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Posts Tagged ‘Stuart Fox’

The Fire Department christened their boat "the 343", after the number of firemen and paramedics who died on 9/11. The 343 is 140 feet long and weighs 500 tons, making it the largest fireboat in the world. The boat has a decontamination shower, pressurized cabins, and specially designed air filters that allow the crew to deal with dangerous chemical spills, a capability conspicuously lacking from the current fleet. The ship's hoses can spray 50,000 gallons of water per minute, which is the equivalent of 50 city fire trucks, and carries 3,600 gallons of fire-dousing foam. The 343 can make 18 knots (20 miles per hour), and costs $27 million.

Unlike the giant NYFD boat, the NYPD boat is only 45 feet long and built for speed, reaching 45 knots (52 mph) with their Rolls-Royce Kamewa water jet engines. The police's new craft will automatically right itself if capsized, allowing it to deploy farther out to sea than anything in the current fleet.

As highlighted by last year's plane crash in the Hudson river, patrolling a coastal archipelago like New York City means cops and firemen need to get wet. With these new boats, New York's finest will finally have the advanced tools they need to keep the City's island population safe now, and in the future.

[The New York Times, via Fast Company]

Is online delivery a viable future for inconvenient old paper mail?

In the program, the volunteers will have images of all their letters viewable on a computer or phone, and then optionally physically delivered later on. The postman will still arrive twice a week to deliver the scanned letters, as well as any packages. Additionally, the postal service will filter out junk mail for the volunteers, essentially adding a spam filter to physical mail.

Itella, the state-owned company that operates Finland's postal service, has vowed that employees will not read the letters, that all sorting and opening will occur in specially secured facilities, and that employees will sign strict confidentiality agreements. 126 families and 20 businesses have already signed up for the service, which will begin on April 12th.

Itella stresses this program is only an experiment designed to discover what types of snail-mail the Finnish people feel comfortable receiving in this fashion. However, despite the small size, experimental nature, and high security of the program, some Finish citizens have already begun drawing comparisons between Itella and Communist-regime security services.

A similar service, Earth Class Mail, already operates commercially in the US, and claims to serve tens of thousands of users. Whether Itella can replicate Earth Class Mail's success remains to be seen. But given the high level of technical savvy amongst the Finnish population, as well that citizenry's more robust trust in the responsibility of their government, Itella's scanning program may very well be the future of mail.

[Samaa]

Unlike most computer chips, which use transistors made of silicon, the NIST spray-on computer chip utilizes an organic semiconductor, called poly(3-hexylthiophene), or P3HT. By spraying the P3HT over a deposited circuit architecture of gold and silicon, the NIST team can lay down vast swaths of electronics quickly and cheaply.

The NIST scientists admit that translating this breakthrough into a concrete new technology will prove challenging. However, once the technique is perfected, it can result in very significant price drops for both solar panels and large display screens.

[Physorg.com]

The NAS research panel will look into how electromagnetic interference, computer error, hardware and software design, human error, and a host of other factors can influence sudden acceleration and deceleration in cars controlled by computer. The NASA side will concentrate solely on how electromagnetic interference, not floor mats, human error, or faulty gas pedals, may have led to the sudden acceleration that instigated the recall.

Overall, the investigation will cost around $3 million, and ensure that Jay Leno has monologue fodder for the duration of the study.

[The Wall Street Journal]

The trick was using a type of microbe known as magnetotactic bacteria. These critters have little internal compasses, and will follow the pull of a magnetic field. By manipulating a magnetic field, the researchers tricked the bacteria into forming a giant, computer-controlled swarm. In one experiment, the researchers had the bacterial swarm assemble a small pyramid. In another, they directed bacteria through the blood stream of a rat, like in Innerspace.

In the future, the researchers want to use the bacteria as a propulsion system for larger nanorobots that could deliver drugs, repair an organ, or assemble larger and more complex nanostructures.

But, as I mention with every video, don't take my word for it when you can check it out for yourself! In the video below, you can actually watch the bacterial swarm assemble a tiny pyramid:

[IEEE Spectrum]

This is not the first picture of an atom, nor is it the first picture of atoms from different elements. However, in those older photos, the atoms were arranged beforehand by scientists. But in the Oak Ridge pic, the material was created chemically, and the picture was still able to identify individual atoms.

The material in the photo, called boron nitride, consists of boron, nitrogen, and oxygen, with some carbon atoms inserted in place of boron to serve as a control in the image. The electron scanning microscope that took the picture used a 60 kilovolt beam. That's a very low energy for this kind of microscope, because if the beam were any more powerful, it would displace some of the atoms in the compound.

Right now, scientists can only determine the chemical arrangements in a material through chemistry. By developing a technique for taking pictures like this, material chemists and engineers of the future will be able to simple look at the chemical compound to see its geometry and composition.

[Oak Ridge National Laboratory]

This is not the first picture of an atom, nor is it the first picture of atoms from different elements. However, in those older photos, the atoms were arranged beforehand by scientists. But in the Oak Ridge pic, the material was created chemically, and the picture was still able to identify individual atoms.

The material in the photo, called boron nitride, consists of boron, nitrogen, and oxygen, with some carbon atoms inserted in place of boron to serve as a control in the image. The electron scanning microscope that took the picture used a 60 kilovolt beam. That's a very low energy for this kind of microscope, because if the beam were any more powerful, it would displace some of the atoms in the compound.

Right now, scientists can only determine the chemical arrangements in a material through chemistry. By developing a technique for taking pictures like this, material chemists and engineers of the future will be able to simple look at the chemical compound to see its geometry and composition.

[Oak Ridge National Laboratory]