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What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs
In the days after Steve Jobs' death, friends and colleagues have, in customary fashion, been sharing their fondest memories of the Apple co-founder. He's been hailed as "a genius" and "the greatest CEO of his generation" by pundits and tech journalists. But a great man's reputation can withstand a full accounting. And, truth be told, Jobs could be terrible to people, and his impact on the world was not uniformly positive.
(CNN) -- You don't have to be a science major to know that heat rises: Just step into an attic on a hot summer day. But what you might not know is that this basic scientific reality could also help create clean energy for entire cities. For centuries, architects have taken advantage of rising heat to help cool some structures. Solar chimneys allow the rising air to go out of the building, taking the heat with it. Today, Australian entrepreneur Roger Davey wants to take advantage of that phenomenon -- with a twist.
Can hot air be the free fuel of the future? - CNN.com
Snapshot from video NOTE: Some major wind projects like the proposed TWE Carbon Valley project in Wyoming are already pricing in significantly lower than coal power -- $80 per MWh for wind versus $90 per MWh for coal -- and that is without government subsidies using today's wind turbine technology. The International Clean Energy Analysis (ICEA) gateway estimates that the U.S. possesses 2.2 million km2 of high wind potential (Class 3-7 winds) — about 850,000 square miles of land that could yield high levels of wind energy. This makes the U.S. something of a Saudi Arabia for wind energy, ranked third in the world for total wind energy potential.
Japanese breakthrough will make wind power cheaper than nuclear | MNN - Mother Nature Network
BAE invisibility cloak hides vehicles as scenery, cars and cows (Wired UK)
British defence company BAE Systems has developed an "invisibility cloak" that can effectively hide vehicles from view in the infra-red spectrum. The patented system -- called Adaptiv -- uses a matrix of hexagonal "pixels" that can change their temperature very rapidly. On-board cameras sweep the area to pick up the background scenery and display that infra-red signature on the vehicle. This allows even moving tanks to be effectively invisible in the infra-red spectrum, or mimic other objects. "The tank skin essentially becomes a big infra red TV," BAE Head of External Communications Mike Sweeney told Wired.co.uk. "You can display anything you want on it -- including a cow -- while the rest of the vehicle blends into the background."
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The Original Electric Car: Unplugged? Perhaps the most notorious suppressed invention is the General Motors EV1, subject of the 2006 documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? The EV1 was the world's first mass-produced electric car, with 800 of them up for lease from GM in the late '90s. GM ended the EV1 line in 1999, stating that consumers weren't happy with the limited driving range of the car's batteries, making it unprofitable to continue production.
The 18 Most Suppressed Inventions Ever Photo Gallery - The Original Electric Car: Unplugged? - Conspiracies on truTV
"I would call it brain reading and we hope that in two or three years it will be available for use for paralysed patients." The experimental breakthrough came when the team attached two button sized grids of 16 tiny electrodes to the speech centres of the brain of an epileptic patient. The sensors were attached to the surface of the brain The patient had had part of his skull removed for another operation to treat his condition. Using the electrodes, the scientists recorded brain signals in a computer as the patient repeatedly read each of 10 words that might be useful to a paralysed person: yes, no, hot, cold, hungry, thirsty, hello, goodbye, more and less.
'Mind-reading machine' can convert thoughts into speech - Telegraph
This is so simple. Continuance is a set of batteries with a USB interface on the side. The batteries are rechargeable plus dole out some juice to stranded gadgets that are starved of power. Handy, compact and a totally do-able concept! Kudos!
Continuance – Rechargeable Battery with USB Interface by Haimo Bao, Hailong Piao, Yuancheng Liu & Xiameng Hu » Yanko Design
Foxconn, which manufactures Apple's iPads, iPhones, iPods and Mac computers, has been plagued by a series of suicides at its Chinese plants. Its critics have argued that its factories, some of which are home to as many as 250,000 workers, are "electronic sweat shops" and that staff can quickly become depressed and alienated. Foxconn's chairman, Terry Gou, told staff that the company would start using robots for repetitive tasks on the assembly line. Foxconn is already using 10,000 of its "Shenzhen No. 1" robots, which resemble a simple mechanical arm, to lift, coat and weld metals.
Apple manufacturer Foxconn replaces staff with robots - Telegraph
From microwave energy blasters and blinding laser beams to chemical agents and deafening sonic blasters, these weapons are at the cutting edge of crowd control. The US is at the forefront of an international arms development effort that includes a remarkable assortment of technologies, which look and sound like they belong in a Hollywood science fiction thriller. From microwave energy blasters and blinding laser beams, to chemical agents and deafening sonic blasters, these weapons are at the cutting edge of crowd control. The Pentagon's approved term for these weapons is "non-lethal" or "less-lethal" and they are intended for use against the unarmed . Designed to "control crowds, clear streets, subdue and restrain individuals and secure borders," they are the 21st century's version of the police baton, pepper spray and tear gas. As journalist Ando Arike puts it, "The result is what appears to be the first arms race in which the opponent is the general population."
6 Creepy New Weapons the Police and Military Use To Subdue Unarmed People | | AlterNet
11 cheap gifts guaranteed to impress science geeks | DVICE
Science comes up with a lot of awesome stuff, and you don't need a Ph.D, a secret lab, or government funding to get your hands on some of the coolest discoveries. We've got a list of 11 mostly affordable gifts that are guaranteed to blow your mind, whether or not you're a science geek. 1. Aerogel Also known as frozen smoke, Aerogel is the world's lowest density solid, clocking in at 96% air. It's basically just a gel made from silicon, except all the liquid has been taken out and replaced with gas instead.Theta Wave Brain Synchronization « Get High Now (without drugs)
This is a replication of a Theta wave entrainment rhythm first created by scientists in the 1960s to lull patients into a deep, colorful, creative dream state. Listen to it for 10 minutes, longer if you can. The longer it plays, the deeper you’ll go. So go.In a new study, researchers report that bumblebees were able to figure out the most efficient routes among several computer-controlled "flowers," quickly solving a complex problem that even stumps supercomputers. We already know bees are pretty good at facial recognition, and researchers have shown they can also be effective air-quality monitors. Bumblebees can solve the classic "traveling salesman" problem, which keeps supercomputers busy for days. They learn to fly the shortest possible route between flowers even if they find the flowers in a different order, according to a new British study. The traveling salesman problem is a problem in computer science; it involves finding the shortest possible route between cities, visiting each city only once. Bees are the first animals to figure this out, according to Queen Mary University of London researchers.