How to Toggle First-Person View in Google Maps Navigation

How to Toggle First-Person View in Google Maps Navigation

Many people don’t realize this, but Google Maps navigation has two views: a first-person view (where the arrow faces forward at all times) and a map view, which shows a more traditional map and rotates the arrow. If you’ve somehow gotten stuck on the second, here’s how to go back to regular navigation.

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So Lockheed Martin Says It’s Made a Big Advance in Nuclear Fusion…

So Lockheed Martin Says It’s Made a Big Advance in Nuclear Fusion…

Yesterday, Lockheed Martin joined a long line of companies claiming to be hot on the trail of nuclear fusion, the long-promised savior of our energy economy. Unlike the atom-splitting fission reactions that run our submarines and nuclear power plants, fusion smashes atoms together at high temperatures, creating new particles in a reaction that emits massive […]

The post So Lockheed Martin Says It’s Made a Big Advance in Nuclear Fusion… appeared first on WIRED.




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Researchers halfway to cutting carbon fiber costs by 90%

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BMW i3

Carbon fiber has been utilized for decades to build racecars, as a means to cut weight while maintaining strength. But until recently, the space-age material has been largely absent from the street on anything but supercars because of the expense to use it. Recently, BMW signaled a major shift in that trend when it starting using carbon fiber reinforced plastic panels on the i3 and i8. This relatively small scale start might be just the beginning; the German company believes that a breakthrough to inexpensively manufacture the lightweight stuff is just on the horizon.

MAI Carbon Cluster Management GmbH counts BMW, Audi, Airbus, the German government and many other organizations as supporters, and it’s researching how to make carbon fiber cheaper to produce, according to Automotive News Europe. The company thinks it can reduce costs by 90 percent in the near future. "We’ve certainly reached a halfway point on our cost-cutting target for suitable carbon-fiber parts," said project head Klaus Drechsler to Automotive News Europe.

Unfortunately, it isn’t entirely clear just what MAI Carbon is doing to make such a huge leap possible. However, a recent post on the company’s website talks about a new form a carbon fiber using a thermoplastic matrix that could be cured in less than three minutes. That’s compared to about 90 minutes in the traditional process with an autoclave.

The news of cheaper carbon fiber is especially welcome to companies like BMW that are already pushing its use forward. The automaker is already investing $100 million to triple capacity at its Moses Lake, WA, joint venture factory through 2015, and promises to bring the lightweight material to more models in the future.

Researchers halfway to cutting carbon fiber costs by 90% originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 15 Oct 2014 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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