UBC researchers find new substance that could impact perfume industry

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UBC researchers find new substance that could impact perfume industry

April 6, 2012. 3:45 pm • Section: Live@5, Opinion

A team of researchers at the University of British Columbia have identified a gene in balsam fir trees that produces a fixative very similar to a mixture of seashells, fish bones and sticky inner-stomach substance that sperm whales regurgitate.
The compound is a key ingredient in high-end scents and the find could have a big impact on the perfume, fashion and advertising industries.
The promotional possibilities are endless…how about: “Synthetic Whale Vomit presents The Real Housewives of Vancouver”?

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Good Friday in Victoria, Australia…

Hamilton Janitorial - Hamilton Janitorial Services

Phone: (250) 264-7052 Email: Website: www.hamiltonjanitorial.com Hamilton Janitorial Services in Fort St. John

From 8:30-9:30 p.m. Saturday, March 31, Fort St. John residents were encouraged to switch off their lights in suppport of Earth Hour/ Photo: Flickr User Woodleywonderworks

Image: Flickr Creative Commons

Updated 1 day 10 hours ago.

Peace Region energy use up during Earth Hour

Despite a global effort to reduce energy use during Earth Hour Saturday, consumption in both Fort St. John and Dawson Creek increased from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. B.C. Hydro spokesperson Jennifer Young says both cities reported negative results, with Fort St. John increasing usage by .93 per cent and Dawson Creek by .6 per cent.

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She says there could be many reasons why there was an increase in power usage.

"There are many factors that will affect people’s consumption and thus the savings for earth hour," she explains. "For example: weather, major events, and large industrial customers will all affect the load for a substation and individual municipality."

Last year Fort St. John saved 1.38 per cent, while 2010 saw an increase like this year. Northern Environmental Action Team's Karen Mason-Bennett says this year was simply bad timing. NEAT was out of town for the weekend at the trade show in Chetwynd, and there was no concentrated effort on Earth Hour participation this year. She also explains that the nature of industry in our town makes it difficult to regulate energy use.

"If they put an extra shift on at the Canfor plant, it will negate whatever efforts that residents put in, basically," she suggests. "You have to understand how the whole community works on an electricity basis."

Regardless, she says the message of Earth Hour is something that should continued throughout the year.

"I think it's a pretty good habit to get into," she says. "You don't need to have every light in your house on while you're watching TV. Just thinking about all of the extraneous stuff that's on all of the time is more of the point than sitting in the dark."

Despite negative results in Dawson Creek and Fort St. John, Mason-Bennett says there were two wine and cheese events in Chetwynd and Fort Nelson that were successful. Tumbler Ridge increased usage by .96 per cent, Taylor by .9 per cent and Fort Nelson by .89 per cent. No data is available for Hudson's Hope or Chetwynd. Overall, the province saved 121 megawatt hours of electricity and reduced the provincial electricity load by 1.67 per cent.

Laptop scheme a scam? 

Salahudin safdar , 

Tuesday, 3 Apr 2012 

 

LAHORE - As the laptop distribution continues on various campuses of Lahore, the beneficiaries of this scheme flock the IT markets for laptop related services including operating system changes and software installations.
The walls and notice boards in educational campuses are flooded with the advertisements like “Install Windows on your laptop”, “Get MS Office and Windows Media Player”. The laptops are given with Linux-based operating system Ubuntu installed on it. Even the operating systems installed have upgraded versions available easily but the laptops came by default with Ubuntu 10.10 version while currently Ubuntu 12.04 is being used. However unfamiliarity of students with Linux-based OS has created a hoax amongst them and they are shifting to Microsoft Operating Systems Windows 7 or XP. Educational campuses surveys disclose that the rate of Windows installation is varied across institutes and ranges between Rs 150 and Rs 500. Similarly, in IT markets, the price for similar services varies from Rs 200 to Rs 500, while licensed versions of Windows 7 Professional installation costs some Rs 12,000 to Rs 13,000 per laptop.
Contrary to these genuine softwares, their pirated versions are easily available on a Rs 50 DVD. Students usually cannot afford that much prices while at the same time they fear the pirated versions may harm their laptops that is why they prefer to get the windows installed from IT experts.
A Pakistan Today survey showed mostly people advertising their services use these pirated versions and are earning quite a good bit of money out of it.
Yumna Munir, a student of Hailey College of Commerce, said that she had got Windows installed by a person who had placed an ad on her college’s notice board for Rs 500. The advertiser fooled the young lady by claiming that he had installed the genuine Windows 7 on her laptop that she recently got through the Punjab Chief Minister’s Free Laptop Scheme. An advertisement near M.A.O College reads “Get Windows 7 or XP for Rs 500 with full drivers and softwares on Shahbaz Sharif’s Laptops”. The advertisement states the service would be provided at door step.
Following the package details, there were written two cell phone numbers to contact for hiring the service. IT gurus point out that the Punjab government smartly tried to comply with the intellectual property rights by offering free laptops with pre-installed Linux-based open source operating system, Ubuntu. But the government should understand that in Pakistan IT growth is based on Microsoft led products, like Windows and Office applications, they maintained. Commenting on the Chief Minister Laptop scheme hardware, IT wizards indicate that though the machine processor is relatively based on new technology, it is slower than the latest iSeries processors. They point out that Dell Inspiron, the laptop given to students, is equipped with Intel Pentium B950 dual-core processor, which is designed for entry-level machines. Though, it is based on Sandy Bridge architecture, but many of the features, like Turbo Boost for the CPU part, Hyper Threading, AES, Virtualization (VT-x and VT-d), Trusted Execution or Intel Quick Sync, are deactivated.
A simple web search on Google also presents a similar picture about the laptops.
A processor benchmarking website (cpubenchmark.net) reveals that the processor installed in the Dell Inspiron n4050 is the most sluggish processor available in the market. The benchmark chart topper common CPUs indicates that the processor these laptops hhave in them, Intel Pentium B950 2.10GHz, is slower from most common processors, Corei5-2400, Core i7870, AMD Phenom II X6, Corei7-2630QM, Corei7 950, Core i7 960, Core i5-2500K, Core i7-2670!M, Core i7-2600 and Core i7-2600K.

The Week’s Best Robot Videos: Bots Fight It Out and Patrol the Seas

The Week’s Best Robot Videos: Bots Fight It Out and Patrol the Seas

By Adam Sneed
| Posted Friday, March 30, 2012,

This week, robots jump, swim, and fight for our attention.

The Flea Bot

Sand Flea Jumping Robot

For rolling bots, a curb, rock, or stair can put a damper on any travel plans. But even a building can’t stop Sand Flea, the jumping rover from Boston Dynamics. The robot is based on an earlier project that Boston Dynamics worked on with Sandia Labs, though it doesn’t look like this version can jump while moving. Sand Flea uses an angling mechanism and a CO₂-powered piston to launch itself into the air, showing no difficulty in jumping onto a roof and falling back down to the ground. The robot was developed for use in Afghanistan, where it could send video from behind walls and inside buildings that might be dangerous for humans to enter.

Via IEEE Spectrum.

Apple’s iPad hits snag over 4G claims overseas

View Photo Gallery — The new iPad: Reasons you should and shouldn’t buy it: Here are five reasons to buy — and not to buy — Apple’s latest iPad, according to Washington Post tech blogger Hayley Tsukayama.

By Hayley Tsukayama, Thursday, March 29, 5:08 AM

Following allegations by an Australian agency that Apple’s advertising deceived people into thinking its new iPad could run on all 4G networks, the company has said that it will offer refunds to any iPad buyers who believe they have been misled. The flap is the latest in a series of glitches involving the new iPad since it went on sale March 16.According to a report from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission told a federal court that Apple had not heeded warnings from the consumer watchdog that it was misleading consumers.

In court, the report said, Apple said that it never claimed that the device would work on Australia’s 4G networks, which are run by the telecom company Telstra. The iPad is compatible with what is known as “4G” in the United States — the LTE networks of Verizon and AT&T — but does not work with the LTE networks in Australia. The networks operate on different frequencies.According to a report from Fox News, Apple lawyer Paul Anastassiou said, “At no point in any promotional material for which Apple was responsible has Apple said at any time that the new Apple device is compatible” with Telstra 4G. He continued, “No such representation in our submission is conveyed by the use of the acronym 4G in the name of the device. . . . Prior to the launch of the product there was significant press pointing out that the device is not compatible with the Telstra 4G LTE network.”
In addition to granting refunds, the company agreed to post statements at points of sale to make it “plain that there is no claim made in relation to the device that it is capable of connecting with the Telstra 4G LTE network.”
Since the iPad’s debut two weeks ago, some consumers have complained about how rapidly the device drives up charges on wireless data plans and about its tendency to heat up while in use.
Other countries have also raised concerns about the way Apple is marketing the tablet’s “WiFi + 4G” model. Regulators in Sweden said that they have received several complaints about the tablet, the Wall Street Journal reported, and a lawyer at the Swedish Consumer Agency said the agency is considering an investigation. British regulators at the Advertising Standards Authority told the Daily Mail that the authority is assessing complaints about Apple’s decision to market the device in Britain, where there are no 4G networks.
The 4G LTE feature was one of the main additions to the new iPad, and although there are no compatibility issues in the United States, consumers have reported that they’ve blown through their data plans quickly in the two weeks since the iPad went on sale, The Washington Post reported.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on regulator concerns in Australia, Sweden and Britain.

Foxconn hiring points to summer iPhone 5, report says

By Hayley Tsukayama, Published: March 27

A report from M.I.C. Gadget mentions that Foxconn is in the midst of a hiring drive for production of the iPhone 5, causing some to speculate that the next iPhone will be coming in June, instead of in the fall.
Apple reworked its iPhone release schedule to show off its newest iteration in the fall instead of the summer, and it seems unlikely — no matter who’s hiring — that the company would cut the product life of its most successful iPhone to date.

That said, it’s Apple and if the company is planning a total refresh for its next iPhone — which, if it follows in the footsteps of the iPad, will be called the “new iPhone” — it may decide to unveil the handset at its Worldwide Developers Conference. Most people expect that the next iPhone will have the same LTE technology that’s currently in the iPad and have also revived rumors that it will have near-field technology that will allow users to do things such as pay or quickly exchange contact information with their phones.
While the rumors about production on the iPhone 5 are drawing attention, news of the recruitment drive actually came from the end of a report about workers at Foxconn’s plant in the Shanxi Province who are striking because of a pay dispute. According to a report from the Taiwanese publication Want China Times, workers were told all employees would get a pay raise, but walked out when only managers and technicians received a pay raise.
Foxconn has long been criticized for its working conditions, and the upheaval could also explain why the company is looking to hire. The company is one of Apple’s largest suppliers and was one the first companies in the iPhone-maker’s supply chain to be audited by the Fair Labor Association. The FLA’s first report is expected sometime before the end of March.

New iPad’s screen has to be seen to be believed

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New iPad’s screen has to be seen to be believed

omar el akkad

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Mar. 16, 2012 3:40PM EDT

It gets lonely at the top.
Apple’s new iPad – cleverly named “The New iPad” – hit store shelves on Friday, prompting the now-familiar frenzy of early-morning diehards who wait for hours in line to get their hands on the gadget. Like the original iPad and the iPad 2, the newest iteration of the world’s most popular tablet is by far the best device of its kind on the market – from its sleek, minimalist design to the breadth of the App Store.

Dell XPS 14z U561111AU Ultraportable with allrounder versatility

Dell XPS 14z U561111AU
Ultraportable with allrounder versatility

About the Dell XPS 14z U561111AU - (Price $1,498.00)

The XPS 14z is one of Dell’s premium ultraportables, and it has a pretty impressive set of specs given how light it is.

Sure, $1,498 isn’t exactly a low price but ultimately the 14in Dell XPS 14z U561111AU has a strong set of specs overall. While the dedicated graphics card is a tad low-end, the combination of a 2nd Gen Intel Core i7 and 8GB of RAM make the XPS 14z suitable for a wide variety of intensive software. Its portability is certainly good considering the computing power, as it weighs only 1.98kg and measures just 23mm thick.

Processor
The XPS 14z features a 2nd Gen Intel Core i7-2640M (2.8GHz), a high-end dual-core processor that will have no difficulties with demanding software like video encoders. It can burst up to 3.5GHz using Turbo Boost 2.0 Technology if a particularly demanding program is running.

Graphics
It comes with a dedicated graphics card called the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M. It’s a low-end one that is enough for modern games at low settings.

RAM
8GB of RAM is enough to either run many programs at once fluidly or run very intensive image and video editing software.

Storage
A large 750GB hard disk drive provides plenty of room for a reasonably large collection of files including movies and music.

Screen
The XPS 14z sports a 14in (1,366 x 768 resolution) gloss screen. The gloss screen should have better colour richness when compared to a matte screen, but the reflectiveness will make it a bit difficult to use in direct sunlight.

Portability
The XPS 14z has good portability, because it weighs 1.98kg and is 23mm thick. It’ll be very easy to carry around.

Client exodus to push BlackBerry fees down

 

 Research In Motion (RIM) will be forced to slash the fees it charges carriers for BlackBerry service this year, an analyst said on Monday as another United States government customer edged away from the service, cutting into a pillar of the struggling smartphone company's business model. -- PHOTO: AP



(REUTERS) - Research In Motion (RIM) will be forced to slash the fees it charges carriers for BlackBerry service this year, an analyst said on Monday as another United States (US) government customer edged away from the service, cutting into a pillar of the struggling smartphone company's business model.

RIM runs its own network infrastructure, enabling it to encrypt, compress and push data to BlackBerry phones via a cellular network. The Canadian company brought in almost US$1 billion (S$1.2 billion) from this high-margin service last quarter, one-fifth of its total sales.
But a second US government agency in as many months, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), said on Monday it would remove its BlackBerry servers in favour of a nimbler alternative that offers support for a wider variety of devices.
According to Northern Securities analyst Sameet Kanade, RIM - once the only option for secure mobile communication - has moved too slowly to counter the threat posed as companies and governments increasingly allow employees to use their own mobile devices for work. Meanwhile, carriers have soured on paying the BlackBerry service's fee, he said.