Not The Sort of Spinoff You Usually Hear About

Not Quite Rocket Science: 2 Week Underwear, Wall Street Journal

"Underwear you can wear up to two weeks at a time without having to worry about the smell? Andy Jordan's Tech Diary looks into the technological feat, how it works, and who is using the underwear. Yes, there's a smell test."

Keith's note: The video focuses on underwear that can be worn for prolonged periods of time without risk of odor, disease, etc. An anti-microbial barrier in the fabric of the underwear kills odor-causing microorganisms. My two cent's worth about NASA spinoffs is at the end of the video. Having been a climber and participated in a number of expeditions to utterly remote and harsh locations for long periods of time (Devon Island, Everest Base Camp) let me tell you, advances such as this are of critical importance. The relevance to expeditions to other worlds is obvious. Not only is life more pleasant (a big deal when you are far away and under lots of risk and stress) but if you can wear clothing longer you cut down on the energy costs of cleaning garments and the logistics (and upmass) of providing additional new garments. This special underwear has already been tested on ISS.

Stomping Through the Permian [Science Tattoo] | The Loom

Triolobite foot440Mandy writes, “I am actually a microbiologist, but my side interest is the trilobite. I went in thinking I’d just get a small black outline of a trilobite, and the tattoo artist was so excited that I wanted a trilobite, and insisted on designing something more complicated for me. So attached is a photo of my right foot. It’s like a pet trilobite that follows me everywhere.”

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.


Lest WE Forget

HEADQUARTERS GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC

Honor those who sacrificed all for our freedom this weekend – that's what this holiday is truly about.

General Orders No.11, WASHINGTON, D.C., May 5, 1868

I. The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers

Will Recovering a OS Harm a Motherboard?

All,

I know, the obvious answer is "no" because a similar process is used to create the PC in the first place, but bear with me. A friend donated a used PC and I was in the middle of cleaning the hard drive and OS so it could be re-donated for use teaching a language class. I didn't have access

The Chinese Muslims | Gene Expression

The post is titled the Chinese Muslims, not the Muslims of China. One may make a semantic distinction here in that the latter connotes the residence of a Muslim community within Chinese society, while the former indicates members of Chinese society who happen to be Muslim. Such black and white dichotomies are naturally artificial, but to a large extent the Uyghurs of Xinjiang fall into the category of a group of Muslims (of Turkish language) who happen to fall within the boundaries of the modern Chinese state (thanks to that inheritance of the Chinese state of the full expanse of the Manchu Empire of the 18th century). On the other hand, the Hui people are arguably more a Chinese people who happen to be Muslim.

For more on the topic, please see my blog post at the Islam in China website. It was submitted a while back, but it only went up recently.

LCR Meter Readings

LCR131B has inductance capacitance and resistance measurement functions but it has two different testing frequencies - 120HZ and 1kHZ.

Which test frequency shouldo be used to measure the resistance?

A-B-C (as easy as)

UPDATE:  SOLVED at 12:06 CDT by Emily

The most suspenseful riddle of the day was whether or not I was going to get one of my computers working in time to file today’s riddle!  You know how trouble seems to come in threes?  Well, I’d be happy with only three troubles this week.  Try three laptops and two desktops, down for the count.  I think I repel technology.

Finally, I’m up and running… okay, up and limping… and more than ready to play riddle.  We’re collecting another crowd of folks to play the bonus riddle, and I’d sure like to add your name to the list.

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Today’s answer is a single object.

It is visible to the unaided eye.

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Many people think today’s object was the “first”, but it was not.

Although it wasn’t first, it is associated with many things that are.

Surrounded by controversy, this object was initially ridiculed and thought of as a joke.

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It has made an appearance in popular fiction.

It has a strong representation in non-fiction.

Today’s object does something for which it is very well known.

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A-a-a-a-a-a-a-and we’re OFF!
You know where to find me, so good luck.

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I found it!  The perfect spider – the one we can all appreciate!  I’m not lurking in this, but I doubt it’d be much of a hardship.

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2009 Ferrari Scuderia Spider