The i.play system, developed in the UK by Loughborough University and Playdale, looks a bit like a jungle gym with a series of twelve nodes attached to a metal structure that is seven feet high and twenty feet in diameter. In “i.play” mode, the computer at the top of the system yells out instructions of which node needs to pushed, pulled, or spun. If kids don’t run, jump, and lunge fast enough, or hit the wrong node, they lose a life....
For a quick and impressive example, notice how at the end of the movie trailer the emotional green-skinned monster rips a car in half with his bare hands. How strong does he have to be to do this? Let’s do a rough calculation. I looked up the tensile strength of steel and got an average value of around 500 MPa, (that’s 500 million newtons of force per square meter). This means it would take 500 million newtons (about 110 million pounds) to pull apart a beam of steel with a cross sectional area of 1....
We decided to test Siri’s beat-making skills, but not just in one on her accents accent. We took the task to American, English and Australian Siri. And we were pretty impressed with the results. There’s no surprise that each region’s English-speaking Siri sounded different when spitting hot fire from our iPhones. But we were surprised to see that with each change in accent, Siri’s pace increased. American Siris took their time while English Siris went a little faster....
The Paperwhite has a 6.8-inch high-resolution e-ink display, which won’t show glare from the sun like the LCD screen on a smartphone or tablet. Reading on an e-ink display is also easier on your eyes. The Kindle is inherently a uni-tasking device — there are no apps, no web browser, no notifications — which makes it easier to concentrate on reading. It also allows the Kindle to last several weeks on a single charge, which is especially helpful if you want to read through an entire international flight....
But where did the two disks come from? Are they a scar from a cosmic childhood trauma, or an inevitable mark of galactic maturity? With just one sample galaxy (our own) to study in detail, astrophysicists and astronomers have struggled to land on one origin story. Now, a new survey has spotted some of the strongest evidence yet for similar disks in a neighboring galaxy. The finding suggests that the Milky Way’s dual disks are a common galactic evolution, not the unique result of some extraordinary past....
Eventually a park-goer did die on the Alpine Slide, and, after five additional fatalities and countless head wounds, electric shocks, and broken teeth, the entire venue shut down in 1996. New owners repeatedly tried to reopen the cult favorite destination, but after continued safety issues, the park’s operators finally decided to rebrand it a decade later. While no other attraction can match its brazenness, Action Park lives on in the many rides that push today’s thrill-seekers to the edge of their comfort zones....
The award honors the inventors of two influential laser tools: Arthur Ashkin, an American physicist, for developing a way to catch and hold objects using focused beams of light, and Gérard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of Canada, for their creative solution for concentrating and amplifying laser beams beyond what standard materials would permit. Strickland, an associate professor at Waterloo University in Canada, is the third woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics, after Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963....
Eventually, a work crew of 50, along with a cargo crane, special moving beds, and “a crowd of Penn students” relocated the mythological creature from the German freighter Schildturm to the Penn Museum’s courtyard. It spent just three years in its original location, before museum personnel moved it indoors, ultimately landing in a windowless gallery surrounded by other objects from ancient Egypt. On June 14, the sphinx saw the sun for the first time in more than 80 years, as part of a museum renovation that will put the sphinx outdoors—and closer to eye-level with visitors....
The annual list of the 10 most endangered rivers, which supply millions of people across the country, came out on Monday, and includes the Snake River, Mobile River, Maine’s Atlantic Salmon River, and Coosa River. But the biggest and most at risk is the Colorado River, which provides water to at least seven states across the Southwest as well as northern Mexico. “The climate crisis is really a water crisis, and ground zero for that crisis is the Colorado River Basin,” Matt Rice, American Rivers’ director of the Colorado Basin Program, told CNN....
“I had no way of knowing where he was, what he was seeing, or of giving him an order without raising my voice,” he says. “I just had to wait until he came back.” So Thomas—who prefers that we not reveal his last name as he is still on active duty in the gendarmerie—started thinking about how to resolve these problems. He wanted to be able to see where the dog was, and to give it orders that only the animal would hear....
If you want to hack your way to scrubbing, you need to get smart with the cleaning tools you use. You can start with the Elicto ES-530 Electronic Cordless Spin Mop and Polisher, a versatile spin floor cleaner that’s capable of mopping, polishing, and scrubbing simultaneously. And for a limited time, you can bring one home on sale for just $129.97 (reg. $149) for our Pre-Black Friday Doorbusters Sale. Most cleaning tools are built to accommodate a specific surface and to perform a specific cleaning task....
Published under the title “Saving Lives During Disasters by Using Drones,” the drone that hunts for human screams is a project by Fraunhofer FKIE, a German research institute. The drone specifically was the work of the Department of Sensor Data and Information Fusion, and its authors presented the research to the Acoustical Society of America on June 8, 2021. Drones, and all sorts of robots more generally, are ideal responders to a disaster....
These great big birds also might actively try to find two plants that can kill pathogens, making them a rare example of a bird using plants to fight disease. A new study published yesterday in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution details this self-medication in great bustards. “Great bustards seek out two species of weeds that are also used by humans in traditional medicine,” co-author Azucena Gonzalez-Coloma, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Madrid, said in a statement....
“We all have experienced that a balloon rubbed on our hair can [stick] to a wall or attract small pieces of papers,” said Ishara Dharmasena, a doctoral student at the University of Surrey, and lead scientist on the project. “Our clothing tends to stick to our skin on a dry day. We all have experienced lightening. All these are due to the triboelectric effect, or static charging. TENGs use the triboelectric effect to transform the movements…into electricity....
The powder itself is made of carbon spheres that have many, many pores onto which carbon dioxide molecules can stick, a process known as “adsorption,” making carbon an excellent material for CO2 capture. The researchers, who collaborated with colleagues at several universities in China, enhanced adsorption by manipulating the size and concentration of pores in the carbon powder—the vast majority of them are less than one-millionth of a meter in diameter....
To make super-strong glass, the researchers have long set their sights on alumina, an oxidized version of aluminum that happens to possess some of the strongest chemical bonds on Earth. Putting alumina in glass, the scientists hypothesized, would make the new material super robust. But in their first attempts, they struggled to produce it. When they tried to make glass with alumina in it, murky crystals of silicon dioxide would form on the glass against the surface of the container, so that the glass was no longer see-through....
While they said that there’s no need to panic at this time, it would do organizations well to take additional precautionary measures to defend their respective networks. You always have the option to hire professionals to do this for you, but you can also take matters into your own hands by doing all the defending yourself. Whether you’re a business owner looking to go all out on cybersecurity or a professional hoping to acquire cybersecurity skills to advance in your career, the Complete 2022 PenTest and Ethical Hacking Bundle packs the necessary training needed to help you learn how to stay ahead of emerging threats....
In a press release, officials said that the revisions would improve the act by reducing regulatory burdens and simplifying its application. “The Act’s effectiveness rests on clear, consistent, and efficient implementation,” said Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, a former fossil fuel lobbyist. “An effectively administered Act ensures more resources can go where they will do the most good: on-the-ground conservation.” The changes affect three aspects of conservation. One is critical habitat, which is the collective areas considered essential to protect a threatened or endangered species....
Materials: ∙ Empty 20- or 24-oz. aluminum can ∙ 6-cm. disc (cut from black card stock) ∙ 25-by-7–cm. strip (cut from black card stock, with 1-cm. notches on one long side) ∙ Roll of black gaffer tape ∙ 8-by-5–in. sheet of semimatte photo paper (i.e., half of an 8-by-10–in. sheet) ∙ Plastic cable ties Tools: Can opener, pin, scissors, red light, blow-dryer, computer, flatbed scanner Remove the can’s top with a can opener, and poke the middle of its side with a pin....
