Nuclear Generators Go Green

Nuclear power from reactors nudges enriched uranium into a critical mass that unless controlled can create a chain reaction that produces dangerous radioactive byproducts that must be kept safe from humans for thousands of years. Nuclear-powered laser-turbine electricity generators, on the other hand, harness the harmless radiation from the natural decay of thorium--an abundant natural ore.
"Our device is not a reactor," said Charles Stevens, founder of Laser Power Systems LLC, who has become sensitive to people calling his device a reactor. "Our device is a laser-turbine electricity generator that uses sub-critical thorium as its power source."



Cadillac hypothesized that a thorium fueled power plant in this concept car could carry enough fuel when manufactured to power it for its entire lifetime. (SOURCE: Cadillac)

Stevens started his research circa 1984 when he invented a laser that could be powered by rare earth metals. Over the years his research has worked its way up the periodic table to demonstrate how heavier and heavier atoms can produce lasers of increasingly greater power. Eventually LPS perfected a uranium-powered laser that produced their highest power yet.  However, three-years ago Stevens decided to "go green" and throttle back from dangerously radioactive materials to thorium, which he claims is a safe source of nuclear power.
"Thorium can be use to power a laser that creates temperatures in excess of 3000 degrees," said Stevens. "We use it to heat water, which makes steam to drive a turbine that turns a generator to create electricity."
LPS currently has several prototypes of its thorium-powered laser-turbine generator. A 5 kilowatt unit is for general portable use, but its 250 kilowatt unit could substitute for an automobile engine. The automobile engine sized unit measures just 12-by-12-by-26 inches, weighs 500 pounds, and can produce the equivalent of about 335 horsepower. In addition, an electric automobile powered by thorium could be delivered with enough fuel to last its entire lifetime, since about one gram of thorium is the equivalent of about 7500 gallons of gasoline, and 8 grams of thorium could power a typical car for over 300,000 miles. LPS also has a 2.5 megawatt unit on the drawing board that could power about 5,000 homes with a unit about the size of a refrigerator.
LPS's proprietary thorium-fueled laser-turbine electricity generators, which are protected by 20 patents, use a Tesla coil to drive a spark-plug-like device which accelerates the natural decay of thorium. The emitted alpha- and beta-particles are used by proprietary electronics to stimulate a gas laser into emission in a sub-critical reaction that never emits dangerous radiation like gamma-rays.
According to Stevens, thorium is four to five times more abundant than uranium, with known worldwide resources available that could power everything on the planet for about 5000 years. After that, the Moon has massive deposits of thorium which NASA has already mapped, and which could be scooped up from the surface without the need for convention deep-mining equipment.

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New Skills robot QBO

Robot QBO has been known for several years and during that time is constantly evolving. Now he has learned to recognize gestures with his stereoscopic vision, which allows you to manage a playlist. QBO is running Linux.

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Bag Electric

ThinkGeek company known for its series of original music t-shirts on which to play. Among the simulated musical instruments: guitar, synthesizer and drums. Shirts come in various sizes, suitable for both adults and children. Wanting to give the idea of ​​an extraordinary new stage of development, ThinkGeek decided to release yet another musical product. The novelty is equipped with the same analog electric guitar, which previously could be seen on the very first T-shirt series. To play music in your bag has a small amplifier, which is attached to the valve. Invited to play guitar exactly the way that that is the case with T-shirt. Painted on the fretboard you can even take these chords. To use a guitar amplifier and requires four AAA batteries. As for the bag itself, then it is placed in a 17-inch laptop or a similar-sized objects. To store various things in the new product, there are two large offices, six small, and a special pocket for your mobile. The cost of this “gadget” is only $ 50.

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What to Do With a New PC

Here's how to eliminate crapware, install all of your favorite apps at once, and get your brand-new PC ready for hard work (or play).

 Everyone has their own I-just-bought-a-new-PC ritual. Some folks start by loading their pristine PC down with all their utilities and apps. Others immediately jump into the new games their old machine couldn't handle. A few others install Linux.

That’s all well and good--but before doing any of those things, you should take a few important steps. Prior to diving headfirst into your new laptop or desktop, read our favorite new-PC tips and tricks, all of which are designed to keep your system feeling brand-new for as long as possible.

Step 1: Update Windows

After you're done pulling the plastic off your new PC and plugging it in, the first thing you should do is grab all the Windows updates your new machine can handle. Of course, you'll need a network connection for that; just link your PC to your modem or router by inserting an ethernet cable, or if your PC supports Wi-Fi and you have a Wi-Fi network, open the Control Panel, go to Network and Sharing Center, and click Connect to a network.
Once you’re connected to the Internet, go to the Control Panel, choose Windows Update, and click Check for updates to make sure Windows Update pulls in as many updates as possible.
Depending on how long your PC was sitting on a store shelf without an Internet connection, this process could take anywhere from a few minutes to more than an hour. Each update may require a reboot, and some updates prompt even more: You'll probably have to grab updates, reboot, and check Windows Update again for updates to those updates you just installed.
Unfortunately, we can't do much to help you speed up this step. However, you may want to read our tutorial about slipstreaming Windows 7 updates on a USB drive, which eliminates the need to download updates over and over. Placing the latest updates on a USB drive lets you install the latest Windows 7 updates as you run the Windows 7 installation disc. It’s especially useful if you're the administrator for a few PCs on your home or office network, as it cuts down the time needed to download and install updates on each machine.

Step 2: Uninstall the Crapware

SlimComputer uses a crowd-sourced database to recommend which apps you should install and which apps you should keep--but the recommendations aren't always useful.Unless you built your PC yourself, it likely came with a whole bunch of preinstalled apps and utilities. Many of these are undoubtedly well-intentioned inclusions--and some might even be useful--but you don't have to hang on to your 30-day Norton AntiVirus trial if you know that you're just going to use Microsoft Security Essentials instead.
If you know exactly what to keep and what to get rid of, a deep uninstaller utility such as Revo Uninstaller is all you need. The free, basic version scans your system to ensure that it eliminates applications that Windows' built-in uninstaller sometimes misses.
However, determining what's crapware and what's worthwhile isn't always easy. PC Decrapifier does a good job of identifying a lot of the common crapware culprits--toolbars, trial-application installers, shortcuts for setting up old dial-up services, and so on. You get to review the list of recommended items to uninstall before you pull the trigger, so you don't need to worry about accidentally losing something you want to keep.
Alternatively, you could give SlimComputer a shot. Like PC Decrapifier, SlimComputer aims to take out the junk, but it uses feedback from other SlimComputer users to make recommendations and provide brief notes as to why a program may or may not be useful. As always, we’d balance out a lot of the user-supplied comments with a healthy dose of common sense, but they are a helpful point of reference for any applications you're on the fence about.

Step 3: Update the Drivers

Semper Driver Backup can create a library of your drivers and back it up.The drivers are what turn the collection of parts in your PC from a generic Windows-running box into a processing powerhouse. Your ideal driver setup, though, depends in part on your PC's configuration--and on your tolerance for risk.
Generally speaking, you want to have the newest drivers available for all your gear. For example, making sure your graphics card's drivers are up-to-date will usually fix bugs and enhance performance with each new revision, and you might not be able to perform basic functions such as networking or audio input/output without your motherboard's full set of current drivers. If you're still having problems getting certain devices to work, updating the BIOS might be in order.
If you stick around the PC scene long enough, however, you’ll inevitably come across a driver update that breaks something that used to work perfectly. That's why some people prefer to stay with whatever driver version works for them--and leave it at that until something doesn't work. Short of clinging to an older, working driver, you can fix many driver-related problems by rolling back to a previous driver version, or you can uninstall the updated drivers and reinstall (from scratch) a version that worked fine.
If you're on a new, store-bought Windows 7 PC and all of the component drivers are preinstalled, you're probably better off with the existing drivers (though you may want to check for BIOS and graphics-card driver updates for the performance benefits anyway). Also, you don't necessarily need to worry about finding drivers for everything on your PC: Windows has generic drivers available for USB drives, keyboards, mice, webcams, and so on.
On the other hand, if you're breaking in a PC that you made yourself, we recommend updating everything to the latest stable drivers available. If things aren't working seamlessly after that, find out whether the component manufacturer offers a beta driver that works better.
Once all your drivers are in working order, you'll probably never want to deal with this stuff ever again, so grab a driver-backup tool such as Semper Driver Backup or Double Driver. These tools make a quick copy of all your current drivers, so you can easily restore the drivers if (or when) something goes wrong.

Step 4: Install Everything at Once

Ninite lets you batch-install and update dozens of common useful Windows apps.By this point you're probably itching to install the applications and utilities you've grown accustomed to using on your previous machines. The hard part is remembering every single application you use--probably not difficult for those you work in on a daily basis, but a bit harder for the ones you touch only every week or month or so--and spending the time to seek out and download each and every one of them.
When it comes to tools that can help with this monumental task, we can't sing Ninite's praises enough. Head to that site, and you can view a huge catalog of common free apps--Web browsers, antivirus utilities, file-sharing and media-playback programs, and so on--and get them all bundled in one installer file. You just choose the software you want, download the custom installer, and download everything in one fell swoop. Ninite even selects the 32-bit or 64-bit version as appropriate for your PC, and it skips all the adware and toolbars that, ordinarily, you might install by accident while clicking Next over and over.
One more tip: Resist the urge to delete Ninite's installer once it's done working its magic. If you run it after you've already installed all of your apps, it will check for any updates and automatically download and install the ones you need.

Step 5: Disaster-Proof Your PC

Windows Backup is a free, basic backup tool built into Windows 7.Congratulations! By now, your PC should be primed for action, just the way you like it. Get out of your seat and stretch for a minute. Then sit back down--you still need to do two things before the system is fully prepared for everyday use. You don't want to have to repeat this whole process if something goes wrong with your hardware or Windows installation, so this step will create a sort of “reset button” that brings your PC back to its ultimate state.
Take a moment to preserve your machine's pristine, work-ready existence with Macrium Reflect Free, which creates an image backup of your hard drive that you save to a backup drive. If anything terrible happens during your computing adventures, you can just restore the system from this image backup.
You should probably also set up an automated backup system if you haven't already. If you pay $40 for the Pro version of Macrium Reflect, it adds automatic incremental backups to that same image file; you won’t have to create a new one each time.
If you'd rather save the cash, you can use Windows 7's built-in Backup and Restore features instead. To do so, open the Control Panel, click Backup and Restore, and adjust the basic backup settings (location, frequency, backup directories, and the like). For more tips on disaster-proofing your PC, read Rick Broida's "Prepare Your PC for Future Data Disasters."
If you've read this far and followed all the steps, your new PC is now plenty prepared for the future. It’s time to take your new machine for a spin!

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iPad 3 in '11? No. Two new iPhones

Just weeks away from when Apple is expected to be unveiling the next iPhone, another Wall Street analyst has said the company could surprise us with two new handsets.
Fortune this morning posted part of note from J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz saying that the firm expects Apple to release two new iPhones: one that will be a brand new model with a different appearance, and a souped up iPhone 4 model called the "iPhone 4-plus."
"Our research indicates that there will be an iPhone 5 based on a lighter, thinner form factor that is GSM + CDMA capable, i.e., a 'world-mode' smartphone. A second device (4-plus) based on the current iPhone 4 but with some minor improvements could target the midrange and focus on China," Moskowitz wrote. "As for the current iPhone 4, we expect it to subsume 3GS as the lower-end offering."
Moskowitz also weighs in on rumors of Apple considering the release of a third-generation iPad before year's end, saying Apple's in "no rush" to replace its existing models based on lackluster competition.
"The other tablet entrants have stumbled," Moskowitz wrote. "Offerings by MMI and RIM have been the latest disappointments. Also, we had the opportunity to demo Sony's tablet before its launch. We were not impressed."
Reports earlier this year claimed Apple was gunning to release a new model of the iPad in time for the holiday shopping season. A tech blog called This is my next claimed in July that Apple was working on a special HD model that would be sold alongside the iPad 2. Taiwan-based news site DigiTimes followed, saying Apple was cooking up a thinner iPad model with an improved display, called the "iPad 2 Plus." Not to be outdone, the Taiwan Economic News said a new iPad model would be ready by Thanksgiving.
In August, things started looking bad for those rumors though. Two analysts told CNET that a new iPad wouldn't be ready until next year because its high-resolution display was difficult to make in the volume Apple needed. Mobile processor industry tracking firm the Linley Group also said Apple's next-generation, four-core A6 processor would not be ready until the middle of 2012, meaning a new device would have to use the same processors in the current iPad 2 model.
As for two new iPhones, this is not the first such suggestion that Apple plans do so, something that would be a first for the company. A Deutsche Bank analyst in June said that Apple was working on a similar configuration of a high-end new model, and improved iPhone 4 model for release this year. Evidence suggesting that might be the case surfaced a few days later, with a screenshot of a white plastic iPhone 4 model on Vietnamese site Tinhte--the same outlet that got ahold of the iPhone 4 ahead of its official unveiling.
More recently, there have been murmurs of two iPhone model offerings as part of deals being worked out with Chinese carriers, which are expected to carry the new iPhone when it's released. Moskowitz highlights China and its potentially massive subscriber base as one of the main reasons for offering a lower cost iPhone 4-plus model, but that he does not expect it to be exclusive to the region.
Apple is expected to release its next iPhone model in October, with a possible unveiling of the device later this month.

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AT&T To Release Sony Ericsson Xperia Play 4G On September 18th

AT&T is reportedly planning on releasing the new Sony Ericsson Xperia Play 4G on their network starting on September 18th. The handset is said to retail for just $49.99 with a new 2-year contract agreement. Coming in a midnight blue shade, the handset offers a 4.0-inch 854 x 480 touchscreen display, a 1GHz processor, a VGA front-facing camera, a 5.0-megapixel rear-facing camera, a PSP-styled keyboard, PlayStation games, HSPA+ support and runs on Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread OS. [Press Release]

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Pioneer STEEZ Portable DAP

If you are looking for a new Digital Audio Player(DAP), then check out the Pioneer STEEZ Portable (NSP-D10P). Measuring 39.8mm x 86.8mm x 15.5mm and weighing 55 grams, the gadget provides a 4GB of storage space, an OLED display, and a mini USB port. There is also a “Non-Stop Mix” function, which will automatically select and play music tracks that comes with a similar tempo. The DAP is compatible with MP3, WMA, AAC and WAV files. The Pioneer STEEZ Portable DAP will be released in Japan next month. No word yet on pricing. [Pioneer]

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