Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art When ancient Egyptians play Dungeons & Dragons with this D20 die above, we betcha they played with real dungeons! The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a nifty collection of the Ptolemaic Period (304 – 30 B.C.) dice, carved out of serpentinite rock: Link – via CNET’s Crave
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Ancient Egyptian D20 Die
That hourglass-shaped device is the PowerPac, an energy storage device meant to be powered by a human on a stationary bicycle. Conceived of by South African design firm Ideso , the PowerPac won a Red Dot Design Award in the “Best of the Best” category. “Our aim was to create an aesthetically pleasing, user-friendly and functional design that marries the fluidity of cycling with dynamic power generation,” says Ideso MD, Marc Ruwiel. “It can be used by avid cyclists who can reduce CO2 emissions and generate their own electrical power, while enjoying a good workout at home.” I’m all for people-powered electricity generators, and I would’ve loved to have one of these during the recent blackout, but something struck me in the copy: “…An average cyclist could fully charge the battery from empty with 80 minutes of cycling and 132Wh of charge/potential energy can be stored in the battery.” The “Wh” designation stands for watt-hour , and “132Wh” means you could power a 132-watt device for 1 hour. For 80 minutes of cycling to yield, say, just over two hours of light from a 60-watt bulb sounds like a low yield, doesn’t it? My first thought was, can that be right? I did a little digging, and here’s what I found. It turns out hooking a bicycle up to something that directly powers a mechanical device is a fairly efficient way to generate energy. Rig a bicycle up to drive a sewing machine or a hand mixer and you get decent bang for your buck. But the second you get batteries and electricity involved, the efficiency drops way, way off. An article in Low-tech Magazine called ” Bike powered electricity generators are not sustainable ” explains why: …Generating electricity is far from the most efficient way to apply pedal power, due to the internal energy losses in the battery, the battery management system, other electronic parts, and the motor/generator. These energy losses add up quickly: 10 to 35 percent in the battery, 10 to 20 percent in the motor/generator and 5 to 15 percent in the converter (which converts direct current to alternate current). The energy loss in the voltage regulator (or DC to DC converter, which prevents you from blowing up the battery) is about 25 percent. This means that the total energy loss in a pedal powered generator will be 42 to 67.5 percent…. And it even turns out that the bicycle itself has mechanical inefficiencies that suck up more energy: (more…)
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Surprising News About Bicycle-Powered Electricity Generators
ax2groin On Tuesday, voters in California overwhelmingly approved Proposition 35, which ratcheted up penalties for those convicted of sex crimes, including human trafficking. The proposition included a provision requiring registered sex offenders to disclose to law enforcement all of their Internet connections and online identities. On Wednesday, two of the 73,900 registered sex offenders in the state who would be affected by the law filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of these provisions. The two plaintiffs argued that forcing them to expose their online identities would violate their First Amendment right to speak anonymously. Their appeal is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Late on Wednesday, Judge Thelton Henderson granted a temporary restraining order barring the law from going into effect until he had time to consider the plaintiffs’ constitutional arguments. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Judge blocks California’s new ban on anonymity for sex offenders
astroengine writes “The family of planets circling a relatively close dwarf star has grown to six, including a potential rocky world at least seven times more massive than Earth that is properly located for liquid water to exist on its surface, a condition believed to be necessary for life. Scientists added three new planets to three discovered in 2008 orbiting an orange star called HD 40307, which is roughly three-quarters as massive as the sun and located about 42 light-years away in the constellation Pictor. Of particular interest is the outermost planet, which is believed to fly around its parent star over 320 days, a distance that places it within HD 40307’s so-called “habitable zone.”” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
While ” ultrawidescreen ” 21:9 aspect ratio HDTVs haven’t taken off despite several attempts, LG is bringing the formfactor to the desktop with its new EA93 UltraWide LCD monitor. Measuring at 29-inches with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,080, it uses the extra horizontal space to display not just cinema-style movies, but also side by side video from different sources or up to four different views at once thanks to its built-in software. For connections, it has DVI Dual Link, DisplayPort, or HDMI with MHL support. We got an eyeful of the monitor at IFA earlier this year and you can check out our hands-on video after the break, or take a quick Korean vacation to snag one for 690,000 won ($633) before they go on sale everywhere else later in the year — pricing elsewhere has not yet been announced. Gallery: LG 21:9 EA93 29-inch LCD hands-on Continue reading LG’s 29-inch EA93 is the world’s first 21:9 ultrawidescreen monitor, launches this month in Korea Filed under: Displays , LG LG’s 29-inch EA93 is the world’s first 21:9 ultrawidescreen monitor, launches this month in Korea originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Nov 2012 23:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | LG Korea | Email this | Comments
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LG’s 29-inch EA93 is the world’s first 21:9 ultrawidescreen monitor, launches this month in Korea
The Japanese military invaded American soil in 1942 when a force of 500 men overtook the Aleutian Islands of Attu and Kiska in Alaska. They captured a Navy weather crew stationed there and occupied the islands, which are the westernmost parts of the USA. It is now known as The Forgotten Battle but the invasion caused widespread outrage in 1942. Pearl Harbor was still a fresh memory, having been attacked on December 7 of the previous year. Now, a Japanese military force had stepped foot on American soil – and the 500 had grown to over 5,000 men. Although Kiska and neighboring Attu (which had been overrun two days previously) were part of the distant Aleutian Islands they were, nevertheless, American. Plans were immediately drawn up to retake the island, known as the Aleutian Campaign. The campaign would not succeed for over a year and would claim many American lives. Today, Kiska is a National Historic Landmark, and abandoned vehicles, weapons, and ordnance still litter the island. Signs warn of unexploded bombs and other hazards. Read about the Aleutian Campaign and see pictures of Kiska from both World War II and today at Kuriositas. Link -via the Presurfer (Image credit: Flickr user Buzz Hoffman )
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The Japanese Invasion of Alaska
The Royal Society, along with the Academy of Medical Sciences, British Academy, and Royal Academy of Engineering, recently concluded a workshop called Human Enhancement and the Future of Work in which they considered the growing impact and potential risks of augmentation technologies. In their final report , the collaborative team of scientists and ethicists raised serious concerns about the burgeoning trend, and how humanity is moving from a model of therapy to one in which human capacities are greatly improved. The implications, they concluded, should be part of a much wider public discussion. More »
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Scientists raise the alarm on human enhancement technologies
Owners of @me.com and @mac.com e-mail addresses—relics of Apple’s past attempts at offering cloud services—now own an @icloud address too. The company began sending out e-mails to those who have accounts on the old domains on Tuesday, letting them know they can now take advantage of Apple’s latest e-mail service in the form of iCloud. But worry not: if you’ve been using your old addresses but moved your account to iCloud earlier this year, you’ll still be able to keep using them (whether or not you choose to use the new @icloud.com address). The move was foreshadowed earlier this year as part of an iOS 6 prerelease beta to developers. In the iOS 6 Beta 3 changelog, Apple stated those signing up for new Apple IDs, as well as those enabling Mail on iCloud for the first time, would automatically receive an @icloud.com address. But if you had an existing @me.com address from the MobileMe days, or even a @mac.com address from the .Mac days, you would receive an iCloud address that matched the username you previously had. That appears to be the case now with Apple alerting users to the change. As pointed out by our friends at TidBITS , there’s no difference in implementation—if you want to make use of the new address, you just have to add it to your mail client. If you don’t want to use the new address, however, you don’t have to. You can stick to the old ones, as long as you weren’t one of the stubborn few who didn’t move your MobileMe account to iCloud before the beginning of August. Read on Ars Technica | Comments
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Apple’s @me and @mac e-mail users now have @icloud, too
Every one of the modern US Navy’s 129 ships, and its entire fleet of aircraft, relies on gas turbines for either basic propulsion or to generate electricity for their critical systems—typically both. But as fuel costs continue to rise, these turbines now burn through nearly $2 billion of fuel annually. That’s why the Naval Research Lab is developing a revolutionary new type of engine that could reduce our armada’s energy consumption by as much as 25 percent (and save $400 million a year) even as the Navy transitions to “all electric” propulsion systems. More »
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US Warships Could Soon Run on Detonated Waves
AT&T has announced that it will be dropping a cool $14 billion over the next three years or so to beef up its wireless and wireline broadband networks. Project Velocity IP (VIP) will see the company boost its 4G LTE network to 300 million users by year-end 2014 and expand its wired IP broadband base to 75 percent of customer locations by the end of 2015. In addition, the operator intends to have fiber deployed to a million business locations and plans to expand U-verse by 8.5 million users to 33 million customer locations. It predicts that 99 percent of customers will get broadband services either through terrestrial IP or wireless 4G LTE when it’s all said and done. $8 billion will go toward wireless projects, while $6 billion will help goose up wired broadband — so, nobody can say the telecom giant is hoarding all those profits . Check the PR after the jump for a full breakdown. Continue reading AT&T to spend $14 billion over the next three years on broadband, wireless infrastructure Filed under: Wireless , Internet , AT&T AT&T to spend $14 billion over the next three years on broadband, wireless infrastructure originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Nov 2012 09:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | AT&T | Email this | Comments
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AT&T to spend $14 billion over the next three years on broadband, wireless infrastructure