score an invite to the first round of Valve’s closed beta of Steam for Linux . The service is now available to anyone running Linux the latest build of Ubuntu (still no word on when the service is coming to other distros) (seems it runs on multiple different Linux builds now. Apologies). The new, wider release comes with a handy installer package , but those who are already in the closed beta can just upgrade to the latest version within Steam. Valve has also opened up a new Github repository to organize bug tracking for beta testers. That’s what you Linux people like to do, right? Find and catalog bugs? Since the closed beta launch in early November, Steam has expanded its selection of available Linux games from 24 to 39, a list still dominated by indie games. However, THQ president Jason Rubin recently tweeted that the struggling publisher was “evaluating cost/benefit” of Linux development, based on fan feedback in the wake of the company’s successful Humble Bundle experiment . Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Steam for Linux beta now open to the public

Using Windows 8’s “hidden” backup to clone and recover your whole PC

The blue screen of bringing your PC back to life. When it comes to backing up and restoring your PC, Windows 8 took a few steps forward and a few steps back. Your settings and apps in the new tablet-y interface (yeah, we’re still calling it Metro ) are automatically backed up if you use a Microsoft account. That means when you restore your PC, all of the Metro stuff comes back exactly the way you remember it. This has limitations—your desktop applications, anything that wasn’t downloaded from the Windows Store, are wiped when performing the most easily accessible type of restore in Windows 8. Beyond Metro, all you get is a file on your desktop listing the applications you’ve lost. There’s also a new backup tool on the desktop side of things, but this has its limits too. Called File History, it lets you automatically back up files to a network drive or cable-connected external hard drive every 10 minutes. As Peter Bright explained in an article last summer, File History’s arrival was paired with the exit of Shadow Copies. This was a useful tool that let users revert to previous versions of files without needing to connect an external drive, and now it’s gone. Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Using Windows 8’s “hidden” backup to clone and recover your whole PC

How to bring down mission-critical GPS networks with $2,500

Enlarge / The phase-coherent signal synthesizer with its top cover removed. The $2,500 device can be used to severely disrupt mission-critical GPS equipment used by the military and private industry. Nighswander et al. Scientists have devised a series of novel and inexpensive attacks that can severely disrupt mission-critical global positioning systems relied on by the military and a variety of industrial players, including airlines, mining companies, and operators of hydroelectric plants and other critical infrastructure. Unlike previous GPS attacks, the one developed by a team of scientists from Carnegie Mellon University and a private navigation company exploits software bugs in the underlying receivers. That allows the attacks to be stealthier and more persistent than earlier exploits, which primarily relied on signal jamming and spoofing. Prototype hardware that cost only $2,500 to build is able to cause a wide variety of GPS devices within a 30 mile radius to malfunction. Because many of those devices are nodes on special networks that make GPS signals more precise, the attacks have the effect of disrupting larger systems used in aviation, military, and critical infrastructure. The PCSS, or phase-coherent signal synthesizer, that they developed simultaneously receives and transmits civil GPS signals. It carries out many of the same things done by spoofers used in earlier GPS attacks. But instead of merely providing false information designed to compromise the accuracy of the GPS readings, it includes data that exploits weaknesses in the firmware of nearby receivers, many of which use the Internet to share their readings with other machines. The success of the PCSS is the result of an almost complete lack of authentication in the devices that send and receive GPS signals. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How to bring down mission-critical GPS networks with $2,500