Researchers at the University of California San Diego have created robotic contact lenses.All you need to do is blink twice with the contacts in your eyes, and they’ll zoom in up to 32 percent. Researchers hope to further develop this tech to create adjustable glasses and other visual prostheses.Imagine having the ability to zoom in on objects with the literal blink of an eye. Sounds like something out of a sci-fi flick, right?...
MORE OFF-THE-NEWS AUTO ANALYSIS FROM MIKE ALLEN• REALITY CHECK: Pickens Overlooks Existing Natural Gas Cars in Energy Plan• EARLIER: Was Obama Right on Tire Inflation for Better Efficiency?Has hysteria kicked in yet? Dill Air Control Products recently recalled 6 million Chinese-made tire valve stems that may crack and fail, letting air out of tires at speed and possibly affecting as many as 30 million vehicles. Wake up, folks! I’ve always recommended the use of metal valve stems, not rubber ones....
The US Navy recently landed a strike fighter on the deck of an aircraft carrier without the pilot inside actually doing anything. Instead, an officer aboard the carrier guided the aircraft down by remote control. The system, known as ATARI, is meant to solve the problem of landing unmanned aircraft during emergencies.The test landings took place in late March aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. The system is called aircraft terminal approach remote inceptor, or ATARI for short, and consists of an F/A-18 Hornet strike fighter outfitted for remote operation....
A team of salvagers has raised the Norwegian guided missile frigate Helge Ingstad, which sank after a collision with a commercial tanker in November 2018. A time-lapse video shows the warship slowly being raised by a team of salvage cranes. The ship emerges from the shallow water with clear signs of rust and algae growth on the hull. Despite the lack of corrosion inside, the Norwegian government will almost certainly scrap her, reducing the Norwegian navy’s frigate fleet by a whopping 20 percent....
Guy Grace likes to give a warning before he sets off an alarm. Otherwise, you scare the bejeezus out of the neighbors. It’s 8:27 a.m. on a sunny Thursday morning in April, and Grace, the director of Security and Emergency Preparedness at Littleton Public Schools outside Denver, Colorado, is standing in the lobby of Goddard Middle School. Beside him are Derek, an armed school resource officer, and a handful of school administrators....
California’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Company, is shutting off power to nearly 800,000 customers in an attempt to reduce the risk of wildfires sparked by the agency’s poorly maintained infrastructure.More than 34 counties in the state—including Humboldt, Alameda, and Santa Clara —will be affected.According to the utility, the shutoffs will occur in three phases over the course of the next two days. More than half a million Northern California residents awoke to darkness Wednesday morning after Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the region’s largest energy utility, began the first phase of its planned Public Safety Power Shutoff....
Electronic Sun VisorSun visors never quite hit the mark if you travel east in the morning and west in the evening. We’ve even taped pieces of opaque paper to the bottom of the visor in an attempt to block the sun. A corporate research project at Volkswagen is developing an electronic anti-glare system using an electronic matrix within the glass controlled by a computer to block the rays. A sun status sensor and a sensor that determines the eye position of the driver both feed signals to the computer, which calculates the point of sunlight entry within the viewing angle of the driver’s eyes....
Charlie O’Brien saw the light after he saw the stars. The star catcher for the Toronto Blue Jays doesn’t remember the specific game, but he does recall seeing stars after getting smashed in his mask by two consecutive foul-tip balls in Atlanta. O’Brien says it was like getting punched in the face. “There are times when you get hit with a 90-mph-plus ball and you lose sight of what you’re doing–even where you are–for a while....
I grew up in Minneapolis, so I can say this for sure: Winter is more bearable when you have something to look forward to. We knew it was going to get dark and cold for five months, so you either embraced the opportunities snow brought—pond hockey, snowmobiles, and skiing—or bought a timeshare in Orlando. As a young kid with poor hand–puck coordination, I was put on skis by my parents. The sport opened up a new side of Minnesota....
Physics Ph.D. candidate Dominik Czernia has developed an online tool to help you calculate your chances of falling in love. Using the “Optimal Stopping Problem,” or the “Sultan’s Dowry Problem,” you can determine the best way to optimize your dating pattern.It comes down to probability: the more dates you go on, the better your chances. As they say, there are plenty of fish in the sea. And as mathematicians will tell you, the more fish you kiss, the better your chances of finding a catch....
Modern human DNA is actually a cocktail. While we call ourselves Homo sapiens, we’re actually a mixture of other species like Neanderthal and Denisovan, early human ancestors. This latter group’s DNA, recently discovered in 2010, is particularly common in East and Southeast Asia populations, but a new study in Cell provides evidence that another ancestor, one that branched off from Denisovans long ago, lived in Papau New Guinea and also mated with modern humans as soon as 15,000 to 30,000 thousand years ago....
An F/A-18E fighter jet crashed this morning in Death Valley National Park in Rainbow Canyon, also known as “Star Wars Canyon,” which is located near China Lake, a naval air weapons station that’s about 125 miles north of Los Angeles. The crash occurred around 10 a.m. local time, according to the Los Angeles Times, and injured seven people though their injuries are reported as “minor.” The status of the pilot has yet to be determined....
Media Platforms Design TeamThree years ago Yokohama introduced its dB Super E-Spec, a tire which uses oil from orange peels as an ingredient. The company touted it as a better tire for the environment; though the orange oil displaces just a small amount of petroleum in the tire itself, it improves the life of the tires and the car’s fuel economy.Goodyear has also been looking for an Earth-friendly new additive; two years ago the company began researching a processing aid that could replace petroleum in case prices rose too high....
The HMS Queen Elizabeth, Britain’s biggest warship ever, set sail for the first time today, three years after the U.K. decommissioned its last carrier, the HMS Illustrious, in 2014. The Royal Navy calls it “four acres of sovereign territory, deployable across the globe to serve the United Kingdom.“At 65,000 tons and 920 feet, the Queen Elizabeth is a giant compared to the Illustrious, which weighed barely one-third as much and was only 690 feet long....
U.S. helicopters in the al-Baghdadi Raid belonged to the elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.The 160th was set up after the failure of the U.S. hostage rescue mission in Iran.The 160th operates a number of specialized helicopters in both transportation and attack roles.The helicopters that took part in this weekend’s raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi raid were from an elite U.S. Army helicopter unit created to transport American commandos on high risk missions....
This April, after a suspected chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, killed dozens of people and sickened hundreds more, an international monitoring group called the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons sent a team to investigate. In May the OPCW released its results: suspected chlorine gas. Jerry Smith, who served as senior inspection team leader at OPCW from 2011 to 2012 and the head of contingency operations from 2013 to 2014, explains the process....
A new technique developed by MIT researchers harnesses radio waves to help neural networks spot what someone is doing through a wall.Researchers trained a neural network to recognize people’s activity patterns by inputting films of their actions, shot both in visible-light and radio waves.Don’t worry: The low-res tech isn’t able to identify people.Humans can spot patterns of activity, but we can’t see through walls. Advanced neural networks that use radio wave imaging to see have the exact opposite problem....
NASA is working on an energy source that could power future outposts on the moon and Mars, as well as missions to the far reaches of the solar system. To make it happen, the space agency has turned to an institution with decades of nuclear experience: Los Alamos National Laboratory.Los Alamos’ Kilopower, a small and simple nuclear fission reactor, could be the key to powering long-term missions in space. One of NASA’s current primary goals is to establish a permanent human presence on the moon, and companies like Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Moon Express have expressed interest in building infrastructure on the moon to drive lunar industries such as mining for Helium-3 or manufacturing rocket fuel....
Star Trek exists in a future where the Earth is ruled by a single government, so it’s only fitting that the newest television entry into the franchise is getting streamed all over the world on Netflix. Well, everywhere except in Canada and the United States, that is. In the U.S., the new show will air on CBS before showing up on the network’s All Access streaming option, which has not yet reached popularity of Netflix or Hulu....
Two B-2A bombers landed at RAF Fairford in the U.K. this week as part of the U.S. Air Force’s efforts to conduct “joint and allied training in Europe to improve bomber interoperability.“The two bombers were captured by plane spotter Ben Ramsay, who caught their otherworldly approach to the English airfield.The two bombers departed from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, where B-2 bombers usually carry out operations.An impressive new video shows a pair of B-2A Spirit stealth bombers landing at a Royal Air Force base in the UK....
