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window 9

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Until it's launched, we won't know for certain, but my hope is that Windows 9 will also include a 'killer' feature similar to Apple's Siri personal assistant, along with 'smart' coding that can rationalise password storage, predict usage patterns and reporting requirements. We'll have to wait and see but, if Microsoft's genetic code is true to form, we're in for another step forward. /Getting under the skin of the software giant is not always easy. 

But there is clearly something in Microsoft's DNA that has created a good-bad-good gene when it comes to developing its operating systems. In essence, every time it skips a generation, it's significantly enhanced. 

Remember Windows 95? It was a great product for its time. Innovative, intuitive - an OS that really moved the world of personal, and more importantly business, computing forward. Sure, it had some bugs, but software development on that scale is bound to have early teething problems and they were quickly resolved. 

New millennium 

Then came Windows ME, a product supposedly fit for the new Millennium. Except, no-one appeared to have told the development team that a move into the 21st Century was supposed to engender improvement, not retrograde steps. While ME showed some ingenuity, much of it was regressive particularly for business users, who were not a happy bunch of campers. 

Skip a generation from 95 and welcome Windows XP. A giant leap for computer-kind, XP was a significant springboard for Microsoft to build a whole new suite of products and really enhance existing business applications such as its Office suite. 

It was stable, reliable and incorporated enough innovation to keep customers loyal. In fact, there are still organisations using XP and are very happy with it, despite the rest of the world having moved on. 

Vista was next. Clearly the rogue gene had found its way back into the code and its launch was greeted to the sound of one hand clapping. Enough said - and swiftly on to Windows 7. Again, genuine innovation and a drive towards integration with mobile technologies. Great for businesses that were starting to get to grips with an 'always-on' world. 

By now, the trend was pretty clear and, apparently, not just an anomaly. Windows 8: yes, a rock-solid system which works well, but an OS that was half-baked when it came to business. 

The interface was a radical departure from day-to-day working environments and, although 8.1 has been an improvement, the concept of partial control via tiles and partial control through traditional menu layouts just does not work - particularly when most of the workforce is highly unlikely to have touch screens. 

In my view, this was a personal consumer OS that should have stayed that way and been clearly separated from business users. It's the reason why most businesses have held-off from full Windows 8 implementation. 

Who cares? 

So, given Microsoft's genetic record, Windows 9 should be a real humdinger for business and, if the rumours are correct, there will be an element of consumer and enterprise separation. But before us geeks get too carried away, there is a fundamental question to be asked: "does business really care that much?" 

The reality is that, for many business users, the interest in PCs has waned and they are simply seen as a 'must have' tool to do their job, rather than engendering the kind of excitement that used to occur every time new innovations, applications or hardware appeared. 

The focus is now on mobile tech and that means Windows 9 has a very specific job to do: it needs to be a reliable workhorse not a sparkly, whizz-bang package. 

Compare an OS to the office photocopier. Unless you are running a print shop or the design department of a major corporate, how many buttons, features and gizmos do you actually need to make a few copies? Speed, yes. Reliability, most definitely. Collation, probably. As for the rest - who even understands what that button with the strange reverse arrow icon means, let alone how to use it? 

The same can be said for an OS. It needs to do the bog-standard stuff totally reliably and be robust enough to withstand the lowest common denominator user. 

It must be easy to support and fully backwards-compatible with both software and hardware. It certainly has to be fast and run software glitch-free and efficiently. Most importantly, Windows 9 has to be totally cloud future-proofed, regardless of the system or service. 

WORLD BIGGEST TV

Samsung starts selling 110-inch ultra HD TV for $150,000 in South Korea

Samsung said a 110-inch TV that has four times the resolution of standard high-definition TVs is going on sale for about $150,000 in South Korea.The launch Monday of the giant television set reflects global TV makers' move toward ultra HD TVs, as manufacturing bigger TVs using OLED proves too costly.
Last year, Samsung and rival LG Electronics, the world's top two TV makers, touted OLED as the future of TV. OLED screens are ultrathin and can display images with enhanced clarity and deeper color saturation.

But Samsung and LG failed to make OLED TVS a mainstream that would replace the LCD television sets and still struggling to mass produce larger and affordable TVs with OLED. Meanwhile, Japanese media reported last week that Sony Corp. and Panasonic Corp. decided to end their OLED partnership.

Demand for UHD TVs is expected to rise despite dearth of content while its price will likely come down faster than that of the OLED TVs. Much of the growth is forecast to come from China, a major market for the South Korean TV makers. Chinese TV makers have been making a push into the UHD TV market as well.
According to NPD DisplaySearch, global sales of ultra HD TV sets will surge from 1.3 million this year to 23 million in 2017. More than half of the shipments will be taken by Chinese companies between 2013 and 2017, according to NPD.

   While Chinese TV makers have been seeking to boost sales of UHD TVs with a lower price and a smaller size, Samsung's strategy is to go bigger with a higher price tag. Samsung's 110-inch UHD TV measures 2.6 meters by 1.8 meters. It will be available in China, the Middle East and Europe. In South Korea, the TV is priced at 160 million won ($152,000) while prices in other countries vary.
Samsung said it received 10 orders for the latest premium TVs from the Middle East. Previously, the largest UHD TV made by Samsung was 85-inch measured diagonally.
The ultra HD TVs are also known as "4K" because they contain four times more pixels than an HD TV.

WHAT IS SUPERNOVAE

To say in three words, a supernova is an exploding star. Okay, that was more than three, but you get the point. A supernova is more significant than a nova, but less so than a hypernova. Supernovae are very bright and generate bursts of radiation that can briefly outshine a whole galaxy before declining in brightness over many weeks or months. In this period a supernova can emit as much energy as the Sun might over its entire lifetime.
How Supernovae are Studied
By using optical telescopes, astronomers can approximate the amount of light generated by a supernova. These measurements can be used to determine how the luminosity and color of a supernova vary with time.
Astronomers may examine the light through a prism, which breaks the light from a supernova into the spectrum of colors that composes it. From this, astronomers can gauge how the brightness of light depends on that light’s wavelength. The luminosity could change at all wavelengths. The spectrum of a supernova can very with time as well, until it fades entirely of course.
The study of a supernova is more than just a study of any ordinary light show. Both the light and spectrum of color of a supernova can be used to make conclusions about the physics that occurs during and after supernova explosions. Understanding how a supernova explosion occurs and progresses is crucial to understanding why certain stars go boom. Supernovae are responsible for producing and dispersing elements into the interstellar medium. The elements that form stars, planets, and life on Earth are created and spread by supernovae. You could say that we are made of stardust.
Naming Convention                   
Supernovae are reported to the International Astronomical Union’s Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, which assign them a name. The name begins with “SN,” the prefix for supernova, followed by the year, followed by a string of letter from A to Z. The first 26 supernovae are attached with a capital letter (A-Z). Following this are pairs of lower-case letters, such as aa, ab, ac, so on and so forth. For example the 367th supernova discovered in 2005 would be named SN 2005 nc.
This naming convention was utilized since 1885. However, up until 1947, rarely would more than one supernova was found per year. Two-letter designations were scarcely necessary until 1987, and since 1988, they have been necessary more and more every year.
Supernovae Types
Since 1941, Rudolf Minkowski discovered that some spectra contain hydrogen and some do not, and therefore supernovae are classified by Type I, ones lacking hydrogen in their spectra, and Type II, ones that strongly show strong hydrogen lines.
Since 1985, Type I supernovae have been classified further. Type Ia supernovae have a silicon spectral line at 615 nm, and Type Ib does not. Type Ib supernovae have strong helium lines, and Type Ic do not.
Type I supernovae are classified such because of the sharp maxima and smooth decay of light in their light curves. The initiation of a Type I supernova can be modeled as an explosion of a carbon white dwarf that is crushed under the pressure of electron degeneracy.
Supernovae Models           

         
The assumption follows that a white dwarf accumulates enough mass that it exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit of 1.4 solar masses (for white dwarves, this is the mass at which the star’s core can no longer resist gravitational collapse). The core temperature of the white dwarf rises dramatically, setting off chains of nuclear fusion reactions that essentially blow the star up.
This model is consistent with the fact that Type I supernovae are hydrogen deficient, since white dwarves contain nearly zero hydrogen. Furthermore, the slow decay of light is consistent with the model, because the radioactive decay of unstable heavy elements produced by the supernova produces most of the energy.
Supernovae of Type I can be further categorized into Types Ia, Ib, and Ic. Type Ia supernovae are indicated by the lack of hydrogen and have an observable ionized silicon line at 615.0 nm. Type Ib supernovae have a non-ionized helium line at 587.6 nm and no silicon absorption feature at 615.0 nm. Type Ic supernovae have feint or no helium lines as well as no silicon absorption features near 615.0 nm. Sometimes Types Ib and Ic supernovae are hard to distinguish between because they are so similar, so astronomers may indicate “Type Ibc” to avoid the trouble of precise naming.
Type II supernovae are modeled after massive stars that explode and/or implode. A plateau is apparent in their light curves a few months after initiation. The explanation for the plateau is that energy is generated by the heating and cooling of the star’s outer layer as it is carried into space. The observation of the strong hydrogen and helium spectra confirms this, as there should be a large amount of these gaseous elements on the outermost layers of the massive star.
Type II supernovae can be further categorized based on their spectra. Type IIP depicts a plateauing in its light curve. Type IIL shows a linear decline in its light curve (magnitude vs. time). Furthermore, while most Type II supernovae depict wide emission lines that indicate velocity expansion at the scale of thousands of km/s, some possess relatively narrow lines. These are labeled as Type IIn (‘n’ as in ‘narrow’). Supernovae that are peculiar are notated with ‘pec’. Some supernovae change types over the course of weeks and months, starting with hydrogen lines that get dominated by helium lines. The combination of features between Types II and Ib have contributed to the notation of these supernovae as Type IIb.
Where Supernovae Occur
Supernovae have been observed in galaxies across the entire Universe. There are three types of galaxies: ellipticals, spirals, irregulars. Type Ibc and II supernovae have been taking place in spiral and irregular galaxies, specifically in areas of these galaxies where massive stars have formed in the previous 10 million years or so. Since Type II has not been seen in elliptical galaxies, it is said that these supernovae occur with explosions of massive stars.
Type Ia supernovae have been observed in all galaxy types, but generally not near massive star formations. Since few to no stars form in elliptical galaxies, it is said that Type Ia supernovae occur from stars that are older and less massive.
Supernovae Theories: Death Star
Theorists tend to notice that stars greater than 8 solar masses tend to explode, if they do, as Type II and Type Ibc supernovae. These stars are relatively young and massive, which manifest in irregular or spiral galaxies. They also notice that Type Ia supernovae can be depicted by the explosion of low-mass stars called white dwarves.
The study of how stars develop and evolve over time throughout their lives is important to understanding supernovae. A close examination of stars can be distinguished into an internal study and an external study, since two different events occur on the inside and outside of stars. Stars produce energy over the course of their lifecycle by the process known as nuclear fusion.
Nuclear fusion is a process in which atomic nuclei (the proton/neutron cores of atoms) fuse to form new elements as well as release incredible amounts of energy. In stars, the nuclei of lighter elements like hydrogen and helium fuse, under extreme temperatures and pressures at the central core of stars, to produce nuclei of heavier elements. Note that electrons are in complete free flow from atomic nuclei under the extreme pressures and temperatures at the core of stars.
Using the mass-energy principle that Albert Einstein discovered, E=mc² (energy = mass times the square of the speed of light), we know that large masses of matter produce energy. Nuclear fusions inside stars generate extreme amounts of energy that burst to the stellar exterior, some of which becomes the light that shines from stars.

Photo by: Wikipedia Creative Commons

In the core of massive stars greater than 8 solar masses, nuclear fusion results in a chain of element formations: from hydrogen to helium nuclei, to complicated reactions that eventually result in silicon nuclei, which ultimately form iron nuclei. An iron nucleus is the most stable naturally occurring element outside of supernovae explosions; it cannot be fused into heavier elements without incredibly large bursts of energy. Because of this, the core of massive stars slowly becomes a large chunk of iron nuclei.
Once a star’s core is completely saturated with iron nuclei, nuclear fusions will cease, and the star’s energy production will come to an end. Without energy to support itself, the star will collapse: its core can no longer resist the force of its gravity. The star’s core and all the matter above the core will be crushed inward by gravity.
Ultimately, only neutrons will survive the implosion of the star, and in the final act, the neutrons form a new core which becomes that which is known as a neutron star. As the neutron core stabilizes, what is left of the previous massive star will flow in limbo.
Once the core stops collapsing, like a super-compressed perfect spring, it bounces out and releases all of the compressed energy. This shockwave will burst and rip through the outer layers of the star. All that was the massive star extinguishes in an, excuse the pun, astronomical explosion, and only the new neutron star might survive the blast.
Massive stars tend to die with a Type II or Type Ibc supernova. The entire supernova process occurs over a scale of a few milliseconds.

Sometimes a collapsing core of neutrons will become so massive that it never quite rebounds and will instead form an event horizon (the outer layer of a black hole in which not even light can escape) at the bottom of its collapse. The pressures built up never quite escape this event horizon, and there is no shockwave to start a supernova. Eventually the star remnants fall into the newly forming black hole. It is theorized that sometimes a supernova can result in a black hole formation, under certain conditions.
The Sun will not die with a supernova. This Sun will, at a slow pace, fuse its core hydrogen nuclei into helium nuclei over the next 5 billion years or so. Once its core becomes all helium, these will slowly fuse into carbon nuclei in a relatively short amount of time.
The carbon nuclei in turn will not fuse into anything else because the Sun is not hot enough. The carbon core would no longer support the Sun and collapses under its own weight. Despite this, the blanket of free flow electrons in the Sun will resist total collapse. The Sun will become a white dwarf.
What remains outside of the white dwarf get shrugged off to form a planetary nebula. As this nebula slowly spreads into space over thousands of years, the white dwarf of what was the Sun will continue to glow away what is left of its energy over the course of the next billions of years. This white dwarf will continue to exist until it reaches conditions for a Type 1a supernova, which is explained above under the “Supernovae Models” section.
Supernovae Effects
The explosion caused by a supernova has significant effects on the space surrounding it. The tremendous shockwave caused by a supernova can press and condense gas in the environment. If the gas was quite dense to begin with, then the pressure exerted on it could collapse into the formation of new stars. A supernova explosion could create new elements, especially those heavier than iron. These new elements disperse into space and enrich surrounding gas mediums. In this way, stars formed after supernovae tend to have greater heavy element concentrations. In fact, it is this very enrichment of the gas in the Milky Way that has contributed to the rise of life on Earth!
Supernovae may also send small proton, alpha (helium nuclei), and electron particles through space (these are all called cosmic rays or cosmic ray particles). It is said that the beaming of these high-energy, high-momentum particles on Earth contributed to genetic mutation, and therefore, biological evolution on Earth.
Supernovae and the Fate of the Universe
Supernovae of Type Ia are the brightest subjects in the Universe. They are used as signpost beacons of light that could be used to estimate distances in space. Astronomers are currently utilizing light from Type Ia supernovae to measure distances in nearby galaxies. It is theorized that by measuring these distances along with the speeds at which these galaxies are moving away from us (due to the Universe constantly expanding), a serious study done by Edwin Hubble, we can measure how much matter is in the Universe as well as the Universe’s final fate.
According to Einstein and the theory of general relativity, the amount of matter in the Universe contributes to what geometry it has. Einstein theorized that matter curves the space and time around it, and therefore the whole Universe. More matter means more curvature, more curvature means that the expansion of the Universe will halt due to gravitational force. If this occurs, then Universe will implode in a Big Crunch. On the other hand, if there is insufficient matter to cause a Big Crunch, the expansion of the Universe will continue to no end.

SIMPLER AND CHEAPER SOLAR CELL

BY WORKING TO IMPROVE CELL EFFICENCY, SCIENTISTS AT OXFORD UNIVERSITY ARE CREATING SIMPLER AND CHEAPER SOLAR CELL

Over the last four years, solar cells made from materials called perovskites have reached efficiencies that other technologies took decade to achieve ,but until recently no-one quite knew why.

Since perovskites was first used in 2009 to produce 3% efficient photovoltaic (PV) cells, scientists have rapidly developed the technology to achieve efficiencies of over 15%,Overtaking  other emerging solar technologies which have yet to break the 14% barrier.

Scientists at oxford university have revealed that the secret to perovskites ‘success lies in a property known as the diffusion length, and worked out a way to make it ten times better.

‘The diffusion length gives us an indication of how thick the photovoltaic (PV) film can be,’ explains  Sam Stranks, who led the discovery in Henry  Snaith ’s group at oxford university’s department of physics .’ if the diffusion length is too low ,you can only use thin films so the cell can’t absorb much light.’

So why the diffusion length is so important-

PV cells are made from two types of materials, called p-type and n-type semiconductors. P-type materials mainly contain positively –charged ‘holes’ and n-type materials mainly contain negatively-charged electrons. They meet at a ‘p-n junction’, where the difference in charge creates an electric field.

The cells generate electricity when light particles (photons) collide with electrons, creating ‘excited’ electron and holes. The electric field of the p-n junction guides excited electrons towards the n-side and holes towards the p-side. They are picked up by metal contacts, electrodes, which enable them to flow around the circuit to create an electric current.

‘The diffusion length tells you the average distance the charge –carries (electron and holes) can travel before they recombine,’ explains   Sam. ‘Recombination happens when excited electrons and holes meet, leaving behind a low-energy electron which has lost the energy it gained from sunlight.

‘if the diffusion length is less than the thickness of the material, most charge-carriers will recombine before they reach they reach the electrodes so you only get low currents. You want a diffusion length that is two to three times as long as the thickness to collect almost all of the charges.’

The thickness of a solar cell is always a compromise-if they’re too thin they won’t absorb much light, but if they’re too thick the charge carries inside won’t be able to travel through. Longer diffusion lengths allow for more efficient cells overall, as they can be made thicker without losing as many charge carries .Scientists can get around this  by arranging cells into complex structure called ‘mesostructures,’ but this is a time-consuming and complicated process which has yet to be proven commercially.

Previously, researchers were able to get mesostructured perovskite  cells to 15% efficiency, using a perovskite compound with a diffusion length of around 100nanometers(nm).But by adding chloride ions to the mix, Henry’s group achieved  diffusion length over 1000nm.These improve cell can reach 15% efficiency without the need for complex structures, making them cheaper and easier to produce.

‘Being  able to make 15% efficient cells in simple cells in simple, flat structures makes huge difference. We’ve made hundreds just for research purposes, it’s such an easy process. I expect we’ll be seeing perovskite cells in commercial use within the next few years. They’re incredibly cheap to make, have proven high efficiencies and are also semi-transparent. We can tune   the color too, so you could install them in aesthetically-pleasing ways in office window.’