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We’ve come a long way in terms of transportation. As we see progress sprout as a means to combat difficulties, it’s understandable that the transition into a society heavily reliant on flying cars is still far ahead in our future but there are still some companies leading the industry. Thanks to PAL-V, flying cars can …more
The post Flying Cars Can Now Be Purchased From PAL-V appeared first on Legit Reviews.
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We know very little about our planet’s seafloor, but that’s poised to change as autonomous underwater scouting technology gets better and better. To that end, nearly two dozen teams are racing to develop robots that can investigate, map, and conduct science at extreme depths, and under serious time constraints.…
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Pixar is offering a free course through Khan Academy that can help you find the kind of stories you want to tell — and help you tell them better. The "Art of Storytelling" is the latest installment in a series of free courses from the studio called "Pixar in a Box." It discusses ways to build worlds and characters, how to make sure your stories reflect your unique perspective, along with other relevant advice. And if there’s anybody qualified to give storytelling advice, it’s the creators of Toy Story, Wall-E and Up.
Pixar’s older courses are also still available on the educational website if you want to learn more about animation, colors in films and environment and character modeling. Of course, if you’d rather learn about something else, you merely need to browse other areas of Khan Academy. The famous online education platform has an enormous catalog of lessons and is available as an Android and an iOS app.
Via: TheNextWeb
Source: Khan Academy
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On the eve of a Day Without Immigrants, people attend a Valentine’s Day rally organized by the New York Immigration Coalition called “Love Fights Back” in New York City.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
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On the eve of a Day Without Immigrants, people attend a Valentine’s Day rally organized by the New York Immigration Coalition called “Love Fights Back” in New York City.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
In cities around America, thousands of construction companies, restaurants, and other businesses are bracing for “A Day Without Immigrants,” a combination boycott/strike that highlights the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and culture.
The movement is a response to President Trump’s immigration agenda, which includes a pledge to seal the U.S. border with Mexico, and a travel ban on citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries (which is now on hold).
Some businesses are closing for the day; others are staying open and pledging to contribute a share of the day’s proceeds to non-profits that aid Latino communities. In a number of cases, business owners are abiding by their staffs’ wishes, after holding votes to decide whether to open.
Several closures are high-profile: chef and entrepreneur José Andrés told NPR this week, “It was a very easy decision” to close his restaurants in Washington, D.C., saying he wants to support his employees who had planned not to work Thursday.
Celebrity chef Rick Bayless, who’s famous for popularizing the complex flavors of Mexico’s cuisine, says he closed four Chicago restaurants for the day out of respect for his staff’s vote.
From Los Angeles, Daneille Karson reports for our Newscast unit:
“Thousands of immigrants are skipping work; not shopping; not eating at restaurants; buying gas, ort sending their children to school. L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis says immigrants, regardless of legal status, contribute 40 percent of L.A. County’s gross domestic product: almost $300 billion in tax revenue to the county a year.
” ‘It’s incumbent on us to be brave, which we’re prepared to do,’ Solis said. ‘To step up; to say to him, not in my house; not in my county; not in my state.'”
The day of protest comes after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents alarmed immigrant rights advocates by arresting some 680 people in raids across the U.S. last week. As NPR has reported, the Department of Homeland Security has called those raids routine, saying they targeted people who had criminal convictions.
At least two schools are closed for the day in Washington, D.C. And Ahmad Erfani, who was born in Iran and grew up in France, says he’s closing his bakery, Le Caprice.
“Mostly the people who work here are immigrants. We spoke with them, they thought it’s good for solidarity with the others to not work,” he tells member station WAMU.
Erfani added, “They are hard workers. I am not happy when I see they are not very happy these days, because it is difficult. They work hard, they come here six in the morning. It is not very comfortable for us.”
The Day Without Immigrants comes more than 10 years after another national movement, the Great American Boycott, used a May 1 boycott to protest the Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005.
That legislation, also called HR 4437, would have required hundreds of miles of new fencing to be built along the Mexican border, along with toughening the federal stance toward people who are in the country illegally — and toward anyone in the U.S. who offers them shelter or aid. The bill won passage in the House of Representatives before failing in the Senate.
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The Indian Space Research Organisation, India’s version of NASA, set a record on Valentine’s Day when one of its PSLV rockets successfully launched 104 satellites into orbit. Riding onboard were 88 "Dove" mini-satellites from Planet, a US-based private imaging service, India’s Cartosat 2D high-resolution imaging satellite, and 15 others from various nations.
These Doves aren’t the first of their kind to be sent into orbit, or even the 14th. Planet already has a flock of 50 such miniaturized probes up there. But with these additional 88, Planet can claim the distinction of having "the biggest fleet of Earth-imaging satellites — and of satellites in general — in human history," a company rep told The Verge.
Now that the diminutive, 4-inch by 12-inch satellites have reached space, they’ll enter into a Sun-synchronous orbit, which will have them circling the poles. This allows the flock to cover the same part of the planet every day at the same time, which in turn allows the company to collect standardized, predictable imaging of the Earth’s surface. This won’t happen immediately, however, as the company will next need to spend a couple months properly positioning each probe in its assigned orbit.
Via: Verge
Source: ISRO
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If you’ve ever lived in or visited someone in an apartment in Japan, you know how much sound travels. Talking too loud can have you worried that the neighbors will be upset with you, so it can be very difficult to pursue any hobby or career that makes a lot of sound. This includes everything from playing an instrument and voice acting to playing video games and being immersed in music that’s turned all the way up.
Space is also an issue there, so it makes sense that this Danbocchi Soundproof Cardboard Studio would be created. It’s a less-professional whisper room that’s made out of lightweight materials, weighing in at 66.6lbs once it is completely set up. You will need to put things together on your own, but there aren’t many pieces, and you shouldn’t have to worry about it being as difficult as furniture from IKEA.
When it’s assembled, it measures 3.6 x 3.6 x 5.4′, which should give you enough room to at least sit comfortably in the box. This isn’t a cheap box made of cardboard, costing you $1,618, but it is certainly cleaner than anything you could jerry-rig at home out of grocery store boxes. There are a couple different variations of this box for those that have more or less space, but none cost less than a grand, so it’ll need to be a pretty serious consideration to dump money into.
Available for purchase on JapanTrendShop
[ The Danbocchi Soundproof Cardboard Studio is a cheap whisper room copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
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NASA’s Orion spacecraft may first carry crew into space in 2019 under a new plan NASA is considering.
NASA
When presidential transition officials recently reviewed NASA’s existing plans for using its Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, they were not particularly impressed with the agency’s stretched-out timelines. Under NASA’s current plan, an initial crewed launch of the new vehicles was unlikely to occur before 2021, and independent analyses pegged 2023 as a more realistic target. That would put the first crewed flight into deep space beyond the first term of President Trump.
In response to these concerns, top-level NASA managers have been considering the possibility of launching crew on the maiden flight of the Space Launch System, known as Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), instead of making an uncrewed test flight of the rocket as presently planned. Although this would delay the initial launch of the SLS rocket from 2018 to at least 2019 or 2020, it would also add more sizzle by bringing crew to the mix.
With such a mission, astronauts would likely fly around the Moon as happened with the historic Apollo 8 flight in 1968. As one senior NASA manager recently explained to Ars, imagine the message NASA could send if, on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo landings in 1969, it was once again sending humans back into deep space with its new rocket and spacecraft. NASA would seem to be fulfilling its promise to America to getting back into the business of exploring deep space with humans.
Now these secretive plans have spilled out into the open. On Wednesday acting NASA administrator Robert Lightfoot sent a memo to the agency workforce saying such an option would now be studied. “I have asked Bill Gerstenmaier to initiate a study to assess the feasibility of adding a crew to Exploration Mission-1, the first integrated flight of SLS and Orion,” he wrote. “I know the challenges associated with such a proposition, like reviewing the technical feasibility, additional resources needed, and clearly the extra work would require a different launch date. That said, I also want to hear about the opportunities it could present to accelerate the effort of the first crewed flight and what it would take to accomplish that first step of pushing humans farther into space.”
Such an initiative comes with major questions for NASA. First of all, would risk evaluators sign off on launching astronauts on the massive SLS rocket without an uncrewed test flight in advance? (The agency has done so before, launching John Young and Robert Crippen on the first space shuttle mission without an uncrewed test flight). The second major question is whether the Orion spacecraft would be ready for such a mission. NASA engineers at Johnson Space Center have been designing the vehicle for an uncrewed EM-1, without some key life-support systems.
But one engineer at the Houston space center said it is likely that, with additional funding, Orion could be made ready. Some of the systems, such as carbon dioxide removal systems, might have to rely on a more rudimentary canister system rather than a final design, but the older technologies have been proven out in past missions. “If we started with EM-1 and added only what we needed, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work,” the engineer told Ars.
The politics of all this remain murky, as well. The notion of a crewed EM-1 flight may be part of a plan by Lightfoot to increase the chance that the new administration continues funding support for development of the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft. As Lightfoot is well aware, there are factions within the Trump administration urging the president to fully embrace the commercialization of the space agency, along with the promise of less expensive rockets and capsules being developed by the private space industry. A greater focus on commercial spaceflight might reduce funding—or eliminate it altogether—for the more expensive government vehicles.
For now, it will be up to Gerstenmaier, the head of NASA’s human spaceflight operations, to study the question of timelines, cost and crew safety. The survival of his cherished SLS and Orion programs may well depend on the extent to which he is willing to set some of his usual caution aside.
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