Batteries. We need them for almost everything we use. They're in our laptops, our smartphones, our video game controllers, our remotes, and anything we use that is now wireless. But the one thing wrong with batteries in today's world is that they are finite. Eventually, they will run out of power and there's not a whole lot we can do about that. Or is there?

Researchers have recently developed a new material for a basic battery component that, according to them, will allow almost any battery indefinite power storage. This new material, known as a solid electrolyte, could increase battery life as well as battery storage capacity and safety as liquid electrolytes are the leading cause of battery fires.

The standard lithium-ion batteries that we use today use a liquid electrolyte. This liquid electrolyte is an organic solvent that has been known to overheat and cause fires in things like cars, commercial airliners and even smartphones. With a solid electrolyte, there is absolutely no safety problem whatsoever.

According to Gerbrand Ceder, a professor of materials science and engineering at MIT and one of the main researchers on the project, "You could throw it against the wall, drive a nail through it - there's nothing there to burn." In addition to that, a solid-state electrolyte will have virtually no degradation, which means that such batteries could last through "hundreds of thousands of cycles," Ceder continued.

Organic electrolytes also have limited electrochemical stability, which means that they lose their ability to produce an electrical charge over time. In addition to MIT, scientists from the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, the University of California at San Diego and the University of Maryland also conducted research on the project.


The findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Materials and the researchers described the solid-state electrolytes as an improvement over the current lithium-ion batteries we are using today. Electrolytes are one of three main components in a battery along with anode and cathode terminals.

The electrolyte component of the battery separates the battery's positive cathode and negative anode terminals while allowing the flow of ions between terminals. A chemical reaction then takes place between the two terminals, producing an electric current.

Previous problems with solid electrolytes are that they were incapable of conducting ions fast enough to be efficient energy, producers. The team of researchers from MIT and Samsung say that they have overcome that problem. Another advantage of a solid-state lithium-ion battery is that it can perform under very cold temperatures with Ceder calling this breakthrough "a real game-changer" that creates an "almost perfect battery".

Content originally published here

---

Sharing this story on Social Media? Use these hashtags! #MIT #Samsung #Batteries #SolidStateBatteries

On Monday, Acer announced that its 23.8-inch Aspire Z3-710 Series of all-in-one desktop PCs are saving you some time by shipping with Windows 10. so you won't have to do the free upgrade from Windows 8.1.

The Z3-710-UR55 at $750 and Z3-710-UR54 at $900 will be the two models that ship with Windows 10. The Z3-710-UR55 comes with an Intell Core i3-4170T dual-core processor clocked at 3.2GHz with 3MB of cache, 6GB of DDR3L RAM, 1TB hard drive, DVD writer, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 + LE, 1080p webcam, three USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, GbE LAN, and stereo speakers.

The Z3-710-UR53 has a Core i5-4590T quad-core processor clocked at 2GHz with 6MB of cache and 8GB of RAM. If you're just using general purpose computing chores, it might not be worth the additional $150 as you only get 2GB of additional RAM. Even with the processor being an upgrade in cores and cache, it really is a downgrade in clock speed.

Looking for a Quote on a Desktop Rental for Your Business Event? Rentacomputer has a full range of Desktop Rentals for your event! Our short-term rentals are available in over 1,500 cities nationwide!

Acer says that both systems come with a slim 1.4-inch chassis with a display that can tilt from 5 to 25 degrees using only two fingers. If these don't sound as appealing to you, Acer still offers the Z3-710-UR59, which is a Windows 8.1 model, only at $700. It has an Intel Pentium G3260T dual-core clocked at 2.9GHz, 4GB of RAM, and 1TB HDD. All of the systems sound pretty cool and the fact that they are All-in-Ones is a definite bonus. You just need to find which one bests suits your needs.

Content originally published here

---

Sharing this story on Social Media? Use these hashtags! #Acer #Aspire #AllinOne

When it comes to programming languages, most people probably can't name more than 2. Popular answers to this question typically include languages like C++ or JavaScript, but there is a whole host of other languages out there for people to use. And just because you've never heard of one doesn't mean that it isn't the most popular programming language on the other side of the country.

Silicon Valley may be the hotbed of new and exciting tech, but most programmers and developers are working hard in other industries, like big business. A recent programmer Q&A from the site Experts Exchange delved deep into its own data to determine what exactly the most popular programming languages are in the United States.

The survey took a look at who was asking questions about which programming languages, which was one of the factors in determining which states used which programming languages. In addition to that, users who were qualified "Experts" on the site seemed to favor PHP heavily.

If you look at the data and simply go off of the number of questions asked then it's clear to see that Microsoft's .NET programming language is seeing increased use. However, most people in the business are not surprised by these results.

PHP is a script language that is pretty much the standard with web developers, despite the fact that a lot of programmers don't seem to like all that much. Going along with that, .NET is a Microsoft standard that isn't exactly the most talked about but it is a good entrance for coders who are just getting started with learning to build apps around Microsoft platforms, platforms which are widely used in the business world.

What this data also does is show those in the Silicon Valley that the popularity of the newest programming languages is insignificant when compared to the driving force of existing options. Some of the more trendy languages, like Ruby on Rails and Swift, don't even appear on the list.

So what are the most popular programming languages in the country? Here's the list:

• ASP
• Cold Fusion
• C++
• C#
• Delphi
• Java
• JavaJ2EE
• JavaScript
• .NET
• PHP
• Powershell
• Python
• Shell
• SQL
• VisualBasic

Just to note, West Virginia and North Dakota didn't return any significant data....coders must not exist there.

Content originally published here