Keeping 'The Cloud' Afloat

In the world now, billions of people are sending messages to each other 24/7 creating a massive amount of data on the "cloud". But what is the cloud and more importantly where is the cloud.

It's easy to imagine data existing in this kind of pseudo magical area supported by the combined force of many users into a cloud of information floating under its own weight, and while it is true that the internet is held up by the combined efforts of many users, the lion's share of the internet is held up by the technological titans, replacing Atlas' muscles with vast server banks. While certainly not limited to, includes Microsoft, Google and Facebook, who all have hundreds of thousands of servers, if not millions now.

These gigantic server farms are now processing countless terabytes of data, using huge amounts of power and sending it all over the world, and some of the technology used in these server farms is quite interesting. You quickly find that thinking about servers in terms of your home computer just doesn't do it justice. These server farms can quite quickly begin to resemble industrial complexes, which is fitting since they are providing industrial computing.

A central cooling plant in Google's Douglas County,
Georgia, data center. Photo: Google/Connie Zhou

One of the biggest issues faced by server farms is the cooling required and how to make it efficient to cool. Depending on the type of server, power consumption can vary greatly, from 50W anywhere up to 5000W for the very high end servers, though the average is generally closer the 250W mark, this doesn't seem so bad until you realise that all of this energy is converted into heat, then suddenly block of 250W servers might closer resemble a 2KW heater. While power consumption has been coming down, especially in recent years, when you have rooms full of these, the required cooling can be quite extreme and this has led to a number of industrial scaled solutions.

The easiest to implement though not the most efficient is to cool the whole building with very powerful air conditioning units and then rely on the internal fans in the servers to cool the key components. While effective this does have the downside of requiring a lot of extra power consumption.

An interesting alternative to this has been liquid cooling, again not really anything like you might see in a home, this relies on submerging the whole servers into a non-conductive liquid and then centrally cooling and pumping the liquid, which makes the process a lot more efficient. This method also has the added benefit of increased thermal conductivity, since compared to gasses, liquids have much better thermal properties, which typically results in better cooling for all components on the server, rather than just the main heat producing elements, which can increase the lifespan of devices.

In either case, what tends to result from these installations is room and rooms of servers with other areas totally dedicated to the removal of heat, and it's in these massive leviathans that the cloud we all rely on is supported.

Fire Retardant Clothing in Industry; How Important is it?

Fire retardant clothing is part of the health and safety gear for a lot of places and at first glance it may seem unnecessary or overprotective but just how important is FR clothing in industry. In a lot of applications the answer turns out to be; very!

One of the best ways to look at FR clothing is to look at the consequences of not wearing it. When normal clothing ignites victims generally suffer huge amounts of burning to large parts of their body. Those who survive then have the massive risk of infection again lowering the rate of survival and horrific scarring. While skin grafts and even stem cell treatments can be used to reduce or even remove scarring, for obvious reasons, this is a road you don't want to have to go down in the first place.

Comparatively, the same person wearing FR clothing could potentially walk away without a scratch! The benefit of FR clothing can really be that drastic because often the cause of ignition won't be present for an extended period of time. In the case of something like an arc flash; a violent electrical breakdown in which temperatures in excess of 20,000oC can be reached, the arc flash is only likely to be there for a split second. During that time though, molten metal can be sprayed out of it and very easily ignite the clothing of anybody standing nearby. An important note here is that when an arc flash occurs, it isn't just the person working who is at risk; it's everybody around them too, so safety equipment such as FR clothing is still important, even if you're just working nearby to something which may present a danger.

So when working in industrial environments, remember to wear FR clothing; it could save your life one day!

Weird and Wonderful Display Systems

Got some interesting display system setups people have around the world today;

 How many screens do you need?! Something tells me it's less than 8, this person certainly can't get enough extra space though.

 Every Guy's dream here, a triple screen display just for gaming! What's not to love.

This strange contraption resembles some kind of strange dentists chair or maybe something from the matrix, but this is the ergo workstation, designed to keep geeks comfortable for extended periods of time.

New Microsoft Patent

Microsoft have just patented an interesting piece of tech: virtual image display goggles.

Essentially taking the idea of 3D technology they've designed goggles, which display images directly in front of your eyes using both 2D and 3D.

instead of the normal LCD screen seen in this kind of technology prior to this, this new tech will use laser virtual image projectors to create an image around an arms length in front of you. since the lenses on the goggles can also be transparent though, we can expect to see this technology in aeroplanes and even video games soon.

Some awesome use of custom display solutions

Behind the screen

Of course behind every LCD you have a computer doing the hard work but the technology to do this is getting smaller and smaller, with the intel atom processors, you can have a computer that's only a few inches across.

Review display System's new compact atom design is just 102 x 146mm so fits behind a 5.7" LCD screen for highly compact computing.

This system also has the advantage of minimal power requirements; it uses just 14W, where most desktop computers will use in the region of at least 10 times that, some even exceeding 100 times that!

This makes the board fantastic in a lot of personal and industrial display systems such as sealed units, places where space is an issue and where portability is required. Not to mention, it's a fully functional unit on its own and very capable, the lower power consumption can make it hugely useful and cost effective anywhere!

Bulletproof LCDs

following on from the last post about how LCD screens can be protected with special glass layers; here are a few videos of straight LCD monitors that can stop bullets on their own:





I wouldn't trust it enough to stand on the other side though ;)

Protective windows and screens; how they work.

We’ve all heard of bulletproof glass, whether from movies, general knowledge or coming across it, and we know it isn’t just glass, but what exactly is it that makes it so durable and what other functions could it have?

Well, the term glass in it isn’t totally untrue, bullet resistant glass does have glass in it. This will be layered into the bulletproof glass several times, only this has normally undergone a tempering process whereby the glass is much sturdier than ordinary glass.

The layers between the tempered glass are then formed of polycarbonate and thermoplastics which are much tougher than glass. This allows a much stronger constructions able to withstand significant impacts and while this is often associated with armoured vehicles and such designed to actually withstand impacts from gunfire, such forms of glass have countless uses outside of military applications.

For a start, anything that is outside and could be vandalised can benefit greatly from having things tougher than glass protecting them. Good examples here include shop windows, which need to be resistant to impacts to help deter robbery, help kiosks, which need to protect LCD display screens from vandalism and dispensing machines which need to protect from both vandalism and theft.

On top of this, protective screening has some incredibly good uses in industrial computer monitor LCDs. In industry environments can be harsh and knocks and scrapes can be an occupational hazard of any equipment in them not to mention, high temperatures and potentially damaging chemicals. This makes screening similar to bulletproof glass, very desirable for covering over display systems and touch screen interfaces which may be used on a plant.

Combining the technology to make durable glass with some clever touch screen technology; projected capacitance can then allow you to make incredibly durable protective layers able to withstand huge impacts, without tarnishing the important stuff inside, this is often how touchscreen kiosks found in town and city centres all over the UK are constructed as well as touchscreens used in industrial applications like on chemical plants, refineries, food processing plants etcetera.

Such glass can also have protective layers on top of that too. This is often to provide a level of scratch resistance to keep the glass clear and usable though again going back to industrial examples, it can be required to have a protective layer to stop chemicals from damaging the surface, again, which could cause problems otherwise.