Eliminating a Daily Chore: Self-Cleaning Windows Are Here!

‘Cleanliness is next to godliness’ is a phrase you’ve certainly heard before, and it is undoubtedly true.

However, why is godliness necessary to achieve that state of cleanliness? More importantly, why does one have to deal with such boring tasks?

Whether or not you want to do it, there are certain things that simply need to be taken care of every once in a while. Most of these things that need to be cleaned are usually ‘inside’ your room, but what’s the one thing inside a room that is constantly plagued by dust from the outside?

You guessed it, the glass on your windows!

Cleaning windows can be a very tiring chore, especially for people who aren’t used to regularly cleaning them. Things become even more complex when the windows are high on the wall. Fortunately, the woes of such people have come to an end, because self-cleaning windows are here!

Self-Cleaning Glass: What Is It?

Self-cleaning glass is a type of glass that automatically keeps itself free of dust. The glass contains a specialized coating that imparts these important self-cleaning properties. The field of self-cleaning coating on glass is divided into two categories: hydrophobic and hydrophilic. These two types of coating both clean themselves through the action of water by rolling droplets off the surface or deflecting water.

How Does it Work?

This special coating contains titanium dioxide. When sunlight (which contains UV rays) strikes the surface of the glass with this coating, this layer reacts with the dirt particles and breaks them down into smaller particles. Now, when water is sprayed on the surface of the glass, either by a natural processes (rain) or by artificial means (a hose), the smaller and weaker particles are effectively deflected.

This process is further supported by the fact that titanium dioxide is hydrophilic, or in other words, it loves water. This means that water would cover as much of the surface of the glass as possible.

Because water is spread on the glass as a sheet, rather than individual droplets, the glass looks streak-free and clean.

Availability

Windows taking care of themselves is a pretty neat idea. Outside of normal outdoor-facing windows, this simple technology can be used on computer monitors and PDA screens, where you definitely don’t want fingerprints.

The Pilkington Activ is the first type of self-cleaning glass, as claimed by Pilkington. It consists of a 20–30 nm layer of nanocrystalline anatase titanium dioxide deposited onto the soda-lime silicate float glass. This treated glass exhibits excellent visible transmission and reflectance properties.

I suppose the world will soon be ridding itself of all different kinds of stuff that gives humans a hard time. Cleaning is this sort of thing; everyone enjoys it, but we don’t want to overexert ourselves too much in the process, do we?

The Invisible Web: The Internet Is Much Bigger Than You Think

Browsing the world wide web is extremely fun, somewhat addicting, and also very easy to do. We type our queries into Google Search or Bing and hit enter. Bang! Billions of search results instantly pop up on the screen (a good Internet connection helps with this too). Sounds simple enough, right? Well, what if I told you that the part of the world wide web that is accessible through search engines like Google and Bing makes up only 4% of all web content?

I know, that’s exactly how I reacted when this was pointed out to me by a friend. I still find it hard to believe, but after digging into this strange hidden world, it’s hard to deny. So what are we waiting for? Let’s find out what lies beyond the reaches of the Internet as we know it!

The Invisible Web

Also known as the Deep Web, Deep Net or Hidden Web, the Invisible Web is essentially the part of the world wide web that is not indexed by search engines. The name “Deep Web” was coined by Mike Bergman in 2000. The size of this part of the web was estimated, in 2001, to be 7,500 terabytes. Keep in mind that the Deep Web is said to be growing exponentially. Scary, huh?

It mostly consists of database-driven pages that can only be accessed via major database sites, similar to job search sites. They are essentially dynamic pages that are constantly updated with the latest information, but disappear the moment they are closed. It’s almost like magic!

This part of the web may also be inaccessible due to unlinked content, which prevents spiders (web-crawling programs) from accessing the content.

Private intranet content is also present on the Deep Web, where 11+ billion static pages are hidden from the public. These pages are obviously owned by specific companies and are password-protected.

Credits:Brian Senic/Shutterstock

The remainder of the Invisible Web is made up of limited access content (sites technically shut-off by CAPTCHAs), Non-HTML/text content (which isn’t handled by search engines), Software (content accessible only by Tor software) and other related material.

Unexplored World

The Invisible Web is so vast, but it can’t be accessed by the usual search engines. In that case, how exactly DO you take a trip into this unexplored world?

First, use a search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc) and find a primary database page. Then, search within that database for exactly what you’re looking for. This is not easy and can be quite time-consuming, due to the isolated nature of these “invisible” pages.

The Dark Side

As mentioned above, there is a significant portion of the Deep Web that is encrypted and only accessible by special software. This is called the Dark Web. One such special program used for accessing the Dark Web isTor. Unfortunately, it has devolved into a hub for numerous criminal activities. These criminal networks use Tor to their advantage, as it protects the identity of a person online by continually changing the user’s IP address. Obviously, caution is advised when using such software. It’s important to note, however that the majority of Tor users actually require this software to safely access social media, since certain social media sites are restricted in some countries.

Taking advantage of this unique use of the Tor software and its connection to the Dark Web, Facebook announced last year that its users could access the site through the Tor program. Now, even people living in countries with Internet restrictions can access Facebook. See, even the dark side has its advantages!

So in  the end, these secret pages might turn out to contain some very useful and interesting information, while also helping people safely access certain parts of the web. I guess it’s time to turn invisible!

Why Do You Have To Charge A Battery More Frequently As It Ages?

In our increasingly technology-driven world, it seems like nothing can keep us from becoming the masters of the digital domain. From tablets and smartphones to electric cars, humanity is certainly advancing, but one stumbling block remains

We are heavily dependent on batteries to power our machines, and as we continue to move away from fossil fuels towards electric alternatives, the durability and longevity of batteries will come to the forefront of efficiency.

Photo Credit: Sashkin / Fotolia

Unfortunately, as any laptop or smartphone owner will tell you, batteries tend to lose their charge capacity over time, and within a few years, it seems like a battery can hardly hold a charge at all! If we want to keep pushing towards the future we’re promised, we need to answer that fundamental question – why do batteries lose their capacity?

Believe it or not, you should actually blame it on salt crystals, but we’ll get to that shortly….

The Science of Batteries

While batteries have certainly become more efficient and powerful in recent years, particularly the highly popular lithium-ion batteries (which we’ll focus on in this article), some of the old-school basics are the same. Specifically, modern batteries still possess positive and negative electrodes, as well as a chemical substance in between them – an electrolyte. Like all batteries, a chemical reaction is happening constantly to move ions between these positively and negatively charged poles, which produces a current.

In the case of modern lithium-ion batteries, the positive electrode is typically made of lithium iron phosphate, while the negative electrode consists of graphite. When you charge one of these batteries, the lithium ions from the positive electrode move to the negative electrode. That movement produces energy, which the battery can store. In the opposite direction, when the battery is discharging all of that energy, the ions move in the opposite direction.

This process consists of two parts – ions move in one direction and electrons move in the opposite direction. This differential provides the charging power for the battery, and if one of these two things stop moving, so does the other! In other words, once the positive electrode completely discharges, the battery stops powering a device. Similarly, if you switch off a device, the battery stops discharging!

The Battery Breakdown

Those very same ions that flow around the electrolyte mixture in a battery must pass through ion channels at the positive and negative electrodes. While the battery is discharging, those ions moving around the negative electrode change its physical properties at an atomic level. Lithium reacts with the iron phosphate and a crust begins to develop in those ion channels, developing on the small imperfections of the surface as a result of those tiny chemical reactions.

This crust is best compared to salt crystals, which slowly build up over time, similar to the way rust non-uniformly develops on certain types of metal as a result of oxidation. These salt crystals block the movement of ions through the channels, making the flow less efficient, and thus the capacity for holding a charge significantly lower. At the atomic level, there is no way to create an electrode that has absolutely no imperfections, so these crystals will always develop over time.

 

It may take a year or two for enough crystals to build up that a user will notice, but there’s no way to avoid it completely. Eventually, all batteries will undergo this process of degradation, frustrating us to no end. Some studies have sought out ways to reverse or remedy these problems, given that batteries are such a huge part of our daily lives, but the solutions are few and far between.

Atomic deposition of material to eliminate those imperfections (the sites on which crystals can form) could work, but it seems like a very time-intensive and meticulous process. As we learn more about these crystals, there might be a way to neutralize their build-up or break them apart, thus restoring a battery to its original capacity and strength.

However, lithium-ion battery repair strategies haven’t been perfected, so we’re forced to keep buying new ones or dealing with decreased capacity. The interesting thing is that increasing the capacity and longevity of batteries seems like the focus of every innovator in the field, but the problem of crystal formation might be a better area of focus. If that problem is solved, then the constant arms’ race of battery strength wouldn’t be nearly as important.

Fortunately, as we shift to a more “green” global society, batteries are only going to become more important, and if humans have proved anything throughout their history, it’s that “necessity is the mother of invention”!

How Can Mobiles Make " EMERGENCY CALLS" When There Is "NO NETWORK COVERAGE "

Smartphones have become such an integral part of our lives that people who don’t yet have one often find themselves in situations like these:

For a smartphone owner, the most annoying feeling in the world – other than the battery dying just as you receive a long-awaited text message – is having no network coverage on your phone! People do all kinds of unusual things to find service, and some truly freak out like it’s the end of the world when they don’t see those network bars in the top corner of the phone’s display.

During those situations, namely when there’s no network coverage on your phone, your phone has probably informed you (almost to the point of being rude) – “No Network. Emergency calls only.”

Wait a minute! Isn’t that message an oxymoron? How could you make ‘Emergency calls’ when you don’t have network coverage on your phone in the first place?

Why Do You Need Network Coverage Anyway?

Photo Credit: itestro/Fotolia

Network towers are an absolutely essential component of the wireless calling process. Let’s suppose that you want to call a friend; the moment you press that green (or whichever color it is on your phone) ‘call’ button, your phone emits a signal for the nearest network tower to catch. From there, the signal goes through a series of steps to arrive at another tower (which is nearest to your friend). Finally, the signals from the tower are received by your friend’s phone and voila! The two of you are talking!

The bars in the top corner of your phone signify the ‘usable strength’ from your network service provider. When the bars disappear, it means that the network coverage is not strong enough to make calls, send texts and so on. If that’s true, then how can you still make those ’emergency calls’?

Exploring the Mystery of Emergency Calls

Like many people, you may think that there is some kind of tricky machinery fitted inside your phone that enables it to make emergency calls, but unfortunately, that’s simply not true.

As mentioned earlier, cellphones require network coverage to make calls. However, if the usable strength of the mobile network of your service provider (the manufacturer/company of the SIM card that you are using) is not good enough at the place where you’re making the call, then they use the network of some other service provider whose usable signal strength is strong enough to make the call.

GSM technology (most SIM cards work on GSM nowadays) is designed in such a way that you can use the network of another service provider in the absence of network coverage from your own service provider, but your access to it will be limited, hence the ’emergency call’ restriction.

Therefore, in the absence of a strong enough network coverage of your own service provider in your area, your phone camps on a ‘Roaming network’ (these are those companies that have links with your own company). If the roaming network is also not strong enough, then your phone camps on the best network signal available in your vicinity, irrespective of its source company. Emergency calls can be made in this case.

What if your SIM card is dysfunctional?

In some western countries (like the United States and England), people can connect with an  emergency number (e.g 911 or 999) even if their SIM cards are not in proper working order. Note that it’s not the SIM card, but rather the antenna in your phone, that gets you connected to a network tower. A SIM card only has the phone number and carrier info, so it’s not essential to make an emergency call. In such cases, since the SIM is dysfunctional, the emergency service center does not get the caller ID or the location of the caller, but the call can be connected.

What if there is absolutely no network coverage?

If you happen to be in a place where there is absolutely no network coverage from any service provider, then that’s just bad news. Since there is no network tower in the vicinity that can receive and transmit the signals coming from your phone, your phone becomes completely ineffective.

Given that fact, for people who travel to remote locations to explore hinterlands and unknown places, it’s absolutely necessary to have communication backup (in the form of satellite phones or radios) in the case of dire situations that require immediate assistance.

If a visit to the jungles of the Amazonian basin is in the cards for you, ensuring that you have the necessary communication options in that dense green paradise is a very wise choice.