iPhone 5s Data Usage Is Higher Than Any Tablet

iPhone 5s users sure like their phones — and their data plans apparently. In the most recent study by JDSU, a technologies company dedicated to improving optical networking worldwide, they found that iPhone 5s data usage is the highest of any device. Ever. They even use more mobile data than any tablet on the market.

Apple products are no strangers to using high amounts of mobile data. In fact, an iPhone has been at the top of the annual study since 2010. Originally, the study only looked at 3G devices, but even then the iPhone 4 dominated the data market.

With iPhone 6 rumors swirling all over the internet, this news has to make Apple investors happy. The implications are that Apple’s flagship handset device, the iPhone 5s is being used more regularly by its customers than any other device. But the report revealed much more than that.

iPhone 5s data usage was 20 percent higher than the previous iPhone 5 and seven times higher than the iPhone 3G. Let that sink in for a moment. iPhone 5s users are sucking down 4G/LTE data so fast that.1 percent of users account for over half of the entire data usage.

Tablets on the other hand only saw two devices in the top ten. The most data hungry tablet? Apple’s fourth generation iPad. Interestingly, the iPad mini has shown to consume very little data. All of this usage on mobile handsets has market strategists wondering, what’s next?

Some of the high data usage can be chalked up to the constant release of new products. Call it the Christmas syndrome. With the release of a new flagship phone every year, Apple started a trend that other producers, like Samsung with their Galaxy series, have picked up on. On Christmas, children can not wait to play with all their new toys. The release of phones has created the same mentality, but in adults. Upon purchasing their brand new iPhone 5s, consumers are using large amounts of data. But what the amount of data usage is not going down over time.

“The faster the speeds that mobile operators provide, the more consumers swallow it up and demand more,” said Michael Flanagan, CTO of Mobility for the Network and Service Enablement business segment of JDSU and author of the study. “One would expect a honeymoon period in which early adopters test their toys. But for 4G users to consistently exhibit behaviour 10 times more extreme than 3G users well after launch constitutes a seismic shift in the data landscape. This has important ramifications for future network designs.”

A common phrase used now in the world of data usage and networking is “extreme users”. 4G users of the major phone brands are quickly becoming labeled in studies like the one performed by JDSU. It can only leave consumers guessing how data providers will begin dealing with the potential issue of stressed networks. Charging extreme users more? Creating special extreme user hotspots? Only time will tell.

New Retinal Implant Technology Expected to Help Restore Sight

In an effort to improve retinal implant technology, researchers have developed a new method that uses microsecond pulses, on-chip counter-electrodes, and controlled firing of electrodes to shape the electrical field, which could help people who have lost their sight see more than just light and vague shapes.

Researchers at the University of Arizona and University of Tübingen have made a breakthrough in retinal implant technology that could help people who have lost their sight see more than just light and vague shapes.

Wolfgang Fink, an associate professor in the UA departments of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering, is researching new implant design and methods of electrical stimulation of the retina that will enable retinal implants to produce much clearer images.

Fink conducted the research jointly with Erich Schmid, professor emeritus of theoretical atomic and nuclear physics at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Fink will present the team’s findings in San Diego during the November 6-8, 2013 IEEE International Conference on Neural Engineering, organized by the Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society.

Only a handful of companies and research institutions worldwide are developing retinal implants, which stimulate surviving retinal cells in people who have lost their sight due to common degenerative diseases such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. Implant patients can usually detect the presence of light, but the images they perceive are very low resolution.

“Current technologies and methods are far behind what can be done,” said Fink, who is working with Tech Launch Arizona to patent the new technology and license it to retinal implant developers.

The conference presentations – “Simultaneous vs. Sequential and Unipolar vs. Multipolar Stimulation in Retinal Prostheses” and “Electric Stimulation of Neurons and Neural Networks in Retinal Prostheses” – will reflect the team’s view that implants on the market don’t work, and will propose new methods for achieving higher resolution images so implant patients can see in greater detail.

The low-level visual acuity currently achievable, Fink said, enables implant patients to make out white stripes on a black computer screen, or to distinguish between white objects such as a cup and a plate on a black background in a darkened room. “But only if the patients are told in advance that they are to choose between a cup and a plate,” Fink said.

The level of restored vision the research team thinks is achievable, using its discoveries, is for an implant patient to be able to make out a bird flying in the sky. To accomplish that level of detail, the team’s novel method of electrical stimulation uses microsecond pulses, on-chip counter-electrodes, and controlled firing of electrodes to shape the electrical field.

The technology of retinal implants

Retinal implants consist of an array of electrodes that are activated – either by light entering the eye or by a signal from a camera mounted outside the eye – to emit electric fields, which in turn stimulate retinal cells that send signals to the brain.

In an attempt to achieve greater resolution, some companies are developing implants with more densely packed electrodes while maintaining the array’s same small footprint. Just adding more electrodes, however, is not the answer, Fink said, stressing that without the stimulation methodology he and Schmid propose, the vision achievable with hundreds or even thousands of electrodes would be no better than that achieved using tens of electrodes.

“Stimulation methodology is what achieves the improved vision, not electrode density,” Fink said.

Stimulation methodology, not electrode density, is key

One problem with current implants, Fink explained, is that the return electrode, or counter-electrode, is too far from the electrode array, or chip, often somewhere within the patient’s head. This configuration does not allow fine-tuned stimulation of retinal cells that are just microns above the chip.

The research team’s solution is to use electrodes on the chip as return electrodes, so the electrical stimulation can be more focused.

Some electrodes are programmed to fire in short bursts – it is these microsecond high-voltage pulses that stimulate retinal cells – while others are programmed to fire for longer periods. The team has discovered that the field emitted by the longer-firing electrodes can be used to shape the field emitted by the electrodes firing in short bursts.

It’s easy, but erroneous, to visualize a one-to-one relationship between the electrodes on a chip and the retinal cells they stimulate to form a pixel. An electrode cannot emit an electric field with laser-like focus – the laws of physics dictate otherwise. In reality, each electrode, when firing alone, emits a hemispherical field that stimulates all retinal cells in its vicinity. When all the electrodes on an array are fired up simultaneously, the fields bunch together but never overlap, again due to physics. However, the shape of the electrical field can be controlled by selectively firing the electrodes in specific patterns.

For example, an electrode’s stimulating field can be shaped by fields from adjacent electrodes into what the team calls a “fountain” – a tall, focused electric field that pushes upward directly into a localized region of the retina and then cascades down, fountain-like, to the return electrodes on the chip.

Chip-level field shaping improves visual perception

Unlike the technology developed by Fink and Schmid, current retinal implants rely on longer pulses, typically measured in milliseconds, and a single distant counter-electrode. They also lack the firing-sequence control that enables fields to be shaped.

“If you look at the electrode array in the cup and plate scenario, only a few electrodes of the entire array are firing and stimulating the retina – all the other electrodes are quiescent,” Schmid said. “This is why current implants appear to work well.”

Conversely, Schmid said, being able to see a bird flying – a small, dark shape traversing an expanse of blue and white – is a highly complex task for a retinal implant. And it’s a negative of the cup and plate scenario: Every single electrode is firing except for those tracking the bird.

“With every electrode firing simultaneously, the fields are forced into very thin, almost parallel electric field lines. There is so much bunching going on that no electric current can leave the chip. You’re basically strangling the stimulation being emitted from the chip,” said Schmid, likening the effect to squeezing around the middle of a bunch of straws.

In the artificial vision generated by the implant, that bird is represented by non-firing electrodes. However, the absence of an electrical field above those electrodes leaves a vacuum into which adjacent fields readily enter, thus obliterating the image of the bird. The team’s novel field-shaping and neural stimulation methods would allow the bird to be perceived.

Beyond Retinal Implants

Taken in its wider context, Fink and Schmid’s research is about neural stimulation.

“We believe this same methodology could work for all forms of neural stimulation,” said Fink. “It could be applied to paralysis, deep brain stimulation, things like that. There are definitely some cool ideas to explore that go way beyond vision.”

Fink is the founding director of the Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory, and the inaugural holder of the Edward and Maria Keonjian Endowed Chair. He holds joint appointments in the UA departments of electrical and computer engineering, biomedical engineering, systems and industrial engineering, aerospace and mechanical engineering, and ophthalmology and vision science.

In 2012 he was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering for his outstanding contributions in the field of ophthalmology and vision sciences with particular focus on diagnostics and artificial vision systems.

The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation have funded Fink’s research into artificial vision, and his research contribution to the DOE Artificial Retina project involved developing a real-time image-processing system, determining the most effective electric stimulation patterns (awarded two patents to date), and designing a robotic surrogate for patients with a vision implant. In 2009, the DOE Artificial Retina project won R&D Magazine’s R&D 100 Award and the Editors’ Choice Award as one of the top three of the 100 award winners that year.

Source: Pete Brown, College of Engineering, University of Arizona

Image: University of Arizona

New System Converts Sun’s Energy into Hydrogen Fuel

Tom Meyer at the Energy Frontier Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill built a device that converts the sun’s energy not into electricity but hydrogen fuel and stores it for later use. The device, a dye-sensitized photoelectrosynthesis cell generates hydrogen fuel by using the sun’s energy to split water into its component parts. After the split, hydrogen is sequestered and stored, while the byproduct, oxygen, is released into the air.

A new system designed by researchers at UNC and NC State converts the sun’s energy into hydrogen fuel and stores it for later use.

Solar energy has long been used as a clean alternative to fossil fuels such as coal and oil, but it could only be harnessed during the day when the sun’s rays were strongest. Now researchers led by Tom Meyer at the Energy Frontier Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have built a system that converts the sun’s energy not into electricity but hydrogen fuel and stores it for later use, allowing us to power our devices long after the sun goes down.

“So called ‘solar fuels’ like hydrogen offer a solution to how to store energy for nighttime use by taking a cue from natural photosynthesis,” said Meyer, Arey Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. “Our new findings may provide a last major piece of a puzzle for a new way to store the sun’s energy – it could be a tipping point for a solar energy future.”

In one hour, the sun puts out enough energy to power every vehicle, factory and device on the planet for an entire year. Solar panels can harness that energy to generate electricity during the day. But the problem with the sun is that it goes down at night—and with it the ability to power our homes and cars. If solar energy is going to have a shot at being a clean source for powering the planet, scientists had to figure out how to store it for night-time use.

The new system designed by Meyer and colleagues at UNC and with Greg Parsons’ group at North Carolina State University does exactly that. It is known as a dye-sensitized photoelectrosynthesis cell, or DSPEC, and it generates hydrogen fuel by using the sun’s energy to split water into its component parts. After the split, hydrogen is sequestered and stored, while the byproduct, oxygen, is released into the air.

“But splitting water is extremely difficult to do,” said Meyer. “You need to take four electrons away from two water molecules, transfer them somewhere else, and make hydrogen, and, once you have done that, keep the hydrogen and oxygen separated. How to design molecules capable of doing that is a really big challenge that we’ve begun to overcome.”

Meyer had been investigating DSPECs for years at the Energy Frontier Research Center at UNC and before. His design has two basic components: a molecule and a nanoparticle. The molecule, called a chromophore-catalyst assembly, absorbs sunlight and then kick starts the catalyst to rip electrons away from water. The nanoparticle, to which thousands of chromophore-catalyst assemblies are tethered, is part of a film of nanoparticles that shuttles the electrons away to make the hydrogen fuel.

However, even with the best of attempts, the system always crashed because either the chromophore-catalyst assembly kept breaking away from the nanoparticles or because the electrons couldn’t be shuttled away quickly enough to make hydrogen.

To solve both of these problems, Meyer turned to the Parsons group to use a technique that coated the nanoparticle, atom by atom, with a thin layer of a material called titanium dioxide. By using ultra-thin layers, the researchers found that the nanoparticle could carry away electrons far more rapidly than before, with the freed electrons available to make hydrogen. They also figured out how to build a protective coating that keeps the chromophore-catalyst assembly tethered firmly to the nanoparticle, ensuring that the assembly stayed on the surface.

With electrons flowing freely through the nanoparticle and the tether stabilized, Meyer’s new system can turn the sun’s energy into fuel while needing almost no external power to operate and releasing no greenhouse gases. What’s more, the infrastructure to install these sunlight-to-fuel converters is in sight based on existing technology. A next target is to use the same approach to reduce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, to a carbon-based fuel such as formate or methanol.

“When you talk about powering a planet with energy stored in batteries, it’s just not practical,” said Meyer. “It turns out that the most energy dense way to store energy is in the chemical bonds of molecules. And that’s what we did – we found an answer through chemistry.”

Related Studies:

• Leila Alibabaeia, et al., “Solar water splitting in a molecular photoelectrochemical cell,” PNAS, vol. 110 no. 50, 20008–20013; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1319628110
• Hanlin Luo, et al., “A Sensitized Nb2O5 Photoanode for Hydrogen Production in a Dye-Sensitized Photoelectrosynthesis Cell,” Chem. Mater., 2013, 25 (2), pp 122–131; DOI: 10.1021/cm3027972

Source: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Image: Yan Liang

Engineers Convert Yeast Cells into Biofuel

Left: Starting cells with around 15 percent lipid content. Right: Engineered cells with nearly 90 percent lipid content.

Using genetically engineered yeast cells and ordinary table sugar, engineers from the Cockrell School of Engineering developed a new biofuel.

Austin, Texas — Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering have developed a new source of renewable energy, a biofuel, from genetically engineered yeast cells and ordinary table sugar. This yeast produces oils and fats, known as lipids, that can be used in place of petroleum-derived products.

Assistant professor Hal Alper, in the Cockrell School’s McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, along with his team of students, created the new cell-based platform. Given that the yeast cells grow on sugars, Alper calls the biofuel produced by this process “a renewable version of sweet crude.”

The researchers’ platform produces the highest concentration of oils and fats reported through fermentation, the process of culturing cells to convert sugar into products such as alcohol, gases or acids.

The UT Austin research team was able to rewire yeast cells to enable up to 90 percent of the cell mass to become lipids, which can then be used to produce biodiesel.

“To put this in perspective, this lipid value is approaching the concentration seen in many industrial biochemical processes,” Alper said. “You can take the lipids formed and theoretically use it to power a car.”

Since fatty materials are building blocks for many household products, this process could be used to produce a variety of items made with petroleum or oils — from nylon to nutrition supplements to fuels. Biofuels and chemicals produced from living organisms represent a promising portion of the renewable energy market. Overall, the global biofuels market is expected to double during the next several years, going from $82.7 billion in 2011 to $185.3 billion in 2021.

“We took a starting yeast strain of Yarrowia lipolytica, and we’ve been able to convert it into a factory for oil directly from sugar,” Alper said. “This work opens up a new platform for a renewable energy and chemical source.”

The biofuel the researchers formulated is similar in composition to biodiesel made from soybean oil. The advantages of using the yeast cells to produce commercial-grade biodiesel are that yeast cells can be grown anywhere, do not compete with land resources and are easier to genetically alter than other sources of biofuel.

“By genetically rewiring Yarrowia lipolytica, Dr. Alper and his research group have created a near-commercial biocatalyst that produces high levels of bio-oils during carbohydrate fermentation,” said Lonnie O. Ingram, director of the Florida Center for Renewable Chemicals and Fuels at the University of Florida. “This is a remarkable demonstration of the power of metabolic engineering.”

So far, high-level production of biofuels and renewable oils has been an elusive goal, but the researchers believe that industry-scale production is possible with their platform.

In a large-scale engineering effort spanning over four years, the researchers genetically modified Yarrowia lipolytica by both removing and overexpressing specific genes that influence lipid production. In addition, the team identified optimum culturing conditions that differ from standard conditions. Traditional methods rely on nitrogen starvation to trick yeast cells into storing fat and materials. Alper’s research provides a mechanism for growing lipids without nitrogen starvation. The research has resulted in a technology for which UT Austin has applied for a patent.

“Our cells do not require that starvation,” Alper said. “That makes it extremely attractive from an industry production standpoint.”

The team increased lipid levels by nearly 60-fold from the starting point.

At 90 percent lipid levels, the platform produces the highest levels of lipid content created so far using a genetically engineered yeast cell. To compare, other yeast-based platforms yield lipid content in the 50 to 80 percent range. However, these alternative platforms do not always produce lipids directly from sugar as the UT Austin technology does.

Alper and his team are continuing to find ways to further enhance the lipid production levels and develop new products using this engineered yeast.

This research was funded by the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program, the DuPont Young Professor Grant and the Welch Foundation under grant F-1753.

Publication: John Blazeck, et al., “Harnessing Yarrowia lipolytica lipogenesis to create a platform for lipid and biofuel production,” Nature Communications 5, Article number: 3131; doi:10.1038/ncomms4131

Source: University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering

Image: University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering