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Monday 6 July 2015

Christopher Ghigliotty: New Technology Means Smashed Phone Screens Could Soon Self-Repair

If you've ever dropped your phone and watched the screen completely shatter, you'll understand why we're pretty excited about the latest update in phone technology.

Duncan Wass, a professor at the University of Bristol, is largely responsible for the carbon based "healing agent" that will allow our phones to "self-heal"...BEST. NEWS. EVER.

The "self-repairing" agent contains millions of tiny spheres that crack and releases a liquid solution.

When released, the solution hardens instantly and invisibly, allowing for a perfect recovery.

Initially the product was developed for repairing the cracks of aeroplane wings but it's now believed that it could have multiple uses.

Car windshields, wind turbines and bike frames are just some of the things that could benefit from this new technology.

Speaking to The Independent, Duncan said: "We took inspiration from the human body.

"We’ve not evolved to withstand any damage – if we were like that we’d have a skin as thick as a rhinoceros – but if we do get damaged, we bleed, and it scabs and heals.

"We just put that same sort of function into a synthetic material: let’s have something that can heal itself".

Wednesday 1 July 2015

Top 10 Winter Towns By Christopher Ghigliotty

Boston
Boston: City in Massachusetts

Boulder
Boulder: Municipality in Colorado

Dortmund
Dortmund: City in Germany

Granada
Granada: City in Spain

Green Bay
Green Bay: City in Wisconsin

Lake Placid
Lake Placid: Village in New York

Minneapolis–Saint Paul
Minneapolis–Saint Paul: Region in Minnesota

New York City
New York City

Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.: Capital of United States of America

West Yellowstone
West Yellowstone: Town in Montana

Tuesday 30 June 2015

Data Roaming Charges To End In Eu Within Two Years

Data roaming charges are set to be abolished within the European Union by June 2017, it has been announced.

The ban will be preceded by a 14-month interim period, in which companies can still add surcharges - but at a reduced rate.

A deal, reached on Tuesday, also sets out rules requiring telecom operators to treat most internet traffic equally.

But the net neutrality rules will allow firms to favour some services, such as internet TVs.

From April 2016, telecoms operators will be able to add a surcharge of no more than:

  • €0.05 (3.5p) extra per minute for calls
  • €0.02 extra per SMS sent
  • €0.05 extra per megabyte of data used

The cap would make roaming within the EU 75% cheaper during the interim period, the European Commission said.

The agreement is the culmination of years of campaigning to cut roaming charges and to define the EU nations' approach to regulating internet traffic - particularly in light of the US adoption of net-neutrality rules.

It largely follows proposals put forward in March this year, which analysts said were a weaker version of what European regulators had originally promised.

But it will enshrine the principle of net neutrality, which stops internet service providers (ISPs) favouring some internet traffic, in European law for the first time.

However, as mooted in March, there will be exceptions to those rules.

ISPs will be able to favour services that require high-quality internet connections, such as internet TVs, as long as they do not impinge on the overall quality of internet traffic.

The commission said they would also be able to throttle traffic if it was in the public interest to do so.

For example, to combat the proliferation of images of child sexual abuse or a terrorist attack.

The agreement will be presented to the EU's member states between July and December this year for formal adoption.

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) - the fourth largest grouping of MEPs in the European Parliament - has previously criticised regulators for trying to water down plans to end data roaming.

But it welcomed Tuesday's announcement.

The president of the ALDE group, Guy Verhofstadt, said the "great roaming rip-off" was to be brought to an end.

The group blamed the delay in successfully negotiating the deal on member states, which have been accused of seeking to protect their national operators in the past.

But Marietje Schaake MEP, another member of the group, renewed the attack on the net-neutrality deal, saying: "The compromise reached now is a watered-down version of the strong ambitions of the European Parliament."

Renata Avila, global campaign manager at the World Wide Web Foundation added: "Despite claiming to protect net neutrality, the deal agreed by the Commission, Parliament and Council has decided to allow 'specialised services', but has then failed to define what is meant by this, leaving the door open for a two-tier internet... specialised services should be tightly defined and seen as the exception, not the rule."

However, Gunther Oettinger, the commissioner for the digital economy and society, defended the net-neutrality proposals as a "pragmatic" approach.