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Friday, September 07, 2012

Airbus imagines 'smarter skies' by 2050: reduced emissions and shorter flight times

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/07/airbus-smarter-skies-reduced-emissions-shorter-flights/

Airbus has been crafting its plane of the future for some time now, and while earlier visualizations focus on see-through aircraft with shapeshifting seats, the aviation company's latest ideas have the environment -- and passengers' precious time -- in mind. Airbus just unveiled its "Smarter Skies" conceptualization of what air travel will look like in 2050, and all signs point to shorter flights and less energy consumption. For one, the aircraft manufacturer imagines an assisted takeoff, dubbed "eco-climb" mode, where smaller, lighter airplanes would depart from shorter runways and reach cruising altitude faster. Once in the air, planes could pinpoint the most direct route and travel en masse -- a la a flock of birds -- along "express skyways" to reduce emissions and arrive at their destinations sooner. (That idea's totally gonna fly, right?) And when it comes time to land, aircraft could descend into airports with engines running in idle, allowing for reduced noise and emissions. Take a look at all five concepts in action in the video below the break.

Continue reading Airbus imagines 'smarter skies' by 2050: reduced emissions and shorter flight times

Filed under: Transportation

Airbus imagines 'smarter skie! s' by 20 50: reduced emissions and shorter flight times originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Sep 2012 05:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA Quadro K5000 GPU for Mac offers significant Premiere Pro performance boost, we go hands-on

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/07/nvidia-quadro-k5000-for-mac-hands-on/

NVIDIA just announced that its new Quadro K5000 GPU will be available on Mac Pros, offering 4K display compatibility and support for up to four displays, not to mention 4GB of graphics memory and about 2x faster performance than the Fermi-based Quadro 4000. While the Kepler-powered chip won't actually hit Apple systems till later this year, we got a first look at the K500 on a Mac here at IBC. NVIDIA demoed Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro CS6 on a Mac Pro with dual K5000 GPUs.

As you'll see in the video below, with 11 streams of 1080p video at 30 fps in Premiere Pro (and one overlay of the NVIDIA logo), GPU acceleration handles the workload seamlessly, letting us add effects in real time without any processing delay. Switching to software rendering mode in the editing program shows a night-and-day difference: video playback is extremely choppy, and processing moves at a crawl. Even with two K5000 chips in this desktop, Premiere Pro utilizes just one, but After Effects takes advantage of both GPUs. In this program, NVIDIA showed us ray-tracing, a computationally intensive 3D imaging feature, which only became available in After Effects with the release of CS6. Like in Premiere Pro, the program runs smoothly enough to let us edit images in real time. Take a look for yourself by heading past the break.

Gallery: NVIDIA Quadro K5000 for Mac hands-on

Continue reading NVIDIA Quadro K5000 GPU for Mac offers significant Premiere Pro performance boost, we go hands-on

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

NVIDIA Quadro K5000 GPU for Mac offers significant Premiere Pro performance boost, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Sep 2012 06:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A Simple Explanation For Why Organic Food Is Destroying The World

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-simple-explanation-for-why-organic-food-is-destroying-the-world-2012-9

organic apple

Harvest season is upon us in New England and with it the opportunity to buy organic locally farmed produce for 2-4X what Costco charges to drag the same vegetable or fruit up from Mexico and dump it into your minivan in Waltham.

A variety of analyses on whether or not locally produced food is truly good for the environment have been made, e.g., http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-local-food/

I wonder if a simpler analysis would not apply. Let’s assume that every dollar we spend does a relatively constant amount of damage to the earth. If I give a person or a business an extra dollar, a fraction of that will be spent to buy gasoline, buy new manufactured products and discard old ones, buy electricity that will result in fossil fuels being burned, etc. There are some minor variations in how much damage will be done depending on the person or business that I give the dollar to, but in nearly all cases the more money spent the more damage will be done to the planet.

Thus if I buy local food for 4X the cost of food produced in Mexico, I am paying for New Englanders to drive around in cars, heat their houses with oil, purchase new smart phones and tablet computers, etc. Had I instead bought the produce from Mexico, I would have supported Mexicans who walk to work, heat just one room of their house and only when necessary, and make do with devices that they already own.

This analysis seems simplistic, but I am not sure that it is wrong. What do readers think? Is someone who buys local food at high prices hastening the destruction of the earth?

[Obviously there are other reasons to buy local food, such as taste, but this postin! g is pur ely about environmental damage.]

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Green House's lantern runs on salt and water, powers your gadgets via USB

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/06/green-houses-lantern-runs-on-salt-water-usb/

Japanese company Green House Co Ltd has quite an eclectic product portfolio, what with its women-only camcorder and peripherals like a PCI Express interface card with USB 3.0 support. Its latest device falls under another category entirely: the rivetingly named GH-LED10WBW is an LED lantern that runs on just water and salt; no batteries required. The light source provides eight hours of electricity per dose of saline water, and the lantern comes with a dedicated water bag for mixing the solution. The salt / water combo acts as an electrolyte with the magnesium (negative electrode) and carbon (positive electrode) rods inside the lantern. Users can get about 120 hours of power with the Mg rod before they'll need to buy a replacement (the rod is sold separately to begin with). More than just supplying a battery-free source of light, though, the lantern can function as a charger, thanks to a USB port built into the casing. Pricing has yet to be announced, but the GH-LED10WBW will be available by mid-September.

Filed under: Peripherals

Green House's lantern runs on salt and water, powers your gadgets via USB originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 23:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MediawavePC's MW6110 is a multipurpose Intel Core i7-supporting media player

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/07/mediawavepcs-mw6110-media-center/

Nettops and media-center PCs in many ways hang on opposite sides of the same saddle. MediawavePC's new MW6110 "Ultra Small Media Player" tightens the straps between these two types of machines, and adds an extra satchel with it. The 7.87 x 7.28 x 1.57-inch form gives it a discreet footprint, and supports Intel's Core i3- i5- and i7 chips. You can also add-in up to 16GB of DDR3 RAM, along with 1TB of storage. Connection-wise, you're well looked after with 6 USB ports, HDMI, LAN, plus Audio in / out and WiFi. So, plenty of scope to configure to suit your needs -- you'll just need the $499 base price to get started.

Continue reading MediawavePC's MW6110 is a multipurpose Intel Core i7-supporting media player

Filed under: Desktops, Home Entertainment, HD

MediawavePC's MW6110 is a multipurpose Intel Core i7-supporting media player originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Sep 2012 00:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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