Minute Physics has a knack for explaining complicated scientific ideas and principles in a way that the average YouTube viewer can comprehend. Even when they tackle rocket science, a term synonymous with complicated physics, math, and equations.
via Gizmodo
… Read More → "Rocket science explained for non-rocket scientists"
The rise of sensors, surveillance cameras, and other automated devices can be seen in a new analysis of Internet traffic.
As one of the leading manufacturers of the equipment that routes data around the Internet, Cisco Systems is in good position to know just how many 0s and 1s go zipping around all day, every day. Today it released an annual analysis of how much Internet usage is growing on mobile devices, and the report produced some staggering numbers.
via Read More → "The machines are talking a lot"
You’ve already seen it unboxed on board the International Space Station, and now you can watch as the crew of the ISS activates Robotnaut 2 and begins to put it through its paces. The robot was turned on just before eleven o’clock Eastern, but there’s still plenty more to see — head on past the break for the live stream. Naturally, you can also keep up with the robot’s progress on its Twitter feed.
via Read More → "NASA activates Robotnaut 2 on board the ISS and you can watch it live"
One way to find out what skills will be in highest demand this year is to look at job posts.
I decided to analyze recent Craigslist San Francisco Bay Area job ads. It’s a good proxy for the local demand. The Bay Area is often a trend setter, and technologies that become popular here frequently gain broader adoption. So the findings can also be viewed as a leading indicator for other geographies.
via Bob Tekiela at Venture Beat
< … Read More → "And the most in-demand tech skills of 2012 are …"
That squishy dollop of brilliance that is the jamming robot gripper has learned a new trick: roboticists at Cornell and the University of Chicago have taught it to throw stuff.
Just as a quick refresher, all the gripper is, is a latex balloon filled with coffee grounds. The grounds move around each other like grains of sand and can conform to objects and complex surfaces, but when air is pumped out of … Read More → "Jamming robot gripper learns to throw stuff"
One of the most mind-blowing areas of quantum mechanics is entanglement: two or more particles separated in space can have physical properties that are correlated. A measurement performed on one particle will tell us the result of the same measurement taken on an entangled particle. Entanglement is important but difficult to study, both in terms of a theoretical understanding and doing experiments. While creating entangling relatively small groups of particles has been accomplished several … Read More → "A Schrödinger cat with eight lives: quantum entanglement of eight photons"
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the world’s top-rated universities, has announced its first free course which can be studied and assessed completely online.
An electronics course, beginning in March, will be the first prototype of an online project, known as MITx.
The interactive course is designed to be fully automated, with successful students receiving a certificate.
The US university says it wants MITx to “shatter barriers to education”.
via BBC</ … Read More → "MIT launches free online ‘fully automated’ course"
It’s the end of another era at NASA, although this one was perhaps more inevitable than others. Chief Information Officer Linda Cureton announced in a blog post over the weekend that the agency’s last mainframe computer was shut down this month, marking an end to decades of room-filling computers.
via engadget
Read More → "NASA pulls the plug on the mainframe computer era"
Demos, talks and a paper-plate dinner buffet were the fare last Friday evening at the Computer Museum in Mountain View, Calif., and the subject was the high-tech future of health care. The gathering was hosted by FutureMed, a health-care program that is part of Singularity University, a networked organization dedicated to exploring how disruptive technologies can sweep across whole industries and society.
The technologies on display were impressive, often inspiring — like the wearable-robots, or mechanical exoskeletons, made by Ekso Bionics, to enable people with spinal cord injuries to walk again; or I.B.M.’ … Read More → "The future of high-tech health care — and the challenge"
Excavating a basement using professional machinery is nothing new but doing it with radio controlled (RC) scaled models is something unheard of. Welcome to the little big world of Joe, from Saskatchewan, Canada.
For the past 7 years (!), Joe has been digging out his basement at an average annual rate of 8 to 9 cubic feet … Read More → "Canadian digs out basement using only radio controlled scale tractors and trucks…since 2005"
