In Japan, engineers are attempting to contain radioactive contamination from the Fukushima power plant by freezing the ground around it into “ice walls” that will remain frozen for years . At Nova, Jessica Morrison writes about this weird technique, which has been around for over half a century and is more commonly used as part of massive construction projects with large underground components, including Boston’s Big Dig.
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How engineers freeze soil to create structurally sound solid walls of earth
We live in a magical age filled with robot maids, flying cars ( sorta ), and mechanical guard dogs . And now, finally , that list includes color-changing home furnishings, like this fiber optic throw pillow. This is the 21st Century for crying out loud. Read more… 
Apple has a new trick up its sleeve with the iPhone 5s that was talked about on stage during its recent reveal event, but the impact of which won’t be felt until much later when it gets fully taken advantage of by third-party developers. Specifically, I’m talking about the M7 motion coprocessor that now takes the load of tracking motion and distance covered, requiring much less battery draw and enabling some neat new tricks with tremendous felt impact. The M7 is already a boon to the iPhone 5s without any third-party app support – it makes the iPhone more intelligent in terms of when to activate certain features, and when to slow things down and converse battery life by checking less frequently for open networks, for instance. Because it’s already more efficient than using the main A-series processor for these tasks, and because changing these behaviours can themselves also save battery, the M7 already stretches the built-in battery to its upper limits, meaning you’ll get more talk time than you would otherwise out of a device that’s packing one. Besides offering ways for Apple to make power management and efficiency more intelligent on the new iPhone 5s, the M7 is also available for third-party developers to take advantage of, too. This means big, immediately apparent benefits for the health and activity tracker market, since apps like Move or the Nike+ software demoed during the presentation will be able to more efficiently capture data from the iPhone’s sensors. The M7 means that everyone will be able to carry a sensor similar to a Fitbit or equivalent in their pocket without having to cart around a separate device, which doesn’t require syncing via Bluetooth or worrying about losing something that’s generally tiny, plus there’s no additional wristwear required. And the M7′s CoreMotion API is open to all developers, so it’s essentially like carrying around a very powerful motion tracking gizmo in your pocket which is limited in function only by what developers can dream up for it. So in the future, we’ll likely see gesture-controlled games (imagine the iPhone acting as a gesture controller for a title broadcast to Apple TV via AirPlay), as well as all kinds of fitness trackers and apps that can use CoreMotion to limit battery drain or change functionality entirely depending on where and when they’re being used, as detected by motion cues. An app might offer very different modes while in transit, for instance, vs. when it’s stationary in the home. Apple’s iPhone 5s is an interesting upgrade in that much of what’s changed takes the form of truly innovative engineering advances, with tech like the fingerprint sensor, camera and M7 that are each, in and of themselves, impressive feats of technical acumen. What that means is that, especially in the case of the M7, the general consumer might not even realize how much of a generational shift this is until they get their hands on one, and new software experiences released over the hardware’s lifetime will gradually reveal even more about what’s changed. 
Sony has named a new flagship in its Android-powered Xperia smartphone line up which focuses on beefing up camera capabilities. The 4G Xperia Z1, roundly leaked under the moniker ‘Honami’ but officially confirmed today at Sony’s IFA press conference in Berlin, is a follow up to the 5-inch, quad-core Xperia Z unboxed at the start of the year at CES. The Xperia Z1 has a 20.7MP camera on its rump (vs the 13.1MP on the Xperia Z) coupled with a 1/2.3-inch Exmor RS CMOS image sensor, Sony’s G Lens (27mm wide angle, f2.0 aperture) and Bionz image processing engine which Sony users in its standalone cameras. There’s also 3x “clear image zoom” — with Sony claiming its optical zoom delivers “zero distortion”. Sony is making big boasts for this lens combo — claiming it offers “best in class imaging” and is the “ world’s leading camera in a smartphone ” (Nokia may however disagree; its Lumia 1020 smartphone has a 41MP lens ). NB: Sony’s odd wording here — “camera in a smartphone” — can be explained by its simultaneous attempts to extend phone camera smarts via a hardware add-on lens system that clips onto any phone , including the Xperia Z1. Sony is preloading a series of camera apps onto the Z1 to extend its camera capabilities on the software side — including Social Life, a camera streaming app to broadcast what’s going on around you to Facebook; a Timeshift burst mode to take multiple images so you can choose the best shot from several; a visual search app called Info-Eye to get more info on snapped products/landmarks; and an augmented reality app called AR Effect to overlay customised animations onto images. Sony is clearly following in the footsteps of rivals’ strategy here, including Nokia (with its PureView imaging push) and Samsung , which has also focused on making its own suite of imaging apps for flagship devices such as the Galaxy S4. But as well as making its own apps, Sony’s hoping to get developers working for it on the camera front too. “It’s built with an open SDK and we’re already working with a talented group of app developers that will extend its capabilities, ” it said today. Elsewhere, the Xperia Z1 looks to be a slightly beefed up version of its earlier sibling, with the same size 5-inch 1080p display — albeit this time including newer Sony screen tech that it has also brought to the Xperia Z Ultra phablet. Sony’s Triluminos screen tech apparently supports a greater range of colours with natural shades. The Z1 also features Sony’s X-Reality technology for improving the viewing experience of low res video. The Xperia Z1 runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean at launch. Under the hood it has a 2.2Ghz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset. There’s also 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage –expandable via a microSD card slot — and a 3, 000mAh battery. Design wise, the Xperia Z1 shares the look and feel of the rest of Sony’s Xperia range — with clean lines and blunt edges, although Sony says it’s evolved the design, most notably by adding a one piece aluminium casing to all the plastic. Oh and the Z1 is also waterproof, as is its predecessor. To ram that point home, Sony apparently thought it was a good idea to entertain IFA attendees by getting some ladies to cavort with some phones in some water . As sexist displays go, it’s pretty impressive — even by tech industry ‘booth babe’ standards — so well done Sony for alienating ~50% of potential buyers. It better hope the other 50% gets so distracted they end up buying two phones apiece. On the size front, neither the Xperia Z1 or its numeral-less sibling is the largest handset Sony makes, although their five inch displays sits on the cusp of phablet territory. The Sony enormo-phone award goes to its palm-stretching Xperia Z Ultra : a 6.4 inch phablet that’s so large Sony sells a Bluetooth handset accessory for it so you can comfortably take calls. Sony said the Xperia Z1 is due to hit shelves “starting this month”. 
With every new iPhone, most of the discussion centers around its look and not what comes inside. But, according to multiple reports , Apple has designed a new 64-bit dual-core A7 system on a chip for the iPhone 5S . It is supposedly 31 percent faster, representing a serious slowdown in spec improvement. It proves that the smartphone market may have matured and that existing smartphone owners won’t feel the urge to upgrade to a new model anymore. When it comes to smartphone chips, Apple is a lone ranger. It has been designing its own ARM-based chips for a couple of years. It outsources production to Samsung and other manufacturers. But the important part is that only Apple devices use Apple chips. So far, this strategy has proven to be successful. The iPhone 4S was twice as powerful as the iPhone 4, and had nine times the graphics processing capabilities. The iPhone 5 was once again twice as fast as the iPhone 4S, with twice the graphics performance. That’s why this year’s 31 percent performance boost is lackluster. If the new iPhone is indeed called the iPhone 5S, the ‘S’ will certainly not stand for ‘speed’. A 31% CPU speed increase sounds like a huge failure to me, specially considering previous generations showed ~100% improvements.— Paul Haddad (@tapbot_paul) August 26, 2013 On paper, Android phones are more powerful. Right now, the Snapdragon 800 and Tegra 4 both come with at least 4 cores and more raw power . It seems that Apple doesn’t want to compete in the spec game anymore, without giving any explanation. The main advantage is that Apple can optimize the A7 for its own set of APIs, making it feel faster than it actually is. Even though Snapdragons have more GHz, iPhone apps are still fast because Apple takes advantage of its chip architecture like no one else. The gap isn’t as wide as expected. Moreover, Apple’s custom design strategy improves battery performance. Apple needs to reduce both component costs and R&D costs Yet, why were the A6 and the A5 much faster than their predecessors? Because smartphones were not as fast as Apple wanted them to be. If you want to use Siri or play nice games, you need the iPhone 4S. If you want to use the upcoming AirDrop feature, you need the iPhone 5. Now it’s not the same story. Apple probably thinks that the iPhone 5 can run everything perfectly fine, and there is no need to put more raw power. In other words, smartphones have matured. As smartphones get more widespread, Apple needs to reduce both component costs and R&D costs. The company can’t invest as much money in developing its new chips if smartphones become more and more commoditized products . The company wants to avoid hurting its margin more than it needs. The A7 needs to be future-proof. While the iPhone 5C will not receive the A7 at first, entry-level iPhones will eventually get those chips. It needs to be powerful enough and cheap enough so that Apple doesn’t have to develop yet another chip next year for its cheap iPhones. If Apple judges that current chips are becoming fast enough to power iOS for years, iPhone users shouldn’t expect speed increases. Instead, the company will bet on new features and software updates. With market maturation coming soon, Apple faces a nearly overwhelming challenge as well. How do you convince your customers to upgrade their phones? The same thing happened for the iPod — they got lighter and lighter. In 2001, the original 5GB iPod was 6.5 ounces (184 grams). In 2004, the iPod mini was 3.6 ounces (102 grams). In 2005, the iPod nano was only 1.5 oz (42 grams). At this point, if you already had an iPod and used it as a portable music player, there was no real incentive to upgrade to a new one, except more gigabytes. The same thing is true for your microwave — you only buy a new one if your old one breaks. Yet, there is one last thing that can be improved again and again on the iPhone — the camera. Everybody uses their phone as their primary camera. It’s the camera that you always have in your pocket. While it has greatly improved over the years, there’s still room for improvement — especially now that HiDPI displays are getting more popular. This single spec upgrade will make people upgrade. That’s why the most interesting news of the day isn’t the A7, but the new dedicated chip for video capturing. In addition to helping for image stabilization, it could allow you to take 120 fps videos. If the iPhone 5S can shoot smooth slow-motion videos, it could be the feature that stands out and steals the show at Apple’s event. In fact, the ‘S’ could stand for ‘slow motion’. (Image credits: Ascii.jp , Wikimedia Commons ) 
First time accepted submitter Jagungal writes “Although the core Xen hypervisor has always been open source from the start, Citrix have now released the next version of their XenServer including all features and tools under an open source license. This includes also introducing a new XenServer.org community portal. The major change for users is that they now get all features from the licensed version for free but unless they pay for support, they have to do all security updates manually. Change logs for the new version 6.2 can be found here. It’s been a few years since Citrix started giving it away, free as in beer. Read more of this story at Slashdot.