Finland's Ministry of Transport and Communications has made 1-megabit broadband Web access a legal right, YLE, the country's national broadcasting company, reported on Wednesday.
According to the report, every person in Finland (a little over 5 million people, according to a 2009 estimate) will have the right of access to a 1Mb broadband connection starting in July. And they may ultimately gain the right to a 100Mb broadband connection.
Just more than a year ago, Finland said it would make a 100Mb broadband connection a legal right by the end of 2015. Wednesday's announcement is considered an intermediate step.
France, one of a few countries that has made Internet access a human right, did so earlier this year. France's Constitutional Council ruled that Internet access is a basic human right. That said, it stopped short of making "broadband access" a legal right. Finland says that it's the first country to make broadband access a legal right.
But Finland's definition of "access" to broadband is a little fuzzy. According to the Helsinki Times when it reported the 100Mb target last year, the Finnish government said that no household "would be farther than 2 kilometers from a connection capable of delivering broadband Internet with a capacity of at least 100 megabits of data a second." It did say, though, that "about 2,000 (households) in far-flung corners of the country" wouldn't be included. Ostensibly, Finland plans to keep that same distribution when its 1Mb broadband access is implemented.
Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10374831-2.html
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
German centre-right coalition in the making. Euronews. 06.10.2009.
Negotiations on the make-up of Germany’s new conservative coalition have been taking place amid a growing clamour for action on the nuclear industry.
Hundreds of protestors gathered in Berlin calling for an end to nuclear power and demanding Germany’s reactors close as promised by 2020.
Fresh from winning last week’s election, Chancellor Angela Merkel has begun talks with the liberal FDP party on forming Germany’s first centre-right coalition in 11 years.
Guido Westerwelle, is head of the pro business FDP. He said: “There will certainly be differences, that’s normal. But I am sure they can be overcome and we can work out a good coalition agreement.”
The big losers in the general election, the SPD Social Democrats are trying desperately to bridge deep divisions in the party. Many members are not happy with what they see as the SPD’s authoritarian leadership and the candidacy of Sigmar Gabriel, former environment minister, for the party chairmanship: Gabriel said, “I am the candidate for the leadership and all my colleagues who are candidates for other posts in the party are only candidates too.”
The selection of prominent leftwinger Andrea Nahles, whom the steering committee agrees should be general secretary, is seen as a clear signal the SPD has begun its shift back to the left.
Source: http://www.euronews.net/2009/10/06/german-centre-right-coalition-in-the-making/
Hundreds of protestors gathered in Berlin calling for an end to nuclear power and demanding Germany’s reactors close as promised by 2020.
Fresh from winning last week’s election, Chancellor Angela Merkel has begun talks with the liberal FDP party on forming Germany’s first centre-right coalition in 11 years.
Guido Westerwelle, is head of the pro business FDP. He said: “There will certainly be differences, that’s normal. But I am sure they can be overcome and we can work out a good coalition agreement.”
The big losers in the general election, the SPD Social Democrats are trying desperately to bridge deep divisions in the party. Many members are not happy with what they see as the SPD’s authoritarian leadership and the candidacy of Sigmar Gabriel, former environment minister, for the party chairmanship: Gabriel said, “I am the candidate for the leadership and all my colleagues who are candidates for other posts in the party are only candidates too.”
The selection of prominent leftwinger Andrea Nahles, whom the steering committee agrees should be general secretary, is seen as a clear signal the SPD has begun its shift back to the left.
Source: http://www.euronews.net/2009/10/06/german-centre-right-coalition-in-the-making/
Monday, October 5, 2009
Scheme removes entropy from ultracold atoms. 05.10.2009.
Studying the quantum properties of gases requires cooling them down to a fraction of a Kelvin using various laser-based and magnetic techniques. Creating Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs), for example, means reaching just a few tens or hundreds of nanoKelvin. At this point an atom's de Broglie wavelength, which is inversely proportional to its momentum, becomes long enough so that it is comparable to the spacing between atoms, which causes all the atoms to condense into the quantum ground state.
In addition to cooling atoms, however, physicists also want to minimize their entropy. One principal aim is to create "quantum simulators", in which the atoms exhibit similar quantum phenomena to that in superconductors and other "real-life" materials.
Ease of control
A simulator could consist of a lattice of ultracold atoms held in place by laser beams in which the properties of the atoms are easily tunable. For example, the probability of an atom tunnelling from one lattice site to another or the interaction between the particles could be easily controlled, something that is extremely difficult to do in condensed-matter systems such as crystals.
Moreover, unlike crystals, in which impurities or defects could mask some basic quantum properties, atoms in optical lattices represent almost ideal systems with virtually no impurities. The challenge in building such a simulator, however, is ensuring that the atoms have a low enough entropy – a quantity related to disorder – that they can exist in precise lattice arrangements.
Now, Massimo Inguscio, Francesco Minardi and colleagues at the University of Florence, together with Sandro Stringari at the University of Trento, have demonstrated a new scheme that makes it easier to reach such low entropies. This involves putting a mixture of potassium and rubidium atoms into a magnetic trap and then cooling the mixture. Directing a laser beam with just the right wavelength into the trap compresses the potassium at the focal point of the beam while leaving the rubidium virtually unchanged.
Classical explanation
The result is that entropy is transferred from the potassium to the rubidium atoms in a process that can be understood using classical thermodynamics. Filling an isolated box with one gas and compressing the gas with a piston would raise the temperature of that gas. But mixing it with a second gas that can flow through the piston will result in a transfer of heat and therefore entropy from the first to the second gas when the first gas is compressed.
Commenting on the work, Dan Stamper-Kurn of the University of California Berkeley writes that the Florence team is not the first to use one quantum gas to cool another. But, he says, unlike previous groups, it has managed to transfer this entropy reversibly, in other words it has been able to shuttle the entropy back and forth between the refrigerator and target gases. This was shown by repeatedly moving the potassium into and out of the BEC state. This is important because it shows that the process is not irreversible and introducing heat into the system that cannot be removed.
Stamper-Kurn adds that the system can also be used to identify phase transitions of poorly understood target gases with exotic quantum properties. This, he says, can be achieved by measuring the state variables, such as temperature, pressure or magnetization, of the well known refrigerator gas at two different points in the experiment since these reveal how the entropy and temperature of the target gas change.
Textbook thermodynamics
Other groups, such as that of Wolfgang Ketterle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, have transferred entropy not between two distinct gases but between one region of a gas and another. However, Florence team member Jacopo Catani points out that Ketterle's research was aimed more at producing BECs reversibly, whereas the work of his group is a more versatile way of reducing entropy since the target and refrigerator gases can be easily isolated. He estimates that this research might lead to the creation of a quantum simulator within the next three years, but adds that it is not just the potential applications of the work that he finds satisfying. "It is also really nice to see how textbook thermodynamics can be applied to a quantum system," he says.
The research is reported in Physical Review Letters.
Source: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/40570
Sony develops highly efficient wireless power transfer system based on magnetic resonance. 05.10.2009.
Transfers 60 Watts of electrical power over a distance of 50cm.
Sony Corporation today announced the development of a highly efficient wireless power transfer system that eliminates the use of power cables from electronic products such as television sets. Using this system, up to 60 Watts of electrical energy can be transferred over a distance of 50cm (at an efficiency of approximately 80%, approximately 60% including rectifier).
This new wireless power transfer system incorporates a form of contactless electrical energy transmission technology based on magnetic resonance. With magnetic resonance, electromagnetic energy is only transferred to recipient devices that share the identical resonant frequencies as the energy source, so energy transfer efficiency is maintained, even when misalignment occurs. Furthermore, even if there are metal objects located between the transmitter and receiver, no heat induction occurs.
Sony has also drawn on its years of experience developing high radio frequency (RF) technologies for use in wireless communications and broadcast products to create a new rectifier that realizes both high speed and high efficiency. The new wireless power transfer system combines these technologies to realize a transfer efficiency of 60%, even when a rectifier is included. Sony has also developed passive extender units that are set to the same frequencies as the transmission and recipient devices, enabling the transfer distance to be extended from 50cm to 80cm* without any degradation in transfer efficiency.
With the growth in networked products, the number of cables used to connect these products has also increased. While data cables are rapidly being replaced with wireless communication systems such as Wi-Fi, the demand for wireless power transfer systems is also continuing to grow. Sony will proceed with its efforts to develop further technologies that meet customer needs for the wireless transfer of power across a wide range of products, distances and energy levels.
High speed rectifier realizing high transfer efficiency
Transfer distance is able to be extended using passive extender units
Sony Corporation today announced the development of a highly efficient wireless power transfer system that eliminates the use of power cables from electronic products such as television sets. Using this system, up to 60 Watts of electrical energy can be transferred over a distance of 50cm (at an efficiency of approximately 80%, approximately 60% including rectifier).
This new wireless power transfer system incorporates a form of contactless electrical energy transmission technology based on magnetic resonance. With magnetic resonance, electromagnetic energy is only transferred to recipient devices that share the identical resonant frequencies as the energy source, so energy transfer efficiency is maintained, even when misalignment occurs. Furthermore, even if there are metal objects located between the transmitter and receiver, no heat induction occurs.
Sony has also drawn on its years of experience developing high radio frequency (RF) technologies for use in wireless communications and broadcast products to create a new rectifier that realizes both high speed and high efficiency. The new wireless power transfer system combines these technologies to realize a transfer efficiency of 60%, even when a rectifier is included. Sony has also developed passive extender units that are set to the same frequencies as the transmission and recipient devices, enabling the transfer distance to be extended from 50cm to 80cm* without any degradation in transfer efficiency.
With the growth in networked products, the number of cables used to connect these products has also increased. While data cables are rapidly being replaced with wireless communication systems such as Wi-Fi, the demand for wireless power transfer systems is also continuing to grow. Sony will proceed with its efforts to develop further technologies that meet customer needs for the wireless transfer of power across a wide range of products, distances and energy levels.
High speed rectifier realizing high transfer efficiency
- Sony has drawn on its years of experience and expertise in RF technologies, and also incorporated optimal new components to develop a new rectifier that combines both high speeds and high efficiency. This minimizes energy loss when transferring energy from the transmitter to the receiver, and enables products such as television sets and mobile PCs to be efficiently powered, wirelessly.
Transfer distance is able to be extended using passive extender units- Passive extender units placed between the transmitter and receiver units enable the transfer distance to be extended without any degradation in efficiency. Based on fundamental experiments conducted using the component devices only, transfer distance can be extended from 50cm to 80cm. Although relatively large transmitter and receiver units are generally required for transferring energy over long distances, passive extender units can be used to relay power between small-sized transmitter and receiver unit.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
US relaxes grip on the internet. BBC News. 01.10.2009.
The US government has relaxed its control over how the internet is run.
It has signed a four-page "affirmation of commitments" with the net regulator Icann, giving the body autonomy for the first time.
Previous agreements gave the US close oversight of Icann - drawing criticism from other countries and groups.
The new agreement comes into effect on 1 October, exactly 40 years since the first two computers were connected on the prototype of the net.
"It's a beautifully historic day," Rod Beckstrom, Icann's head, told BBC News.
The European Commission, which has long been critical of Icann's alliance with the US government, welcomed the new deal.
"Internet users worldwide can now anticipate that Icann's decisions...will be more independent and more accountable, taking into account everyone's interests," said Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for information society and media.
'Global system'
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) is a not-for-profit private sector corporation - set up by the US government - to oversee critical parts of the internet, such as the top-level domain (TLD) name system. Top level domains include .com and .uk.
Since its inception in 1998, it has periodically signed accords - known collectively as the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) - with the US Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
we endorse this Affirmation and applaud the maturing of Icann's role in the provision of internet stability
Eric Schmidt
CEO, Google
These papers meant that the US government was responsible for reviewing the work of the body.
These have now been abandoned in favour of the new "affirmation of commitments", a brief document which turns the review process over to the global "internet community".
"Under the JPA, Icann staff would conduct reviews and hand them over to the US government," explained Mr Beckstrom.
"Now we submit those reviews to the world and post them publically for all to comment."
In addition, independent review panels - including representatives of foreign governments - would specifically oversee Icann's work in three specific areas: security, competition and accountability.
The US will retain a permanent seat on the accountability panel.
Mr Beckstrom said the decision to break away from the US government in all other areas had been made "over the last year and a half".
"Stakeholders told us that the JPA should not be renewed and that it wasn't appropriate for it to be renewed," he told BBC News.
"It is also recognition by the US government that the internet is a global system."
The internet began as a research project by the US military, known as Arpanet.
On 1 October 1969, the second computer was connected to the network, said Mr Beckstrom. Ever since, the US has paid close attention to the workings and growth of the net.
"Today's announcement bolsters the long-term viability of the internet as a force for innovation, economic growth, and freedom of expression," said US Assistant Secretary for communications and information Lawrence Strickling.
"This framework puts the public interest front and centre."
Businesses have also welcomed the change of direction by the US.
"Google and its users depend every day on a vibrant and expanding internet; we endorse this affirmation and applaud the maturing of Icann's role in the provision of internet stability," said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.
However, the new agreement does not totally sever the links between the US government and Icann entirely.
In addition, Icann also has a separate agreement with the US - to run the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) - that expires in 2011.
The IANA oversees the net's addressing system.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8283310.stm
It has signed a four-page "affirmation of commitments" with the net regulator Icann, giving the body autonomy for the first time.
Previous agreements gave the US close oversight of Icann - drawing criticism from other countries and groups.
The new agreement comes into effect on 1 October, exactly 40 years since the first two computers were connected on the prototype of the net.
"It's a beautifully historic day," Rod Beckstrom, Icann's head, told BBC News.
The European Commission, which has long been critical of Icann's alliance with the US government, welcomed the new deal.
"Internet users worldwide can now anticipate that Icann's decisions...will be more independent and more accountable, taking into account everyone's interests," said Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for information society and media.
'Global system'
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) is a not-for-profit private sector corporation - set up by the US government - to oversee critical parts of the internet, such as the top-level domain (TLD) name system. Top level domains include .com and .uk.
Since its inception in 1998, it has periodically signed accords - known collectively as the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) - with the US Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
we endorse this Affirmation and applaud the maturing of Icann's role in the provision of internet stability
Eric Schmidt
CEO, Google
These papers meant that the US government was responsible for reviewing the work of the body.
These have now been abandoned in favour of the new "affirmation of commitments", a brief document which turns the review process over to the global "internet community".
"Under the JPA, Icann staff would conduct reviews and hand them over to the US government," explained Mr Beckstrom.
"Now we submit those reviews to the world and post them publically for all to comment."
In addition, independent review panels - including representatives of foreign governments - would specifically oversee Icann's work in three specific areas: security, competition and accountability.
The US will retain a permanent seat on the accountability panel.
Mr Beckstrom said the decision to break away from the US government in all other areas had been made "over the last year and a half".
"Stakeholders told us that the JPA should not be renewed and that it wasn't appropriate for it to be renewed," he told BBC News.
"It is also recognition by the US government that the internet is a global system."
The internet began as a research project by the US military, known as Arpanet.
On 1 October 1969, the second computer was connected to the network, said Mr Beckstrom. Ever since, the US has paid close attention to the workings and growth of the net.
"Today's announcement bolsters the long-term viability of the internet as a force for innovation, economic growth, and freedom of expression," said US Assistant Secretary for communications and information Lawrence Strickling.
"This framework puts the public interest front and centre."
Businesses have also welcomed the change of direction by the US.
"Google and its users depend every day on a vibrant and expanding internet; we endorse this affirmation and applaud the maturing of Icann's role in the provision of internet stability," said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.
However, the new agreement does not totally sever the links between the US government and Icann entirely.
In addition, Icann also has a separate agreement with the US - to run the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) - that expires in 2011.
The IANA oversees the net's addressing system.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8283310.stm
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