This month, on a barren Wyoming landscape dotted with gopher holes and hay bales, the federal government is assembling a supercomputer 10 years in the making, one of the fastest computers ever built and the largest ever devoted to the study of atmospheric science.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research’s supercomputer has been dubbed Yellowstone, after the nearby national park, but it could have been named Nerdvana. The machine will have 100 racks of servers and 72,000 core processors, so many parts that they must be delivered in the back of a 747. Yellowstone will be capable of performing 1.5 quadrillion calculations — a quadrillion is a 1 followed by 15 zeros — every second.
The sheer speed of Yellowstone is designed to burst through the limits of chaos theory — the difference, allegorically, between predicting the odds of blackjack after playing five hands versus playing a million. The machine is expected to give scientists a clearer image of the state of the planet, and its future, revolutionizing the study of climate change, extreme weather events, wildfires, air pollution and more.
learn more – L.A. Times – New Wyoming supercomputer expected to boost atmospheric science
Girls in STEM: A New Generation of Women in Science
Girls in STEM, featuring young women scientists and engineers who wowed the President and the nation at the White House Science Fair in February, shines a spotlight on these extraordinary young role models and their exciting projects — ranging from a machine that detects buried landmines, to a prosthetic hand device, to a lunchbox that uses UV light to kill bacteria on food. – whitehouse.gov/stem
STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering and Math
High school students create model boats that sail from California to Hawaii
Making a third try at sailing handmade sailboats on a course for Hawaii, students from Regional Occupational Program model-making classes at San Clemente High School launched three new vessels into the Pacific from Capistrano Beach on Tuesday afternoon.
Under the supervision of Malcolm Wilson, an instructor in the Capistrano-Laguna Beach ROP, about 75 students in three teams designed and built the one-fifth-scale model boats out of surfboard foam and fiberglass. Then they rigged them to sail on westerly and trade winds toward the Hawaiian Islands. Their progress will be monitored via onboard GPS devices.
After signing their names on the hulls and inserting their contact information into watertight containers in each of the boats, the students stood back and watched with friends and relatives as volunteer swimmers guided the boats over breaking waves on their way out to sea.
read more – The Orange County Register
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Universal Music Catalog – just a few years away
With the announcement of Amazon’s new Cloud Player iPhone app, the Universal Music Catalog is one step closer. For years I have dreamed of this Star Trek-like device, where I can find any song I want and listen to it, from anywhere. Preferably this will be an app on a device I already own (smartphone), rather than a new iPod or something.
Though, I would buy an iPod that had the Universal Music Catalog on it.
You may be skeptical but let’s work through this.
First, all three major online music retailers, Apple/Amazon/Google, give you the ability to upload thousands of songs to their cloud for free or at nominal costs. Which means that each of them has the most massive music catalog you can possibly imagine. They also highly promote the “matching” ability of these mega-drives, which means that they probably already have the song you’re uploading so don’t worry, you can just use their copy.
But, if they don’t have your song then they will store a copy on their drive, a brilliant way to continue growing their catalog.
Second, the details here are awesome. Amazon just announced that if you pay $20/year you have unlimited storage space for music. Google offers space for 20,000 songs for free and Apple is charging $25/year for storage of 25,000 songs. This even includes those mixtapes you’ve been carrying around, rare CD’s, and even live recordings.
Yeah, the piracy debate is dead in the water here. Theoretically, one person could pirate 20,000 songs and then upload them to Google for free, with forever storage.
Continue reading “Universal Music Catalog – just a few years away”
Winter surfing in New Hampshire – Salmon Theory
A glimpse of the New Hampshire winter surfing experience
Voice of Casey Lockwood
Surfers:
Casey Lockwood
Shawn MacDonald
Stevie O’Hara
and others
Update on San Onofre Nuclear Plant – backup emergency generators also flawed
NRC OVERSIGHT HAS FAILED AT SAN ONOFRE
This letter was sent to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko, with a copy to The Orange County Register:
Dear Chairman,
We were stunned to learn recently that for nearly three decades, the San Onofre nuclear reactors have been operating with inherently flawed backup emergency diesel generators, flaws that could have caused these generators to shut down as a result of a major earthquake. According to documents submitted to the NRC on May 14 of this year by Southern California Edison, the operator of the San Onofre plant, the effect of a major seismic event on the high-frequency sensors that would trigger the shutdown of the backup generators had not been analyzed. Upon discovering this issue, the sensors were immediately turned off, indicating significant safety concerns.
Allowing the San Onofre nuclear reactors, located directly next to major fault lines, to operate with such a fundamental safety issue unexamined for three decades is a dramatic failure on the part of the commission. The loss of both offsite and onsite power, or station blackout, is the very condition that led to the nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi (Japan). As you are aware, the seismic vulnerability of nuclear reactors has become an even more urgent issue in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. We are well aware of your particular concerns in this area. Tuesday’s news underscores the need for immediate and urgent action.
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Electric Car Owners Dish on Their Real-World EV Experiences
Safety first
“I’d rather sit on batteries than a tank of gas, in terms of explosion risk,” says Olivier Chalouhi, who became the world’s first Nissan LEAF owner when he took delivery of one in late 2010. It is a sentiment that Patrick Wang, one of the first to own the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt, shares. “There’s a ton more energy in gasoline than in the battery pack—so to me it’s not a concern at all,” he says.
The only safety concern among a small sample of EV owners interviewed in conjunction with the May EVS26 electric vehicle symposium in Los Angeles relates to pedestrians’ obliviousness to the quiet electric drivetrain. Chalouhi, whose LEAF is equipped with an automatic pedestrian-alert sounder, says he has not had any such issues. Yet Wang, whose Volt is equipped with a driver-actuated pedestrian-alert sound, says that sometimes in parking lots pedestrians have not noticed him, so he activated the chirping noise.
Maintenance and driving range
Given that the battery pack is the single most expensive part on the vehicle—some estimates are up to 45 percent of the total cost of the vehicle—questions have been raised as to how frequently it will need to be replaced.
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ESPN launches iPhone/iPad app version 4.0 – ESPN Radio
If you’re needing to keep Mike & Mike an arm’s length away at all times, ESPN has refreshed its Radio app to help with just that. Now optimized to the iPad in addition to the iPhone and iPod touch, the software allows you to sort your listening habits by sports, teams and athletes that you follow.
The free version offers access to podcasts, the 20-minute SportCenter cycle, and offline listening for on-demand content.
The premium version — touting custom stations / playlists, live audio pause / rewind, myESPN personalization, alerts / push notifications and a few more gems to keep you well informed on the latest Red Sox debacle. Though, you’ll have to shell out $4.99 for the premium app and its 35 ESPN radio stations.
What about Android and WP7 devices, you ask? The folks in Bristol claim that apps for those platforms will arrive later this summer.
via Engadget
ESPN RADIO V4.0 – in iTunes
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Science Experiment: How fast can you react?
I love this piece from Scientific American, written in the format of a teaching lesson, instructing you how to perform a science experiment: How Fast Can You React?
Key concepts:
Reaction time
Neuroscience
GravityIntroduction
Think fast! Have you ever noticed that when someone unexpectedly tosses a softball at you, you need a little time before you can move to catch it (or duck)? That’s because when your eyes see an incoming signal such as a softball, your brain needs to first process what’s happening—and thenyou can take action. In this activity, you can measure just how long it takes for you to react, and compare reaction times with your friends and family.Materials
· Ruler (inches or metric)
· Paper
· Pencil
· Chart (below)
Keep reading – How Fast Can You React?
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America’s Best High Schools 2012
This year, our ranking highlights the best 1,000 public high schools in the nation—the ones that have proven to be the most effective in turning out college-ready grads.
The list is based on six components provided by school administrators:
- Graduation rate (25 percent)
- College matriculation rate (25 percent)
- AP/IB/AICE tests taken per student (25 percent)
- Average SAT/ACT scores (10 percent)
- Average AP/IB/AICE scores (10 percent)
- AP courses offered per student(5 percent).
Search for your own school or find the best in your area:
The top 10 schools: