Craig Barratt, president of Qualcomm Atheros, recently stated that Wi-Fi gigabit speeds within the home (via 802.11ac) are just one or two years away from becoming reality. He made this revelation during an interview at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference on Tuesday as he explained how Wi-Fi technology will soon get better and faster.

As reported earlier, 802.11ac is the next step past 802.11n in the Wi-Fi ladder. It will be fully backward compatible with all previous generations of Wi-Fi, and in the 2.4 GHz spectrum, it will be identical to 802.11n. The major innovation with 802.11ac will be that in the 5 GHz band, the spec will offer “substantially” higher throughput. That said, users will see gigabit speeds using the 5 GHz band.

But as GigaOM points out, most consumers don’t have a gigabit connection to the Internet. “We are driving more content around the home,” Barratt said. “And actually in many countries, they already enjoy substantially larger broadband connections into the home, so optical networks are being deployed on every increasing scale. And in the next several years, we do expect much higher bandwidth connections into the home as well.”

Why we need higher bandwidth connections and faster wireless speeds should be fairly obvious: we’re data hogs. We like our games, our movies and our television shows streamed right to our desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, consoles and HDTVs. The higher the resolution, the more bandwidth we’ll need to satisfy our hunger for multimedia. But much in the way software and hardware drive each other forward, the same applies to multimedia and bandwidth.

Barratt pointed out that consumers also need a strong Wi-Fi network to offload much of that data consumption from cellular networks that typically charge high prices for small allowances of data. But as he states, gigabit speeds on Wi-fi networks — whether they’re at home or at the local Starbucks — will be one or two years away.

“A lot of work is happening in the standards group right now,” he said.

Yet even if 802.11ac will be finalized within a year or two, will most households be ready? Will consumers need that kind of throughput if broadband connections are still piping internet in at up to 15 Mbps? As it stands now, even Wireless N is faster than what most broadband providers are bringing into the home.

SOURCE via GigaOM

Samsung today announced a 16 MP CMOS image sensor that should be making its way into the smartphone and tablet next year. Mass production of the chip is scheduled to begin in November of this year.

The S5K2P1 sensor offers, according to Samsung, “excellent quality in video mode” and delivers up to 8.3 MP resolution at 60 frames per second and maximum 16 Megapixel-resolution for point-and-shoot images at 30 frames per second “without shutter lag effect”. In fact, the manufacturer claims that the sensor is good enough to be used in dedicated digital still cameras and camcorders as well as it features excellent sensitivity and low-noise performances: even in night and dark indoor environments.

The S5K2P1 is currently available in sample quantities.

SOURCE via Samsung

The embedded multimedia card (e-MMC) uses a stack of eight 64 Gb, 20 nm NAND flash memory chips with a toggle DDR 2 interface. It is about 1.4 mm thick and weighs 0.6 grams.

“By starting production of the 64Gb-based 64GB e-MMC solution this year, we are accelerating the pace of adoption of premium embedded memory cards,” said Myung Ho Kim, vice president of memory marketing at Samsung in a prepared statement.

According to the company, the device supports sequential read speeds of up to 80 MB/s and sequential write speeds of 40MB/s, which is about three times better than the current product generation. The input/output performance is rated at 400 IOPS.

Samsung shipped its first 64GB e-MMC in January of 2010 using 30n 32Gb NAND flash components, and started producing 64GB eMMC with 20nm-class 32Gb NAND flash late last year. There was no information when the 64 Gb-based flash will be available.

While testing some new equipment, Neal Patwari of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City discovered that breathing actually affects Wi-Fi signal strength. He came to this conclusion after noticing variations in wireless signal strength in certain parts of a room that were seemingly triggered by chest movements.

To prove his theory, Patwari placed 20 in-expensive wireless units around an occupied bed which were arrayed so that they sent 2.4 GHz waves across the sheet, but with one-thousandth the power of a laptop’s wireless card. The units themselves measured signal strength four times a second, thus the makeshift network was able to accurately estimate the person’s breathing rate to within 0.4 breaths per minute after collecting 30 seconds worth of data.

Ultimately Patwari’s test revealed that wireless signals bent around the subject’s chest as it rose with each inhalation, causing them to travel a longer distance and decrease slightly in power. Naturally this discovery is being hailed as a new way to monitor a patient’s breathing without having to cram tubes down into their lungs (which sucks and hurts). Some disagree however, as patient monitoring mostly depends on more input than just inhaling and exhaling.

But now there’s fear that this new Wi-Fi network system could be placed around an entire room or building in order to track user movements within. This scenario is based on a prior study conducted by Patwari and a colleague which revealed that any movement can affect wireless signal strength, and that these changes in strength can be used to track users within a room even if they’re sitting or lying down. Even more, the changes can be measured when the Wi-Fi signal passes through a wall and into another room.

That said, a similar Wi-Fi network could be tailored to spy on shoppers at the mall, on hotel guests, or restaurant patrons no matter what they’re doing. For more information about Patwari’s discovery, head here.

SOURCE via CNET” target=”_blank”>New Scientist

There’s a long press release and a video after the jump with scads of information, but it distills to this: controlling machines with your brain. José del R. Millán, a researcher at Switzerland’s EPFL, has been developing the technology both for communication and mechanical-control purposes, and Nissan Europe has partnered with the lab with an eye on taking such technology to cars.

Nissan’s take, for instance, is that as you “think about turning left ahead… the car will prepare itself for the maneuver, selecting the correct speed and road positioning, before completing the turn.” Our take is that you can stay tuned for 2050 when your car realizes you’re about to scrap it, and the police pull you over for thinking about speeding. Until then, your future is spelled out in words and a video after the jump.

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Cheer up, ladies, because Mitsubishi Electric is about to make your elevator ride substantially less awkward, but you better hold your skirts properly, because they may just fly like Marilyn Monroe.

Yesterday, the company unveiled plans to construct what it hopes will become the world’s fastest lifts, as part of a new project in China. The forthcoming set of elevators will be housed within the still-incomplete Shanghai Tower, where they’ll travel between the basement and 119th floor at a speed of 59 feet per second — a rate that would narrowly eclipse the current Guinness world record, which sits at about 55 feet per second.

These elevators, of course, would be significantly slower if they were filled with vomit, which is why Mitsubishi will add active roller guides, vibration-dampening roof covers and pneumatic controls to make the ride a bit easier on the human body.

Unfortunately, it’ll be a while before these flesh wagons enter the record books, as the Shanghai Tower likely won’t be completed until 2014. Willy Wonka, however, has already begun the appeals process.

According to the American Diabetes Association, a staggering 25.8 million children and adults in the United States have diabetes. While some cases are more severe than others, it goes without saying that living with diabetes can become very troublesome. Constantly pricking fingers for glucose testing and insulin injections can become quite a bother.

Hoping to ease the lifestyle of diabetics, scientists at the Institute of Industrial Science at the University of Tokyo are currently researching a new way to monitor blood glucose levels that may help diabetics get back to their normal lives. The researchers have begun testing on glowing glucose monitors that are implanted under a thin layer of skin.

The implants are as small as 1mm in diameter and can be injected into the skin with very little pain and removed like a splinter with a simple pair of tweezers. When implanted into the skin, the monitors will become sensitive to changes in glucose levels and immediately glow when blood sugar spikes to dangerous levels. Currently, the implants have been shown to work reliably in mice for 140 days so a human version may not be too far down the line.

The cost of deploying solar power systems has dropped by 18 percent in 2010 and by 11 percent during the first six months of 2011, the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) reports. The decline in overall installation cost is especially due to the decrease of photovoltaic module cost.

“Wholesale PV module prices have fallen precipitously since about 2008, and those upstream cost reductions have made their way through to consumers,” said Galen Barbose of Berkeley Lab. However, a drop in secondary, non-module cost in industrial applications are also seen as critical as “those are the costs that can be most readily influenced by solar policies aimed at accelerating deployment and removing market barriers,” stated Berkeley Lab scientist Ryan Wiser.

Large-scale solar system cost with projects that are greater than 5000 kW came in at $2.90 to $6.20 per watt in 2010, depending on the size and project type. The 2011 number seems to be in the range of $3.80/watt to $4.40/watt, Berkeley Lab said. Utility scale systems with a size of greater than 1000 kW cost an average of $5.20 in 2010, while the cost in 2011 appears to have fallen into the $3/watt to $4/watt range. Residential solar system with a size of up to 2 kW cost about $9.80/watt, according the Berkeley Lab.

However, the reduction of federal, state, and utility incentives in 2010 somewhat offset the decline in installed costs. The decline in post-incentive installed costs fell by $0.40/watt for residential solar systems and by $0.80/watt for commercial solar systems, Berkeley Lab said.

SOURCE via Berkeley Lab

NASA said that SLS will provide a safe, affordable and sustainable technology to carry the Orion spacecraft into space. The SLS will also serve as backup for commercial and international partner transportation services to the International Space Station (ISS).

According to NASA, SLS will combine features from the Space Shuttle as well as the Constellation program. The device will be using a liquid oxygen propulsion system that will be built from the Space Shuttle’s RS-25D/E core stage as well as the new J-2X engine. The total lift capacity initially will be 70 metric tons, or about 154,000 pounds. NASA believes that the capacity can be expanded to 130 metric tons in the future. The first flight is targeted for late 2017.

“NASA has been making steady progress toward realizing the president’s goal of deep space exploration, while doing so in a more affordable way,” NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said. “We have been driving down the costs on the Space Launch System and Orion contracts by adopting new ways of doing business and project hundreds of millions of dollars of savings each year.”

SLS is designed as NASA’s first new “space exploration-class” system since the Saturn V took astronauts to the moon more than 40 years ago. NASA hopes that SLS will enable it to explore “near-Earth asteroids, Mars and its moons and beyond.”

SOURCE via NASA

Last year Canon showed to the world its largest CMOS sensor, but for whatever reason, Canon seemed more concerned with showing off its engineering prowess than finding a use for the giant 8-inch CMOS sensor. Fortunately, the super-powerful snapper has found its way into the 105-centimeter Schmidt Telescope at the University of Tokyo’s Kiso Observatory. The sensor’s size makes it a perfect fit to record in low-light; capturing the wonders of the universe in 0.3 lux at 60 fps. The University will premiere footage from the experiment, possibly with nibbles, after September 19^th.

SOURCE via Canon