For everything from family to computers…
Seismologists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the International Seismological Center, and NASA have come to a consensus about last year’s cascading tragedies in Japan that left at least 16,000 dead and half a million homeless. Jim Stone, a self-professed former National Security Agency analyst with an “engineering background,” has a different explanation: the whole thing was a deliberate and dastardly act of nuclear war.
from Wired Top Stories
Intel teams up with a startup to create a server twice as efficient as those that power websites and apps today.
As the cloud becomes more pervasive—driving everything from social networking to mobile apps—the computers that power it must guzzle more and more energy. Today, startup company SeaMicro, chip maker Intel, and electronics giant Samsung unveiled a new computer design that could make the data centers that power cloud services dramatically more efficient.
Spider silk is well known for some spectacular properties. It is stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar yet flexible enough to be spun into a wide variety of shapes.
New research shows that the material is not only strong but also smart.
from Wired Top Stories
Whoa!! That is just pure craziness!!! o.O
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Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have successfully created a self-guided bullet prototype that is able to home in on a laser-designated target from more than a mile away.
The laser-guided bullet looks more like a small missile or dart than a conventional bullet. Regular bullets are held on course by their spin. The laser-guided bullet uses fins instead, so it doesn’t spin, it flies and its trajectory can be altered via the fins mid-flight.
The magic happens on board the bullet itself. An optical sensor collects information and relays it to an 8-bit central processing unit, which controls the electromagnetic actuators that adjust the fins. According to researchers Red Jones and Brian Kast, the tiny size of the bullet actually makes this feat relatively easy to perform (the bullet is more easily controllable than a cruise missile).
As far as precision goes, there is no comparison. Over a range of half-a-mile, a conventional bullet might be off target by as much as 10 yards. The laser-guided bullet will spread by as much as eight inches.
Click here to view the embedded video.
[PhysOrg via Geekosystem]
from The UberReview
To the multitude of arguments for protecting rainforest biodiversity, here’s a new addition: An Amazonian fungus could eat our most durable landfill waste. A group of students from Yale found the fungus during an expedition to Ecuador and learned it breaks down polyurethane.
This plastic is one of those modern chemical compounds found in so many products, it’s pointless to count – from Spandex to garden hoses, for a start – and it is prized for both its flexibility and rigidity. The problem is that like many other polymers, it does not break down readily. This means it persists in landfills, as Fast Company points out. It burns pretty well, but that releases carbon monoxide and other gases into the atmosphere, so it’s a nonstarter in most situations. Something that can degrade it naturally would be a better solution.
The fungus called Pestalotiopsis microspora can subsist on a diet of polyurethane alone, and do so in an anaerobic environment, according to the researchers who found it. The Yale team isolated the enzyme that enables this fungus to do its work and noted it could be used for bioremediation.
It’s odd to think of a microorganism eating up a durable synthetic material, but this would not be a first, by a long shot; bacteria and fungi can break down lots of things. A bacterial species called Halomonas titanicae is eating the RMS Titanic, for instance. We just need to know where to find these hungry species – and the rainforest is a good place to look.
from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now
While I think it is awesome to get biofuel, I just shudder at what could go wrong if E. coli got out to public…
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Biofuels may hold the key to reducing our dependence on foreign oil and cutting down on our greenhouse gas emissions. Ethanol is currently the biofuel of choice, with almost all gasoline bought at the pump in the United States containing 10 percent ethanol. Right now, though, most ethanol comes from corn and sugarcane, and there are concerns that growing our fuel from these crops could drive up food prices (“food versus fuelâ€).
Biofuels made from macroalgae, aka seaweed, avoid this problem. Seaweeds do not require arable land, fertilizer, or fresh water, and they are already cultivated as food (though not a staple crop like corn), animal feed, fertilizers, and sources of polymers. Traditionally, scientists ignored seaweed as a biofuel source because its main sugar component was too difficult to process. A recent paper published by Science describes how researchers genetically-engineered a microbe that is capable of producing ethanol from seaweed.
from Ars Technica
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