Jet stowaway at hospital as security issues linger

HONOLULU (AP) -- Surveillance cameras at San Jose International Airport successfully recorded the teenager on the tarmac, climbing up the landing gear of a jet. But in the end, the cameras failed because no one noticed the security breach until the plane — and the boy — landed in Hawaii hours later.

Although the 15-year-old apparently wanted nothing more than to run away, his success in slipping past layers of security early Sunday morning made it clear that a determined person can still get into a supposedly safe area and sneak onto a plane.

Giant 3-D Printer to Make An Entire House in 20 Hours

3-D Printing Concrete Houses Contour Crafting
3-D printers can make airplanes and their parts, food and more why not entire buildings? A professor at the University of Southern California aims to print out whole houses using layers of concrete and adding
plumbing, electrical wiring and other guts as it moves upward.Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis at USC created a layered fabrication method he calls Contour Crafting, which he says can be used to build a single house or a colony of houses.It could be used with concrete or adobe he says. Khoshnevis has been developing the system for several years and hosted a presentation about it at a recent TEDx even It would use a movable gantry taller than the house you want to build. Concrete pours out and is set down layer by layer, like a typical 3-D printer would sinter plastic together. It could be ideal for emergency housing, commercial or low-income structures, but it could also be used to print out customized luxury homes, according to Khoshnevis. Or, he adds, it might be ideal for the moon or Mars. “Contour Crafting technology has the potential to build safe, reliable, and affordable lunar and Martian structures, habitats, laboratories, and other facilities before the arrival of human beings his website reads. Khoshnevis is hardly the only 3-D printing expert advocating this Enrico Dini the Italian inventor of the D-Shape 3-D printer, wants to 3-D print moon buildings out of lunar regolith.On Earth, the automated system could prevent delays, injuries and other labor issues related to human workers. With this system, maybe a 3-D printer could beat the Chinese attempt to construct the world’s tallest building in three months.

Redesigning Education: Building Schools for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math

Not since the Soviets launched Sputnik into Earth's orbit in the 1960s has there been such urgency for America to redesign science and math education programs. Now, in the third millennium, the initiative takes the form of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education. Research demonstrates that interest among American students in STEM subjects has greatly declined, a major issue given that the STEM labor force is an indicator of a nation's ability to sustain itself. The new STEM initiative will launch with a bold mission: to reengage students in the joys of learning science and mathematics at all levels of education.

The launch is well underway. In January of this year President Obama announced that $250 million would be invested in training and recruiting 100,000 new science and math teachers. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made STEM a prerequisite for states applying for Race to the Top funding.In lockstep with the White House announcement, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in conjunction with the American Architectural Foundation, conducted workshops as part of a national summit on how design thinking and the design process can help to foster creative new models for STEM school development and create a framework for scaling up the STEM knowledge network. Using design thinking, workshop participants also investigated what a STEM educational environment would look like. America is investing in STEM education with money and with human capital.

Now is the time to reflect on the reasons for students' disengagement from science and technology subjects. We need to treat STEM as a pedagogical approach and design an environment to support this new way of teaching. Brian Greene, a best-selling author and theoretical physicist best known for his work in string theory, talks passionately about how we have educated the curiosity out of the math and sciences. Greene says that we have paralyzed our children with the fear of being wrong. Risk-taking and making mistakes are critical to the scientific process. This fear of being wrong has resulted in disengagement from science and mathematics: learning science and math is a drag! He makes a convincing assessment of the problems with our current science education system and stops just short of demanding a new pedagogy to bring excitement and relevance back to the learning of science and math.

Technology-Where will you go next?

Depending on when you were born, technology could be your friend, your enemy or just an acquaintance.  Years ago, when computer screens weren’t the size of the average smartphone and one had to have an advanced degree to figure out how to turn 0′s and 1′s into actual functions, most of us would have leave technology to the experts.  But now, we have incredible access to enormous amounts of information and we have powerful machines that sit in the palm of our hands ready to do
very complex tasks. Technology is a part of our lives – it is in our cars, it is at our doctor’s office, it is in our schools, it is in our televisions, our phones, our credit cards, and on and on. Achievers are committed to continual improvement. If you aren’t keeping up, you are falling behind because everyone else is moving forward but you.So how do those of us who are inept and still have VHS VCRs blinking under our tubed TVs embrace that which scares us, frustrates us, and forces us to ask our five year old neighbor how to make a phone call?
Easy! Take a deep breath.  Put down the hammer that you were about to use to smash the remote and realize that it is time to let go of 1955 and embrace the information era.  The Internet has every answer that ever was and ever will be at the touch of a few keystrokes.  Gone are the days of non-intuitive websites and browsers.  Welcome the age of being able to browse the world’s best libraries and viewing long lost footage of your favorite documentaries!
Improvement and change are best in small increments. When you start with small, easy steps, its less overwhelming and you can build momentum as you go. Technology doesn’t mean you have to buy the latest gadget or take a masters level course on programming your microwave.  Just like riding a bike, we all had to start with one foot on the pedal and one foot on the ground with the trust that we will overcome our fear of falling and will perfect balancing on two wheels.  Practice in the privacy of your own home – surf the net and see what the latest craze is on YouTube and Google a quote to see who really said it…

Thanks To Apple And Google, Wearable Technology Is On Track To Become A $50 Billion Market

The main takeaway: wearable tech is already a $3- to $5 billion market today. In the next two to three years, it could skyrocket to $30- to $50 billion.That means more smartwatches, fitness monitors, shoes, and headsets.Smartphones are one of the key driving forces behind the expected growth in wearable tech, acting as a hub that keeps all of our devices connected. Over time, wireless devices will become even more popular as hardware improves, and sensors and batteries get better.With Apple and Google dominating the install base of smartphone operating
systems  iOS and Android respectively  they are in two of the best positions to leverage the wearable tech market.Here are some key stats and info from the report: here are more than 250 million installed mobile operating systems that can support wearable technology.
An iWatch could generate $10 billion a year in revenue with an EPS of $3.30.There are currently only nine smartwatches available today.Watches are a $56 billion market.Regarding retail impact, Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour have best leveraged wearables to enhance the fitness experience and efficacy of their products.
The health and fitness market is about $2- to $3 billion.
By 2020, batteries are expected to be 2.2x more powerful.

Truck Carrying 'Extremely Dangerous' Radioactive Material Stolen in Mexico

A truck carrying extremely dangerous material used in medical treatment has been stolen in Mexico officials said.The truck was transporting cobalt-60 from a hospital in the northern city of Tijuana to a radioactive
waste storage facility when it was stolen in Tepojaco near Mexico City Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement. Cobalt-60 is a radioactive isotope and was being used in radiotherapy.
Mexican authorities are conducting a search for the material and have issued a statement to alert the public, the IAEA said.The truck is a white Volkswagen Worker with license plate 726-DT-8, Mexico's National Commission for Nuclear Security and Safeguards said.At the time the truck was stolen, the source was properly shielded. However, the source could be extremely dangerous to a person if removed from the shielding, or if it was damaged the IAEA said in the statement.There was no indication from officials that the truck was headed for the U.S.U.S. law enforcement and Department of Homeland Security officials are aware of the theft and working closely with Mexican authorities, a U.S. official briefed on the situation told ABC News.Border officials armed with radiation detection devices have been alerted. It is unclear who stole the material and if they know what they have, the official said.

Researchers study link between diesel fumes and destruction of bee colonies

Scientists are investigating the possible link between pollution found in diesel fumes and the global collapse of honey bee colonies. Researchers from the University of Southampton believe nanoparticles emitted from diesel engines could be affecting bees brains and damaging their in-built navigation skills. They believe this may stop worker bees finding their way back to the hive.There is also a theory that diesel fumes mop up flower smells in the atmosphere, making it difficult for the insects to find
food. Ecologist professor Guy Poppy and neuroscientist Dr Tracey Newman think nanoparticles are one of a number of stress factors
which could lead to a tipping point in bee health, which in turn could contribute to bee-colony collapse.They will now take part in a three-year, �156,000 study to find out more.Diesel road traffic is increasing in the UK and research from the US has shown that nanoparticles found in its fumes can be detrimental to the brains of animals when they are exposed to large doses explained Mr Poppy
We want to find out if bees are affected in the same way, and answer the question of why bees aren't finding their way back to the hive when they leave to find food." Bees are estimated to contribute billions to the world's economy, �430 million a year to the UK alone, by pollinating crops, producing honey and supporting employment, the researchers said.Yet winter losses of bees have led to a drop of tens of thousands of beehives year on year since 2007. The US has seen a 35% unexplained drop in the number of hives in 2007, 2008 and 2009, they added. A recent United Nations report and other studies have not identified the cause of bee declines.The team includes biologists, Nanotechnology researchers and ecologists, who will now test the behavioural and neurological changes in honey bees, after exposure to diesel nanoparticles. Chemical ecologist Dr Robbie Girling said: "The diesel fumes may have a dual affect in that they may be mopping up flower smells in the air, making it harder for the bees to find their food sources.
Recent research has revealed more about the effects of nanoparticles, enabling scientists to investigate this possible link to bee-colony.

Creating a transistor with a single atom

There was a time when science was the pre-occupation of lone scientists trying to unravel the mysteries of nature. Their purpose possibly had been to derive ethereal sense of pleasure by contributing in some messure towards the intellectual growth of mankind. Recent pass has brought about revolutionary change in the scientific outlook of the people, specially after realising that nature is a great source of power, and it is Science alone that can assist in placing that Power in the hands of man for promoting the human progress, prosperity and well being.

Science, and inventions are now rightly regarded as the most important means for improving the material welfare of the
people. The agency of Science as a major force of social reconstruction nowstands universally accepted. It is no wonder, therefore. that the scientific development of a country becomes the yard-stick of its progress and greatness In technology, there is a strong desire to shrink things. Consider the sheer amount of news these days surrounding nanotechnology: it is arguably one of the fastest growing sectors in technology. Recent news out of two universities on potentially groundbreaking work on single-atom transistors should not be that surprising, then. Scientists have created a transistor the size of a single atom, opening the way for the next generation of nanotechnology: a quantum computer that might one day function in a nanoscale world and would be significantly smaller and quicker than today's silicon-based machines. Until now, single-atom transistors were created on a hit-or-miss basis

SpaceX’s latest rocket launch a success after recent setbacks

SpaceX added another historic mission to its resume with the successful launch of its Falcon 9 rocket with a $100 million SES-8 satellite in tow.This was the seventh official launch in the Falcon 9 series and takes SpaceX, run by founder Elon Musk, one step closer to its ultimate goal of transporting humans into space by 2017.The successful launch came from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday afternoon came after two previous
attempts were cancelled in recent weeks.
The entry of SpaceX into the commercial market is a game-changer SES chief technology officer Martin Halliwell said in a recent teleconference.It's going to really shake the industry to its roots.SpaceX has said the goal of the launch is to take a payload to a predetermined geostationary location 50,000 miles above the Earth’s surface. The 224.4 foot tall rocket can be used to carry cargo payloads or SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft into orbit .Meeting this national priority for an American human space transportation capability is paramount for SpaceX and we are very focused on this for our NASA customer reads an explanation on the company’s site.And having NASA as a paying customer surely is one of SpaceX's most public accomplishments.So how much does it cost to launch your own private payload into space? About $56.5 million, according to SpaceX’s price index listed on its site.And that's part of SpaceX's commercial appeal beating comparable offers from Russia ($100 million) and European ventures ($200 million) according to the Houston Chronicle.Although heavier payloads can run the cost up to $135 million.

Why Today's Moms Need Fewer Calories Than 50 Years Ago

There was no Zumba in 1965, no hot yoga CrossFit spin nor many other faddish exercises that  modern-day moms plunk down their money for to stay trim and healthy.But there was a lot more housework like cooking, cleaning, and childcare and a lot less passive entertainment, like watching television, which may explain weight differences between moms about 50 years ago and mothers today.
According to a new study published in the medical journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, over the last 50 years mothers have become significantly
less active overall and require about 1,200-1,500 fewer calories per week to stay at a healthy weight compared to their 1965 counterparts. The authors say that this energy imbalance calories consumed versus calories burned is contributing to the obesity epidemic for both women and their children.
Can You Be Obese and 'Healthy'?
I'm not saying that women should do more housework, but they need to add physical activity back into the day lead author Edward Archer of the University of South Carolina tells Yahoo Shine.Why did the obesity epidemic come about as it did? We've engineered physical activity out of all domains of our lives.The study is a follow-up to research done on occupational activity levels that found that there was a strong correlation between obesity and the decrease in manual labor for men over the decades.This new study was devised to take into account the fact that women traditionally have burned more calories engaged in activities like housework and child care.The reason we focused on mothers is that the vast majority of caregivers in the world are women says Archer, and, he adds, mothers have the most influence on the health of future generations.(There are plans for another study on fathers.)
Our Titanic Obesity Problem
According to the study the impact of maternal inactivity on children begins in the womb.Research suggests that body-fat composition and metabolism is to a certain extent, programmed in utero.Children are also highly influenced by the activity level of their mothers.With each passing generation mothers have become increasingly physically inactive sedentary and obese thereby potentially predisposing children to an increased risk of inactivity adiposity and chronic non-communicable diseases Archer said in a release.Given that physical activity is an absolute prerequisite for health and wellness, it is not surprising that inactivity is now a leading cause of death and disease in developed nations.The researchers looked at activity logs gathered for over 45 years from 50,000 daily diaries compiled by the American Heritage Time Use Study.They found that women with kids under 5 reported a decline in physical activity (defined as childcare cleaning cooking and other housework as well as sports and exercise) from 44 hours per week in 1965 to less than 30 hours per week in 2010 more than two hours per day.This means that women in 1965 could eat about 225 calories per day more or the equivalent of two eggs and a piece of toast without gaining weight. Mothers with older children reported a decline in activity of about 11 hours a week which comes out to 177 calories per day. In addition to being less active mothers reported an increase in sedentary behavior such as watching television looking at the computer and driving. Moms of young children increased their sedentary behavior from 18 to 25 hours per week and moms of older children from 17 to 23 hours.While [200] may not seem like that many calories says Archer it's equal to about 10 percent of your daily energy requirements.What's more physical activity rates drive changes in appetite and metabolism.When you get below a certain activity level your hunger no longer corresponds to your energy output and your metabolism slows, so you tend to gain even more weight, he explains.
We aren't what we eat, we are what we do with what we eat says Archer.That's where the activity comes in.He adds that you don't need to sign up for a gym instead think about small daily changes such as taking a walk after every meal standing up when possible and pacing while on the phone.He also recommends cutting recreational screen time in half.The average American watches about four hours of television a day.As Archer says The second-greatest correlate for obesity after having an obese mom is having a TV in your bedroom.

Science And Technology Achievement Show In Beijing

(CHINA OUT) Two high-speed trains are seen at the China National Convention Center on March 7, 2011 in Beijing, China. The technological achievement exhibition opened on Monday as China display and promotes their science and technology achievements from the past five-years

Breakthrough in science and technology

 This strategy, coupled with the national strategy for socio-economic development is focused on reforming financial mechanisms for improving scientific and technological operations, and encouraging businesses to
invest in the field.The science and technology sector in Vietnam is striving for regional and international standards in some fields by 2020.Since 2000, just 2 percent of the State budget has been allocated to the development of science and technology, accounting for 0.45-0.5 percent of GDP, and investment from other sources is yet to come up to expectations.  Participants in a recent online exchange organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) and the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA) underlined the need to increase both domestic and foreign investments in developing the science and technology sector.According to MoST Deputy Minister Nghiem Vu Khai, it is possible to raise the level of investment to 1.5 percent of the country’s GDP by 2015 and more than 2 percent by 2020.It is important to get businesses involved and pay 10 percent of their pre-tax profit. Under the corporate income tax law, if businesses allocate 10 percent of their profits for investing in the development of science and technology, they will be exempt from 2.5 percent of their income tax.This aim is to encourage them to improve their operational efficiency, productivity and competitiveness.However, experts insist on imposing mandatory requirements when businesses are allowed to operate.In their opinion, an industrial nation is credited with an abundant of advanced products, accounting for at least 45 percent of its GDP.The bottom line is that we need a proper solution to apply modern scientific and technological advances in economic restructuring to achieve the targets for socio-economic development until 2020.VUSTA Vice Chairman Dr Tran Viet Hung emphasized the need to improve the application of scientific and technological advances in Vietnam.Sharing this view, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST) Duong Ngoc Hai says it is imperative to upgrade administrative mechanisms to international standard.So to speak, scientists should be offered incentives and provided with favourable working conditions to contribute more to the progress of national development.The MoST is coordinating with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of the Interior to put suitable politics in place for them to enter the fray.

In which maybe I need better eyes

A little bit of reason, intellect, modern thought…
every miracle can be explained…
the people in the day of Jesus were all sick, not demon possessed.God was invented by primitive people
who had no explanation for the wind, the weather, the lights in the sky, life or death. It absolved them of uncertainty, and personal responsibility.But we’re past all that now.
All of that was primitive.Stick with me please.
I’m going somewhere good with this.Even Paul admitted that it’s okay to believe as a child when you’re a child but when you’re an adult you put away childish things. (1 Cor 13:11)There comes a time when we have to put away such a simplistic childlike faith. Right?But what about, what the man we believe to be God, said…Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it. (MK 10:15)

How to Teach a Robot to Improvise

Self-piloted drones have become sophisticated enough to land on moving aircraft carriers, but put a single unexpected tree in the way, and they will crash. Now a five-university group that includes specialists in biology, computer vision and robotics is trying to teach drones to dodge obstacles on the fly. Working with $7.5 million from the Office of Naval Research, the scientists aim to build an autonomous, fixed-wing surveillance drone that can navigate through an unfamiliar city or forest at 35 miles an hour.The group’s inspiration is the pigeon. Hardy, plentiful and receptive to training, the birds are easy to study. In flight, they estimate the distance between themselves and objects ahead by quickly processing blurry, low-resolution images, just as a drone will need to do. And, crucially, they have a tendency to make decisions at the last moment—within five feet of an obstacle.The first step is to teach robots to differentiate between obstacles and empty space. Engineers have already figured out how to train point-and-shoot cameras to spot faces in a photo: In a process called supervised learning, a technician feeds millions of images into a computer and tells it to output a “1” when the image contains a human face and a o when it does not. But this style of supervised learning would be an impossibly labor-intensive way to train a drone. A human would have to label not just faces but every possible object the robot might encounter. Instead, Yann LeCun, a professor of computer and neural science at New York University who leads the drone’s vision team, is developing software that will allow the drone to draw conclusions about what it’s seeing with much less human coaching. By mimicking the hyperefficient parallel processing method that the brain’s visual cortex uses to classify objects, the software enables features from the raw video frame to be extracted much more quickly. As a result, the drone’s human instructors need to show it only a few hundred to a few thousand examples of each category of object (“car,” “tree,” “grass”) before it can begin to classify those objects on its own. Once the researchers have taught the drone to see, they will need to teach itto make decisions. That involves grappling with the inherent ambiguity of visual data—with deciding whether that pattern of pixels ahead is a tree branch or a shadow. Drew Bagnell and Martial Hebert, roboticists at Carnegie Mellon University, are developing algorithms that will help the robot deal with visual ambiguity the way humans do: by making educated guesses. “They can say, ‘I’m 99 percent sure there’s a tree between 12 meters and 13 meters away,’ and make a decision anyway,” Bagnell says.It will take a lot of computing power to make those decisions. The drone will have to process 30 images per second while contemplating its next move. LeCun says that a processor that can run his algorithms at a trillion operations per second would do the job, but the challenge is to build all that power into a computer light and efficient enough to fly. The best candidate is a processor that LeCun developed with Eugenio Culurciello of Purdue University: a low-power computer the size of a DVD case called NeuFlow, which LeCun is confident he’ll be able to speed up to a trillion operations per second by the group’s 2015 deadline.Once they’ve built a robot that can learn, see and make decisions fast enough to avoid obstacles, they still have to teach it to fly. Russ Tedrake, an MIT roboticist, is already using motion-capture cameras and a full-scale prototype of the final drone to model the maneuvers it will need to perform. If the team succeeds, the result will be a robot that can descend into a forest and lose today’s drones in the trees.
FILTERING THE WORLD
As the drone flies, its onboard camera will feed video to software that applies a series of filters to each frame. The first filters pick up patterns among small groups of pixels that indicate simple features, like edges. Next, another series of filters looks for larger patterns, building upward from individual pixels to objects to complex visual scenes. Within hundredths of a second, the software builds a low-resolution map of the scene ahead. Finally, it will compare the objects in view to ones it has “seen” before, classifying them as soon as it has enough information to make an educated guess.

With New Programming, Autonomous Airplanes Can Navigate on the Fly With No GPS

Self-piloted drones may be able to land or fly almost anywhere -- even aircraft carriers -- but they need some complex navigation skills to do it, including the somewhat existential ability to know where they are in the world. But this is difficult without some type of onboard relative positioning system. A new algorithmic project at MIT straps netbook computer parts to a specially designed, laser-equipped airplane that
can find itself and navigate tight spaces safely.First, the researchers needed a plane that could carry all the computers and electronics it would need to fly, yet still handle tight spaces and low speeds with aerodynamic ease. MIT professor Mark Drela came up with this unusual short-winged model, which buys the aircraft slightly more response time in tight spaces. The Robust Robotics Group, led by associate aeronautics and astronautcs professor Nick Roy, used two types of algorithms to help their airplane locate itself in real timt was pre-loaded with a map of its environment, but it's still enormously challenging to write programs that can determine where the plane is on this map. The aircraft uses a laser rangefinder, accelerometers, gyroscopes and other sensors to figure out its orientation, speed and other properties, which means lots of computation is required. To figure out its state of being at any given moment, the plane has to calculate 15 different values, according to MIT News. A combination of two state-estimation algorithms figures this out on the fly, allowing the plane to dodge obstacles it only just figured out it was approaching.Using these algorithms, the plane recently flew through the parking garage under MIT’s Seuss-y Stata Center, covering more than three miles at 22 MPH. It successfully dodged support beams, cars and vans, and the low ceilings in the garage.It's a complex problem in many ways, not the least of which is a fixed-wing airplane's inherent slower response time, according to Roy.It’s going much faster, and it can’t do arbitrary motions Roy says. “They can’t go sideways, they can’t hover, they have a stall speed.The next step is to endow the plane with the ability to create its own map on the fly, in real time -- a much bigger challengee.

Creating 150 MPH Hurricanes in a Giant Aquarium in Florida

About two years ago, Brian Haus, the chair of the Division of Applied Marine Physics at the University of Miami, was studying storms in the western Pacific ocean, off the coast of Taiwan. He and his team are chasing hurricanes. Sometimes the hurricanes completely miss the sensor-packed buoys placed in their path to track power and speed. Sometimes they don't.This time, the researchers got lucky.Not one but two super typhoons hit their equipment at the same time. Even luckier, most of their gear managed to not break apart. He and his team waited
for the storms to subside before they left port to retrieve their recording devices. But before they could recover the buoys, one storm, named Chaba, defied the forecasts. Instead of losing strength, it headed right for them at full power. Haus and his fellow researchers found themselves enduring nine days of "most uncomfortable" 30-foot swells.

Last month, the University of Miami broke ground on the 45-million-dollar Marine Technology & Life Sciences Seawater Complex, which will house a tool that will give Haus and other scientists studying storms more steady, predictable, and controllable access to an important resource in their work--the hurricanes themselves.The hurricane simulation tool, which is named SUSTAIN (short for SUrge-STructure-Atmosphere Interaction) is a tempest in a teapot the size of a small house. When it's completed, it'll be unique in its ability to create category-5 level hurricanes inside of a lab, across a 3-D field of waves made of real sea water pumped into the building at 1,000 gallons per minute.With it, scientists will be able to better understand the process by which hurricanes are fueled by warm water.We know that hurricanes grow in power when they pass over deep warm water, and mellow out when they pass over colder areas. But we don't know much about the actual process of this energy transfer on the molecular level. By using salt water, the simulator more accurately creates sea spray and foam, which are believed to affect its evaporation into the atmosphere. And for the moment, how much heat is transferred directly and how much is transferred by evaporation is completely unknown. By simulating different kinds of waves and wind conditions, some with more and less spray, the scientists can measure the air and water temperature shifts using thermisters to model the delta in heat transfers when there's varying amounts of spra Knowing how this process fuels hurricanes will allow scientists and meteorologists to build smarter models of them, so we can forecast them with more accuracy. And its not possible, or easy, or safe to make these observations in the field. He says, At sea, you have to deal with the real beast, but in the lab, we have the opportunity to create the hurricane when and how we want it.

The hurricane simulator and SUSTAIN is being designed by Cambridge Seven, the cross-functional architecture and engineering firm which got its start by winning the bid to create the New England Aquarium 50 years ago by being the only firm to mention fish in their pitch. Peter Sollogub, Associate Principal at Cambridge Seven, says the hurricane simulator is comprised of three major components:The first is a 1400-horsepower fan originally suited for things like ventilating mine shafts. To create its 150mph winds, it will draw energy from the campus's emergency generator system, which is typically used during power outages caused by storms. The fan, sitting next to sensitive instrumentation, must have its vibrations isolated. "It's like your right hand is in a hurricane and your left hand is conducting retinal surgery," Sollogub says. The wind speeds are sensed through laser and sonic wind meters (otherwise known as anemometers).The second part is a wave generator which pushes salt water using 12 different paddles. Those paddles, timed to move at different paces and rates, can create waves at various sizes, angles and frequency, creating anything from a calm, organized swell to sloppy chaotic seas. To reduce wave refraction, the end of the pool has a perforated, parabola-shaped beach to dissipate wave energy.The third aspect of the tank is the tank itself, which is six meters in width by 20 meters in length by two meters high. It's made of three-inch thick clear acrylic so that the conditions inside can be observed from all sides. They've got to create ductwork for the air that creates "well behaved high velocity flow" so testing is accurate.Bob Atlas, Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, has hopes for SUSTAIN, believing it will have an impact on our ability to predict the power of storms. Atlas says that when Katrina made landfall, NOAA--and the nation--realized that "we had made tremendous progress in track forecasting, but we hadn't yet really made a dent in being able to forecast intensity of hurricanes.

Bob Atlas has spent his career forecasting harsh weather, beginning in the U.S. Air Force where he maintained a rate of accuracy greater than 95%. His career then turned to research and modeling, first at NASA and now with NOAA, where the agency’s Hurricane Forecasting Improvement Project has improved 26% in track prediction and 14% in intensity forecasting from 2005-2011. Atlas credits better models that also incorporate Doppler radar from hurricane spotting planes--both things that the hurricane simulator at U Miami will also help improve. SUSTAIN has been designed with a large overhead space where remote sensing experts plan to aim cameras positioned downward, mimicking the perspective of weather satellites. The remote measurements of the cameras will be compared against the actual measurements taken by lasers in the tank to fine-tune our ability to measure storms and waves from afar.But, Atlas added, there's a more practical aspect of the SUSTAIN facility that will tell us about more than just storms--it'll also tell us about how the world we live in will react to violent weather. All of SUSTAIN's fury can be aimed at models of manmade and natural structures--buildings, beachheads, sea walls--so that architects and engineers can test how storm surge and spray will affect cities and coasts. (Yes, they plan on clobbering mini models of skyscrapers.)Atlas says, "NOAA has to be able to predict the storm. But ultimately, what the public needs to know is if their streets and homes will be flooded, and if their homes will survive when the hurricane is making land fall. And for that, I believe this facility can help.

Samsung fights back in Apple patent battle

Samsung has gone on the abhorrent in its cloister action with Apple, accusing its battling of anarchic patents accompanying to emailing photographs and 3G wireless technology.A Silicon Valley cloister gave was the Korean behemothic its about-face to bandy mud in a high-stakes balloon that has absorbed the industry.

Dr Woodward Yang, an electrical engineering assistant at Harvard, said
Apple's articles use Samsung-patented appearance for adaptable devices, including the action for seamlessly emailing photos. He was one of Samsung's aboriginal assemblage afterwards a array of Apple experts said Samsung phones and tablets abandoned Apple's patents.One of Samsung's designers aswell testified that she did not await on Apple designs to actualize icons for Samsung's Galaxy S smartphone line.

Apple and Samsung are traveling toe-to-toe in a patents altercation apery a attack for industry supremacy amid two rivals that ascendancy added than bisected of common smartphone sales.

The American aggregation accuses Samsung of artful the architecture and some appearance of its iPad and iPhone, and is allurement for a sales ban in accession to budgetary damages. The Korean company, which is aggravating to aggrandize in the United States, says Apple abandoned several patents, including some for its key wireless techn Apple assured presenting affirmation apropos its own patents this week, and Samsung started calling witnesses. On Tuesday, Yang said Samsung's patents were filed afore the addition of the iPhone in 2007.Yang focused on patents that awning smartphone features, not wireless technology. One of those patents covers technology for calmly award photos in an album.

The abstraction actuality was, let's accept a bookmark Yang said.

Under analytic from Apple advocate Bill Lee, Yang accustomed he had not apparent affirmation that Samsung in fact acclimated any of those appearance in its own smartphones.

Later on Tuesday, Samsung alleged artist Jeeyuen Wang, who said she and a ample Korean aggregation formed harder for three months to actualize Samsung's own figure designs for Galaxy S phones.

I slept conceivably two hours, or three hours a night Wang said.Apple advocate Michael Jacobs showed Wang centralized Samsung abstracts - with her name on them - absolute references to Apple icons. However, beneath analytic from Samsung advocate John Quinn, Wang said some of those abstracts were created able-bodied afterwards Samsung had accomplished its own designs.In an attack to invalidate some of Apple's patents in the case, Samsung aswell presented affirmation this anniversary to appearance that Apple's patents awning abstruse advances - like multitouch - that had already been developed afore Apple claims to accept invented it.

Technology Interconnected

We tend to forget that the latest shiny gadgets that abound in our modern world would be pointless without the backup that enables them to work. The factors that enable these things to be used are inter-dependent on a complex range of other technologies, most of which are beyond both our comprehension and our control. On an everyday level, how useful is a mobile phone when the batteries run out and what can you do with a car that has no petrol?

Mahindra Axe 

Far more complicated are the myriad support systems required to make much of our high-end technology function. As a military example, a standard heat-seeking missile requires special fuel, a dedicated warhead, computers that control the guidance system, gyroscopic stabilizing and an on-board self-destruct mechanism. Without all of these, the
rocket is simply a scrap-bin of very expensive parts
heading into the blue yonder.Even the sciences that have brought us that most commonplace of military hardware, the firearm, are wholly dependent on external factors that many shooters do not understand. The steel used must be of the correct grade, the barrel must be bored perfectly straight and sights properly aligned.The ammunition has to be consistently manufactured, with reliable primers

Sniper Rifle.

high-quality powder and bullets that are identical in weight and shape, and with ballistic properties that exactly match the requirements of the

Technology - Kid - Gadgets

weapon. Failure to adhere to each and every one of these criteria will result in a gun that shoots high or low, misses the target completely or has a point of impact that differs with every shot. These results are not what the shooter demands or expects,  particularly when the man behind the trigger is a combat soldier and his life  depends on the reliability and accuracy of his small arms.
The above content is from an old, torn copy of SNIPER RIFLES From the 19th to 21st century by MARTIN PEGLER. Aren't they wonderful? I always thought as long as my mobile works, why do I need to bother about who made it / why it works / why I must clean it.

Technology and Humans

The same way, I felt why do I need to study electronics, processors, timing waveforms and such when all I am gonna do is just some programming in the luxury of my cubicle. But now, after reading these three paragraphs, that aint the case. It looks like everything is so interconnected and so cool. Every single task seems important *in the manufacture of Rifles...*
Damn it all. There is a lot I still need to understand. What are your thoughts about this? Ever felt / thought this way?

Technology: A gift or A curse

Lately I accept apprehend abounding online writing on technology and internet issues.In the accomplished anniversary there accept been the following: Some of Google had been afraid in China, Nintendo server
getting afraid into. A few weeks back, the case of Sony getting afraid into and claimed advice of users were stolen. As technology advances, we acquisition ourselves application it added and added in
accustomed life, relying on it added and if put into acute context, we accept become absolutely abased to it and may at times become disciplinarian to technology.Who can candidly say they do not analysis their phones or emails at atomic 2-3 times or added a day? How abounding of us would say the aboriginal affair we grab in the morning afore we deathwatch up is our phone? I am academic if we in fact recorded our own time acceptance of technology in just one day, we will be shocked. If you anticipate about it this will include: phones, PC, internet, television, gadgets.

Alternate Uses For Technology Advancements

Technological improvements appear all the time, with new developments accepting appear in altered fields every day. Whilst it can yield a while for new advances to clarify through to accepted abode items, it happens at such a amount that there are consistently new technologies acceptable commercially available. If
you anticipate about altar which are now accepted place, such as 3D TVs and iPads, for most, we can bethink if the account was heralding them as the newest thing.
Technology moves into abounding altered areas too, with those who break abaft generally award it harder to bolt up, or in the case of businesses, abeyance to trade. Abounding technologies that are developed for one affair get adulterated into added areas as humans see uses above those originally intended.
Changes in the use of technology are accepted place. Looking aback to the radio, its aboriginal purpose was to advice shipping, but it bound developed into a antecedent for bartering opportunities and helped with abounding added advancements, such as television and adaptable buzz signals. Nearer to today, technology is accepting utilised beyond the board, if blow screens were invented, the acceptance was accepted to be high, but the absolute uses and applications accept assorted abounding times. A lot of accepted on buzz and accretion devices, the technology has confused into abounding added sectors; with EPoS Systems in shops, the use of blow screens is about the barometer and even affairs a alternation admission can be done application the technology.Looking forward, technologies accepting developed today for one purpose could calmly advance to connected development into added sectors, or acclimated by humans with altered visions to advice actualize altered uses. 3D technology has been acclimated to actualize holograms of asleep performers, but what abroad will appear from it in the future? Voice acceptance is accepting added accepted and is advancing its uses every day, so who knows what advance will be fabricated in the abreast future? With added troubles in the world, at atomic it is one affair to attending advanced to!