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Posted on 05.14.08 by John @ 8:29 pm
Here’s an evolutionist’s dream: 10,000 planet Earths, starting from the same point at the same time, and left to their own devices for four and a half billion years. What would happen? Could you go on safari from one planet to the next seeing an endless procession of wildly different organisms? Or would many of the planets be home to life forms that are broadly similar? The Repeater - The Wild Side - Olivia Judson - Evolution - Opinion - New York Times Blog Filed under: Science and Technology Comments: None |
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Posted on 03.11.08 by John @ 7:57 pm
(page might be down, last I looked the server’s log files are filling up its hard drive!) Filed under: Cool and Robots and Technology Comments: Comments Off |
Looks like the sound of gnashing gears and grinding steel may once again grace the television sets of America. Noted sports cable network |
Posted on 03.02.08 by John @ 7:53 pm
Abengoa Solar Inc., a Spanish technology company that has several smaller solar-thermal projects in Spain, North Africa and the United States, will build and run the Solana Generating Station. Solana will use 2,700 "troughs" of mirrors lined up across former alfalfa farmland, focusing sunlight on tubes in the middle of the troughs. The tubes will be filled with a petroleum-based chemical that will heat up to 735 degrees, and transfer their heat to water, making steam and spinning turbines in two 140-megawatt generators. The petroleum liquid is reused in the tubes, not burned. The plant also will use molten salt to store heat and continue generating electricity for as long as six hours after the sun sets. That’s key in Arizona, where residents use the most electricity between 5 and 6 p.m., when the sun is low in the sky and common solar panels struggle to generate electricity. [via lonelocust] Filed under: Science and Technology Comments: Comments Off |
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Posted on 02.07.08 by John @ 7:48 pm
The new material is comprised of photorefractive polymers. These chemicals have photoelectric properties that make them well-suited to storing the optical interference patterns used to produce holograms. When a photorefractive polymer is exposed to a pattern of bright and dark areas, electrons are released from the areas exposed to high-intensity light and migrate to areas that are darker. Once in place, the electron-rich areas diffract light differently from the electron-poor ones, allowing the original interference pattern to be reproduced when the material is exposed to light Holodeck 0.1: the durable, rewritable holographic display Filed under: Cool and Design and Science and Technology Comments: None |
Advances in display technology are simply amazing. I hope to see holographic display units so common place that they are used in cheap kids toys like and LCD would be used today.|
Posted on 01.17.08 by John @ 9:16 pm
Building the lenses was a challenge because materials that are safe for use in the body, such as the flexible organic materials used in contact lenses, are delicate. Manufacturing electrical circuits, however, involves inorganic materials, scorching temperatures and toxic chemicals. Researchers built the circuits from layers of metal only a few nanometers thick, about one thousandth the width of a human hair, and constructed light-emitting diodes one third of a millimeter across. They then sprinkled the grayish powder of electrical components onto a sheet of flexible plastic. The shape of each tiny component dictates which piece it can attach to, a microfabrication technique known as self-assembly. Capillary forces – the same type of forces that make water move up a plant’s roots, and that cause the edge of a glass of water to curve upward – pull the pieces into position. Contact lenses with circuits, lights a possible platform for superhuman vision Filed under: Cool and Mad Science and Science and Technology Comments: 1 Comment |
My friend Greg sent this to me today. I’ll be first in line when these come out!|
Posted on 11.07.07 by John @ 9:09 pm
Starting this month Nippon Airship Corporation will begin offering airship cruises over Tokyo, at roughly US $1,100 to $1,500 a pop, no pun intended. Rides will be aboard a Zeppelin NT and will last 90 minutes Too cool. You can read more about NT Zeppelin here. Filed under: Cool and Japan and Technology Comments: None |
I can only hope that someone decides that this sort of service is needed at the Grand Canyon. Makes more sense than a |
Posted on 10.11.07 by John @ 4:55 pm
A new composite plastic built layer by layer has been created by engineers at the University of Michigan. This plastic is as strong as steel. It has been built the same way as mother-of-pearl, and shows similar strength. Interestingly, this 300-layer plastic has been built with ’strong’ nanosheets of clay and a ‘fragile’ polymer called polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), commonly used in paints and glue, which acts as ‘Velcro’ to envelop the nanoparticles. This new plastic could soon be used to design light but strong armors for soldiers or police officers. The researchers also think this material could be used in biomedical sensors and unmanned aircraft. Filed under: Science and Technology Comments: 1 Comment |
Now if this material can be made clear… Oh wait, it is. If it can be made crystal clear and has good refractive qualities it would make for some dandy scratch proof glasses.|
Posted on 10.01.07 by John @ 8:57 pm
Approach - The Navy and Marine Corps Aviation Safety Magazine Filed under: Technology Comments: None |
I was browsing the Internet today for random stuff and happened across this. It’s the online version of the Naval Safety Center’s publication ‘Approach’. All sorts of astounding stories about mid air collisions, shattered canopies, and others tails of how things can go bad and what can be learned from them. I’m sure that most people will never be in a position where they are running through an emergency checklist because they have lost their starboard flight side hydraulics and most of their port stab, but the lessons about keeping a cool composure and the value of training are ones that we can all use.|
Posted on 09.23.07 by John @ 9:11 pm
Andrews Space & Technology (AS&T) introduced an innovative propulsion system that could significantly shorten round trips from Earth to Mars (from two years to only six months!) and enable our spaceships to reach Jupiter after one year of space traveling. The system, which may dramatically affect interplanetary space travel is called the Miniature Magnetic Orion (Mini-Mag Orion for short), and is an optimization of the 1958 Orion interplanetary propulsion concept. [via slashdot ] Filed under: Science and Space and Technology Comments: None |
Oh cool, Mars in six months? Nice…|
Posted on 09.20.07 by John @ 8:17 pm
Filed under: Computers and Cool and DIY and Technology Comments: None |
Well, its not quite the super sensory perception you see in comic books, a group of researchers utilizing |
Posted on 09.14.07 by John @ 6:56 pm
If you have a point-and-click digital camera made by Canon, you may be able to turn on all sorts of features usually reserved for more expensive SLRs. That includes live histograms, depth-of-field calculation, under and overexposure highlighting, and — best of all — shooting your pictures in RAW. The secret is CHDK, an enhanced, free software replacement firmware. I’m going to have to disagree that the best part of this is being able to shoot in RAW mode. Don’t get me wrong, I love using RAW (or NEF as it’s called on my Nikon) but the best part of this enhancement is that fact that you can do scripting in a BASIC like language in the camera. Wow… This is like getting a computer that has predefined programs on it and then discovering the programming tools for it. With these scripts you can do such amazing things as automatically create a series of photos for HDR stacking that can later be run through software to extend the dynamic range of the images. You can run an interactive interval timer to take X number of photos ever X seconds, minutes, or even hours so you could do a time laps study of ice melting or a building being built. Those are just two examples of what can be done with the powerful feature. [via MAKE] Filed under: DIY and Hacked and Mods and Photography and Technology Comments: None |
One of the greatest things about technology isn’t what it does, but it’s what it can do. This is a shining example of this very concept:|
Posted on 09.14.07 by John @ 6:43 pm
The X PRIZE Foundation and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a remarkable $30 million prize purse. Private companies from around the world will compete to land a privately funded robotic rover on the Moon that is capable of completing several mission objectives, including roaming the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending video, images and data back to the Earth. Well this is just cool, a $30 million dollar (US) prize may not sound like all that much when your talking about going to the moon but the money isn’t what is at stake here. Charles Lindbergh didn’t set out to win the Orteig prize (Started in 1919 by a wealthy hotel owner, it offered $25,000 for the first allied aviator(s) to fly non-stop from New York NY to Paris France vice-versa) just for the cash. I’m sure the money was part of the incentive, but the achievement of winning was it’s own reward. When Lindbergh finished his 30 plus hour flight his accomplishment ushered in a new age for aviation. I can see [via CNN Money] Google Sponsors Lunar X PRIZE to Create a Space Race for a New Generation Filed under: Historic and News and Science and Space and Technology Comments: None |
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Posted on 09.06.07 by John @ 10:20 pm
Filed under: Cool and DIY and Mad Science and Photography and Technology Comments: None |
I don’t usually toot my own horn but this time I’m going to. I was recently asked if MAKE magazine could use a few of my photos of a Halloween display that I had made a few years ago. I agreed to it of course, I mean who wouldn’t want to see their photos in a national magazine? So I signed some paperwork and waited for the issue to hit the stands. All my waiting paid off when I saw the issue on Saturday and saw my photos printed up in glorious color. My photos of glow sticks, black light, and electric arcs fit right in with the other amazing projects that are being showcased in the Halloween issue. If your looking for a way to add a little something to your garage turned haunted house or even if your just wanting to scare the crap out of a coworkers with some automated nasty in the cube farm this is the magazine to buy!
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Posted on 09.03.07 by John @ 10:01 pm
Ecolong, the everlasting MP3 player! : Akihabara News .com Filed under: Cool and Technology Comments: 3 Comments |
This music player sports an impressive 85 hours worth of play from 3 AAA batteries. Now, only having 1 GB of storage is going to mean that you better like your music. You know, even if you did have to use something like |
Posted on 08.30.07 by John @ 8:12 pm
How cool is that? The page is for ’science fiction authors who wanted a little scientific accuracy’ but the heck with that, I’m going to read this from ‘cover to cover’. [via retro thing, boingboing] If you want to read a few book by my favorite masters of scifi, go on over to Amazon and flex the credit chip.
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If I’m asked what kind of book I like to read my answer is 
