For everything from family to computers…
Just how ants create the highly efficient network of trails around their nests has never been fully understood. Now researchers think they’ve cracked it
Among the most impressive transportation networks on the planet are the complex trails that ants create around their nests. These networks arise through the ants’ exploration of their environment and end up channelling the distribution of food for the colony and the daily movements hundreds of thousands of individuals.
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
NASA knows Columbia sustained damage on liftoff. But engineers’ concerns get swept aside by mission control, at the cost of seven lives.
from Wired Top Stories
Thanks to the ubiquity of USB connections on mobile devices, getting power from a portable solar charger is just as easy as plugging into the wall.
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