Zuckerberg tightens grip as Facebook profit soars
San Francisco (AFP) April 28, 2016 -
Facebook on Wednesday fielded a plan to tighten Mark Zuckerberg's grip on the helm as the booming social network reported stellar profit.
Profit in the first quarter tripled from a year ago to $1.5 billion as revenue jumped to $5.4 billion from $3.5 billion in the same period a year earlier.
"We had a great start to the year," said Facebook co-founder and chief executive Zuckerberg.
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Samsung angles for spot at heart of connected life
San Francisco (AFP) April 28, 2016 -
South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung on Thursday wooed app makers as it pursued a vision of being at the heart of life in a hyper-connected world.
"Coding is the key to the future," Samsung Electronics mobile communications business president Dongjin Koh said at the company's annual developers conference here.
"Software is everywhere."
Samsung executives depicted a future ...
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China manufacturing index expands at slower pace
Beijing (AFP) May 1, 2016 -
China's economic recovery stabilised in April, an official factory activity gauge showed Sunday, as the property market recovered and credit grew.
The Purchasing Manager's Index (PMI), tracking activity in factories and workshops, rose for the second successive month, the National Bureau of Statistics said.
The figure was 50.1 compared to 50.2 in March. But any reading above 50 signals e ...
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Feeding frenzy in Spain's renewable energy sector
Madrid (AFP) May 1, 2016 -
A wind of change is blowing on Spain's renewables: companies and investment funds have been on a buying spree, taking advantage of the know-how and growth prospects of a sector still limping out of a crisis.
In 2015 "total transactions reached 5 billion euros ($5.7 billion)", says Joao Saint-Aubyn, a Madrid-based energy expert at global consultancy Roland Berger.
The biggest by far were ...
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BioStar Announces 5 MW Solar Projects to Benefit Schools and Business
Kansas City, KS (SPX) May 02, 2016 -
BioStar Renewables reports they will add 5.1 MW of solar energy installations to their portfolio as a result of contracts totaling over $31 million. The installations will benefit schools in Hawaii and a cold storage facility in New Jersey, allowing them to save money while decreasing carbon emissions and meeting their sustainability goals. They will also utilize new cutting-edge tracking techno ...
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Verengo and Swell Energy signs residential energy storage partnership
Torrance CA (SPX) May 02, 2016 -
Verengo Solar and Swell Energy have jointly announced a partnership that creates a one-stop home energy storage and backup power solution for the residential market. Under the terms of the agreement, Verengo will leverage its leadership position and expertise in the residential solar power installation market and become a preferred installer of Swell Energy's home solar battery products.
A ...
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Kyocera helps Hawaii college stabilize electricity costs long-term
Scottsdale AZ (SPX) May 02, 2016 -
Kyocera Solar has announced the completion of a 284-kilowatt (kW) solar energy project for Hawaii Tokai International College (HTIC) in Kapolei, Hawaii. The project is expected to meet more than 50% of the College's total electric power requirements, based on projected use. The project is the latest example of Kyocera's in-house Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) program enabling universities, schoo ...
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At last: Non-toxic and cheap thin-film solar cells for 'zero-energy' buildings
Sydney, Australia (SPX) May 02, 2016 -
'Zero-energy' buildings - which generate as much power as they consume - are now much closer after a team at Australia's University of New South Wales achieved the world's highest efficiency using flexible solar cells that are non-toxic and cheap to make.
Until now, the promise of 'zero-energy' buildings been held back by two hurdles: the cost of the thin-film solar cells (used in facades, ...
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Alta eyes UAVs as 31 percent solar energy efficiency record set
Sunnyvale CA (SPX) May 02, 2016 -
With its most recent solar efficiency record of 31.6%, Alta Devices continues to achieve solar efficiencies that are substantially higher than all other commercially available solar technologies.
This breakthrough, combined with its unique thinness and flexibility, redefines how solar technology can be used. In particular, Alta's solar technology is of great interest in the UAV (unmanned a ...
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Augmented games can increase the diversity of sports
Helsinki, Finland (SPX) May 02, 2016 -
Augmented climbing wall increases social interaction, helps to attract wider target audiences and empowers users to become content creators.
Augmented climbing wall operates as a huge touch screen. It combines body tracking with custom computer vision software, depth camera, and projected graphics. A conference paper about the system received a best paper honorary mention in the ACM CHI 20 ...
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Spintronics for future information technologies
Berlin, Germany (SPX) May 02, 2016 -
They thereby demonstrated that this class of materials is suitable for data processing based on spin. The work has been published in the renowned periodical Physical Review B and was selected as "Editor's Suggestion" article.
Future information technologies should employ considerably less energy for processing data. One exciting class of materials for this comprises topological insulators. ...
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Machines can learn to respond to new situations like human beings would
Leuven, Belgium (SPX) May 02, 2016 -
How does the image-recognition technology in a self-driving car respond to a blurred shape suddenly appearing on the road? Researchers from KU Leuven, Belgium, have shown that machines can learn to respond to unfamiliar objects like human beings would.
Imagine heading home in your self-driving car. The rain is falling in torrents and visibility is poor. All of a sudden, a blurred shape app ...
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Exploring phosphorene, a promising new material
Troy NY (SPX) May 02, 2016 -
Two-dimensional phosphane, a material known as phosphorene, has potential application as a material for semiconducting transistors in ever faster and more powerful computers. But there's a hitch. Many of the useful properties of this material, like its ability to conduct electrons, are anisotropic, meaning they vary depending on the orientation of the crystal.
Now, a team including researc ...
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Seebeck thermoelectric device achieves higher conversion efficiency
Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Apr 29, 2016 -
A thermoelectric (TE) device using cutting edge thermoelectric conversion technology has been created by a team comprising NEC Corporation, NEC TOKIN Corporation and Tohoku University. The new technology, known as the spin Seebeck effect, has conversion efficiency 10 times higher than the conventional method.
Thermoelectric conversion technology that converts energy abandoned as waste heat ...
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New movies from the microcosmos
Munich, Germany (SPX) Apr 29, 2016 -
With the aid of terahertz radiation, Munich physicists have developed a method for generating and controlling ultrashort electron pulses. With further improvements, this technique should be capable of capturing even electrons in motion.
Seeing how atoms and electrons in a material respond to external stimuli can give scientists insight into unsolved problems in solid-state physics, such ...
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Cooling graphene-based film close to pilot-scale production
Gothenburg, Sweden (SPX) May 02, 2016 -
Heat dissipation in electronics and optoelectronics is a severe bottleneck in the further development of systems in these fields. To come to grips with this serious issue, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have developed an efficient way of cooling electronics by using functionalized graphene nanoflakes. The results will be published in the renowned journal Nature Communications. ...
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Light-powered 3-D printer creates terahertz lens
Chicago IL (SPX) May 02, 2016 -
From visible light to radio waves, most people are familiar with the different sections of the electromagnetic spectrum. But one wavelength is often forgotten, little understood, and, until recently, rarely studied. It's called terahertz, and it has important applications in imaging and communications.
"Terahertz is somewhat of a gap between microwaves and infrared," said Northwestern Univ ...
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Speedy bridge repair
Salt Lake City UT (SPX) May 02, 2016 -
In just 30 seconds, a devastating earthquake like the ones that struck Japan and Ecuador can render a city helpless. With roadways split and bridges severely damaged, residents and emergency personnel could be prevented from moving around to rebuild.
Normally, it takes weeks to repair the cracking or spalling of columns on just one bridge damaged in an earthquake. But a team of researchers ...
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