via The Register

… Read More → "Qualified boffin Lucy Sherriff presents a handy guide to linguine, jubs, Norrises and Hiltons, and other useful units available to accurately quantify our world"

See the rest of the graphic here at xkcd here

DARPA has repeatedly indicated an interest in developing hypersonic aircraft and weapons systems which are capable of Mach-20 speeds and thus able to reach any region of the planet within an hour. To this end, the agency has announced its new Integrated Hypersonics (IH) program, which draws upon previous research and aims to create a hypersonic X-plane (HX) ready for testing by 2016.

In a press release titled “Hypersonics – The New Stealth”, DARPA … Read More → "DARPA continues push toward high-speed aircraft with new Integrated Hypersonics program"

In a dorm room-sized office near Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal, a lanky man in an inflated spacesuit dances. He hops, shimmies and boogies. He stretches his arms, sweeps his hands over his head, twists his torso and lifts a bent leg in the air. At one point he lurches over, as if to scoop up a rock on Mars.

The guy in the spacesuit is artist and designer Ted Southern. Videotaping his performance is Nikolay Moiseev, a Russian mechanical engineer and Southern’s partner in founding Final Frontier Design, a startup company … Read More → "Inside Brooklyn’s DIY spacesuit startup"

So I was at a July 4 picnic on Wednesday where one of the other guests used to be a physics teacher at Stuyvesant High School, and he explained this whole Higgs boson thing to me in a way that made it make about as much sense as it’s going to for someone who only took physics in college. And he did the whole thing without using food metaphors — molasses, soup, etc. — which I thought was impressive.

Basically, it’s like this: Sub-atomic particles are either fermions or bosons</ … Read More → "Still confused about the Higgs Boson? Read this"

Flash memory continues to shrink in size and grow in capacity. Hard disk drive technology continues its inevitable march toward greater areal densities, and hybrid drives are being purchased in greater numbers. Hewlett-Packard is busy at work on a new type of storage, one based on fancy little things calledmemristors, which may hit the market in the mid-term.

There’s a lot happening with solid state storage, and a lot more set to happen—but some serious problems need to be solved first.
via Read More → "The future of flash memory: tiny (and extremely tough to build)"

Scientists have discovered a new molecule that will make your teeth cavityproof and may change dental care forever. They have appropriately named it Keep 32—for your 32 teeth—and it can kill the bacteria that produces cavities in 60 seconds flat.

José Córdoba—a researcher at Yale University—and Erich Astudillo—from the Universidad de Santiago, Chile—claim that this molecule can be added to any dental care product, from toothpaste to mouthwash. In fact, they say it can be added to … Read More → "Scientists find molecule that will make your teeth cavityproof"

A number of Caenorhabditis elegans worms were carried aboard a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) and brought back for study.

Researchers found reduced activity of five genes in the worms that, when suppressed in the species on Earth, lead to longer lifetimes.

The work appears in Scientific Reports.

The nematode C. elegans& … Read More → "Study shows space travel may slow aging process"