Dave Johnson’s Buckyball-Moving Magnet Machine

Call me a hypocrite, but while I’m disdainful of Design for the Sake of Design, I’m all for Mechanical Engineering for the Sake of Mechanical Engineering. Dave Johnson’s self-built Magnet Machine sends Buckyballs on a little journey with no purpose, but does demonstrate some cool bits of electromagnetic science:

This machine manipulates small spherical rare earth magnets, slicing one at a time from the end of a long chain, moving it around a bit, then dropping it back to re-connect at the tail end of the chain.

It also demonstrates a little snippet of science called eddy currents. Watch how slowly the magnet falls through the aluminum tube compared to falling through air: the falling magnet generates an electrical current in the tube, and that current in turn generates a magnetic field that opposes the movement of the magnet, slowing it down dramatically.

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Dave Johnson’s Buckyball-Moving Magnet Machine

Swedish University Testing Wheelchair That Maps Its Surroundings

Back in March, we saw a project using a head-mounted Kinect to sense and alert the user to obstacles in their path. Researchers at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden are working on a similar system, but building it into a wheelchair.

It was tested this week by a grad student hopeful who is himself visually impaired, and he pronounced it solid. The system looks quite bulky, however, and is limited to detecting objects within a narrow plane, so it wouldn’t pick up, say, a curb or overhang.

Still, it’s interesting research, and could be the start of a new kind of intelligent wheelchair that could let blind and partially sighted people get around their homes a bit easier.

[via Gizmag]

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Swedish University Testing Wheelchair That Maps Its Surroundings

Study finds Netflix is the largest source of internet traffic in North America

In your daily Netflix news, the latest report on Global Internet Phenomena for spring 2011 from Sandvine has called out the movie service as the largest single consumer of bandwidth on the internet in North America. The last report in October suggested it made up around twenty percent of internet traffic during prime time, but this time around the stats say it accounts for 30% of traffic during prime time, and 22.2% of daily internet traffic. Sandvine gets the data from ISPs using its broadband technology and now foresees “Real-Time Entertainment” (which includes Netflix) shooting up over 55% of peak internet traffic by the end of this year. It also reports on net traffic from other regions, noting social networking outpaces YouTube traffic in Latin America, while European subscribers use twice as much data as North Americans. We’ll have to wait and see if these stats are waved in our faces to justify the next round of bandwidth caps or throttling, in the meantime you can click through for more stats or hear about it from Sandvine CEO Dave Caputo discuss them in a video embedded after the break.

Continue reading Study finds Netflix is the largest source of internet traffic in North America

Study finds Netflix is the largest source of internet traffic in North America originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 May 2011 14:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How Many Hours of Sleep Do You Really Need? [Sleep]

The general rule of thumb for what counts as a full night’s sleep has been eight hours for as long as anyone can remember, but it’s not an arbitrary number at all. Two studies, one at the University of Pennsylvania and the other at the Walter Reed Research Institute, tested dozens of sleepers and found that sleeping even seven hours a night will slowly add up to a costly sleep debt. More

Yale opens up image library, starts with 250,000 free images


Yale is making high-resolution images from its cultural collections available on a free, open access basis. They’ve started by uploading 250,000 images, with lots more to follow. The collection includes “a small limestone stela with hieroglyphic inscription from the Peabody Museum of Natural History, a Mozart sonata in the composer’s own hand from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, a 15th-century Javanese gold kris handle from the Indo-Pacific collection of Yale University Art Gallery and a watercolor by William Blake.”

As works in these collections become digitized, the museums and libraries will make those images that are in the public domain freely accessible. In a departure from established convention, no license will be required for the transmission of the images and no limitations will be imposed on their use. The result is that scholars, artists, students, and citizens the world over will be able to use these collections for study, publication, teaching and inspiration.

Digital Images of Yale’s Vast Cultural Collections Now Available for Free

(via MeFi)


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Yale opens up image library, starts with 250,000 free images

Mizzou Professor says nantenna solar sheet soaks up 90 percent of the sun’s rays, puts sunscreen to shame

Photovoltaics suffer from gross inefficiency, despite incremental improvements in their power producing capabilities. According to research by a team led by a University of Missouri professor, however, newly developed nantenna-equipped solar sheets can reap more than 90 percent of the sun’s bounty — which is more than double the efficiency of existing solar technologies. Apparently, some “special high-speed electrical circuitry” is the secret sauce behind the solar breakthrough. Of course, the flexible film is currently a flight of fancy and won’t be generating juice for the public anytime soon. The professor and his pals still need capital for commercialization, but they believe a product will be ready within five years. Take your time, guys, it’s not like global warming’s getting worse.

[Image source: Idaho National Laboratory (PDF)]

Mizzou Professor says nantenna solar sheet soaks up 90 percent of the sun’s rays, puts sunscreen to shame originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 May 2011 07:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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