Tag: loading-chartbeat

Army and Air Force team up for laser-based landmine sweepers

Used to be that if the US military wanted to clear a roadway, runway or airfield of deadly IEDs (improvised explosive devices), they’d have to send in highly-trained and heavily armored explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) teams a la ” The Hurt Locker. ” Problem is, this method is as ploddingly slow as it is dangerous to the servicemen and women involved. That’s is why the Army and Air Force are teaming up to burn those IEDs clean out of the Earth using lasers mounted on MRAP battle trucks . The technology is called the Recovery of Airbase Denied by Ordinance (RADBO) and was developed through the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center Prototype Integration Facility (AMRDEC PIF) at the Redstone Test Center in Huntsville, AL. It mounts an Air Force-built laser (similar to what’s used in the HEL-MD ) and a dexterous manipulator arm onto the Army’s Cougar I MRAP . That way, EOD crews won’t even have to leave the comfort of the cab to disable roadside bombs. The laser can reportedly fry an IED from 300 meters away while the manipulator arm can rip up to 50 pounds of disabled bomb out of the ground at a time. “We may see hundreds to thousands of small unexploded ordnance items on a runway or airfield but the RADBO will allow us to reduce the time it takes to get an airfield operational, ” Marshall “Doc” Dutton, Air Force EOD modernization program manager of the Air Force Civil Engineer Center said in a statement. “Currently, if a runway gets hit it can take days to weeks to get cleared. With the RADBO, runways can be cleared and operational at a much quicker pace.” The system is currently undergoing munitions testing before moving to Tyndall Air Force Base in September, though there’s no word on when it will actually begin active service. Filed under: Science Comments Source: US Army

Read the original post:
Army and Air Force team up for laser-based landmine sweepers

The US military is developing Star Wars-style hoverbikes

Last time we heard from Malloy Aeronautics, it was testing hoverbike technology with a robot-carrying drone . A few months later, it’s partnering with a Maryland-based defense company to develop a hoverbike for the US military . Working with Survice Engineering Co., the UK aeronautics company will set up shop in Maryland as part of “an ongoing research and development contract.” The duo will also work with the US Army Research Laboratory on the project that aims to create “a new class of Tactical Reconnaissance Vehicle (TRV).” The goal is to replace some of the work a helicopter does with the hoverbikes, a vehicle that provides increased safety and costs significantly less. “With adducted rotors you immediately not only protect people and property if you were to bump into them, but if you ever were to bump into somebody or property it’s going to bring the aircraft out of the air, ” Malloy’s marketing sales director Grant Stapleton told Reuters . Funds from a Kickstarter campaign for those compact UAVs was used to build scale models capable of carrying a human — one of which was on display at the Paris Air Show. [Image credit: Malloy Aeronautics] Filed under: Transportation Comments Via: Reuters Source: Malloy Aeronautics

Visit link:
The US military is developing Star Wars-style hoverbikes

NASA mission sends back fuzzy, color ‘movies’ of Pluto

Sure, Pluto doesn’t have full-fledged planetary status anymore, but we’re still excited to get some pictures from the edge of the Solar System . The New Horizons spacecraft is carrying a “Multicolor Visible Imaging Camera” that takes stills in blue, red, and near-infrared, then puts them together for a color picture. It took a series of pictures between May 29th and June 3rd that show the dwarf planet and its largest moon, Charon revolving around their shared center of gravity. The mission will make its closest approach to Pluto on July 14th when it gets about 7, 800 miles above the surface (shown above in an artist rendering). You can check out the low-res animation after the break, and mark your calendar for the better look that’s just 24 days away. New images from @NASANewHorizons show Pluto and its moon Charon, now in color: http://t.co/yp6BZOrXmU pic.twitter.com/sCiFKTsa35 – NASA (@NASA) June 19, 2015 Filed under: Science Comments Source: NASA , New Horizons Mission

See more here:
NASA mission sends back fuzzy, color ‘movies’ of Pluto

The world’s thinnest light bulb is made from graphene

Forget LED light bulbs… in the future, your lighting may be made from carbon . Columbia University researchers have built a light bulb chip that superheats graphene to produce illumination. While that’s the same basic concept that you see in an incandescent bulb, the graphene filament measures just one atom thick — this is the world’s thinnest light bulb, and may be close to being the thinnest possible . It’s transparent, too, which could suit it to see-through displays . The technology should have uses beyond lighting things up, too. Generating this kind of heat on a small scale could lead to “micro-hotplates” that heat up chemicals for the sake of studying chemical reactions. Also, creating light at this scale is key to developing photonic processors that are much faster than conventional chips. The light will need to switch on and off much faster for any computing uses, but it’s a realistic possibility. [Image credit: Myung-Ho Bae/KRISS] Filed under: Displays , Household , Science Comments Source: Columbia University , Nature

Visit link:
The world’s thinnest light bulb is made from graphene

Rearranging jellyfish limbs may lead to self-healing robots

Normally when a jellyfish loses a limb, say to the jaws of a hungry sea turtle, it simply regenerates the lost appendage, no big deal. However, a Caltech research team has been studying a certain jellyfish species that doesn’t regrow its limbs but rather rearranges the remaining ones to maintain symmetry. They think that this body-modifying trick could one day help robots repair themselves after similar injuries. In a paper published June 15th in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the team described its work with the moon jellyfish. They amputated the various numbers of limbs from anesthetized jellies and then monitored their recovery. While the jellies healed in a couple of hours (as they normally do), the team noticed that rather than beginning to regrow their limbs the jellies instead shifted their remaining appendages around to restore their symmetry. What’s really wild is that mechanical forces created by the jelly’s own muscle contractions appear to be behind its reorganization. “This is a different strategy of self-repair, ” Caltech assistant professor of biology Lea Goentoro said in a statement. “Some animals just heal their wounds, other animals regenerate what is lost, but the moon jelly ephyrae [juveniles] don’t regenerate their lost limbs. They heal the wound, but then they reorganize to regain symmetry.” This discovery could lead to new advances in robotics . “Symmetrization may provide a new avenue for thinking about biomaterials that could be designed to ‘heal’ by regaining functional geometry rather than regenerating precise shapes, ” Goentoro continued. “Other self-repair mechanisms require cell proliferation and cell death-biological processes that aren’t easily translated to technology. But we can more easily apply mechanical forces to a material.” Soon, injured robots may not drag their broken limbs behind them like this little guy , but simply rearrange their other legs instead. [Image Credit: Getty Images/Vetta (top); Caltech (inline)] Filed under: Science Comments Source: Caltech

See more here:
Rearranging jellyfish limbs may lead to self-healing robots

Watch the first full-color HD videos of Earth from space

It’s no longer a challenge to get astonishingly sharp photos of the Earth from space, but video? That’s another matter. UrtheCast is about to open the floodgates, however. It just released the first batch of full-color, high-definition video of Earth recorded from the International Space Station. In many ways, the extremely sharp footage (with detail down to 3.3 feet) of Barcelona, Boston and London is like an internet mapping site come to life — all those pathways are suddenly full of moving boats and cars. The Iris imaging system that recorded these movies won’t be fully operational until the summer, but the preview suggests that its customers will get plenty of insights into traffic and other activity that’s harder to track from the ground. Filed under: Cameras Comments Source: UrtheCast

Follow this link:
Watch the first full-color HD videos of Earth from space

CloudPlayer streams your music from Dropbox and Google Drive

DoubleTwist has released a media player separate from its main product, and this one can stream music straight from various cloud services. Aptly named CloudPlayer, the app links to your Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive accounts all at once to access any music files you’ve uploaded. The company says it “created CloudPlayer to provide an alternative to crippled, proprietary cloud music lockers that impose painful restrictions on what you can do with the music you own.” Unlike other services (company co-founder Jon Lech Johansen specifically targets Google Play Music in his blog post), DoubleTwist claims CloudPlayer doesn’t have a download or a device restriction, and it supports lossless audio. You can also choose songs and playlists to save for offline playback on the app. Finally, the media player can stream music through Chromecast and AirPlay devices (such as Apple TV), though you’ll have to shell out $5 for the feature as an in-app purchase. Otherwise, the app is free and up right now on Google Play — DoubleTwist says it’s “launching on Android first, ” so the player might head to other platforms in the future. A quick glance at the early reviews, however, shows that it’s having issues detecting music from OneDrive. The company says it’s a “bug with Microsoft’s OneDrive API, ” and it’s already taking steps to fix the problem. Filed under: Misc , Mobile Comments Via: Jon Lech Johansen’s blog Source: doubleTwist

More:
CloudPlayer streams your music from Dropbox and Google Drive

Amazon’s delivery drones could be in the air within a year

Commercial drone operations like Amazon’s highly-touted delivery service could commence in about a year, according to a senior official from the Federal Aviation Administration. FAA Deputy Administrator Michael Whitaker told a congressional committee on Wednesday the necessary regulations for commercial UAVs to operate in public airspace will “be in place within a year.” That’s way shorter than the 2017 start date that the FAA originally figured on. And when the rules are finally settled on, Amazon will be ready. “We’d like to begin delivering to our customers as soon as it’s approved, ” Paul Misener, Amazon’s VP of global public policy, testified at the hearing. “We will have it (the technology) in place by the time any regulations are ready. We are working very quickly.” Amazon debuted the delivery drone idea way back in 2013 and began lobbying for FAA acceptance. This February, the FAA proposed that drones be allowed to operate only during daylight hours at a maximum height of 500 feet while staying within the pilot’s line of sight. However, since the regulations hadn’t been set in place at that point, Amazon had to take its initial flight tests to Canada . However, the FAA’s position has changed rapidly since March making it easier for companies to acquire operational permission and giving Amazon the ok to conduct drone tests ( in the continental US no less ). At this pace, the company may not need to move forward with its proposed crowdsourced delivery scheme . [Image Credit: Associated Press] Filed under: Amazon Comments Source: Reuters

See the article here:
Amazon’s delivery drones could be in the air within a year

California labor commission rules Uber drivers are employees

The California labor commission has ruled that an Uber driver qualifies as an employee, not a contractor, of the company. As a result Uber will have to reimburse a driver for expenses accumulated in the line of duty. That includes $256 in tolls and the IRS rate of $0.56 per mile for use of a personal vehicle for business purposes. But the total award of $4, 152.20 is not what scares the company, that’s pocket change seeing as how it was recently valued at roughly $50 billion . No, the king of cars-for-hire is afraid of the broader implications. If their current network of over one million drivers suddenly became employees, running the business could get a lot more expensive. For one, companies need to pay social security, payroll and medicare taxes for their employees. And it could have implications for the expectation of health or retirement benefits and even leave Uber vulnerable to renewed pressure from taxi unions . Of course, Uber is appealing the ruling and could keep this issue tied up in court for sometime. Plus, this ruling only applies in California for the time being, but it could be an omen of more trouble waiting on the horizon. [image credit: AP Photo/Eric Risberg] Filed under: Transportation Comments Via: Dan Levine (Twitter) Source: Uber vs. Berwick (scribd)

Taken from:
California labor commission rules Uber drivers are employees

Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite packs text that’s twice as sharp

Don’t want to shell out $199 for the Kindle Voyage just to get an Amazon-badged e-reader with extra-crisp visuals? You won’t have to after today. Amazon has launched an updated version of the Kindle Paperwhite whose e-paper display touts the same 300 pixels-per-inch density as the Voyage, giving you text that’s twice as sharp as on the last-generation model without paying extra for the privilege. You’ll accordingly get easier-to-read layouts (including Amazon’s in-house font, Bookerly) that take advantage of that slicker screen. The new Paperwhite will ship on June 30th for the same $119 (with ads) as its ancestor, which undercuts Kobo’s Glo HD and makes it the sweet spot in the Kindle line. Unless you really want the Voyage’s advanced light and touch sensors, this new mid-tier model will likely be enough. Filed under: Amazon Comments Source: Amazon

More:
Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite packs text that’s twice as sharp