Chinese 100-Megapixel Camera Can Snap Ultra-High-Resolution Images

The Chinese-developed IOE3-Kanban camera features a 100-megapixel charge-coupled device (CCD) chip capable of producing 10,240 x 10,240 pixel images. The light and compact camera should greatly boost success in the fields of disaster monitoring, aerial mapping and intelligent transportation systems where ultra-high-resolution imaging is key.

Developed by the Institute of Optics and Electronics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences over a period of two years, the IOE3-Kanban camera is remarkably compact: just 19.3 cm (7.72 inches) in width.




The filmless CCD chip is also exceptionally tolerant of temperature extremes, having an ideal operating range between minus 20 degrees centigrade to 55 degrees centigrade (-4 to 131 degrees F). Though it may look rather plain, the camera packs a host of advanced features that allow operators to take full advantage of its formidable imaging power.

Advanced optical systems, camera control systems and high-capacity data recording systems have all helped contribute to the success of a recent real-world trial conducted by the IOE as part of a national aerial remote-sensing system.

A statement released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences celebrated the IOE3-Kanban as “currently China's highest pixel camera” and extolled the device's “high sensitivity and high dynamic range (HDR) features.”

The successful development of the IOE3-Kanban 100-megapixel camera comes on the heels of the IOE's previous triumph, having developed an 81-megapixel camera during China's 10th Five Year Plan period between 2001 and 2005.

$123,000,000,000,000 - China’s estimated economy by the year 2040.

In 2040, the Chinese economy will reach $123 trillion, or nearly three times the economic output of the entire globe in 2000. China's per capita income will hit $85,000, more than double the forecast for the European Union, and also much higher than that of India and Japan. In other words, the average Chinese megacity dweller will be living twice as well as the average Frenchman when China goes from a poor country in 2000 to a superrich country in 2040. Although it will not have overtaken the United States in per capita wealth, according to my forecasts, China's share of global GDP -- 40 percent -- will dwarf that of the United States (14 percent) and the European Union (5 percent) 30 years from now. This is what economic hegemony will look like. 

Most accounts of China's economic ascent offer little but vague or threatening generalities, and they usually grossly underestimate the extent of the rise -- and how fast it's coming. (For instance, a recent study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace predicts that by 2050, China'seconomy will be just 20 percent larger than that of the United States.) Such accounts fail to fully credit the forces at work behind China's recent successor understand how those trends will shape the future. Even China's own economic data in some ways actually underestimate economic outputs.

It's the same story with the relative decline of a Europe plagued by falling fertility as its era of global economic clout finally ends. Here, too, the trajectory will be more sudden and stark than most reporting suggests. Europe's low birthrate and its muted consumerism mean its contribution to global GDP will tumble to a quarter of its current share within 30 years. At that point, the economy of the 15 earliest EU countries combined will be an eighth the size of China's.

This is what the future will look like in a generation. It's coming sooner than we think. What, precisely, does China have going so right for it?

The first essential factor that is often overlooked: the enormous investment China is making in education. More educated workers are much more productive workers. (As I have reported elsewhere, U.S. data indicate that college-educated workers are three times as productive, and a high school graduate is 1.8 times as productive, as a worker with less than a ninth-grade education.) In China, high school and college enrollments are rising steeply due to significant state investment. In 1998, then-President Jiang Zemin called for a massive increase in enrollment in higher education. At the time, just 3.4 million students were enrolled in China's colleges and universities. The response was swift: Over the next four years, enrollment in higher education increased 165 percent, and the number of Chinese studying abroad rose 152 percent. Between 2000 and 2004, university enrollment continued to rise steeply, by about 50 percent. I forecast that China will be able to increase its high school enrollment rate to the neighborhood of 100 percent and the college rate to about 50 percent over the next generation, which would by itself add more than 6 percentage points to the country's annual economic growth rate. These targets for higher education are not out of reach. It should be remembered that several Western European countries saw college enrollment rates climb from about 25 to 50 percent in just the last two decades of the 20th century.

And it's not just individual workers whose productivity jumps significantly as a result of more education; it's true of firms as well, according to work by economist Edwin Mansfield. In a remarkable 1971 study ,Mansfield found that the presidents of companies that have been early adopters of complex new technologies were on average younger and better educated than heads of firms that were slower to innovate.

The second thing many underestimate when making projections for China's economy is the continued role of the rural sector. When we imagine the future, we tend to picture Shanghai high-rises and Guangdong factories, but changes afoot in the Chinese countryside have made it an underappreciated economic engine. In analyzing economic growth, it is useful to divide an economy into three sectors: agriculture, services, and industry. Over the quarter-century between 1978 and 2003, the growth of labor productivity in China has been high in each of these sectors, averaging about 6 percent annually. The level of output per worker has been much higher in industry and services, and those sectors have received the most analysis and attention. (I estimate that China's rapid urbanization, which shifts workers to industry and services, added 3 percentage points to the annual national growth rate.) However, productivity is increasing even for those who remain in rural areas. In 2009, about 55 percent of China's population, or 700 million people, still lived in the countryside. That large rural sector is responsible for about a third of Chinese economic growth today, and it will not disappear in the next 30 years.

Third, though it's a common refrain that Chinese data are flawed or deliberately inflated in key ways, Chinese statisticians may well be underestimating economic progress. This is especially true in the service sector because small firms often don't report their numbers to the government and officials often fail to adequately account for improvements in the quality of output. In the United States as well as China, official estimates of GDP badly underestimate national growth if they do not take into account improvements in services such as education and health care. (Most great advances in these areas aren't fully counted in GDP because the values of these sectors are measured by inputs instead of by output. An hour of a doctor's time is considered no more valuable today than an hour of a doctor's time was before the age of antibiotics and modern surgery.) Other countries have a similar national accounting problem, but the rapid growth of China's service sector makes the underestimation more pronounced.

Fourth, and most surprising to some, the Chinese political system is likely not what you think. Although outside observers often assume that Beijing is always at the helm, most economic reforms, including the most successful ones, have been locally driven and overseen. And though China most certainly is not an open democracy, there's more criticism and debate in upper echelons of policy making than many realize. Unchecked mandates can of course lead to disaster, but there's a reason Beijing has avoided any repeats of the Great Leap Forward in recent years.

Lightning Charger Connector Caps Add Dash To iPhones, iPads & iPods

Is your iPhone, iPad or iPad bare and naked? Cover those unsightly holes with one of 5Lightning Charger Connector Caps from the Bone Collection. Snapping snugly into your Apple device's Lightning connector slot, these cute character covers fit flush against the body while keeping the slot dirt-, dust- and debris-free.

According to Chao0574, the seller who's offering these character covers on Taobao, they'll fit any Apple device including the iPhone 5, iPad Mini, iPad 4, and iPod Touch 5.

The covers are designed in such a way that when the clear plastic business end is plugged in to the Lightning connector slot, the soft & colorful silicone plastic character end opposite curves around to lay flush against the device's body, avoiding snags and presenting its best face forward.

Choose from five different styles: Red Power Ranger, Penguin, Red-Nosed Reindeer, Wise Owl, or Yellow Rubber Duckie. The latter should be especially popular in China where giant inflatable Rubber Duck Mania has swept the country. Chao0574 is pricing Lightning Charger Connector Caps at 15 yuan each, or around $2.45 a piece.

EIA Says Worldwide Shale Oil And Gas Potential Is Huge

A surge in oil and gas production from shale rock has transformed energy in the United States, helping reverse declines in oil production and prompting a massive shift from coal to natural gas electricity production that has led to a significant drop in carbon dioxide emissions (since burning coal releases more carbon dioxide than burning natural gas). A new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration lends support to the idea that a similar transformation could take place outside the United States. 

A map from a new Energy Information Administration report on shale oil and gas resources.

The map above gives a sense of just how widespread oil and gas resources are. The EIA report concludes that Russia has even more technically recoverable shale oil than the United States. Three countries have more shale gas—China, Argentina, and Algeria. Geologists have long known that some shale deposits contain large amounts of oil and gas, but it’s only recently that hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technology have made it feasible to extract.

While other countries may have more of these resources than the United States, the impact in some of them may not be as great, or happen as quickly. It could take many years to develop resources in other countries because the geology is somewhat different—the techniques that work in the United States might not quite work elsewhere. What’s more, many countries don’t have the needed technological expertise. Some countries make it difficult for companies to set up and find ways to exploit the resources (see “China Has Plenty of Shale Gas, But It Will Be Hard to Mine”).

What’s more, the United States had a lot of spare natural gas generating capacity, which made it easy to switch from coal to natural gas. In a place like China, where energy demand is quickly growing, there’s little spare capacity. Natural gas production might only serve to slightly slow the growth of electricity from coal plants, not reverse it.

So far, the impact of increased shale gas production has been limited outside the United States. Because natural gas is relatively expensive to export and requires the construction of specialized infrastructure, prices for natural gas have fallen sharply inside the United States, but not outside the country.

But it has had one impact: increased natural gas production in the U.S. has led to increases in coal consumption elsewhere. Unlike natural gas, coal is relatively easy to export. When demand for it dropped in the U.S., it was shipped abroad, lowering coal prices and contributing to an increase in coal use—and carbon dioxide emissions.