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In 2010, a lake of caustic, poison mud from an aluminum manufacturing operation spilled out and destroyed a nearby town, along with much of the native life. Humans were killed and burned, property destroyed. And it still looks like Mars. More »
from Gizmodo
We’re quite familiar with the fun you can have when you’ve got a high speed camera in your possession. But, even Phantom’s pricey and impressive 2,800 FPS cameras have nothing on the latest project out of UCLA. Engineers at the school have rigged up a microscope cam that uses serial time-encoded amplified microscopy (STEAM) to capture clips of individual cells at 36.7 million FPS. Let that sink in for a moment — that’s a “shutter” speed of 27 picoseconds. The school actually pioneered the method years ago, which uses ultra-fast laser pulses to generate images of cells as they speed by. The camera is capable of processing 100,000 cells a second, allowing doctors to spot cancerous anomalies that might have otherwise gone undetected. Now we just hope they can supersize the tech and sell it to HBO… boxing KOs can never be played back slow enough.
from Engadget
The graphene filled in the smaller hole with fresh
carbon atoms
Due to their extraordinary abilities, graphene and other one-atom-thick molecules like carbon nanotubes have enormous potential for use in fields from electronics to medicine. For example, graphene is physically strong, transparent, flexible, and a great conductor of both electricity and heat—and now the two-dimensional carbon molecule can add another power to its roster: self-healing. When researchers made holes in a graphene sheet, the molecule rebuilt its own structure using new carbon atoms. This ability might help researchers grow graphene in large quantities and specific shapes.
Physicists led by Konstantin Novoselov, who along with Andre Geim discovered graphene and won the physics Nobel Prize, trained an electron microscope at a sheet of graphene. They deposited palladium or nickel, which damage graphene by encouraging carbon bonds to break, onto a section of the sheet. When the researchers shot an electron beam at the damaged area, the beam mobilized the metal atoms to eat away at the graphene, etching nanometer-scale holes. But the holes didn’t last long: Provided with a reservoir of spare carbon atoms, the graphene incorporated the fresh carbon to patch the holes, as can be seen in the …
from Discover Magazine
Using both the military and software sides of their education, a team of Polish military students studying computer engineering at Wojskowa Akademia Techniczna (Military University of Technology) presented at the Imagine Cup here in Sydney an app that uses the built-in magnetometer in a Windows phone to detect the magnetic signature of land mines buried in the ground.
SAPER (Sensor Amplified Perception for Explosives Recognition) is Poland’s entry in the software design category of the 2012 Imagine Cup.
It’s like a high-stakes Minesweeper with real-world results. The corresponding web application shows the locations of mines users have already detected, or whose known locations were input by military professionals. Then, if you enter a dangerous area, the app sends you a notification on your phone.
SAPER has 75 percent accuracy in detecting land mines, and works from 30 centimeters away. However, both of these stats can be improved by purchasing their external, more powerful magnetometer/metal detector, for “premium users,” which the team says makes the app comparable in accuracy to current military tools. Being from a military academy, Team ARMED had access to a field test site, where they buried mines in the ground and tested their app on them.
The team hopes to first deploy their app in the most affected areas, such as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam and Croatia, where, team mentor Mariusz Chmielewski tells me, there are regularly “bombs on the side of the road you are driving on. It is a big, big problem.”
from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now
This is insane. 152,455 Lego bricks, 677 pounds (307 kilograms) and 6.56 feet long (2 meters). That’s how amazing this Lego cut-out of a Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine is. It has over 160 separate engine components just arranged like the engine that power the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. More »
from Gizmodo
Apple has withdrawn all its laptop and desktop computers from the EPEAT environmental rating system, including older MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models. According to iFixit, who recently tore down a MacBook Pro and its retina screen, that’s likely related to a design direction favoring smaller, lighter notebooks and longer battery life. Doing so required them to glue the cells to the aluminum shell, making it impossible to recycle the case and other parts — iFixit couldn’t pull the batteries out without spilling the (highly toxic) battery guts all over. Cupertino’s decision means that many federal agencies might not be able to buy those products, since 95 percent of its electronics purchasing must conform to the EPEAT standard. On top of that, many educational institutions that require the certification would also need to opt out of Mac purchases, as well as large corporations like HSBC and Ford. Currently, iPhones and iPads are exempt from that certification, but considering recent ads from Apple specifically touting its conformance to EPEAT, the company might have some ‘splaining to do.
[Image credit: iFixit]
from Engadget
