N Y B B L E M O N T H L Y N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2008.02.23 Issue No. 197
Satellite navigation is one of those enabling technologies where once
you've tried it, you wonder how you ever survived without it. Then
again, something has to be said about technology that works so well
that people forego their decision-making abilities in favour of this
navigational aid. We've all heard about the woman who drove along the
railroad tracks for miles until she saw an oncoming train, forcing her
off the tracks. Then, there's this family on vacation who almost made
a right turn down a mountain cliff because the GPS unit told them to.
You hear these stories, and you think those people are newbies; won't
happen to an experienced driver like me.
The thing with GPS is that it simplifies things, makes navigation too
easy. Regardless of how many wrong turns you make, in the end, you
know it'll get you to your destination. This assurance lulls you into
complacency and you start the see the world as a series of lefts and
rights, just like the ones on the GPS screen. Road signs like "No
right turn" or "Left turn only" or "Wrong way, go back" don't register
in your mind because all you're waiting for is for the GPS unit to
tell you what to do next.
Just the other day, on my way to Woolloomooloo, I followed a left turn
that is supposed to bring me to The Wharf. Instead, it led me straight
to an expressway tunnel. Worse, I was on the wrong lane, so I missed
my exit. By the time I got out, I was already at the Supa Centa, and
it's another half hour before I got to my destination.
Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the satnav
companies about it. Thanks.
_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* World's Most Powerful Rail Gun
* Chinese Weathermen Stops Rain From Falling
* Origami Plane To Launch From Space
* Darkest Man-Made Material Ever
* Japanese Cyborg Farmers
* Edible Antifreeze For Better Ice Cream
* Video Ads On Grocery Carts
* Ethanol For $1 A Gallon
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh
_________WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL RAIL GUN_________
http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,160195,00.html
BAE Systems has recently delivered a functional, 32-megajoule
Electro-Magnetic Laboratory Rail Gun (32-MJ LRG) to the U.S. Naval
Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va. Installation of the laboratory
launcher is currently under way, and according to BAE, this is the
first step toward the Navy's goal of developing a tactical
64-megajoule ship-mounted weapon. At 32 megajoules, this new system
appears to be the most powerful rail gun ever built - firing rounds at
up to Mach 8, and the Office of Naval Research is installing
additional capacitors at the Dahlgren facility to support it. The
planned 64-megajoule weapon, if it's ever built, could require even
more power -- a staggering 6 million amps.
While the 32-MJ LRG should start firing soon, it could take another 13
years for a 64-megajoule system to be built and deployed on a ship.
The Marines, in particular, are interested in the potential for rail
guns to deliver supporting fire from up to 220 miles away -- around 10
times further than standard ship-mounted cannons -- with rounds
landing more quickly and with less advance warning than a volley of
Tomahawk cruise missiles.
_________CHINESE WEATHERMEN STOPS RAIN FROM FALLING_________
http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,23136575-5005940,00.html
With no roof on the showpiece Olympic stadium called the Bird's Nest,
the Beijing Meteorological Bureau has been charged with developing
methods of preventing wet weather spoiling what promises to be a
spectacular start to the Beijing Olympic Games on the evening of
August 8. Zhang Qian, head of weather manipulation at the bureau,
believes his guys can do the job. They say they have stopped light
rain from falling in experiments. For cold clouds below zero degrees,
liquid nitrogen is used as a coolant to increase the number of
droplets while decreasing their mean size. As a result, the smaller
droplets are less likely to fall and precipitation can be reduced. For
clouds above zero degrees, the seeing agent silver iodide is used to
accelerate the droplets' collision and coalescence, producing a
downdraft which suppresses the formation of clouds.
The weather bureau is also working hard on preparing for one of the
pre-Games highlights, the ascent of the Olympic torch to the top of
Mount Everest.
_________ORIGAMI PLANE TO LAUNCH FROM SPACE________
http://snipurl.com/207tl
Researchers from the University of Tokyo have teamed up with members
of the Japan Origami Airplane Association to develop a paper aircraft
capable of surviving the flight from the International Space Station
to the Earth's surface.
The researchers have designed an 8-cm prototype origami glider, shaped
like the Space Shuttle, and plan to test its strength and heat
resistance in an ultra-high-speed wind tunnel at the University of
Tokyo's Okashiwa campus (Chiba prefecture). In the tests, it will be
subjected to wind speeds of Mach 7, or about 8,600 kilometers (5,300
miles) per hour. No launch date has been set for the paper spaceplane.
According to the researchers, the origami aircraft is not expected to
burn up on re-entry.
_________DARKEST MAN-MADE MATERIAL EVER_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7190107.stm
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York,
have created the "darkest ever" substance known to science. The
material was created from carbon nanotubes - sheets of carbon just one
atom thick rolled up into cylinders. Researchers say it is the closest
thing yet to the ideal black material, which absorbs light perfectly
at all angles and over all wavelengths. The discovery is expected to
have applications in the fields of electronics and solar energy.
Theory suggests that nanotubes might make a super black object, and
experts are just starting to test these predictions. Experiments
showed that this "forest" of carbon nanotubes was very good at
absorbing light, and very poor at reflecting it. Such technology could
help in producing more efficient solar cells, more efficient solar
panels and any application where you need to harvest light.
_________JAPANESE CYBORG FARMERS_________
http://robots.net/article/2442.html
Researchers at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
graduate school, with support from the Japan Ministry of Agriculture,
Forestry, and Fisheries, have developed an exoskeleton for farmers.
The idea is to assist the aging Japanese farmers in their daily
routine by giving them greater strength to complete their work, much
of which is manual labor.
The new power-assist robotic suit includes 8 motors on its rigid ABS
resin frame structure, along with various sensors and wireless
networking gear, and weighs 18 kg (just under 40 pounds), yet carries
most of its own weight and places a minimum load on the operator. For
now, the team is working to improve the suit power supplies and
controls to increase operating range, portability, and time. Active
field tests performing actual farming tasks while measuring operator
efficiency and degree of fatigue are planned. They expect the new
robot suit to be in use by 2012, both for agricultural and other
similar operations. The mass-produced version of the suit is expected
to weigh in at 8 kilograms and cost about 200,000 yen.
_________EDIBLE ANTIFREEZE FOR BETTER ICE CREAM_________
http://snipurl.com/207to
Food chemist Srinivasan Damodaran at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, US, is experimenting with edible antifreeze made
from gelatin that could keep ice cream tasty and smooth, and prevent
other frozen foods from being ruined.
The taste of good ice cream depends on a blend of flavour,
temperature, and texture – what food scientists call "mouth feel". The
formation of tiny ice crystals, each around 15 to 20 microns wide, is
crucial to making smooth ice cream. But if ice cream is subjected to
sudden temperature fluctuation – when transported home from the store,
for example – these crystals can grow to 40 microns or larger, as
water melts and refreezes. This can ruin the texture of good ice
cream, making it gritty to eat. It can also damage frozen soft fruits.
Damodaran's antifreeze is made by partly digesting gelatin using an
enzyme found in papaya, called papain. The antifreeze contains
proteins similar to those that help "snow flea" insects survive winter
without freezing solid. By adding this special gelatine into ice
cream, it prevented ice crystals from forming. Damodaran admits it'll
be years before ice cream with edible antifreeze reaches the market.
_________VIDEO ADS ON GROCERY CARTS_________
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080114/D8U5LR780.html
Microsoft is bringing digital advertising to the grocery cart. The
software maker spent four years working with Plano, Texas-based
MediaCart Holdings Inc. on a grocery cart-mounted console that helps
shoppers find products in the store, then scan and pay for their items
without waiting in the checkout line. Starting in the second half of
2008, the companies plan to test MediaCart in Wakefern Food Corp.'s
ShopRite supermarkets on the East Coast. Customers with a ShopRite
loyalty card will be able to log into a Web site at home and type in
their grocery lists; when they get to the store and swipe their card
on the MediaCart console, the list will appear. As shoppers scan their
items and place them in their cart, the console gives a running price
tally and checks items off the shopping list.
Aside from that, the system also uses radio-frequency identification
to sense where the shopper's cart is in the store. The RFID data can
help ShopRite and food makers understand shopping patterns, and the
technology can also be used to send certain advertisements to people
at certain points - an ad for 50 cents off Oreos, for example, when a
shopper enters the cookie aisle. Microsoft said it is still working on
how it will present commercials and coupons. In return, advertisers
will get more feedback about which commercials or coupon offers are
effective, because customers either buy the products or accept the
offers on the spot, or they don't.
_________ETHANOL FOR $1 A GALLON_________
http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2008/01/ethanol23
Illinois biofuel startup Coskata, which is backed by General Motors
and other investors, can make ethanol from just about anything organic
for less than $1 per gallon, and it wouldn't interfere with food
supplies. Its technology uses bacteria to convert almost any organic
material, from corn husks (but not the corn itself) to municipal
trash, into ethanol.
Coskata uses existing gasification technology to convert almost any
organic material into synthesis gas, which is a mix of carbon monoxide
and hydrogen. Rather than fermenting that gas or using thermo-chemical
catalysts to produce ethanol, Coskata pumps it into a reactor
containing bacteria that consume the gas and excrete ethanol. Richard
Tobey, Coskata's vice president of engineering, says the process
yields 99.7 percent pure ethanol. The process generates more ethanol
per ton of feedstock than corn-based ethanol and requires far less
water, heat and pressure. Those cost savings allow it to turn, say,
two bales of hay into five gallons of ethanol for less than $1 a
gallon, the company said. Corn-based ethanol costs $1.40 a gallon to
produce.
The company plans to have its first commercial-scale plant producing
up to 100 million gallons of ethanol a year by 2011.
_________NYBBLETS_________
* Engineered mosquitoes could wipe out dengue fever by causing
newly-born mosquitoes to die before they are able to breed
* Open-source browser Mozilla celebrates 10th birthday on January 23,
2008
* Three high-school sophomores in Racine, Wisconsin discovered an
asteroid using a telescope in New Mexico they controlled over the Net
* Silicon nanowires increasy lithium-ion battery life tenfold
* US Food and Drug Administration has declared that meat from cloned
animals is safe to eat - no special labeling necessary
_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Whatatop - Vote top pictures, submit yours, check their ranking
http://english.whatatop.com/
PizzaTorrent
http://pizzatorrent.com/
Like YouTorrent, but better
F-Secure Health Check
http://support.f-secure.com/enu/home/onlineservices/fshc.shtml
10 Handy Numbers to Store in Your Mobile Phone
http://www.marcandangel.com/2008/02/13/10-handy-numbers-to-save-in-your-mobile-phone/
_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
One nostril is almost always easier to breathe through than the other,
and it switches every few hours. Why does that happen?
(No joke.)
_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a
human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished
work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why"
for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."
~ Viktor Frankl ~
_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
What does it mean "to take pot luck"?
"To take pot luck" means to take whatever is available by chance,
rather than choosing yourself. In the Middle Ages, leftovers were
often thrown into a big pot each day and when you were offered dinner
from the pot, it really was a matter of luck what was in there!
Nowadays, when people are invited to a "potluck dinner," it means
everyone is expected to bring something for everyone else to share. At
least it's not all mixed into one stew.
Source: Arcamax Trivia
_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
A wife was making a breakfast of fried eggs for her husband. Suddenly
her husband burst into the kitchen. "Careful... CAREFUL! Put in some
more butter! Oh my GOD! You're cooking too many at once. TOO MANY!
Turn them! TURN THEM NOW! We need more butter. Oh my GOD! WHERE are we
going to get MORE BUTTER? They're going to STICK! Careful...CAREFUL! I
said be CAREFUL! You NEVER listen to me when you're cooking! Never!
Turn them! Hurry up! Are you CRAZY? Have you LOST your mind? Don't
forget to salt them. You know you always forget to salt them. Use the
salt. USE THE SALT! THE SALT!"
The wife stared at him. "What the hell is wrong with you? You think I
don't know how to fry a couple of eggs?"
The husband calmly replied, "I wanted to show you what it feels like
to have you sitting next to me when I'm driving."
_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
JukeFly
http://www.jukefly.com/
Streams music from your home computer to any browser
TomTom Home
http://www.tomtom.com/plus/service.php?ID=17
That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.
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