Trexa Electric Car Platform Will Cost Upwards Of $15,999 [Cars]

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No longer do you need to fantasize about buying a Tesla, now that Trexa has released pricing details of its "scalable lithium-drive platform," (aka the base for building your own electric car).

$15,999 is a fair price to pay for the starting block of your new car, when other electric cars can set you back more than $100,000 (for a Tesla, anyway—Nissan's Leaf costs around $30,000.) Still, who hasn't dreamed of building their very own car? And as it's electric, you'll be saving the planet, and your wallet.

The starting price is for the base model, which has a top speed of 100mph, an acceleration of 0-60mph in 8 seconds, charge time of four hours and a 105 mile range. [Trexa]


NCBI ROFL: I still think listening to country music is degrading. | Discoblog

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BallasyrkellypicLove is in the air at NCBI ROFL! Tuesday-Friday this week, we will feature research articles about love in its most physical form (okay, we just mean plain ol’ sex). Enjoy!

Degrading and non-degrading sex in popular music: a content analysis.

“OBJECTIVES: Those exposed to more degrading sexual references in popular music are more likely to initiate intercourse at a younger age. The purpose of this study was to perform a content analysis of contemporary popular music with particular attention paid to the prevalence of degrading and non-degrading sexual references. We also aimed to determine if sexual references of each subtype were associated with other song characteristics and/or content. METHODS: We used Billboard magazine to identify the top popular songs in 2005. Two independent coders each analyzed all of these songs (n = 279) for degrading and non-degrading sexual references… … RESULTIS: Of the 279 songs identified, 103 (36.9%) contained references to sexual activity. Songs with references to degrading sex were more common than songs with references to non-degrading sex (67 [65.0%] vs. 36 [35.0%], p < 0.001). Songs with degrading sex were most commonly Rap (64.2%), whereas songs with non-degrading sex were most likely Country (44.5%) or Rhythm & Blues/Hip-Hop (27.8%). Compared with songs that had no mention of sexual activity, songs with degrading sex were more likely to contain references to substance use, violence, and weapon carrying. Songs with non-degrading sex were no more likely to mention these other risk behaviors.”

degrading

Photo: Wikimedia/Nicholas Ballasy

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Opera makes me want to kill myself.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Want your rat to get it on while high on ecstasy? Play loud music.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Flatufonia–or the musical anus


The Nutrition Police March On

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The Obama administration will begin a drive this week to expel Pepsi, French fries and Snickers bars from the nation’s schools in hopes of reducing the number of children who get fat during their school years.

I cannot imagine that such efforts will yield results; kids have too many ways to circumvent these restrictions.

Instead, what about health insurance premiums that increase with weight above the "healthy" threshold?

Samsung Monte S5620 Phone Gets Early Reveal Prior To MWC [Phones]

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A few leaks here and there, and voila—Samsung's Monte S5620 is revealed ahead of MWC. Running the TouchWiz 2.0 Plus OS, it has full HTML browsing and the usual array of social networking tricks.

A 3.0-inch capacitive WQVGA TFT touchscreen, 3.2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, A-GPS, Bluetooth 2.1, and Google Maps 3.0 seems to be the crux of it, with memory listed as 200MB, expandable via the microSD card slot. Yes, it's a budgetphone, but it's the first that we've seen using TouchWiz 2.0 Plus, (with the Jet, Omnia II and Tocca Ultra being some of the phones using TouchWiz 2.0), so hopefully we'll see a few new UI features when we catch a glimpse of it next week at MWC. [Samsung]


Navigon Updates MobileNavigator iPhone App With Facebook and Twitter Connectivity, Panorama View 3D Mapping [IPhone Apps]

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Not only has Navigon added a bunch of new features to its iPhone app, the price is $20 cheaper—although if you want Traffic Live and 3D maps, it still adds up to $100. Nonetheless, it sounds worth it.

The update has a few nifty angles—there's the connection to your Facebook or Twitter accounts for updating friends on your current position, destination and time you're due to arrive; the aforementioned Panorama View 3D views (which use NASA height and terrain data) and personalized route delivery, called MyRoutes.

The addition of NASA's data is a nice touch, meaning you'll be able to find out more about the location you're in, such as elevations and shadows. Discover a hill before you reach it—and maneuver around it if you're not keen on heights.

MyRoutes, on the other hand, collects data on your preferences and habits, giving you customized routes along side the fastest/easiest ways to reach your destination.

Here we come to the price. I mentioned before that it'll cost $100 if you want the full service for your iPhone or iPod Touch, with the actual price of the MobileNavigator app being lowered by $20 to $69.99. The Traffic Live has also been discounted slightly, from $24.99 to $19.99 (only available until the 15th of February), and the Panorama View 3D will cost $9.99. Those who bought the app before will get the update for free, according to Navigon.

Yes, it's pricey. Yes, it's not far off what you'd spend on a stand-along satnav. But as our iPhone navigation battlemodo deduced last August, the MobileNavigator is the best money can buy. And that was before all these new updates.


PLCs

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i m a starter in plcs ladder logic programming. i just wanted to clear the doubt that is it possible to on off an output without using two seperate contact input one to on and the other to off it. if its possible please help me how to do it.

Notion Ink’s Adam Tablet Will Have Flash, Output At 1080p and Have Battery Life 2x Longer Than iPad [Tablets]

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Flash, a longer battery life, outputting video at 1080p, a $1m app competition—these are just some of the ways Notion Ink is hoping its Android-powered Adam tablet will be able to win customers over.

The tablet has gone through several different guises since renders were unveiled in December. From the slick silver-edged device, to the roll-topped plastic prototype at CES, the latest renders suggest the final design will be more in keeping with that cheaper-looking prototype, although much slimmer. They're reportedly considering launching two different models, with the key difference being how thin they are—either 12.9mm or 11.6mm, which suggests different displays being used.

Pitting it against the iPad, CEO Rohan Shravan told SlashGear that due to the Nvidia chip and Pixel Qi screen, the Adam will have a battery life at least two times longer. Plus, it'll be able to output 1080p video whereas Apple's tablet can only manage up to 576p, AND they're exploring the use of Flash, which will apparently be shown off next week.

Recognizing that despite offering more spec than the iPad they still have a battle on their hands, they're encouraging development for the Adam with a $1m bounty being put up for creating apps. They haven't officially announced the competition yet, but as soon as we hear we'll let you know how you can put your creative genius to work. [SlashGear]


Pressure Drop in Filters

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hello,

Till date I have known that the filter rated as 3 micron will have more pressure drop than that of the filter rated as 10 micron.

So, pls let me knw, is it possible to design a filter of 3 micron rating having pressure drop less than that of the filter having 10 micron ratin

LG Mini GD880 Phone Has 16:9 Ratio And Looks Hot To Trot [Phones]

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This LG Mini GD880 is so good-looking it makes my brain hurt at the injustice of it (presumably) running LG's S-Class OS, and not Android. Still, there's some nice spec to back up this slim 16:9 phone.

Just like the Chocolate phone before it, the display has a 16:9 aspect ratio, in this case at 3.2-inches. LG hasn't released many details about the internals just yet, but we do know it has a 5.0-megapixel camera with face detection, Wi-Fi, and HSDPA 7.2Mbps connectivity.

The lack of buttons, metal finishings and square corners make it look like it'll be part of their more "premium" range of handsets, so expect to pay a pretty penny if you want it PAYG, otherwise it'll most likely go for the usual month contract fees when it goes on sale in March in Europe—with worldwide availability expected shortly. I'm going to harass LG for confirmation of the OS, but with Mobile World Congress starting this weekend, I'm sure we'll find out a whole load more then. [LG]


Bending of Pipes During Heat Treatment

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Hello All,

We are into the business of cold drawing mild steel and alloy pipes to the size required by the customer. The process of cold drawing requires intermediate annealing. But when we anneal the pipes (to temperatures of around 950 degree C) in our 'closed bogie type oil fired' furn

The Puffin: A Passion for Personal Flight

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Meet the Puffin. It's an airplane concept conjured up by the mind of aerospace engineer Mark Moore. The unusual looking, vertical take-off and landing tailsitter is only an idea, but you'd never know that from the attention the Puffin has gotten on the Internet.

Moore came up with the design for the electric powered, 12-foot (3.7 m) long, 14.5-foot (4.4 m) wingspan personal air vehicle as part of the coursework for his doctoral degree. Then Langley's creativity and innovation and revolutionary technical challenges funds paid for much of the research. How the Puffin rocketed from esoteric erudition to web sensation is a classic case study in the power of the viral nature of the web.

"The animation of the Puffin on YouTube has gotten more 648,000 hits in a week," said Moore. "Until the concept was mentioned in the media Jan. 19, the video had only been clicked on a couple of thousand times since it was uploaded to the NASAPAV channel last November."

It all started with an email from a reporter who was pursuing a story on electric aircraft propulsion for "a couple of websites associated with space.com." As the former manager of the former Vehicle System program's Personal Air Vehicle sector. Moore is a nationally recognized expert on that and other small aircraft systems.

The Puffin personal air vehicle conceptMoore not only shared information about electric motor research for airplanes, but also the Puffin design that he and a team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA), and M-DOT Aerospace planned to present to an American Helicopter Society conference on aeromechanics, Jan. 20. Combine NASA cachet with an intriguing technology concept, some compelling animation created by Analytical Mechanics Associates graphic designers and quotable quotes from Moore and the story of the Puffin lifted off.

First it appeared on the Scientific American website from the original interview on electric aircraft propulsion. There Moore was quoted as saying the team named the design the Puffin because, "If you've ever seen a puffin on the ground, it looks very awkward, with wings too small to fly, and that's exactly what our vehicle looks like," Moore says. "But it's also apparently called the most environmentally friendly bird, because it hides its poop. So the vehicle is environmentally friendly because it essentially has no emissions. Also, puffins tend to live in solitude, only ever coming together on land to mate, and ours is a one-person vehicle."

The pictures and video of the Puffin helped attract media attention too. It's not everyday that you see a design that's part plane, part helicopter that stands upright on the ground. Its tail splits into four "legs" that serve as landing gear. It lifts off like a helicopter, hovers and then leans forward to fly horizontally with the pilot lying down like in a hang-glider.

Even the technical details were pretty interesting. If ever built the proposed aircraft would be small and very lightweight -- about 300 pounds (136 kg) empty weight plus another 100 pounds (45 kg) of battery and 200 pounds (91 kg) for the pilot or payload. The design would be powered by a total of 60 horsepower through electric motors, which are designed to be able to fail any two powertrain components on either side and still produce the required power to hover. It has a cruising speed of 150 mph (241 kph), but cruises more efficiently at lower speeds The range with current battery technology would be about 50 miles (80 km).

The first web story snowballed until the Puffin garnered worldwide attention, capturing more than 10 news.google.com search pages in less than seven days with stories in media from Japan, Russia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Romania, Turkey, Chile, Spain, Guatemala, Greece, Peru, Mexico, Norway, Argentina, Czechoslovakia, China, Korea, and others. A full "Google" search of "NASA Puffin" indicated there were more than 38,000 hits for the combined words. Moore and the NASA Langley News Media Team got inquiries from a New York Times blogger, Germany's biggest Sunday paper, a French men's magazine, ABC News and many more. Even the social media site "Twitter" has been all a-twitter with more than 1,200 tweets about the Puffin in a week.

The Puffin personal air vehicle conceptFor Moore the publicity was an added bonus, but it was the way the work was accomplished that really excited him. "I've been doing conceptual design studies for 25 years, and this is the first time that I have performed a six month conceptual design study that involved such detailed analyses performed right from the onset (that is viscous full Navier Stokes Overflow aero solutions feeding WopWop aeroacoustic analysis, along with MBDyn rotor dynamics, with detailed transition trajectory analysis)," said Moore. "So I think it is a poster child of higher-order methods being able to push themselves far forward to the front stages of design -- to avoid the nasty 'real world' surprises that higher-order analysis can bring at later stages. Getting systems analysis to work in closer collaboration with discipline experts is greatly needed as we progress towards greater multi-disciplinary coupling to solve highly complex problems."

The other thing the engineer says he looks forward to is sharing the technical results of the studies and "the depth of analysis that exists" with other researchers. He'd much rather do that, Moore says, than talk to reporters.

As for the Puffin media frenzy -- it's subsided some, but could start back up later this year when the NIA hopes to fly a remote control one-third size model to validate assumptions made in academic studies, with the specific intent of exploring the transition from hover to forward flight.

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NASA Helps Launch Bold New Era of Open Government

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Open Government at WhiteHouse.govOn Saturday, February 6, 2010, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched its Open Government Webpage at:


http://www.nasa.gov/open

In line with the Directive, the NASA Open Government Webpage serves as a portal to agency activities related to the Open Government Directive.

The portal provides an interface for users to get the latest news as it relates to open government at NASA; find ways to connect and collaborate with the agency; understand the Open Government Directive; and share ideas about how to be more transparent, participatory and collaborative. NASA's annual FOIA reports are also available on the portal in an open format. Users may access agency datasets, tools and geospatial data hosted on data.gov via this Open Government Webpage.

A screenshot of the new Open Government site on NASA.govAs part of the Open Government Directive, each agency will release an Open Government Plan. The Plan is intended to outline concrete steps NASA can take to be more collaborative, transparent and participatory. NASA is seeking input on the creation of this Plan from its employees and the public at large. The mechanism for collecting and sorting these inputs is a website where users may submit, vote, and comment on ideas. This website is publicly available at:


http://opennasa.ideascale.com

An e-mail address is also available for suggestions, along with a mailing address and phone number, posted on the Open Government Webpage. The new email address is:

opengov@nasa.gov

To ensure NASA captures and responds to ideas submitted, the agency has enlisted a team of moderators to participate in the process and facilitate dialog about this exciting opportunity, using the above tools. NASA's encourages its employees, the space community at large, and the general public to contribute their ideas on how NASA can be more transparent, participatory, and collaborative.


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Watching History Unfold

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Watching History Unfold
Guests look on from the terrace of Operations Support Building II as space shuttle Endeavour launches on the shuttle program's last planned night launch. Endeavour launched from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A to begin the STS-130 mission early Monday, Feb. 8, 2010. Mission STS-130 will deliver a third connecting module, the Italian-built Tranquility node and a seven-windowed cupola, which will be used as a control room for robotics, to the International Space Station.

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Endeavour Lifts Off

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Space shuttle Endeavour lights up the night sky as it lifts off from Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The primary payload for the STS-130 mission to the International Space Station is the Tranquility node, a pressurized module that will provide additional room for crew members and many of the station's life support and environmental control systems. Attached to one end of Tranquility is a cupola, a unique work area with six windows on its sides and one on top.

The cupola resembles a circular bay window and will provide a vastly improved view of the station's exterior. The multi-directional view will allow the crew to monitor spacewalks and docking operations, as well as provide a spectacular view of Earth and other celestial objects. The module was built in Turin, Italy, by Thales Alenia Space for the European Space Agency.

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Launch of NASA’s Shuttle Endeavour Sparks Early Monday Sunrise

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Space shuttle Endeavour lit up the predawn sky above Florida's Space Coast on Monday with a 4:14 a.m. EST launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The shuttle's last scheduled night launch began a 13-day flight to the International Space Station and the final year of shuttle operations.

Endeavour's STS-130 mission will include three spacewalks and the delivery of the Tranquility node, the final major U.S. portion of the station. Tranquility will provide additional room for crew members and many of the space station's life support and environmental control systems.

Attached to Tranquility is a cupola with seven windows, which houses a robotic control station. The windows will provide a panoramic view of Earth, celestial objects and visiting spacecraft. After the node and cupola are added, the orbiting laboratory will be approximately 90 percent complete.

Shortly before liftoff, Commander George Zamka said, "Thanks to the great team that got Tranquility, cupola and Endeavour to this point. And thanks also to the team that got us ready to bring Node 3 and cupola to life. We'll see you in a couple of weeks. It's time to go fly."

Zamka is joined on the flight by Pilot Terry Virts and Mission Specialists Kathryn Hire, Stephen Robinson, Nicholas Patrick and Robert Behnken. Virts is making his first trip to space.

Endeavour's first landing opportunity at Kennedy is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 20, at 10:01 p.m. The STS-130 mission will be Endeavour's 24th flight and the 32nd shuttle mission dedicated to station assembly and maintenance.

NASA's Web coverage of STS-130 includes mission information, interactive features, news conference images, graphics and videos. Mission coverage, including the latest NASA TV schedule, is available on the main space shuttle Web site at:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

NASA is providing continuous television and Internet coverage of the mission. NASA Television features live mission events, daily status news conferences and 24-hour commentary. For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and schedule information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Daily news conferences with STS-130 mission managers will take place at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Johnson will operate a telephone bridge for media briefings that occur outside of normal business hours. To use this service, reporters must possess valid media credentials issued by a NASA center or issued specifically for the STS-130 mission.

Journalists planning to use the service must contact the Johnson newsroom at 281-483-5111 no later than 15 minutes prior to the start of a briefing. Newsroom personnel will verify credentials and transfer reporters to the phone bridge. Phone bridge capacity is limited, so it will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Patrick, who holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, plans to tweet from orbit during the mission. He can be followed at:

http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Nicholas

Live updates to the NASA News Twitter feed will be added throughout the shuttle mission and landing. To access the NASA News Twitter feed, visit:

http://www.twitter.com/nasa

For more information about the space station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

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Dual Magnets on Speakers

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I have seen dual magnets on some speakers, with the extra magnet behind the other one. Can this really improve the speaker's performance? If yes, would i benefit if I try to stack the magnets by (1) letting one pull the other or (2) forcing it to come together as they push each other?