How do you stay safe at a convention filled with people that make it their life’s work to worm their way into anything and everything that’s online and connected?With Black Hat feeding directly into DEF CON, two conventions in Las Vegas heavily attended by those in the security business as well as those wanting to break the security business, there’s no telling exactly how many people might be able to access your cellphone, for example....
Climate change threatens many facets of modern human life, from eroding coastlines, climbing temperatures, and ocean acidification. But these problems extend beyond our natural world—they affect our digital world as well.“Our findings are clear,” Paul Barford, a computer science professor and the University of Wisconsin-Madison told Popular Mechanics. “A good deal of internet infrastructure will be underwater in the next 15 years.” “A good deal of internet infrastructure will be underwater in the next 15 years....
Brillouin scattering is seen as a natural hinderance in fiber optic cables.New developments in artificial Brillouin scattering could revolutionize circuits.By controlling how they operate, circuits could use sound waves to integrate optical information.Fiber optics are the world’s hidden backbone, spanning oceans and connecting continents. Giant companies like Microsoft and Facebook join forces to create these cables, like the Marea subsea cable, which connects from Virginia to Spain. These cables give off a type of feedback that many in the industry consider bothersome, but that a group of scientists believes could develop a new generation of integrated circuits, leading to a potential revolution in everything from 5G and broadband networks to defense systems....
Media Platforms Design TeamHow Bad is the Situation in Paulsboro?As a train crossed New Jersey’s Mantua Creek this morning, the bridge buckled, sending at least two cars into the valley below. One busted tanker car has been leaking a hazardous gas called vinyl chloride.The area around the Paulsboro spill was evacuated and a hazardous materials team is on-site working to contain the mess. At least 40 people have gone to the hospital with breathing problems, but no serious injuries have been reported....
Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph by Hans Hansen) Beam: A long, thick piece of wood, metal or stone that, when oriented horizontally, forms the support for a ceiling or roof. Some beams have their own monikers. For instance, the beam above a door or window is called a header. The beam normally transfers the load it carries from above to vertical posts below it, and the posts in turn carry the load to footings secured in the ground....
Media Platforms Design TeamStargazers get a treat each November with the coming of the Leonid meteor shower, and tonight’s the night. The event peaks this afternoon and evening; astronomers say the best time to view the shower should be tonight into early Tuesday morning.This year’s Leonids won’t be as active as in years past, but viewers still should be able to see 10 to 15 meteors per hour. Of course, your best chance to see some shooting stars will come if you can get away from the city lights....
Today, the FCC Commission voted to repeal net neutrality protections by a margin of 3 to 2. The long-expected move followed popular outcry including physical demonstrations and two days of online protest in the form of a “Break the Internet” campaign which rallied giants like Reddit, Mozilla, Cloudflare, Pinterest, and Github as well as rank-and-file enthusiasts to its cause. Unlike the efforts to save the net from the scourge of SOPA in 2012 and to defend net neutrality in 2014, this movement was ultimately unsuccessful....
Media Platforms Design TeamITHACA, N.Y. — It’s been an exciting past few weeks for the Cornell Automotive X Prize Team. Not only have we gotten a few new team members and a new office, but we’ve chosen the type of alt-energy car we’ll be trying to take 100 miles—and beyond—on a single gallon of fuel. After a summer’s worth of detailed analyses to figure out which component technologies will help us meet the contest’s requirements, we’ve settled on the most efficient platform to embrace: the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV)....
Let’s get this out of the way now: Quantum teleportation will not bring us one step closer to the Star Trek transporter. But it will get you as far as the boundary of space now. Sort of.The officially defined boundary of space is about 100 km up, or 62 miles. That just so happens to be the new record set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. You just might need to hoist up 62 miles of fiber optic cables to the boundary to accomplish it....
The study of mass killings can often lead to a conundrum—the numbers associated with the worst genocides in history can often be so staggering that it’s difficult to fully appreciate the actual devastation. A new paper from a mathematical biologist attempts to absorb and quantify some of the most highest rates of systemic murder in human history during the Holocaust. A quarter of all Holocaust victims, he finds, were murdered in a period of just three months....
The U.S. Air Force’s fleet of B-52H Stratofortress bombers is receiving vital upgrades that will keep the planes battle worthy into the 2050s. First flown in the early 1960s, the B-52H will see nearly a century of continuous service. The big bomber is getting new radars, communications equipment, and maybe even hypersonic weapons to keep it relevant to the battlefields of the future. The B-52H fleet, already nearly 60 years old, has been the recipient of a steady but slow stream of upgrades to keep the planes useful....
Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph by Scott Heiner/Getty Images)EnginesExpect to see smaller engines, with plenty of efficiency-boosting features. Variable valve timing and lift will become much more common, turbos will be used to offset power losses from smaller engines, and gradually more engine accessories like water and power-steering pumps will be electrically driven. New coatings and roller bearings will reduce engine friction. It’s also very possible that we’ll finally see camless, electromagnetically operated valves....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe gas giants of our solar system protect their secrets. That’s especially true of the two blue planets that are farthest out. While unmanned explorers like Cassini and Galileo have beamed back all sorts of new information about Jupiter and Saturn, astronomers got their only up-close look at Neptune and Uranus when the Voyager probes passed by in the 1980s, making these distant worlds doubly mysterious.Take, for example, the blustery jet streams on Uranus and Neptune....
A French vinter holds the world record for the number of fighter jets in private hands.The collection spans forty years of aviation, from World War II to the late Cold War.The fighters are no longer in flying condition, but they’re still an impressive sight.A French winemaker holds the title for the largest private collection of fighter jets in the world. Michel Pont, a vintner who lives in the Burgundy region of France, grows grapes for wine and collects fighter jets....
Marine biologist Andrew Thaler from Southern Fried Science likes to build weird things. His latest invention? A device that lets him “see” the world like dolphins do. His device, which he dubbed DolphinView, combines bone-conducting headphones, a cheap LiDAR system (which uses infrared emitters to measure light and distance), charging components and a mounted glasses set up to let him experience the world through echolocation.Dolphins don’t have external ears, and actually “hear” things with their jaws....
As it wends the material into delicate hair-thin veins, this new 3D printer is doing two amazing things. First, unbound by the constraints of gravity, it is pumping a suspended ‘painting’ into a buoyant gel the consistency of hand-sanitizer. And second, the material you see being injected here is living, human cells. Today, a team of engineers and biomedical researchers led by Tapomoy Bhattacharjee and Thomas Angelini at the University of Florida has unveiled a radical new 3D printing technology....
The drive to Snowshoe Mountain is going great until the 4-year-old throws up. I can’t say I blame him—if I weren’t the one driving, West Virginia’s mountain roads might have me a little green around the gills too. Upon sight of the vomit, the 2-year-old starts making gagging noises. My 11-year-old niece, somewhere aft in the fourth row, barks, “Did Rhys just throw up?” I’m happy to hear from her, actually, because the Sprinter 4x4 I’m driving is so vast that you need to do a head count every time you climb aboard, and I wasn’t a hundred percent sure we hadn’t left her at that McDonald’s back in North Carolina....
Someone made a breakfast machine completely made out of Lego, and it’s truly incredible. The Breakfast Machine is comprised of multiple, intricate parts: including the egg cracker that can tap, and split eggs, neatly dropping off the shells, a spatula car used to fry and move eggs and bacon, and claws that gingerly hold the egg in place while the machine moves it onto a plate. It can even pick up salt and pepper shakers to season the meal....
New analysis of the chemical signatures of volcanic minerals found on Venus surface reveal that the planet may still be volcanically active.Previously, Earth was thought to be the only currently volcanically active planet in the solar system. The surface of Venus, the second planet from the sun, can reach up to 900 degrees Fahrenheit. As NASA’s Magellan zipped around Venus in the 1990’s, it snapped pictures of sprawling lava flows and volcanic mountains....
With the past few years, we’ve seen an explosion of robotic advancement, whether spurred on by DARPA or fueled by some of the world’s wealthiest companies. We’ve also seen a significant uptick in cute robots, a category in which this pogo-stick bot firmly resides.View full post on YoutubeCreated by Disney’s research team, this little guy is built for one thing and one thing only—to get its hop on. In fact, this bot can hop 19 times in a row (or about 7 seconds) completely untethered....
