Aston Martin glass phone concept oozes class, just like the cars: Aston Martin makes some of the most drool-worthy cars on the planet, so any phone that's going to carry the Aston Martin logo had better look pretty sleek. This transparent phone concept from Mobiado should do the trick, with a wow factor that will get tongues wagging even if you aren't standing next to the car itself. Far from being just a cool phone with a fancy logo slapped onto it, the CPT002 can control many of the car's functions. Just having it in your pocket operates the keyless entry system, and once you're moving the phone can do things like automatically upload pictures from onboard cameras in the car to your social networks, so your friends can see where you're traveling, It will even use its accelerometer to measure your movement in an accident, then adjust the airbag deployment speed and seat belt tensioner to fit the situation. While it is a concept, this isn't just some pie-in-the-sky phone that will never exist in the real world. Aston Martin is working with Mobiado to create something real for their customers.
At ground zero, the future finally appears: The noise at ground zero is a steady roar. Engines hum. Cement mixers churn. Air horns blast. Cranes, including one that looks like a giant crab leg, soar and crawl over every corner of the 16-acre site. For years, the future has been slow to appear at the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But with six months remaining until the national 9/11 memorial opens, the work to turn a mountain of rubble into some of the inspiring moments envisioned nearly a decade ago is thundering forward. One World Trade Center, otherwise known as the Freedom Tower, has joined the Manhattan skyline. Its steel frame, already clad in glass on lower floors, now stands 58 stories tall and is starting to inch above many of the skyscrapers that ring the site. A new floor is being added every week. On the 29th floor, men preparing to install window glass last week were tethered to the building by safety cables as they worked near the ledge. Even their hard hats were attached by a safety line, in case they were knocked over the side. A yellow line, painted on the concrete deck, marked how close workers are allowed to stand without wearing a safety harness.
Canada's first cathedral in 50 years will use solar cells: The first Roman Catholic Cathedral to be built in Canada in 50 years will become the first in the world to integrate solar energy collection and stained glass. In May, windows laced with solar cells will be installed into the $28.5 million Cathedral of the Holy Family in Saskatoon, Sask. The windows are the creation of Toronto artist Sarah Hall. Divided into 18 painted glass panels each, the three finished windows will contain a total of 1,113 solar cells and will produce as much energy as five Canadian households use in a year. The largest of the three will measure 37 feet high by 12 feet wide. To create a solar stained glass window, the glass is painted and fired with metallic oxides, which fuse onto the base glass. The painted glass is then tempered and silver polycrystalline solar cells are soldered and embedded into the painted surface. A layer of ultra-white tempered glass is then laminated on top and the window is made into a thermopane.
Canada adopts lower window-to-wall ratio proposal: Like the attempt at ASHRAE to reduce window-to-wall ratio in the prescriptive commercial building codes, similar moves to reduce glass have been proposed and passed in Canada, reported Margaret Webb, executive director, Insulating Glass Manufacturers Alliance, Ottawa, Ontario, at the association's Annual Meeting in Las Vegas. Canada's Standing Committee of Energy Efficiency in Buildings fast -tracked a proposal to reduce the ratio, called the fenestration/door to wall area ratio, for prescriptive requirements. In the ASHRAE 90.1 proposal, the WWR would have been reduced to a blanket 30 percent. Under the SCEEB proposal, the FDWR would be set to a declining value based on heating degree days, using the quadratic equation.
"Instead of just setting a value, they used a creation based on heating degree days," Webb said. "While it wasn't going to have as significant of an impact as that of the ASHRAE proposal, it was serious enough to warrant attention." IGMA submitted a negative, as did the Canadian Home Builders' Association, proposing a compromise solution that would provide a lesser reduction in the FDWR. "The amount of the ratio improved by about 5 percent across [most parts] of Canada," Webb said. The proposal, with the compromise ratio, was passed and the code is published.
Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia: A local glass manufacturing company is banking on the growing awareness among people in Sabah for safer products in promoting its safety glass products. This is apart from the emergence of new and less costly technology to produce tempered glass, one of the two kinds of safety glass regularly used in applications where standard glass could pose a potential danger, by China which makes it more affordable for people now, unlike before when it was costly. We just recently expanded our business to making tempered glass because most people need safety glass, that is tempered glass," said its Managing Director, Victor Su. Tempered glass is four times stronger than the standard glass and a person can stand on it without breaking it, he said after the official launching of his companies' Tempered Glassline. Su said the demand for tempered glass in Sabah is picking up because nowadays "we are going more into tourism, where safety aspects are of paramount importance people think about safety more now." Manufactured through a process of extreme heating and rapid cooling that make it harder than normal glass, tempered glass is four to five times stronger than standard glass and does not break into sharp shards when it fails. The thermal process that curves tempered glass also makes it heat resistant.
Cracks develop in glass wall at Ahmedabad airport’s international terminal (India): The swanky international terminal of the city airport is facing an unexpected problem for the last couple of months. Many of the glass tiles used in the construction of the glass wall at the terminal have developed cracks on their own, for no apparent reason. Some officials of the Airport Authority of India, however, blame the labourers working at the airport for the cracked tiles, while some others say the tiles had cracked because of the increasing summer heat. Sources at the airport said that at least a dozen glass tiles had cracked in the last couple of months. Fortunately, none of the affected tiles had splintered completely. They looked like frosted glass with cracks but had held together. This had prevented mishaps that might have been caused by shards of glass detached from completely broken tiles. Another senior official, however, said that the glass tiles had developed cracks because of the growing summer heat. There was no other explanation for the rapidity with which the tiles were cracking, he said. A third group of officials believes that the quality of the glass used in the construction of the glass wall was not upto the mark.
Crisis in Japan Sparks Conversations About Security Film: While natural disasters are, for the most part, unavoidable there are some things that can help better protect those in nature’s way. The recent earthquakes and tsunami in Japan have led to discussions about the role window film can play in mitigating such disasters. A product like security film can assist in protecting victims during a hurricane or earthquake from shards of glass or the danger of objects entering through broken windows. In the case of Japan, film may not have made any difference during the tsunami’s push, but it may have provided extra protection during the earthquake. “With Japan’s tsunami, film wouldn’t have been able to do a whole lot because of the force of the water. However, seismic activity is something film has been used for to help mitigate damage,” says Lewis Pitzer, special projects coordinator for American Standard Window Film in Las Vegas, Nev. “We can put the film on and in the event of racking or seismic activity it can help make the glass break safely.” Breaking safely means that the film will hold the glass shards in place as opposed to becoming possibly lethal projectiles. With the addition of attachment systems film can keep these shards or tempered pieces intact in the window frame and allow for a more secure building envelope.“There is a benefit to adding film to tempered glass because you might not want to lose that opening. When thinking of contingency planning, if it‘s an area where you need to stay open like an emergency response center or a business corporate headquarters on the trading floor, you still might not want to have a situation where the tempered glass breaks and exits the frame and you are sitting there with open windows,” says Pitzer. “With film and the proper use of an attachment system on two vertical sides it will hold the whole broken piece in place. You will have a membrane that keeps the building envelope contained. That can be very important for a building like a hospital.” In Japan’s case a variety of buildings could have benefited from the use of film. Film used on school windows can protect children inside. Hospitals and clinics need the ability to remain open and manageable and film can assist with that goal. “What we found in the Bay Area after the 1989 earthquake was a lot of glass breakage. As widespread as the glass breakage was, there was no way to get everything boarded up,” says Scott Haddock, president and CEO of Glasslock Inc. in Easton, Md. “There was lousy weather for a week after the earthquake and it was really difficult to close up the envelope of all of these buildings. The good thing about film is that, as long as you can keep it in the frames, you can protect the envelope of your facilities.”
“In one case, there was a school system in California where there was a seismic event and they have annealed glass on the building and the glass broke and pieces broke off and went into the desk of the children. The kids weren’t there thankfully, but they realized the hazard and put film up,” says Pitzer. It’s important for dealers to remember that window film is not a hurricane-proof product. The product can help protect, but there is no guarantee of protection. “It’s like a bomb blast scenario—typically the target building doesn’t have a lot you can do for it, but the collateral affects. Buildings in the outer-lying areas that weren’t so close to the epicenter. It can minimize the collateral affects of things like broken glass,” says Haddock. “As long as it’s not over-sold it’s an excellent way to mitigate glass fragments in an event whether natural or man-made.”
Workers Use 'Liquid Glass' In Bid To Stop Toxic Leak At Japanese Plant - -Efforts to end the release of highly radioactive water into the ocean at Japan's stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant finally met with some success Tuesday with the injection of "liquid glass" gel around a damaged pipe managing to reduce the toxic flow in half, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. Workers have tried a variety of methods to reduce the flow, put at several tons of water an hour. More info' here.
Metallic glass is stronger and tougher than steel: Ritchie has created metallic glass, a material he believes is the strongest and toughest to date. During our visit, Ritchie brought us to the bottom basement of the old engineering building to show us how he and his students try to break the new material to see if it’s resistant to fracture. In the future, Ritchie hopes metallic glass could one day be used for airplane engines and large structures such as bridges. Ritchie said “trying to get high strength and high toughness is very difficult. One of the holy grails is to get both high strength and high toughness [in materials]. We call that damage tolerance.” To make this metallic glass, the researchers used five elements to confuse the material. That way, the material couldn’t flex into automatic memory and form its normal, crystal structure. This is unusual, considering all metals have crystalline structures. Window panes are amorphous and aren’t crystalline in structure.
Like glass, the fabricated material was not crystalline. “We learned to make metals in this amorphous state,” Ritchie said. “There are stronger materials and there may be tougher materials, we know of no other material with the combination [we've made]. Strength and toughness are mutually exclusive, and we’ve achieved it in a material that you wouldn’t expect - in glass. Glass is usually brittle,” Ritchie said. The group from Cal Tech made the material from five or more elements. They melted it and it cooled quickly. The material wasn’t able to crystallize, so it formed an amorphous material. The Cal Tech team cut the material into little rods and sent them to Ritchie’s team at Berkeley to basically destroy the metallic glass. The experiments didn’t involve throwing the metallic glass against the floor though. Instead, Ritchie ran the metallic glass through mechanical testing machines. The machines could barely make the material crack. In the future, the new material could be used in nuclear pressure vessels because it has the same toughness as the material used today. A better material could help nuclear reactors avoid a catastrophic failure.
Next Princess Cruises ship to have glass-bottomed 'SeaWalk' - Princess Cruises today announced its next ship will be called the Royal Princess -- a name the line has used twice before -- and revealed several new-to-the-industry features that will be aboard the vessel. Located on the starboard side of the 3,600-passenger vessel, the "SeaWalk," as Princess is calling the new feature, will offer dramatic views of the ocean 128 feet below. The Royal Princess also will have another cantilevered feature on the port side of the ship, the SeaView bar, which will have space for 20 people, Buckelew says.
Serious Materials Launches Window Retrofit System: Serious Materials announced the commercial launch of its glazing retrofit system that was used to update the windows of the Empire State Building for energy efficiency. iWindow is a retrofit glass system that doesn't replace the existing glass or alter the exterior appearance of the building. Serious Materials says the iWindow panel can be installed on the inside of the existing glass in as little as 20 minutes. At approximately $20 per square foot total installed cost, iWindow is 50% to 75% less costly to install compared to a typical aluminum replacement system which can dramatically impact the viability of such retrofit scenarios. Energy efficiency improvements can also return higher rents, secure greater occupancy, and generate higher resale value.
Each iWindow incorporates the SeriousGlass system. SeriousGlass units include spectrally-selective suspended film systems that create multiple air chambers, accomplishing high thermal performance of triple pane glass without the additional weight and structural concerns. Beyond super-insulating performance, SeriousGlass enables high light transmission, 99.5+% UV blockage, and reduced fading and damage to interior furnishings. iWindow is designed for any curtain wall or window wall commercial retrofit application and is ideally suited for historic and landmark projects as it allows preservation of the existing façade.
Spray-On Solar Glass Gets A Bit Bigger: We’ve seen New Energy Technologies announce a series of advances in its attempt to turn windows into solar panels, and now the company says it has a working, 1-square-foot see-through glass prototype that can generate electricity. An earlier version of this solar window was just 4 inches by 4 inches, and New Energy says the boost in size takes it a big step closer to bringing a product to market. “We continue to pursue an aggressive product development program, working to improve, among other things, solar cell efficiency, power output, durability, manufacturability and further scale-up,” says company president and CEO John Conklin.
New Energy’s process involves “spraying” electricity-generating, nano-sized solar cells directly onto glass, “eliminating expensive and often cumbersome or high-vacuum production methods typically used by current solar manufacturers,” it says. The coatings are less than 1/10th the thickness of thin films, New Energy says, taking advantage of what it calls “the world’s smallest functional solar cells.” The company claims that by generating electricity from both natural and artificial light sources, its cells “outperform today’s commercial solar and thin-film technologies by as much as tenfold.”
A manufacturer of bulletproof glass and solar panels has been sold after it went into administration in the wake of cashflow and accounting woes. Romag Holdings, which is based in County Durham and supplies security glass to banks, embassies and police stations, was sold to Ask The Genie, a subsidiary of property group Gentoo. The company identified cashflow problems and suspended its shares after an investigation into a £4 million payment ex-chairman John Kennair made to one of its divisions without informing the board. When Mr Kennair stepped down as chairman in February, Romag said it was experiencing significant demand for its products, particularly solar panels, and had a strong forward order book. But it was unable to secure further funding from its bank - Lloyds - and its trade and assets, including 160 staff, have been transferred to Ask The Genie. Romag supplies transparent material - glass and plastic - to security, renewable energy, architectural and specialist transport markets. It is one of only two solar panel manufacturers in the UK.
The John Hancock Tower is winner of the prestigious Twenty-Five Year Award. That honor is given to just one American work of architecture each year, a building that’s been around for at least a quarter century and proved its merit over time. And the Cambridge Public Library is winner of the Harleston Parker Medal. The Parker has been awarded annually since 1921 to “the most beautiful piece of architecture, building, monument or structure’’ in Greater Boston. The Twenty-Five Year is bestowed by the national American Institute of Architects. The Parker winner is chosen by the local Boston Society of Architects. The Hancock stands in Copley Square, and the library is at 449 Broadway in Mid-Cambridge. Some of the Hancock’s 10,344 glass window panels began cracking or falling out, especially in windstorms. All were removed, to be replaced for some months by sheets of black-painted plywood.
“The Cambridge Public Library is a magnificent twenty-first century building that seamlessly incorporates the original 1888 landmark. The historic stone building and the new glass building stand side by side as a study in contrast, although they are united by materials and colors.’’ The library is at its best in the evening. The new building glows like an enormous lantern. You can see the indoor activity through the transparent façade. There are two skins of glass, with a wide air space between. It’s a green technology, imported from Germany, that maintains thermal comfort, saves energy, and doesn’t interrupt the view.
What Is Gorilla Glass? The allure of Gorilla Glass is no mystery to anyone with a Droid, an iPhone 4, a Galaxy tab or a Dell Adamo. But for everyone else wondering about all the new Gorilla Glass gear at CES, here’s the rundown. Gorilla Glass is, well, glass…You’ll find it in screens, mostly. This includes smartphone screens, tablet screens, laptop screens, and as of this week, touch-table screens and TV screens.…that’s pretty tough to break or scratch… Drop it, smack it, or shoot it with an air rifle, and chances are you won’t break, or even scratch, a piece of Gorilla Glass. Our own Brian Barrett went hands-on with a panel some time ago and came away impressed:
Gorilla Glass is an unscratchable, unshatterable material used as a protective window for your mobile phone, PMP or laptop display. It’s in 65 products already, and I can assure you that the very nice man from Corning is not faking it. Your intrepid reporter also gave this several tries with all his blogger strength and couldn’t make a dent. I was, however, able to scratch the heck out of some polycarbonate. OK, so it’s not literally indestructible, and it’s still quite possible to shatter your iPhone’s screen. But it’s harder than it used to be.
…because it’s treated differently than most other gadget glass.
Speaking to SmartPlanet, Gorilla Glass engineer Dr Donnell Walton explains: When you chemically temper a glass, you immerse it in a salt bath and you stuff larger ions in all the surfaces and put them all under compression. What’s unique about Gorilla Glass is that because of its inherent composition, it can allow those larger ions to penetrate the surface more deeply to increase the compression tolerance and tolerate deeper scratches. The compression pushes a flaw back. It’s harder to break from a deeper scratch. It’s also a bit more expensive than the glass normally used for gadget screens, though given its rapid adoption – it’s used in some 300+ devices at this point – its value as a selling point and feature clearly outweighs its monetary cost.
Leybold Optics will install what it says is the world's largest thin-film coating system for glass production at SAGE Electrochromic's new high-volume manufacturing facility in Faribault, MN. The record-breaking coating line will be more than 150 meters long, contain more than 200 turbomolecular pumps, and feature a new twin sputter deposition system that operates at high substrate temperatures, among other technological breakthroughs.
SAGE will use the system for high-volume production of SageGlass, the world's most energy-efficient window glass. SageGlass is an electronically tintable "dynamic" glass for use in building windows and skylights. The glass can be switched from clear to darkly tinted at the touch of a button, or programmed to respond to changing sunlight and heat conditions. This revolutionary technology significantly reduces energy consumption and associated costs. The production start is planned for late 2012.
Leybold Optics says is proud to be selected for this pioneering project and says the company proves to be the first mover when it comes to the conversion of new technology into industrial production equipment. Leybold Optics says its unique combination of know-how in the fields of display, photovoltaic, and architectural glass coating systems provides Leybold Optics with the ideal skill for this reference installation.
Peter Kuitenbrouwer - Ryerson’s glass atrocity: Ryerson University held a news conference at 10:30 to display details of its new Student Learning Centre, corner of Gould and Yonge streets, but since they have already leaked the details to another newspaper, I feel free to express my view: the “thing” they are proposing to build, for a cool $112-million, looks shockingly suburban and derivative. Rather than try to work with the historic character of Yonge Street and fit into the province’s most storied shopping thoroughfare, Snohetta of Norway and Zeidler of Toronto propose to slam an irregular, iceberg-esque monolith of glass and concrete where Sam the Record Man once stood. Back a few years ago when Ryerson bought Sam’s, Sheldon Levy, the president of Ryerson, promised in a news release that, “we are working closely with the City of Toronto to ensure that the legacy of Sam the Record Man is honoured.” They have not done so.
Researchers develop golden window electrodes for organic solar cells: Researchers at the University of Warwick have developed a gold plated window as the transparent electrode for organic solar cells ("Ultrathin Transparent Au Electrodes for Organic Photovoltaics Fabricated Using a Mixed Mono-Molecular Nucleation Layer"). Contrary to what one might expect, these electrodes have the potential to be relatively cheap since the thickness of gold used is only 8 billionths of a metre. This ultra-low thickness means that even at the current high gold price the cost of the gold needed to fabricate one square metre of this electrode is only around £4.5. It can also be readily recouped from the organic solar cell at the end of its life and since gold is already widely used to form reliable interconnects it is no stranger to the electronics industry.
Organic solar cells have long relied on Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) coated glass as the transparent electrode, although this is largely due to the absence of a suitable alternative. ITO is a complex, unstable material with a high surface roughness and tendency to crack upon bending if supported on a plastic substrate. If that wasn't bad enough one of its key components, indium, is in short supply making it relatively expensive to use.
An ultra-thin film of air-stable metal like gold would offer a viable alternative to ITO, but until now it has not proved possible to deposit a film thin enough to be transparent without being too fragile and electrically resistive to be useful. Now research led by Dr Ross Hatton and Professor Tim Jones in the University of Warwick 's department of Chemistry has developed a rapid method for the preparation of robust, ultra-thin gold films on glass. Importantly this method can be scaled up for large area applications like solar cells and the resulting electrodes are chemically very well-defined.
Dr Hatton says "This new method of creating gold based transparent electrodes is potentially widely applicable for a variety of large area applications, particularly where stable, chemically well-defined, ultra-smooth platform electrodes are required, such as in organic optoelectronics and the emerging fields of nanoelectronics and nanophotonics" The paper documents the team's success in creating this simple, practical and effective method of depositing the films onto glass, and also reports how the optical properties can be fine tuned by perforating the film with tiny circular holes using something as simple as polystyrene balls. The University of Warwick research team has also had some early success in depositing ultra-thin gold films directly on plastic substrates, an important step towards realising the holy grail of truly flexible solar cells. This innovation is set to be exploited by Molecular Solar Ltd, a Warwick spinout company dedicated to commercialising the discoveries of its academic founders in the area of organic solar cells.
Investment in US clean technology highest since 2008: Rising oil prices and increasing investor confidence have encouraged US clean technology market, says report by Cleantech Group. Global investment in US clean technology has reached its highest level since 2008, while investment in UK companies has dropped sharply, quarterly figures show. Increasing investor confidence and rising oil prices have helped investment in North American companies more than double compared with the previous quarter, according to a report by Cleantech Group, an international firm that works to accelerate the development and market adoption of clean technologies.
Sheera Haji, CEO of Cleantech Group, said: "I absolutely think rising oil prices have had some important impacts. We've seen decent uptake in transportation." He added: "We're seeing a good rebound as public markets are doing well, companies are doing well, and investors are raising funds and investing them. We're also seeing a real skew towards bigger deals." While North America flourishes, investment in companies in Europe and Israel dropped by 60% compared with the previous quarter. Investment in British companies has plummeted to its lowest level since 2003, with only nine deals secured all year.
Haji described the period as a "very weak" quarter for the UK. He said: "I have not been following the UK closely, but there's been some uncertainty around what's happening in the UK – around the economic recovery and growth – and that has impacted on the vibrancy of the start-up economy." The news comes a week after a report from the US Pew Environment Group showed that Britain's private investments in green energy projects fell by 70% last year, causing it to fall from third to 13th place in the league of countries developing clean technology.
Haji said Japan's nuclear crisis could have a "pretty significant impact" on the next set of quarterly figures, and that it may boost investment in clean technology and coal. He added: "We think it's a setback for the building of new reactors."
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