Using high-speed lasers, researchers have created "5D" data storage technology that could allow 500 TB of data to be written to a CD-sized glass disc, according to The Optical Society. The technique uses higher writing speeds that might finally make it feasible to use the technology for archival and other purposes. 

With 5D optical storage, each file uses three layers of nanoscale dots. The dots' size, orientation, and position within the three standard dimensions, make up the five "dimensions." The dots change the polarization of light travelling through the disc, which is read using a microscope and polarizer.

We've seen 5D optical storage before, but there were several problems—particularly the slow writing speeds that made the technology impractical. It has huge upsides for (extremely) long-term storage, though. It's been estimated that the storage medium could withstand temperatures up to 1,000 degrees C and last 13.8 billion years at room temperature without degrading. 

To overcome the speed problem, researchers used a femtosecond laser with a high repetition rate. Rather than writing directly in the glass, they used the laser to produce a phenomenon called near-field enhancement, that creates tiny structures using a few weak light pulses. Those can enhance the circular voids generated by a more powerful, single-pulse "micro-explosion." This technique "minimized the thermal damage that has been problematic for other approaches that use high-repetition-rate lasers," according to the paper.

Using the new technique, the team could write 5GB of text data onto a silica glass disc the size of a conventional CD with nearly 100 percent readout accuracy. "With the writing density available from the method, the disc could hold 500 terabytes of data," the researchers said. They could also write at speeds of a million voxels per second, or about 230 KB per second. 
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That might sound slow, but by introducing parallel writing, you could feasibly fill a 500TB disc in about 60 days. That could provide a way to back up reams of valuable data, essentially forever. "With the current system, we have the ability to preserve terabytes of data, which could be used, for example, to preserve information from a person’s DNA," said research team leader Peter G. Kazansky.

With recent murmurings of chip shortages easing in 2022, one could be forgiven for imagining some sort of promised land where prices return to the lower levels once remembered.

Unfortunately, that idea will have to be consigned to the land of rainbows, pixie dust, and affordable housing in major cities, because while the situation may ease, that doesn't mean it will stop growing.

For Gartner senior analyst Ben Lee, the relief slated to arrive in the middle of 2022 is not a lowering of absolute prices, but a slowing in the rate of growth.

The semiconductor chip shortage that is hamstringing the production of products ranging from cars and computers to appliances and toothbrushes will extend into 2022 and potentially beyond that, according to Matt Murphy, CEO of Marvell Technology.

“We’ve always gone through cycles of ups and downs, where demand has exceeded supply or vice versa,” AMD CEO Lisa Su said at the recent Code Conference in Beverly Hills. “This time, it’s different.”
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Su said that while she expects the first half of 2022 to be “likely tight,” the second half will be less severe as manufacturing capacity opens.

If you have an old phone, an alarm system or an ankle monitor, your tech could stop working properly next year.

In 2022, everything from your old phone to your alarm system could stop working as service providers turn off 3G networks in the United States.

Kami Griffiths has a perfectly fine phone. It’s your standard Samsung Galaxy smartphone with all the important apps, a decent camera, and a screen big enough to watch videos. It’s so fine, in fact, she’s had it since 2016 without ever feeling the need to drop hundreds of dollars on an upgrade.

Come next year, though, Griffiths won’t have a choice. That’s the current deadline for when the only cellular network her phone can use will shut down forever.

All the major cellphone carriers—AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile—are planning to shut their older 3G networks in 2022. Like millions of people in the United States who use 3G phones and other 3G devices, she will have to buy a new device if she wants to text, make calls, or even reach 911.

When these deadlines roll around, Griffith’s own phone could be the least of her problems. Griffiths, who is an executive director and co-founder of Community Tech Network—a nonprofit that focuses on digital literacy in San Francisco—is worried that the group’s clients, a mix of mostly older adults and low-income residents, will find themselves either without a working phone, or could struggle to figure out how to use a new device.

“It’s going to be very difficult for them. They will not be happy,” said Griffiths, who notes older tech users have a harder time figuring out new devices. “If it works fine, they don’t want to change a thing.”

Why Is This Happening? 3G network technology has been around in the United States for two decades. Verizon launched the first 3G network in the nation in 2002, and 4G has been around since 2010. In 2019, carriers started slowly rolling out 5G networks and soon the big companies were launching 5G smartphones. Now they need to focus their resources on building out those newer networks, while saving money on maintaining the older ones.
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“The reason the carriers would like to get rid of old legacy tech is to free up that wireless spectrum,” said Ian Fogg, vice president of analysis at mobile analytics firm Opensignal. “If you switch off older tech in most markets, most countries, your spectrum license allows you to use that with newer networks like 4G and 5G.”
When Do the Networks Shut Down? The shutdown dates start in January 2022 and are spread out throughout the year. At this time, the dates are all confirmed, and the carriers are proceeding as if they are set in stone. However, the Federal Communications Commission recently accepted comments from groups and people concerned about the shutdown, which could lead to a delay.

Researchers have unveiled a ground-breaking system that allows electronic devices to run without batteries for “an infinite lifetime”.

Computer engineers from Northwestern University and Delft University of Technology developed the BFree energy-harvesting technology to enable battery-free devices capable of running perpetually with only intermittent energy input.

The same team previously introduced the world’s first battery-free Game Boy last year, which is powered energy harvested from the user pushing the buttons. 

The engineers hope the innovative BFree system will help cut the vast amounts of dead batteries that end up as e-waste in landfills around the world. 

It will also allow amateur hobbyists and those within the Maker Movement to create their own battery-free electronic devices.

“Right now, it’s virtually impossible for hobbyists to develop devices with battery-free hardware, so we wanted to democratize our battery-free platform,” said Josiah Hester, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northwestern University, who led the research.

“Makers all over the internet are asking how to extend their device’s battery life. They are asking the wrong question. We want them to forget about the battery and instead think about more sustainable ways to generate energy.”

To run perpetually with only intermittent energy—for example the sun going behind a cloud and no longer powering the device’s solar panel—the BFree system simply pauses the calculations it is running without losing memory or needing to run through a long list of operations before restarting when power returns. 

The technology is part of a new trend known as ubiquitous computing, which aims to make computing available at any time and in any place through smart devices and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The research represents a significant advancement in this field by circumventing the need for a battery, and the associated charging and replacing that comes with them.

“Many people predict that we’re going to have a trillion devices in this IoT,” Dr Hester said.

“That means a trillion dead batteries or 100 million people replacing a dead battery every few minutes. That presents a terrible ecological cost to the environment.

“What we’re doing, instead, is truly giving power to the people. We want everyone to be able to program devices effortlessly in a more sustainable way.”
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The research was presented at the UbiComp 2021 conference on September 22nd.

In a power outage, having one of the best portable power stations around will come in real handy. They tend to be expensive, but the peace of mind is worth it because during emergencies you can keep your most important gear running—whether that’s your appliances, a television or radio for news updates, or lights. They’re also the perfect energy source while you’re camping or exploring the great outdoors. You may think you already have all the best camping gear, or best road trip gear, but if you don’t have a power source packed away, you’re not fully equipped.

There is a new portable power station on the block—or, at least, there will be soon. The EcoFlow DELTA Pro is a portable home battery and power station designed to keep an entire home powered for up to a week for emergency use. It puts out enough power to support appliances and electronics. It easily connects with Smart Extra Batteries, Solar Panels, Solar Trackers, Smart Generators, and a Smart Home Panel to extend functionality. You have an opportunity to get a steep discount on the portable battery, thanks to the Kickstarter campaign. It will retail for $3,599, but you can grab it for $600 off, which is $2,999.
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The EcoFlow DELTA Pro portable home battery is a dual-purpose energy-delivery device. It’s a home battery, storing energy that’s generated through various means, but it’s also a portable power station to provide power to your home, RV, small living space, or whatever you need. You could set up lights all over your campsite and connect them to this beast. A single unit has a base capacity of 3.6kWh of energy, but can be expanded to 25kWh with the additions of Smart Extra Batteries, Smart Generators, and a Smart Home Panel—enough to power an entire family’s needs for emergency use for up to a week. It can sustain air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, electronics, and much more. You can pair or sync up multiple units to increase the energy capacity if you need it.

As people ventured out from their pandemic cocoons this year, they gobbled up more electricity than they did before COVID-19 shut the world down. But there still isn’t enough clean energy to meet rising demand, so coal is making a comeback. Global electricity demand climbed 5% above pre-pandemic levels in the first six months of 2021, according to an analysis published recently by London think tank Ember. Electricity grids turned to more coal to meet that demand, and power sector carbon pollution rose 5% compared to the first half of 2019.

“Catapulting emissions in 2021 should send alarm bells across the world. We are not building back better, we are building back badly,” Dave Jones, global program lead at Ember, said in a statement. “The electricity transition is happening but with little urgency: emissions are going in the wrong direction.”

China drove 90% of the rise in electricity demand and most of the uptick in coal. While China is already the biggest carbon emitter in the world, that’s been mitigated because its per capita emissions are less than half that of the US, which is currently the second biggest climate polluter. But China’s per capita electricity demand is also rising rapidly, Ember’s report shows. That highlights how important it will be for the planet for China to get its emissions in check. 

None of the 63 countries Ember analyzed, which account for 87% of the global electricity production, saw a “green recovery” in the first half of 2021. Ember’s criteria for “green recovery” included lower power sector emissions and higher electricity demand, a sign that more electricity was being generated by clean energy sources like solar and wind. Some countries, like the US, had slightly cleaner power sectors compared to 2019, as electricity demand stayed relatively flat, but their emissions are expected to rise again with demand. 

Renewable energy had a growth spurt in the early part of 2021. Together, wind and solar generated more than a tenth of the world’s electricity—doubling their share in 2015 and surpassing nuclear power plants for the first time this year. But solar panels and wind turbines were still only able to meet 57% of the rise in electricity demand, leaving coal—the dirtiest-burning fossil fuel—to provide the rest.

A clean power sector is one of the most crucial steps to achieving global climate goals. Countries are working together under the framework of the Paris climate agreement to limit global warming to about 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures, which could significantly limit the damage we’re already beginning to see because of climate change.

Planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector need to fall by 57% this decade to meet that goal, regardless of a rise in electricity demand, according to a recent analysis by the International Energy Agency. Much of that reduction could come from completely cutting out coal—but the Ember analysis shows that the opposite is happening.

In the future, clean power grids could also translate to clean transportation, housing, and building sectors. All-electric vehicles, homes, and buildings are one way city planners and policymakers have sought to bring down greenhouse gas emissions. But the power sector has a long way to go to provide them all with carbon pollution-free energy. 
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During the height of the pandemic last year, carbon dioxide emissions fell across the board for electricity, transportation, and other energy-hungry industries. That clearly hasn’t been enough to stave off climate change-fueled disasters like worsening droughts, explosive wildfires, record-smashing heatwaves, and severe storms. Moving forward, CO2 cuts will have to come from intentional changes to how the world does business—not because a pandemic put things on pause.

NASA is planning a mission up to an asteroid that is hurtling around in our solar system, and it could be a seriously lucrative mission if it is a success.

In fact, the number, in terms of the potential value of the precious metals that the asteroid may be composed of, is simply baffling, because it's supposedly worth more than $10,000 quintillion.

To put that into context, it's got 22 zeros after it. Written down, it looks like this - 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

It's worth enough to make everyone currently living on earth a billionaire. That's a lot of money.

Anyway, the asteroid with this unfathomable wealth of precious metals stashed away on it is called Psyche 16, and it was discovered back in March 1852.

The 124-mile space rock is set to become the primary focus of a NASA mission which is set for lift off in August 2022.

If it does go ahead, the craft would arrive on the asteroid about four years later.

This would be the first mission that humans have sent to somewhere that is made of metal, rather than rock and ice, as NASA said: "Unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, scientists think the M-type (metallic) asteroid 16 Psyche is comprised mostly of metallic iron and nickel similar to Earth."

It turns out that those sorts of metals in that quantity are worth a hell of a lot.

Of course, there is the question of how you would extract that worth, given that it's floating around in space some four years travel away, but that's something that NASA will presumably intend to scope out on this prospective mission.

So, the asteroid sits between Mars and Jupiter and is thought to have been the 'remnants of a protoplanet' that was destroyed in hit-and-run collisions when the solar system formed', according to the Daily Mail.

Researchers in a recent study said: "The findings are a step toward resolving the mystery of the origin of this unusual object, which has been thought by some to be a chunk of the core of an ill-fated protoplanet."

Katherine de Kleer, assistant professor of planetary science and astronomy at Caltech, added: "We think that fragments of the cores, mantles, and crusts of these objects remain today in the form of asteroids.

"If that's true, it gives us our only real opportunity to study the cores of planet-like objects."
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Also, it might be worth an unimaginable amount of money, so it's probably worth inspecting.

From faster charging batteries and tinier chips, graphene is sometimes called the 'wonder material'. And now researchers are looking at using it to revamp hard disk drives (HDDs). 

HDDs are cheaper than faster, more compact Solid-State Drives (SSDs), which have the advantage of no moving parts, and are now ubiquitous on smartphones and many of the latest laptops. 

But researchers at the University of Cambridge Graphene Centre hope to breathe new life into the old HDD by using graphene to create ultra-high density HDDs.  

In a new paper published in Nature, the Cambridge researchers detail how they've used graphene to make HDDs that can store 10 times more data than today's HDDs. 

Their application of graphene focuses on replacing the currently used carbon-based overcoat (COC) layers that are used to protect a HDD's spinning platters when data is being rapidly written to them from the HDD's read/write heads. To achieve higher HDD densities, manufacturers have decreased the space between the head and platter. 

As the researchers note, the COC thickness has shrunk from 12.5nm in the 1990s to about 3nm today, allowing for a current storage density of about one terabyte (1 TB) per square inch. 

The researchers have shown they can use graphene's thin, one-atom-thick strong and slippery properties to boost HDD density by 10 times. 

Graphene, a single layer of graphite, was only discovered by Professor Andre Geim and Dr. Kostya Novoselov, in 2004 at the University of Manchester. The pair won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for their work on graphene, so it's still early days for the wonder material. 

The Cambridge researchers replaced commercial COCs with one to four layers of graphene. Then they tested friction, wear, corrosion, thermal stability, and lubricant compatibility. 

The researchers report graphene enables a two-fold reduction in friction and provides better corrosion and wear resistance than state-of-the-art COCs. A single graphene layer reduces corrosion by 2.5 times, they said.

"Demonstrating that graphene can serve as protective coating for conventional hard disk drives and that it can withstand Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording conditions is a very important result," said Dr Anna Ott from the Cambridge Graphene Centre, a co-author of the study. 
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"Considering that in 2020, around 1 billion terabytes of fresh HDD storage was produced, these results show a route for mass application of graphene in cutting-edge technologies," said professor Andrea Ferrari, director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre. 

Ford is finally ready to roll out over-the-air (OTA) software updates to its vehicles at scale. While Tesla and other automakers have offered OTA updates for years, Ford only delivered its first software updates to select Ford F-150 and Mustang Mach-E customers this year. But the automaker says it’s prepared to rapidly increase the number of vehicles capable of receiving software updates, with the goal of producing 33 million vehicles with the capability by 2028. 

Ford, which is fond of using the phrase “Built Ford Tough” for its trucks, is playing it cool with the branding this time, simply calling its software updates “Ford Power Ups.” Over the past two months, Ford says over 100,000 F-150 and Mach-E customers have received their first OTA updates. And there will be more to come, including owners of the new Ford Bronco. The automaker is preparing a major update later this year that will include Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. 

With this new update, Ford owners can ask Alexa for a weather update, play music, find the nearest gas station, or provide directions to their favorite destinations. Over 700,000 vehicles in the US and Canada will be eligible for the Alexa update this year, with “millions” more added over the next few years, Ford said. 

This isn’t exactly new for some Ford owners. Customers with Alexa accounts have been able to mirror the smart home assistant in their cars via their smartphones’ mobile connection. This new software update, though, will “embed” Alexa inside the car’s operating system, allowing for a more integrated user experience. And Ford is offering three years of Alexa complimentary, after which subscription fees will kick in. 

Not all the updates will come for free. BlueCruise, the automaker’s “hands free” highway driving assist system, will be available later this year to select F-150 and Mach-E customers who have purchased the relevant software updates. 

Legacy automakers have struggled to catch up to Tesla, which has long been the leader in shipping over-the-air updates to its customers to change everything from its Autopilot driver help system to the layout and look of its infotainment touchscreen. The idea that a car can be updated similarly to how Apple or Samsung can upgrade or repair the software on a smartphone has proven to be difficult and elusive for most car companies.

Most car dealers are wary of OTA updates for fear of being cut out of the lucrative service and maintenance process. Basically, if you can fix your car with an OTA update, you don’t need to take it in to the dealership as often. And that means less money for them.

Ford said that most of the updates will be “virtually invisible” to its customers and require “little to no action.” Others will require a reboot of the vehicle’s operating system that can happen when it’s most convenient, like overnight. 

“It’s a total reversal of the ownership model where vehicles used to just get older,” said Alex Purdy, head of business operations. “Now Fords will actually get better over time.”
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Earlier this year, Ford announced that Google’s Android would power the infotainment systems in “millions” of its cars starting in 2023. That, along with the Alexa software update that will begin rolling out later this year, is proof that Ford is committed to “giving our customers the choice to stick with the technologies and brands they’re already using and love or to try something new,” Purdy said.

Apple is working on technology to detect a user's blood pressure using neural networks and seismocardiogram data, negating the need for a blood pressure cuff.

According to a patent application published Thursday, a wearable device, potentially paired with Apple Watch, might one day be capable of monitoring a user's blood pressure without the need for any additional peripherals.

The patent application, titled "Interpretable neural networks for cuffless blood pressure estimation," explores the use of neural networks to estimate blood pressure using seismocardiogram data. Unlike an electrocardiogram, which relies on electrical signals to monitor a heart rate, a seismocardiogram measures the micro-vibrations produced by the heart beating.

There exist seismocardiogram devices small enough to be considered wearable, though these sensitive systems are typically placed over a user's sternum to measure minute vibrations in or near the heart. How Apple intends to deploy such a device was not discussed in the patent filing.

According to Apple's patent, the system would work by leveraging an individually pruned neutral network accepting a seismocardiogram as input. That neural network would then use the data to estimate blood pressure.

For example, Apple could create a baseline model by training the neural networks with seismocardiogram data and blood pressure measurements from a group of subjects. Using that as a baseline, the system could then prune the model for subsequent users. The initial dataset would be collected from users performing different sedentary activities.

From there, Apple contends that the neural network could be used to accurately estimate a user's blood pressure without a cuff. As the patent points out, the system could use the neutral network "to determine blood pressure based on accelerometer or gyroscope data," which are already present in Apple devices.

Current versions of the Apple Watch can be used to monitor and analyze different types of health data, including heart rates with an optical sensing system, heart rhythms via a built-in electrocardiogram or blood oxygen sensing on the Apple Watch Series 6. Since the Apple Watch release, Apple has been continually expanding the device's health toolkit, and Apple may be looking to build out a set of health-minded accessories. 

The patent lists Siddharth Khullar, Nicholas E. Apostoloff, and Amruta Pai as its inventors. Among them, Apostoloff has been named on a previous patent dedicated to facial analysis and emotion detection.
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This isn't Apple's first patent focused on blood pressure monitoring. In 2020, the company filed a patent application for an Apple Watch-supported system that could use pulse transit time to measure blood pressure. Another system could use pressure sensor data, and Apple has explored how to monitor blood pressure without a cuff in the past.