Is Your Hard Drive Crash Proof?

Its just a matter of time before you experience a hard drive problem. Are you prepared to loose your data? If your hard drive crashed right now do you have an action plan to follow?

Most people only think of backing up their data after they experience a problem. Don't set yourself up for a data loss disaster.

Your data integrity action plan should consist of the following:

1) How often you will back up your data

2) What data you will back up

3) What back up procedure you will use

How often you back up your data can only be determined by how important you feel it is. Answer this question "If my hard drive crashed right now, I would be alright if I had the data from at least (time) ago".

Of course you would want everything but if you could have the data from 1 month, or 6 months ago would that be sufficient? Whatever time is sufficient mark it on your calendar both a hard copy and set up a meeting on your PC to remind you.

You change your smoke detector batteries when you turn your clock back and when you turn it ahead right? Well back up your data then too.

If you don't change your clocks then pick some holidays or special dates that happen close to the timeframe you want to back up your data so you won't forget.

What data you back up depends on how you use your PC. Some of the key directories, if you are using Windows, are the My Documents, Favorites and Desktop directories.

Remember if you are using multiple profiles on your PC then the three directories above can be different for each profile and each one would need to be backed up.

You will also want to include your email data. Don't forget to write down the email accounts you have. You should also write down any username and passwords so they are not lost. You should look at every directory to see if it has information that you would need.

Make a list of all the software programs you are using. If you have the physical CDs put them all together in a safe location.

Don't forget the CDs for your peripherals like your scanner, digital camera, PDA etc… Collecting these CDs may remind you of additional data that you need to back up.

If you are running software that you installed from downloaded files, burn them to a CD-R and add it to your collection. If you use a CD-R or DVD-R you can update it as you download and install new applications.

What procedure you use to back up your data can be determined by the amount of data you want to back up. Your data might fit onto a CD or DVD in which case you just need to burn it and you're done.

If it spans multiple DVDs then you might want to consider getting a second hard drive to copy your data onto. If you are not comfortable with adding a second internal hard drive or you are using a laptop then you can purchase an external hard drive to back up your data.

The information you have on your hard drive could disappear in a flash. If you don't want to spend up to $3,000 to have a data recovery company retrieve what information they can from your hard drive, then take a few minutes right now and create your back up action plan.

If you ever have a data emergency your action plan will be your insurance policy. If you adhere to it, your valuable data will adhere to you!

How Does VOIP Work

VoIP was originally developed to provide voice communication between computer users in different locations. Although it still has this application, it has been further developed into a telephone network in its own right. People using VoIP can call any telephone anywhere in the world and can receive calls on telephone sets connected to the Internet or Local Area Network (LAN).

Background

It all started back in 1995 when Israeli computer enthusiasts made the first computer to computer voice connection. In the same year this technology was developed into a software package called Internet Phone Software. All that was needed to talk to another computer user was a modem, sound card, speakers, and a microphone.

The software digitized and compressed the audio signal before sending it over the Internet in data packets. These voice connections could only occur between computers which had the software installed. The sound quality was very poor -- nowhere near the quality of standard telephone connections.

The technology continued to be developed and by 1998 gateways had been established to allow PC-to-phone connections. Later that same year phone-to-phone connections that used the Internet for voice transmission were set in place. These phone-to-phone connections still required a computer to initiate the call, but once the connection was established, the callers could use a regular phone set.

VoIP Today

There are currently many VoIP services available for residential and commercial use. Some of these still rely on PC-to-PC connections but may offer other services such as PC-to-phone and phone-to-phone.

Internet phones are available that plug into the sound card or USB port of a computer. These phones may have number pads and ringers that allow you to use them the same as traditional telephones. The computer can be bypassed completely by connecting a phone directly to a broadband modem (either DSL or cable).

How Does It Work?

The first step in using VoIP is converting your voice into digital data. This is done by 'sampling' your voice -- dividing the analog sound signal into discrete steps that can be assigned a number value. Once your voice is digitized, the data can be compressed.

This compressed digital data is split up into 'packets' of about 1500 bytes that can be transferred over the Internet. As well as the voice data, the packets contain information about their origin, their destination, and a timestamp that allows them to be reconstructed in the correct order. Once they arrive at their destination, they are reassembled and converted from digital back into analog so that the receiving party can hear your voice.

In order for voice data to be transmitted without noticeable delays, a broadband Internet connection is necessary. Many households and businesses are already using broadband (either DSL or cable) so adding VoIP is relatively simple.

Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming

This post is a new 'basic' level rebuttal of the myth: "There is no actual empirical evidence that carbon dioxide emissions are causing global warming."

What the Science Says: Less energy is escaping to space. Carbon dioxide (CO2) acts like a blanket; adding more CO2 makes the 'blanket' thicker

It is the Earth’s atmosphere that makes most life possible. To understand this, we can look at the moon. On the surface, the moon’s temperature during daytime can reach 100°C (212°F). At night, it can plunge to minus 173°C, or -279.4°F. In comparison, the coldest temperature on Earth was recorded in Antarctica: −89.2°C (−128.6°F). The hottest was in Libya, where a temperature 58°C (136.4°F) was measured in 1922.

Man could not survive in the temperatures on the moon, even if there was air to breathe. Humans, plants and animals can’t tolerate the extremes of temperature on Earth unless they evolve special ways to deal with the heat or the cold. Nearly all life on Earth lives in areas that are more hospitable, where temperatures are far less extreme.

Yet the Earth and the moon are virtually the same distance from the sun, so why do we experience much less heat and cold than the moon? The answer is because of our atmosphere. The moon doesn’t have one, so it is exposed to the full strength of energy coming from the sun. At night, temperatures plunge because there is no atmosphere to keep the heat in, as there is on Earth.

The Earth is wrapped in an invisible blanket

The laws of physics tell us that without the atmosphere, the Earth would be approximately 33°C (59.4°F) cooler than it actually is.

This would make most of the surface uninhabitable for humans. Agriculture as we know it would be more or less impossible if the average temperature was This would make most of the surface uninhabitable for humans. Agriculture as we know it would be more or less impossible if the average temperature was −18 °C. In other words, it would be freezing cold even at the height of summer.

The reason that the Earth is warm enough to sustain life is because of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These gases act like a blanket, keeping the Earth warm by preventing some of the sun’s energy being re-radiated into space. The effect is exactly the same as wrapping yourself in a blanket – it reduces heat loss from your body and keeps you warm.

If we add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, the effect is like wrapping yourself in a thicker blanket: even less heat is lost. So how can we tell what effect CO2 is having on temperatures, and if the increase in atmospheric CO2 is really making the planet warmer?

One way of measuring the effect of CO2 is by using satellites to compare how much energy is arriving from the sun, and how much is leaving the Earth. What scientists have seen over the last few decades is a gradual decrease in the amount of energy being re-radiated back into space. In the same period, the amount of energy arriving from the sun has not changed very much at all. This is the first piece of evidence: more energy is remaining in the atmosphere.

 

[caption id="attachment_158" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Total Earth Heat Content from 1950 (Murphy 2009). Ocean data taken from Domingues et al 2008.[/caption]

 

What can keep the energy in the atmosphere? The answer is greenhouse gases. Science has known about the effect of certain gases for over a century. They ‘capture’ energy, and then emit it in random directions. The primary greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CO4), water vapour, nitrous oxide and ozone – comprise around 1% of the air.

This tiny amount has a very powerful effect, keeping the planet 30°C (54°F) warmer than it would be without them. (The main components of the atmosphere – nitrogen and oxygen – are not greenhouse gases, because they are virtually unaffected by long-wave, or infrared, radiation). This is the second piece of evidence: a provable mechanism by which energy can be trapped in the atmosphere.

For our next piece of evidence, we must look at the amount of CO2 in the air. We know from bubbles of air trapped in ice cores that before the industrial revolution, the amount of CO2 in the air was approximately 280 parts per million (ppm). In June 2013, the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory in Hawaii announced that, for the first time in thousands of years, the amount of CO2 in the air had gone up to 400ppm. That information gives us the next piece of evidence; CO2 has increased by nearly 43% in the last 150 years.

[caption id="attachment_159" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Atmospheric CO2 levels (Green is Law Dome ice core, Blue is Mauna Loa, Hawaii) and Cumulative CO2 emissions (CDIAC). While atmospheric CO2 levels are usually expressed in parts per million, here they are displayed as the amount of CO2 residing in the atmosphere in gigatonnes. CO2 emissions includes fossil fuel emissions, cement production and emissions from gas flaring.[/caption]

The Smoking Gun

The final piece of evidence is ‘the smoking gun’, the proof that CO2 is causing the increases in temperature. CO2 traps energy at very specific wavelengths, while other greenhouse gases trap different wavelengths.  In physics, these wavelengths can be measured using a technique called spectroscopy. Here’s an example:

 

[caption id="attachment_160" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Spectrum of the greenhouse radiation measured at the surface. Greenhouse effect from water vapor is filtered out, showing the contributions of other greenhouse gases (Evans 2006).[/caption]

The graph shows different wavelengths of energy, measured at the Earth’s surface. Among the spikes you can see energy being radiated back to Earth by ozone (O3), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N20). But the spike for CO2 on the left dwarfs all the other greenhouse gases, and tells us something very important: most of the energy being trapped in the atmosphere corresponds exactly to the wavelength of energy captured by CO2.

Summing Up

Like a detective story, first you need a victim, in this case the planet Earth:more energy is remaining in the atmosphere.

Then you need a method, and ask how the energy could be made to remain. For that, you need a provable mechanism by which energy can be trapped in the atmosphere, and greenhouse gases provide that mechanism.

Next, you need a ‘motive’. Why has this happened? Because CO2 has increased by nearly 50% in the last 150 years.

And finally, the smoking gun, the evidence that proves ‘whodunit’: energy being trapped in the atmosphere corresponds exactly to the wavelengths of energy captured by CO2

The last point is what places CO2 at the scene of the crime. The investigation by science builds up empirical evidence that proves, step by step, that man-made carbon dioxide is causing the Earth to warm up.

Posted on 9 July 2013 by gpwayne

This article, Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming, is syndicated fromSkeptical Science and is posted here with permission

 

 

A Green Alternative That Might Just Save the Planet

"It's best to get it out of the water now or it'll start getting grazed by the little beasties," says Lars Brunner as he hauls 50 kg (110 pounds) of glistening, translucent kelp from the dark waters of the Sound of Kerrera into the boat. The long summer days mean the seaweed is rapidly storing up sugars, which snails and barnacles find delicious.

"You can eat it, but whether it tastes good is debatable," says Brunner. He is also after the sugars, but for a different reason. His work at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (Sams), with parallel projects in Ireland and Norway, is part of a growing worldwide effort aiming to turn the centuries-old seaweed industry into a major source of environmentally friendly biofuels.

The seaweed is farmed in a picture-perfect sea fjord that once hosted a fish farm, near Oban in Argyll, where craggy, green hills overlook the loch. "It's a very good site," says Brunner. "It has really nice currents; the seaweed needs the water to flow over the blades so they can capture the nutrients they need."

Many millions of pounds are being invested in seaweed research from Vietnam to Israel to Chile because producing biofuels in the sea removes at a stroke many of the serious problems with conventional biofuels. Though important as greener alternatives to oil, many biofuels are produced from food crops, such as corn and sugar, which drives up global prices in a world where a billion people are already hungry. Biofuel production also consumes increasingly scarce freshwater and the worst examples — those from palm oil — can produce more carbon dioxide than diesel.

"Seaweed does not have any of those problems," says Phil Kerrison, another marine scientist, back at the Sams labs. Seaweed farming has even been shown to clean up the pollution from fish farms and kelp grows far more quickly than land plants, turning sunlight into chemical energy five times more efficiently.

 "Modern cars can already take 10 percent ethanol, so you already have a way of using it and you are already filling up cars with biodiesel from land crops, so why not seaweed?" Many see huge potential, with the UK government already including up to 4,700 sq km (1,814 sq miles) of seaweed farming cultivation in its future energy scenarios and another study finding it could in theory supply the world's needs several times over. Seaweed can be used to produce ethanol, which can be mixed with petrol, or methane, the main component of the natural gas heating the UK's homes.

But despite 1,000 years of seaweed cultivation, largely in Asia, it remains a labor-intensive industry. Twine has to be impregnated with millimetrer-sized seaweed embryos then wound around ropes. After a growing season in the water, it is harvested by hand. Oban has a history of seaweed industry: there used to be a large factory a few miles up the coast at Barcaldine that ran 24 hours a day and bussed in workers from all around. It produced alginate, a common thickener in ice cream and other food, until cheap imports killed the business.

"This new interest is like the wheel coming around again," says John Keeney, skipper of the Sams boat and a former fish farmer and harbourmaster. Roderick McEachen, who runs the local ferry, agrees. Pointing over the water to the white farmhouse he was born in, he says: "They used to use seaweed to grow potatoes; it was ideal."

Seaweed is also used to produce vitamin supplements — the huge Chinese industry was founded to provide iodine to the country's swelling population — as well as cosmetics, plastics and animal feed. These multiple uses could help solve seaweed's biggest barrier to a biofuels breakthrough, says Kerrison. "The main challenge is making the costs low enough, although they are continuously going down because research is going on all over the world. But if you can extract an expensive product first, then do the biofuel, you get a double whammy that helps the economics." Other advances being worked on include mechanizing seaweed production and using the base of offshore wind turbines as growing sites.

There are other potential barriers, including the fact that most common microbes do not ferment the special sugars in seaweed very well. But in 2012, a Californian firm produced genetically modified bacterium that can produce about 1kg (2.2 pounds) of ethanol from 3kg (6.6 pounds) of dried seaweed. Other research in the area involves harvesting bacteria from the droppings of the sheep on the Scottish island of North Ronaldsay, which thrive on an almost exclusive diet of seaweed.

The environmental impact of large-scale seaweed farming is also being investigated but appears as likely to be positive as negative. Some phytoplankton may be outcompeted for nutrients, but the swathes of kelp may provide hatcheries for fish and compounds seaweed gives off in summer could sink and trap climate-warming carbon on the seabed.

Professor Mike Cowling, chief scientist at the Crown Estate, which controls leases of the UK seafloor, is cautiously optimistic. "It is on the threshold of taking off," he says. Seaweed farms covering 15,000 sq km (5,791 sq miles) of UK water could be in operation by 2050. But he says the seasonality of the growing season is a challenge.

Professor Laurence Mee, director of Sams, believes large-scale seaweed farming will become a reality because global competition for resources is intensifying on an increasingly crowded planet. "We have the highest commodity prices in history and we are running out of places to grow things."

The Growing Global Seaweed Industry

The global seaweed farming industry already produces tens of millions of tonnes every year across 44 countries and is worth billions of dollars. But the prospect of a truly sustainable biofuel that can replace climate-warming fossil fuels without making world hunger worse is driving new investment across the globe.

Europe is spending millions of euros on nine pilot plants along its Atlantic coast, while the U.S. department of energy, Norwegian oil giant Statoil and the Chilean government have invested in seaweed-biofuel projects.

In Vietnam, shrimp farmers are now growing seaweed resulting in higher incomes, cleaner water and a locally produced biofuel. In Israel, researchers are testing integrated systems where fish, oysters and seaweed are grown together to maximize the use of nutrients, an echo of the Chinese practice of growing tilapia fish in rice paddies. In India, red seaweed is being investigated.

Seaweeds are macroalgae but their tiny, unicellular cousins — micro algae — are also seen as promising potential source of biofuel. The U.S. navy is spending heavily on the technology while ExxonMobil has sunk $600 million into its research.

By Damian Carrington, The Guardian

University Chemists Work to Desalt the Ocean for Drinking Water

[caption id="attachment_111" align="alignleft" width="300"] The Water Chip[/caption]

A prototype “water chip” developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin in collaboration with a startup company.

By creating a small electrical field that removes salts from seawater, chemists at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Marburg in Germany have introduced a new method for the desalination of seawater that consumes less energy and is dramatically simpler than conventional techniques. The new method requires so little energy that it can run on a store-bought battery.

The process evades the problems confronting current desalination methods by eliminating the need for a membrane and by separating salt from water at a microscale.

The technique, called electrochemically mediated seawater desalination, was described last week  in the journal Angewandte Chemie. The research team was led by Richard Crooks of The University of Texas at Austin and Ulrich Tallarek of the University of Marburg. It’s patent-pending and is in commercial development by startup company Okeanos Technologies.

“The availability of water for drinking and crop irrigation is one of the most basic requirements for maintaining and improving human health,” said Crooks, the Robert A. Welch Chair in Chemistry in the College of Natural Sciences. “Seawater desalination is one way to address this need, but most current methods for desalinating water rely on expensive and easily contaminated membranes. The membrane-free method we’ve developed still needs to be refined and scaled up, but if we can succeed at that, then one day it might be possible to provide fresh water on a massive scale using a simple, even portable, system.”

This new method holds particular promise for the water-stressed areas in which about a third of the planet’s inhabitants live. Many of these regions have access to abundant seawater but not to the energy infrastructure or money necessary to desalt water using conventional technology. As a result, millions of deaths per year in these regions are attributed to water-related causes.

“People are dying because of a lack of freshwater,” said Tony Frudakis, founder and CEO of Okeanos Technologies. “And they’ll continue to do so until there is some kind of breakthrough, and that is what we are hoping our technology will represent.”

The left panel shows the salt (which is tagged with a fluorescent tracer) flowing upward after a voltage is applied by an electrode (the dark rectangle) jutting into the channel at just the point where it branches. In the right panel no voltage is being applied.

To achieve desalination, the researchers apply a small voltage (3.0 volts) to a plastic chip filled with seawater. The chip contains a microchannel with two branches. At the junction of the channel an embedded electrode neutralizes some of the chloride ions in seawater to create an “ion depletion zone” that increases the local electric field compared with the rest of the channel. This change in the electric field is sufficient to redirect salts into one branch, allowing desalinated water to pass through the other branch.

“The neutralization reaction occurring at the electrode is key to removing the salts in seawater,” said Kyle Knust, a graduate student in Crooks’ lab and first author on the paper.

Like a troll at the foot of the bridge, the ion depletion zone prevents salt from passing through, resulting in the production of freshwater.

Thus far Crooks and his colleagues have achieved 25 percent desalination. Although drinking water requires 99 percent desalination, they are confident that goal can be achieved.

“This was a proof of principle,” said Knust. “We’ve made comparable performance improvements while developing other applications based on the formation of an ion depletion zone. That suggests that 99 percent desalination is not beyond our reach.”

The other major challenge is to scale up the process. Right now the microchannels, about the size of a human hair, produce about 40 nanoliters of desalted water per minute. To make this technique practical for individual or communal use, a device would have to produce liters of water per day. The authors are confident that this can be achieved as well.

If these engineering challenges are surmounted, they foresee a future in which the technology is deployed at different scales to meet different needs.

“You could build a disaster relief array or a municipal-scale unit,” said Frudakis. “Okeanos has even contemplated building a small system that would look like a Coke machine and would operate in a standalone fashion to produce enough water for a small village.”

Source: University of  Texas

This article, University Chemists Work to Desalt the Ocean for Drinking Water, is syndicated from Green Building Elements and is posted here with permission.