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From Gizmodo: How NASA Solved a $100 Million Problem for Five Bucks [Video]
A few years ago, back when the Constellation Program was still alive, NASA engineers discovered that the Ares I rocket had a crucial flaw, one that could have jeopardized the entire project. They panicked. They plotted. They steeled themselves for the hundreds of millions of dollars it was going to take to make things right. More »
from Gizmodo
From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: Video: Skin Augmented With Spider-Silk Stops a Speeding Bullet
Skin Augmented With Spider-Silk Stops a Bullet via New Scientist
Extolling the many virtues of spider silk is something of a trend these days, as the fine yet remarkably hardy material continues to best even the strongest synthetic materials (a good spider silk weave is supposedly four times stronger than Kevlar). But this latest application makes transgenic, spider silk-producing goats seem simple by comparison: A bioengineered skin so tough that it stops a speeding bullet from penetrating.
To be perfectly fair up front, the bullet in the first clip in the video below is moving at half speed. Repeated with a round moving at a full 1,080 feet per second, the skin gives way. But both half-speed and full-speed tests were also conducted with real human skin and human skin augmented with regular silkworm silk, as well as with piglet skin. In all cases, the bullet won out. The only exception was the bioengineered spider silk tissue.
Which begs the question: Is it possible to someday augment human skin to make it tougher–possibly even bulletproof? Probably not, and even if so that certainly wouldn’t make the human body impervious to the other factors involved in being struck by a bullet (like the sheer bone-breaking, potentially heart-stopping impact).
Regardless, chalk it up as another potential application for nature’s toughest fiber, one that’s getting closer and closer to mass-production and integration into a range of materials that need strengthening.
from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now
From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: Testing the Best Audiophile-Quality Headphones
Audiophile Headphone Battle Sam Kaplan
Our friends over at Sound + Vision rounded up six of the best-sounding over-the-ear headphones out there. Put away your packaged Apple “White Plastic Circles of Pain” earbuds–these will fill your earholes with some of the finest-quality audio on the market. The headphones include some of the best offerings from Sony, Grado, Sennheiser, and Audio-Technica–definitely worth a look if you’re serious about your music.
from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now
From Lifehacker: Radioactivity Counter Turns Your Android Phone into a Geiger Counter
Android: Getting one step closer to turning your phone into a tricorder, Android app Radioactivity Counter uses the CMOS camera sensor on your phone to record radiation levels. More »
from Lifehacker
From Kotaku: Developer Makes Disabled Gamer’s Wish Come True With an Arrow Click
When a commenter on the website of Legend of Grimrock asked about clickable on-screen arrow navigation for the upcoming indie dungeon crawler, developers said they had no plans to implement such a feature. When they found out why the commenter asked, they quickly changed those plans. More »
from Kotaku
From Geeks are Sexy Technology News: The Future of the Menu: Say Hello to Ubuntu’s Upcoming Head-Up Display
This is the HUD. It’s a way for you to express your intent and have the application respond appropriately. We think of it as “beyond interfaceâ€, it’s the “intenterfaceâ€. This concept of “intent-driven interface†has been a primary theme of our work in the Unity shell, with dash search as a first class experience pioneered in Unity. Now we are bringing the same vision to the application, in a way which is completely compatible with existing applications and menus.