Google To Switch To Green Energy Entirely In 2017

Last year, Google consumed as much energy as the city of San Francisco. The online giant said on 6 December that all of its data centers around the world will be entirely powered with renewable energy sources sometime next year. This is not to say that Google computers will consume nothing but wind and solar power. Google gets electricity from a power company, which operates an energy grid supplied by hydroelectric dams, natural gas, and coal and wind power. Over the last decade, Google has made deals with renewable producers, guaranteeing to buy the energy they produce with their wind turbines and solar cells. With those guarantees, companies can obtain bank financing to build more turbines. The power created by the renewable is plugged into the utility grid, so that Google’s usage presents no net consumption of fossil fuels and the pool of electricity gets a larger share of renewable sources. Unlike carbon based power wind supply prices do not fluctuate. The more renewable energy it buys, the cheaper those sources get. About 25% of USs’ electricity goes to businesses, and companies like Google are now about 2 percentage points of that. Google operates eight businesses and runs on 13 data centers. The 5.7 terawatt hours of electricity Google consumed in 2015 is equal to output of two 500 megawatt coal plants. That is enough for 140,000 person towns.

A Robotic Hand Almost As Good As Real

Scientists have developed a robotic hand that can be controlled with the mind, allowing people with certain types of spinal injuries to perform everyday tasks, such as using a fork or drinking from a cup. The low-cost device was tested in Spain on six people with quadriplegia that affects one’s ability to grasp or manipulate objects. By wearing a cap that measures electric brain activity and eye movement, the users were able to send signals to a computer that controlled the glove like device attached to their hand. Participants were able to perform daily activities better with the robotic hand than without it, according to results published on 6 December in the journal Science Robotics. The principle of using brain-controlled robotic aids to assist people with quadriplegia isn’t new. But many existing systems require implants, which can cause health problems, or use wet gel to transmit signals from the scalp to the electrodes. The gel needs to be washed out of the user’s hair afterwards, making it impractical in daily life. The participants, who had previously expressed difficulty in performing everyday tasks without assistance, rater the system as reliable and practical, and did not indicate any discomfort during or after use. It took the participants just 10 minutes to learn how to use the system before they were able to carry out tasks such as picking up chips or signing a document. There were some limitations to the system though. Users had to have sufficient function in their shoulder and arm to reach out with the robotic hand. And mounting the system required another person’s help.