Onswipe Supersonic Flying Wing Nabs $100,000 from NASA | Bidirectional Flying Wing Aircraft An aircraft that resembles a four-point ninja star could go into supersonic mode by simply turning 90 degrees in midair. The unusual "flying wing" concept has won $100,000 in NASA funding to trying becoming a reality for future passenger jet travel. The supersonic, bidirectional flying wing idea comes from a team headed by Ge-Cheng Zha, an aerospace engineer at the University of Miami, and including collaborators from Florida State University. He said the fuel-efficient aircraft could reach supersonic speeds without the thunderclap sound produced by a sonic boom — a major factor that previously limited where the supersonic Concorde passenger jet could fly over populated land masses. "I am hoping to develop an environmentally friendly and economically viable airplane for supersonic civil transport in the next 20 to 30 years," Zha said. The midair transformation allows the aircraft to fly in its most fuel-efficient modes at both subsonic and supersonic speeds, Zha explained.
NASA unveils Orion spacecraft to hurl humans to Mars in 2021 It’s no Prometheus, but the spacecraft shown in the photo above is what NASA plans on using to put a human on the planet Mars. Yesterday, NASA unveiled the Orion passenger module at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Orion crew still has plenty of work to do on the vehicle before it logs any time away from the ground, but NASA plans to have it run an unmanned test flight by 2014. A manned mission to the planet Mars is scheduled to take place some time in 2021. “The vehicle we see here today is not a PowerPoint chart. The Orion isn’t a full-fledged spaceship. “It is going to start looking more like the shape of capsule soon. While I agree with Garver’s perception of Orion looking like “the future,” a lot can happen between now and 2021. VentureBeat has previously written about NASA’s capability to drive innovation in the startup world, but we can only hope future politicians will agree to keep funding Orion over the next decade. Photo via CollectSpace
How to Use a Kindle DX as a PC Display Compared with other Kindle models, Amazon's Kindle DX is gargantuan. Its 9.7-inch E Ink screen provides ample space for reading books and viewing graphs and images. But what if you could use all of those E Ink pixels for something more creative, such as displaying your Windows desktop? As it turns out, with a few simple tricks you can use the Kindle DX as a computer display that can show anything your usual monitor can show. In this guide I'll explain how to do it. Ingredients To get started, you need a Kindle DX, its USB cable, and a PC. Kindle-jailbreak-0.10.N.zip, from the MobileRead ForumsKindle-usbnetwork-0.37.N.zip, from the same MobileRead threadKindle VNC ViewerTightVNC, a VNC serverPuTTY or another Telnet client Jailbreak Your Kindle DX Obviously you're about to do something the Kindle DX wasn't meant to do out of the box. Next, disconnect the Kindle DX from the computer. Important: The update will now fail, and show a warning to that effect. Install USB Networking Great job!
Towards A Retina Web Advertisement With the recent announcement and release of the Retina Macbook Pro, Apple has brought double-density screens to all of the product categories in its current lineup, significantly paving the way for the next wave of display standards. While the fourth-generation iPhone gave us a taste of the “non-Retina” Web in 2010, we had to wait for the third-generation iPad to fully realize how fuzzy and outdated our Web graphics and content images are. In the confines of Apple’s walled garden, popular native apps get updated with Retina graphics in a timely fashion, with the help of a solid SDK and a well-documented transition process. By contrast, the Web is a gargantuan mass whose very open nature makes the transition to higher-density displays slow and painful. Before diving into the nitty gritty, let’s briefly cover some basic notions that are key to understanding the challenges and constraints of designing for multiple display densities. Device Pixels CSS Pixels Bitmap Pixels SVG: Pros
Scientist Beams Up a Real 'Star Trek' Tricorder Starships, warp speed, transporters, phasers. Think "Star Trek" technology is only the stuff of fiction? Think again. Dr. "Star Trek inspired me to be a scientist" said Jansen, who has been formally working on his tricorder prototypes since 2007, but toying with the idea of making a functioning device since he was "a kid in high school." The 29-year-old Jansen's school days spanned the late 1990s when "Star Trek: Voyager" was on the air. The first tricorder appeared on the original show's initial episode in 1966, when Capt. But if Jansen, a self-confessed "addicted maker" of things, is successful at developing, testing and bringing his instrument into the public, the tricorder may not be just the stuff of "Star Trek" prop rooms. Jansen said his tricorder can take atmospheric measurements, or ambient temperature, pressure or humidity. Fascinating, as Spock might say. "Everything you need to build one is on line" at www.tricorderproject.com, said Jansen. © 2014 Thomson/Reuters.
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