Posts

LAS VEGAS–The first official announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show always belong to LG, which has a press conference at the early hour of 8am PST. Like many Korean companies, LG makes a wide range of products–from refrigerators to cell phones to TVs–so it tends to pack a lot of announcements into the allotted 45 minutes. Because of the early conference, LG got to be the first big player to announce a lineup of 3D TVs–the company will launch several models, as well as a 3D LCoS projector....

When pirates tried to board a merchant vessel off the coast of the Philippines, the crew defended their ship like a castle, throwing boiling oil and water at the invaders. They succeeded in fending off the buccaneers, but this battle highlights the variety of desperate, homebrewed anti-pirate measures that some boat crews must employ to prevent capture—or worse.The incident took place five miles southeast of Sibago island in the Philippines, in the Celebes Sea....

Today marks the 77th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and here’s a surprising fact: Even now, the military is not certain exactly how many soldiers died there. Over the last month, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), an organization within the Department of Defense, announced it has accounted for the remains of several soldiers who were previously listed as missing in the attack.Related StoryPearl Harbor Still Holds a Few MysteriesJapan’s surprise attack was devastating from an operational level and affected morale across the country....

Earlier this month, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) let loose on an asteroid. Its Hayabusa2 spacecraft fired a projectile at a space rock called Ryugu. JAXA hoped that firing at the asteroid would be good practice for Earth defending itself from asteroids that might be headed this way. Having had time to check their work after the explosion, the researchers can now confirm the success of the test and the creation of the first artificial crater on an asteroid....

Caught during winter testing in northern Michigan, the 2008 Buick LaCrosse Super (pictured at right, top) will be unveiled at the New York auto show later this month, GM said today. It has a new front, the grille is larger than the present model, and its vertical bars are taller and set wider apart. However, it looks like the fenders and hood are unchanged, reflecting Buick’s decision to save money by restricting the changes to the grille, front fascia and lower air intake....

Media Platforms Design TeamScientists have found a kind of brain cell in mice that can instruct stem cells to start making more neurons, according to a new study. In addition, they found that electrical signals could trigger this growth in rodents, raising the intriguing possibility that devices could one day help the human brain repair itself. appears in the journal .The studyNature NeuroscienceWe knew the brain can generate new neurons, a process known as neurogenesis, via neural stem cells....

In 2017, current events made escaping into a sci-fi story all the more appetizing, and there were lots of great choices.Below are our 13 favorite sci-fi books from 2017. They include stories about underground lunar societies, a Manhattan partially covered in water, and giant robots who question their own programming. Some are stand-alone books while others are part of a series, but there all the best reads of the year.New York 2140By Kim Stanley RobinsonBUY NOWThe fear of living in a place that will one day be covered in water is very real for New Yorkers and many other coastal dwellers around the world....

If we can all agree that war is hell, then how might we think of life at the Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, Texas, where people toil to build the world’s most expensive war machine? You might reasonably picture it as a kind of purgatory. The F-35 stealth warplane is without precedent in military history—maybe any kind of history. The Pentagon first sought bidders for it 18 years ago; development began when Bill Clinton was still saddled with the presidency....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Credit: Carlsbad Desalination Project) California is looking toward the Pacific Ocean to solve its ongoing drought crisis. San Diego County is planning to invest $1 billion in a desalination plant that will daily produce 54 million gallons of fresh water per 100 million gallons of sea water taken in. The Carlsbad Desalination Project Using reverse osmosis, the plant will remove salt and other chemicals to produce fresh potable water....

Like most airports in the U.S., Leesburg Airport in Leesburg, Virginia has no airport control tower. During a test last year, though, it tested a “remote tower” designed by Saab, an experimental concept that could allow small airports to essentially use a remote version of air traffic control. Rather than overlooking the airport from a stories-high tower, the air traffic controllers in this test worked from a windowless conference room using Saab’s Remote Tower Center (RTC)....

Wildfires have threatened the homes of tens of thousands of people in northern California. Known as the Camp Fire, it has destroyed thousands of structures, currently threatens 15,000 more, and has considerably worsened the air quality in the Bay Area.“Pretty much the community of Paradise is destroyed, it’s that kind of devastation,” said Cal Fire Capt. Scott McLean late Thursday, speaking of a town of 27,000 residents located around 180 miles northeast of San Francisco, in a press statement....

An incredibly well-preserved giant wolf head was found in Siberia in 2018.More details about the specimen’s history, anatomy, and physiology will emerge after a DNA extraction.A large, 40,000-year-old severed wolf head was found by a local man near the Tirekhtyakh River in Eastern Siberia. Because the head was incredibly well preserved, the discovery presents a rare opportunity to delve into wolf genealogy and evolution. “This discovery is amazing,” Julie Meachen, a paleontologist and professor at the University of Des Moines who specializes in ancient wolf evolution (but is not involved with this finding), told Gizmodo....

Update 9/2 4:48 p.m. EDT: SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said that the incident was not an explosion, but rather a very fast fire. As such, he believes a Dragon spacecraft—the craft that will eventually hold people—would have survived the inferno and safely jettisoned its emergency escape pod.View full post on TwitterUpdate 9/2 10:06 a.m. EDT: According to Aviation Week, yesterday’s incident at Cape Canaveral likely damaged the launch pad to the point that SpaceX will have to postpone their launch of SES 10, which is slated to be the first launch mission to reuse a Falcon 9 first stage....

New research from the Georgia Institute of Technology demonstrates that groups of ants behave in ways that are like both liquids and solids. For example, if you drop a penny into an ocean of ants, they will initially absorb the impact like a solid spring. But then the penny will begin to sink through the group as if they were a liquid; they’ll release their grips on one another and move around to fill in the void on top....

Apple has a new option for broken hardware: a third-party service technician can be dispatched to your home in select cities to fix that cracked screen.Right now, the service looks to be limited to cracked iPhones.Over the years, iPhones have slowly evolved into a fragile slab of glass—and the source of much heartbreak if one happens to slip from your grip. Now Apple is trying to ease the pain by making house calls....

Apple’s big 2018 iPhone event just wrapped up after introducing us to the new iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, as well as the cheaper iPhone XR and the Apple Watch Series 4. Here’s a rundown of the most important bits to know about each. iPhone XS and XS Max AppleYes, it’s here, the new iPhone X. Meet the iPhone XS (pronounced ‘iPhone Ten S’). It has a stainless steel body and comes in three finishes (gold, silver, and space grey) and two sizes....

Last December, the price of Bitcoin was soaring to its all-time high of of $19,666 per coin, which it hit on December 17th. And, in the heat of the moment, some were predicting it was on its way to $1 million. Here in November 2018, though, Bitcoin has dropped as low as $4,200, its lowest point in the last calendar year. And that’s probably for the best considering Bitcoin is an environmental scourge by its very nature....

Your internet activity is visible to wireless providers and mobile carriers, but Google is at least trying to mitigate the feeling of constant surveillance for subscribers of its wireless network, Project Fi. The search giant announced today an “enhanced network” of security meant to blanket Project Fi with an ever-present virtual private network (VPN), encrypting all traffic entering the system through Wi-Fi or cellular. Project Fi is the company’s own cellular service, made possible through piggyback partnerships: It grants customers access to cellular networks from carriers like Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile in addition to two million free Wi-Fi networks dispersed internationally....

Ricky Arnold steadies his hand. He job is to insert 10 microliters of fluid into a microplate and watch as crystals grow. Ten microliters amount to a single droplet from his pipette, so Arnold must be exceedingly precise—which is a challenge, because he is floating inside the International Space Station.Arnold repeats the process 96 times, filling small cells in the microplate with a solution mixed to grow protein crystals. He also tests ways to mix the solution with crystal-seeding material....

Wildfires raging near Athens, Greece have killed dozens of people, in one of the deadliest blazes in recent history. High winds and extreme temperatures have pushed the fires further than most believed possible, catching tourists and residents off guard. Officials say that so far, at least 49 people have been killed, with at least 172 injured and 15 missing.“Unfortunately, at this stage, we do not expect to find more people injured, only more dead,” said Miltiades Milonas, vice president of the Greek ambulance service, to The New York Times....