Well, the relation is coincidental and humorous

Some time ago, a ‘new idea’ had been tossed by Virgil Griffith stating that your music preference can reflect your IQ. A comparative study was made between different college students in USA about the ten most frequent “favorite music” via that college’s Network Statistics page on Facebook. These students were asked to take a SAT test and their scores were compared to decide which group of music genre audience has a better Intellect. Surprisingly, students listening to Lil Wayne, Beyonce, Ludacris, e.t.c had the least score on the SAT test and those listening to Beethoven scored the highest ! See the score chart and see where do you stand:

If you are a Radiohead fan, you should check out another report: link. The results are obviously inaccurate to actually judge one’s quantity of grey matter, but the chart can be used for fun and is something many people have been thinking about, but could not speak out

A Piezoelectric device will do the job

A piezoelectric device inside a small motor

Piezoelectric materials are special classes of ceramics and crystals, which have the ability to generate electrical potential when mechanical pressure is applied on them. They currently provide the basis for a large number of applications, including powering up guitar pickups, making for fuses in rocket-propelled grenades, or making up the basis for doorbells. But now, scientists at the City College of New York are working on a method of using the materials to produce electricity out of air flows.

The team basically plans to convert the kinetic energy of motion into power, especially for planes and automobiles. The investigators will present their brand-new concept between November 22-24, at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society’s (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics. The gathering will take place at the Minneapolis Convention Center. “These devices open the possibility to continuously scavenge otherwise wasted energy from the environment,” CCNY Professor Yiannis Andreopoulos, the leader of the research team, explains.

The new instruments, the team reports, are a half-inch by one inch in size, and they could easily be mounted on supports such as the roof or tail of a car, or the fuselage of a plane. Because they would be located directly into the path of air flows, they would vibrate accordingly, potentially producing very large amounts of energy during their life span. The current thus obtained will most likely not be enough to replace the power provided by current internal combustion engines, the experts add.

However, these amounts of electricity could be used to run secondary systems, such as batteries, or could even be used to charge GPS stations, CD players, mobile phones and other minor devices. At this point, Andreopoulos and his team are working on modeling the physical forces the new materials would be subjected to. These results would allow them to design the piezoelectric devices in a way that would ensure a maximum efficiency, while at the same reducing drag and ensuring the fuel consumption remains low.

Source: Softpedia News

Will It Win The Mainstream Market?

Google is gearing up to release it’s Chrome OS, an open source, lightweight operating system, which has created a buzz all over. It is supposed to target the netbooks in the initial stages. The company will be holding an event at it’s Mountain View campus this thursday to make a technical announcement on Chrome OS. No one knows whether the product will be a success or a failure, but considering the credibility of Google and also a list of it’s “unsuccessful products”, it’s will be interesting how Google will introduce and balance the upcoming product.

Here is a list of unsuccessful Google products by BlogScoped:

• Google Deskbar
• GNS, Google Number Search
• GoogleScout
• Blogger Pro
• Google Directory
• Google Catalogs
• Google Local
• Google RealNames Support
• Paid Google Videos
• Google Related Links
• The Google SOAP API
• Google Answers
• Google X
• Whois Searches

See, Google is not as perfect as you think it is But, who knows, Chrome OS might end up being part of the above list, or may even take over the widely dominated Microsoft’s Windows OS.