Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Building a Crash-Proof Internete,
On 18 July 2001, a freight train derailed in the Howard Street tunnel running beneath downtown Baltimore, spilling 20,000 litres of hydrochloric acid. The resulting chemical fire destroyed fibre-optic cables owned by eight major US internet carriers.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Email Patterns Can Predict Impending Doom
Email logs can provide advance warning of an organisation reaching crisis point. That’s the tantalising suggestion to emerge from the pattern of messages exchanged by Enron employees.
Monday, May 4, 2009
The Secret Of Google’s Book Scanning Machine Revealed
The other day my colleague Kee Malesky turned me on to an incredibly interesting article from the New Scientist website about the granting of patent 7508978.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Invisibility Cloaks Could Take Sting Out of Tsunamis
Invisibility cloaks that are able to steer light around two dimensional objects have become reality in the last few years.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Self-Help Software to Soothe Stressed Astronauts
When astronauts in orbit stress out, they call Earth to chat with a NASA psychiatrist. But transmitting messages to Mars and beyond would take 20 minutes or so, requiring new approaches to mental health in space. So researchers are developing self-help software that allows space travelers to carry their counselors with them on a DVD.
Read [...]
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Science Fiction Inspires DARPA Weapon
The late Arthur C. Clarke is famous for having popularized the geostationary communications satellite in 1945. Now the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working to turn one of his more dangerous ideas into reality. Clarke’s 1955 novel “Earthlight” climaxes in a battle between a lunar fortress and three attacking spacecraft. At the height of the battle the defending commander unleashes “The Stiletto,” which resembles “a solid bar of light” and pierces one spacecraft “as an entomologist pierces a butterfly with a pin.”
Thursday, April 10, 2008
3D Printer to Churn Out Copies of Itself
A self-replicating 3D printer that spawns new, improved versions of itself is in development at the University of Bath in the U.K. The “self-replicating rapid prototyper,” or RepRap, could vastly reduce the cost of 3D printers, paving the way for a future where broken objects and spare parts are simply “reprinted” at home. New and unique objects could also be created.
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