Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
More robots on the moon. Well, only if they get funding and the thing works. Lets hope it does.
The Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute has developed a prototype moon rover, “Scarab.” The robot has the ability to perform the challenging task of lunar prospecting.
The ultimate goal of lunar prospecting is to discover, extract, and utilize resources in the soil of other planets.
Looks like the sound of gnashing gears and grinding steel may once again grace the television sets of America. Noted sports cable network ESPN has been talking to BattleBots about a possible hook up later this summer. I for one am looking forward to it, nothing quite like seeing two hundred plus pound remote controlled cars beating the crud out of each other. Ah, technology…
(page might be down, last I looked the server’s log files are filling up its hard drive!)
Welcome to BattleBots.com : News and Press
I’ll be the first one to say it, someone is going to complain about the reflection of the collectors. I would assume that things like this are taken into account but you can never tell in this litigious world.
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]
$1 billion solar-thermal plant near Gila Bend to supply APS customers
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.
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
Oh yeah baby, you can be James Bond and Weegee all at the same time with this gem!
After a bit of digging I discovered it’s DORYU 2-16 with Cine-Nikkor 25mm F1.4 lens.
" This camera is a serious camera for the police, and not a toy. It is a pistol camera DORYU 2-16 famous as rare and valuable camera. The DORYU 2-16 has the same C mount as the 16mm movie camera. A Cine-Nikkor 25mm F1.4 lens was able to be mounted in the DORYU 2-16 pistol camera. You can find the small lens for GOLDECK 16 on the table."
This is something I’d buy if I had that chance.
The site has some impressive Nikon gear on it, I like those S Motor bodies a lot! I love Nikon cameras, go check it out.
My friend Greg sent this to me today. I’ll be first in line when these come out!
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