If NASA can put a man on the moon, rest confidently they can plan an elaborate sting to nab a moon rock thief. NASA recently managed to outwit the 74 year-old grandmother who was attempting to sell a piece of Apollo-era moon rock about the size of a grain of rice for approximately $1.7 million dollars. via Dvice
China has already, however briefly, sat atop the Top500 list of supercomputers, but that was using silicon designed by American companies like Intel and NVIDIA. The country’s latest contestant though, is sure to be a much bigger point of national pride. The Sunway BlueLight MPP, which was installed at the National Supercomputer Center in Jinan this September, is powered by 8,700 ShenWei SW1600 CPUs — the homegrown chips that come out of Shanghai. via Read More → "China debuts homegrown supercomputer, hits one petaflop mark"
Interesting article in the NY Times on New York City’s foremost seller and repairer of radio scanners:
Mr. Guggenheim is perhaps the city’s foremost seller and fixer of radio scanners, which monitor frequencies used by emergency responders like police officers and firefighters. This makes it the go-to place for spot-news photographers, tow-truck drivers, … Read More → "Character study: Peter Guggenheim’s Life of Fixing Radio Scanners"
Cloud computing is one of the hottest buzzwords in technology. It appears 48 million times on the Internet. But amidst all the chatter, there is one question about cloud computing that has never been answered: Who said it first?
Some accounts trace the birth of the term to 2006, when large companies such as Google and Amazon began using “cloud computing” to describe the new paradigm in which people are increasingly accessing software, computer power, and files over the Web instead of on their desktops.
But Technology Review … Read More → "Who coined the term ‘cloud computing’?"
Researchers have successfully tested the abilities of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) to function as a so called “magnetic tongue”. Antonio Randazzo, Anders Malmendal, Ettoro Novellino and their team reported their findings in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Sensing the smell and flavor of food is a very complex physiological and cognitive process. A food’s components and the taster’s … Read More → "Artificial tongue distinguishes 18 different types of canned tomato"
General Motors will become the first American automotive manufacturer to build its own electric motors when production begins in White Marsh, Md., in late 2012. In promoting this capability, GM has released details of the first motor to be built there, the 85 kW (114 hp) permanent magnet motor to be used in the 2013 Chevrolet Spark EV. via Gizmag
< … Read More → "Stanford software that models human motion travels to museum"There are 640 muscles in the human body, or maybe it is 639. Or maybe it is 850. Or 656. It all depends on whom you ask. In any case, it is a lot. Stanford bioengineer Scott Delp knows; he has programmed almost every one into his latest work, OpenSim, a software application that helps medical professionals and bioengineers study, diagnose and correct abnormalities in how people move. via Stanford University
The merging of two technologies under development – plasmonics and nanophotonics – is promising the emergence of new “quantum information systems” far more powerful than today’s computers.
The technology hinges on using single photons – the tiny particles that make up light – for switching and routing in future computers that might harness the exotic principles of quantum mechanics. via Purdue Newsroom
Read More → "New hybrid technology could bring ‘quantum information systems’"
When Popular Mechanics visited the set of Real Steel—which takes place in a not-too-distant future where robots face off in the boxing ring—leading man Hugh Jackman asked us, “Will robots really be this advanced in 10 years?” We had a partial answer: The film, out Oct. 7, touches on current and developing robot technologies, but bot boxing would require major advances. Still, Jackman’s curiosity prompted us to dig deeper. via Popular Mechanics
This is a scanning electron micrograph image of a 3.8-micron diameter carbon nanotube yarn that functions as a torsional muscle when filled with an ionically conducting liquid and electrochemically charged. The angle indicates the deviation between nanotube orientation and yarn direction for this helical yarn. (Image courtesy of the University of Texas at Dallas)
New artificial muscles that twist like the trunk of an elephant, but provide a thousand times higher rotation … Read More → "Carbon nanotube muscles generate giant twist for novel motors"
