February 22, 2012

Good Morning,

We use technology and cyberspace so much that we often take it for granted. But the key word in cyberspace is, apparently, "space." Researchers believe we are running out of digital airwaves for data customers. Check out the third article for more details on this eye-opening story.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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New way found to create medical isotopes

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Canadian medical researchers have found a way to create medical diagnostic isotopes without the need for nuclear technology. The news emerged Monday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver, where Dr. Francois Benard of the British Columbia Cancer Agency said existing cyclotron technology has been adapted to create the isotopes, Postmedia News reported. Traditionally, nuclear power plants were used to create technetium-99m for diagnosis and treatment of cancers and heart disease. Benard said two of Canada's 12 hospital cyclotrons in British Columbia and Ontario have manufactured technetium-99m using molybdenum-100. The cyclotrons use large electromagnets to make the sub-atomic transformation, the report said. "It's essentially a win-win scenario for healthcare," Benard said. "We have found a practical, simple solution that can use existing infrastructure." Canada has been the world leader in creating medical isotopes from its facility in Chalk River, Ontario, but the aging facility has been all but shut down for maintenance and upgrades.


Hubble telescope sees new type of planet

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The Hubble Space Telescope has found a new type of planet outside our solar system, a water world covered by a thick, steamy atmosphere, U.S. astronomers say. A team of astronomers led by Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics made the observations of the planet GJ 1214b, about 2.7 times Earth's diameter and weighing almost seven times as much. It orbits a red-dwarf star every 38 hours at a distance of 1.2 million miles, giving it an estimated temperature of 446 degrees Fahrenheit, a release from the center reported Tuesday. "GJ1214b is like no planet we know of," Berta said. "A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water." The planet's density is only slighter greater than that of water, and much less than Earth's, astronomers said. This suggests GJ 1214b has much more water than Earth does, and much less rock, they said. The internal structure of GJ 1214b would be extraordinarily different from that of our world as a result, Berta said. "The high temperatures and high pressures would form exotic materials like 'hot ice' or 'superfluid water,' substances that are completely alien to our everyday experience," he said. GJ 1214b is located in the constellation of Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer, just 40 light-years from Earth.


Wireless users face 'spectrum crunch'

WASHINGTON - The U.S. mobile phone industry is running out of space on the airwaves necessary to provide voice, text and data to its customers, experts say. The situation, dubbed "spectrum crunch," could lead to more dropped calls, slower data speeds and higher prices to consumers for cellphone service. While the United States still has enough spectrum to go around, that could change as early as next year, the Federal Communications Commission estimates. "Network traffic is increasing, driving up demand for mobile broadband," an official at the FCC's wireless bureau told CNN. "Carriers are doing things to offset the increase in demand. They can manage it for the next couple years, but demand is inevitably going to exceed the available spectrum." Consumption of wireless Internet services is skyrocketing as smartphone and tablet sales soar, but wireless spectrum -- the bands of frequencies over which all wireless transmissions travel -- is a finite resource. "We got into this principally because technology and demand exploded at a rate that nobody had anticipated," Rory Altman, director of technology consultancy Altman & Vilandrie said. Cellphone carriers have responded, attempting to limit customers' data usage by putting caps in place, throttling speeds and raising prices. And things are likely to get worse for cellphone users before they get better. "For a while we won't notice the quality of service changes, but over time as devices get better and use more data, we'll start to take notice," Altman said. "Consumers will notice it, and the burden will fall on the carriers to fix it."


'Printed' solar cells a low-cost solution?

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Solar cells manufactured using special ink printed onto sheets of a supporting material could lead to new low-cost solar cells, U.S. chemical engineers say. Solar cells produced with the ink printing process, mass-produced at low cost and not limited by the availability of materials, could economically compete with other energy technologies, researchers at Purdue University said. "To date, none of the photovoltaic technologies simultaneously meets all these constraints," researcher Rakesh Agrawal said. Agrawal's lab created nanocrystals of a material called copper zinc tin sulfide, which enabled creation of a light-absorbing ink, a university release reported. "The concept is that, once you have an ink you can print photovoltaic cells very fast, so they become very inexpensive to manufacture," Agrawal said. Researchers say to be competitive with other energy technologies solar cells must be capable of generating terawatts, or trillions of watts, of electricity at a cost of 50 cents per peak watt. "These goals can only be met with a truly transformational technology," Agrawal said.

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