IT’S New Year and that can only mean one thing – darts is back!

The world famous Lakeside stage is set to celebrate the 40th anniversary year of the British Darts Organisation with the 2013 Lakeside World Darts Championships, starting on Saturday.

Players from over 30 countries around the globe have competed to qualify in the final field of 32 men and eight women over eight days of top tungsten action.

In addition to extensive coverage on BBC Sport for the 36th consecutive year, the tournament will also be seen on satellite channel ESPN as well as Eurosport and Eurosport Asia, combining to produce the biggest TV audiences for darts in the world.

The bookies favourite this year is England’s Stephen Bunting, who more than justifies his No.1 seeding having won his first major title, the Winmau World Masters, in October, and the Zuiderduin Masters in Holland last month.

Bunting takes on Lakeside debutant Jamie Wilson on Sunday in the opening match at 1pm.

At 56, three-times champion Martin Adams is the oldest player in the tournament, and the No.2 seed begins his 20th consecutive Lakeside campaign against the youngest, Dutch star Jimmy Hendricks, just 18. That match is also on Sunday with a 3pm start.

Dutch star Christian Kist won here as a qualifier ranked No.74 in the world 12 months ago, epitomising the magic of Lakeside by arriving largely unknown and leaving with the famous trophy and a cheque for a life-changing £100,000.

Also defending their Lakeside title is Women’s world champion Anastasia Dobromyslova, who added to her 2008 crown with victory over Trina Gulliver in last year’s final.

The Russian returns at 7.30pm on Sunday when she plays Lorraine Farlam.

It’s a complete sell-out at Lakeside, play gets underway on Saturday at 1pm.

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Modesto, California, United States – Titanium-Jewelry.com, a leading online retailer of men’s wedding bands, tungsten rings, titanium rings and unique contemporary jewelry designs for men and women, has now announced the addition of new rings, camouflage wedding bands. The rings are made of either titanium or tungsten as the base material.  The surface of the each ring has an artistically unique camouflage design, then an industrial epoxy coating is applied creating a hardened acrylic enamel.
 
Scott Mackey, COO of Titanium-Jewelry, says “Camo Rings are becoming very popular with younger men who tend to be outdoorsy, hunter types.  Each ring has a unique pattern and they are priced in everyone’s budget.”
 
An outdoorsman with an adventurous spirit and an appreciation for nature would be the ideal candidate to wear one of the camo rings from this line. The classic look of titanium wedding bands joined with the manly look of camouflage is a winning combination.
 
In business for more than 20 years, Titanium-Jewelry.com has a reputation for carrying beautiful, award winning wedding bands and jewelry that is perfect for men and women looking for both contemporary and classic design. Titanium-Jewelry.com specializes in men’s titanium rings, tungsten rings and cobalt rings combined with the precious metals and diamonds.

Tungsten Jewellery Manufacturer & Supplier: Chinatungsten Online - http://www.tungsten-jewellery.com
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Phil Taylor's Ladbrokes PDC World Championship final victory over Michael van Gerwen was beamed live to South Africa for the first time.

Coverage from Alexandra Palace has also broken new ground this year in Eastern Europe and the USA.

PDC chairman Hearn says the top players stand to cash in on the new wave of interest, with prize money already set to be increased for the 2014 tournament.

Next year’s winner stands to collect £250,000 — a whopping 25 per cent hike on this year.

Hearn said: “The world seems to be opening up because 2012 has been a massive year for us.

“Apart from the fact that NBC are showing regular darts on their sports channel in America, we have had live coverage for the first time in Eastern Europe, through Hungary and Romania.

“These are entirely new areas for us, the Asian coverage is growing and it is becoming a really global sport.

“If you are new to the sport, you can follow the game quite quickly and the atmosphere the fans give, that comes through on the television coverage.

“I am finding that people are incredulous about the atmosphere — even more so than the darts.

“They cannot believe that there are thousands and thousands of people going crazy watching an indoor game that has always been associated with pubs, that has suddenly become working man’s golf. Darts has become that.

“We have been stuck in the traditional sports for years — football, cricket, rugby. But all of a sudden, darts has come up on the blindside and is creating atmospheres and TV ratings that surpass any other sport apart from Premier League football.

“We are hearing record audiences in Germany, Holland, the UK. This morning I had a phone call that we want to go live with the final in South Africa — we have never done anything in South Africa.

“People have looked down their nose for too long at traditional, working-class pastimes that suddenly become major sports.

“People don’t see Premier League footballers walking down the street because they are too busy driving their Ferraris. The appeal of this sport is that ordinary people are achieving their dreams and people can associate with that.

“It is cheap to play, there is no barrier for entry — you don’t have to be a member of a golf club or have an expensive set of clubs.

“All you need is ability and dedication — but we have the characters who are transgressing the normal barriers of sport because everyone can associate with it.”

‘The Power’ Taylor, 16 times the world champ, has gone from the dole to being a multi-millionaire thanks to his talent with the tungsten tips.

Hearn said: “I don’t think the bubble will burst. I’ve always felt we were a work in motion, a jigsaw being put together and over this tournament a few more pieces of the jigsaw have gone into place.”

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Photonic crystals of tungsten emit visible light but without the same wasteful emission of infrared, say researchers aiming to reinvent the light bulb.
 
Photonic crystals are nanoscopic structures designed to channel light of specific wavelengths while blocking other wavelengths.
 
This ability to control and filter light with great efficiency makes them hugely useful for applications such as increasing the efficiency of photovoltaic cells by absorbing light at certain optimal wavelengths.
 
Today, Sergei Belousov and buddies at the Kintech Lab in Moscow and a number of friends at the GE Global Research Center in New York state,  say they have another application for photonics crystals. They’ve worked out how photonic crystals can dramatically improve the light emitting efficiency of tungsten in the hope of reinventing the light bulb.
 
Tungsten bulbs have had a bad press, to say the least. Tungsten has a high melting point (3695 K) and so can be heated until it glows without melting. The problem is that only 5 per cent of the light it emits is visible, the rest being infrared, which simply goes to waste.   With an efficiency of only 5 per cent, tungsten bulbs have rapidly fallen out of favour.
 
The question Belousov and co set out to answer is whether they can engineer the nanostructure of tungsten to create a photonic crystal that emits visible light while suppressing the emission of infrared light.

They theoretically studied the properties of several structures, such as nanoscopic tungsten log piles and spheres embedded in another medium. While tungsten log piles make little difference, tungsten spheres just a fraction of a micrometre in radius do just the job, emitting light mainly in the visible region of the spectrum.

Belousov and co then tested their idea by making a tungsten photonic crystal of the required design and measuring the amount of light it emits at different frequencies. They say the new structure emits far less infrared light and has an efficiency of 15 per cent, significantly higher than the bulk material.
 
That’s a significant improvement and improvements on this will surely be possible. But whether it will be enough to trigger a tungsten revolution in light bulbs is open to question. The current generation of compact fluorescent bulbs can match the light output of a 100 Watt tungsten bulb using less than 30 Watts and LED lights can do it using less than 20 Watts.
 
If Belousov and co want to put tungsten back into light bulbs, they’ll have to beat some stiff opposition first.

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