Flexible display using OLEDs

In breaking the convention of flat panel displays by replacing them with rollable, flexible, stretchable, bendable, foldable displays, OLEDs has a major role to play. These are tiny Light Emitting Diodes small enough to design flexible panels. Apart from making gadgets more stylish and giving gadget freaks goose bumps; this makes them sort of more wearable. They have been used in Samsung  YOUM, and have a world of possible applications. But a thing that has to be kept in mind that a flexible display does not essentially mean a flexible/bendable phone. Why? ….Simply because apart from making the screen flexible what we need to make a phone flexible is a bendable battery which is not that easier to make.

 

SAMSUNG YOUM flexible display

So candidates like LG G flex and Samsung Galaxy round exist but they are not bendable but “bent”, i.e. they have a permanently bent structure which makes them less prone to breaks, and provides easier handling (God knows how they figure out that a bent phone is easier to handle!)

LG G flex

Moreover LG G flex is not released yet, and Samsung GALAXY round is released is in Korea only, as if the companies know that they won’t be a giant success in the market.

One more rumor surrounded that Samsung is going to release galaxy skin which ultimately turned out to be a concept phone. 

Samsung skin (that turned out to be aconcept phone!)

The youm flexible screen concept by Samsung can only be used to make the screen flexible but the phone will remain stone- hard.

Therefore as long as some nanomaterials like graphene is not extensively researched to provide a corporate model of feasibility; flexible phones are not coming to your hands.

 Coming to the point, what makes an OLED or Organic LED small enough..? 

Unlike a conventional LED which is simply a p-n junction diode in which the wavelength emitted during recombination of hole and electron is in the range of visibility, OLED is a stack of layers of organic polymers which emit light when current flows through it.

It has a cathode, an anode an emissive layer, a conductive layer and two more layers of some transparent material like glass (sometimes a single layer of glass and other layer is of some other opaque material, if it’s an OLED that transmits light only one way.)

These layers can be covered on surfaces and most notably can even be printed using ink-jet printers! This promises that in future they are going to be very economical in building the next generation of televisions.  But until now probably owing to the lack of specialized infrastructure that is there only for LCD or LED screens they cost a bit higher. But still OLED televisions have arrived in the market and are possibly here to stay.  

 

Real Life Applications of the Game Theory

For most of us game theory sounds like some play stuff rather than a serious intellectual science. But the fact that it is something way beyond games and mere empirical estimation is reflected through its extensive use in USA’s controversial anti terror security program the- PRISM. The basic function that the PRISM performs is to accumulate data from numerous data sources sometimes obtained from spying over the internet and keeping a watch on almost everything and everyone which is then fed to a game theory based algorithm that outputs the potential threat zones, Seems like a novel life saving scheme but peeping into embassies and personnel lives has gone wrong and there came the entire Snowden episode.

Game theory estimates the chances of occurrence of an event based on the fact that everyone involved will work for their maximum profit and as long as the parties involved are rational the estimation doesn’t go wrong. Ask Bueno de mesquita the man who works for US government and successfully predicted many political events. Everything is done mathematically and every party involved is given a number according to its say and expected favor. Some matrix or algorithm gives the output which suggests the expected outcome. And interestingly in a significant number of cases the estimation comes out to be correct.

This theory has varied fields of applications like trade, economics, diplomacy, biology etc.

Many companies hire professionals of this field to estimate the quotation they should put on, to snap a tender. The use of this method is swelling up in other related corporate fields including bidding and auctions. Wherever there is competition there is a room for game theory.

An important sub-discipline of economics ‘the behavioral economics’ uses game theory as a tool. Behavioral economics fundamentally deals with behavior of concerned parties that tend to affect their monetary/economic decisions. Everything like procrastination is kept in mind in this particular approach. So without any surprise a great number of Nobel Prize winners in economics are associated with game theory.

Have you seen the popular movie “a beautiful mind” based on Nobel laureate John Nash? ...well Nash is a game theorists and his theory that won him the Nobel the Nash Equilibrium was an important work of game theory.

Mesquita has written many books including a recent one called “the predictioneers game” on the aspects of this theory by which one can prophesize the future. He has made some very interesting predictions also!   

Augmented Reaility

By 2020 almost 50 billion gadgets will be connected to the internet, which means for one person there will be six gadgets on an average. The new IP system ( version 6, if I am correct ) can support even greater number of addresses. With this number of internet enabled devices we are at the doorstep of a future which would leave nothing to our imagination, everything would be known to us, everyone would be connected to the cloud, every place would be reachable.




This is the background for the technology of augmented reality. Augmented reality in contrast with virtual reality doesn't messes up with the physical reality but in a way enhances it. An enhanced physical experience is best explained by the example of google glass, If you view the world through these glasses, they will tag important places, roads, bridges and inform you about the traffic stats of the given place. This is called augmented experience, Now have a look at the tools, techniques and applications associated with this tech.

Augmented Reality: Gadgets and Technologies 

Google glass

google glass

A first of its kind eyeware, google glass has features of internet, GPS, voice commands, camera which enables you to find your roads, see tagged places in front of you and click a photo by just saying 'click'. Currently available for developers only; it will soon be marketised for general public at an expected amount of $750, a high price it seems to me, but its a fair amount considering what we usually pay for the smartest of the smartphones.

Google has well considered to make this gadget lightweight, so its set in a frame that weighs even less than your normal glasses. Corrective lenses aren't used yet but google claims that its not a big deal here. 

The Sixth Sense

A bit more futuristic, this technology is developed by engineers at TED. The Sixth sense uses inexpensive gadgets like a camera, a projector , a smartphone and some colored labels on your fingers.All this to make you capable of projecting the keypad on your hand and use it there only, project the details of a product say a book where ever you find it convenient and know everything about it beforehand. A rather revolutionary idea and at an affordable cost because all these things come in handy now-a-days. 

Conflict minerals 101

Recently a movie directed by a Danish film director Frank Piasecki Poulsen showed the seriousness of problems associated with the use of conflict minerals. Although not known to many, conflict minerals make their way to general electronics because of the highly untraceable nature of their mix-up with the conflict-free minerals. With its flashy trailers the movie made into headlines and stirred the debate whether the electronics giants like Nokia should be held responsible for this issue.

The movie however was criticized by some for specifically targeting Nokia which is no different from other manufacturers, but otherwise what it showed was a harsh truth. 

WHAT ARE CONFLICT MINERALS ?

Minerals that are extracted in the mines operated by conflict groups of DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) are called “conflict minerals”. They are called so because these mines are real hells for the inhabitants of DRC. They are illegal and by no means observe any human right. The workers are paid a meager sum and are forcefully made to live underground for many days. When these mines collapse many of them are buried with them. It is often quoted that this place is least suitable for girls, as thousands of them have been raped in the past years. These conflict groups are anti-government agencies that own most of the mines in DRC by the might of firearms which out power the Congolese government. By selling minerals from these mines these notorious groups are now flourishing and are filling their arsenals with the money they are getting indirectly from electronic manufacturers.

Wearable Gadgets

What are wearable gadgets?

Wearable gadgets as the name suggests are gadgets that can be worn. Many of us might think that they are needless as we already have our smartphones in place. On the contrary they are sure making things hands-free and their applications are justified because your smartphone cannot capture anything that comes into your view by just a voice command like google glasses can do, besides that solar power clothes which can generate electricity to charge your gadgets are definitely an innovation. But this isn't all of it, today everything  like wrist bands, watches, cuff links, shirt buttons, shoes ,T-shirt are going the digital way. They are loaded with features like bluetooth and Wi-Fi connect. Probably it won't be an exaggeration to expect voice controlled shirt buttons and bluetooth enabled trouser zippers too. However for the latter two technologies, I don't know if they really exist but if they do than they are a sure nomination for the Ig Noble prize.

 Let's have a look at some of these technologies that really exist :


Smartwatches



Although isn't every wirst watch whether digital or not is a wearable gadget itself ? But here we are not talking about the mechanical watches powered by quartz crystal as with the coming of smartphones they are mere showpieces and

Nanoelectronics- Nanotechnology in electronics

The quest to find a worthy successor for the C-MOS has emerged out to what is known as nanoelectronics. Many research groups, universities, organizations (like DARPA)and companies like intel and IBM are engaged in developing a technology that is compact enough to make the chips even smaller without compromising with the cost and power efficiency. The Moore’s law which is now a standard for development pace in the electronics industry states that in every 18 months the number of transistors will double on a chip, but as we have reached the limit of resizing the MOSFET; what’s required is a new technology that can be implemented on a chip for ensuring continuous pace in the processor speeds.

 Broadly speaking nanoelectronics may refer to as many as dozens of these approaches to replace the existing MOSFET technology plus the other applications of nanotechnology in advancing the present electronic devices.

Evolution of High Performance Computing

High Performance computing is just another term for what we usually call 'Supercomputing'. Supercomputers are essentially  high speed performance machines which deliver what cannot be extracted out of ordinary functional computers, Their super capabilities are a result of a network of processing units working in a coordination to achieve the result of desired operation, There are two ways of getting this: first one is to use many machines connected to a network and work is distributed to them using a main server ( Distributed computing), The second one is to cluster as many units as you need in one place and then make them perform cohesively . The latter approach is more commonly used because connecting several nodes to a network distributed over a wide area adds to time and cost factors.

So many of us might imagine that developing a supercomputer is as simple as connecting a lot of processors and controlling them using a master computer, You can do this but only if you can deliver so much power and control the massive heat emission released by the CPUs.