If a friend told you he was off to take a dip in Baltimore’s Harbor, you’d probably be concerned for his health and sanity. But five years from now, swimming in Baltimore’s waterways might not sound so crazy—and there’s an innovative piece of technology to thank. Read more…
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Baltimore’s Stealthy Plan to Make Its Harbor Swimmable By 2020
Science_afficionado writes: A lot of attempts have been made to use nanocrystals to improve battery performance, but the results have been disappointing. The problem is that when the size of the crystals drop below a certain size they begin to react chemically with the electrolytes which prevents them from recharging. Now, however, a team of engineers from Vanderbilt University report in an article published in the journal ACS Nano that they can overcome this problem by making the nanocrystals out of iron pyrite, commonly known as fool’s gold. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Quantum Dots Made From Fool’s Gold Boost Battery Performance
It wasn’t too long ago that we put the major mobile operating systems head to head, but with big updates from both Google and Apple in the meantime, we think it’s worth another look at where they both stand. Is there a clear winner? Or are they barely distinguishable any more? Read more…
Conservationists working at the University of Virginia’s Rotunda have inadvertently uncovered a chemical hearth designed by Thomas Jefferson. The discovery is offering fresh insights into how chemistry was taught over 200 years ago. Read more…
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Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Chemistry Lab Found Hidden Behind Wall
There have long been rumors, leaks, and statements about the NSA “breaking” crypto that is widely believed to be unbreakable, and over the years, there’s been mounting evidence that in many cases, they can do just that. Now, Alex Halderman and Nadia Heninger, along with a dozen eminent cryptographers have presented a paper at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (a paper that won the ACM’s prize for best paper at the conference) that advances a plausible theory as to what’s going on. In some ways, it’s very simple — but it’s also very, very dangerous, for all of us. (more…)
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The NSA sure breaks a lot of "unbreakable" crypto. This is probably how they do it.
the_newsbeagle writes: Parsing the first human genome took a decade, but times have changed. Now, within 26 hours, doctors can scan a sick baby’s entire genome and analyze the resulting list of mutations to produce a diagnosis. Since genetic diseases are the top cause of death for infants (abstract), rapidly diagnosing a rare genetic disease can be life-saving. The 26-hour pipeline results from automated technologies that handle everything from the genome sequencing to the diagnosis, says the doctor involved: “We want to take humans out of the equation, because we’re the bottleneck.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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In 26 Hours, Sick Newborns Go From Genome Scan To Diagnosis
More than 50 items have been recovered at the site of the ancient Greek shipwreck that yielded the famous Antikythera mechanism. Working at a depth of 180 feet (55 meters), archaeologists managed to pull up the remains of a bone flute, glassware, luxury ceramics, and a bronze armrest. Read more…
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Dozens of Cool Artifacts Recovered From the Antikythera Shipwreck
An artist’s rendering of HELLADS, a General Atomics-built laser weapon now in ground testing. Air Force leaders say a laser pod based on the technology could be aboard fighter aircraft within five years. DARPA Sometime very soon, combat aircraft may be zapping threats out of the sky with laser weapons. “I believe we’ll have a directed energy pod we can put on a fighter plane very soon,” Air Force General Hawk Carlisle said at this week’s Air Force Association Air & Space conference in a presentation on what he called Fifth-Generation Warfare. “That day is a lot closer than I think a lot of people think it is.” Some low-power laser weapons were on display in mock-up on the exposition floor of the conference, including a system from General Atomics that could be mounted on unmanned aircraft such as the Predator and Reaper drones flown by the Air Force. But the Air Force is looking for something akin to a laser cannon for fighter aircraft, more powerful systems that could be mounted on fighters and other manned Air Force planes within the next five years, Air Force leaders said. Directed-energy weapons pods could be affixed to aircraft to destroy or disable incoming missiles, drones, and even enemy aircraft at a much lower “cost per shot” than missiles or even guns, Carlisle suggested. The Air Force isn’t alone in seeking directed energy weapons. The US Navy has already deployed a laser weapon at sea aboard the USS Ponce, capable of a range of attacks against small boats, drones, and light aircraft posing a threat—either by blinding their sensors or operators, or heating elements to make them fail or explode. Other laser weapons are also being tested by the Office of Naval Research for use on helicopters to protect against man-portable antiaircraft missiles. (And there’s a railgun , but that’s not really a directed=energy weapon, and it’s too massive to be mounted on an aircraft). Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Air Force fighters will carry Laser cannons, cyber weapons by 2020
It may have come to your attention that there’s a fresh version of iOS in town. But aside from a font change, what’s different about this new edition of Apple’s mobile OS? To help you navigate around iOS 9, we’ve listed all the tricks that it can do that were beyond the capabilities of iOS 8. Read more…
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23 Things You Can Do in iOS 9 That You Couldn’t Do in iOS 8
400: That’s about how many years old Japan’s Hirosaki Castle is. It’s also how many tons it weighs. And yet it was successfully lifted two feet in the air and 230 feet down the road. Read more…
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Here’s How You Move a 400-Ton, 404-Year-Old Japanese Castle