Science and technology go hand in hand. With the innovation of technical things and gadgets, our life has got a new dimension. It is very interesting to know living supercapacitors constructed inside every living organisam. We are now able to witness the impossible things that we have never dreamt of in the last couple of years. Well, there is a progress or advancement in each department be it biological, medicine or any technological matter.

In the year 2015, a research group came up with the results which showed that they were successful in making the rose absorb a conducting polymer solution. Well, this is something new which we don’t come across very often. Really, it is an incredible matter in the field of electronics.

THE SOLUTION

The conducting hydrogel which got formed in the stem of the rose was in the form of wires. The stem of the rose acted as a perfect transistor with all the gates at each end and a gate in the centre. This device can act as a supercapacitor.

The results were published in the Science Advances. An assistant professor has been able to develop a SuperCapacitors material, which has been specially designed for the issue. The material that has been developed polymerises inside the stem of the rose without any further trigger.

The fluid can create channels for conducting. The channel may be long and it is not limited within the stem of the rose but also within the leaves and petals.

THE CHARGING

The rose can be charged at frequent intervals without any degradation in the performance of the semiconductor device. The best part is that the energy stored in the semi-conductor is of the same magnitude in the stem of the rose.So the SuperCapacitors developed from this will be a great help in the power industry.

There are many areas where we can utilise this SuperCapacitors device – the plant. This plant is capable of powering up our ion pump. It can also give power to various types of sensors which are quite beneficial.

THE RESEARCH

The research is in the initial stages of the experiment and a lot of work is let before it can be confirmed for the future. If this plant becomes successful, then the future will be benefitted a lot.

The plant can be used to power up the switches and also will be useful in the storage of energy. So it can be also used in creating the fuel cells. With the research going on, it is now time to implement the facts.

The implications will make it more worthy. The supercapacitors will make the tasks easy in the future. The performance would also matter a lot in the near future. The supercapacitors can be used in the automobile industry as well.

This will be a great help in saving our natural resources as well for the future generations. With the device or the plant coming in the future, a lot of money would also be saved for the generation of power and electricity. For this project, the main funds are coming from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

Poor construction management and substandard project vision can easily endanger the completion of any project. Several building projects still include inferior working conditions which are not eloquently sustainable. The world is constantly changing and with it the construction processes are also being developed. Construction processes that involve digital technologies ensure sustainable working conditions, productivity and sustainability. That’s not all, the integration of new technologies also enable the creation of fresh architectural expressions. The advent of digital fabrication has made it easier to use programmed computers as a medium of completing the projects successfully using digital designs.

Digital Building Culture

The potential of this digital building culture can be fully exploited with funding and institutional environments that facilitate proper interdisciplinary research. The process of digital fabrication unites the separate disciplines like robotics, control system engineering, materials science, computer science, structural design and architecture.

Recently, the AAAS 2017 meeting in Boston was held in which the RMIT University, University of California, and Jane Burry amongst others explained the development in digital building culture. The detailed presentations they showcased at this event highlight the integration of digital technologies with building process, planning and design. The process of digital fabrication in itself is revolutionary and can successfully renovate the building industry.

Overcoming Challenges in Digital Fabrication

Assistant professor, Jonas Buchli at ETZ Zurich and private investigator in NCCR highlighted the expanded use of digital fabrication using domain specific robotic technology in prefabrication and construction sites.

He also demonstrated the various challenges that the researchers are going through in the integration and further development of digital technologies in varied fields of architecture. Digital fabrication and increased use of digital designs for higher quality projects can successfully transform the future of architecture.

Free Of Limitations

Digital fabrication has helped designers by unchaining them from the limitations of dimensional representational techniques. It has freed the designers from the various constraints of physical modeling and drawing.

This has helped them solve the various hindrances of extraneous factors like material and fabrication constraints, and environmental and structural optimization. The director of RMIT University in Australia demonstrated how the various opportunities for quality control, mass customization, variation, optimization, and automation can be explored.

Digital fabrication helps realize the potentialities of these opportunities in full scale construction projects. Burry also demonstrated examples of how innovation and research has successfully changed construction practices. For a better insight of development she will use case studies of Antonio Sagrada Familia.

3D printing digital fabrication enables building objects using layers of plastic or metal. However, the process of development in 3D printing has been slow and has till date only enabled small scale object printing.

The Associate Professor in Berkeley USA, Ronald Rael is devising new methods to overcome this challenge. He has been working on the project for quite some time, and has been able to develop new materials that will help overcome the challenge of costs and scales of 3D printing. Ronald demonstrated that sustainable resources amassed from waste streams derived for 3D printing in architecture will be a viable solution for overcoming the challenges.

Just a few weeks legislation was passed by the Congress which empowers the internet providers to collect as well as user’s web browsing history and app usage. This means a great blow to the privacy of internet users and it has left everyone confused and scared. This legislation is a boon for the business community as they will be market their products & services in a more decisive fashion by making use of the user’s online behaviour. But there are few ways which can help in safeguarding the online privacy in a more refined way.

What actually is legislation is all about?

Congress understands the importance of the online privacy therefore the ISPs are simply banned from collecting, sharing, and storing as well selling certain type of personal information which can result in revealing too much about the user. This includes the app usage data, location information and browsing histories without the prior consent of the user. If you wish to safeguard these make sure you read the internet provider documents clearly signing up.

Can ISP sell a user’s internet browsing history?

ISP has their own privacy policy which exclusively covers this type of information but it is not applicable in all the cases. So if the personal information like browsing history is a part of the privacy policy then sharing or selling of such data will be a violation of its own policy. For this they can be tried in the federal court as they are indulging in unfair business practices.

An example will help in illustrating this point; a few years ago Verizon introduced the supercookie program which happened to track too much for the company’s benefit. It was an intrusion to the user’s privacy and also a violation of its own privacy policy because of this supercookie was removed at the end.

How you can protect yourself now?

It is sensible to be worried about your privacy under the given circumstances but there are certain ways which will help in safeguarding it a great extent. You must have heard about the VPN or virtual private network in the past now the time is rife to make use of it. By paying a small amount you can get a VPN which will hide your location, web surfing activities and personal data from your ISP through encrypting all the internet traffic. Secondly using Tor is also a good option as it works by masking the identity of the users by sending their internet traffic through a complex network of intermediary servers.

This doesn’t mean government will snoop on you

This is a grave misconception held by many since the new legislation has come into being. However it allows the ISPs to get into the data mining business. Federal and governmental agencies will still make use of traditional ways of gaining information directly from the ISP through subpoena. But ISP will be able to sell your web surfing habits and behaviour to the marketers by building active data sets.

Internet forms the heart and soul of our daily work routines, for it shortens the work period and makes everything easier. It is even used in our homes regularly for the thousand nothings and five or six things of paramount importance. If you are in the habit of using your home internet connection every day, you’ll recognize the hassle of interrupted or slow connection. Imagine, downloading an important document, and right at 75% a pop up arrives stating ‘download failed’, or ‘check internet connection’. Few simple computer tips will help you boost your internet speed.

Simple Everyday Issues in Internet

If you are confronted with such a situation, firstly try to fix small issues that you can capably handle on your own. Keep a track of the monthly data cap, and move the router to the central location of your house. Computers or laptops also have a certain capacity of handling things, so whenever working on the internet close the unused open programs that hog the bandwidth. If you are a computer geek you can fix your operating system by disabling send offload settings or by escalating the reverse buffers.

Easy Computer Tips

Sometimes the issues are small and can be fixed at home, but sometimes the problem lies with the equipment itself. With the aid of a few tools you can easily maximize your broadband connection speed. Wire connections can sometimes help fix the problem of slow internet speed. It helps create a complete home network with the help of power cables, and it’s quite easy to set up. It is not the typical cable connection and the speed won’t be the same, but it will certainly offer faster service, in fact twice the speed that in home Wi-Fi. Some of the advanced models even help create a complete Wi-Fi hotspot.

Invest In a Good Modem

You can easily get a cable modem on lease from your internet provider, and while you have to pay an approximate of $ 150, it wouldn’t offer you with the fastest speed. Instead, you should invest in a more practical and better option like the cable modems available in the market which cost around $60 to $80. The high quality modems offer data speed about 343 Mbps, which means you, can download without facing the hassle of fluctuating speed. Most of the good quality modems are compatible with numerous cable systems. The indicator lights on the modem, can easily interpret any problem, and help you fix speed related issues faster.

Shut Extra Programs

The simplest and cheapest method of increasing internet speed is by periodically cleaning the computer. There are numerous applications running in the background that consume data and affect internet speed. Extra website tabs, Skype, chatting applications, multi player notifications, updates, security scans can easily falter the broadband speed. Shut down the bandwidth heavy streaming services, and other services that you have not used lately. Clear the browser history, and other old files using the web browser options menu. If you use home Wi-Fi ensure that it is password protected at all times. If not people can easily log into your Wi-Fi device and consume your internet, and these are probably the easiest computer tips for fixing fluctuating internet speed.

Digital assistants were simply a over glorified feature in the mobile phones just a few years but currently it is seen as added luxury oozing with utility. Amazon has begun the unexpected war of the digital assistants with the launch of the Alexa voice assistant on the iPhone. Amazon is making this digital assistant available through its very own iOS based shopping app though Alexa will be sorely missed on the Android platform for some time. Alexa will be giving stiff challenge to the Apple’s own digital assistant Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana as well. In short iPhone users will be spoilt for choice with multiple digital assistants.

Features of Amazon’s Alexa

Alexa happens to be a core part of the Amazon smart home line up of devices and most importantly the Echo speakers. Alexa has shown its mettle in answering the questions, performing varied skills and setting times as per the need of the users. It has helped in making people aware of the smart home appliances and how they will be controlled in a more interactive and decisive fashion in the upcoming future.

It just like any other digital assistant simply say ‘Alexa’ and follow it up with your command. Users with Amazon Tap or Amazon Fire TV voice remote then they are required to press the button in order to wake Alexa. Amazon is growing the list of commands for Alexa and it is designed to understand the natural language with ease and simplicity. The best thing about Alexa is that it can easily comprehend complex command or even when users omit a few words from the command.

The battle of the digital assistant

Alexa on iPhone comes with fairly limited options but it is expected to grow as more and more users start making active use of it. Setting a time or getting news pulled up is bit difficult in the beginning but as the AIexa gets a hold of it things gets seamless. But Alexa works like a charm when asked to make a search on the Amazon.com for any product. On other side Microsoft Cortana is great at scheduling meeting and setting up the reminders but still it happens to be better suited as a desktop or laptop assistant rather than iPhone assistant. Secondly users are required to make a separate download in order to get it work on the phone. Thirdly users will have to open the app in order to make use of it which is quite frustrating.

Siri works as the default digital assistant on the Apple’s iPhone and therefore it has a number of advantages. It has the coveted always on function which is deeply integrated with the voice assistant therefore it a great at getting a number of job done from opening mails, setting timer, calling others and much more without breaking a sweat. Siri is extremely capable & more than enough and very soon people will find that having multiple digital assistants installed isn’t a good thing.