At the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, initial mating of space shuttle Discovery and the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft is complete in the mate-demate device. The device, known as the MDD, is a large gantry-like steel structure used to hoist a shuttle off the ground and position it onto the back …
Continue reading “For delivery only – photos/video of Space Shuttle being attached to Boeing 747”
This reminds me of Star Trek as we discover new ways to heal patients without cutting them open. This method involves half-surgery and half-minimally-invasive techniques that also take much less time: They performed a unique, high-risk hybrid procedure that combined minimally-invasive method with traditional surgical techniques. They stopped the massive balloon-like aneurysm, replaced a failed …
Continue reading “Hybrid surgery, a major new medical trend, reduces need for cutting open”
Scientists at the Quantum Dynamics division of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, Germany announced Wednesday that they have built the very first, elementary quantum network comprised of a pair of entangled atoms that transmit information to each other via single photons. That and a couple of bucks will get you …
Continue reading “Scientists build first working quantum network – mind-bogglingly powerful”
April 13, 2012 – Europe’s highest active volcano, Italy’s Mount Etna, erupted again this week. The eruption, which spewed blood-red molten lava and grey and white ash into the air, is the 24th in a series that started in January 2011. A decade ago the volcano was at it again, this time more serious. …
Continue reading “Video of Sicily’s Mount Etna erupting with lava flows and steam sprays”
As we all get finished with our taxes so do the President and First Lady. It turns out that the Obama’s came in with a 20.5% tax rate on income of $789,674 (married filing jointly), including donations worth $172,130. The bulk of that income came from presidential salaries, $394,821, and book sales, $441,369. In 2010, …
The war over “number of users” is heating up for Google and Facebook. In the past, Facebook was able to dominate headlines by going real big, billions of this or that. The latest data: 845 million monthly active users at the end of December 2011. Approximately 80% of our monthly active users are outside the …
Continue reading “Facebook and Google enter first stage in, The War of the Numbers”
Netflix awarded a $1 million prize to a developer team in 2009 for an algorithm that increased the accuracy of the company’s recommendation engine by 10 percent. But today it doesn’t use the million-dollar code, and has no plans to implement it in the future, Netflix announced on its blog Friday. The post goes on to …
Continue reading “Netflix drops $1 million algorithm, goes all-in on streaming recommendations”
Six families of makers from the Bay Area are working on building a fully-operational motion controlled flight simulator based on the fighter ship from Battlestar Galactica. Using the fuselage of a small plane, the team has already built a motion platform that rotates a full dizzying 360 degrees in both the pitch and roll axes. …
Continue reading “DIY: build your own Battlestar Galactica space flight simulator”
Yesterday, I wrote about the need for women writers and artists in comic books, highlighting a very successful Kickstarter project, Womanthology. The project was so successful that they have an offshoot. A documentary about female super heroes that premiered at South by Southwest 2012: Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines traces the fascinating evolution and …
Continue reading “The untold story of American superheroines”