Media Platforms Design TeamThere’s a headlight arms race going on, and at this year’s Frankfurt Motor Show we got an up close look at Audi’s latest salvo. Debuting in the updated 2014 Audi A8, the Active Matrix lights consist of 25 LEDs that can bend the light beam specifically to the situation. While that doesn’t best the 56 LED total of the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class, it’s still a heck of a lot of light....
Watching in VRIntel will capture 30 Olympic events in virtual reality for the IntelTrue VR system, the largest-scale VR event to date and the first-ever live VR broadcast of the Olympic Winter Games. Intel will use paired-lens capture systems with multiple stereoscopic pods, as well as up to 12 4K cameras. The whole endeavor will generate up to 1 TB of data per hour.View full post on IframeWith the IntelTrue VR system, as seen on the NBC Sports VR app for fans in the United States, users can select three to six camera locations per event or simply sit back and let a produced VR-cast take over....
It’s pink, slimy, googly-eyed and, apparently, misunderstood.That’s according to scientist Andrew Stewart, who discovered the curious new species of fish shown in the photo above during the filming of “Expedition Antarctica,” a documentary following researchers through the bitter cold of the southern continent, released last month on YouTube. (Skip ahead to the 14:30 mark to check the fish out).“That’s why I came to Antarctica, to see things like this,” Stewart said in the film....
Digging out a tunnel is no easy feat. Just talk to the folks running Bertha, the world’s largest tunnel-boring machine that hit a snag and wound up stuck underground in Washington for years. Brenda—Bertha’s younger, smaller sibling—has had no such trouble, and just burst through a solid wall into a new, unbuilt subway station over the weekend. View full post on VimeoThe 22-foot Brenda has been cranking through roughly 100 feet of earth per day, starting way back in July of 2014 with only a brief break at another soon-to-be subway station back in March....
Overpainting Muntins Multipane windows and doors are beautiful things. They let plenty of light through and make a compelling architectural statement at the same time. If you are fortunate enough to have newer windows or doors on which the dividing muntins are clad in vinyl, you never have to worry about paint peeling. This is a good thing because painting them can drive you nuts. It’s not that it’s hard work–it isn’t....
You’ve probably seen scale models before—toy trucks, the battlefield diorama at the Gettysburg History Center, Elijah Wood—but you’ve probably never seen them at the scale that filmmakers Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh work in. Their first project, To Scale: The Solar System, spanned seven miles in a dry lakebed in the Nevada desert in 2015. It accurately reproduced the sun and its surrounding planets if Earth were the size of a marble....
Media Platforms Design TeamThere are nine species of lava lizards on the Galapagos Island chain, each of them only slightly distinguishable from the last. Given that each continue on as a single species and not a gaggle of hybrid mutts, they have to be able to distinguish between each other. An Alma University-led team sought out to find what signals go in to identifying members of the same species. And they did it by utilizing robots....
Pressure-treated wood is a delightful product. It’s chemically protected to ward off insects and fungal decay. This protection increases the lifespan of the wood and makes it ideal for outdoor projects like decks. But here’s an important thing to keep in mind when picking pressure-treated 4x4s.The chemical treatment process in question isn’t as effective on wood that is closer to the core of the tree. This is important because 4x4 posts are made as a by-product of plywood production and are often the center of a log, which is called the peeler core....
Media Platforms Design TeamAs automakers augment the reciprocating piston engine with hybrid systems and improved accessories, independent inventors are busily working to make huge improvements to the basic efficiency of the internal combustion engine. Novel designs are popping up at engineering expos everywhere, and the newest comes from Bloomfield, Conn.-based LiquidPiston. Its X1 engine is a simple machine with just three moving parts and thirteen major components, but it aims to raise thermal efficiency from the 20 percent of a normal gas engine to more than 50 percent, with drastic reductions in weight and size....
The United States may be in for a military parade. The Washington Post reported yesterday that planning for a U.S. Armed Forces parade is going on “at the highest levels of the military.” Unlike other major military powers, military parades in the U.S. are remarkably rare, and they should probably stay that way. Military parades are expensive and damage to civilian infrastructure, would create logistical headaches, and and are today generally associated with authoritarian, militaristic regimes the U....
The Boring Company has gotten its first official client: the city of Chicago. Elon Musk’s nebulous transportation company will build a transportation system in Chicago that will, the company claims, take people from downtown to O’Hare Airport in 12 minutes.On the company website, The Boring Company describes two types of transportation systems: a Hyperloop and a Loop. The Chicago project appears to be the latter, described as “a high-speed underground public transportation system in which passengers are transported on autonomous electric skates traveling at 125-150 miles per hour....
Buy NowThe Mychanic Smart Jumper Cables ($25) include the brilliant feature of reverse polarity protection. Live positive to dead positive, live negative to ground—that’s the car-jumping wisdom that’s ingrained in your memory. But if you haven’t jumped a car since Pogs were a thing, you’ll be excused for a brief lapse, which is exactly why you need this protection. With the Mychanic cables, instead of a blinding spark (followed by some creative swearing), crossed wires result in a beep and a blinking light....
NASA has received 12 mission proposals for their New Frontiers program, which will select a spacecraft to send to a new target in the solar system with a planned launch in the mid-2020s. Of the 12 proposals, one or more will be selected for Phase A studies in November, and one mission will be chosen in early 2019 to proceed with development with a budget around $1 billion. Launch is expected sometime around 2024....
Yesterday, Mercury’s orbit passed in front of the sun for the first time since 2012 and the last time until 2019. Obviously, staring at the sun to watch this happen is not a great idea unless you are taking great pains to do it right. And if you missed your chance, don’t worry. NASA has a great, gorgeous timelapse that looks far better than anything you’d see through some pinhole telescope....
A team of physicists from New York University, University of Buffalo, and Wayne State University have discovered a new state of matter, which they say has the potential to increase storage capabilities in electronic devices.“Our research has succeeded in revealing experimental evidence for a new state of matter—topological superconductivity,” says Javad Shabani, an assistant professor of physics at NYU, in a press statement. “This new topological state can be manipulated in ways that could both speed calculation in quantum computing and boost storage....
An opal miner discovered an unknown species of dinosaur decades ago that remained relatively unstudied until 2015.The species, found in Lightning Ridge, NSW, Australia, was named Fostoria dhimbangunmal after Bob Foster, who discovered it.Researchers expect additional fossil discoveries to come out of Lightning Ridge, where another new species was discovered last year.Thirty-five years ago, an opal miner discovered a new species of dinosaur from a piece of rock he nearly destroyed....
Media Platforms Design TeamDo you like race cars? Are you a fan of English automaker Aston Martin? Can you reasonably part with $380,000? If your answer is yes to some or all of these questions, prepare yourself: Today, Aston Martin Racing put two of its own factory racers up for sale. The first is a V8 Vantage GTE, which competed in the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans—and retired 31 laps into a race that normally lasts 300-plus, “denying the team a likely podium finish,” says Aston Martin....
“Made in the U.S.A.” has been in decline for decades, but in the last few years it has shown signs of an incipient comeback. Even as the number of manufacturing jobs has decreased, manufacturing output—the value of goods made here—has increased substantially. We still make $5.4 trillion worth of stuff annually here, and 12.4 million Americans still work in the manufacturing sector. But Trump administration tariffs, speculation about a trade war, and the continued march toward automation make the future of American manufacturing less certain....
There’s a problem with the Hubble Space Telescope. According to a recent NASA announcement, one of Hubble’s main instruments, the Wide Field Camera 3, has suffered some sort of hardware failure and is currently offline. There’s no indication of when or if the telescope will be repaired.According to the NASA announcement, the malfunction occurred at 12:23 a.m. Eastern time. The announcement doesn’t give very many details and only says the issue is “a hardware problem....
The peak of the fidget spinner craze has mostly passed, but that does not mean that there are not great minds who are still working on developing important advances in aimless spinning technology. Case in point: You can now buy a fidget spinner for your keyboard. Nobody was asking for this, but now that it’s here…View full post on YoutubeThe spinners themselves are made out of resin, with a brass nut to mount them to the actual key and a trio of stainless steel weights for the three extended legs....
