We May Soon Be Able To Charge Our Phone Using The Sound Of Our Voice

We May Soon Be Able To Charge Our Phone Using The Sound Of Our Voice

Sara Gates

The Huffington Post 

What if you could charge your phone just by yelling at it?
That's the idea behind a recent collaboration between scientists at Queen Mary University of London and Nokia. The team is working to develop a prototype charger that could replenish the battery of a mobile phone using human voices, music or even background noise.
"Being able to keep mobile devices working for longer, or do away with batteries completely by tapping into the stray energy that is all around us is an exciting concept," researcher Dr. Joe Briscoe said in a statement released by the university. "We hope that we have brought this technology closer to viability."
So how does it work?
To harvest energy from sound, the team used a type of nanotechnology called nanorods, which are capable of generating electrical energy and responding to vibration in sound. For the prototype, engineers attached electrical contacts on both sides of the rod in order to transform the sound vibrations into energy and capture the charge.
So far, researchers have been able to generate five volts of electricity with their prototype, which is enough to charge one phone.
While the hope is that sound-powered devices could replace conventional chargers, Briscoe admits that sound vibrations may not produce quite enough energy to do away with current charging methods entirely.
"I believe charging phones this way could be a part of the future, but there probably isn't enough energy in sound to remove the need for conventional charging completely," Briscoe told Mashable. "It could help to reduce how often we need to charge our phones, though."
Transforming sound into battery power is not a novel idea. We first heard of a sound-charging phone that would power itself with the user's voice when a team of Korean researchers revealed their prototype in 2011.
However, now that engineers have partnered with a communications technology corporation, it seems much more likely that a sound-powered charger may soon be a reality.

This article originally appeared in The Huffington Post

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UK spies have scanned the internet connections of entire countries

UK spies have scanned the internet connections of entire countries

Jon Fingas

Engadget

You may know that the UK's GCHQ intelligence agency pokes its nose into people's internet service accounts, but it's now clear that the spy outfit is mapping the internet connections of whole nations, too. Heise has obtained documents showing that a GCHQ system, Hacienda, can scan every internet address in a given country to see both the connection types in use (such as web servers) as well as any associated apps. The scanning platform is looking for relevant targets and any exploitable security holes; if a target is running software with known vulnerabilities, it's relatively easy for agents to break in and either swipe data or set up malicious websites that trick suspects into compromising their PCs. Poring over this much data would normally be time-consuming, but there's a companion system (Olympia) that makes it easy to find useful information within minutes.
The technology itself isn't shocking; anyone can do this, if they don't mind incurring the wrath of internet providers and law enforcement. However, the global scale of Hacienda is bound to raise eyebrows. Agents had scanned 27 whole countries as of 2009, along with parts of five others -- it's clear that the goal is to have complete national network maps on demand, whether or not they're really needed for investigations. GCHQ can also hand its findings over to the NSA and other intelligence groups. There are ways to thwart this probing, such as the early version of an internet stealth protocol (TCP Stealth), but it could be a while before you're completely off the radar.

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Look, no hands! Test driving a Google car

Look, no hands! Test driving a Google car

Paul Ingrassia

Reuters

MOUNTAIN VIEW Calif. - The car stopped at stop signs. It glided around curves. It didn't lurch or jolt. The most remarkable thing about the drive was that it was utterly unremarkable.
This isn't damning with faint praise. It's actually high praise for the car in question: Google Inc.'s driverless car.
Most automotive test drives (of which I've done dozens while covering the car industry for nearly 30 years) are altogether different.
There's a high-horsepower car. A high-testosterone automotive engineer. And a high-speed race around a test track by a boy-racer journalist eager to prove that, with just a few more breaks, he really could have been, you know, a NASCAR driver.
This test drive, in contrast, took place on the placid streets of Mountain View, the Silicon Valley town that houses Google's headquarters.
The engineers on hand weren't high-powered "car guys" but soft-spoken Alpha Geeks of the sort that have emerged as the Valley's dominant species. And there wasn't any speeding even though, ironically, Google's engineers have determined that speeding actually is safer than going the speed limit in some circumstances.
"Thousands and thousands of people are killed in car accidents every year," said Dmitri Dolgov, the project's boyish Russian-born lead software engineer, who now is a U.S. citizen, describing his sense of mission. "This could change that."
Dolgov, who's 36 years old, confesses that he drives a Subaru instead of a high-horsepower beast. Not once during an hour-long conversation did he utter the words "performance," "horsepower," or "zero-to-60," which are mantras at every other new-car test drive. Instead Dolgov repeatedly invoked "autonomy," the techie term for cars capable of driving themselves.
Google publicly disclosed its driverless car program in 2010, though it began the previous year. It's part of the company's "Google X" division, overseen directly by co-founder
Sergey Brin and devoted to "moon shot" projects by the Internet company, as Dolgov puts it, that might take years, if ever, to bear fruit.
So if there's a business plan for the driverless car, Google isn't disclosing it. Dolgov, who recently "drove" one of his autonomous creations the 450 miles (725 km) or so from Silicon Valley to Tahoe and back for a short holiday, simply says his mission is to perfect the technology, after which the business model will fall into place.

NOT WINNING BEAUTY CONTESTS, YET
Judging from my non-eventful autonomous trek through Mountain View, the technology easily handles routine driving. The car was a Lexus RX 450h, a gas-electric hybrid crossover vehicle - with special modifications, of course.
There's a front-mounted radar sensor for collision avoidance. And more conspicuously, a revolving cylinder perched above the car's roof that's loaded with lasers, cameras, sensors and other detection and guidance gear. The cylinder is affixed with ugly metal struts, signaling that stylistic grace, like the business plan, has yet to emerge.

But function precedes form here, and that rotating cylinder is a reasonable replacement for the human brain (at least some human brains) behind the wheel of a car.
During the 25-minute test ride the "driver's seat" was occupied by Brian Torcellini, whose title, oddly, is "Lead Test Driver" for the driverless car project.
Before joining Google the 30-year-old Torcellini, who studied at San Diego State University, had hoped to become a "surf journalist." Really. Now he's riding a different kind of wave. He sat behind the test car's steering wheel just in case something went awry and he had to revert to manual control. But that wasn't necessary.

Dolgov, in the front passenger's seat, entered the desired destination to a laptop computer that was wired into the car. The car mapped the route and headed off. The only excitement, such as it was, occurred when an oncoming car seemed about to turn left across our path. The driverless car hit the brakes, and the driver of the oncoming car quickly corrected course.

I sat in the back seat, not my usual test-driving position, right behind Torcellini. The ride was so smooth and uneventful that, except for seeing his hands, I wouldn't known that the car was completely piloting itself - steering, stopping and starting - lock, stock and dipstick.

Google's driverless car is programmed to stay within the speed limit, mostly. Research shows that sticking to the speed limit when other cars are going much faster actually can be
dangerous, Dolgov says, so its autonomous car can go up to 10 mph (16 kph) above the speed limit when traffic conditions warrant.

'NOT A TOY'
In addition to the model I tested - and other such adapted versions of conventional cars - Google also has built little bubble-shaped test cars that lack steering wheels, brakes and accelerator pedals. They run on electricity, seat two people and are limited to going 25 mph (40 kph.) In other words, self-driving golf carts.
Google's isn't the only driverless car in development. One of the others is just a few miles away at Stanford University (where Dolgov did post-doctoral study.) Getting the cars to
recognize unusual objects and to react properly in abnormal situations remain significant research challenges, says professor J. Christian Gerdes, faculty director of Stanford's REVS Institute for Automotive Research.
Beyond that, there are "ethical issues," as he terms them. "Should a car try to protect its occupants at the expense of hitting pedestrians?" Gerdes asks. "And will we accept it when
machines make mistakes, even if they make far fewer mistakes than humans? We can significantly reduce risk, but I don't think we can drive it to zero."

That issue, in turn, raises the question of who is liable when a driverless car is involved in a collision - the car's occupants, the auto maker or the software company. Legal issues might be almost as vexing as technical ones, some experts believe.

Self-driving cars could appear on roads by the end of this decade, predicted a detailed report on the budding driverless industry issued late last year by investment bank Morgan Stanley. Other experts deem that forecast extremely optimistic.
But cars with "semi-autonomous" features, such as collision-avoidance radar that maintains a safe distance from the car ahead, are already on the market. And the potential advantages - improved safety, less traffic congestion and more - are winning converts to the autonomy cause.
"This is not a toy," declared the Morgan Stanley research report. "The social and economic implications are enormous."

Paul Ingrassia, managing editor of Reuters, is the author of three books on automobiles, and has been covering the industry since 1985. The car he drives is ... a red one.

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Stars Who Stole Harry Styles' Hat 

Harry Styles

Credit:  Instagram

Harry Styles has two signature accessories, and both of them rest atop his head of luscious curls: scarf-like headbands and oversized hats! The One Direction rockstar can always be spotted rocking black caps or tan wide-brimmed hats, but he's actually started a major trend! Other stylish guys like Justin Bieber and Cody Simpson have been inspired by Harry's style, and even fashionistas like Kylie Jenner and Demi Lovato have been spotted sporting the Harry-inspired look.

Cody simpson

Credit: WireImage

Demi Lovato

Credit: Getty

Alli Simpson

Credit: Instagram

Perrie Edwards

Credit: Twitter

Kylie Jenner

Credit: Instagram

Justin Bieber

Credit: Instagram

Lottie Tomlinson

Credit: Instagram

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Ferrari sells for record $38 mln

Ferrari sells for record $38 mln

AFP

A red 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO Berlinetta, said to be one of only a handful, was snapped up for $38.1 million in California, becoming the most expensive car ever sold at auction.
The previous record was held by a 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196R Formula 1 model bought in Britain last year for $30 million.

The Ferrari, which has a checkered past, auctioned at Monterey Car Week near San Francisco on Thursday and is from the Maranello Rosso collection. It has chassis number 3851 GT.
Only 39 such cars are known to have been manufactured, according to the Bonhams auction house.
Its first owner was French racer Jo Schlesser, who drove the car in competition with his friend, the Olympian alpine ski racer Henri Oreiller, during the 1962 Tour de France Automobile.
But the second time the French pair took the car out, during the Coupes du Salon race, Oreiller crashed it and was killed.

"The car was badly damaged after hitting a trackside building and a mourning Jo Schlesser returned it to the factory for repair to as-new condition and subsequent re-sale," Bonhams said.
Paolo Colombo of Italy purchased it the following year for competition and later sold it to Ernesto Prinoth, who Bonhams said "embarked upon an energetic program of mixed hill-climbing and circuit racing."
Italian enthusiast Fabrizio Violati acquired the car in 1965 and kept it until his death in 2010. It had since been retained by the Maranello Rosso Collezione.

The auctioneers did not name the new buyer.

Among the celebrities who own a Ferrari 250 GTO are the designer Ralph Lauren, Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason and the heir to the Wal-Mart supermarket chain, Rob Walton, according to The Los Angeles Times.

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The rise of robot scheduling is a nightmare for low-wage workers

The rise of robot scheduling is a nightmare for low-wage workers

By Max Nisen

QUARTZ

“Automated scheduling software” has been touted as the wave of the future (paywall) for hip, forward-looking, data-driven workplaces. The company Kronos, for example, promises to help restaurants “provide outstanding customer service as you control labor costs.” Using the system, employees have variable hours, determined by data on customer flow, allowing managers to schedule more workers during busier times and fewer on slow days.

“Along with virtually every major retail and restaurant chain,” Jodi Kantor writes (paywall) in the New York Times, “Starbucks relies on software that choreographs workers in precise, intricate ballets, using sales patterns and other data to determine which of its 130,000 baristas are needed in its thousands of locations and exactly when.”
But, Kantor points out, for low-wage workers, especially parents, the system’s shifting work schedules can make life extremely difficult. For white collar workers, “flexible work” often means the ability to take a few hours or days a week spent working at home, and is the sign of a progressive and supportive employer. For low-wage service employees, however, there’s nothing particularly flexible about the variability of robot scheduling.
The Times story points at a larger truth: Advances in management and workplace technology all have essentially one goal, to get more out of employees at lower cost. And in the quest for efficiency, companies often forget they’re dealing with people.
Kantor offers as an example the heartbreaking chronicle of a woman named Janette Navarro, and her efforts to raise her young son while working at Starbucks under this scheduling system. She often found out about her work hours with only a few days notice, requiring panicked adjustments to take care of her son and the family’s finances. She was sometimes asked to “clopen” her store (work till closing at 11pm and return at 4am to open it). The job required constant scrambling and caused tension with family members she constantly needed to beg for help to keep an eye on her son.
She wasn’t alone. Starbucks told the Times that its policy is to give employees a week’s notice on hours. But Kantor’s interviews with several of the coffee chain’s workers across the country indicated that much shorter notice is common.
This kind of work is “flexible” only for the company. It means schedules and salaries vary to the point where it’s difficult for workers to make long-term plans. To save the company money, computer models often dismiss workers when sales are slow.
Many people in these kind of jobs don’t have the skills to get more consistent work, and their unreliable schedules make it even harder to pursue those skills. Navarro for instance, was a few credits short of a degree, but couldn’t commit to college classes because of her erratic schedule.
Cliff Burrows, the group president in charge of United States stores, responded to the story (paywall) with an email to staff announcing that it plans to change its policies, the Times reported:

Mr. Burrows told them the company would revise its software to allow more human input from managers into scheduling. It would banish the practice, much loathed by workers, of asking them to “clopen” — close the store late at night and return just a few hours later to reopen. He said all work hours must be posted at least one week in advance, a policy that has been only loosely followed in the past. And the company would try to move workers with more than an hour’s commute to more convenient locations, he said.

As for Navarro, after the Times inquired with Starbucks about her issues, she was given a more fixed schedule, with better shifts.

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Hitchhiking robot charms its way across Canada

Hitchhiking robot charms its way across Canada

TORONTO — He has dipped his boots in Lake Superior, crashed a wedding and attended an Aboriginal powwow. A talking, bucket-bodied robot has enthralled Canadians since it departed from Halifax last month on a hitchhiking journey to the Pacific coast.

HitchBOT, created by team of Ontario-based communication researchers studying the relationship between people and technology, will reach its final destination Sunday in Victoria, British Columbia, where it will receive a traditional aboriginal canoe greeting at Victoria Harbor.

"What we wanted to do is situate robotics and artificial technologies into unlikely scenarios and push the limits of what it's capable of," said David Smith, the robot's co-creator, who teaches at Ontario's McMaster University. "It's challenging but it can also be highly engaging and entertaining as hitchBOT has proven."
The robot looks like it was made out of components scavenged from a yard sale — a bucket, pool noodles, cake saver, garden gloves and yellow Wellington boots — but it has a sense of direction and can even ask and answer questions. His conversation skills might be a bit stilted, but hitchBOT has managed to charm its way across 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) since it began its journey in Nova Scotia on July 26.

Smith said hitchBOT has a built-in GPS system and is programmed with mobile technology similar to a smartphone, with speech recognition software that works in conjunction with language modelling. The robot links questions with answers by looking for certain key words and is programmed to scour Wikipedia to spit out regionally relevant facts.
The team also programmed hitchBOT to track its adventures online and take pictures to post on Twitter and Instagram.
It didn't take long for HitchBOT to become a social media sensation and, truth be told, many of the people who have offered him a ride already knew about him before encountering the bizarre contraption. Smith said its Instagram following was approaching 11,000 people, its Facebook account had garnered more than 41,000 "likes" and it has nearly 32,000 Twitter followers.

"Social and traditional media have really ensured that HitchBOT is well-known," Smith said. "Some (drivers) have tried to search its location. And in most cases, hitchBOT has had multiple offers."
Along the way, hitchBOT was invited to a pow-wow with the Wikwemikong First Nation group, where the robot was dubbed Biiaabkookwe, according to its Twitter feed. It later hitched a ride with Belgian tourists.
Currently, Smith said HitchBOT is hanging out with the British Columbia rock band The Wild, which is taking it to its next performance. When it reaches Victoria this weekend, Steve Sxwithul'txw, an aboriginal broadcast producer, plans to pick it up. He said he has arranged a canoe welcome, high tea at the Empress Hotel and ferry ride to Seattle.

Smith said his team monitors hitchBOT via GPS and social media but drivers have been in control of where they take it and leave it. Smith said the team had replacement robots to continue the journey in case anything happened to hitchBOT, but so far, the robot has not been mistreated.

The child-sized robot is able to able to stand, making it visible to drivers via a retractable tripod. It has a car seat attached to its torso so drivers can strap it into their cars using seatbelts.
The robot, which comes equipped with solar panels on its torso, communicates to people that it can be recharged by plugging it into car cigarette lighters or regular outlets.
Matthew Berry, of Alberta, said some friends picked up the robot while heading to a wedding in Golden, B.C. They picked it up on the border between Alberta and Calgary, where its previous driver was looking to offload it.

"It was good fun; we took it out onto the dance floor to, well, do the real robot," Berry said. "It was funny because it was a very meticulously planned wedding so I wasn't sure how the bride would react, but she loved it!"
Berry said while the couple was giving their speech, the bride thanked the couple's friends for attending, and the robot interrupted, saying, "I like to make friends."

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For the first time, more Americans subscribe to cable internet than cable TV

For the first time, more Americans subscribe to cable internet than cable TV

Zachary M. Seward

Quartz

You can now officially think of American cable companies as internet service providers with a declining side business in television.
At the end of June, the number of people subscribing to broadband internet from the nine largest US cable companies (49,915,000) exceeded the number of television subscribers (49,910,000) for the first time. That’s according to a new tally by Bruce Leichtman, president of Leichtman Research Group.
The milestone is significant, if not surprising. Cable companies like Comcast have been losing TV subscribers for many years now, as people cut the cord or opt for service from telecoms like Verizon and satellite companies like DirecTV. However, the cable industry has remained strong as those companies supplant their lost business with new internet subscribers, who are paying more than ever. The average price of Time Warner Cable’s internet service is up 20% over the past two years, to $47 a month.
And as more television watching moves to the internet, the distinction between the two will matter less. For cable companies, the data travels over the same pipes, and even cord cutters still tend to require internet service. Which is one reason internet bills are likely to keep rising.

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The internet is broken. You can blame sharks. And Netflix

The internet is broken. You can blame sharks. And Netflix

Bad news: The internet ran out of space on Tuesday. Worse news: Sharks are eating what is left.
Thankfully, it is not as bad as it sounds. Yet. But there are some existential threats to the internet on the horizon, and there are worse ways of putting it than to point out that the whole thing is full up.
On Tuesday, a small collection of out-of-date routers, in charge of mapping out routes using the internet’s backbone of physical cables, failed. The routers use a system called the border gateway protocol, or BGP, to track these routes, of which there are around half a million.

To be specific, there are actually 512,000, the magic number that caused the failures earlier this week. It turns out that is the absolute maximum number of routes some older hardware can hold. Some routers slow to a crawl, while others simply forget the extra routes.

That was the cause of the outages, which managed to affect sites as large as eBay. US internet service provider Verizon added 15,000 more routes to the BGP, and the dependable routers finally fell over, five years after experts say they should have been retired from service.
To add insult to injury, on Wednesday, reports surfaced that Google was having to protect what was left of the internet’s backbone from shark attacks. Unlike so many things named by the architects of the internet, “shark attack” is not just a catchy name for something dull: it is literally sharks attacking the undersea cables that connect the world.

Sharks are, literally, attacking the internet. Photograph: Alamy
Apparently sharks are attracted to the magnetic field created by the high voltage carried through newer undersea cables and, thinking they’re fish, they bite them. Then, if underwater footage is anything to go by, they realise their mistake and swim away from the damage they have caused.
There is some good news. The cables are now largely shark-proof, and the old routers that failed on Tuesday will now be out of service, unable to connect to the new network. Those headlines about the internet being “full up”? Unfortunately, they weren’t quite as ridiculous as they sounded.
For one thing, our ability to gobble up bandwidth continues to grow as fast as our ability to install new infrastructure: people using Netflix and YouTube accounts for more than half of US internet traffic. As the average American watches five hours of broadcast television a day, this percentage is only going to grow, as more content is delivered via the internet.

But, as problems go, the solution to that one is fairly simple: throw money at it, and build more and better cables. By another measure, though, the internet is full in a way that is much more difficult to fix.
We are about to run out of IP addresses, the short 12-digit identifiers for every single device online. A cap of 4.2bn looked fine back in the 1970s, when the protocol was being put together; it looked a bit shaky in the 80s, as the personal computer was born; and was obviously doomed by the 90s, once mass adoption of the internet became a reality. The noughties brought smartphones, using even more addresses, and that was before the much heralded “internet of things”.

A fix is on the horizon: IPv6, which ups the limit to something in the order of 300 trillion trillion trillion devices, which should hopefully be enough for quite some time. But IPv6 requires every single device on the connection to switch over – and it is not backwards-compatible. That means that it is difficult to upgrade in a piecemeal fashion: it is all or nothing, and once a device switches over to IPv6, it can’t talk to things using the old connection.

That explains why there has been such a delay in flicking the switch, even as the internet steadily fills up. In 2011, APNIC, which is in charge of allocating IP addresses in the Asia Pacific region, ran out of new addresses, and the other registries will soon follow.
Well, at least we’ve solved the shark attack.

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Apple's Pricey Bet on New Sapphire Screens

Apple's Pricey Bet on New Sapphire Screens

Daisuke Wakabayashi

The Wall Street Journal

Apple Inc. created the blueprint for a smartphone when it covered the touch screen of its first iPhone in glass instead of plastic. Now, it is betting $700 million that sapphire, a harder and more expensive material, can replace glass and better protect future devices.
The first sapphire display screens for the forthcoming larger iPhone and smartwatch are expected to roll off production lines this month at a Mesa, Ariz., facility that Apple opened with materials manufacturer GT Advanced Technologies Inc. At full capacity, the plant will produce twice as much sapphire as the current output from the nearly 100 manufacturers world-wide, says Eric Virey, a senior analyst at French research firm Yole Développement.

"Nobody has ever invested this much money on sapphire," Mr. Virey says.
GT and Apple are producing synthetic sapphire, designed to replicate the properties of one of the hardest minerals on earth. Sapphire doesn't crack or scratch as easily as glass. It withstands high temperatures and resists chemical corrosion.

Manufacturing synthetic sapphire is costly, so the material has been used sparingly, in airplane windows and armored vehicles to protect against extreme conditions or as a scratch-resistant cover for expensive watches.
Apple already uses sapphire to cover the iPhone's camera lens and fingerprint reader. But broader use of the material could ease another big headache: damaged phone screens.
SquareTrade, which offers warranties for damaged screens, estimates that 11% of iPhone owners have devices with cracked or broken screens.

Changing a component as important as the screen carries a fair amount of risk. Corning Inc., which makes the heavy-duty Gorilla Glass used in today's iPhones, has proven that it can meet Apple's demands to speed production and churn out millions of phones ahead of a new product release. If Apple and GT run into problems producing sapphire on a large scale, that could throw a wrench into Apple's supply chain, creating shortages during peak demand. It also isn't clear that sapphire will outperform current materials in real-world use.

Analyst Mr. Virey estimates that a sapphire screen could cost $16 to produce, compared with about $3 for Gorilla Glass.
Apple and GT declined to comment for this article.
Apple is considering using sapphire screens in more expensive models of the two new, larger iPhones it plans to debut this fall, if it can get enough of the material, people familiar with the matter say. Some analysts expect Apple to charge more for the phones than previous new models, because of increased component costs.

If the use of sapphire leads to fewer broken screens, Apple may save money in warranty costs. But Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi says those savings likely wouldn't offset sapphire's higher cost.
If Apple doesn't raise prices, the higher cost could erode the iPhone's profit margins, says Matt Margolis, an analyst at PTT Research and a GT investor. He says Apple may be willing to absorb the hit to separate its products from those of rivals.
Apple has invested heavily in components to make its products stand out. It designed its own 64-bit processor for mobile devices, helping the company leapfrog competitors. The Cupertino, Calif., company acquired AuthenTec Inc., a maker of fingerprint-sensor technology, in 2012 and last year introduced a fingerprint reader in the iPhone 5S.

For sapphire, Apple last year bought the 1.4-million-square-foot Arizona facility—about the size of two dozen football fields—from a solar-panel producer for $113 million and leased it to GT, a leading maker of furnaces used to produce sapphire.
In November, Apple agreed to prepay GT $578 million to outfit the factory with cutting-edge furnaces. GT is operating the factory to produce sapphire exclusively for Apple.
GT Chief Executive Tom Gutierrez told analysts last week that the Arizona facility was nearly complete and was starting the transition to high-volume production. He said the plant wouldn't reach full operational efficiency until early next year. GT said it expected Apple to pay the last of its four prepayments, of $139 million, by the end of October, contingent on GT meeting certain operational targets.
Sapphire is scratch-resistant. But it isn't clear if the material will better protect against screens breaking, since sapphire's strength depends on its thickness and cut. Sapphire also is denser than glass, which will add to the phone's weight.

Corning says its Gorilla Glass has outperformed other materials, including sapphire, in tests in which screens are dropped from different heights. It also says Gorilla Glass reflects less light than sapphire, making the glass easier to view in sunlight.
A few small smartphone manufacturers have already introduced handsets with sapphire screens. Britain's Vertu Corp., which makes luxury phones costing more than $10,000, has two models with sapphire screens. Japan's Kyocera Corp. introduced the Brigadier, a phone that the company says is virtually scratchproof.
Natural sapphires are gem varieties of corundum, a crystalline form of aluminum oxide. Impurities such as copper or magnesium change the color, creating the gems used in jewelry. Without such impurities, sapphire is clear.

Mass-producing sapphire is complex. Sapphire crystals are grown in massive furnaces at high temperatures. After the ingredients crystallize in an energy-intensive process, the result is a giant hockey-puck-shaped cylinder called a boule, which is carved into different shapes. Apple's Arizona plant is using next-generation furnaces capable of producing boules larger than 440 pounds.

By forming boules more than 50% larger than produced by current machines, Apple and GT aim to drive down the price of sapphire and close the gap with glass.

"Before the Apple investment, I would have said sapphire is a great material with great potential but it's a few years out from becoming a market reality," says Vinita Jakhanwal, director of mobile and emerging display technologies at research firm IHS Technology. "But Apple has invested a significant amount, so it would be fair to say that the company probably expects a return on its investment pretty quickly."

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Did Debby Ryan Already Ditch Her Blonde Hair

Did Debby Ryan Already Ditch Her Blonde Hair

We were just getting used to seeing Debby Ryan with her new platinum blonde locks, but it seems like she's already abandoning her edgy new look - at least for a little while! Debby shared a cool pic of herself mid-hair dye, explaining that she was going back to her iconic red hair for her role on Jessie!

"Hair today, gone tomorrow," Debby captioned her pic, adding, " bye bye blondie!" We love she is always switching up her look, and fans can't wait to see her hair when it's a fresh new shade of red!

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You Won't Believe What Demi Lovato Did for Charity

Demi Lovato would do nearly anything for her fans, but we're still in awe of the crazy stunt she pulled to raise money and awareness for charity. The "Really Don't Care" singer poured five buckets of ice water on herself to raise awareness for ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease.

Don't worry, it's not totally random. Instead, she got tagged to participate in the viral "ice bucket challenge," which asks participants to either donate $100 to an ALS charity or get doused in a bucket of ice water.

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