Day: June 7, 2012

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From Autoblog: Subaru Legacy that spent 3 months at bottom of Finnish lake starts on first try

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subaru legacy wagon in lake

“Ja, that ice’ll hold ya.” Until it didn’t, and suddenly a man’s 1996 Legacy wagon was at the bottom of a shallow lake in Finland. Three months later, the Subaru wagon was dragged from its freshwater slumber, and while most people would just write the car off or at most turn it into a parts donor, curiosity got the better of the rescue squad.

Would it run? Just how bad was the damage? Before plunging below the surface, the owner did have time to shut the engine down and get his dogs out, so the boxer four didn’t aspirate any water and electrons weren’t coursing through the various circuits, two details that likely saved a bunch of damage. After removing a live fish from the engine bay, draining a lot of water from the fuel tank and crankcase, and a fresh fill of fluids and spark plugs, lo and behold, the SCUBA-ru chugged to life on the first try.

It’s not perfect; until the residual water works its way through the fuel system it’s going to feel a little low on power, and oxidation may start to fiercely assert itself. The smell is probably epic, too, but this is one funkbox with a great story.

from Autoblog

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From AnandTech: ASUS Demonstrates Displays with Integrated Touch and WiDi

Years ago ASUS made the transition from being just a motherboard company to a notebook manufacturer. These days I’m getting the distinct impression ASUS would like to be much more than just a notebook company. It has been building everything from displays to routers for quite a while now, but ASUS is definitely ramping up its focus on all things peripheral to motherboards and systems.

At Computex we got a glimpse of two ASUS displays, one that brings integrated Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) technology (pictured above) and one that integrates touch. Although I wouldn’t rely on WiDi as a primary interface for my display due to latency, it does make it easier to temporarily “connect” another machine to your display.

The touch enabled model is obviously aimed at Windows 8 and I expect to see more touch enabled desktop monitors as Windows 8 officially launches. I don’t know that touch alone is a compelling feature for Windows 8, but it seems like it’s going to quickly become a requirement as it really is a more convenient way to interact with the Metro UI.

from AnandTech

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From Ars Technica: NASA’s Commercial Crew gains support in Congress

It appears that SpaceX’s success with the Dragon spacecraft has won some much-needed space in the US House of Representatives. Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) announced Tuesday that his office reached a truce with NASA regarding the Commercial Crew program. Under the agreement, Wolf will lower his opposition to Commercial Crew and hopefully help NASA gain better funding.

Wolf chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies, which controls NASA’s budget. His subcommittee has consistently hit the Commercial Crew Development program (CCDev) with heavy cuts. NASA Administrator Bolden has stated that the cuts have delayed access to the Space Station by American vehicles by at least a year, with this year’s cuts expected to delay American access again. In hearings, some of Wolf’s subcommittee members have seemed intent on using the coming Space Launch System (SLS) to ferry astronauts to the Space Station, even though this service would come at a price that’s about ten times higher.

In April, Wolf included language in the 2013 spending bill’s accompanying report that stopped just short of requiring NASA to drop its Commercial Crew competition. Wolf wanted NASA to immediately downsize the program from the current four competitors to either a single “competitor” or a well-funded leader and a weakly funded follower. Commercial space backers have worried that the language would succeed in essentially discontinuing CCDev, given that similar tactics have been used in the Senate.

 

from Ars Technica

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From Wired Top Stories: Spy-Satellite Merger Fizzles, Preventing Space Monopoly

More than three-quarters of the U.S. government’s satellite images don’t come from government satellites. They’re provided by two companies, GeoEye and DigitalGlobe. So alarms began to ring in Washington in February, when those two companies started talk to become one, forming a monopoly in space and radically altering the economics of the commercial satellite industry and how we see the Earth from above.

from Wired Top Stories

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From The UberReview: Self Stirring Pot is Ridiculously Simple

The Kuru-Kuru Nabe is a self-stirring pot that was invented by a Japanese dentist who goes by the name of Hideki Watanabe.

Watanabe created his initial prototype by using dental plaster to coat the insides of the pot so that it creates a natural whirlpool when boiled – simple and effective.

I find it interesting that a lot of people have translated “kuru-kuru” to “round and round” – my preferred translation would be “spinning”.

[Source]

from The UberReview

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From The UberReview: Researchers Discover Plastic-eating Fungus


Researchers from Yale University have discovered a mushroom in the jungles of Ecuador that is able to survive on a diet of polyurethane.

The fungus, namely Pestalotiopsis microspore is able to survive by eating plastic alone and has no need for air or light. The discovery was made by students Jonathan Russell and Pria Anand, who have published their findings in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

The pair has isolated the enzyme within P. microspore that allows it to decompose plastic; the next step will be to extract the enzyme so that it can be put to work dealing with plastic waste. Now all we need is a mushroom that can dine on cesium and we’ll be set.

[Source]

from The UberReview