Tag: Science

Monster CCD Sensor Has 111 Million Pixels

 

Wow. This is going to make one heck of a camera for a telescope. I can see a market for these with medium and large format camera users. A sensor this size would make a nice replacement for a film back on a 4×5 view camera.

Dalsa Semiconductor has fabricated an image sensor with more than 111 million pixels. The company claims the 4 x 4-inch charge-coupled device, configured as 10,560 x 10,560 pixels, is the world’s highest-resolution image sensor and the first to break the 100 million-pixel barrier.

EETimes.com – Record CCD image sensor has 111 million pixels

Organ Donor Club Grows…

Organ cooler
In 2002 Dave Undis started a non-profit group called LifeSharers. The idea behind it was that if you join the club you agree to donate your organs or tissues to members after your death If upon your death no club members need your organs, or there isn’t a match, they are offered to non-club members. Sounds like a darn fine idea to me. Every year thousands of viable organs are disposed of in graves and hundreds of people that need new hearts, livers, lungs die because there aren’t any matches to them or they are too far down on the list. The club is free, so it’s not exclusive. Rich and poor get the same chance, if your a member. Mr. Undis realized that there wasn’t enough incentive to get people to donate their organs. Many people feel that a program like this is unfair to people but to them I say join the club. If more people agreed to give the gift of like after their deaths then a program like this wouldn’t be needed.

It might sound ghoulish to want to join a club like this but I look at it as being like free insurance. No, not insurance, because that’s a sure thing. Something gets broken, you file a claim, you get money. This is more like an inside tip on a race. It isn’t 100% certain that your going to win (a suitable donor still might not be there for you when you need it) but it lowers the odds that your not even going to place. I’ve never thought too much about transplants because like everyone else I figured I’d never need one. Heck, I haven’t even known anyone that’s needed an organ transplant. I’m sad to say that this has changed. My mother in law has been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver due to the side effects of a medication that she was taking. She is waiting on a suitable liver to become available for some time now. I only hope that one becomes available soon.

For more information becoming an organ or tissue donor: 

For more information on LifeSharers, visit www.lifesharers.org or call 888-ORGAN88.

To register as an organ donor, call 800-94DONOR and make your wishes known (from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services):

1. Indicate your intent to be an organ and tissue donor on your driver’s license.

2. Carry an organ donor card. (http://www.organdonor.gov/signup1.html)

3. Most important, discuss your decision with family members and loved ones.

[via Physorg]

ABC News – A ‘Members Only’ Club for Organ Donors

A Meteoroid Hits the Moon

Moon impact 

Very neat. I hope that the next probe that is sent to map the surface will get some crist high detail images of this new crater.

There’s a new crater on the Moon. It’s about 14 meters wide, 3 meters deep and precisely one month, eleven days old. NASA astronomers watched it form: "On May 2, 2006, a meteoroid hit the Moon’s Sea of Clouds (Mare Nubium) with 17 billion joules of kinetic energy—that’s about the same as 4 tons of TNT," says Bill Cooke, the head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, AL. "The impact created a bright fireball which we video-recorded using a 10-inch telescope."

NASA – A Meteoroid Hits the Moon

Epson A6 QXGA Electronic Paper

Epson epaper 

The technology of thin film displays marches on. I’ll take my place in line for a roll up computer monitor as soon as they hit the streets.

Epson announced that they successfully developed a A6 (7.1") QXGA (1536×2048) Electronic paper using the SUFTLA Technology (Surface-free technology by laser annealing) son poly-Si TFT-LCD.?
In order to realize electronic devices on plastic film, new technology has been developed that enables the transfer of thin-film devices from an original substrate to another substrate by using laser irradiation. This technology was termed SUFTLA, which stands for surface-free technology by laser annealing. A polycrystalline-silicon thin film transistor (poly-Si TFT) back-plane for liquid crystal displays (LCDs) with integrated drivers was fabricated using a low-temperature process (below 425/spl deg/C) and could be successfully transferred from a glass or quartz substrate to plastic film using this technology. This technology enabled us to fabricate an all-plastic substrate TFT-LCD having a display area of 0.7 in measured diagonally and a pixel count of 428/spl times/238. In addition, the operation of the integrated drivers and the displayed image could be confirmed for the first time in the world.

Epson A6 QXGA Electronic Paper

Record Meteorite Hit Norway

Impact

 

A chunk of rock from space hit Norway a few days ago and it could be a record setter. Many people reported seeing the fireball and the smoke trail and then the sound of the impact:

Farmer Peter Bruvold was out on his farm in Lyngseidet with a camera because his mare Virika was about to foal for the first time.

"I saw a brilliant flash of light in the sky, and this became a light with a tail of smoke," Bruvold told Aftenposten.no. He photographed the object and then continued to tend to his animals when he heard an enormous crash.

"I heard the bang seven minutes later. It sounded like when you set off a solid charge of dynamite a kilometer (0.62 miles) away," Bruvold said.

Astronomers were excited by the news.

 I’ll bet. With some luck the meteorite can be recovered and studied. For more information on meteorites, check out Wikipedia.

Record meteorite hit Norway