Science Industry

The OECD has been undertaking work on international mobile roaming services during the last two years. Two reports have already been published, the first of which benchmarked retail and wholesale charges for voice roaming services and SMS. It found their price level was unreasonably high, particularly in view of the underlying costs, and conducted a preliminary analysis of options available to policy makers in order to lower prices and increase transparency for end-users. The second report provided a deeper understanding of these options and put forward a set of recommendations that could be implemented by governments, should it be necessary, after assessing the specific situation in a given country.

While these reports have addressed issues surrounding international mobile roaming services in general, they have not dealt with the specific issues of data roaming services. Though sharing many common aspects with voice and SMS roaming services, data roaming services have several specific characteristics, such as potentially closer substitutes (as a customer’s usual home number does not have to be transferred in order to provide full substitutability, especially for data-only services), and the possibility of delivering them over different end-user devices (notebooks, netbooks, tablets, smart-phones, and so forth).

This report primarily focuses on presenting the methodology and main findings of a pricing data collection exercise that covers data roaming services in the OECD area. It encompasses data roaming services with Internet access functionality, as well as pricing for incoming and outgoing Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS). Available data roaming prices for handset and laptop use have been collected, even though only handset-based prices have been used for comparison, except for one of the benchmarks.

The report addresses some specific issues related to regulatory approaches adopted for data roaming services. The available evidence on wholesale data roaming prices for the European Union is presented. This allows some consideration to be made on the adequacy, effectiveness and possible regulatory exit of the European Union’s Roaming Regulation. An ambitious requirement of this legal provision is the obligation for data roaming operators to implement the so called “cut-off limit”. It is a threshold that operators make available to consumers, beyond which the data roaming service ceases, if the customer does not explicitly accept its continuation. Bill-shock phenomena are a matter of concern for policy makers, especially for data roaming services. The implementation of this measure is one step towards protecting data roaming customers in a market where average prices are still not reasonably competitive.

Researchers at the Canadian Human Media Laboratory, Queens University in Ontario, have made a full-featured smartphone flexible electronic paper.

Paper phone can dial and receive calls, play music and read an e-book. However, in contrast, adapts to form pockets or purses, and some actions can be made by it to bend in certain ways.

This device has a flexible screen diagonal 9.5 cm (3.7 inches) made from e-paper company E-Ink, below which the flexible printed circuit with resistive sensors bending. These sensors allow the phone is programmed to recognize different types of bending, which then result in actions such as viewing menus, dialing, dialing songs or perform some other function.

When it is not in use, the paper phone does not waste electricity. Vertegalov team has made ​​a similar device, called Snaplet, which can be worn as a band on the forearm. Works like a clock when the convex curve (arm), it becomes a personal digital assistant when the plane, and can be used as a phone when he bent concave.

American soft drink producer will make in the future bottle of the organic orange peel and potatoes, or the shell oat grain.

The U.S. soft drinks producer, the company “Pepsi”, has developed a bottle produced of the renewable raw materials of plant origin, which can be completely recycled. “Pepsi” this bottle will start to use the test program in 2012, and if they prove successful, we will commence their full commercialization, reports Reuters. “Green Bottle” is now made ​​from hemp grass, bark and leaf conifers that surround the corn cob, and the future composition of organic bottles may enter and peel oranges and potatoes, the shell oat grains and other byproducts of the food industry. (continue reading…)

The MODIS Surface Reflectance products provide an estimate of the surface spectral reflectance as it would be measured at ground level in the absence of atmospheric scattering or absorption. Low-level data are corrected for atmospheric gases and aerosols, yielding a level-2 basis for several higher-order gridded level-2 (L2G) and level-3 products.

MOD09GA provides Bands 1-7 in a daily gridded L2G product in the Sinusoidal projection, including 500-meter reflectance values and 1-kilometer observation and geolocation statistics. 500-m Science Data Sets provided for this product include reflectance for Bands 1-7, a quality rating, observation coverage, observation number, and 250-m scan information. 1-kilometer Science Data Sets provided include number of observations, quality state, sensor angles, solar angles, geolocation flags, and orbit pointers.

Do you remember the huge phone, so-called ”bricks” that ravaged world of the eighties and nineties with us. If you want to liv up the technology of the past, it has enabled by Mobile Phone Massif.

Made identical to the model from the eighties, this amendment will turn your iPhone intoa phone that used the businessmen and yuppies nearly three decades. (continue reading…)

“Logitech” presented new version M515 wireless mouse that enables navigation on soft surfaces, such as sofa, bed or pillow.

Company “Logitech” presented M515 wireless mouse that enables navigation on soft surfaces, such as sofa, bed or pillow. Wireless mouse has a closed bottom surface, which prevents dirt entering, makes it easy to simply slip the fabric and the sensor to detect hand movement, and the mouse is active only when the user wants. The mouse will be able to buy in Europe in early April, at a price of 49.99 euros.

Tiny heat engine can be used for active cooling of high-clocked processors.

Steam engines, diesel engines or cooling systems: All of these devices are based on heat engines that can afford to incineration or other thermodynamic processes work. Smaller than a dice, these engines are not built yet, so they can be used in micro-mechanical systems is limited. But now Dutch researchers managed through a self-reinforcing oscillation process, with a few cubic microns to produce seven orders of magnitude smaller heat engine. The prototype they made in the scientific journal “Nature Physics” before.

Peter Steeneken and his colleagues at Research in Eindhoven, the chip manufacturer NXP offset a few microns in small single-crystal resonator of n-type silicon with alternating current pulses in small oscillations. Because of the piezoresistive effect of the material changed from these movements, the electrical resistance. This enabled a direct current flowing parallel to the resonator more or less heat. These temperature fluctuations could expand or shrink the material and turns. This is the basis for a heat engine similar to a combustion engine, lift in which the cylinders and quickly cut.

Peter Steeneken and his colleagues at Research in Eindhoven, the chip manufacturer NXP offset a few microns in small single-crystal resonator of n-type silicon with alternating current pulses in small oscillations. Because of the piezoresistive effect of the material changed from these movements, the electrical resistance. This enabled a direct current flowing parallel to the resonator more or less heat. These temperature fluctuations could expand or shrink the material and turns. This is the basis for a heat engine similar to a combustion engine, lift in which the cylinders and quickly cut.

In the case of resonance, the resonator converts electrical and thermal energy as a heat engine into mechanical motion. Although this is an impressive base experiment, it could lead to practical applications themselves. Because of this thermodynamic process could in theory develop cooling modules that are integrated due to their size in fast-clocked processors and could these cool active.