AirAsia flight from Indonesia to Singapore missing

An AirAsia Indonesia airliner flying from Indonesia to Singapore with 162 people on board has gone missing.



Flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control at around 06:20 local time (23:20 GMT) over the Java Sea.

The plane, an Airbus A320-200, disappeared midway into the flight of more than two hours from the city of Surabaya. No distress call was made.

Bad weather was reported in the area, and an air search operation has now been suspended for the night.

Planes from Indonesia and Singapore had been scouring an area of sea between Kalimantan (Borneo) and Java. Some boats are reported to be continuing to search as night falls.

No wreckage has been found, an Indonesian official told the BBC.

The flight left the Indonesian city of Surabaya in eastern Java at 05:20 local time (22:20 GMT) and was due to arrive in Singapore at 08:30 (00:30 GMT).

The missing jet had requested a "deviation" from the flight path due to storm clouds, AirAsia said.

Indonesia's transport ministry said the pilot had asked permission to climb to 38,000 ft (11,000m) to avoid thick cloud.

AirAsia, a budget airline which owns 49% of AirAsia Indonesia, is based in Malaysia and has never lost a plane.

However, 2014 has been a difficult year for aviation in Asia: Malaysia's national carrier Malaysia Airlines has suffered two losses - flights MH370 and MH17.

Flight MH370 disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March with 239 passengers and crew. The wreckage, thought to be in southern Indian Ocean, has still not been located.

MH17 was shot down over Ukraine in July, killing all 298 on board.
At the scene: Saira Asher, Changi Airport, Singapore


Flight QZ8501 was supposed to arrive early this morning. Hours later the families of the passengers gathered here have very little information.

Airport officials are keeping them well away from the media and trying to make them comfortable.

The AirAsia incident comes at the end of a difficult year for air travellers in the region, and the scenes at Changi airport today are reminiscent of those in Kuala Lumpur immediately after MH370 went missing in March: anxious relatives waiting for any news on their loves ones, a media frenzy, but no answers.

The Airbus, pictured here on an earlier flight, disappeared about an hour after takeoff
Anxious family members have been arriving at the airport in Surabaya
There was a similar scene at the flight's intended destination in Singapore
The flight arrivals board at Changi Airport in Singapore, where the AirAsia flight was dueEmergency contact

There were 155 passengers on board, the company said in a statement:
138 adults, 16 children and one infant
Most on board were Indonesian
Several were from other countries: one UK national, a Malaysian, a Singaporean and three South Koreans
Two pilots and five crew were also on board - one French, the others Indonesian

AirAsia has set up an emergency line for family or friends of those who may be on board. The number is +622 129 850 801.

Dozens of passengers' relatives have been gathering at Juanda airport in Surabaya and Singapore's Changi airport to hear news.

Changi airport authorities have set up a holding area for relatives. It said 47 had arrived and care officers and counsellors were on hand to provide support.


AirAsia's Chief Executive Tony Fernandes tweeted: "Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers. We must stay strong."

AirAsia Indonesia operates domestic flights round the Indonesian archipelago as well as international services to Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and Thailand.

AirAsia Indonesia, along with other Indonesian airlines, was banned from flying to the European Union in 2007 due to safety concerns but this was lifted in July 2010

Volvo claims XC90 T8 hybrid is the world's most powerful and cleanest SUV

Volvo claims the new XC90 can run for 40 km in electric only mode.

Volvo has finally revealed the full details of the high-tech T8 powertrain that will power the plug-in hybrid version of its XC90 SUV. The XC90 T8 combines an electric motor with Volvo's supercharged and turbocharged Drive-E four cylinder engine, for a hybrid system that can run in electric-only mode for zero-emissions driving or combined with the ICE for increased power.

The four-cylinder Drive-E petrol engine beneath the XC90 T8's hood produces 318 hp (237 kW) and 400 Nm (295 ft lb) of torque on its own, and powers the front wheels. Volvo claims the Drive-E produces as much power as engines twice its size, thanks to the supercharger and turbocharger that bolster its outputs.

Providing electric power is a high voltage (270-400 V) battery that produces 65 kW (87 hp), and is centrally-mounted in a tunnel that runs down the middle of the car's chassis. Volvo claims this position doesn't impact on interior space, allowing the XC90 T8 to seat seven people with space for their luggage. The battery is hooked up to the XC90's electric motor, which is able to deliver 60 kW (82 hp) to the rear wheels, either on its own or in tandem with the petrol engine working up front.



In between the the XC90 T8's engine and transmission, Volvo has fitted the car with a crankshaft mounted starter-generator (CISG), which allows the petrol and electric motors to work seamlessly behind the scenes. As well as acting as a starter motor, the 34 kW unit can provide an extra 150 Nm (11 ft lb) of torque when combined with the petrol engine.

To maximize the battery's charge, the new XC90 T8 is fitted with regenerative braking, allowing it to harvest energy when drivers lift off the throttle. The amount of energy that is actually regenerated is controlled by a stability function to stop the car slowing too aggressively when you lift off the throttle, and to stop the way the brake pedal responds from feeling unnatural.

Keeping all this electric hardware cool is a challenge that Volvo has attacked by fitting the XC90 T8 with a two-circuit system. The first circuit cools the CISG and electric motor, while the second keeps the battery cool both passively and, if necessary, actively by using the car's climate control system.



This complicated combination of electric and petrol power allows drivers to use their car in five separate modes. As you'd expect, Pure electric mode uses only the rear-mounted motor to power the car, and Volvo claims that a range of over 40 km (25 mi) is achievable. Moving into Power mode, which can take the car from 0 to 100km/h in 5.9 seconds, combines the instant response of the electric motor with the petrol engine's more powerful top end performance for, according to Volvo, power and response to rival a V8.

Manually selecting all-wheel drive (AWD) mode also takes advantage of both motors, to provide more traction for drivers on demand, while Save mode allows drivers to hold the battery's charge for later use. Finally, the engine defaults to Hybrid mode, where the car will automatically alternate between petrol and electric power for maximum fuel efficiency. This complex combination of systems allow the T8 to emit just 59 g/km on the New European Drive Cycle (NEDC) with fuel economy of 2.5 L/100km, and a U.S. driving cycle fuel economy figure of 59 MPGe.

Source: Volvo

Wireless sensor alerts your smartphone as food begins to spoil

MIT researchers modified an NFC tag to function as a gas detecting sensor (Photo: Melanie Gonick)


While the stench of rotting food would cause you to stop from chowing down, chances are it became unfit for consumption some time before those funky aromas wafted through your nostrils. Chemists at MIT have been working on a wireless, inexpensive sensor that, among other things, identifies spoiled food early by detecting gases in the air. It then shares its data with a smartphone, potentially alerting users to that soon-to-be moldy fruit in the bottom of the fridge.

“The beauty of these sensors is that they are really cheap," says Timothy Swager, Professor of Chemistry at MIT. "You put them up, they sit there, and then you come around and read them. There’s no wiring involved. There’s no power. You can get quite imaginative as to what you might want to do with a technology like this.”

Swager has something of a history in developing gas-detecting sensors. In 2007, his amplified chemical sensors designed to detect vapors from explosives such as TNT saw him awarded the prestigious US$500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize. In 2012 he produced ethylene sensors to gauge the ripeness of fruit, a tool that could help grocers arrange their stock to minimize waste and maximize sales of fresh produce. His latest creation could be seen as a culmination of these earlier achievements.

The new sensors are modified near-field communication (NFC) tags, which are often used as proximity sensors. The team punched a whole in the tag's electronic circuit and then replaced the missing link with carbon nanotubes designed to detect particular gases. The nanotubes were drawn on usingmechanical pencils, which were also developed in Swager's lab back in 2012.

These sensors require little power, which comes courtesy of short pulses of magnetic fields emitted by the smartphone used to read them. Normally, these pulses induce an electric current in the tag's circuit that keeps it running. But in the modified tags, once the carbon nanotubes smell a targeted gas in the air the radio frequencies at which it receives these pulses is shifted. The sensor will only respond to the reading smartphone if the frequencies are unchanged, therefore indicating whether or not a targeted gas is present.

At the moment, each sensor is only able to detect one gas, and the smartphone must be held within 5 cm (2 in) to pick up a reading. The chemicals successfully sniffed out in testing include gaseous ammonia, hydrogen peroxide and cyclohexanone. While revealing rotting food is one potential use for the sensors, the minimal amount of energy required could see them deployed just about anywhere, possibly detecting everything from explosives to environmental pollutants to dangerous gas levels in manufacturing plants.

We have seen other devices emerge recently that are aimed at letting you know when food is unsafe to eat, such Peres and color-coded smart tags, though they don't quite promise the same versatility as MIT's newest creation.

The researchers have filed a patent for the technology and are now further exploring its potential applications. They are also seeking to integrate Bluetooth technology to expand its range beyond 5 cm (2 in).

You can hear from some of the researchers in the video below.

Source: MIT

QR codes could generate 3D images on phones – no internet required

Using a smartphone, users could scan QR codes to see encrypted 3D images


Whether they're on product packaging, promotional materials or in magazines, most QR codes do the same thing – when a smartphone scans them with its camera, they trigger that phone's web browser to navigate to a given website. In the near future, however, they may be used to securely display 3D images on the user's phone, without even involving the often-untrustworthy internet.

The system is being developed by a team from the University of Connecticut led by Bahram Javidi, a professor of electrical engineering. Here's how it works ...

First, a physical object or scene is photographed using an image sensor. Instead of a single lens, that sensor is equipped with an array of mini "lenslets," making it similar to an insect's compound eye. Each of those lenslets contributes its own 2D "elemental image" of the complete object, taken from a slightly different angle than any of the others.

Every one of those images is electronically broken down into two information packets – one is a record of the unique angle of the object in the image, and the other contains the intensity data of all the image's pixels. That information is subsequently compressed, encrypted, and stored as a QR code. A series of such codes collectively contain the data from all of the elemental images.



Using a smartphone equipped with a decryption app and a unique security key, users then sequentially scan those codes to obtain their combined data. In order to see the resulting 3D image of the object – an amalgamation of all the elemental images – another lenslet array is placed over the phone's screen.

Javidi and his team are now refining the technology, with an eye towards commercial applications.

A paper on the research was published this week in the journal Optica.

Source: The Optical Society