Forget robotic product delivery. As usual for Google, I suspect it’s all about the data.

Google has quietly bought seven robotics companies, and has given Andy Rubin, the man who originally led the Android project, the job of developing Google’s first robot army. And so, theNew York Times suggests it might only be a few years before a Google robot driving in a Google car is delivering products to your door.

I somehow doubt Google has anything quite so futuristic in mind. I think the effort is quite similar to both Google’s self-driving car endeavor and its Android project. In other words, it’s all about gaining a dominant position in markets where data is about to explode.

Take Google’s self-driving cars. Contrary to common perception, the company didn’t “invent” this technology; most carmakers were already working on autonomous system when Google got involved, and academic researchers had made dramatic recent progress—propelled in large part by several DARPA challenges (see “Driverless Cars are Further Away than You Think”). Google just saw that this was where the automotive industry was headed, and realized that the advent of automation, telematics, and communication would mean a tsunami of data that it could both supply and profit from. Given that many of us spend several hours a day in automobiles, this data could help Google learn more about users and tailor its products accordingly.

Similarly, I suspect Google has recognized that a new generation of smarter, safer, industrial robots is rapidly emerging (see “This Robot Could Transform Manufacturing” and “Why This Might be the Model-T of Workplace Robots”), and it’s realized that these bots could have a huge impact both at work and at home. Whoever provides the software that controls and manages these robots not only stands to make a fortune by selling that software; they will have access to a vast new repository of data about how we live and work.

In this sense, I think Google is being true to its stated mission: “to organize the world’s information”—although it’s worth noting that in an increasingly connected and data-rich world that could mean seeking to organize just about every aspect of our lives. Luckily for Google, it may soon have a robot army to help it keep everything in order.

Using plastic to absorb light could lower the cost of solar power.

By Kevin Bullis

A thin sheet of dyed plastic could cut the cost of solar power, particularly for applications that require solar cells to be highly efficient and flexible.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are using the plastic to gather sunlight and concentrate it onto a solar cell made of gallium arsenide in an experimental setup. Doing so doubled the power output of the cells.

So far, the researchers have shown that the approach works with a single solar cell, but they plan to make larger sheets of plastic dotted with arrays of many tiny solar cells. The approach could either let a smaller solar panel produce more electricity, or make a panel cheaper by reducing the amount of photovoltaic material needed.

“It’s lower cost compared to what you would have to do to get the same efficiency by completely coating the surface with active solar material,” saysJohn Rogers, professor of materials science and engineering and chemistry at the University of Illinois. The work was presented at the Materials Research Society conference in Boston this week.

As light hits the plastic sheet, a specially selected dye absorbs it. The dye is luminescent—meaning that after it absorbs light, it reëmits it. But the light it emits is largely confined inside the plastic sheet. So it bounces along inside the plastic until it reaches a solar cell, much in the same way light is guided along inside a fiber optic cable. The dye absorbs only part of the solar spectrum. So to further boost power output, the researchers added a reflective material that directs some of the light that the dye doesn’t absorb to the solar cell.

The approach could be compatible with another innovation from the same group of researchers—a technique for making flexible and stretchable solar cells that can conform to irregular surfaces (see “Making Stretchable Electronics”).

Flexible solar panels could find new uses. The military, for example, is interested in laminating solar cells to soldiers’ helmets to power their electronic gear. Bendable cells could also conform to the wings and fuselage of small drones to charge on-board batteries and extend their flight times. And the technology might even be used for cases that recharge tablets and other portable electronics.

There are other ways to concentrate sunlight and direct and reduce the amount of solar cell material needed. Rogers’s group has founded a company, Semprius, that can concentrate sunlight 1,600 times, compared to just 10 times for the dyed plastic sheet (see “Ultra-Efficient Solar”). But the concentrators used to do this are bulky and require a tracking system to keep them pointed at the sun as it moves through the sky. Such systems might lead to low-cost solar power for the grid, but they’re impractical for solar helmets or tablets. In contrast, the dye-coated plastic is thin and lightweight and can absorb light coming from different angles, making tracking unnecessary.

Published December 04, 2013

FoxNews.com

USB users unite: If you can’t tell which way is up, you’re not alone.

While the USB port has taken over technology, connecting everything from printers and keyboards to smartphones and tablets, it’s not perfect. The ubiquitous cables come in a variety of shapes and sizes that don’t always work with each other, and too often users find themselves struggling to plug in in an upside-down cable.

That could all be addressed by the Type-C connector, announced Tuesday by the USB 3.0 Promoter Group, a trade association that controls the USB specification. The new spec will feature an entirely new design, a smaller size, and most important, users will no longer need to be concerned with plug orientation — no more fumbling behind that PC, in other words.

The new cables are due out some time after the spec is finalized in the middle of 2014, but what they will look like still remains to be determined.

“Unfortunately, we are not yet ready to share illustrations of the proposed new connector,” Saunders told CNET.

To be clear, the next-generation cables won’t mate with any existing USB plugs. But in theory, they’ll all work with each other: Buy a new tablet and the cable it comes with will work just as well with your smartphone as it does with your printer.

The new USB Type-C connector, built initially on existing USB 3.1 and USB 2.0 technologies, is being developed to help enable thinner and sleeker product designs, enhance usability and provide a growth path for performance enhancements for future versions of USB, the group said.

“This new industry standards-based thin connector, delivering data, power and video, is the only connector one will need across all devices,” Alex Peleg, vice president of Intel’s Platform Engineering Group, said.

FRANKFURT Wed Dec 4, 2013 6:01am EST

(Reuters) – Deutsche Bank has prohibited its foreign exchange and fixed income staff from using online chatrooms, joining a growing band of lenders who have halted the use of such forums over concerns of mounting scrutiny from regulators.

Chat rooms have been a focus for regulators investigating manipulation of benchmark interest rates and possible rigging in the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market.

“We have banned the use of multi-party chatrooms in FX (foreign exchange) trading already in the first quarter, and we have extended this ban to other parts of our fixed income business”, a Deutsche Bank spokesman said on Wednesday.

Last week, UBS issued a memo to staff banning the use of multibank and social chat rooms at its investment banking division.

Citigroup and Barclays have also clamped down on chatroom use, according to people familiar with the matter.

Citigroup and Barclays declined to comment.

Chat communications featured prominently in a five-year probe into manipulation of a key interest rate known as the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, which has so far seen five financial firms pay more than $3.5 billion in penalties.

In a global probe into possible currency manipulation, regulators are scrutinizing messages between traders for alleged evidence that they worked together improperly to influence currency “fixes” – the daily snapshots of trading used by companies and portfolio managers for valuing their assets.

BRUSSELS Wed Dec 4, 2013 11:42am EST

(Reuters) – European Union antitrust regulators have approved Microsoft’s $7.3 billion acquisition of Nokia’s mobile device business without conditions, the European Commission said on Wednesday.

“The Commission concluded that the transaction would not raise any competition concerns,” the European Commission said in a statement, adding that it was unlikely “to lead to competitors being shut out from the market”.

SAN FRANCISCO Wed Dec 4, 2013 4:59pm EST

(Reuters) – Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said on Wednesday that he has filed a shareholder proposal with Apple for a much smaller stock buyback plan than he has advocated previously, as he continued to pressure Apple to share more of its cash pile.

“Gave $AAPL notice we’ll be making a precatory proposal to call for vote to increase buyback program, although not at $150 billion level,” Icahn said in a tweet.

CNBC said Icahn’s plan calls for a $50 billion buyback program.

Icahn had been urging Apple to buy back $150 billion worth of shares. Icahn owns approximately 0.5 percent of Apple’s outstanding shares, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Icahn on Tuesday told Time magazine that he filed a shareholder proposal with Apple on November 26, three days before the deadline for measures to be voted on at the company’s next annual shareholders meeting.

Known for decades of strong-arm tactics, including proxy fights, Icahn has repeatedly made it clear that his proposal is not a sign that he is against Apple’s management.

Icahn, who has already met Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer to discuss the issue in the past months, couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

“As part of our regular review process, we are once again actively seeking our shareholders’ input on our program, and as we said in October, the management team and our board are engaged in an ongoing discussion about it which is thoughtful and deliberate,” Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said. “We will announce any changes to our current program in the first part of calendar 2014.”

Pushing for an additional $50 billion buyback is a major step back from his earlier demand that Apple return an additional $150 billion to shareholders. Apple is currently in the midst of returning $100 billion to shareholders, including a share repurchase program of $60 billion.

Icahn told Time magazine that Cook is willing to consider his views and the last conversation he had with the Apple CEO was a 20-minute phone call on November 21.

Icahn said Cook found the “conversation sort of interesting.”

“He said, ‘Look, you’ve accomplished a lot, and we want to listen to you.'”

By Matthew Rocco Published November 25, 2013

Microsoft’s (MSFT) new Xbox One video game console sold out within 24 hours of hitting store shelves, selling more than one million units to match rival Sony (SNE).

The Redmond, Wash.-based company said it’s working to replenish stock as fast as possible. The Xbox One launched on Friday to long lines outside retailers, most of which quickly ran out of the product.

Microsoft had previously disclosed that preorders of the $499 console, which launched in 13 markets worldwide, sold out.

The launch followed a successful debut a week earlier for Sony’s PlayStation 4, which also sold out and topped one million in sales.

Sony began selling the PlayStation 4 in just the U.S. and Canada. The device will be rolled out in Europe and Latin America on Nov. 29, and then in Japan on Feb. 22, 2014.

The PlayStation 4 was priced below the Xbox One at $399, although Microsoft’s console includes the company’s Kinect motion-sensing device. Using Kinect, users can control the Xbox One using voice commands and gestures.

Microsoft has also touted its console’s additional entertainment uses, such as controlling a television or streaming video programming.

Shares of Microsoft edged 24 cents higher to $37.82 early Monday morning.

Polymer glue helps fracture-prone high-capacity batteries last through more charges.

By Katherine Bourzac

If electric cars are ever to drive hundreds of miles between charges—as they must to compete with gas-powered cars—their batteries will need to store much more energy. Unfortunately, several of the most promising high-capacity battery materials are prone to breaking in ways that would cut an electrified road trip short.

Now researchers at Stanford University have shown that mixing one such promising battery material, silicon microparticles, with self-healing polymers helps prevent a longer-lasting battery from failing. They say the self-healing polymers could stabilize other promising but damage-prone battery materials.

The self-healing battery’s negative electrode, or anode, combines silicon with polymers that act like chemical zippers, healing cracks that form when the battery is used and recharged.

The self-healing battery electrode has so far been tested with pure lithium metal as the positive electrode, because its storage capacity is much greater than that of any conventional cathode. The self-healing electrode itself has eight times the storage capacity of the carbon anodes found in a conventional rechargeable lithium-ion battery. If paired with a conventional cathode, it would create a battery that stored about 40 percent more energy. If paired with a correspondingly high-capacity cathode, total energy storage would be doubled or tripled.

While previous silicon batteries could only be discharged and recharged 10 times before breaking down, the self-healing battery weathers 100 charging cycles. But that’s still not enough, acknowledges Stanford materials scientist Yi Cui. “We need to go to 500 cycles for portable electronics, and a few thousand for electric vehicles,” Cui says.

Still, Cui’s approach may provide a new way forward for promising materials that have been stalled. “This points to a way to solve a general problem with high–capacity anodes,” says Paul Braun, a materials scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who is not involved in the work.

Silicon anodes take in large amounts of lithium when the battery is charged, and release all that lithium as the battery is put to use. Such anodes can store a lot of energy in a small space, but their high capacity is a liability as far as the materials they’re made of are concerned: as large amounts of lithium enter and leave the battery, the silicon expands and contracts, cracking the anodes the first time they’re used; the same thing happens to anodes made of tin and germanium.

For the self-healing battery, Cui collaborated with another Stanford researcher,Zhenan Bao, who had previously developed self-healing electronic skin based on a stretchy, sticky polymer (see “Electric Skin that Rivals the Real Thing”).

When the polymer is fractured, it flows back together. The group mixed in some conductive carbon particles to ensure that the polymer, which isn’t conductive, wouldn’t impede the flow of electricity through the battery. This gooey mixture was then combined with silicon microparticles to make an anode. When the battery is charged and discharged, the silicon still expands, contracts, and fractures, but the polymer pulls everything back together. “Normally, once the anode cracks, you lose electrical contact,” says Cui. “The self-healing polymer ties the broken parts back together.”

There are other ways to deal with silicon’s tendency to crack. Cui’s group has experimented with nanostructured forms of silicon, including nanowires, that can withstand the strain of charging and recharging. Nanostructured silicon anodes like this are being developed by Amprius, a Sunnyvale, California company that Cui cofounded. However, researchers and companies are still learning about these nanomaterials. “It’s easy to get your hands on a small vial of nanostructured silicon, but to make 50 or 60 tons at a reasonable cost is a big problem that hasn’t been solved,” says Braun.

Cui says the combination of microparticles with the healing polymer could be less expensive and more practical for high-capacity batteries than approaches that require expensive nanomaterials. The silicon microparticles used in the self-healing battery demonstration can be bought off the shelf in large quantities and aren’t very expensive.

Nancy Sottos, a materials scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has developed yet another approach: Sottos mixes capsules of healing materials in with the battery materials. One such material is a bubble that bursts to release conductive metal to heal electrical connections in a damaged battery. Her group has made early proof-of-concept demonstrations using this method.

Yuegang Zhang, a battery researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, says the Stanford self-healing binder shows promise for other kinds of high-capacity battery materials, such as tin. Zhang has taken a different approach in his own work, mixing tin nanostructures with stretchy, strong, conductive graphene to hold the anodes together. Noting the small number of times Cui’s silicon batteries can be recharged, he says, “silicon still has problems, but I like this idea.”

Now that they’ve made the first demonstration, Cui and Bao are working on fixes that would allow their self-healing silicon battery to go through more charge cycles. “We’re just starting,” Cui says.

Emerging Technology From the arXiv

November 25, 2013

Light harvesting in plants and bacteria cannot be properly explained by classical processes or by quantum ones. Now complexity theorists say the answer is a delicate interplay of both, an idea that could transform computation.

Physicists have long known that plants and bacteria convert light into chemical energy in a way that is hugely efficient. But only in recent years have they discovered that the molecular machines behind this process rely on quantum mechanics to do the job.

That’s a big surprise because of the temperatures involved. Quantum states are highly fragile—sneeze and they disappear in a puff of smoke. Physicists can maintain these states for some time in carefully controlled environments at low temperature but nobody can explain how it can be possible in the warm wet environments inside living things.

Today,  Gabor Vattay at Eotvos University in Budapest and Stuart Kauffman at the University of Vermont in Burlington have the answer. They say the processes behind light harvesting are a special blend of the quantum and the classical. And that this delicate mix represents an entirely new form of computing that nature might exploit in other systems too.

The quantum processes must studied in light harvesting systems occur in a structure known as the Fenna-Matthews-Olson or FMO complex, a huge pigment protein that is part of the light gathering machinery in green sulphur bacteria. Embedded in these protein structures are reaction centres that convert the energy from light into chemical energy.

When light hits the FMO complex, the energy must travel across the protein matrix until it reaches a reaction centre. And amazingly, this transfer occurs with an efficiency of almost 100 per cent.

That’s puzzling because the only way for the light energy to find a reaction centre is to bounce through the protein network at random, like a ricocheting billiard ball. This process would take too long, much longer than the nanosecond or so it takes for the light energy to dissipate into the environment and be lost.

So the energy transfer process cannot occur classically in this way. Instead, physicists have gathered a variety of evidence showing that the energy transfer is a quantum process.

The thinking goes like this. Because energy can exist in a superposition of states, it can travel a variety of routes around the network at the same time. And when it finds the correct destination, the superposition collapses, leaving the energy at the reaction centre. The result is an almost perfect transfer of energy.

But Vattay and Kauffman say that this kind of pure quantum process this cannot be responsible either. That’s because a number of quantum processes slow down the movement of quantum objects through random networks like this. “Quantum mechanics has adverse effects too,” they say.

One of these party-poopers is known as Anderson localisation, a phenomenon that prevents the spread of quantum states in random media. Because the quantum state acts like a wave, it is vulnerable to interference effects, which prevent it propagating in a random network.

Another is the quantum zeno effect, the paradoxical phenomenon in which an unstable state never changes if it is watched continuously. That’s because watching involves a serious of measurements that constantly nudge the state, preventing it from collapsing.  This is the quantum version of the watched-pot-never-boils effect.

A similar thing happens to the quantum state of the energy during light harvesting. This quantum state will inevitably interact with the environment but these interactions act like measurements. This triggers a quantum zeno-like effect that prevents the state from collapsing at the reaction centre. So the energy transfer cannot occur in this way, say Vattay and Kauffman.

Instead, they propose a new process in which the quantum search mechanism and the interaction with the environment combine to overcome Anderson localisation. It is the interplay between these processes that delivers the energy to the reaction centre in an optimal way, they say.

The idea is that the interaction with the environment changes the wave-like nature of the quantum state just enough to prevent Anderson localisation. At the same time, the quantum zeno effect extends the life time of the quantum state allowing it to find its way to the reaction centre. It is this interplay between the quantum and classical worlds that allows the energy transfer.

That explains the quantum-like behaviour of light harvesting processes at room temperature. But Vattay and Kauffman say the idea has other important implications. The problem of finding a reaction centre in a protein matrix is formally equivalent to many other problems in computing. So it ought to be possible to turn light harvesting to the task of computing by mapping one problem onto the other.

That could dramatically improve computational speeds at room temperature. “Computers based on artificial light harvesting complexes could have units with 100-1000 times larger efficiency at room temperature,” say Vattay and Kauffman.

What’s more, this kind of computation may already be at work in nature. “Since the realization of this mechanism seems now relatively easy, it is an important question if it has been realized in light harvesting systems or is also present in other biological transport or optimization processes. Especially in the human brain,” they say.

If they are right, this new kind of computation could generate a flurry of interest in a short space of time.

A cheap device called the Safeplug makes it easy to use the Tor anonymity network at home.

By Tom Simonite

Tor, a privacy tool used by activists, criminals, and U.S. intelligence to obscure traces of their online activities, is being repackaged for the mass market. A $49 device launched today and targeted at consumers makes it relatively easy to route a home Internet connection through the Tor network. The Safeplug, as the device is called, can also block most online ads.

“It’s meant to be a mass-market product,” says Jed Putterman, chief product officer of PogoPlug, the company that developed the Safeplug and whose main business is providing cloud storage and backup for home use. “We wanted to make a family-friendly way to get the protection Tor offers.”

The most straightforward way of using Tor today involves downloading a bundle of software, including a new Web browser, onto each device a person wants to use anonymously. The Safeplug, in contrast, is a small box that is simply plugged into a home Internet router to allow any Internet-connected device to make use of Tor. The Safeplug acts as a proxy server, meaning that computers on the same network use it as a go-between to access the Internet. The device also has a built-in advertising blocker, which is disabled by default.

Putterman hopes the device will appeal to families who wish to prevent their ISPs or online companies such as ad networks from being able to connect their IP address or identity with their online activity. IP addresses can be used to reveal a person’s location (see “Tracking Trick Shows the Web Where You Are”), and to link diverse threads of online activity into behavioral profiles for advertising purposes. Safeplug may also appeal to those disturbed by recent revelations about NSA surveillance (see “Circumventing Encryption Frees NSA’s Hands Online”).

However, Mehmet Güneş, an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, who studies anonymity tools, says that users of the Safeplug will only remain truly obscure if they adjust their online behavior in other ways. “Tor provides unlinkability from source to destination, and people confuse that with anonymity,” he says. While using Tor people can easily leak identifying information via the Flash plug-in, other media add-ons, or information they type or send, says Güneş.

The Tor Project’s download page cautions that “You need to change some of your habits,” for just those reasons. It recommends disabling all browser plug-ins.

Another challenge for the Safeplug is that Tor’s design causes it to slow down Web traffic. Putterman suggests that people set their device to apply Tor only to Wi-Fi connections to protect phones, tablets, and laptops, while leaving devices using wired connections for bandwidth-intensive tasks such as streaming TV or gaming to function as normal.

The Tor network keeps Internet traffic private by making it take an indirect route. The process hides users’ IP address from the services they’re accessing, and prevents an ISP or other entities that may be monitoring the connection from knowing what those services are. Data from a Tor user hops via three “relays,” which are run by volunteers, on its way to its destination, a process mediated by encryption technology that prevents any relay from knowing the ultimate origin or destination of the data (see “Dissent Made Safer”).

Owners of a Safeplug can also set it to act as a relay to help out other people using Tor. Today there are over 4,000 Tor relays around the world, but Putterman believes his device will lead to the appearance of many more. “We hope to add tens of thousands of Tor relays,” he says. “Relays don’t use a lot of bandwidth and really help the community.”

Güneş says the addition of more relays would fortify the Tor network: “A larger crowd helps you anonymize better.” The addition of more Tor relays could also improve the performance of the network, reducing the bandwidth hit for people using it.

Data on how Tor is used today is hard to come by. A study by Güneş two years ago found that the vast majority of Tor traffic is ordinary Web browsing, so Safeplug may appeal to people already using the network this way.

There are over three million Tor connections in use today, although the number is declining after a spike this summer. The jump is believed to have been caused by a malicious software package using the network to communicate with its operators.

The original development of Tor was supported by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. The nonprofitTor Project, which now maintains the tool, gets most of its support from the U.S. government, mostly the Department of Defense and the State Department.