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New flexible solar cell technology to power lighting for night-time bus users |
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Written by Mohit Garg
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Monday, 15 June 2009 17:32 |
Washington, June 14: A group of engineering researchers at McMaster University in Canada has installed a new flexible solar cell technology to power lighting for night-time transit users.
The bus shelter is located on the west side of University Avenue between the John Hodgins Engineering Building and the Life Sciences Building.
“Our goal is to provide a clean, affordable power source for bus shelters that will let transit companies run Internet-based scheduling updates,” said Adrian Kitai, a professor of engineering physics at McMaster who guided the project.
“The solar technology can also be used to light up bus shelter signage and provide lighting for general safety,” he added.
The flexible solar cell project started as a master’s thesis for Wei Zhang, who subsequently worked as an engineer in the Department of Engineering Physics.
Julia Zhu, a research technician in the department, and Jesika Briones, a master’s of engineering entrepreneurship and innovation graduate, also helped develop the initiative.
The ability to bend the solar cells to fit the curved roof of the bus shelter is one of the main features of the technology.
The flexibility is achieved by tiling a large number of small silicon elements into an array, mounting them onto a flexible sheet, and connecting them through a proprietary method.
The two solar strips installed on the McMaster bus shelter are about 90 centimeters long and 12 centimeters wide.
Each strip has 720 one-centimetre square solar cells and generates up to 4.5 Watts of power.
With the help of Facility Services at McMaster, a solar strip was mounted at each end of the bus shelter roof and connected to two energy-efficient, multi-LED, light fixtures.
Each light fixture uses only 600 milliwatts of power and produces about the same light output as a three watt regular tungsten bulb or what a small night light would use.
The solar cells capture sunlight during the day and convert it to electricity to recharge batteries located in each lighting unit.
The batteries can hold enough charge to light the shelter for the better part of a night.
The solar cell research team is monitoring the installation to determine how much solar power is required to fully recharge the batteries based on weather conditions.
Winter months will be a particular focus as shorter and overcast days, snow and cold can affect the charging ability of the solar cells and batteries. (ANI) |
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Google trikes blamed for invasion of privacy in UK |
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Written by Sheetal Mehta
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Monday, 15 June 2009 17:31 |
London, June 14: Google’s new plan to photograph every roadside in Britain for its Street View service has drawn flak from the public, which claims that it is an invasion of privacy.
Now, the Internet search engine’s camera cars are being banned from entering private roads and prevented from filming in some villages by human barricades, the Times Online reports.
To deal with it, Google is launching a new device this summer: a rickshaw-style camera cart or ‘tricycle man’ that can be pedalled up country lanes and bridleways and alongside hedgerows to capture families at work and play in their gardens.
The trike, as it is called, carries the same camera equipment that is usually found in Google’s fleet of Vauxhall Astra cars, which, with their darkened windows, have been touring Britain taking shots for 360-degree views of streets to be displayed on the Internet.
Trikes have already been used in Rome to take pictures of the Trevi Fountain and other landmarks that cannot normally be reached by car.
Greece has banned Google until it provides more privacy safeguards, while Japan has asked it to reshoot using less intrusive camera angles.
Britain, however, has embraced the service. Google has struck a deal with VisitBritain, the tourist information service, to use trikes to photograph historic buildings, coastal paths and natural wonders.
The trikes will also take pictures inside football stadiums so visitors can find their seats before they arrive.
Google’s increasing intrusion into British society has caused concern that it is providing criminals with a close-up view of people’s homes and security measures.
Google, however, says that people can have their houses removed from its website by “simply clicking on a button”.
In a post on a company policy blog, Gavin McGinty, Google’s product lawyer, said: “Saying that Street View is enabling crime is like blaming the motor industry for crime because criminals also use getaway cars.” (ANI) |
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Samsung Launches Solar-Powered Phone In India |
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Written by Samrat Khanna
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Monday, 15 June 2009 17:31 |
Samsung India Electronics has unveiled world’s first solar power mobile phone – Solar Guru (Guru E1107) – in India, priced at Rs 2,799.
The company has developed ‘Solar Guru’ especially for people in rural areas where electric supply is unstable. The ‘Solar Guru’ users can charge the battery anywhere the sun is shining, if there is no electricity.
According to Samsung India, “The Solar Guru has been developed keeping in mind the needs of Indian consumers, especially customers residing in areas where the electric supply is unstable”.
Apart from the normal electric charging, Samsung ‘Guru E1107’ has the capacity to provide around 5-10 minutes of talk time with 1 hour of solar charging and a full solar charge of around 10-14 hours for the cell phone provides around 4 hours of talk time.
The new handset comes with 1.52-inch screen with a resolution of 65K CSTN (128x128) and 1 MB of user memory.
Other features of Solar Guru include FM radio, MP3 ring tones, torch and pre-loaded games.
Samsung Country Head (Mobile Division) Sunil Dutt said, “The handsets would be imported from Korea and will be available in the Indian market from the middle of this month”.
“Samsung would also look at manufacturing the handsets from its facility in Noida,” Dutt added. |
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Facebook offers personalised URLs for users |
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Written by Samrat Khanna
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Monday, 15 June 2009 17:30 |
Sydney, June 10: Millions of Facebook users are set to join the rush to grab their personalised URLs on the social networking site.
At 2pm on June 13, Facebook will allow members to register their own user names to make it easier for others to find their pages.
Under the new system, people can get a unique address for themsleves, like http://www.facebook.com/joebloggs, instead of the current system whereby profile pages have a URL with a randomly assigned number such as "www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=123456789".
However, Facebook designer Blaise DiPersia said that the user names would be handed out on a "first-come, first-serve basis" which would certainly spark a rush among users to grab their favourite names first.
In fact, the social networking site has created a special page, where people can choose their user names on the day.
"This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you. We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook user name in the future," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted DiPersia as writing on a blog post.
However, the unique usernames will only be available for existing members who had signed up before the announcement.
The restriction has been put to "prevent people from creating new accounts just to take advantage of reserving a username."
New Facebook users will be able to claim their username on June 28.
Facebook has a strict rule forcing people to use their real names when signing up to the site, and has even banned people with unusual names after suspecting they were fake.
But, for the user names, the only criterion is that the name should at least have five alphanumeric characters.
Facebook said that it "prevents certain words from being included in usernames," which most likely refers to swear words.
Having a unique username will be particularly useful for searching profiles of people with common names.
But DiPersia said that Facebook users should think carefully about the username they choose, because after selecting a name, they cannot change or transfer it.
This is probably to prevent people from selling popular usernames on sites such as eBay.
Members should also be aware that Facebook could remove or reclaim "any username at any time for any reason". (ANI)
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