I got an Xbox for the kids because I made a promise. I regret the promise. I got the unit and found out after the purchase that all multiuser gaming requires a Microsoft Xbox Live subscription. I’m not going to pay for that. But then I tried to create the Xbox Live free account. I [...]
NASA has a lovely gallery of pictures of this wonderful planet on which we live. It is a wonderful planet on which we live and we take it for granted, I fear. Human culture is based on extraction of natural resources. The rate at which we extract those resources has increased since the beginning of [...]
Make magazine tends to have a lot of stuff that requires knowledge of electronics. Some things don’t. Here’s one: What better way to celebrate Earth Day than to get some seeds started. Frequent MAKE contributor and off-grid aficionado Abe Connally teaches us how to make cheap and simple soil blocks to avoid transplant mortality (fromMAKE [...]
You would think that this is a technology that is superfluous. But maybe not. NXP Semiconductors (NASDAQ: NXPI), the RFID leader for multi-applications, announced that ClearCount Medical Solutions has selected NXP RFID solutions to enable its SmartSponge® System. The SmartSponge System can easily and accurately detect and account for surgical sponges placed in a patient’s body [...]
This guy is a real DIY guy. He has a lot of great projects at his site. This is the one that drew my attention. A DIY scanning electron microscope. See the video there.
As a control systems exercise, Research D’Andrea at ETH looks like a lot of fun. and There are a lot of links at the web site.
XKCD comic.
Intel is bring a new fabrication plant on line at 22 nanometers. Silk fibers are around 15 micrometers, human hairs anywhere from 10 to 80 micrometers. Consider that the technology would be able to draw 1000 transistors in the width of a human hair. Intel is pledging to spend between $6 billion and $8 billion [...]
From Science Blog: A national epidemiologic study finds a strong, consistent correlation between adult diabetes and particulate air pollution that persists after adjustment for other risk factors like obesity and ethnicity, report researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston. The relationship was seen even at exposure levels below the current EPA safety limit. Read the whole thing.
Russian security forces are using software piracy as a pretext for harassing opposition groups. It was late one afternoon in January when a squad of plainclothes police officers arrived at the headquarters of a prominent environmental group here. They brushed past the staff with barely a word and instead set upon the computers before carting [...]