Things You Didn’t Know About Technology

01. In 2012, at least 17 newborn girls were named Siri.

02. There are more than 682 million iPhone across the globe.

03. A red panda is native to the Himalayas and southwestern China. Translated, the English word for red panda is "Firefox," which is where the browser gets its name.

04. The word robot comes from the Czech “robota." In English, robota translates to "forced labor."

05. Created in 1956, the first ever VCR was the size of a piano.

06. The world's first camera took eight hours to snap a photo.

07. The very first Apple logo featured Sir Isaac Newton sitting underneath a tree, with an apple about to hit his head.

08. Alaska is the only state in America that can be typed on one row of a traditional English QWERTY keyboard.

09. About 1 out of 8 married couples actually met each other on the Internet.

10. Tech companies often test new products in New Zealand. The reasons for this? The country is diverse, its residents speak English, and if a product is a flop, news doesn't spread as fast because it is relatively isolated.

Unknown Facts About 4G

The new Buzz in the town makes the existence of internet a new chapter of technology. Being followed blindly so far let the chasers know the facts that 4G has:

• The 4G establishment got started in 2009 and took approximately 3 years to hit the road. By 2013 the 4G era got underway operating at the 800 MHZ, 900MHz, 1800MHZ and 2600MHZ frequencies.

• Why the name 4G – Like the technology is growing, every decade as we enjoyed 1G in 1980’s now with the passage of every decade the new version of internet is 4G.

• Better coverage - Because 4G works at a lower frequency than 2G and 3G, it can penetrate walls and building better, providing a better all round coverage. In short it can be marked the 4G works at low frequency offering better coverage.

• LTE enabled devices can be directly accessed as 4G devices. LTE means Long Term Evolution which help any device to become a part of 4G telecommunication.

• 4G has effect on phones battery life : Indeed with great performance goes greater battery. A 4G handset requires a 4G chipset - this is inside your mobile phone - part of the electronics. A 4G chipset uses greater battery power. 4G is also refereed as “Power Hungry”.

• Data usage – so being faster data service 4G yet consumes data equivalent to 3G it is just the it roles at a faster speed. 4G is technological experience for faster internet service.

Once every seven years, the iconic Eiffel Tower in Paris is given a paint job. It takes about 15 months and 60 tons of lead-free brown paint to get the monument looking as good as new again.

Lions usually saunter lazily at a speed of 4 km per hour, but if need arises, they can run as fast as 60 km per hour! They can also leap up to 12 m in air! However, the lion habitually spends almost 20 hours sleeping.

Water facts

1. At birth, water accounts for approximately 80 percent of an infant’s body weight.
2. A healthy person can drink about three gallons (48 cups) of water per day.
3. Drinking too much water too quickly can lead to water intoxication. Water intoxication occurs when water dilutes the sodium level in the bloodstream and causes an imbalance of water in the brain.
4. While the daily recommended amount of water is eight cups per day, not all of this water must be consumed in the liquid form. Nearly every food or drink item provides some water to the body.
5. Soft drinks, coffee, and tea, while made up almost entirely of water, also contain caffeine. Caffeine can act as a mild diuretic, preventing water from traveling to necessary locations in the body.
6. Approximately 85 percent of U.S. residents receive their water from public water facilities. The remaining 15 percent supply their own water from private wells or other sources.
7. By the time a person feels thirsty, his or her body has lost over 1 percent of its total water amount.
8. The weight a person loses directly after intense physical activity is weight from water, not fat.
9. The earth is a closed system, similar to a terrarium, meaning that it rarely loses or gains extra matter. The same water that existed on the earth millions of years ago is still present today.
10. The total amount of water on the earth is about 326 million cubic miles of water.

Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines

One of the more common turbine variants is the vertical-axis turbine. The particular turbine pictured above generated 4 megawatts of power until it was decommissioned in 1993.

Vertical-axis turbines have many advantages over horizontal ones. Chiefly, the turbine is omnidirectional, which means it doesn't have to rotate to track the wind. This makes vertical-axis turbines simpler and more effective in chaotic wind environments. Other advantages include placing the generator and gearbox at ground level for easier maintenance, and a smaller width allows turbines to be placed closer together.

But it has some disadvantage of its own, specifically that they're not very durable. Vertical-axis turbines experience substantial stress because of the uneven forces exerted on them, and this can cause them to fail sooner than your normal windmill. Still, vertical-axis turbines fill a useful niche, and there are many varying designs still in use.

Stalactites

Caves sometimes have icicle-like stone formations hanging from the roof or going up from the cave floor. They are formed, sometimes over thousands of years by water saturated with calcium carbonate dripping from the cave.

If these formations are hanging down from the roof they are called STALACTITES. If they are growing from the floor they are called STALAGMITES.

Stalactites and stalagmites sometimes meet to form columns.

Crazy new solar research breakthroughs

1. Bionic leaf

Scientists at Harvard recently created a bionic leaf, which uses a catalyst to make sunlight split water into hydrogen and oxygen, then a bacteria engineered to convert carbon dioxide and hydrogen into a liquid fuel called isopropanol. They're almost at a 1% efficiency rate of turning the sunlight into the fuel — in other words, they've found a way to recreate the efficiency of photosynthesis.

2. 3D printed solar powered trees

Researchers at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland created a solar powered electric forest with 3D printed trees. That's quite a bit of buzzworthy tech in one project. The trunk of the trees are made from 3D printed wood biomaterials, and the leaves are the solar "panels." They are much less efficient than traditional PV panels, but the research they're doing for solar cells is promising as well.

3. Perovskites

Perovskites are materials with a specific crystalline structure. Stanford University researchers found that using lead, ammonia, and iodine, they could make a lot of it for cheap. Perovskites are more efficient than silicon in some ways, so the idea is using them to supplement rather than replace silicon may be a way to increase the efficiency of solar cells. At Stanford, a silicon solar cell with an efficiency of 11.4% increased to 17% with perovskite.

4. Thin film solar

New research from Cornell, published in Nature in January, showed that scientists are reporting better solar cells by changing the chemistry of the materials. Thin film solar, which is a photovoltaic material onto a substrate like silicon. The ones made by these researchers at Cornell are organic-inorganic metal halide perovskites, which the team has been studying for a while. The new solar cells use a liquid source and a simple coating, which can make it appealing for more commercial uses.

5. Carbon-based solar cells

Another cheap alternative to silicon that has emerged is printed carbon-based, or organic, solar cells. The efficiency is still relatively low compared to other materials, and the research surrounding it peaked about a decade ago. But, as perovskites gain popularity in reducing the cost and increasing efficiency of cells, carbon-based options are looking like contenders, too.