Technology Effect

If hydrogen is to ever play a role in powering vehicles on a large-scale, researchers must not only find a way to produce hydrogen, but also a safe method to store it. Currently, storing hydrogen requires either very low temperatures or very high pressures, both of which are expensive, require large amounts of energy, and involve safety risks. Now a new spin-out company from Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK called Cella Energy Ltd. is developing an inexpensive, practical method to store hydrogen that could be added directly to conventional automobile engines. The method could lead to clean hydrogen fuels for vehicles that can be pumped like gasoline, fuel additives to lower emissions in vehicles with minimal modifications, and even batteries that allow laptops to last a week between charges, among other uses.The new storage technique stems from research performed by Professor Stephen Bennington, Dr. Arthur Lovell, and others at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, the...

  The story goes back to 2008. Canadian musician Dave Caroll was travelling by United Airlines from Halifax to Omaha. His guitar got damaged in the airline's custody, and his attempts to get compensation were thwarted by an insensitive staff. Frustrated, he penned a song, filmed it and put it on YouTube. “I should have flown with someone else, or gone by car, 'cause United breaks guitars,” sang Caroll. The video did not just get millions of hits, it had a viral effect. Soon, all social media sites were agog with messages from people angry with United. The airline, facing the wrath of citizen journalism, paid up compensation to the musician to stem the company's rapidly plummeting image. Thus, the story of Dave Caroll became a textbook example for companies and publicity managers to take online responses very seriously. Globally companies began realising the importance of ‘perception monitoring' and internalising the feedback to stay ahead of competit...

Washington: Finally Amazon has declared that the sales of Kindle books are increasing than paperback books. This shows that the digital book has overtaken the traditional paperback books. Since January 1,150 Kindle books are sold against 100 paperback books. This time Kindle books are outselling paperbacks, which typically cost less than hardcover.It sold three times as many Kindle books as hardcover books and millions of third-generation Kindle device. Free Kindle books are excluded till now and if included then the numbers of sales will be even higher.Bloomberg reports that Amazon is expected to sell more than 8 million Kindle books in 2011. Man Booker Administrator Ion Trewin told that Kindle ebook is not going to take over from print but it will offer another way of reading..

 Last fortnight, a blog post by Facebook's developer support team nailed it. Though the social networking firm backtracked after privacy rights activists cried foul, the seemingly innocuous announcement that application developers can access your home addresses and phone numbers (should you use their app) set the alarm bells ringing. The message was clear: your data, once uploaded on Internet services, is not yours anymore. Enter Diaspora. Diaspora, an open and distributed social network, offers an escape hatch for those who want to stay networked, yet find the loose privacy practices discomfiting. In its early alpha testing stage, Diaspora now offers just what was promised when the four geeks behind this ‘free' project released its code four months ago. Dubbed the ‘Facebook Killer,' Diaspora offers all that Facebook does —friends, status updates, photo sharing, linking messages between Twitter and Facebook, and the works — and two critical features that ...

London: Artificial petrol that costs 19 pence per litre could be available in as little as three years. Scientists in Britain are refining the recipe for a hydrogen-based fuel that will run in existing cars and engines at a fraction of the cost of petrol. With hydrogen at its heart rather than carbon, it will not produce any harmful emissions during combustion, making it cleaner, greener and cheaper, the Daily Mail reports. The first road tests are due next year and, if all goes well, the cut-price "petrol" could be on sale in three to five years, the report says. Professor Stephen Bennington, the project's lead scientist from Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, said, "In some senses, hydrogen is the perfect fuel. It has three times more energy than petrol per unit of weight, and when it burns, it produces nothing but water. "Our new hydrogen storage materials offer real potential for running cars, planes and other vehicles that currently use h...

  Dubai: For parents worried about their children's overspeeding or the wayward behaviour of a driver, a low-cost Internet-based GPS vehicle tracking system is expected to be just the solution. Developed by a Qatari IT service provider, the T-Qat vehicle tracking system is being touted as the only monitoring system which has a web server developed in Qatar and has an Internet-based Global Positioning System (GPS) tracker customised for local users.The service provider aims to extend the service to more Gulf countries as well as Africa while subscribers outside Qatar will need to pay along with the yearly fee the monthly GSM roaming charges. The system is expected to prove particularly useful in improving vehicle breakdown services as well as to monitor vehicles which transport school students as well as day and night shift employees of companies. The service provider, Advanced Technologies and Solutions, which has developed the tracking system, is participati...

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) plans another test-firing of the K-15 missile from a pontoon off the coast of Visakhapatnam. Developed under the Sagarika project, the K-15 has been test-fired several times from submerged pontoons off Visakhapatnam. The pontoon, simulating the conditions of a submarine, will be positioned about 10 to 20 metres below the sea surface. A gas-charged booster will erupt into life, driving the two-stage missile to the surface. The missile's first stage will then ignite and it will climb 20 km in the air before cutting a parabolic path and travelling over a range of 700 km. The missile, which is under production, can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads. It will form part of the lethal arsenal of the country's first nuclear-powered submarine, Arihant, which is undergoing sea trials. India is building two more such submarines. The DRDO is developing a K-4 underwater-launched missile, which will have ...