The French surrender to Astronomers – my town likely to be next
"New enviro-policy to 'end light pollution' has France on track to look like North Korea at night." Continue reading →
Is Virgin Galactic ready for powered flight?
"SpaceShipTwo (SS2) performed a 10.8-minute glide flight April 12 in the skies above the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, the second such flight in as many weeks. This flight was distinguished by a 'cold flow' test of the SS2′s propulsion system, where nitrous oxide flowed through the rocket engine and out the nozzle, creating a distinctive contrail. 'As well as providing further qualifying evidence that the rocket system is flight ready, the test also provided a stunning spectacle due to the oxidizer contrail and for the first time gave a taste of what SpaceShipTwo will look like as it powers to space,' Virgin Galactic noted in a statement." Continue reading →
Veterinary School the Latest Bad Deal in Higher Ed
"When I was in college, the conventional wisdom among students was that veterinary school was even harder to get into than medical school. Presumably this was because there were fewer veterinary schools than there are medical schools. I don't know if that's even true, but that's what we thought, and it was therefore assumed that veterinary grads were rare and that vets would always make a good living. No one even mentioned, back then, the massive debt loads that could be involved. Well, it turns out that demand for vets is falling, and that many vets nevertheless have six-figure debt loads while the starting salary is down to $45,500." Continue reading →
Entrepreneur Works With Coke’s Distribution to Deliver Medicine to Remote African Villages
"In the 1980s, entrepreneur Simon Barry was an aid worker in remote villages in Zambia, and he became aware of how easy it was to grab a Coke nearly every place he went, but he also noticed how many basic necessities were missing. Barry got the idea to somehow use Coca-Cola's distributing success to deliver lifesaving supplies to the countries most in need. Unfortunately, the idea did not become a reality until about five years ago, with the help of Facebook and the Internet. The joint efforts resulted in a test program, called ColaLife. The program gets medical aid to Zambia using the extra space in Coke crates." Continue reading →
Artificial Leaf Generates 100 Watts of Power from Dirty Water
"This development all of a sudden makes it practical to bring this solution to places like Africa, where power is undependable. Each one of these artificial leaves is capable of producing 100 watts of power, enough to keep the lights on at night, and a few more will keep a small refrigerator running. In the first world, putting these at the waste water outflows on houses can help with a household’s power needs and ease up on the grid. We’re still a few years away from seeing this as a viable solution on large scales, but hey, but the time the artificial leaf does hit the market, you should be able to run 15 light bulbs from a single plate. Isn’t that something?" Continue reading →
U.S. Regulations Require Use of Biofuel That Doesn’t Exist
"What is really crazy is that the law caps the amount of ethanol allowed at around 15 billion gallons. The law requires refiners to blend advanced cellulosic biofuels, despite that they are not being commercially produced. Up until this year, the requirement has been relatively minimal ~500 million gallons, but by 2017 the amount reaches 5 billion gallons. The US produces about 3 – 3.5 billion bushels of soybeans annually. A bushel of beans yields 11lbs of oil, and a gallon of biodiesel weighs ~7.3 lbs. Therefore even if we devoted all of the soybeans produced (3.015 bb) in the 2012/13 season it would only amount to 4.5 billion gallons. Where is all this biofuel going to come from?" Continue reading →
How Inventor Paul Vo Created a Little Black Box That Could Change Guitars Forever
"The Vo-96 Acoustic Synthesizer is one of the most innovative musical instrument products created in years. Strap one onto any acoustic guitar and you can transform the way it sounds by breaking—or at least manipulating—the laws of physics. Here's the story of how inventor Paul Vo made a device that sounds like magic. The Vo-96 changes the very physics of how a guitar makes sound to begin with. How do you do that? The device has what Vo calls a 'two-way conversation' with the guitar strings. It listens to the strings and then applies a precisely calculated magnetic energy back to the strings to change how they sound." Continue reading →
Dan Ariely: What makes us feel good about our work?
"What motivates us to work? Contrary to conventional wisdom, it isn't just money. But it's not exactly joy either. It seems that most of us thrive by making constant progress and feeling a sense of purpose. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely presents two eye-opening experiments that reveal our unexpected and nuanced attitudes toward meaning in our work. (Filmed at TEDxRiodelaPlata.)" Continue reading →
Security audit finds developer outsourced his 9-5 job to China to goof off at work
"The analysis of his workstation found hundreds of PDF invoices from the Chinese contractors. The scheme worked very well for Bob. In his performance assessments by the firm's human resources department, he was the firm's top coder for many quarters and was considered expert in C, C++, Perl, Java, Ruby, PHP, and Python. Further investigation found that the enterprising Bob had actually taken jobs with other firms and had outsourced that work too, netting him hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit as well as lots of time to hang around on internet messaging boards and checking for a new Detective Mittens video." Continue reading →
New iPad app allows users to virtually try on glasses in 3-D
"Jonathan Coon turned heads Wednesday with iPad software that lets people try on sunglasses by manipulating 3-D images of themselves from the neck up. The founder of discount prescription lens company 1-800 Contacts introduced a service intended to let shoppers see themselves in eyewear using smartphones, tablets or computers with cameras built into screens. 'One of the great ironies of glasses is that people who wear them usually can’t see themselves when they are shopping for glasses because they need to be wearing prescription lenses,' Coon said. 'For the first time, you can see yourself trying on glasses.'" Continue reading →
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