Intel Unveils New Motherboard Roadmap.......

Intel sees a healthy desktop market in the days ahead, and is readying its channels to address new opportunities in this market. The chip major has affirmed that it will keep working with the system builder channel for the motherboard business and will drive innovation in the space.

“Our biggest message is that 2013 will be an exciting year for the desktop business, and you will see bigger innovations happening. The desktop market is not dead, it’s simply evolving,” said Taha Mughir, Worldwide Customer Marketing Manager, Intel Client Board Division.

Mughir said that Intel will unveil a new form factor called Next Unit of Computing in the country. The 4-inch x 4-inch motherboard features an integrated Core i3 with 7-series chipset, mini-PCIe slot, mSATA slot, two SO-DIMM slots and three USB ports. Power is supplied by an external AC/DC adapter, but there is also a small 2-pin header for optional internal power supply.

“We have already launched the product in other markets and are excited about introducing it in India. In the US, a full-fledged system without monitor and OS, but having a 80/120 GB SSD drive, is retailing at $399. We expect similar pricing from our system builder partners here,” he said.

According to Mughir, Intel sees four other form factors existing simultaneously. “The ATX form factor will be around as the enthusiast/gaming segment needs a larger form factor, Micro ATX will remain for the mainstream desktop market, the mini ITX for the Atom and PC-like embedded market, and the thin mini ITX for the AIO.”

He forecast that AIOs will gain a dominant marketshare to the extent of 30 percent by 2014. “We now have 7-8 strong suppliers of building blocks (such as chassis) for this market, and building block costs are coming down.”

He added that channels must look beyond the value PC market to stay ahead of the competition. Mughir identified markets such as high-end gaming and workstations, PC-like embedded, and AIOs as the three market segments where system builders are likely to dominate. “We have introduced new models for the PC-like embedded market, and now have embedded form factors supporting up to Core i7. Though we have partners building solutions for nearly 200 niche segments, we have identified PoS, digital signage and surveillance as the three key markets for our channels.”

Meanwhile, Intel has released solution recipes (popularly known as cookbooks) which allow resellers to build solutions for these target markets.

Mughir said that in 2013 Intel will launch Haswell, the next generation of the Core series of processors. He also said that next year the mainstream motherboard chipset market is likely to see a transition from the H61 to H67/77.

Flying on Sunshine........

Once futuristic visions, solar sails now take off............

When it comes to futuristic space travel, few concepts are more romantic than sailing on sunlight. Soar above Earth, unfurl a jib and tack your way through the solar system all the way to interstellar space.
Solar sails have been a mainstay of dreamers since Johannes Kepler, who speculated four centuries ago that ships would one day be powered by “heavenly air.” But sun sailing is no longer fanciful fodder for visionaries. Recent technological advances have moved solar sailing from science fiction to science fact.

After keeping scientists in suspense, NASA’s NanoSail-D (illustration shown) fanned out in space earlier this year. Solar sails like this one may be the future of space travel.

Last year, Japan’s space agency launched the world’s first solar sail into interplanetary space; its metal-coated membrane unfurled and caught the light to begin sunjamming. And with help from tiny “nanosatellites” that allow scientists to pack folded-up sails in spacecraft no bigger than a loaf of bread, NASA this year sent its first sail skipping through Earth orbit.
Look overhead at the right time of night, and you can spot the gleaming streak of NASA’s NanoSail-D as it tumbles closer to Earth, mission accomplished. Within the next few months it will incinerate in the atmosphere in a bright flash.
In addition to the Japanese and U.S. efforts, the privately funded Planetary Society expects to launch its own sail next year, as does a satellite design team based at the University of Surrey in England.

Solar sail enthusiasts have waited decades to see such flights. And one day, they hope, solar sails will perform tasks other spacecraft cannot: hover above Earth’s poles to monitor climate change, flit near the sun to watch for solar storms, drag space junk out of orbit like a cosmic maid or even journey to a nearby star.
“As far as solar sails go, we are on the cusp of history,” says Dean Alhorn, an engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., who leads the NanoSail-D mission. “We are ready now with the technology to make these happen.”

Your social brain

Nerve cells notice mistakes and learn from others’ desires................

Some nerve cells snicker at mistakes. Others compel a person to want someone else’s stuff. By studying these phenomena, scientists are learning more than just where schadenfreude and jealousy lie in the brain; they’re gaining an unprecedented view of how social influences can worm into a person’s head.
Such new results carry researchers beyond studying the brain in isolation to studying it as a social actor. Ultimately, this work could help forge a deeper understanding of how the brain learns by using the behavior of others as a guide.
Earlier this year, Japanese researchers uncovered a small group of nerve cells that fire when a macaque witnesses another monkey making a mistake. These cells, located in the front of the brain, remained silent when a monkey made an error itself, but howled when the monkey saw a partner screw up (SN: 9/8/12, p. 12). Humans probably have similar cells, says study coauthor Masaki Isoda, now at Kansai Medical University in Osaka, Japan.
Finding cells that respond to another animal’s error but not to the monkey’s own mistakes was a surprise, showing that the cells behave distinctly from those in the brain’s mirror neuron system. A collection of nerve cells that are active while a subject is both doing and observing another doing, the mirror neuron system has been proposed as a way for the brain to make sense of the actions of others. But these new results, and others like them, paint a more complex picture.
Other research reveals more about how the mirror neuron system helps the brain learn from others. In a different social setting, mirror neurons team up with another system in the brain — the bean-counting system — to make an object in someone else’s possession automatically more desirable (SN: 6/30/12, p. 12). French researchers found that candy, tools and clothes in someone else’s hands held more allure than an untouched object, a copycat phenomenon called “mimetic desire” by the philosopher René Girard.
This automatic upgrade happens in two steps, the researchers found: Initially, the mirror neuron system detects that someone else has something of interest. Then, that information gets sent to the brain’s value-assigning system, which adjusts the value of the object upward.
Although these traits — coveting possessions and nitpicking mistakes — are things parents teach their children not to do, they may serve an important function, researchers say. Watching what other people do wrong and what they acquire can yield valuable information about how to get along in this world.

For New Lamps, An Unlikely Energy Source: Gravity

As long as you reset a weight every 30 minutes, you can have a continuous, battery-free light source.

Kerosene lamps used in off-grid, rural areas are a major problem. They're bad for people's health and the environment's. One startup's solution is to tap another, greener resource, something we all have in abundance: gravity.
The invention, GravityLight, does exactly what the name suggests: It keeps a light going through the power of gravity. As an attached weight falls, it pulls a cord through the center of the light, powering a dynamo. That dynamo converts the energy from the falling weight into power for the light. (It's the same idea as a hand-cranked device, just more vertical.) The weight can be set in a few seconds, and as it slowly reaches Earth, enough energy is generated to keep a light working for 30 minutes. As long as it's set every 30 minutes, it makes for a green, battery-free, continuous stream of light. Other, similar devices like battery chargers could be used through the same process, too.
The inventors say the gadgets can be sold now for less than $10, which would make a return on investment for owners three months after dumping kerosene lighting. And speaking of investments, the group has already shattered the goal for its Indiegogo campaign, meaning we'll hopefully see these in action soon.

http://vimeo.com/53588182