Day: August 21, 2012

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From Autoblog: Video: Consumer Reports cuts loose, compares Scion FR-S against Subaru BRZ

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Consumer Reports pits Scion FR-S against Subaru BRZ

The folks at Consumer Reports are a lot like the Ben Steins of the automotive world. At first glance, they are the dry-as-saltines, facts-only crew that can’t be bothered by anything but the empirical data with which they distill to arrive at their coveted “Recommended” accolades. It isn’t always this way with CR, though, as we found out when they hopped behind the wheel of the Toyobaru coupes of our collective dreams, the Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ.

Automotive engineer Jake Fisher hosts this test and speaks for the CR team explaining that, though both coupes are very much the same animal, they have subtle differences. The BRZ comes with a bit more available kit, like a rear spoiler, HID headlights and navigation, while the FR-S carries a lower price. All seems like what we’ve heard before, right? Well, CR ends up favoring the FR-S, claiming it has a more balanced ride and handles better.

This decision stands in contrast to a recent Motor Trend comparison test, in which the print publication favored the driving characteristics of the Subaru over the Scion.

More than anything, this highlights just how close the two cars are, and as CR‘s Fisher put it, “You’re not gonna go wrong with either one of these.” We agree, but click belowto see the video and find out exactly what made CR err on the side of the Scion, then weigh in with your thoughts in Comments.

 

from Autoblog

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From Geeks are Sexy Technology News: How Your Pee Can Help Save the Environment

The challenge to reduce carbon emissions rages on (despite those who “don’t believe” in global warming). According to Manuel Jiménez Aguilar, an answer may lie in our urine.

In a study he published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, Aguilar explains that urea results in the production of ammonium bicarbonate and also ammonia, which can absorb atmospheric CO2. So why the olive waste? Well urine decays and it seems that the liquid waste that results from the olive paste-making process is a basic preservative that will keep urine fresh.

This mixture of urine and olive waste, according to the study, could reduce CO2 emissions by one percent. Sure, it’s not really doing anything for the carbon monoxide or host of other gases, but CO2 is a big problem in global warming and that would make quite a significant difference. He’s proposing that such a mixture would be placed in places such as chimneys so that gas is sort of filtered past it before heading out into our atmosphere. There would obviously also need to be a system to refresh the paste once it was saturated with carbon dioxide.

It would be a pretty cool environmental development: recycling of olive waste water and our own personal body waste, while also reducing CO2 emissions. Win-win, if you ask me.

What do you think? Viable option for reducing carbon emissions or waste (oooh see what I did there?) of time?

[Via Geekosystem | Photo Credit]

 

from Geeks are Sexy Technology News

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From Engadget: Samsung spending $4 billion to renovate Austin chip factory

Samsung spending $4 billion to renovate Austin semiconductor factory

Premiership footballers will be weeping in envy at the way Samsung’s been spending its cash this month. After splashing $822 million on a Korean R&D center, it’s now chucking $4 billion to renovate its semiconductor factory in Austin, Texas. The cash will be used to increase production on system-on-chip products used in a wide variety of smartphones and tablets, presumably to cope with future demand. It’s not clear if this investment is in addition to the $1 billion it was raising in January to add a new SOC and OLED line to the same facility, but it’s certainly a good time to be living in Texas, right now.

 

from Engadget

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From Ars Technica: A single molecule magnet may enable quantum computing

The terbium atom (red) is sandwiched between two organic molecules (grey and blue) to form a single-molecule magnet.

Spin is one of the intrinsic quantum properties of particles. The spin of electrons orbiting an atom has significant consequences, such as determining the magnetic properties of materials. Atomic nuclei also have spin, but that is harder to manipulate: it interacts less with other spins and nuclei are much more massive, so they aren’t as easily moved. However, those very properties could make nuclear spin a good option for for quantum computing, since the spin state of a nucleus is less subject to environmental influences that might alter its state. But reading out the nuclear spin state is notoriously difficult.

A new proof-of-principle experiment by Romain Vincent, Svetlana Klyatskaya, Mario Ruben, Wolfgang Werndorfer, and Franck Balestro measured the nuclear spin of a single atom. The nucleus belonged to a terbium (Tb) ion inside a larger molecule, which the researchers linked to a gold nanowire to construct a transistor-like device. They measured the four possible nuclear spin states, and observed them to be stable for tens of seconds—long enough to perform entanglement and other quantum-information processes.

Spin is integral to particles: all electrons (for example) have the same amount of spin. The spin quantum state is the relative orientation of the spin with respect to some other spin, or to an external magnetic field. Electrons are low mass particles and relatively lightly bound to atoms, so their spins are fairly easy to manipulate. As a result, the spins of atoms are typically determined by their electrons—including the magnetic properties. However, because electrons’ spins are subject to strong environmental influences, they are somewhat unreliable from a quantum information perspective. If you write information to an electron’s spin, it won’t stay written for long.

 

from Ars Technica

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From Ars Technica: New catalyst enables cleaner diesel without the platinum

Enlarge / A Volvo D13A diesel engine, used in trucks.

Modern diesel engines are more fuel efficient than gasoline engines. Cleaning up their exhaust is a bit more challenging, though, due to the large amount of oxygen involved in the combustion. In particular, removing the nitrogen oxides (NOx) formed as oxygen and nitrogen in the air reacting at high temperatures requires specialized systems and expensive catalysts like platinum. While everyone would like to get rid of the platinum, no materials have been found that match its catalytic performance in diesel engine exhaust.

Until now, apparently. Research published recently in Science describes a new catalyst, a complex mixture of metal oxides including manganese, mullite, and the rare earth metals samarium and gadolinium (Mn-mullite (Sm, Gd)Mn2O5, to be precise), that actually performs better than platinum. And it’s cheaper.

The work was performed by scientists at the nanotechnology startup Nanostellar, with collaborators at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, University of Kentucky, and the University of Texas at Dallas.

 

from Ars Technica