If you’ve built up a proud collection of books, records and DVDs, you’d expect to be able to pass them on to your next of kin. But what happens to all of the downloads you’ve paid for during your life?
MIT’s Killian Court has some swank seating arrangements.
The SOFT Rocker
These curved, solar-panel-covered seats rotate on an axis to keep them facing the sun, generating additional energy from the rocking motion created when people climb inside. All that harvested electricity can be used to recharge gadgets plugged into the three USB ports and to illuminate a light strip on the inside of the loop.
Nike+ basketball and training shoes embedded with pressure sensors and accelerometers to collect previously unmeasurable, movement-based statistics across multiple levels of speed and agility.
Wow Wednesday
The Yakhchal
By 400 BCE, Persian engineers had mastered the technique of storing ice in the middle of summer in the desert. The ice could be brought in during the winters from nearby mountains, but more commonly they had a wall made along an east-west direction close to the yakhchal. In winter, the qanat water was channelled to the north side of the wall. The shadow of the wall made the water freeze more quickly so more ice was produced per winter day. Ice was stored in a specially designed, passively cooled refrigerator.
Elephant plays with a Galaxy Note
I think I’ll name him… “Stampy”
I think he needs a slightly larger touchpad though.
Touch the sky
Solar Shingles See the Light of Day
Dow Chemical is moving full speed ahead to develop roof shingles embedded with photovoltaic cells. To facilitate the move, the U.S. Department of Energy has backed Dow’s efforts with a $17.8 million tax credit that will help the company launch an initial market test of the product later this year.
In October 2009, the chemical giant unveiled its product, which can be nailed to a roof like ordinary shingles by roofers without the help of specially trained solar installers or electricians. The solar shingles will cost 30 to 40 percent less than other solar-embedded building materials and 10 percent less than the combined costs of conventional roofing materials and rack-mounted solar panels, according to company officials.
The importance of ReRAM is that it combines the read/write speeds of DRAM – the stuff on those memory chips in your PC – with the non-volatile nature of flash memory. In other words, they don’t forget stuff when you turn the power off. Potentially, it’s the best of all existing technologies: bulk storage that runs at system memory speeds.
Theoretically, a PC with enough ReRAM memory in would mean no more loading times, ever. All your data would always be kept in the equivalent of today’s system RAM.
Free To a Good Home: One Space Telescope, Still In Orbit
In an unusual move, our cash-strapped space agency is contemplating the donation of one of its still-functional space telescopes. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is out of money, but the observatory still works just fine, so NASA might give it away — if Caltech wants it.
Probably not much would change for the daily life of the 9-year-old space telescope, which has been beaming back pictures of galaxies for way longer than it was designed to last. The California Institute of Technology already leads the mission and takes care of science operations and data analysis. But NASA owns and built the telescope, which was designed to have a life-cycle cost of $150 million. This donation would really be a legal thing, transferring ownership of the telescope as well as operation. Caltech would not give NASA any money, according to NASA
The sad state of scientific progress in this country.
How to Convert a Netbook Into a Touchscreen PC
Tablet PCs may be the next big thing in computers, but netbooks are cheap and widely available now. Why wait for Apple (or TechCrunch) to do it for you? Here’s how to make your own touchcreen PC, starting with an off-the-shelf netbook.
Surprisingly simple DIY instructions.
