WORLD OIL

WORLD OIL

There is a need to accelerate the development of alternative energy fuel resources in order to ensure energy security and reduce emissions, says a paper just published in the journal Energy Policy.

The age of cheap oil has now ended as demand starts to outstrip supply as we head towards the middle of the decade, says the report. It goes on to suggest that the current oil reserve estimates should be downgraded from between 1150-1350 billion barrels to between 850-900 billion barrels, based on recent research. But how can potential oil shortages be mitigated?

Dr Oliver Inderwildi, Head of the Low Carbon Mobility centre at the Smith School, said: 'The common belief that alternative fuels such as biofuels could mitigate oil supply shortages and eventually replace fossil fuels is pie in the sky. There is not sufficient land to cater for both food and fuel demand. Instead of relying on those silver bullet solutions, we have to make better use of the remaining resources by improving energy efficiency. Alternatives such as a hydrogen economy and electric transportation are not mature and will only play a major role in the medium to long term.'

Nick Owen, from the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, added: 'Significant oil supply challenges will be compounded in the near future by rising demand and strengthening environmental policy. Mitigating the oil crunch without using lower grade resources such as tar sands is the key to maintaining energy stability and a low carbon future.'

The Smith School paper also highlights that in the past, political and financial objectives have led to misreporting of oil reserves, which has led to contradictory estimates of oil reserve data available in the public domain.

Sir David King, Director of the Smith School, commented: 'We have to face up to a future of oil uncertainty much like the global economic uncertainty we have faced during the past two years. This challenge will have a longer term effect on our economies unless swift action is taken by governments and business. We all recognise that oil is a finite resource. We need to look at other low carbon alternatives and make the necessary funding available for research, development and deployment today if we are to mitigate the tipping point.'

The report also raises the worrying issue that additional demand for oil could be met by non-conventional methods, such as the extraction of oil from Canada's tar sands. However, these methods have a far higher carbon output than conventional drilling, and have been described as having a double impact on emissions owing to the emissions produced during extraction as well as during usage.

Wii Fit Push Up Bars

Wii Fit Push Up Bars

The Wii balance board has long been in need for a useful addon, and this push-up bar is meant to deliver just that.

Unfortunately, this set of bars are extremely vulnerable, being held in place using your weight alone and a couple of cheap foam strips acting as "grips" which essentially don't do much gripping at all.

The design is sloppy and cheap looking and any significant pressure on the bar will result in it falling to pieces.

The bar fits onto your existing balance board and is compatible with Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus.

The $25 CTA Digital Wii Push Up Bar does, however, offer us the chance to look at the following video which is just about as cringe worthy as the product itself.

Barcode

Barcode

Perhaps one of the most under rated inventions belongs to the barcode. Barcodes aren't given much thought by the majority of consumers, but these codes were fairly recently implemented, in a working fashion, in 1970.

A small food store owner decided one day that keeping records of the inventory of his stock and their associated prices was an extremely laborious process and so, in 1948, he took it upon himself to contact The Drexel Institute of Technology in a bid to work towards a feasible solution. Bernard Silver rose to the challenge and set out to investigate this problem, and began working on a solution involving an automatic way of keeping track of items which had been sold.

Bernard Silver and a group of students from the institute realised their answer in the form of ultraviolet rays, ink and a scanner.The system did work initially, but possessed two major negatives. The system was incredibly costly making implementation on a large scale much more economically draining and the system was also notorious as being unstable.

If the invention was to become commonplace in grocery stores, these two problems had to be ironed out to provide a more viable solution.The patent for the bar code system was filed by Silver and one of his students, Woodland. The patent was not granted immediately; in fact it took three years for the patent agency to grant their invention patent for the bar code, occurring on 7th October, 1952.

The invention of the barcode is patent number 2,612,994, Classifying Apparatus and Method, the official title of the patent.Despite this patent being issued, the system was still not welcomed by the majority of store owners. It wasn't until 1966, that the system began creeping its way into more and more grocery stores. This system was soon criticised, as there was no central mechanism for controlling uniformly coded items. In 1970, Logicorn developed Universal Grocery Products Identification code (UGPIC), soon shortened to Universal Identification Number (UPC). It was Marsh's superstore in Troy, which was the very first store to install this sophisticated barcode reading system and its popularity has soared ever since, obviously now commonplace in all types of stores worldwide.

The first product to have ever been added to the barcode system was a pack of Wrigley's chewing gum.The invention of the bar code may not appear as complex, ground breaking, or as revolutionary as many other inventions, but few have been as understated, yet so effectively time-saving, efficient and manageable.

Internet

Internet

The Internet is something which many of us now take for granted, but the invention of the Internet, is still recent. The Internet is essentially a network connecting thousands of smaller networks into a single global network.

The Internet model and the Transmission Control Protocols used to implement the idea were developed in 1973 by Vinton Cerf, an American computer scientist. His project was backed by the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), directed by Robert Khan, an American engineer.

The Internet initially was used to connect University networks and research labs within the United States.

The World Wide Web, as we now know it, was developed in 1989 by Timothy Berners-Lee, an English scientist, for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)."The design of the Internet was done in 1973 and published in 1974. There ensued about 10 years of hard work, resulting in the roll out of Internet in 1983. Prior to that, a number of demonstrations were made of the technology - such as the first three-network interconnection demonstrated in November 1977 linking SATNET, PRNET and ARPANET in a path leading from Menlo Park, CA to University College London and back to USC/ISI in Marina del Rey, CA." . - Vinton CerfThe Internet is better described as an interconnection of various computer networks which enable each connected machine to communicate directly.

Smaller Internets exist, called Intranets, which are typically used within a single organisation.The Internet grew to phenomenal levels over a short period of time. In 1996, more than 25 million computers had been connected to the Internet across 180 different countries.

The Internet makes use of gateways to connect separate networks to a single network. Gateway interconnections are established across telephone lines, optical fibres and radio links. New networks can be added by welcoming new gateways into the network. Data sent from one machine is tagged, using a unique address which identifies that particular machine, and to ensure the information is sent to the correct destination.

Addressing is crucial to the success of the Internet and commonly uses the dotted decimal approach, for example 168.124.1.0. This address is often associated with a web address, with the numeric address and the URL paired up in an addressing table, to eradicate the need to remember number strings. Once data is sent from one machine, the data travels from gateway to gateway until it reaches the network belonging to the destination machine.

The Internet has no central repository, and therefore is unique in its methodology.The Internet Protocol is a key element to a successful Internet. The Internet Protocol determines how a gateway receives a request and what to do with that request once received. The Transmission Control Protocol then verifies that the information has been sent and received successfully, allowing the data to be re-sent if an error occurs during transmission.The Internet has changed our world bringing a wealth of information to our fingertips.

The sharing of information has accelerated with the introduction of the Internet, with new, fresh content accessible second after second. More applications are being introduced to the Internet, and with the rising popularity of Internet enabled phones, the Internet will only continue to grow at a tremendous rate opening up thousands more opportunities to all of us.

The invention of the Internet is indeed, one of the most recent revolutionary inventions which have been a major success and welcome addition to our world.