Is this the beginning of
robots
taking over the human
workforce? Fascinating
and scary at the same
time.
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Video of a Huge
Tesla
coil in Western NY. Human subject in the
cage of death
with sound.
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Blind Woman Sees With 'Tooth-in-Eye' Surgery
by Lauren Cox, ABC News
Forget about an eye
for an eye -- doctors in Florida have taken a
blind woman's tooth, and used it to help restore
her vision.
In her book,
The New Global Student
($14.95, Three Rivers Press), Maya Frost describes a
flexible education model that employs such options as
international exchange programs, online study and dual
enrollments that allowed students to take high school
and college courses at the same time.
USA TODAY spoke with Frost.
Q: Tell me what your family did and
why -- and how your four daughters turned out....
Click
here for the rest of the story.
21 Billion Orbiting Solar Array will Beam Electricity to
Earth
by Lin Edwards,
PHYSORG.com
The
project, to be undertaken by a research group from 16 companies
including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, aims to spend the
next four years developing the technology needed to beam the
electricity produced to earth. They expect that as fossil fuels
run out, an orbiting solar power plant in space may be needed to
provide a significant source of electricity in the future,
according to the Kensuke Kanekiyo, from the Japanese
Government's Institute of Energy Economics.
The planned solar station will produce 1 Gigawatt of electricity
from its four km2 (approximately 2.5 square miles) array of
solar panels, which is enough to power just under 300,000 Tokyo
homes, at present usage levels. Since the array will be in orbit
some 36,000 km (22,500 miles) above the earth's surface, it will
be unaffected by weather conditions and will be able to generate
power constantly.
The U.S. agency NASA has been investigating the possibilities of
a space-based solar system for several decades and has spent
around $80 million on the research. They and other government
agencies estimate the cost of electricity supplied from an
orbiting solar array could be around $1 billion per megawatt,
which is too expensive to be commercially viable....
Click
here for the rest of the story.
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The Hunt for
Extraterrestrial Life Gets Weird
by Hadley Leggett, Wired Science
In the search for extraterrestrial life, some
scientists say we’re focusing too much on finding signs
of existence as we know it, and in the process, we may
be missing more strange forms of life that don’t rely on
water or carbon metabolism.
Now researchers from Austria have started a systematic
study of solvents other than water that might be able to
support life outside our planet. They’re hoping their
research will lead to a shift in what they call the
“geocentric mindset” of our attempts to detect
extraterrestrial life.
“With our current measurement strategy for life on other
planets, we will only be able to detect life which
shares most of its parameters with terrestrial life,”
astrobiologist Johannes Leitner of the University of
Vienna, who presented his research Friday at the
European Planetary Science Congress in Germany, wrote in
an e-mail. “Presently we will not be able to detect
exotic life, because we have no idea of its potential
properties and by this, our probes to planetary surfaces
do not carry instruments which can look for something
exotic....
Click
here for the rest of the story.
Mice Levitated for Space
Research
by Lin Edwards, PHYSORG.com
The researchers worked
from a number of laboratories around the U.S.,
including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
California and the University of Missouri. The
research was done on behalf of NASA, and was
published in the online journal Advances in Space
Research on 6 September 2009.
The scientists built a variable gravity simulator
consisting of a superconducting magnet that could
generate a magnetic field strong enough to levitate
the water inside every cell in the mouse's body.
Water is weakly diamagnetic, which means that in the
presence of a strong magnetic field the electrons in
water rearrange orbit slightly, creating tiny
currents in opposition to the external magnetic
field. If the external magnet is strong enough, the
diamagnetic repulsion of the water in the mouse
tissue is enough to exactly balance the force of
gravity on the body.
Scientists have previously levitated live
grasshoppers and frogs, but this is the first time a
mammal has been levitated. The mice were confined to
a plastic cage, which had a base with holes to allow
waste to be removed, and an open top to allow in
air, food, water, and to allow the proceedings to be
filmed. The cage was not necessary for the
levitation, but it did allow the scientists to
compare the levitated mice with non-levitated
subjects in identical cages...
Click
here
for the rest of the story.
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