Google's waving its pro-internet freedom flag again, launching a suite of anti-hacker software intended to help human rights and elections-related websites in vulnerable regions. It's a nice thought, even if there's a catch.
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It's easy to forget the value of any given technology once its buzz has arced across our collective consciousness and died a fiery death beyond the hype horizon. Take Cobol, that "Mad Men"-era relic -- just like fish past its prime, as the hipster tech pundits say: worthless, smelly, out of date, bad for you. Java may be the next enterprise mainstay to find itself on the ropes of "relevance."
The book sales are a distant memory. And Java's middle-age utility is no longer sexy enough for the magazine cover spreads. Nearly 19 years since Java's launch, the application development cognoscenti are wandering around the luring bazaar of Node.js, Objective-C, Dart, Go, and the like, wondering, "Java? Is that Web 1.0 era artifact still here?"
[ Think you know Java? Test your programming smarts in InfoWorld's Java IQ test. | Master the latest in Java development with our JavaWorld Enterprise Java newsletter. ]
A quick search of Dice.com job listings says you bet -- in a big way. Whereas listings for iOS-related jobs top out around 2,500, Java pulls up more than 17,000 listings. The Dice numbers are far from a perfect measure, but anything suggesting the Java job market may be some seven times larger than that of the unstoppable force of hype in the developer world is not bad for a relic.
Maybe that's because Java offers a better business plan than giving 30 percent of your revenue to Apple off the top and crossing your fingers in hopes that your app makes the top-25 list. Truth is, Java has always tackled a grander problem than helping angry birds get back at some pigs. It's a foundation of a number of platforms, designed to deliver a smooth way for software to run efficiently on more than one chip architecture. That solved problems for the server programmers, client programmers, and embedded programmers all at once.
Before we forget Java's many vital contributions to computing and its role today, here are 12 definitive reasons why Java is not only surviving but actively thriving in its post-buzz existence.
In other words: Don't call it a comeback; Java's been here, dominating, all along.
Key to continued Java dominance No. 1: Resiliency in the face of (often dirty) politics
The tech world never gave Java a shot because its enemies were many and well-armed. Regardless, the language flourished. Many of those surprised to see Java still here have surely spent too much time listening to the haters and not enough time understanding its success.
Microsoft was Java's first big enemy because the company saw it as the most worthy successor to the unity MS-DOS offered. Redmond bad-mouthed Java from the beginning, fighting it tooth and nail. Java never found the traction it needed on the desktop, in part because the magic Java virtual machine took too much time to start up. Despite the tiny delay, Java applications run well enough on Windows to be functional.
For some inexplicable reason, Steve Jobs never embraced Java, even when the Mac was largely ignored by everyone except Adobe. Java compatibility could bring in plenty of code, but Apple always treated it as an afterthought. (Yes, iOS smartphones are smoother than my Android, so maybe Steve had a point.)
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 21-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Alina Hirschmann
alina.hirschmann@icfo.es
34-935-542-246
ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences
Imagine buildings in which the windows allow the sun's light to enter, and at the same time capture the energy from the sun needed to meet all their energy needs. In this seemingly futuristic scenario, the windows become productive solar cells that help us decrease our reliance on fossil fuels and advance towards a greener and cleaner environment. In a recent study carried out at ICFO, researchers have fabricated an optimal organic solar cell with a high level of transparency and a high power conversion efficiency, a promising step forward towards affordable, clean, more widely utilized and urban integrated renewable energies. The results of this study have just been published in Nature Photonics.
Today's commercial solar panels are, for the most part, composed of wafer-based crystalline silicon solar cells which are quite efficient in converting solar radiation into electrical power (approximately 15% conversion efficiency), but with several important obstacles standing in the way of maximum exploitation. To begin, they must be precisely oriented to receive direct sunlight and even then are limited in their ability to absorb diffused light. In addition, they are heavy, opaque, and take up a great deal of space.
Organic solar cell technology has been around for about thirty years, however nowadays it is starting to attract substantial interest due to its low production cost. While organic cells have not yet reached the efficiency values of silicon based cells, these Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) cells have proven to be lighter in weight, more flexible (they are capable of adapting to curved surfaces), and even more sensitive to low light levels as well as indirect sun light, making them one of the most appealing photovoltaic technologies for many everyday applications. Among such advantages, a property that makes them even more interesting is their potential to be implemented as a semi-transparent device.
However, OPVs, like any other photovoltaic technology achieves its maximum light to electricity conversion efficiency with opaque devices. To turn such cells into transparent ones, the back metal electrode must be thinned down to just a few nanometers, drastically reducing the device's capacity to collect sunlight. ICFO researchers have been able to implement a semi-transparent cell incorporating a photonic crystal and reach a cell performance almost as good as its opaque counterpart. By adding such extra photonic crystal to the cell, ICFO's scientists were able to increase the amount of infrared and ultraviolet light absorbed by the cell, reaching a 5.6% efficiency while preserving a transparency almost indistinguishable from normal glass. The results in efficiency and transparency make these cells an extremely competitive product for Building-Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) technologies. To reach the adequate architectural look, the color of the cells may be tuned by simply changing the layer configuration of the photonic crystal.
Jordi Martorell, UPC Professor at ICFO and leader of the study, explains that "applications for this type of technology in BIPV are just a few steps away, but the technology has not reached its saturation point yet. ICFO's discovery opens the path for innovation to other industrial applications of transparent photovoltaics. In the midterm we expect to reach the extremely high transparencies and efficiencies needed to power up devices such as displays, tablets, smart phones, etc"
The future looks promising for these devices. A recently approved European project entitled SOLPROCEL will allow a consortium of top European researchers and industries led by ICFO to boost the study of the capabilities of these cells, improving their stability and lifetimes as well as obtaining the material needed to substantially raise their efficiency.
###
Ref: Rafael Betancur, Pablo Romero-Gomez, Alberto Martinez-Otero, Xavier Elias, Marc Maym & Jordi Martorell, Transparent polymer solar cells employing a layered light trapping architecture doi:10.1038/nphoton.2013.276
1: SOLPROCEL: Solution Processed High Performance Transparent Organic Photovoltaic Cells.
About ICFO:
ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences was created in 2002 by the government of Catalonia and the Technical University of Catalonia as a center of research excellence devoted to the science and technologies of light with a triple mission: to conduct frontier research, train the next generation of scientists and technologists, and provide knowledge and technology transfer. In recognition of research excellence, ICFO was granted the prestigious Severo Ochoa accreditation by the Ministry of Science and Innovation and was given the top worldwide position in the Physics category in the "Mapping Scientific Excellence" ranking published in 2013.
Research at ICFO targets the forefront of science and technology based on light with programs directed at applications in Health, Renewable Energies, Information Technologies, Security and Industrial processes, among others. The center currently hosts 300 professionals including researchers and PhD students, working in 60 laboratories. All research groups and facilities are located in a dedicated 14.000 m2 building situated in the Mediterranean Technology Park in the metropolitan area of Barcelona.
Researchers at ICFO publish in the most prestigious journals and collaborate with a wide range of companies around the world. The Corporate Liaison Program at ICFO, which includes members of a large number of local and international companies, aims to create synergies between ICFO and the industrial sector. The institute actively promotes the creation of spin-off companies by ICFO researchers. To date ICFO has helped create 5 start-up companies. The institute participates in a large number of projects and international networks of excellence and is the recipient of generous philanthropic support by Foundation Cellex.
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 21-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Alina Hirschmann
alina.hirschmann@icfo.es
34-935-542-246
ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences
Imagine buildings in which the windows allow the sun's light to enter, and at the same time capture the energy from the sun needed to meet all their energy needs. In this seemingly futuristic scenario, the windows become productive solar cells that help us decrease our reliance on fossil fuels and advance towards a greener and cleaner environment. In a recent study carried out at ICFO, researchers have fabricated an optimal organic solar cell with a high level of transparency and a high power conversion efficiency, a promising step forward towards affordable, clean, more widely utilized and urban integrated renewable energies. The results of this study have just been published in Nature Photonics.
Today's commercial solar panels are, for the most part, composed of wafer-based crystalline silicon solar cells which are quite efficient in converting solar radiation into electrical power (approximately 15% conversion efficiency), but with several important obstacles standing in the way of maximum exploitation. To begin, they must be precisely oriented to receive direct sunlight and even then are limited in their ability to absorb diffused light. In addition, they are heavy, opaque, and take up a great deal of space.
Organic solar cell technology has been around for about thirty years, however nowadays it is starting to attract substantial interest due to its low production cost. While organic cells have not yet reached the efficiency values of silicon based cells, these Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) cells have proven to be lighter in weight, more flexible (they are capable of adapting to curved surfaces), and even more sensitive to low light levels as well as indirect sun light, making them one of the most appealing photovoltaic technologies for many everyday applications. Among such advantages, a property that makes them even more interesting is their potential to be implemented as a semi-transparent device.
However, OPVs, like any other photovoltaic technology achieves its maximum light to electricity conversion efficiency with opaque devices. To turn such cells into transparent ones, the back metal electrode must be thinned down to just a few nanometers, drastically reducing the device's capacity to collect sunlight. ICFO researchers have been able to implement a semi-transparent cell incorporating a photonic crystal and reach a cell performance almost as good as its opaque counterpart. By adding such extra photonic crystal to the cell, ICFO's scientists were able to increase the amount of infrared and ultraviolet light absorbed by the cell, reaching a 5.6% efficiency while preserving a transparency almost indistinguishable from normal glass. The results in efficiency and transparency make these cells an extremely competitive product for Building-Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) technologies. To reach the adequate architectural look, the color of the cells may be tuned by simply changing the layer configuration of the photonic crystal.
Jordi Martorell, UPC Professor at ICFO and leader of the study, explains that "applications for this type of technology in BIPV are just a few steps away, but the technology has not reached its saturation point yet. ICFO's discovery opens the path for innovation to other industrial applications of transparent photovoltaics. In the midterm we expect to reach the extremely high transparencies and efficiencies needed to power up devices such as displays, tablets, smart phones, etc"
The future looks promising for these devices. A recently approved European project entitled SOLPROCEL will allow a consortium of top European researchers and industries led by ICFO to boost the study of the capabilities of these cells, improving their stability and lifetimes as well as obtaining the material needed to substantially raise their efficiency.
###
Ref: Rafael Betancur, Pablo Romero-Gomez, Alberto Martinez-Otero, Xavier Elias, Marc Maym & Jordi Martorell, Transparent polymer solar cells employing a layered light trapping architecture doi:10.1038/nphoton.2013.276
1: SOLPROCEL: Solution Processed High Performance Transparent Organic Photovoltaic Cells.
About ICFO:
ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences was created in 2002 by the government of Catalonia and the Technical University of Catalonia as a center of research excellence devoted to the science and technologies of light with a triple mission: to conduct frontier research, train the next generation of scientists and technologists, and provide knowledge and technology transfer. In recognition of research excellence, ICFO was granted the prestigious Severo Ochoa accreditation by the Ministry of Science and Innovation and was given the top worldwide position in the Physics category in the "Mapping Scientific Excellence" ranking published in 2013.
Research at ICFO targets the forefront of science and technology based on light with programs directed at applications in Health, Renewable Energies, Information Technologies, Security and Industrial processes, among others. The center currently hosts 300 professionals including researchers and PhD students, working in 60 laboratories. All research groups and facilities are located in a dedicated 14.000 m2 building situated in the Mediterranean Technology Park in the metropolitan area of Barcelona.
Researchers at ICFO publish in the most prestigious journals and collaborate with a wide range of companies around the world. The Corporate Liaison Program at ICFO, which includes members of a large number of local and international companies, aims to create synergies between ICFO and the industrial sector. The institute actively promotes the creation of spin-off companies by ICFO researchers. To date ICFO has helped create 5 start-up companies. The institute participates in a large number of projects and international networks of excellence and is the recipient of generous philanthropic support by Foundation Cellex.
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
This Halloween season, the three big Monsters cereals will be joined by Frute Broot and Fruity Yummy Mummy, which haven't been on the market in decades.
This Halloween season, the three big Monsters cereals will be joined by Frute Broot and Fruity Yummy Mummy, which haven't been on the market in decades.
This Halloween season, the cereal monsters are on the loose. Count Chocula, Boo Berry and Franken Berry have consumers in their grasp — for a limited time only.
The General Mills cereals came out on the market in the early '70s, but the company decided in 2010 they would only be available during the Halloween season.
"That was bad news for some people," says Dan Pashman, host of The Sporkful food podcast.
One of his podcast listeners turned her sister in Tuscan, Ariz., into a "Boo Berry mule" by making her cross the border into Mexico to get the cereal.
A General Mills Monsters cereal commercial from the 1970s.
"This artificial scarcity has kind of galvanized a cult following around this time of year for these cereals," Pashman tells Weekend Edition host Rachel Martin.
This year, Frute Broot and Fruity Yummy Mummy are also making a comeback. Frute Broot (formerly "Fruit Broot") went off the market in 1982; Yummy Mummy was pulled in '92.
The boxes aren't collectors' items — consumers do actually eat them.
"But not all at once," Pashman says. "In fact, a big deal as people hoard them is they always are checking the expiration dates because they want to see how long it's gonna last."
Pashman himself recently purchased a Boo Berry that's doesn't expire until September 2014: "I'm gonna hang on to that 'til supplies are low, and then that's my nest egg right there."
Sweetness aside, the Monsters cereals seem to have made a powerful imprint on parents.
"There really is something about these particular artificial flavors that tap into a very specific sense memory," Pashman says. Sporkful podcast listener Rachel Gonzalez told him:
"It still reminds me of that Saturday morning special treat that you could only eat every once in a while, and it's something now that I get to share with my own daughter ... It's really kind nostalgic and exciting to me."
ATLANTA (AP) — The state that was the first to pass a law prohibiting the execution of mentally disabled death row inmates is revisiting a requirement for defendants to prove the disability beyond a reasonable doubt — the strictest burden of proof in the nation.
A state House committee is holding an out-of-session meeting Thursday to seek input from the public. Other states that impose the death penalty have a lower threshold for proving mental disability, and some don't set standards at all.
Just because lawmakers are holding a meeting does not mean changes to the law will be proposed, and the review absolutely is not a first step toward abolishing Georgia's death penalty, said State Rep. Rich Golick, R-Smyrna, chairman of the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee.
Georgia's law is the strictest in the U.S. even though the state was also the first, in 1988, to pass a law prohibiting the execution of mentally disabled death row inmates. The U.S. Supreme Court followed suit in 2002, ruling that the execution of mentally disabled offenders is unconstitutional.
The Georgia law's toughest-in-the-nation status compels lawmakers to review it, Golick said.
"When you're an outlier, you really ought not to stick your head in the sand," he said. "You need to go ahead and take a good, hard look at what you're doing, why you're doing it, weigh the pros and cons of a change and act accordingly or not."
Thursday's meeting comes against the backdrop of the case of Warren Lee Hill, who was sentenced to die for the 1990 beating death of fellow inmate Joseph Handspike, who was bludgeoned with a nail-studded board as he slept. At the time, Hill was already serving a life sentence for the 1986 slaying of his girlfriend, Myra Wright, who was shot 11 times.
Hill's lawyers have long maintained he is mentally disabled and therefore shouldn't be executed. The state has consistently argued that his lawyers have failed to prove his mental disability beyond a reasonable doubt.
Hill has come within hours of execution on several occasions, most recently in July. Each time, a court has stepped in at the last minute and granted a delay based on challenges raised by his lawyers. Only one of those challenges was related to his mental abilities, and it was later dismissed.
A coalition of groups that advocate for people with developmental disabilities pushed for the upcoming legislative committee meeting and has been working to get Georgia's standard of proof changed to a preponderance of the evidence rather than proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Hill's case has drawn national attention and has shone a spotlight on Georgia's tough standard, they say.
The process has taken an enormous amount of education, said Kathy Keeley, executive director of All About Developmental Disabilities. Rather than opposition to or support for the measure she's pushing, she's mostly encountered a lack of awareness about what the state's law says, she said.
The groups are hoping to not only express their views at the meeting, but also to hear from others to get a broader perspective, Keeley said. The changes should be relatively simple and very narrow in scope, targeting only the burden of proof for death penalty defendants, she said.
Ashley Wright, district attorney for the Augusta district and president of the state District Attorneys' Association, said prosecutors question the logic of changing a law that they don't see as problematic and that has repeatedly been upheld by state and federal courts.
"The district attorneys don't believe that you change a law for no reason and, in this case, the law appears to be working," she said. "Where has a jury done a disservice? Why are we putting all our eggs in the defendant's basket and forgetting that there's a victim?"
Prosecutors agree that the mentally disabled shouldn't be executed, and defendants are frequently spared the death penalty when there is proof of their mental disability supported by appropriate documentation from credible and reliable experts, she said.
But Hill's lawyer, Brian Kammer, argues that psychiatric diagnoses are complex, and "experts who have to make diagnoses do not do so beyond a reasonable doubt, they do it to a reasonable scientific certainty."
Furthermore, he said, disagreements between experts make the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard nearly impossible to meet.
"Even where evidence is otherwise seemingly overwhelming that a person has mental retardation, one dissenting opinion that splits a hair on one or more pieces of evidence can result in that person who's almost certainly mentally retarded being executed," Kammer said.
In Hill's case, a state court judge concluded the defendant was probably mentally disabled. In any other state, that would have spared him the death penalty, Kammer said.
Additionally, three state experts who testified in 2000 that Hill was not mentally disabled submitted sworn statements in February saying they had been rushed in their evaluation at the time. After further review and based on scientific developments since then, they now believe Hill is mentally disabled, they said.
The state has dismissed the doctors' new testimony, saying it isn't credible. And courts have ruled that Hill is procedurally barred from having a new hearing. His lawyers had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case based on the new evidence, but the high court this month declined to take it up. Hill has a challenge on different grounds pending before the Georgia Supreme Court. But he has exhausted his challenges on the mental disability issue, Kammer said.
Even if changes are made to Georgia's law, they will likely not be retroactive and wouldn't apply to Hill, Keeley said.
