NVIDIA, MSI, EVGA GTX 960 Review
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Getting Particles to Accelerate Themselves
According to Newton, objects will not accelerate unless an unbalanced force is applied to them. While that is still true, researchers at MIT and Israel's Technion have found a way to trick Newton, and the conservation of momentum. What they discovered is a way to cause an electron to accelerate on its own, almost to the speed of light.
The researchers theorize that this effect can be caused with specially engineered phase masks, like those for creating holograms but at a much finer scale. Any electron that is self-accelerated this way, would look like it were accelerated by some external force, even though none is being applied. The reason this does not violate any laws of physics is because the electron is accelerating and expanding at the same time. The tail of the electron's wave packet expands backwards so that the total momentum is still preserved.
As the researchers dug into their theory more they also found that the self-acceleration can cause time dilation, like that described by relativity. This could be especially useful by allowing a way for short-lived particle to exist a little longer, making it easier to study them.
Source: MIT
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Microsoft Acquires Revolution Analytics
Microsoft has announced that it will acquire Revolution Analytics, a company known for its distribution and support of the R programming language. R was "specifically designed for statistical computing and predictive analytics" and it will be used by Microsoft to "offer cloud services and on premise applications for its customers to undertake big data-style analysis." As big data and cloud computing continue to gain in popularity and usefulness, R is in a prime position to help those industries succeed. Microsoft corporate VP of machine learning Joseph Sirosh described the motivation for the acquisition stating, "As their volumes of data continually grow, organizations of all kinds around the world—financial, manufacturing, health care, retail, research—need powerful analytical models to make data-driven decisions. This acquisition is part of our effort to address these customer needs."
Source: PC World
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Theory Suggests the Milky Way is a Wormhole
Wormholes have been a popular topic in science and science fiction for decades and could potentially allow for relatively easy travel across the Universe. While they have been theorized though, no one has found one yet, but one has been suggested. Researchers at the International School for Advanced Studies have theorized that our home galaxy, the Milky Way, may actually be a gigantic wormhole.
To arrive at this idea, the researchers combined equations from General Relativity with a highly detailed dark matter map of the galaxy. Based on the observed dark matter distribution, the Milky Way might not only contain a worm hole but have one spanning its full size. It could even be navigable, if the researchers' calculations are correct.
To test if the hypothesis is true, one will have to very carefully compare the Milky Way with another galaxy, which is something we are not yet capable of. Besides that hypothesis though, this work could also lead to new interpretations of what dark matter is.
Source: International School of Advanced Studies via EurekAlert!
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Kim Dotcom Planning Secure Video Chat Service
Kim Dotcom, the man famous for his involvement in the cloud file storage service Mega Upload, has announced plans to release a secure video chat program called MEGAchat. MEGAchat joins the new MEGA file upload service with a focus on security that offers end-to-end encryption, allowing information to get from its source to its destination without being seen by unwanted parties. The software operates entirely in a web browser, removing the need to download and install any additional software. MEGAchat will only support video chat at first, but plans are in place to add text chat and video conferencing.
Source: Slash Gear
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Emitting and Extracting More Light with Metamaterials
Metamaterials are likely among the most important, recent scientific discoveries as they are able to defy Nature and give us properties that cannot be found in any natural material. A lot of the research into metamaterials has concerned optics, and especially the possibility of creating invisibility cloaks, but this is not the only application. Another potential use is to enhance light sources, and recently researchers at City College of New York have done this.
Previous efforts to enhance light emission with a metamaterial have been problematic because the light did not want to leave them. For this work the researchers put a light emitting nanocrystal on top of a metamaterial with hyperbolic dispersion. This would enhance the light emission, and then the researchers figured out how to efficiently extract the photons from the system by embedding quantum dots in the material.
Potentially this discovery could lead to ultrafast LEDs, nanoscale lasers, and efficient single photon sources.
Source: City College of New York
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Hardware Roundup: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 Edition
NVIDIA is introducing a new member of its Maxwell family of video cards today with the GeForce GTX 960. It is aimed at what could be the ideal price/performance ratio, and considering it comes in right around $200, NVIDIA may have a winner on its hands. The GM206 cards feature DirectX 12 support, 128 CUDA cores, 2GB of GDDR5 memory, a 128-bit bus, and a core clock speed of 1126MHz. NVIDIA is letting its board partners release non-reference models today too, so you can find not only the stock NVIDIA version but overclocked ones right away. We have plenty of reviews covering both editions, so hit them all up below to see just what the GeForce GTX 960 is capable of!
NVIDIA, MSI, EVGA GTX 960 @ OCC
GeForce GTX 960 @ TechSpot
GeForce GTX 960 SLI @ TechSpot
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 @ PC Perspective
ASUS GTX 960 Strix @ LanOC Reviews
ZOTAC GTX 960 AMP! Edition @ Bjorn3D
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Plex for PlayStation Released for United States Users
Plex, the popular personal media management hub that was made available on the PlayStation 3 and 4 last December for users located in Europe and Asia, is now available to United States residents. While the latest announcement for Plex for PlayStation did not go into detail on which restrictions still plague the application, it can be assumed that Plex for PlayStation still only supports video from a user’s library and also requires a Plex Pass subscription, which costs $5 per month. Support for music, photos, and Plex channel functionality is scheduled to come at a later time for Plex for PlayStation, but with Plex now covering users across the globe that utilize the PlayStation and Xbox, on both the latest and previous generations, the service is likely to grow its user base fairly quickly in the near future.
Source: TechHive
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ASUSTOR Now Offers After-Sales Maintenance Service Throughout Russia
ASUSTOR, a leading innovator and provider of network storage solutions, has announced that it is now offering after-sales maintenance service throughout Russia, thanks to its parent company ASUS and ASK-2 LLC. ASUS customers within Russia have already enjoyed the benefit of professional and timely support, and with ASUSTOR making use of the 200 officially authorized service center locations throughout the country that ASK-2 LLC runs, ASUSTOR customers will enjoy the same quality customer service. Cindy Wu, the Sales Manager at ASUSTOR, stated that "Joining ASUS’s network of service centers allows us to provide our Russian users with the highest standard of after-sales service and support, strengthening the market’s confidence in ASUSTOR NAS products."
Source: Press Release
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DirectX 12 Will be Exclusive to Windows 10
It was reported last November that DirectX 12, which provides improved performance thanks to improved CPU utilization, lower-level access, and more, may not come to Windows 7. Microsoft has just confirmed that claim, which was originally made by Richard Huddy, the Chief Gaming Scientist at AMD, by announcing that DirectX 12 will be exclusive to Windows 10. This is not the first time that Microsoft has made its DirectX API exclusive to a certain version of Windows, with DirectX 10 being exclusive to Windows Vista. For gamers who wish to access and benefit from the performance improvements that DirectX 12 will bring to the table, Windows 10 is going to be a required upgrade. Fortunately, Microsoft is offering Windows 10 as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8.1 users, as long as the upgrade takes place within the first year of the release of the operating system.
Source: TweakTown
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Keyboard Developed that can Recognize Users
For some, keyboards are just an input device, but for others they are a work of modern technology with advanced switches, layouts, and software driving them. As impressive as your keyboard may be though, researchers have created one that is probably some notches above. This new keyboard, as reported in the journal ACS Nano has the ability to identify users, providing extra protection against direct access of a computer by an unauthorized user.
The smart keyboard identifies users by recognizing the pressure we apply to keys as well as the speed with which type. With such a profile, even if someone inputs the character password, the keyboard can still prevent successful access. The keyboard is even able to power itself or a small device from the energy of each key press. It is also dirt resistant as its surface coating repels dirt and grime.
Source: American Chemical Society
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Amazon Commits To Indiana Wind Farm
Amazon has signed a 13 year Power Purchase Agreement with a wind farm being built in Benton County Indiana, allowing the farm to be built and giving Amazon a large source of renewable energy. The 150MW farm is expected to be operational by January 2016 and puts Amazon one step closer to achieving its promise of powering Amazon Web Services facilities entirely with renewable energy. With this new wind farm Amazon joins other major players such as Google and Apple in powering data centers with renewable energy.
Source: Datacenter Dynamics
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Acer Announces Two New Chromebooks
Acer has announced a pair of new Chromebooks targeted at students and designed for use in the classroom. The C740 features an 11.6" screen and the C910 uses a 15.6" screen. Both Chromebooks are able to withstand force up to 132 pounds, have reinforced hinges, and can handle falls from up to 18" high, making them a perfect choice for users that are prone to dropping things. The laptops can be configured with either Celeron or i3 processors, 2GB or 4GB of RAM, and start at a resolution of 1366x768. Both models will be available starting next month.
Source: Engadget
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Learning Why Organic Semiconductors Perform Unevenly
Organic semiconductors have been a focus of a lot of interest for some time now, as they have the potential to very cheaply replace silicon-based devices, and introduce new properties. While they have that potential, it is difficult to tap it because of uneven performance issues. These issues have been known about for some time, but finally we may know what causes them, thanks to researchers at Berkeley Lab.
Inside of organic semiconductor films are nanocrystals that form domains. Researchers have realized the performance issues come from the domain interfaces, but the exact reason why has eluded them. This is in part because the domains are so much smaller than the diffraction limit that few observation methods would work. The Berkeley researchers solved that problem by adapting transient absorption (TA) microscopy to work with the samples of TIPS pentacene they had. This method uses femtosecond laser pulses to excite transient energy states, and then measures the changes in the absorption spectra. The researchers modified their system to create focal volumes a thousand times smaller than normal TA microscopes achieve, and made it possible to use different light polarizations, to isolate signals from adjacent domains.
What the researchers found was that the problem comes from the smaller domains between larger ones. These smaller domains can have random orientations that prevent charge carriers from moving efficiently. Armed with this knowledge and an ability to measure and predict performance, it should be possible to optimize the systems for manufacturing organic semiconductors.
Source: Berkeley Lab
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