Buy your own giant Japanese robot for only $1.3 million. This anime-inspired mech drives, shoots water-propelled rockets, and fires 6,000 BBs a minute By Randy Nelson, Tecca Climbing inside of a giant humanoid robot and piloting it is a staple of Japanese cartoons, but has always been something you could only watch characters do on-screen while you imagined yourself into their shoes — until now. A team of hobbyists, skilled engineers, and robot-lovers in Japan have finally created an honest-to-goodness mech you can actually drive. Called the Kuratas, the human-controlled robot was created by a group calling itself Suidobashi Heavy Industry lead by Kogoro Kurata, an ironworker and artist. The Kuratas features a humanoid upper body and four insect-like legs with wheels. Controlling the robot is handheld through a custom control stick that's part steering wheel, part puppetry rig.
In addition to its literal pair of arms, the Kuratas is armed with a multi-rocket launcher and two Gattling cannons. [via io9] (Source) More on Tecca: Best-Paying Jobs by Major. By Christine Laue, PayScale.com When it comes to choosing a college, a college major and eventually a job, where should you put your efforts and your money? The compensation experts at online salary database PayScale.com used US Department of Education data to identify the 20 most common college majors, then determined the top-paying jobs for each major, five to eight years into each job. What did the research show? When it comes to salary, not all majors are equal. The majors fall into two general categories, says PayScale’s lead analyst, Katie Bardaro: those that train students for a specific field and those that teach analytical and critical-thinking skills, which can be applied to a variety of fields. Jobs in technical fields like physical science tend to pay better, according to PayScale’s research.
If you’re considering a major that might lead to lower-paying job, an expensive college might not be your smartest choice financially. See the No-Stick Ketchup Bottle of the Future in Action. Ugandan Students Win Award For Pregnancy Scan Machine. - StumbleUpon. Tesla - Master of Lightning: A Weapon to End War. Tesla inherited from his father a deep hatred of war. Throughout his life, he sought a technological way to end warfare. He thought that war could be converted into, "a mere spectacle of machines. " In 1931 Tesla announced to reporters at a press conference that he was on the verge of discovering an entirely new source of energy. Asked to explain the nature of the power, he replied, "The idea first came upon me as a tremendous shock... War clouds were again darkening Europe. The idea generated considerable interest and controversy.
By 1937 it was clear that war would soon break out in Europe. What set Tesla's proposal apart from the usual run of fantasy "death rays" was a unique vacuum chamber with one end open to the atmosphere. Of all the countries to receive Tesla's proposal, the greatest interest came from the Soviet Union. Tesla hoped that his invention would be used for purely defensive purposes, and thus would become an anti-war machine.