This is just been released, scientists in China have developed an innovative solar panel technology that they say will turn raindrops into electricity. It is a new kind of solar cell design and can be triggered by either rain or sun, the first published report was in the Angewandte Chemie Journal. An all weather solar cell would be a great advance toward solving the energy crisis. This new solar cell is made using the technology that combines an electron enriched graphene electrode with a dye sensitized solar cell, this new cell can be excited by either incident light on sunny days or raindrops if it rains.

The standard current solar cells are mostly dye sensitized varieties, they use a thin film of photovoltaic cells that harness organic dye to absorb sunlight and produce electrons, that is how they create energy. This new design could further guide the advanced all weather solar cells technology according to the scientists who made it. Several attempts by news organizations like Fox to contact the paper's lead author, Ocean University of China Professor Qunwei Tang have so far failed. The science news Journal noted that by using the thin layer of highly conductive graphene the solar cell could effectively harness power from rain, the salt contained in the rain separates into ions of ammonium, calcium and sodium, making graphene and natural water a great combination for creating energy it reported.

The Journal went on to say that the water actually cleans to the graphene, forming a dual layer with the graphing electrons, which acts as a pseudo-capacitor. The energy difference between the layers is so great that this causes the generation of electricity. A senior research scientist and adjunct professor at Columbia University who did not participate in the paper told Fox news that this technology would have huge additional costs and he also had questions about the potential solar cell optical losses exceeding the benefits of the rain harvested electricity. If the costs factors could be overcome this type of solar cell could be used in climates not typically able to use standard Sun powered solar cells.

China of course is one of the world's major solar panel manufacturers and innovators, they expect significant increases in the use of the technology within their own country over the next two years, this is all designed to reduce the country's carbon emissions and to that aim China has set a goal of tripling its solar power output to as much as 143 GW by the year 2020. There are numerous US firms also heavily involved in solar panel innovation and technology, with the leader probably being SolarCity which was cofounded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk who announced that the company will be making its most cutting-edge solar panels within the United States. The company's main production facility where they are saying they will produce its most efficient rooftop solar panels is based in Buffalo New York and by all accounts is a huge production space, this facility will reach full capacity by the end of 2017.

Hyundai motors has formed a partnership with Cisco with regard to car technology, they are specifically looking at how to connect cars on the road to the Internet. The South Korean carmaker said earlier this year it was looking for someone to help it develop what it is calling “hyper connected intelligent cars” as a long-term project pushing eventually towards driverless vehicle technology. The competition to control and produce the first effective driverless vehicle is becoming extremely intense with more and more vehicle manufacturers partnering up with tech giants, it seems all of them believe that controlling this emerging market is a future massive income earner.

Hyundai Motor Company and Cisco today revealed a new technology roadmap that will enable next-generation in-vehicle networking with security. In addition, the companies shared their timeline for commercial deployment of ‘hyper-connected' production vehicles, slated for 2019. Technology advancements from the collaboration will enable Hyundai and Cisco to disrupt auto industry at a faster pace.

This unique automotive and IT collaboration is focused on technology solutions for in-vehicle data demands, which will increase exponentially with autonomous driving and other connectivity needs. The focus for Hyundai and Cisco is moving away from restrictive CAN (Controller Area Network) systems, to Ethernet communications, which boast processing speeds of up to 1Gbps. Ethernet-based software also supports integrated data control, which allows for flexible expansion of connections to handle large data sets coming from various components in the vehicle simultaneously.

Hyundai and Cisco have created a new platform that provides highly secure access to all the data in the vehicle. The platform utilizes the first generation of 1Gps architectures and Automotive Ethernet with QoS, which allows for maximized bandwidth, more capabilities. It's highly configurable and secure – and offers the flexibility to design and build new services. It will also accelerate innovation, provide ‘over the air updates', and shorten the lifecycle in bringing new capabilities to market.

“Hyundai Motor Group's ongoing collaboration with top global technology companies is a testament to our ‘Open Innovation' spirit that will prepare us for continued leadership as transportation and mobility undergo an unprecedented evolution,” said Seung-ho Hwang, Executive Vice President and Head of Hyundai Motor Group's Auto Intelligence Business Department. “Our partnership with Cisco is an outstanding example of such efforts, and in 2019 we will unveil the first vehicle equipped with groundbreaking connected-car technologies jointly developed by the two companies.”

Hyundai may be a Korean company, but over half the cars they sell in the U.S. are made in the U.S. Hyundai have a technologically sophisticated manufacturing facility in Montgomery, Alabama, engineering facilities in Michigan, plus design, research, and testing grounds in California. All of which provides around 5,000 jobs for American automotive workers. Add to that total more than 32,000 employees at Hyundai dealerships and 6,000 workers employed by our various vendors, and you've got quite the microeconomy. The Hyundai California design & research center $30 million design facility is fitted with the world's most advanced visualization, graphics, and clay-modeling technologies, keeping Hyundai at the forefront of car technology and design. Hyundai invested $1.7 billion building one of the most advanced manufacturing facilities in Alabama manufacturing facility, North America. It has received ISO/TS 16949 certification, the most rigid quality management standard from the International Automotive Task Force. It also provides thousands of jobs for workers in the region.

It is true, IBM researcher Stefan Harrer is developing a new and novel way of monitoring a person's brain in order to predict epileptic seizures. Working with neurologists from the University of Melbourne and the companies Australian branch Harrer is designing a computer system that he says is like an artificial brain, this computer will be dedicated to analyzing a real human brain. They have designed a software application that will interpret human brain waves by using a neural network. A patient's brain waves are fed into the neural network and analyzed by the IBM proprietary hardware. The hardware in question is an experimental IBM chip called TrueNorth, this chip has been built with an architecture that is designed to mirror the human brain which is why it makes an efficient neural network.

The team of researchers in the genes using the computer chip with an external computer and eventually on a wearable device that will work cooperatively alongside a brain implant, the implant would send EEG information to the wearable device or computer which would then use the data to predict the onset of an epileptic seizure. The team expressed the desire for the system to be on a wearable device as quickly as possible as this would then allow them to do an analysis in real-time. They also said that having the wearable device working efficiently is the only real way for this technology to have a great impact beyond looking cool on research papers. They envisage the device on detecting an oncoming seizure would alert the patient and the patient's doctors using a connected smart phone.

Using the data attained from earlier implant studies the scientists involved expect they will be able to see deeper into the underlying structure of seizure brain activity. Harrer and his team hope to use this information to further refine the device so it can then be used not only to predict seizures but possibly be used to even stop them before they occur. Harrer said that to be unable to stop the seizure the artificial brain would have to compensate for the real brain which was malfunctioning.

The difficulty the team has faced from the start is trying to extract the really meaningful information from all the background noise generated by the patient's brain, they have to be able to detect a specific seizure pattern for each individual patient and so far this has eluded them but they all say they are getting closer everyday. This whole thing might sound like science fiction but it isn't, neurologists at the University of Melbourne have already been running a study in which less complex implants gathered EEG readings from epilepsy patients for the last three years, which is why Harrer joined forces with them with his study. The ultimate aim of both of these projects is to one day be able to attach an artificial neural network to a human body, this is many years in the future but all of the team believe it not only can be done but has to be done.

Mid 2017 Intel and micron launched a new ultrafast memory technology branded as Optane, they are saying that this technology will pave the way for even faster storage on Apple's MacBooks. Optane is going to be compatible with the NVMe storage protocols that Apple already uses in some of its MacBooks. This fact means it will be relatively easy for Apple to transition to Optane and to take advantage of the new technology before everyone else. Using 3-D X point technology, Optane is said to offer speeds up to 1000 times faster and more durable than currently used flash storage, it achieves this by being 10 times denser than DRAM.

NVMe is meant to replace the aging AHCI technology, NVMe is optimized for lower latency operations afforded by solid-state media and/or nonvolatile memory. Compared to what it is replacing NVMe reduces latency by up to 50%. This new type of memory is the first you memory category in more than 25 years, with most of the industry tech heads just calling it “crazy fast” for short.

The new technology is going to revolutionize the whole industry because a lot of devices and software that are still on the drawing boards will benefit greatly from the use of this superfast memory. To make it Intel and micron had to actually use unique material compounds and Crosspoint architecture to get the density they needed which is 10 times that of conventional memory. This new technology makes new innovations possible in applications ranging from machine learning to gameplay, the 8K gaming experience is now within reach using these memory chips.

For decades now the industry has been searching for anyway to reduce the lag time between the processing chip and the data, this new class of nonvolatile memory has achieved that goal, it brings game changing performance to memory and storage. The biggest lag in modern computing has been the time it takes the processor to retrieve data on long-term storage, this new revolutionary technology used in this chip allows quick access to enormous data sets and enables whole new sets of applications.

One of the applications the medical profession is looking forward to with this technology is that researchers or physicians can process and analyze very large data sets in real time, this will accelerate complex tasks including genetic analysis and disease tracking. The performance enhancements of the 3-D Xpoint technology will also be of great benefit to PC users, for many years the 8K gaming experience was something professional gamers can only look forward to, now it is actually on the horizon and coming closer by the minute. The use of this technology in relatively simple tasks like online video or online video chat will mean it will be a greatly enhanced experience without any lags or other problems usually encountered with the current technology.

The 3-D Xpoint technology is a completely new technology, the chip is innovative, it uses a transistor less crosspoint architecture which creates a three-dimensional checkerboard where memory cells sit at the intersections of the lines, as a result data can be written and read much faster and much more efficiently.

Intel Optane technology provides an unparalleled combination of high throughput, low latency, high quality of service, and high endurance. Check out the video to see how new computer architectures are unleashing unprecedented possibilities from data center to desktop.