New Form of Touchscreen Displays Pioneered, Extremely Multi-Touch
You've heard of resistive touchscreens, and hopefully you've been fortunate enough to own a capacitive touchscreen phone. But have you heard of Interpolating Force-Sensitive Resistance, or I.F.S.R touchscreen technology? Touchco hopes you soon will. A bunch of scientists at New York Universit![DIY Moped Runs on Air [Air Powered]](http://gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2008/04/800_AirPropelVehicle09PlanetMechanics.JPG)
DIY Moped Runs on Air [Air Powered]
This Puch moped only has a range of about 7 miles and with a top speed of only 18 mph, it isn't going to break any land speed records, but there is definitely something special about it: it runs on air. Jim Stansfield, an aeronautics graduate outfitted his Puch with a pair of carbon-fiber air cylind
Broadcom Wi-Fi Chips to Have Skyhook Wi-Fi Positioning Built-In
Broadcom already makes a boatload of the GPS chips found in mobile phones and other location-aware gadgets, and now they're adding Skyhook's Wi-Fi positioning service to most of their mobile Wi-Fi chipsets, spreading the location-based love even without GPS. This is how iPhone regular finds you
Nokia C6 and C7 Touchscreen Phones Have 8MP Camera and New ClearBlack Displays
Describing the C6 as a "premium touchscreen," it has a new ClearBlack Display which they're trying to position as the Pioneer KURO of the phone world—blacker blacks, but also brighter colors. The C7 is an even skinnier version. Both Symbian^3 phones have 8MP cameras and shoot video at 720p reso
CCleaner 2.21.940
CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. But the best part is that it's fast (normal
12TB DVDs Could Be On The Way
A storage density of 51MB per square centimeter? Whatever, standard DVDs. Australian scientists developed a new multilayer optical storage medium that can house data at 1.1TB/cm3. Unlike existing DVD technology, the key to this data storage technique is the fact that multiple pieces of data can b
Sign Up Now to Test Google Wave in September
Yesterday we told you that Google Wave was opening to 100,000 regular folk at the end of September, but on closer examination, it looks like Google's already allowing users to get in line for their invite to the limited preview. Just head over to the Google Wave's sign up for updates page, enter iNew Solar Tech Uses Both Light and Heat to Nearly Triple Energy-Gathering Efficiency
Posted by AceNik on Aug 29, 2010•
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Stanford engineers have figured out a new way to make solar panels that use both the sun’s light and heat to generate energy. It’s a discover that could double the efficiency of solar panels.
With today’s photovoltaic panels, as the sun heats them up, they get less efficient. They can’t use the heat to generate energy, just the light. And as their temperatures reach 100 degrees Celsius, they stop working altogether.
But by coating a piece of semiconducting material with a thin layer of the metal celsium, it allows the panels to use both light and heat to gather juice.
The device they’ve created, dubbed the “photon enhanced thermionic emission,” or PETE, doesn’t even hit peak efficiency until it reaches well over 200 degrees Celsius. This will make them perfect for solar concentrators such as parabolic dishes, which focus the suns rays and can get as hot as 800 degrees Celsius.
When combined with a thermal conversion cycle that would use its high-temp waste heat, the system could reach 55% efficiency or even higher, which would be nearly twice the efficiency of today’s systems. Awesome. [Stanford via Slashdot]
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