The Ontario government has given approval for a California company to construct a massive 40MW solar power plant near Sarnia that will blanket an area larger than all three Toronto islands with hundreds of thousands of solar panels. It will be the largest solar power station in North America and among the most expansive in the world to use photovoltaic cells. Once complete, the 40-megawatt Sarnia project will be able to supply enough emission-free electricity to power between 10,000 and 15,000 homes on sunny days. If all goes according to schedule, the Sarnia solar plant will be fully functional in 2010 and will continue supplying clean electricity to the grid for the next 30 to 50 years.
Daily Archive for April 29th, 2007
Researchers from the IBM Almaden research lab and the University of Nevada have created a simulation that was as big and as complex as half of a mouse brain on the BlueGene L supercomputer. Half a real mouse brain is thought to have about eight million neurons each one of which can have up to 8,000 connections. Using the BlueGene L supercomputer the researchers created half a virtual mouse brain that had 8,000 neurons & had up to 6,300 connections.
In other smaller simulations the researchers say they have seen characteristics of thought patterns observed in real mouse brains. In these other tests the team saw the groups of neurons form spontaneously into groups. The researchers say that although the simulation shared some similarities with a mouse’s mental make-up in terms of nerves and connections it lacked the structures seen in real mice brains. For future tests the team aims to speed up the simulation, and make it more neurobiologically faithful, by adding structures seen in real mouse brains
