In developing countries, an unbelievable 45% of food goes bad because of a lack of cold storage. It’s an especially big problem during transportation from farms to outdoor markets, where food sits in the scorching sun for hours on end. But one startup has a solution: solar-powered refrigeration stations that could save the livelihoods of half a billion farmers worldwide. Read more…
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In Nigeria, Solar-Powered Fridges at Outdoor Markets Save Food From Spoiling
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
Yesterday, we learned that Disney is adding some absolutely massive Star Wars expansions to their Florida and California parks . Now here’s a video showing the highlights of Bob Iger’s keynote speech—along with more concept art that wasn’t officially released. Read more…
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"We’re Creating A Jaw-Dropping New World": More Details About Disney’s Star Wars Land
A team of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology has built a new needle-like robot that can descend through ice-fields to explore the sea floor beneath —and this footage from Antarctica is the first footage it’s returned. Read more…
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A New Robot Provided These Unprecedented Views Beneath Antarctica
the_newsbeagle writes: Scientists are learning how to insert fake memories into the brain via precise electrical stimulation (abstract). In the latest experiment, they gave sleeping mice a synthetic memory that linked a particular location in a test chamber to a pleasurable sensation. (At least they gave the mice a nice memory.) The researchers first recorded the electrical signals from the mice’s brains while the mice were awake and exploring the test chamber, until the researchers identified patterns of activity associated with a certain location. Then, when the mice slept, the researchers watched for those neural patterns to be replayed, indicating that the mice were consolidating the memory of that location. At that moment, they zapped a reward center of the mice’s brains. When the mice awoke and went back into the chamber, they hung around that reward-associated location, presumably expecting a dose of feel-good. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Scientists Insert a Synthetic Memory Into the Brain of a Sleeping Mouse
In science fiction, people can set their laser guns to “Stun.” With a flick of a switch, Captain Kirk can opt to fire nonlethal rounds. Real-life police have no such option. While beanbag guns exist, it’s hardly practical for cops to carry both of them around, and they cannot be expected to know which one they’ll need at any given moment. As a result, when being approached by a threat who will not comply, their only option is to fire a lethal bullet at the target. An unnamed, retired sheriff found this problem vexing, and “did not like the fact that people were being shot when the officers do have time (to consider options) but they had no other option than lethal force, ” Christian Ellis told CNN. Ellis is the CEO of a company called Alternative Ballistics, and they have spent nearly a decade bringing that sheriff’s subsequent invention to market. What the sheriff came up with is a small product, called “The Alternative, ” that can be quickly snapped onto the end of a pistol. When he then pulls the trigger, the bullet slams into a larger projectile on the end of the barrel, with plenty ’nuff force to carry both of them to the target. But the larger secondary projectile slows the speed and spreads the force over a greater area—in other words, it does not penetrate. “It’s gonna feel like you had a professional baseball player hit you in the chest with a hammer, so it is going to hurt, ” Ellis explains. But the thinking is that you will survive, bullethole-free. Here’s how it works: Obviously testing will be needed, as there are many hurdles to clear: Realistically speaking, can an officer break this out in time? Is there room for yet another item to hang from an officer’s belt? How will the training be handled? So while we don’t say this is the magic bullet, if you’ll pardon the pun, to solve unnecessary shooting deaths, we do appreciate the fact that at least someone, somewhere is trying to apply design to the problem. Because we’re damn sure not able to work it out between us as humans.
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Ex-Sheriff Invents a Bullet-Dampening Device
When a franchise is around for four decades, it can get impossibly unwieldy to try and grasp its lore — and Star Wars canon is no exception. Here’s a guide to the origins of Star Wars Canon, the rise and fall of one of the most prominent Expanded Universes in fiction , and where the saga stands with Disney today. Read more…
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A Brief History Of Star Wars Canon, Old And New
New submitter Solandri writes: When Mt. Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, it destroyed a library of classical works in Herculaneum. The papyrus scrolls weren’t incinerated, but were instead carbonized by the hot gases. The resulting black carbon cylinders have mostly withstood attempts to read their contents since their discovery. Earlier attempts to unfurl the scrolls yielded some readable material, but were judged too destructive. Researchers decided to wait for newer technology to be invented that could read the scrolls without unrolling them. Now, a team led by Dr. Vito Mocella from the National Research Council’s Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems (CNR-IMM) in Naples, Italy has managed to read individual letters inside one of the scrolls. Using a form of x-ray phase contrast tomography (abstract), they were able to ascertain the height difference (about 0.1mm) between the ink of the letters and the papyrus fibers which they sat upon. Due to the fibrous nature of the papyrus and the carbon-based ink, regular spectral and chemical analysis had thus far been unable to distinguish the ink from the paper. Further complicating the work, the scrolls are not in neat cylinders, but squashed and ruffled as the hot gases vaporized water in the papyrus and distorted the paper. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Interior of Burnt Herculaneum Scroll Read For First Time
At one time when all you needed to connect was a couple of laptops, a cheap wireless router would more than suffice for most homes. But these days, when there’s everything from phones to tablets to TVs relying on your Wi-Fi network, it makes sense to splurge on your hardware. And D-Link’s new 11AC Ultra Performance Series routers promise speeds of up to 5.6 Gbps optimized for the myriad of different devices constantly hopping on and off your network. Read more…
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D-Link’s New Wi-Fi Routers Look Like Reverse-Engineered Alien Technology
Instead of waiting for the North American International Auto Show in Detroit next week to finally unveil what the new Chevy Volt looks like, General Motors pulled back the curtain on its new electric hybrid at CES just now. No details, no other specifics, just our first full look at the vehicle. Read more…
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The New Chevy Volt First Look: Less Concept, More Sedan