… Read More → "How do astronauts wash their hands?"

Over the weekend, a tiny spot on the sun erupted into a moderately sized solar flare that was particularly loud in radio waves. With the sound of a roaring wave, it completely drowned out radio communication all over the Earth between 28 MHz and 21.1 MHz.
via Wired

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For their Big Mac index (a way to look at currency exchange using global Big Mac pricing) this year, the Economist has released an interactive tool for exploring the data.
via Kottke

< … Read More → "The updated Big Mac index"

A Coursera instructor offering an online course on how to manage an online course has apparently given her students – all 40,000 of them – an unintentional lesson on how not to do just that.

Just a week after its launch, a course on the “Fundamentals of Online Learning” was suspended after complaints by students about technical glitches, confusing instructions and problems with the group-oriented design of the class.

Led by Fatimah Wirth, an instructional designer at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the class was intended to cover … Read More → "Oh, the irony: Coursera suspends online course about how to run an online course"

This year I want to really show my wife how much I <3 her, so I needed to find something more than the standard flowers and candy. I need something with SCIENCE sex appeal. (We’re that kind of family.)  In times like this, it is nice to have friends that work in exotic and unique fields — like nanomaterial engineering.

As it happened, my friend and … Read More → "Pink Aerogel heart may be the geekiest Valentine’s Day gift of 2013"

British troops in Afghanistan are flying a drone that’s shrunk down to its essentials: a micro-machine that spies, built for a solitary user.

This is the Black Hornet. Its Norwegian manufacturer, Prox Dynamics, bills it as the world’s smallest military-grade spy drone, with a weight of 16 grams and a length of 4 inches. Propelled by two helicopter blades, the Black Hornet carries little more than a steerable camera that … Read More → "Palm-sized nano-copter is the Afghanistan war’s latest spy drone"

While there’s been no shortage of rollable displays, rollable speakers are rare — the softness needed for a bendy design is the very thing that would usually neuter the sound. Fujifilm’s new Beat diaphragm manages to reconcile those seemingly conflicting requirements. The surface depends on a polymer that stays soft when the surface is being curled or folded, but hardens when subjected to … Read More → "Fujifilm shows off bendable speaker prototype"

NASA astronaut Don Pettit shot some really beautiful long-exposure images of star trails while aboard the International Space Station in 2012. Last year, we posted a video by Pettit where he demonstrated antibubbles in space.
via Laughing Squid

Read More → "Long-exposure images of ISS star trails by astronaut Don Pettit"

Sometimes it’s obvious when a road is slippery. Other times you can’t tell until your car has already begun swerving out of control. Now researchers in Finland have developed technology to make driving when there’s black ice a little less treacherous.

The VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland developed a slippery road detection system that uses your cars sensors to monitor road conditions and inform … Read More → "Ice sensors in cars warn of slippery roads"

With subway-related deaths getting a lot of attention this year and the transit union nipping at the MTA’s heelsabout it, New York City Transit president (and acting MTA CEO) Thomas Prendergast today delivered a “Customer Contact with Train Incident Report” [PDF] to a Transit Committee meeting. The gist of it? The MTA is aware that people don’t like reading about subway-related deaths … Read More → "Sliding doors to sensors: MTA talks subway deaths and prevention plans"