Researchers from UCSD’s Jacob’s School of Engineering found that the temperature of a building’s ceiling was 5 degrees Fahrenheit lower right below the panels than at an exposed portion of the roof. At night, the panels held the heat and contributed to the heating cost. The scientists determined that the energy savings to heat and cool a building could amount to about a 5 percent discount off the cost of the solar panels over their lifetime.
“The panels essentially act as roof shades,” said Anthony Dominguez, the graduate student lead on the project. “Rather than the sun beating down onto the roof, which causes heat to be pushed through the roof and inside the ceiling of the building, photovoltaic panels take the solar beating. Then much of the heat is removed by wind blowing between the panels and the roof.”
He noted that a space between the panels and a surface help air circulation and enhance the effect, which means that tilted panels provide more cooling. For the specific building that was investigated, the research team found that the panels reduced the amount of heat reaching the roof by about 38 percent. I just wish that solar panels would be more affordable.
We’ve been hearing snippets of information about the Xbox 720 over the last few weeks and now AMD has put its two cents in. We’ve already heard talk of DirectX 11 and an E3 2012 launch for the newest Xbox console and now AMD is adding that the console will be capable of producing graphics with Avatar-levels of detail. Referring to the smash-hit movie that put 3D on the map, Examiner cites director of ISV relationships at AMD, Neal Robison, as saying Xbox fans have a lot to be excited about.
Aside from stunning graphics, Robison is quoted as saying that the next-generation console from Microsoft will boast A.I. and physics capabilities that will allow for every pedestrian in a games like Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row ‘to have a totally individual mentality’. That means no more of the mob mentality that sees everyone just running away screaming, each character will do something different.
The Examiner is using August’s issue of Official Xbox Magazine as a source for the information, but AMD has not confirmed that it is working on the Xbox 720. Similarly, Microsoft has not confirmed any details regarding the new system. Elsewhere in the market, Nintendo just introduced the next generation Wii, the Wii U, which is scheduled for launch next year. Sony is also rumored to be working on the PS4, which is also expected in 2012.
Over the last week or so there’s been a lot of news coverage regarding Google’s new social networking venture, Google+. One topic in particular seems to be cropping up time and time again: the fact that the vast majority of G+ users are men. Some reports put the percentage of male users as high as 86 percent. However, it seems these numbers are not quite right. Entrepreneur Paul Allen moved to dispel the rumors last Friday with some research of his own and a few words about current stats.
“A lot of misinformation about Google+’s male to female ratio is going around Google+ and even being reported on by respectable media sites,” Allen wrote, before declaring, “All of these articles are based on totally flawed data.”
Allen goes on to explain that Socialstatistics.com, the source behind the claim that 86.8 percent of Google+ users are male, is an opt-in, third party service that places users on a leader board. Because men are more competitive when it comes to leader board recognition, they are more likely to sign up for such a service. Allen says another site being sourced, findpeopleonplus.com, is also not accurate.
“They report that of the first 948,000 profiles they crawled, 74.9 percent are male and 25.1 percent are female,” Allen wrote on his own G+ profile. “But crawling is time consuming and the crawlers were finding the mostly male user profiles from the initial field test seeding. This is not a random sampling.”
Mr. Allen’s own surname-based random sampling showed the following results:
7/4 77 percent Male, 23 percent Female
7/7 68.4 percent Male, 31.6 percent Female (after the user base had almost doubled)
7/14 66.4 percent Male, 33.6 percent Female
Based on the rate at which G+ is turning pink, Allen predicts that Google+’s female population percentage will likely surpass LinkedIn’s (37 percent female) in early August.
“The poster of 18 men in a hot tub that has been passed around for the past week or two is not reflective of reality and is not what Google+ is going to end up being.”
If you’ve been waiting for Apple’s earnings to come in shy of analyst estimates, you’re about to be disappointed yet again. We’ve heard this aplenty time already, but we’ll have to say it again. Cupertino has just reported its best quarter ever, with earnings of $7.79 per share, revenue totaling $28.57 billion, and a net profit of $7.31 billion, blasting away market follower’s expectation.
We know you’re probably more interested in sales figures, however, and as you might expect, Apple’s continued to ship iPhones and iPads at a steady pace, with 20.34 million smartphones and 9.25 million tablets sold last quarter, all while the new iPhone 5’s rumor continue to spill out.
If you like Ken Block’s series of Gymkhana videos, or the Japanese Drift competition like our Tengku Djan, then you’ll definitely want to check out Vaughn Gittin Jr’s latest flick featuring his Formula Drift Mustang. Gittin was recently visiting Saudi Arabia to perform a drifting demo at an event at the Al Reem Circuit, and he decided to stick around for an extra few days to get footage of him drifting on track.
Apparently, the track officials pretty much gave Gittin free reign of the entire complex, from the pit lane to the parking lots to the front straight, so the video shows him getting his Mustang sideways in a variety of locations. There’s plenty of tire smoke, wonderful sounds from the naturally aspirated 5.4L V8, and even a few smashed rear fenders.
Everywhere we look we’re surrounded by “smart” technology embedded into everyday items. Refrigerators have built-in televisions and internet connections, while our phones contain more computing power than a NASA control room from the ’70s. Automakers are also ready to ride the tech-train to tomorrow, and Toyota has provided a glimpse of a new way to give passengers a window to the world.
A car already has such a window, but what if the glass was able to provide both information of the world outside and an interactive tool to view it. It’s called the Window to the World concept. Engineers and designers from Toyota Motor Europe and the Copenhagen Instituted of Interaction Design have begun thinking about the future, and it could feature a rather unique option for the rear windows. Touch-screen glass would allow one to see how far objects lie in the distance, pinch to zoom on an area outside and to generally learn more about what’s going on outside.
Starcraft Universe, formerly known as World of Starcraft, impressed us with its pre-alpha footage before. Now it’s back with an even more impressive video, spotted by ChaosSmurf on twitter. The last we heard of the mod, the creators were involved in a minor legal scuffle with Activision and Blizzard over the mod’s name. That’s all resolved now, so the team has been able to get back to creating some impressive new levels, including what looks like a set piece in which players defend a flying platform from Zerg attack. The mod is created entirely using the free editing tools bundled with StarCraft 2. Find out more on the StarCraft Universe ModDB homepage.
Over the last week or so there’s been a lot of news coverage regarding Google’s new social networking venture, Google+. One topic in particular seems to be cropping up time and time again: the fact that the vast majority of G+ users are men. Some reports put the percentage of male users as high as 86 percent. However, it seems these numbers are not quite right. Entrepreneur Paul Allen moved to dispel the rumors last Friday with some research of his own and a few words about current stats.
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