As I’ve been assembling my 1965 Yamaha TD1-B I’ve been impressed again and again by how heavy its parts are. My conclusion is that this weight was dictated by its engine vibration. Control when cracking appears by varying the wall thickness of frame tubes. Ah, thick is best! Weight and vibration are connected in other ways too. When Honda built its 1997 1,100cc Super Blackbird, it decided to give it secondary balancers....
Avengers fans have fallen on some hard times recently. Grey’s Anatomy fanatics still aren’t over McDreamy—or McSteamy, for that matter. Even Game of Thrones loyalists, who watch perhaps the most brutal show ever to air on television, struggle with the loss of, well, approximately 200 characters and counting. The idea of mourning someone who doesn’t technically exist may seem anathema to more stoic consumers of film and television. But just because this particular type of grieving is “disenfranchised,” to use the parlance of grief counselors, doesn’t mean it’s illegitimate....
In the meantime, you can sort of get a sense of what it feels like to stand on the Red Planet thanks to a new 360-degree video from NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover. The video, created by stitching together 57 separate still images captured by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the end of the rover’s robotic arm, was posted to Curiosity’s Facebook page over the weekend. It was quickly re-shared by Facebook head honcho Mark Zuckerberg, who has been bullish on Facebook’s new built-in 360-degree video playing capabilities introduced late last year....
There have been copious attempts at providing indoor location services by dozens if not hundreds of companies, but nothing has yet proven effective enough to be rolled out on a commercial scale. Most technologies have short ranges and relatively wide margins of error (up to several yards). Even GPS, developed for the U.S. military and now standard on all kinds of consumer devices, suffers from weak signal strength as the entire scheme relies on a constellation of satellites parked in faraway orbits....
The polygonal pores shown here measure about 10 to 25 miles wide and may be 100 yards deep. Scientists think the pattern forms as Pluto’s lukewarm interior melts the nitrogen ice deep down. The warmer material floats upward, then cools again at the surface and sinks back down. “This part of Pluto is acting like a lava lamp,” said New Horizons’ William McKinnon in a statement. The darker patch near the center of the image shows what scientists believe is an iceberg composed of dirty water....
In a paper published today in Nature, researchers introduced the Vegetation Sensitivity Index, a metric for measuring how sensitive a particular ecosystem (especially its vegetation) is to climate change. The result is a map that shows which parts of the world will be most severely affected by our changing climate. To create the map, the researchers used satellite data collected from 2000 to 2013 to look at plants on a global scale....
Then, I discovered PureData. When an audio engineer friend mentioned the open-source programming language that uses rectangular boxes to build audio, video and graphics, I was intrigued. After an hour-long workshop, I got the basic idea and was able to create my first patch (a script), which made my computer emit sounds and let me regulate the frequency of those sounds. Fun stuff. PureData (those in the know call it Pd) was amusing and habit-forming....
What’s been holding researchers back up to this point is that, unlike x-rays and other forms of high-energy, ionizing radiation, low levels of radio-wave exposure don’t have the power to penetrate cells and blow apart bits of DNA. For radio frequencies from cell phones to cause genetic mutations in brain tissue, the tissue must absorb an obscene dose of them, and scientists simply don’t know whether or not that’s happening–even in people who spend the better part of their days holding the little energy-emitting devices flush against the side of their heads....
2. ICE SCRAPER The Blizzerator makes clearing snow or ice off cars easier and more comfortable. The scraper’s designer, a chiropractor, angled both the brush and the scraper head to 15 degrees, so that users don’t have to stretch across curved windshields or reach overhead to clean roofs. Blizzerator $20–$25 3. SNOWBLOWER The Compact Track 24 can clear a driveway faster than any other snowblower of its size. Engineers modified the 208-cc engine so that it propels the 200-pound thrower forward 18 percent faster than prior models....
All of this makes the period between Christmas and New Year’s one of the most common times of the year to have a heart attack (in predominantly Christian countries, anyway). This is actually something cardiologists have known for a while—several studies examining mortality around the holidays have resoundingly found that your risk of dying, in general, is significantly higher around that time. They’ve also specifically looked at heart attacks and found the same thing....
On the map issued for next Monday, Central Australia gets the dubious distinction of being the first region shown in purple, meaning temperatures are likely to rise above 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit). This last Monday was the country’s hottest day on record nationwide, with average maximum temperatures around the country of 40.33 degrees, and officials expect more to come. The new pink code is reserved for temperatures from 52 to 54 degrees Celsius, more than 125 degrees Fahreinheit....
If there’s one thing we can count on in life, it’s change, and viruses are no exception. Variants of the original SARS-CoV-2 virus have popped up in different corners of the world. That might sound scary, but it’s actually perfectly normal, or even “humdrum” as one Nature study puts it. While virologists predicted all along that the virus that causes COVID-19 would mutate, it’s impossible to predict exactly how deadly or transmissible the next one will be....
Headphones In the simplest scientific terms, headphones are audio accessories that convert electrical signals into sound. In more fun terms, they’re speakers you slap on your head. Headphones are fitted with miniaturized mechanics that are similar to what you’ll find inside of any speaker. The key parts to a standard headphone are a diaphragm, which most often looks like a traditional cone-shaped woofer, as well as a coil and a donut-shaped magnet that move the diaphragm....
When a patient downloads and agrees to the terms and conditions in one of these apps, she gives the pharmacy access to certain information, such as her weight tracker, pedometer, or sugar tracker (for diabetics). But she is also waiving the privacy protection afforded by HIPAA. That gives the pharmacy free reign to track and market specific products to these patients, pushing coupons for nearby locations or advertising medications based on a patient’s specific conditions, often via text message....
What are the Pioneer DJ HDJ-CUE1BT headphones? Coming from a company with a long history in DJ equipment, the HDJ-CUE1BT headphones have features designed with DJs in mind, but they are also well-suited to be an average user’s daily pick. Compared to Pioneer’s pro models (such as the HDJ-X5), these headphones build on quality benchmarks while adding connectivity and customization features. If you want to feel like you’re working the crowd, whether it’s at the Paradise Garage circa 1977 or it’s from the main stage at Coachella, a detachable short-coiled cable can connect to a DJ mixer, laptop, or other devices with a 3....
At each junction, a curbside controller cabinet is wired into the signal, and inside is a briefcase-size box made of brushed chrome. The container holds the components of the artificially intelligent Surtrac system, which makes decisions based on what it spies through the city’s traffic cameras. Short for Scalable Urban Traffic Control, it’s one of the first to gather information on vehicular flow and use it to adjust lights in real time—so-called adaptive traffic control....
[Via Kongregate] We can restate the Third law more specifically: “If object A exerts a force on object B, then object B exerts a force of equal magnitude, in the opposite direction, back on A.” Interestingly, many people have a hard time intuitively accepting the “equal” part of the law. For example, consider the case a train moving along its track, and an unfortunate fly traveling in the opposite direction on a collision course....
The second video explains how you could duplicate the hoax by placing the magnetron from a microwave oven underneath the table where the magic cell phone sleight of hand is taking place. I would not try this at home by the way, because exposure to a 1000-watt microwave emitter might not be healthy. Herein is the crux of the matter. Yes, it is true that both microwave ovens and cell phones emit radiation in the microwave frequency range....
The low-frequency radio signals were heard for seven glorious minutes, when the Parker Solar Probe was nearest to Venus. When working to identify the cause of the radio waves, NASA scientists realized that the probe must have passed through Venus’s upper atmosphere, known as the ionosphere—an achievement they had not planned for but were pleasantly surprised by. The frequencies recorded matched the sort of signal that would be emitted by gases there....
Maybe these guys are on to something: if you want to teach American kids, it’s probably best to do it in rhyme. Anyone out there feel like sending us a rap video about some other tech-related topic? Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy” doesn’t count… Here’s the CERN video, for your inspiration: CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo.
