This size?
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Computer content and other tech designers now have a helping hand in getting their displays right for an aging population. Iso, the Geneva-based International Standards Organization, 3 February issued new standards that will make life easier for anyone over 50, if the designers read the fine print on the standards.
The first standard is ISO 24502:2010, Ergonomics – Accessible design – Specification of age-related luminance contrast for coloured light.
Iso states in a press release that “it specifies a method of calculation that can be applied to the design of visual signs and displays, so that they are clearly visible to older people, although the luminance contrast can be applied to people aged from 10 to 79 years of age. For example, increasing the contrast (especially for blue light), size and overall visibility of sign displays or integrating features such as oversized monitors or large character display fonts as part of product design can greatly help people with visual difficulties.”
or this size?
The second standard, ISO 24501:2010, Ergonomics – Accessible design – Sound pressure levels of auditory signals for consumer products, “aims to determine an appropriate sound level range of auditory signals, so that all users, including people with age-related hearing loss, can hear them properly against interfering sounds.
Iso produces Guidelines for standards developers to address the needs of older persons and persons with disabilities, available through the Iso store.
An MoS2 (molybdenite) crystal
(correction 31 January) Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL researchers in Lausanne have shown that a material now used in lubricants could herald a long-awaited leap forward in the electronics industry, allowing smaller and more energy-efficient electronic chips: a material with “distinct advantages over traditional silicon or graphene”.
EPFL says molybdenite, also known as MoS2, could replace these two materials. It is the key to major energy savings, they note. If the electronics industry begins to move away from silicon the implications could be far-reaching.
China is a major supplier of silicon and fears that it might limit exports have become a hot international business and political topic.
Molybdenite on the other hand is “abundant in nature, is often used as an element in steel alloys or as an additive in lubricants”, say the researchers.
Transistor with MoS2
Molybdenite is widely used, but until now it has not been extensively studied for use in electronics.
“It’s a two-dimensional material, very thin and easy to use in nanotechnology. It has real potential in the fabrication of very small transistors, light-emitting diodes (Leds) and solar cells,” says EPFL professor Andras Kis, whose Lanes colleagues M Radisavljevic, A Radenovic and M Brivio worked on the study with him.
Their findings are published 30 January by EPFL’s Lanes (Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures) team, in Nature Nanotechnology.
Kis compares its advantages with silicon, currently the primary component used in electronic and computer chips, and graphene, discovered in 2004 by two physicists at the University of Manchester, André Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Tablets are “additive”, mouse not about to disappear
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Logitech, based in Romanel-sur-Morges, will have a “tablet focus” to its “product launches in 2012, and 25 percent of its new retail products will be tablet friendly,” reports the Dow Jones Newswire of the company that made its name with computer peripherals, notably the mouse.
Logitech sales in the third quarter of 2010 were up 22 percent and it has raised its forecast for the final quarter of its fiscal year, which ends in March.
Dow Jones, which interviewed the company’s chief executive, Gerald Quindlen on its plans for the future, notes that while consumer analysts have been predicting the death of the mouse for years, Quindlen says he disagrees with them.
Mathematical invention part of the future shrinking of our electronic devices
EPFL infograph, Pascal Coderey, 2010
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL is boasting its 1,000th invention 3 November, with the official arrival of Kandou, a new system based on mathematics whose daunting task is to try to reduce the world’s computer electricity consumption, currently 150 billion kWh per year, which translates into a monthly bill of several billion dollars. The university is boldly predicting that Kandou “could equip most of our electronic systems within a few years.”
Kandou is the 1,000th invention to arrive in the university’s Service of Industrial Relations. It was invented by Harm Cronie and Amin Shokrollahi of the EPFL algorithm laboratory and in a nutshell “enables processors to communicate more rapidly—while using less energy—with their peripherals”: memory, printers, monitors, an EPFL press release notes. The system has already sparked strong interest from large companies in the computer field, it adds.
Most electronic appliances today use ultra-rapid processors that communicate with other processors or other peripherals by using electronic buses, a kind of information highways.
By Bob Evans
Audio files at the end
The beauty of a collision: first proton-proton collisions, Cern, 16 December 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) - Did you go over the Moon when you first heard Mike Oldfield’s “Music of the Spheres”? Did you go into ecstasies over Gustav Holst’s “Planets” Suite? Well, soon you can fall in love with the Higgs Boson Sonata, the Dark Matter Cantata and perhaps eventually the Black Hole Symphony—or perhaps something like them.
Such works could emerge in the not too distant future from the unlikeliest of sources, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at the Cern particle physics research centre near Geneva. Scientists there are converting the cosmic phenomena they are chasing through the huge underground machine into music in their state-of-the-art computers.
To do it, they use a technique that changes pure scientific data gathered from the LHC experiments into sound, says physicist Lily Asquith.
The detectors in the machine, which is probing the origins of the universe, can reconstruct the pathway of the particles after they are smashed together at near light-speed and calculate how much energy each leaves along its path.
“If you use the right software, you can get really nice music out of the particle tracks,” explains Asquith, who works on the LHC’s Atlas, one of its six detectors, and was one of the originators of what is called the LHC sound project.
A key aim of the enterprise is to help promote awareness among the wider public of the work of Cern, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, and especially the high-cost LHC experiment.
With this in mind, the project team has launched a chatty website dubbed “The Sounds of Science” with a nod to the 1960s hit song by Simon and Garfunkel, “Sounds of Silence.”
“We want everyone to be able to share in the wonder and excitement of what we are doing, and this seems a good way of showing the awe-inspiring magnificence of it all,” says Asquith.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Solutions are within reach, but they are becoming increasingly urgent for the problem of what to do with the growing number of cell phones, televisions, computers and other electronic devices and their waste. A report issued this week by Unep, the United Nations environmental body, draws a gloomy picture, but it says there is hope if action is taken quickly.
“Many developing countries face the spectre of hazardous e-waste mountains with serious consequences for the environment and public health,” according to “”Recycling – from E-Waste to Resources,” published 21 February 2010.
“One person’s waste can be another’s raw material,” says Konrad Osterwalder, of UNU (United Nations University). “The challenge of dealing with e-waste represents an important step in the transition to a green economy. This report outlines smart new technologies and mechanisms which, combined with national and international policies, can transform waste into assets, creating new businesses with decent green jobs.”
The report used data from what Unep calls 11 representative developing countries to estimate current and future e-waste generation: old and dilapidated desk and laptop computers, printers, mobile phones, pagers, digital photo and music devices, refrigerators, toys and televisions.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss Post confirmed to news agency ats that the country’s 2,500 post offices were affected by a system-wide computer breakdown Wednesday morning 27 January. Computers failed to go on at opening time and the problem lasted until nearly 11:00, with some postal stations remaining closed.
Swiss TV news on computer
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s federal communications office (Ofcom) director, Martin Dumermuth, told the Berner Zeitung newspaper Thursday that he plans to propose in January a change to the current license fee regulations. Owners of television sets and radios are subject to fees, but Dumermuth would like to include computer and cell phone owners. He was quick to point out that the goal is not to increase license fee revenue: the same amount would be collected, but spread among a larger group, reducing the fee for each type of equipment.
Swiss flag mousepad, Swiss creation: Logitech's mouse, circa 2008
Romanel-sur-Morges, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A billion computer users today, another billion by 2014 and Logitech ships its billionth mouse. The mouse is the offspring of the first mice, which were created in the 1980s by the company that had its start near Lausanne, Switzerland.
Photo: the sQuba, on land and sea, ready for its unveiling at the Geneva Motor Show.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – What the Swiss lack in the way of a major car manufacturer, they make up for in terms of auto design creativity, thanks to Frank Rinderknecht’s Rinspeed company. Its eXasis (image) was the hit of the 2007 Geneva car show and the designer promises to steal the limelight again in 2008 at the Geneva Motor Show, 6-16 March, with the new sQuba, a car that goes underwater.
This is not just any car, but a convertible that zooms along at 10 metres below the surface. For aficionados of underwater vehicles, this is a step above, literally, military vehicles that are limited to driving along the floorbed of a body of water. “It is undoubtedly not
an easy task to make a car watertight and pressure resistant enough to be
maneuverable under water," says Rinderknecht. Of course not. "The real challenge, however, was to create a submersible
car that moves like a fish in water.”
If you’re still wondering why you need a car that swims, consider this environmentally friendly feature: Rinspeed had to get rid of the combustible engine, not really suitable to the underwater world, so it has several electric engines, including three at the back, with one of these providing jet propulsion on land. A landworthy fish!
