From Engadget:
It's hardly a natural disaster, but the landscape of Manhattan is about to change once again with the arrival of cellular signal to a handful of the borough's subway platforms. Both AT&T and T-Mobile are taking part in the pilot program, and the Metropolitan Transit Author
At first, I really hated it. In fact, after driving it home the first day I decided I was done with the thing. I wasn't going to drive it anymore for a week. I was just going to walk and ride my bike. How green is that?
But the next day I forced myself to drive it again. And then something
This week's image:
Be sure to vote for your favorite caption!
From TreeHugger:
ITT Flow Control recently announced the development of their new, solar powered RainPerfect Water Pump, which takes harvested rainwater in a barrel and pumps it through devices like garden hoses and sprinklers. This way, the rainwater is recycled, and consumers can water
From Fast Company:
In an extended interview, astronaut Ron Garan speaks with Fast Company about his nerve-wracking return to earth, what technologies start-ups should develop for space travel, and life on the International Space Station.
Read the whole article
From Coolest Gadgets:
This is Igloo Village in Finland, and if you want to see the northern lights without saying "B-r-r-r", this is the place. Apparently, many people came from far and wide to see the dazzling natural beauty of the northern lights, but they were getting cold feet on t
From Boing Boing:
Local farmer Shu Mansheng starts the engines of his self-designed and homemade flying device before a test flight in front of his house in Dashu village on the outskirts of Wuhan, Hubei province September 21, 2011. The round steel flying device, which cost more than 20,
As expected, NASA released on Monday a draft request for proposals (RFP) for the next phase of the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, known as the Integrated Design Phase. With the shift to a contract based on Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), with some elements of the Space Act Agreements used for the first two CCDev rounds, there’s a lot more documentation and administrivia in this solicitation. Those who have plowed through the documents have raised concern about one passage in main draft RFP document [Microsoft Word .docx format] on pages 52–53 of the 105-page document, a section titled “Phased Acquisition Using Down-Selection Procedures”. It reads:
(a) This solicitation is for the Commercial Crew Program’s acquisition to facilitate the development of a U.S. commercial crew space transportation capability with the goal of achieving safe, reliable and cost effective access to and from low earth orbit (LEO) including the International Space Station (ISS). The acquisition will be conducted as a two-phased procurement using a competitive down-selection technique between phases. In this technique, two or more contractors will be selected for Phase 1. It is expected that the single contractor for Phase 2 will be chosen from among these contractors after a competitive down-selection.
“Phase 1″ refers to the Integrated Design Phase, the next CCDev round, while Phase 2 refers to the follow-on “Development, Test, Evaluation and Certification” phase, which covers the actual construction and testing of a commercial crewed spacecraft. The passage above appears to indicate that NASA will select only one company for Phase 2, contrary to past claims that the agency planned to support the development of multiple providers. Does this represent a change in plans?
Probably not. One thing to keep in mind is a passage later in that same section: “Notwithstanding paragraph (a), the competition in Phase 2 may result in the award of multiple contracts if budget allows.” That indicates that the agency remains open to providing multiple awards in the following CCDev phase. In addition, when talking to Florida Today reporter James Dean yesterday for an article he wrote about CCDev, he shared with me a clarification he received from NASA on that issue. It turns out that the clause in question is a standard one in FAR-based contracts, and that the Commercial Crew Program was “investigating getting a waiver or deviation from this standard clause language for the final RFP.”
So, while NASA seems committed to continuing to support multiple providers throughout the CCDev program, funding permitting, this case is a reminder that the shift from Space Act Agreements to FAR-based contracts could create some issues that both NASA and industry need to be aware of.
Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer has chimed in to reflect on the recent documentary, Project Nim, about a chimpanzee that was raised as a human. The endeavour was part of a science project to determine how much language, if any, a chimpanzee could acquire in a human environment. Singer believes that Nim was treated wrong and that such invasive research should be consigned to history:
Eighteen years ago, Paola Cavalieri and I founded The Great Ape Project, an organisation dedicated to the idea of giving great apes the moral status and legal protection that befits their nature. As the work of Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey, Francine Patterson, Birute Galdikas, H Lyn White Miles, Roger and Deborah Fouts, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and many other remarkable scientists have shown, chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orang-utans are self-aware beings, capable of thought, and with rich and deep emotional lives. Our idea is that the great apes, as our closest relatives, could serve as a bridge over the immense gulf we have dug between ourselves and other animals. Once one group of animals is included within the sphere of beings with rights, we hope that the extension of some basic rights to other sentient animals will be that much easier to make.
Fortunately, the idea that great apes should not be treated as tools for research – as opposed to the kind of relationship developed by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh – has made some progress since the time when Nim was sent back to Oklahoma. Experiments on great apes are now either banned or severely restricted in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and throughout the European Union.
In the United States, a bipartisan group of members of Congress is supporting legislation to end the use of chimpanzees in invasive research. Project Nim shows that even when research is not invasive, it can have a devastating psychological impact on an animal. What happened to Nim was wrong, and should never happen again.
More.
A research team has succeeded in remotely manipulating metal nanoparticles to lift, drag and release cargo in water.
Contestants from Harvard University, MIT, Boston University and the University of Massachusetts raced each in the closely fought race to measure the particle concentration and size of a bimodal distribution of nanoparticles.
FutureCarbon, Bayreuth-based producer of carbon supercomposites, and its south-German sales partner Goessl+Pfaff are jointly showing innovative solutions to heat composite components at this year's Composites Europe from 27 through 29 September 2011.
Solar power could be harvested more efficiently and transported over long distances using tiny molecular circuits, according to research inspired by new insights into natural photosynthesis.
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have built a very simple nanoantenna that directs red and blue colours in opposite directions, even though the antenna is smaller than the wavelength of light.
Empa researchers have borrowed this trick from nature and developed a polymer foam surface coating with a closed cell construction which not only reduces the pressure loss after the membrane is damaged but also makes the inflatable structure more resistant and giving it a longer operational life.
A revolutionary conducting polymer enables the use of low-cost, high-energy silicon for the next generation of lithium-ion battery anodes.
A year ago Northwestern University chemists published their recipe for a new class of nanostructures made of sugar, salt and alcohol. Now, the same team has discovered the edible compounds can efficiently detect, capture and store carbon dioxide. And the compounds themselves are carbon-neutral.
A novel type of inter-particle binding predicted in 1970 and observed for the first time in 2006, is forming the basis for an intriguing kind of ultracold quantum chemistry. Chilled to nano-kelvin temperatures, cesium atoms---three at a time---come together to form a bound state hundreds or even thousands of times larger than individual atoms.
Using acceleration 1 trillion times faster than a jet fighter in a maximum turn, researchers have gained new insight into dynamic compression of aluminum at ultrahigh strain rates.
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that it has begun operations of its new Line-16 memory semiconductor fabrication facility, which will provide the industry's largest production capacity.
