The heat ray gun, also known as the Active Denial System (ADS), uses 95 GHz waves to cause an intense burning sensation in any person who gets hit by the beam. Here are several demonstrations:
Shielding can help, at least a little:
For more info see: How Military Pain Beams Will Work
NASA Takes Aim at Moon with Double Sledgehammer - “Scientists are priming two spacecraft to slam into the moon’s South Pole to see if the lunar double whammy reveals hidden water ice. The Earth-on-moon violence may raise eyebrows, but NASA’s history shows that such missions can yield extremely useful scientific observations…”
This Psychologist Might Outsmart the Math Brains Competing for the Netflix Prize - “At first, it seemed some geeked-out supercoder was going to make an easy million. In October 2006, Netflix announced it would give a cool seven figures to whoever created a movie-recommending algorithm 10 percent better than its own. Within two weeks, the DVD rental company had received 169 submissions, including three that were slightly superior to Cinematch, Netflix’s recommendation software. After a month, more than a thousand programs had been entered, and the top scorers were almost halfway to the goal…”
Five myths about the satellite smash-up - “Last week’s Pentagon operation to bring down a falling spy satellite may have been widely termed a “shootdown” of precision accuracy — but the reality is more complex, and much messier…”
The Wal-Mart Puzzle - “Given the economic headwinds, one would think that a retailer catering to lower-end consumers would be doubly slammed. As the subprime-mortage mess shows, people at the bottom of the income ladder are struggling. And as for the retail sector generally, don’t ask. Retail sales have been sluggish in recent months, and national chains are shutting down stores by the dozen. From Nordstrom down to Target, fourth-quarter profits have been disappointing. Which brings us to the mystery of Wal-Mart. The nation’s largest retailer, which caters to working-class customers, seems to have something of a sweet spot. The stock closed Tuesday at $51.40—its highest close since March 2005…”
10 Extraordinary Animal Tactics for Surviving the Cold - “Whether they hibernate, have thick fur coats or take shelter, animals are masters of surviving the cold weather. Here are a number of interesting animals and the fascinating things they do to survive harsh conditions…”
Veoh aims to be one-stop shop for Net TV viewers - “Dmitry Shapiro wanted to start a website that promised to be the CBS, NBC and ABC of the Internet, a one-stop shop for TV programming on the Web. Shapiro wasn’t the first to come up with such a lofty concept. At the time of his brainstorm, 2005, many others had similar notions. Shapiro’s Veoh competes with YouTube, (GOOG) Fancast, (CMCSA) Joost, Blip.TV and at least 250 other video websites, according to researcher the Yankee Group…”
Toyota unveils sexy new hybrid sports car - “Produced by Toyota’s research and design team in California, the FT-HS mates an electric motor to a 3.5-litre petrol engine. Toyota says its front engine, rear drive layout provides optimum performance, reaching speeds of 100 km/h in around four seconds…”
Bottom Trawling As Seen From Space - “Bottom trawling is the most destructive of any actions that humans conduct in the ocean…”
NASA’s Lunar Lowrider - “NASA plans to build a lunar outpost by 2020. Though psychologists wonder how moonbase inhabitants will handle the isolation and homesickness, the rest of us want to know: What are they going to drive? The Chariot is a concept truck with no doors, no windows and no seats, and each of its six wheels has independent steering…”
100 Weird Facts About the Human Body - “The human body is an incredibly complex and intricate system, one that still baffles doctors and researchers on a regular basis despite thousands of years of medical knowledge. As a result, it shouldn’t be any surprise that even body parts and functions we deal with every day have bizarre or unexpected facts and explanations behind them. From sneezes to fingernail growth, here are 100 weird, wacky, and interesting facts about the human body…”
The LED Illumination Revolution - “About 12 billion electric lights on the planet use Edison bulbs; a third are in the U.S. So, lighting up the world consumes about 2 trillion kilowatt-hours annually, or one-eighth of all electric power. This takes a lot of fuel: the equivalent of nearly a billion tons of coal annually. In the U.S., half of that is in fact coal. Or, in oil-equivalent terms, U.S. lighting uses the equivalent of 50% of the energy used by all cars on American roads…”
The curry spice that can help mend an unhealthy heart - “Heart failure, in which the heart, damaged by heart attack or disease, gradually loses the ability to pump blood round the body, typically kills 40 per cent of victims within a year of onset. Symptoms include tiredness, swollen ankles and breathlessness. Although there are drugs that can control the condition, there is no way of repairing the scarring and damage suffered by heart muscles. The study, reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, suggests turmeric could help.”
Good news for cat owners:
Study finds health benefits to owning cats
From the article:
The study, by researchers at the University of Minnesota, found that feline-less people were 30 to 40 percent more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than those with cats.
Yet dog owners had the same rate as non-owners. “No protective effect of dogs as domestic pets was observed,” said the study, which was presented Thursday at the International Stroke Conference in New Orleans.
It will be interesting to see what causes the effect.
Coal plant to test capturing carbon dioxide
A Wisconsin coal-fired power plant operated by We Energies is scheduled to launch a pilot project to capture a portion of the carbon dioxide produced as the coal is burned. It will be the first time a U.S. power plant has corralled CO2, the main greenhouse gas, before it floats out of the smokestack.
Power plants produce nearly 40% of U.S. carbon emissions; the bulk of that is from coal plants…
These two videos show different techniques that are currently being used for carbon sequestration:
See also:
Does eating a poppy seed bagel lead to a positive drug test? Here’s the answer:
Imagine taking the images from every research telescope in the world and stitching them together into a single view of the universe. That is, in essence, what the Microsft Worldwide Telescope project is doing.
Here is an introduction:
The system is said to hold tens of millions of images, now made easy to access.
See also: The World-Wide Telescope
You can make hundreds of dollars by snapping random photos of celebrities:
The Rise of the ‘Citizen Paparazzi’
From the article:
Ms. Horgan is part of the changing face of the paparazzi trade, an Internet-fueled industry that feeds on the public’s seemingly insatiable interest in entertainment news. Photo agencies are increasingly relying on submissions from regular folk who either happen to bump into celebrities while carrying digital cameras, or who have injected themselves into the cat-and-mouse game of celebrity snapshots, despite any formal training.
How the professional paparazzi work:
For more info see: How Paparazzi Work
An interesting look at the Dean/Obama 50-state strategy, where the candidate tries to win in all 50 states rather than focusing strictly on “swing states”:
From the article:
Besides a desire to push the party away from a strictly swing-state mentality, Dean and Obama share a commitment to the nuts-and-bolts of grassroots organizing. On the stump Obama is quick to stress his roots as a community organizer and always thanks his precinct captains, who routinely introduce him at campaign events. “Change doesn’t happen from the top down. It happens from the bottom up,” he now says in his stump speech. Obama’s organizing has been greatly enhanced by new technologies like YouTube, Facebook and MySpace (Friendster had just arrived when Dean was running). “We pioneered it and Obama perfected it,” Trippi says. Obama embraced elements of the new politics, hiring the co-founder of Facebook, for example; but other efforts came from the grassroots–just as with the Dean campaign–as supporters organized themselves online and on the ground. The net effect is Obama’s large base of small donors, who are enthusiastic supporters he can tap again and again. Ninety percent of the $28 million he raised online in January, for example, came in donations of $100 or less. Obama has fused a tightknit group of advisers with a mass of ordinary people, creating what Trippi calls “command and control at the top while empowering the bottom to make a difference.”
The latest humanoid robot comes from Spain. It is a little like an upgraded ASIMO:
- It has 2-hour battery life
- It can carry 25% of its body weight
- It can recognize and track faces
- It can map its environment
This video has a nice overview and demonstration:
For more info see: How ASIMO Works
Here’s an overview of the new Google Sites service:
The service gives you a free way to quickly build and publish a web site, in the same way that blogger.com gives you a free way to quickly build an publish a blog. It also looks like it shares some features of Google Groups.
Probably the easiest thing to do if you want to learn more is to try it:
But if you would like to see what the pundits have to say, these articles delve deeper:
- Google’s JotSpot Wiki Reborn As Google Sites
The Kassam rockets are flying again in Israel, and they are hitting targets and killing people:
IDF operations kill fifteen Palestinians since Wednesday
From the article:
The IDF struck back against Gaza’s Hamas leadership late Wednesday night, after an estimated 50 Kassam rockets and at least four Grad-style Katyusha missiles pummeled the western Negev and Ashkelon over the course of a few hours in the afternoon, killing a student at Sderot’s Sapir Academic College and sending dozens into shock.
This brings up the obvous question: Where does Hamas get the rockets? The answer: Kassam rockets are home made.
In America we have a certain mental image that appears whenever we hear the word “rocket.” We tend to think of something big, complex and expensive. We get that impression because we are used to seeing huge moon rockets or billion-dollar space shuttles flying precisely into orbit under the control of thousands of technicians.
The Palestinian Kassam rocket is just the opposite. It is small, simple and cheap. The idea is to create an easily manufactured, inexpensive terror weapon that one or two people can launch from almost anywhere.
How can Palestinians manufacture rockets in their basements? The key is to think small and to use everyday items wherever possible. Therefore, a Kassam rocket starts with a simple iron tube. In other words, you start with a piece of pipe. In a Kassam rocket, the pipe is usually about six feet long and six or seven inches in diameter. At one end of the piece of pipe you weld on four simple fins made of sheet metal. The sheet metal can come from anywhere - an old car fender will do.
Since this is a rocket, it needs some kind of rocket fuel inside the pipe. Palestinians use the simplest fuel possible. It is made of sugar and potassium nitrate, also known as saltpeter. The obvious question most people have is, “Sugar?” It turns out that sugar contains quite a lot of energy. You can see that energy when you are roasting marshmallows and one of them catches on fire. The problem is that sugar does not burn fast enough to use it as a rocket fuel. The potassium nitrate solves that problem by providing an oxidizer that accelerates the reaction. In the United States, there is a whole category of model rocketry called “Candy Rockets.” American hobbyists hold competitions to see who can create the highest-flying sugar-powered rockets. The Palestinians have simply taken the hobby to an extreme.
Once you have filled your pipe with its sugar fuel, you need a nozzle for your rocket engine. In a Kassam rocket the designers use a round metal plate with seven holes drilled in it. Each hole is about an inch in diameter, because that is about as big as a standard drill bit can get. This round plate then screws onto the bottom of the rocket.
At the other end of the rocket is a small bomb. A Kassam rocket has a payload of 10 to 20 pounds and the bomb is very simple. It is made of a metal casing filled with an explosive like TNT. The TNT is probably the hardest material for the Palestinians to obtain, so they smuggle it in or harvest it from old military hardware. The shell of a rifle bullet acts as a blasting cap to initiate the TNT explosion.
When you put this all together, what you have is a rocket that can lob a 10 to 20 pound bomb through the air for a distance of five or six miles. It is very much like an artillery shell, with the advantage that you do not need a massive artillery piece to launch it. Instead, you need a couple of simple guide rails to act as a launch pad. You set up the rails, lean the rocket against them, light the fuse and stand back. 30 seconds later a 20 pound bomb explodes five miles away. By the time Israelis can react, the people who ignited the rocket can be long gone from the launch site.
Because they have no guidance system of any kind, Kassam rockets do have their limits. There is no way to know precisely where the rocket will land. However, as a tool of terror, that randomness can make the rocket very effective. The Germans employed the same tactic with the V-1 and V-2 rockets that they sent toward London during World War II.
This article describes the manufacture of Kassam rockets and offers several photos:
The Growing Threat of the Kassam Unguided Rockets
More info on sugar rocket fuels: Candy Rockets
This propaganda video has images that let you see how Kassam rockets are built and launched:
In the news recently there have been two cases of bugging. In both cases, one thing that’s amazing is what was discovered. The other thing is how easy it is.
Perfect example - A parent bugs a her kid’s classroom using a simple digital recorder:
‘You Are All Just Stupid Kids’: Mother Bugs Child’s Backpack to Spy on Teacher
A second example is a nanny cam used to keep track of a new nanny:
This video shows how easy it is to plant a video bug, as well as the fact that many people are bugging themselves without realizing it:
From the video:
How would you feel if we told you that someone has invaded the privacy of your home and is watching you at this very minute? How would they do that, you ask. The Fox 9 Investigators are going to show you. All it takes is an inexpensive piece of wireless equipment that ironically was designed with safety in mind. But as you’re about to see, prying eyes can use it to watch you, watch your family, and even use it with criminal intentions.
If you are wondering how the nanny cam works, this article explains the product:
Logitech International Is Proud To Introduce The Award Winning Wilife Surveillance System
Here is a demonstration of the system:
Using thermal depolymerization to convert carbon waste to fuel:
See also: Anything Into Oil
[[[See previous invention]]]
There seem to be two kinds of etiquette: that which is useful, and that which is not. The former provides social lubrication that helps everyone to get along in less-than-ideal situations.
Perfect example of useful etiquette - 300 people packed in an aluminum tube for several hours with no hope of escape until arrival:
Airplane etiquette 101 - A flight attendant offers a refresher course on common courtesy
New York is so dense that it has its own rules, but many apply in any urban setting:
We were going to take the kids eagle-watching, but after learning something about eagle etiquette, thought we might wait a couple years:
Program to teach ‘eagle etiquette’ - Of note: “In fact, walking within 350 feet of these birds may cause them to abandon their nest, likely dooming their babies.” See also: Eagle Etiquette
Golf actually has a pretty evolved set of social rules in order to keep things moving along, so there is:
And then there are table manners, to avoid grossing other people out:
Table Manner Tips Every Guy Should Know. See also: Expert offers etiquette advice for professional settings.
Bonus: Male restroom etiquette:
The essential message here: never speak in a male restroom, or society will collapse.
The Ten Best Post-Apocalyptic Survival Vehicles - “We asked you what you think the best post-apocalyptic vehicle would be, assuming you could fuel it up and were unable to stay in one place due to the lack of other resources…”
The 9 Most Baffling Theme Parks From Around the World - “The Amusement Park is the pinnacle of cultural achievement: technology and resources dedicated purely to people having fun. And we can all agree that history wasn’t complete until Walt Disney allowed humanity to experience “The Happiest Place on Earth!” (for a nominal fee). Now societies throughout the world have their own wondrous amusement parks. And like Disney did for us, their parks reflect their culture’s stories, passions and traditions…”
Georgia-Led Team Wins Cash for Space Rock Tracking Plan - “The small Foresight spacecraft designed by engineers in Georgia and California won first place on Tuesday in the Planetary Society’s Apophis Mission Design Competition, which challenged contenders to come up with a cost-effective way of launching a watch dog-like probe to Asteroid 99942 Apophis…”
Six Steps to Speeding up Trains in the U.S. - “It’s stunning to see how fast trains travel in European countries, not the ICE, the TGV, or the AVE, but the normal intercity trains. Currently, a trip on an intercity Corail train from Paris Gare de Lyon to Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne is an hour faster than by car. The 420 km trip can be done in three hours, an average speed of 140 km/hour, or roughly 86 mph…”
Gotcha, CAPTCHA! Gmail bot detector system cracked - “The Gmail CAPTCHA has been cracked—albeit not easily—raising new concerns about spammers’ ability to abuse Google’s e-mail services. Websense Security Labs pointed out the security breach late last week, noting that spammers have a lot to gain by being able to use bots to automatically sign up for new accounts…”
Introducing Ubuntu Mobile - full Internet, no compromise - “Ubuntu Mobile is an Ubuntu edition that targets an exciting new class of computers called Mobile Internet Devices. Ubuntu Mobile, based on the world’s most popular Linux distribution, and MID hardware from OEMs and ODMs, are redefining what can be done in mobile computing…”
Cocaine’s brain effect revealed - “Brain scans have revealed a possible biological basis for cocaine addiction which may explain why some get hooked, while others can use the drug socially…”
Apple holds big plans for iphone university on college campuses - “The concepts discussed at the gathering were similar to those that exist with today’s iTunes University programs where students can download to their iPods or computers lectures and associated materials to bolster their education. But unlike the primarily software-driven iTunes effort, “iPhone U” would let participating students download class presentations directly to their handsets over WiFi rather than require a transfer from a host computer…”
The life and times of America’s greatest hoaxer - “If Abel Raises Cain is a little thin at points—we never learn exactly how Abel was able to make a living for so long as a not-for-profit hoaxer, nor where the funding for his more elaborate ruses came from—it’s also an invigorating and often hysterical look at a gifted comic and the nation of dupes he continues to use as his medium…”
Fertile wives find single men sexy - “In a study looking at the ever-interesting (and ever-mysterious) question of why women are attracted to certain men, researchers found that sexual interest shifts with a partnered woman’s menstrual cycle. When fertile, women in relationships are most attracted to single men; when infertile their attraction shifts to coupled men…”
A quick intro to garbage collection - “I’ve been reading about garbage collection algorithms to potentially create a better one for Factor, so I thought I’d share the basics of what I’ve learned so far. Garbage collection, by the way, is the automatic reclamation of unreferenced heap-allocated memory. This means you can malloc without worrying about free, since the runtime system does it all for you…”
Supercomputer unleashes virtual 9.0 megaquake in Pacific Northwest - “On January 26, 1700, at about 9 p.m. local time, the Juan de Fuca plate beneath the ocean in the Pacific Northwest suddenly moved, slipping some 60 feet eastward beneath the North American plate in a monster quake of approximately magnitude 9, setting in motion large tsunamis that struck the coast of North America and traveled to the shores of Japan. Since then, the earth beneath the region – which includes the cities of Vancouver, Seattle and Portland — has been relatively quiet. But scientists believe that earthquakes with magnitudes greater than 8, so-called “megathrust events,” occur along this fault on average every 400 to 500 years…”
How Good People Turn Evil, From Stanford to Abu Ghraib - “Zimbardo conducted a now-famous experiment at Stanford University in 1971, involving students who posed as prisoners and guards. Five days into the experiment, Zimbardo halted the study when the student guards began abusing the prisoners, forcing them to strip naked and simulate sex acts…”
Loss of wind causes Texas power grid emergency - “A drop in wind generation late on Tuesday, coupled with colder weather, triggered an electric emergency that caused the Texas grid operator to cut service to some large customers, the grid agency said on Wednesday…”
…but no one is exactly sure why:
FPL mystery: How did small fire knock out power to millions?
From the article:
It took only three minutes for an overheated switch and then a fire at a power substation near Miami on Tuesday afternoon to shut down a nuclear plant south of the city and trigger Florida’s largest blackout in at least 20 years. Figuring out why is going to take longer.
And:
One minute after computer systems detected the fire, two generators at the Turkey Point nuclear power plant in south Miami-Dade County began shutting down as an automatic safety measure, FPL nuclear chief Art Stall said. With the generators off, power began going out across Florida almost immediately.
For more info see:
This article:
More Americans Are Giving Up Golf
Contains several interesting facts about golf in the United States:
1) “The total number of people who play has declined or remained flat each year since 2000, dropping to about 26 million from 30 million”
2) “the number of people who play 25 times a year or more fell to 4.6 million in 2005 from 6.9 million in 2000″
3) “core players (those who golf eight or more times a year) has fallen, but more slowly: to 15 million in 2006 from 17.7 million in 2000″
4) about 25% of golfers are women
5) “Between 1990 and 2003, developers built more than 3,000 new golf courses in the United States, bringing the total to about 16,000.”
So what are people doing instead of golfing? One theory is electronic gaming. Which means that golf is being replaced by things like… the forthcoming Lego universe:
See also: LEGO Universe: ‘LEGO Star Wars Multiplied By A Million’
Say you have a plant and you want to know if it needs watering or not. One way to find out is to stick your finger in the soil. The other is to build a sophisticated electronic system that measures soil moisture with probes and then sends status messages to you through twitter. This articl describes the latter approach:
The interesting thing about the article is that it can easily act as a branching-off point. There are many sensing systems you can imagine that would use this same basic approach.
Coming next from the Intel pipeline are more four-core chips (under the code name Nehalem), and new six-core chips (under the code name Dunnington) . The due date is summer 2008, and demo chips are already being produced:
Intel’s Dunnington: Six cores on one chip
From the article:
Dunnington will arrive just before the Nehalem generation of chips, which will be quite a mishmash of designs. Intel will have a wide variety of Nehalem chips, including ones with two, four, and eight cores, chips with up to 16 threads, and some with integrated graphics.
More info:
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the new chips is the system they will use to access memory, called QuickPath Interconnect. This Intel podcast gives an introduction:
See also: The ultimate motherboard
The article covers the 10 most painful stings in nature, and why they hurt so much:
- Bullet ant
- Box Jellyfish
- Rattlesnakes and Their Relations
- Stingrays
- Scorpions
- Spitting Cobra
- Tarantula Hawk Wasp
- Stonefish
- Black Widow Spider
- Gila Monster
It is startling to think that 40 million people are taking a drug meant to treat depression. That is a lot of depressed people. It is even more startling when you realize that the drug doesn’t do anything.
Prozac, used by 40m people, does not work say scientists
From the article:
The study examined all available data on the drugs, including results from clinical trials that the manufacturers chose not to publish at the time. The trials compared the effect on patients taking the drugs with those given a placebo or sugar pill.
When all the data was pulled together, it appeared that patients had improved - but those on placebo improved just as much as those on the drugs.
Also:
The pattern they saw from the trial results of fluoxetine (Prozac), paroxetine (Seroxat), venlafaxine (Effexor) and nefazodone (Serzone) was consistent. “Using complete data sets (including unpublished data) and a substantially larger data set of this type than has been previously reported, we find the overall effect of new-generation antidepressant medication is below recommended criteria for clinical significance,” they write.
So, what should you do if you are depressed? This article offers several possibilities:
Antidepressant drugs don’t work
From the article:
The treatments that do work
* Exercise: Helps some people with depression. Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, said running helped him cope with depression.
* Friends: Talking through your feelings can help in mild depression with a friend or relative or in a self-help group.
* Cognitive behavioural therapy: Teaches you to challenge negative thoughts and feelings of hopelessness.
* Interpersonal therapy: Focuses on relationships and problems such as difficulties with communication.
* Counselling: Helps you think about the problems in your life and find new ways of dealing with them.
It is interesting that exercise comes up again. See also: Using your body to help your brain
See also:
The Large Hadron Collider will answer some of the most basic questions about the universe:
From the article:
Starting sometime in the coming months, two beams of particles will race in opposite directions around the tunnel, which forms an underground ring 17 miles in circumference. The particles will be guided by more than a thousand cylindrical, supercooled magnets, linked like sausages. At four locations the beams will converge, sending the particles crashing into each other at nearly the speed of light. If all goes right, matter will be transformed by the violent collisions into wads of energy, which will in turn condense back into various intriguing types of particles, some of them never seen before. That’s the essence of experimental particle physics: You smash stuff together and see what other stuff comes out.
See also:
This is an old article, but it lays out one of the types of experiments that might be done with the Large Hadron Collider:
Artificial black holes: on the threshold of new physics
From the article:
For several decades now, there has been a fundamental problem with modern physics. The problem is actually an embarrassment of riches: we have not one, but two systems that describe the universe remarkably well. One is quantum mechanics, which describes the rich and subtle behavior of waves and particles. The other system, general relativity combines space and time into one continuum, providing us with the best description of the movement of the planets and the expansion of the universe.
Scientists have realized that to truly understand the universe, we’ve got to make these two systems work together, even merge into a single, more accurate depiction of reality. But the two systems have not given up their independent identities easily. The challenge has been to find conditions in the universe where both the effects of quantum mechanics and general relativity are significant and measurable.
For this to be the case, you’ve got to pack a whole lot of mass (as general relativity mainly relates to gravity), into an extremely tiny volume (where quantum effects become important). Where do you think those conditions might exist? Fortunately, the universe has provided us with such a natural laboratory for fundamental physics: black holes.
The Large Hadron Collider will make it possible to create small black holes:
Amazingly, scientists are becoming increasingly confident that they will be able to create black holes on demand, in quantity, using the new atom-smashers due to come online in the next five years. Some estimates suggest that the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN -the acronym is in French) will be able to create an average of one black hole each second. LHC will bombard protons and antiprotons together with such a force that the collision will create temperatures and energy densities not seen since the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. This should be enough to pop off numerous tiny black holes, with masses of just a few hundred protons. Black holes of this size will evaporate almost instantly, their existence detectable only by dying bursts of Hawking radiation.
See also: A Giant Takes On Physics’ Biggest Questions
The day it turns on will be a moment of truth for Cern, which has spent 13 years building the collider, and for the world’s physicists, who have staked their credibility and their careers, not to mention all those billions of dollars, on the conviction that they are within touching distance of fundamental discoveries about the universe. If they fail to see something new, experts agree, it could be a long time, if ever, before giant particle accelerators are built on Earth again, ringing down the curtain on at least one aspect of the age-old quest to understand what the world is made of and how it works.
“If you see nothing,” said a Cern physicist, John Ellis, “in some sense then, we theorists have been talking rubbish for the last 35 years.”
Nanoparticles could make hydrogen cheaper than gasoline - “The hydrogen economy is getting a shot in the arm from a start-up that says its nanoparticle coatings could make hydrogen easy to produce at home from distilled water, and ultimately bring the cost of hydrogen fuel cells in line with that of fossil fuels…”
I.B.M. to Introduce a Notably Improved Mainframe - “Rising energy costs and environmental concerns are putting pressure on growing computer data centers, with their voracious appetites for electricity. The z10, I.B.M. says, delivers the computing power of 1,500 industry-standard servers, running on personal computer microprocessors, while consuming 85 percent less energy and covering 85 percent less floor space. So the mainframe, it argues, has become the low-cost data center technology, although the machines cost $1 million and up…”
Counting down to the iPhone development kit - “This is supposed to be the week that Apple makes honest coders out of all the software developers who have been busy creating unofficial applications for the iPhone almost since the day it was released last June. Back in October, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that the company planned to release an official software development kit (SDK) in February that would allow third parties to create applications that would run directly on the iPhone…”
Verizon Wireless To Release Network Specs For Outside Devices - “Version 1.0 of the technical specifications will be released and published at the carrier’s Open Development Device Conference taking place in New York City on March 19. The specifications will allow manufacturers to create mobile devices that are compatible with Verizon Wireless’ network even if they are not offered directly by the carrier. Software developers also will be able to design products that can operate on the carrier’s network…”
High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace - “For some reason, the starboard ballast tanks have failed to refill properly, and the ship has abruptly lost its balance. At the worst possible moment, a large swell hits the Cougar Ace and rolls the ship even farther to port. Objects begin to slide across the deck. They pick up momentum and crash against the port-side walls as the ship dips farther. Wedged naked in the shower stall, Kyin is confronted by an undeniable fact: The Cougar Ace is capsizing…”
Nets Drive Evolution of Small Fish - “The scientists stocked two small lakes in British Columbia with two strains of rainbow trout: one that grows quickly and is more aggressive in chasing down food and another that grows slowly and tends to be more cautious. They then used commercial gillnets to fish the lakes and found that they bagged the bolder fish three times faster than the shy ones, which were left behind to multiply. So we could inadvertently be breeding fearful small fry that are nearly impossible to catch…”
Teens losing touch with common cultural and historical references - “Big Brother. McCarthyism. The patience of Job. Don’t count on your typical teenager to nod knowingly the next time you drop a reference to any of these. A study out today finds that about half of 17-year-olds can’t identify the books or historical events associated with them…”
Temperature Monitors Report Worldwide Global Cooling - “Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on…”
Fancy footwear for German police dogs - “The unusual footwear is a necessity due to the high rate of paw injuries on duty…”
$499 HP 2133 To Challenge EeePC and Cloudbook - “Little is known right now, but Engadget is reporting that this machine is expected to sport a 8.9″ 1366 x 766 WXGA display, ExpressCard/54 slot, webcam, nearly full-sized QWERTY keyboard, and optional SSD all running inside a 2.5 lbs anodized aluminum casing with either Linux or Windows Vista pre-installed…”
Man-Made Flood Planned for Grand Canyon - “For the third time since 1996, officials plan to unleash a man-made flood in the Grand Canyon next month in an effort to restore an ecosystem that was altered by a dam constructed on the Colorado River decades ago…”
Diet Overkill: 25 Of the Most Ridiculous (and Ineffective) Popular Diets - “Some people will do anything to lose weight, even if it means defying common sense and nutrition. But just because your best friend’s cousin lost 20 pounds by drinking hot-peppered lemonade doesn’t mean you should do the same. These 25 diets are not only ridiculous, they’re ineffective and even dangerous…”
Notes From Buffett Meeting 2/15/2008 - “Students from Emory’s Goizueta Business School and McCombs School of Business at UT Austin were invited to come visit Mr. Buffett for a Q&A session. These notes were reproduced to the best of my ability as I heard and as I could recall them from a collection of mine and other students’ notes…”
Why do sparks fly when flint hits steel? Here’s the answer:
The little known reason why hot sparks fly when flint is struck by steel
Three perspectives:
And then there’s this… Kind of the ultimate free throw:
“As global starvation worsens, the U.S. plans to devote vast amounts of grain to producing ethanol.”
Ethanol fuels food price frenzy
“The amount of corn it takes to produce 75 litres of ethanol - roughly a tank of fuel - is enough corn to feed one person on a 2,000 calorie per day diet for a year.”
Bloomberg slams US energy law over corn ethanol
“A new U.S. energy law will cause an increase in global food prices and lead to starvation deaths worldwide because it continues to promote corn ethanol, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Monday.”
Lots of fun facts in this article:
Nokia morphs itself from within
Including these:
Every day Nokia sources 329 million parts and builds a million phones in 100 plus handset models and distributes these phones in 70 different languages to 150 countries.
Of course, there are other ways to look at this phone:
7 Jobs That Nokia’s Phone of the Future Will Be Good For
[[[See previous invention]]]
The Ulysses mission, launched in 1990, examined the sun by flying over its poles. You can learn more about the mission here:
Ulysses Spacecraft Flies Over Sun’s North Pole
Description of the mission:
But after 17 years, the power supply has decayed to the point where the spacecraft appears to be dead:
Ulysses to fall silent, its voyage to continue forever
According to the article:
Ulysses depends on radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs) for its power. The spacecraft is launched with a finite amount of radioactive fuel, the decay of which produces heat that the generator converts to electricity. From the moment that the RTG is installed, its power output begins to decay with the decay of its fuel. Now, 17 years after launch, the output of the generator has dropped to the point that Ulysses can no longer power all of its communications, heating, and scientific equipment simultaneously. It was in an effort to conserve power that the mission commanded the main transmitter to be turned off. Using the antenna only occasionally would have allowed ESA to prolong Ulysses’ life. Unfortunately, something bad happened in the power systems when the transmitter was switched off…
This video shows the launch the the Ulysses spacecraft in 1990 on STS-36:
Eventually Ulysses should loop past Jupiter and exit the solar system.
For more info see: How Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators Work
Last week we looked at some really informative animated graphs. Here is another innovative way to display data, this time using box office revenue for movies over time:
The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 - 2007
One question this graph forces you to ask is, “what is going on in April and September?”
An interesting article about the rise of free products and services (freeconomics):
Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
From the article:
Once a marketing gimmick, free has emerged as a full-fledged economy. Offering free music proved successful for Radiohead, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and a swarm of other bands on MySpace that grasped the audience-building merits of zero. The fastest-growing parts of the gaming industry are ad-supported casual games online and free-to-try massively multiplayer online games. Virtually everything Google does is free to consumers, from Gmail to Picasa to GOOG-411.
The rise of “freeconomics” is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the Web. Just as Moore’s law dictates that a unit of processing power halves in price every 18 months, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster. Which is to say, the trend lines that determine the cost of doing business online all point the same way: to zero…
