Virtual Conference Market Growth Driven by Economic Stagnation
February 8, 2010The worldwide virtual conference market is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 56% between the period of 2010 and 2015. This prediction has been made by Market Research Media Ltd, a leading market and technology research company, in its recent research report “Virtual Conference & Trade Show Market Forecast 2010-2015“. In the estimates made by the report the worldwide virtual conference and trade show market is predicted to reach $18.6 Billion over the period 2010 - 2015.
The virtual conference and trade show market has more than doubled in a year from 2008 to 2009 and analysts of Market Research Media expect this trend to continue. Attendance of physical professional events has long suffered from economic stagnation, influenza and and terrorist act fear.
The “Virtual Conference & Trade Show Market Forecast 2010-2015” report by Market Research Media presents a detailed analysis of the current state of the market and technology behind it, and provides year-by-year forecasts by market segments and geographic regions.
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World’s Fastest Graphene Transistor is out of IBM Lab
February 6, 2010
IBM researchers have demonstrated a radio-frequency graphene transistor with the highest cut-off frequency achieved so far for any graphene device - 100 billion cycles/second (100 GigaHertz). The high frequency record was achieved using wafer-scale, epitaxially grown graphene using processing technology compatible to that used in advanced silicon device fabrication.This accomplishment is a key milestone for the Carbon Electronics for RF Applications (CERA) program funded by DARPA, in an effort to develop next-generation communication devices for defense market.
Very high speeds in which electrons propagate are necessary to create high-speed, high-performance next generation transistors. Graphene, a single atom-thick layer of carbon atoms bonded in a hexagonal honeycomb-like arrangement, is the cornerstone element for achieving high propagation speeds. This two-dimensional form of carbon has unique electrical, optical, mechanical and thermal properties and its technological applications are being explored intensely.
Uniform and high-quality graphene wafers were synthesized by thermal decomposition of a silicon carbide (SiC) substrate. The graphene transistor itself utilized a metal top-gate architecture and a novel gate insulator stack involving a polymer and a high dielectric constant oxide. The gate length was modest, 240 nanometers, leaving plenty of space for further optimization of its performance by scaling down the gate length.
The frequency performance of the graphene device already exceeds the cut-off frequency of state-of-the-art silicon transistors of the same gate length (~ 40 GigaHertz). Similar performance was obtained from devices based on graphene obtained from natural graphite, proving that high performance can be obtained from graphene of different origins. Previously, the team had demonstrated graphene transistors with a cut-off frequency of 26 GigaHertz using graphene flakes extracted from natural graphite.
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Top 10 Laboratory Science Stories of 2009 by Los Alamos National Laboratory
January 11, 2010Los Alamos National Laboratory has announced a list of the Top 10 Laboratory science stories of 2009 based on online popularity:
1. Roadrunner
The Roadrunner supercomputer at Los Alamos is the first computing system in the world to reach a petaflop, computer jargon for 1 million billion calculations per second, a record that stood for a year and a half. But the real accomplishment is that Roadrunner reached that goal using an entirely new computing architecture.
The secret to its record-breaking performance is a unique hybrid design. The full system consists of 278 server racks containing 6,562 AMD Opteron™ dual-core processors and 12,240 PowerXCell 8i™ Cell processors, a special IBM-developed variant of the Cell processor used in the Sony PlayStation®3. The node-attached Cell accelerators are what make Roadrunner completely different than typical computing “clusters.”
Roadrunner also is one of the most energy-efficient supercomputers. Using approximately 3 megawatts of power at sustained petaflop performance, the system produces about 500 megaflops per watt, more than twice the efficiency of the average supercomputer.
More information: Worldwide Defense High Performance Computing (HPC) Market Forecast 2010-2015
2. Ardi
A Los Alamos National Laboratory geologist is part of an international research team responsible for discovering the oldest nearly intact skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, who lived 4.4 million years ago.
The discovery reveals the biology of the first stage of human evolution better than anything seen to date. The fossil, nicknamed “Ardi,” is the earliest skeleton known from the human branch of the primate family tree. The discovery provides new insights about how hominids—the family of “great apes” comprising humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans—may have emerged from an ancestral ape.
The discovery and associated research were named Science magazine’s Breakthrough of the Year for 2009 and selected by Time magazine as the #1 science story of 2009.
3. Climate modeling & monitoring
LANL innovations in high-resolution climate modeling and monitoring led to new insights into the impacts of climate change at global and regional scales.
The changing conditions in the ocean due to increased acidity from increased CO2 is one of the unknowns in future climate change projections. LANL’s Climate, Ocean, and Sea Ice Modeling effort for DOE and the National Science Foundation develops the highest-resolution dynamic models of the world’s oceans and polar icecaps.
Although up to 80 percent of the world’s oxygen is generated by photosynthetic processes in ocean phytoplankton and other sea plants, the effects of this photosynthesis on removing CO2 from the atmosphere have not been included previously because of the lack of available computing power.
Harnessing the petaflop capacity of LANL’s Roadrunner supercomputer (see #1 above), Lab researchers recently examined the effect of mesoscale ocean eddies (a few miles in size) on the transport of nutrients crucial for the growth of phytoplankton. These eddies cause vertical transport of nutrients, which is crucial for the growth of phytoplankton.
The model can then calculate surface chlorophyll concentrations, and compare to satellite images. This model is dramatically better than the previous state of the art in resolution and its ability to capture biological complexity.
The regional effects of global climate change on western U.S. forests also are important to understanding future impacts, especially as forests comprise an important CO2 sink. The widespread die-off of piñon trees in the Southwest is now being followed by a larger-scale pine mortality in the Mountain West. LANL scientists documented a new mechanism for this mortality, called carbon starvation. It has been widely presumed that trees die of hydraulic failure (drying out). Instead, they die from closure of the tiny pores on the surfaces of leaves that permit the exchange of gases between the atmosphere and the leaf. When the pores are closed (to prevent water loss during extreme drought), the photosynthetic uptake of carbon also stops, starving the trees. This type of mortality has been documented on all six vegetated continents and is increasing, with climate change, across all biomes (forest, desert, grasslands, tundra, and aquatic ecosystems).
This work is an enormous step forward in demonstrating that regional climate change drives a global-scale response of vegetation mortality. Massive forest die-offs can change vegetated areas from carbon sinks to carbon sources.
More information: Worldwide Defense High Performance Computing (HPC) Market Forecast 2010-2015
4. MagViz
LANL’s MagViz team pioneered the use of modified magnetic resonance imagery (MRI) technology to distinguish and alert airport security staff to potentially dangerous liquids and gels in airport carry-on baggage.
Using extremely low magnetic fields and high-powered computer analysis, the MagViz equipment was demonstrated for its Department of Homeland Security sponsors and potential Transportation Safety Administration users at the Albuquerque International Sunport.
A new area of development is a bottled-liquid scanner system based on the same technology.
More information: Homeland Security News
5. First dual-axis hydrodynamic test
LANL scientists and engineers fired the first-ever double-viewpoint, multiframe hydrodynamic test at DARHT, the Laboratory’s Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test facility – leading to future experiments at LANL and across the nation’s nuclear security enterprise, supporting the stockpile stewardship and weapons assurance mission. “Initial data return was excellent,” said the hydrodynamic experiments division leader, David Funk. “The baseline experiment captured five time-dependent X-ray images and a variety of data from other diagnostics of pressure, temperature, and timing. This data provides the nation with one of the most rigorous tests of our capability to predict weapons performance.”
6. Hurricane prediction
A system of sensors developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nonproliferation mission has also begun to give meteorologists their most detailed view of the relationship between hurricanes and lightning.
By examining the rate and nature of lightning in the hurricane’s eye wall, scientists may begin to be able to predict the potential strengthening of these destructive storms.
7. Fuel from plants
Los Alamos National Laboratory has teamed with Solix Biofuels, Inc. to use an award-winning LANL sound-wave technology to optimize production of algae-based fuel in a cost-effective, scalable, and environmentally benign fashion.
Acoustic focusing—the novel use of sound waves at the heart of the Los Alamos Acoustic Flow Cytometer, a 2007 R&D 100 Award-winning technology—is being commercialized in partnership with Solix to harvest biocrude, or “green gold,” an alternative to crude oil that can be refined into biodiesel, gasoline, or even jet fuel. The technology is to be deployed in 2010 to Solix’s Coyote Gulch Demonstration Facility near Durango, Colorado, for real-world production of lower-cost biofuel.
In addition, research breakthroughs using the LANL Protein Crystallography Station (part of the Lab’s LANSCE facility) to probe the structure of cellulose are making the prospect of affordable, efficient production of cellulosic fuels closer to reality. The Protein Crystallography Station is the only resource of its kind in the United States and the first protein crystallography beam line to be built at a spallation neutron source.
8. IBEX
The invisible structures of space are becoming less so, as scientists look out to the far edges of the solar wind bubble that separates our solar system from the interstellar cloud through which it flies.
Using the High Energy Neutral Atom Imager, led by LANL, the NASA Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission has sent back data that indicates a “noodle soup” of solar material has accumulated at the outer fringes of the heliosphere bubble. The Los Alamos camera detects particles that are heated and stream away from that boundary, specifically the density and temperature of atoms that form the core of that layer.
9. Laser-particle acceleration for cancer therapy
Laser-particle acceleration is an emerging area of physics expected to enable significant future advances in cancer radiotherapy. An international team of physicists led by LANL has accelerated protons to world-record high energies that are otherwise only achievable with large accelerator facilities. Proton radiation at the achieved energy range can be used, for example, to treat eye cancer.
The new record-proton-acceleration energies were demonstrated at LANL’s Trident facility—the world’s highest-contrast, high-intensity, high-energy laser. Physicists bombarded specially designed thin films created using nanotechnology with short bursts of laser energy. The electric fields generated from this bombardment were used to accelerate protons to energies higher than ever before achieved—capable of destroying cancer cells.
10. Nanotechnology for Energy Frontiers
Two LANL teams were awarded lead roles as DOE Energy Frontier Research Centers to develop new materials for energy.
The Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics will capitalize on recent advances in the science of how nanoparticles interact with light to design highly efficient materials for the conversion of sunlight into electricity. The purpose of this EFRC is to develop novel physics, materials, and architectures for harvesting solar light and converting it into electrical charges with efficiencies above equilibrium thermodynamic limits. Such materials can boost the efficiency of solar-energy conversion.
The Center for Extreme Environment-Tolerant Materials has as its objective to understand, at the atomic scale, the behavior of materials subject to extreme radiation doses and mechanical stress in order to synthesize new materials that can tolerate such conditions. This EFRC will develop a fundamental understanding of how atomic structure and interfaces contribute to defect and damage evolution in materials, with such potential applications as structural materials, fuel cladding, and waste forms in the next generation of nuclear power reactors and structural materials in transportation, energy, and defense.
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Emerging U.S. Smart Grid Energy Market: $3.4 Billion Boost
October 28, 2009U.S. Government announced the largest single energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history, funding a broad range of technologies that will spur the country’s transition to a smarter, stronger, more efficient and reliable electric system. U.S. electric grid and make it possible for grid operators to better monitor grid conditions and prevent minor disturbances in the electrical system from cascading into local or regional power outages or blackouts. This monitoring ability will also help the grid to incorporate large blocks of intermittent renewable energy, like wind and solar power, to take advantage of clean energy resources when they are available and make adjustments when they’re not.
The $3.4 billion in grant awards are part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and will be matched by industry funding for a total public-private investment worth over $8 billion. Applicants state that the projects will create tens of thousands of jobs, and consumers in 49 states will benefit from these investments in a stronger, more reliable grid. Full listings of the grant awards by category and state are available HERE and HERE. A map of the awards is available HERE.
An analysis by the Electric Power Research Institute estimates that the implementation of smart grid technologies could reduce electricity use by more than 4 percent by 2030. That would mean a savings of $20.4 billion for businesses and consumers around the country, and $1.6 billion for Florida alone — or $56 in utility savings for every man, woman and child in Florida.
One-hundred private companies, utilities, manufacturers, cities and other partners received the Smart Grid Investment Grant awards today, including FPL, which will use its $200 million in funding to install over 2.5 million smart meters and other technologies that will cut energy costs for its customers. In the coming days, Cabinet Members and Administration officials will fan out to awardee sites across the country to discuss how this investment will create jobs, improve the reliability and efficiency of the electrical grid, and help bring clean energy sources from high-production states to those with less renewable generating capacity. The awards announced today represent the largest group of Recovery Act awards ever made in a single day and the largest batch of Recovery Act clean energy grant awards to-date.
Funding recipients include:
- Empowering Consumers to Save Energy and Cut Utility Bills - $1 billion. These investments will create the infrastructure and expand access to smart meters and customer systems so that consumers will be able to access dynamic pricing information and have the ability to save money by programming smart appliances and equipment to run when rates are lowest. This will help reduce energy bills by helping drive down “peak demand” and limiting the need for “stand-by” power plants – the most expensive power generation there is.
- Making Electricity Distribution and Transmission More Efficient - $400 million. The Administration is funding several grid modernization projects across the country that will significantly reduce the amount of power that is wasted from the time it is produced at a power plant to the time it gets to consumer. By deploying digital monitoring devices and increasing grid automation, these awards will increase the efficiency, reliability and security of the system, and will help link up renewable energy resources with the electric grid. This will make it easier for a wind farm in Montana to instantaneously pick up the slack when the wind stops blowing in Missouri or a cloud rolls over a solar array in Arizona.
- Integrating and Crosscutting Across Different “Smart” Components of a Smart Grid - $2 billion. Much like electronic banking, the Smart Grid is not the sum total of its components but how those components work together. The Administration is funding a range of projects that will incorporate these various components into one system or cut across various project areas – including smart meters, smart thermostats and appliances, syncrophasors, automated substations, plug in hybrid electric vehicles, renewable energy sources, etc.
- Building a Smart Grid Manufacturing Industry - $25 million. These investments will help expand U.S. manufacturing base of companies that can produce the smart meters, smart appliances, synchrophasors, smart transformers, and other components for smart grid systems in the United States and around the world.
The benefits of the smart grid investments are:
- Reduce peak electricity demand by more than 1400 MW, which is the equivalent of several larger power plants and can save ratepayers more than $1.5 billion in capital costs and help lower utility bills. Since peak electricity is the most expensive energy – and requires the use of standby power generation plants – the economic and environmental savings for even a small reduction are significant. In fact, some of the power plants for meeting peak demand operate for only a few hundred hours a year, which means the power they generate can be 5-10 times more expensive than the average price per kilowatt hour paid by most consumers.
- Empower consumers to cut their electricity bills. The Recovery Act combined with private investment will put us on pace to deploy more than 40 million smart meters in American homes and businesses over the next few years that will help consumers cut their utility bills.
- Leverage more than $4.7 billion in private investment to match the federal investment.
- Make the grid more reliable and robust, reducing power outages that cost American consumers $150 billion a year - about $500 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
- Install more than 850 sensors - called “Phasor Measurement Units” - that will cover 100 percent of the U.S. electric grid to monitor grid conditions.
- Install more than 200,000 smart transformers that will make it possible for power companies to replace units before they fail thus saving money and reducing power outages.
- Install almost 700 automated substations, representing about 5 percent of the nation’s total that will make it possible for power companies to respond faster and more effectively to restore service when bad weather knocks down power lines or causes electricity disruptions.
- Power companies today typically do not know there has been a power outage until a customer calls to report it. With these smart grid devices, power companies will have the tools they need for better outage prevention and faster response to make repairs when outages do occur.
- Install more than 1 million in-home displays, 170,000 smart thermostats, and 175,000 other load control devices to enable consumers to reduce their energy use. Funding will also help expand the market for smart washers, dryers, and dishwashers, so that American consumers can further control their energy use and lower their electricity bills.
- Put US on a path to get 20 percent or more of energy from renewable sources by 2020.
- Tens of thousands of jobs across the country. These jobs include high paying career opportunities for smart meter manufacturing workers; engineering technicians, electricians and equipment installers; IT system designers and cyber security specialists; data entry clerks and database administrators; business and power system analysts; and others.
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Global Market for Clean Technologies: Renewables are the Fastest-Growing Energy Source
October 27, 2009
The Energy Information Administration (EIA), an independent statistical agency within the Department of Energy (DOE), recently released the market estimate for a few key clean technologies. EIA based its analysis on a scenario derived by the International Energy Agency that could prevent the worst changes to world’s climate. EIA has found that renewables are the fastest-growing energy source, but fossil fuels still provide over 80% of marketed energy in 2030.
EIA found also that, globally, the cumulative investment in wind turbines and solar photovoltaic panels from now through 2030 could be $2.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, respectively. When the starting gun sounded on the clean energy race, the United States stumbled.
China has already made its choice. China is spending about $9 billion a month on clean energy. It is also investing $44 billion by 2012 and $88 billion by 2020 in Ultra High Voltage transmission lines. These lines will allow China to transmit power from huge wind and solar farms far from its cities. While every country’s transmission needs are different, this is a clear sign of China’s commitment to developing renewable energy.
The United States, meanwhile, has fallen behind. The world’s largest turbine manufacturing company is headquartered in Denmark. 99 percent of the batteries that power America’s hybrid cars are made in Japan. US manufactured more than 40 percent of the world’s solar cells as recently as the mid 1990s; today, US produce just 7 percent.
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