DARPA to Start Reusable Launch Vehicle Program
September 18th, 2013Via: Space News:
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is about to start a program to develop a reusable first stage that could be used to launch medium-sized satellites for as little as $5 million each.
Speaking Sept. 12 at the AIAA Space 2013 conference in San Diego, Pam Melroy, deputy director of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, said the agency would release a Broad Agency Announcement in the next few weeks for a program called Experimental Spaceplane, or XS-1. An industry day for the program is planned for early October.
“The goal of the program is to fly 10 times in 10 days, and to achieve Mach 10,” Melroy said. The XS-1 itself would not fly into orbit, but could carry an expendable upper stage to place payloads weighing up to 1,800 kilograms into orbit at a target price of $5 million per launch. The vehicle could also be used as a platform for hypersonics research.
Melroy’s presentation included several illustrations of potential XS-1 designs, all featuring wings. However, she said DARPA was not restricting the XS-1 program to winged designs. “The key is that it needs to be a reusable first stage,” she said.
Tesla Enters Race to Build Self-Driving Car
September 18th, 2013Via: Reuters:
Electric car company Tesla Motors is working to produce a car capable of running on “auto-pilot” within the next three years, CEO Elon Musk said, joining tech giant Google and rival carmakers in the race to roll a driverless car into the market.
The California-based company’s autonomous car would allow the driver to hand 90 percent of the control of the car over to the vehicle’s computer system, Musk said in an interview with the Financial Times newspaper.
Fully autonomous cars would take longer to develop, he said.
The self-driving car would be developed in-house using Tesla’s own technology, not that of another company, Musk said in comments confirmed by a Tesla spokesperson.
Related: A Mercedes-Benz S-500 Just Drove 62 Miles All by Itself
Gas Prices Set Record: 1,000 Days Above $3 a Gallon
September 17th, 2013Via: USA Today:
Well, AAA has come up with a sobering statistic: the average price of gasoline will surpass $3 per gallon Tuesday for the 1,000th consecutive day. That’s never happened before, the motoring organization says.
Dutch Health Official: Sugar Is Dangerous, Very Addictive
September 17th, 2013Via: Telegraph:
Paul van der Velpen, the head of Amsterdam’s health service, the Dutch capital city where the sale of cannabis is legalised, wants to see sugar tightly regulated.
“Just like alcohol and tobacco, sugar is actually a drug. There is an important role for government. The use of sugar should be discouraged. And users should be made aware of the dangers,” he wrote on an official public health website.
“This may seem exaggerated and far-fetched, but sugar is the most dangerous drug of the times and can still be easily acquired everywhere.”
Mr Van der Velpen cites research claiming that sugar, unlike fat or other foods, interferes with the body’s appetite creating an insatiable desire to carry on eating, an effect he accuses the food industry of using to increase consumption of their products.
China’s Education Plan … From Finland’s Playbook
September 17th, 2013Via: CNBC:
If you think the business competition from China is hard now, brace yourself. It will likely get tougher in about 20 years or so. And how is China doing it? By borrowing a page from Finland.
At first blush, though, it would appear that China is simply lightening up.
“The Ministry of Education plans to lessen the heavy workload,” said CCTV, China’s state television network explained in a post on the English version of its website.
Under the proposed guidelines, which are still under discussion, “primary schools may no longer set any form of written homework for students in grades one to six,” said CCTV, “Instead, schools should work with parents to organize extracurricular activities and after-school assignments, including museum tours and library study.”
In addition, the new system would revamp scoring systems and reduce the number of mandatory exams.
Related: Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? by Pasi Sahlberg
‘Your Pulse Could Be Your New Password’
September 17th, 2013Via: CBS:
Passwords, pin numbers, and credit cards could soon be a thing of the past.
Soon, your heart and your body might be used to keep track of just about everything if new technology is able to unlock “pulse passwords”.
Your heartbeat reveals more about you than your health, Bionym chief executive officer Karl Martin explained.
“There’s actually unique characteristics that relate to the size of the heart, the position of the heart, and the physiology surrounding the heart,” he said.
Our heartbeats are as unique to us as our fingerprints and now they are being used to replace passwords, key cards, and bank cards, CBS 2?s Kristine Johnson reported.
“It’s like your personal pin number is your heartbeat,” Mashable.com’s Lance Ulanoff said.
The technology could allow you to open a door without a key or have tech gadgets like smartphones and tablets unlock the second that you walk into a room. It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but experts say it is the wave of the future.
“It’s going to be a way for us to interact with the world around us without having to constantly identify ourselves,” Ulanoff explained.
Bionym, a Canadian company, developed a wristband to recognize the pattern of an individual pulse. The wristband transmits information that allows the user to do things like withdrawing money without a bank card.
“You don’t have to remember anything. You don’t have to do anything special,” Ulanoff said.
Bionym isn’t the only company developing concepts that use the human body as a form of identification. Motorola is working on a temporary tattoo that contains a computer chip and an antenna.
A pill that dissolves and turns the entire body into a transmitter is also in the works.
Security experts say traditional passwords don’t offer much protection from identity thieves.
“If they’re alpha numeric, and usually they are because they have to be easy to remember, they’re also correspondingly easier to break into,” security expert Rohit Sethi explained.
The new technology could pose considerable roadblocks for hackers because heartbeats cannot be replicated.
“You’re not going to have a piece of paper in your pocket with your password. You’re going to have it as part of your body so that is safer,” Ulanoff said.
Bionym’s wristband is so in tune with its owner that if somebody did steal it, it would not work. The wristband costs about $100 and is expected to hit stores in 2014.
‘Dartmouth Researchers Discover How and Where Imagination Occurs in Human Brains’
September 17th, 2013“Understanding these differences will give us insight into where human creativity comes from and possibly allow us to recreate those same creative processes in machines.”
Via: Dartmouth University:
Philosophers and scientists have long puzzled over where human imagination comes from. In other words, what makes humans able to create art, invent tools, think scientifically and perform other incredibly diverse behaviors?
The answer, Dartmouth researchers conclude in a new study, lies in a widespread neural network — the brain’s “mental workspace” — that consciously manipulates images, symbols, ideas and theories and gives humans the laser-like mental focus needed to solve complex problems and come up with new ideas.
Their findings, titled “Network structure and dynamics of the mental workspace,” appear the week of Sept. 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Our findings move us closer to understanding how the organization of our brains sets us apart from other species and provides such a rich internal playground for us to think freely and creatively,” says lead author Alex Schlegel , a graduate student in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. “Understanding these differences will give us insight into where human creativity comes from and possibly allow us to recreate those same creative processes in machines.”
Revealing Pictures From 1972 Rothschild Illuminati Ball
September 17th, 2013Via: Vigilant Citizen:
On 12/12/72 Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, member of the most powerful elite family in the world, held a Surrealist Ball at Château de Ferrières, one of the family’s gigantic mansions. While these events are usually extremely secretive, photographs of this particular Ball surfaced on the web. In short, it is a mix of an “Eyes Wide Shut”-style masked ball mixed with a Lady Gaga-style pop video.
Research Credit: cgroove69
Directed Energy Device Disables Vehicles
September 16th, 2013The same company is developing, “High altitude electromagnetic pulse weapons.”
Via: Telegraph:
An energy beam that can be fired to disable vehicles and electronic devices has been developed by Nato scientists.
The device uses an intense pulse of electromagnetic energy that can be directed at a moving vehicle to interfere with the electronics on board.
Tests conducted by Nato scientists who have been developing the device in Norway show that it can stop a car approaching a roadblock and could be used to thwart suicide bomb attacks.
It can also be carried in the back of a vehicle to disable other vehicles that are in pursuit.
The researchers, who are working as part of Nato’s Science and Technology Organisation, have also demonstrated it can disable jet skis and drones.
…
The device has been compared to the satellite weapon that features in the James Bond movie Golden Eye. In this an electromagnetic beam is fired from a satellite in orbit to disable electronic equipment.
While the latest device cannot work on the same scale, it has the potential to disable almost any electronic device.
It is, however, unlikely to work against older vehicles that rely upon purely mechanical equipment.
Electromagnetic pulses create an intense magnetic field that damages electronic circuitry.
Details of how the new device works are still secret but it is likely to use microwaves or radio frequency energy.
Images released by Nato show pressure transmitters that are used to generate electrical signals.
The new device has been developed in collaboration with defence company Diehl, which has also been working on high altitude electromagnetic pulse weapons.
Recovery: Widest Gap in Employment Rates Between Rich, Poor in a Decade
September 16th, 2013Via: AP / Newser:
The gap in employment rates between America’s highest- and lowest-income families has stretched to its widest levels since officials began tracking the data a decade ago, according to an analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press.
Rates of unemployment for the lowest-income families _ those earning less than $20,000 _ have topped 21 percent, nearly matching the rate for all workers during the 1930s Great Depression.
U.S. households with income of more than $150,000 a year have an unemployment rate of 3.2 percent, a level traditionally defined as full employment. At the same time, middle-income workers are increasingly pushed into lower-wage jobs. Many of them in turn are displacing lower-skilled, low-income workers, who become unemployed or are forced to work fewer hours, the analysis shows.
