how to prevent the exploding laptop batteries

In this medium, quite often we read cases of how a leaking battery can overheat and eventually cause a fire and should be withdrawn by the manufacturer. Fortunately, now comes a new technology that can prevent the Li-ion batteries are installed on a laptop or cell phone on fire or explode.

Name STOBA technology. The technology was developed by a research institute named Taiwan ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute), and will likely be marketed in the first quarter of next year.

More technology prevent phone laptop battery explosion.

When Li-Ion battery shorting, the battery temperature will rise rapidly, which can reach 932 degrees Fahrenheit. This is why the battery is flammable or explosive. Stoba prevent fire or explosion by being positive and negative side of battery. If the battery temperature reaches 266 degrees Fahrenheit, Stoba changed from a porous material into a film and had to stop the reaction.

Currently the battery manufacturer is testing STOBA. Stoba expected to be present on the market in the first quarter of 2010. Use of Stoba also expected to cause an increase in manufacturing costs by 2-3 percent.

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Low Cost Windows Phone

While the tech community remains crazy over Windows Phone Mango, an update of which was released to manufacturers for testing two weeks ago, they now begin to speculate what is the next step of this mobile OS.
Rumors about the so-called “Windows Phone Tango,” which serves as an in-betweener for Mango and “Apollo” (Windows Phone 8), have been circulating lately. According to Mary-Jo Foley of ZDNet, her sources claim the Tango would most likely appear in lower-priced handsets–mostly by Nokia–and apparently target the Asian market “largely or even exclusively.”

Foley, meanwhile, believes that Tango will most likely be a minor release, as Microsoft saves its effort and energy for Windows Phone 8, which is said will be available by late 2012.

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Found: A Batch of DNA Molecules That Seem To Have Originated in Space

In what appears to be seriously big news from a team of NASA-funded researchers, scientists have found evidence that some building blocks of DNA--including two of the four nucleobases that make up our genetic code--found in meteorites were created in space, lending credence to the idea that life is not homegrown but was seeded here by asteroids, meteorites, or comets sometime in Earth’s early lifetime.

This is big news, of course, because if the ingredients for life were brought here from some external source, there’s always the possibility that the same thing has happened elsewhere in the universe--possibly many times over.

Scientists have been extracting fragments of DNA from meteorites for decades now, but there was never really hard proof that those pieces of biological molecules were native to the extraterrestrial object rather than terrestrial contamination that occurred when the object slammed into Earth. So while the idea of DNA riding aboard extraterrestrial objects has been floated before, this is the first time we’ve been presented real evidence backing that notion.

The idea isn’t that these building blocks are just passengers aboard meteorites, but that the chemistry inside asteroids and comets can actually manufacture the essential building blocks of biology. And a liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry analysis of sample meteorites and the environments where they were found seems to confirm this.

Here’s the basic gist of the findings: The LC and MS analysis separated and analyzed the component parts of the samples and found adenine and guanine, two of the components of the double helix that make up the code that tells our cells what to do. They also found hypoxanthine and xanthine, which don’t factor in to DNA but are used in other biological functions.

But more interestingly, the researchers found three nucleobase-related molecules: purine, 2,6-diaminopurine, and 6,8-diaminopurine. These last two are rarely used in biology, but they are like analogs for nucleobases--the same core molecule but structurally slightly different. That’s really important because if the meteorites were terrestrially contaminated, they wouldn’t be there (because they are not used in biology). But if the chemical processes going on inside an extraterrestrial object really are churning out prebiotic stuff, then you would expect to see all kinds of nucleobases--the ones used for biology, and others that aren’t.

Moreover, analysis of the Antarctic ice and Australian soil around where the meteorites were found showed the amounts of the two nucleobases as well as the hypoxanthine and xanthine to be drastically lower. If the contamination were terrestrial, one could expect equal amounts of the molecules (or less) to be present in the meteorite samples, certainly not more.

It’s a pretty convincing case, though one that will undergo a lot more scientific scrutiny. If comets and asteroids really are churning out the ingredients for life, it certainly changes our picture of life in the universe, and the possibility that other rocks out there might be harboring their own biological systems.

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Analysis: Apple going after Google in tablet spats?

Apple Inc's increasingly effective patent war against rivals like Samsung Electronics may mask its real target: arch-foe Google Inc.

The maker of the iPad and iPhone has sued three of the largest manufacturers of Google's Android-based devices -- Samsung, Motorola and HTC -- for multiple patent infringements across multiple countries, pointing out "slavish copying" of design and "look and feel."

And the courts are beginning to listen: recent success in blocking sales of Samsung's latest Galaxy tablet in most of Europe and Apple's challenges to the Korean giant in Australia reflect an aggressive effort to defend its top position in the red-hot mobile market from the runaway success of Android.

While the lawsuits don't take direct aim at the operating software -- yet -- many of the features under contention are connected to and enhanced by it. Apple CEO Steve Jobs once referred to the software as being the soul of any device when he introduced the company's iOS 5 system in June.

Brian Marshall, an analyst with Gleacher & Co, said Apple is starting to flex its patent muscle with some early success but its real battle is with the Android software. "Apple doesn't really care too much about the actual OEMs."

Apple's lead is now under siege in smartphones from Google's free Android software, already the world's most-used mobile system with 550,000 devices activated every day.

Its momentum could be hampered by successful patent infringement lawsuits against adopters like Samsung.

"The way Google gets sucked into it is through the marketplace," Ron Laurie, managing director and patent consultant at Inflexion Point Strategy, said.

Any injunction won by Apple, if enforced, could mean that Android may be forced to take out the offending feature from its software design. "That would make it less attractive and people would go elsewhere," Laurie said.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has said rivals are responding to Android's success with lawsuits "as they cannot respond through innovations."

HIGH STAKES

At stake is a booming one-year-old market that analysts are already predicting will eclipse the decades-old PC market in a matter of years, a market that Apple fears Google's software could eventually dominate the way it now leads the smartphone arena.

The tablet market is expected to grow from under 20 million tablets last year to over 230 million in 2015.

While Apple is still the leader by far in the tablet market, research firm Informa expects tablets running Android to catch up with Apple's iPad and surpass it in 2016.

Samsung, experts say, has the best chance of attacking the iPad's commanding hold on the market. Apple's 75 percent share is expected to fall to 39 percent in 2015, when Android's will grow to 38 percent, according to Informa.

A less visible benefit of Apple waging and winning patent battles against the likes of Samsung, HTC and Motorola would be that Android may effectively no longer be free because of potential licensing costs that need to be paid to Apple.

Android's major vulnerability lies in the patent arena. Being a fairly new entrant in this market, Google hasn't built up enough intellectual property in the way Apple or Microsoft has.

"All this will end up making Android less 'free', Jean-Louis Gassee, venture capitalist and a former Apple executive, said. "But by how much? Five dollars a handset, no problem. Fifteen dollars -- then it is trouble."

Apple knows the power of licensing -- from the losing side as well. It recently forged a cross-licensing patent deal with Nokia, agreeing to make a one-time payment in hundreds of millions of dollars and pay continuing royalties.

But it is Google that had been caught off guard in the patent battle, being historically and philosophically opposed to gathering them as a defensive or offensive move. But that is changing with Google now in the hunt for key patents.

This has sparked an expensive arms race between technology giants as they try to outbid each other to stockpile on valuable patent portfolios up for grabs.

In the high-profile tussle for 6,000 wireless patents from bankrupt Nortel Networks, Google kicked off the tug-of-war with a stalking horse bid of $900 million -- far greater than anyone expected. But Apple -- allying with Microsoft, Sony and others -- swooped in to snap them up eventually for $4.5 billion, a price tag that sent shockwaves through the industry.

Google's chief lawyer, David Drummond, last week lashed out against Apple and others, accusing them of "a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents."

In the wake of the injunction against the Galaxy in Europe, Apple is seeking a similar ruling against Motorola's Xoom in German court. It won a preliminary ruling last month from a U.S. trade panel that HTC infringed two of Apple's patents.

But Apple is not the only one enforcing patent rights on Android mobile devices. Microsoft recently settled a suit with HTC over the Taiwanese company's Android devices. Oracle is seeking billions of dollars from Google for infringing on Java patents through its Android system.

Analysts expect Apple to continue to be the aggressor.

"It's clear that the tablet wars are going to be fought on many, many fronts," Michael Gartenberg, technology analyst with Gartner. "Clearly lots of companies are seeing opportunities here who don't plan on ceding the market to Apple, and Apple is using everything in its arsenal to defend itself."

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta; Editing by Edwin Chan, Gary Hill)

from: reuters.com

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Minebea Cool Leaf Keyboard Set To Hit Shelves

If you’re a regular keyboard user–and if you’re here, let’s face it, you probably are–then you know firsthand the perils of same, with all that repetitive stress injury likelihood and such. But the folks out at Minebea are not only about to improve the looks of your standard keyboard, but they might do a number on helping your wrists and fingers out, too, with their Cool Leaf touch screen keyboard.

It’s been a long time since we last heard about Minebea’s Cool Leaf system, and the last time we did, they were really just concepts. But now the concepts have made that oh so necessary leap from concept to actual product, and they’ll be available a whole lot sooner than you might think.

First off, a word on the keyboard itself. Basically, this is a standard keyboard, except all the keys have been removed and replaced with spaces on a touch screen, thus allowing you to tap your fingers to spaces on a touch screen instead of actually pressing down keys with resistance. Word is that Minebea has actually extended the concept out to include remote controls and calculators, too, but it’s the keyboards we’re concerned about. The first model will, not surprisingly, be Japanese, and it will offer a 108 key layout. It’s also only compatible with Windows based computers, so Apple folks, I’m sorry but you’re out in the cold, at least for now. Word is, though, you’ll be getting a separate version a little later on. Just when, though, is as yet unclear but I don’t look for you to be without too long.

The first ones will hit Japan May 13th for 26,000 yen (about $318.55 in US dollars), and word is that versions will follow in several other languages, including French, German, Italian, and of course, English, by the end of July. Sounds like it could be worth a look, if a bit expensive, and maybe it will even take some strain off your wrists and fingertips.

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