From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: Video: MIT Alumni Bring Spacesuit Tech to Temperature-Regulating Dress Shirts

Apollo Dress Shirt Ministry of Supply

It happens to the best of us: you slog through the summer heat on your morning commute and wind up a messy ball of sweat by the time you make it to the sweet comfort of your air-conditioned office. Now a team of MIT grads is trying to solve that problem by borrowing temperature-control technology from NASA.

The team, Ministry of Supply, is taking donations via Kickstarter for their Apollo line of dress shirts, which use phase-change materials to absorb heat from your body to cool you off when it’s hot, then release it when things cool down. It’s similar to technology used in NASA-approved spacesuits. The shirts keep sweat and moisture off of you, and use an anti-microbial coating to keep you smelling fresh.

The shirt has been a hit on Kickstarter so far, blowing past its initial goal of $30,000. To keep the funding rolling in, the team has been offering incentives, like new colors or patterns for reaching certain goals. At last count they were at more than $178,000.

[Kickstarter via Tech Crunch]

 

from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now

From Technology Review RSS Feeds: Spray-On Batteries Could Reshape Energy Storage

Rice University researchers make the components of batteries with paints. When combined with spray-on solar cells, the technique opens up a range of possibilities for energy producing and storing devices.

Imagine spray painting the side of your house and it not only produces power from the sun, but can store the energy for later as well. A novel approach to battery design from Rice University researchers could enable that and other types of spray-on batteries.




from Technology Review RSS Feeds

From Discover Magazine: The law school scam as a cognitive bias | Gene Expression

I’ve been aware of the whole “law school scam” genre for years. The basic issue is pretty straightforward: all the problems of higher education with easy loans and inflated tuition for credentialing are manifest writ large in law schools. Here are some plausible numbers, Law Grads Face Brutal Job Market:

The numbers suggest the job market for law grads is worse than previously thought. Nationwide, only 55% of the class of 2011 had full-time, long-term jobs that required a law degree nine months after graduation. The ABA defines “long-term” jobs as those that don’t have a term of less than one year.

Read the whole article, and you see how law school deans try to present weasel explanations for the damning statistics. There’s also a nice interactive graphic. Whittier College of Law has a 40% unemployment rate for the class of 2011. The bar passage rate is 66%, and the tuition is $38,000. In contrast, Columbia 2011 grads have an unemployment rate of less than 1%, with a tuition of  $51,000. Obviously the inputs matter here. Columbia professors aren’t that much better than Whittier professors. Rather, Whittier is probably taking $38,000 a year from individuals who are …

from Discover Magazine

From Autoblog: Quick Spin: 2013 Hyundai Elantra Coupe

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Fashionable And Fun – In That Order

2013 Hyundai Elantra Coupe

It’s an interesting time for the compact car class. On one hand, we’re seeing the rise of the hatchback. On the other, we’re seeing the compact coupe market dwindle. Think about it: When the Chevrolet Cobalt became the Cruze, the coupe bodystyle went away. And when the Ford Focus was redesigned for 2012, the two-door died, but the five-door returned.

That said, it came as no surprise that when Hyundai replaced its Elantra Touring with the stylish new GT, it took on a more traditional five-door shape. But that isn’t the only new addition to the model range for 2013. We now have this, the Elantra Coupe, which the Korean automaker hopes will appeal to a younger set of buyers desiring something that’s more fashionable than all-around useful. Call it, “cheerleader chic.”

With its attractive design and affordable price point, the Elantra Coupe certainly appears to be a hit with that younger, more style-conscious demographic. We donned our best sunglasses and hit the coast of California to see what’s what.

Continue reading 2013 Hyundai Elantra Coupe

 

from Autoblog

From Ars Technica: Chinese hackers steal Indian Navy secrets with thumbdrive virus

According to a report from The Indian Express, China-based hackers broke into the computer systems of India’s Eastern Naval Command… where India’s first nuclear submarine is undergoing trials. Using a virus transmitted by USB thumb drives (which are banned from Indian Navy offices), the hackers were able to cache information that matched keywords and transfer it to another thumb drive when one became available. That allowed the data to be moved to Internet-connected PCs, where the virus then dumped the data and transmitted it across the Internet to servers in China.

The virus is similar to one that attacked the US military’s classified networks in 2008. Those led to a Department of Defense ban on the use of USB drives and any other writable removable media. The DOD partially lifted the ban in 2009, restricting the use of USB drives to “carefully controlled circumstances.”

The Indian Navy has not revealed the extent of the hack, or how long it went on for. The Indian Express reports that at least six officers have been charged with “procedural lapses” that allowed the hack to happen.

from Ars Technica