Last year Edinburgh University got a new pool. But it wasn’t for the co-eds to take dips in; the circular 30-meter tank is ringed with 168 controllable paddles, enabling the precise creation of waves, choppy sea patterns, and even waterspouts. Check out the craziness: The tank calls the FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility its home, and it can mimic a variety of ocean conditions. An overhead crane can drop scale models of seagoing vessels into the pool, allowing researchers to see how it behaves in say, an Atlantic swell, or if it is struck by a (scaled) 28-meter wave. And in addition to the paddles, there are submerged “flow-drive units” that can create current beneath the surface. Working in concert, the systems provide “unrivalled control and repeatability, ” allowing developers of watercraft and submersibles to refine their designs based on real-world testing. To be able to create repeatable waves is vital for testing seacraft. But the same type of science may also be valuable for a very different kind of “testing;” the athletic trials of the Olympics. As adventure sports website The Inertia points out: In the past, surfing has been the red-headed step child of the Olympics because of the obvious reasons: contestable surf in many of the locations set for Games just isn’t there…. But with the advances in wave pool technology snowballing in the last few years, there is a very real possibility of surfing becoming something else entirely: an Olympic sport held outside the ocean in waves that are exactly the same every time–which is exactly what is needed for surfing to be properly judged. If Olympic surfing happens, the organization supplying the waves will probably be Webber Wave Pools . Illustration by Paul Roget Illustration by Paul Roget The company’s donut-shaped design allows for constantly-breaking waves that circle the tank endlessly. Illustration by Paul Roget Illustration by Paul Roget Illustration by Paul Roget And the wave generators of course offer precise control. Working in concert, they can deliver “a stunning 2, 500 waves per hour, ” the company says, and they reckon that will be the key to making the pools profitable: Only with a massive wave rate can huge numbers of surfers be fulfilled. Graduate the wave shape and size from the softest easiest beginner waves to the most demanding piping barrels, and you will not just fulfil thousand of surfers but you will totally stoke that same number.
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Circular Wave Pools for Research—and Maybe Olympic Surfing
Today at Microsoft Ignite, the company released a preview of Office 2016. The preview is free for Office 365 users, and a trial is available to everyone else. The new suite can edit or attach files directly from OneDrive. You can also try out collaborative editing in Word 2016, allowing you to edit documents others are working in simultaneously using every version of the application, including Word on the desktop. Read more here or get started downloading the preview here . Read more… 
Here’s a fun video showing the rainbow of colors that anodized titanium can become. There are blues and purples and gold and it all changes so fast. It’s basically magic (or science!) that just applying voltage to a piece of titanium in an electrolytic bath can transform the color completely. Read more… 
We asked for your worst stories of working IT phone support — and boy, did you ever answer our call. You have the patience of saints and the fortitude of soldiers. We’ll never look at a phone the same way again. Read more… 
ememisya writes: I wonder if I posted, “There will be another 12/7 tomorrow, just a warning.” around December, would people associate it with Pearl Harbor and I would find myself arrested, or has enough time passed for people to not look at the numbers 12 and 7 and take a knee jerk reaction? A student was arrested for “Harassment by Computer” (a class 1 misdemeanor in the state of Virginia) due to his post on an “anonymous” website [Yik Yak]. Although the post in and of itself doesn’t mean anything to most people in the nation, it managed to scare enough people locally for law enforcement agencies to issue a warrant for his arrest. “Moon, a 21-year-old senior majoring in business information technology, is being charged with Harassment by Computer, which is a class one misdemeanor. Tuesday night, April 28, a threat to the Virginia Tech community was posted on the anonymous social media app Yik Yak. Around 11:15 p.m., an unknown user posted ‘Another 4.16 moment is going to happen tomorrow. Just a warning (sic).’ The Virginia Tech Police Department released a crime alert statement Wednesday morning via email informing students that VTPD was conducting an investigation throughout the night in conjunction with the Blacksburg Police Department.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Ubiquitous in many classrooms since the 19th century, chalk and chalkboards are familiar to most of us. White, powdery and prone to sticking to those surfaces where it is put (and just as easy to wipe away), chalk and its accompanying board are excellent instructional aids. Notably, however, most chalk today isn’t technically chalk at all, but gypsum. Read more… 
This is the Fourier Transform. You can thank it for providing the music you stream every day, squeezing down the images you see on the Internet into tiny little JPG files, and even powering your noise-canceling headphones. Here’s how it works. Read more… 