Friday, December 28, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
REAL LIFE JURASSIC PARK COMING SOON!!!! (kind of)
You can bet on Dubai to have a bottomless budget when it comes to creating out-of-the-world attractions to lure affluent tourists. If you sat biting your nails on the edge of your seat while watching the famous movie ‘Jurassic Park,’ then wait till you get to real Jurassic Park that will come alive in Dubai soon. The first-of-its-kind dinosaur park set in the new City of Arabia promises to take you back into the primitive world and give you some thrilling moments of interacting with dinosaurs. The Million dollar park called the ‘Restless Planet’ spanning over 5,00,000 square foot will feature over 100 animatronic dinosaurs of forty different species. The theme park will recreate a virtual earth complete with mountains and oceans using computer graphics and special effects to give the realistic feel. The dinosaurs will come alive thanks to the pneumatic systems and sensors that are incorporated in them. They are programmed to interact with the visitors to give them a memorable experience.
Scheduled to open in the late 2008, the park is sure to increase the in-flow of dollars to the already cash-rich Dubai. Watch the promotional video released by the developers showing a T.rex charging at visitors and pterodactyls flying overhead while you wait restlessly for the project to be completed.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Walk on new water
Desktop fabricator may kick-start home revolution
17:59 09 January 2007
by Tom Simonite
by Tom Simonite
A cheap self-assembly device capable of fabricating 3D objects has been developed by US researchers. They hope the machine could kick start a revolution in home fabrication – or "rapid prototyping" – just as early computer kits sparked an explosion in home computing.
Rapid prototyping machines are already used by designers, engineers and scientists to create one-off mechanical parts and models. These create objects by depositing layer upon layer of liquid or powdered material.
These machines typically cost from $20,000 to $1.5 million, says Hod Lipson from Cornell University, US, who launched the Fab@Home project with PhD student Evan Malone in October 2006.
The standard version of their Freeform fabricator – or "fabber" – is about the size of a microwave oven and can be assembled for around $2400 (£1200). It can generate 3D objects from plastic and various other materials. Full documentation on how to build and operate the machine, along with all the software required, are available on the Fab@Home website, and all designs, documents and software have been released for free.
Many hands
"We are trying to get this technology into as many hands as possible," Malone told New Scientist. "The kit is designed to be as simple as possible." Once the parts have been bought, a normal soldering iron and a few screwdrivers are enough to put it together. "It's probably the cheapest machine of this kind out there," he adds.
The machine connects to a desktop computer running software that controls its operation. It then creates objects layer-by-layer by squeezing material from a mechanically-controlled syringe. A video shows a completed machine constructing a silicone bulb (16MB, wmv format).
Unlike commercial equipment, the Fab@Home machine is also designed to be used with more than one material. So far it has been tested with silicone, plaster, play-doh and even chocolate and icing. Different materials can also be used to make a single object – the control software prompts the user when to load new material into the machine.
Malone and Lipson hope Fab@Home will grow into a community of enthusiasts who share designs for 3D objects and even modify the machines for themselves. This will prompt the emergence of widespread personal fabrication, Lipson hopes.
"We think it's a similar story to computers," he explains. "Mainframes had existed for years, but personal computing only took off in the late seventies." A cheap self-assembly computer called the Altair 8800, launched in 1975, sparked the rapid development of personal computing, he notes: "We hope Fab@Home can do the same for rapid prototyping."
Copy cat
Adrian Bowyer, who is also working on rapid prototyping machines at Bath University, in the UK, agrees that the technology could have mass appeal once the equipment is cheap enough. One of his own machines can even make some of its own parts (see 3D printer to churn out copies of itself).
"Fab@Home is an interesting idea; it should be easy for anyone in the world to build," Bowyer says. "Once you've used one you never want to go back, it's liberating and enormously fun." Bowyer believes the technology could one day even replace traditional models of manufacturing.
Bowyer adds that the Fab@Home machine could probably already be used to make many cheap injection-moulded products already on the market: "I can imagine people swapping plans of things to make online, or paying to download them instead of going to the shop."
Ominous Asteroid Threatens Mars
Dec. 21, 2007 -- Mars could be in for an asteroid hit.
A newly discovered hunk of space rock has a one in 75 chance of slamming into the Red Planet on Jan. 30, scientists said Thursday.
"These odds are extremely unusual. We frequently work with really long odds when we track ... threatening asteroids," said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The asteroid, known as 2007 WD5, was discovered in late November and is similar in size to an object that hit remote central Siberia in 1908, unleashing energy equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb and wiping out 60 million trees.
Scientists tracking the asteroid, currently halfway between Earth and Mars, initially put the odds of impact at 1 in 350 but increased the chances this week. Scientists expect the odds to diminish again early next month after getting new observations of the asteroid's orbit, Chesley said.
"We know that it's going to fly by Mars and most likely going to miss, but there's a possibility of an impact," he said.
If the asteroid does smash into Mars, it will probably hit near the equator close to where the rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian plains since 2004. The robot is not in danger because it lies outside the impact zone. Speeding at 8 miles a second, a collision would carve a hole the size of the famed Meteor Crater in Arizona.
In 1994, fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked into Jupiter, creating a series of overlapping fireballs in space. Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another planet.
"Unlike an Earth impact, we're not afraid, but we're excited," Chesley said.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Brief fire breaks out inside White House complex
Last update: 12:53 p.m. EST Dec. 19, 2007
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- A brief fire broke out Wednesday morning in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is adjacent to the White House. No one was seriously hurt and the fire was contained within a half-hour.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- A brief fire broke out Wednesday morning in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is adjacent to the White House. No one was seriously hurt and the fire was contained within a half-hour.
The two-alarm blaze started on the second floor of the building. Black smoke, which observers said smelled like plastic, billowed out of the windows overlooking the West Wing of the White House for about 30 minutes.
Firefighters were forced to break windows in the historic building. It appeared that several offices were gutted on the second floor near the ceremonial office of the vice president, but the fire did not appear to have spread to other floors.
Vice President Dick Cheney was not in the building at the time of the fire.
The building, commonly called the Old Executive Office Building, has a long, colorful history. Several presidents had their offices in the building. It also housed the office of the secret White House plumbers, who engineered the break-in of the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate that ultimately led President Richard Nixon to resign.
Renovation was ongoing in the building. There was damage to historic areas, officials said.
The Secret Service quickly ruled out any suspicious source for the fire; the building was quickly evacuated. Only one Marine was slightly hurt when the smoke in upper floors caused him to break a window, according to Washington, D.C. fire authorities.
The building originally housed the State, War and Navy departments between 1871 and 1888. The granite structure, often compared to a giant wedding cake, is one of America's best examples of the French Second Empire style of architecture.
There had been talk of tearing the building down, but it was spared and given historic landmark status. To accommodate an ever-growing White House staff, a new executive office building was erected across the street.
Jet From Supermassive Black Hole Seen Blasting Neighboring Galaxy
A jet of highly charged radiation from a supermassive black hole at the center of a distant galaxy is blasting another galaxy nearby -- an act of galactic violence that astronomers said yesterday they have never seen before.
Using images from the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory and other sources, scientists said the extremely intense jet from the larger galaxy can be seen shooting across 20,000 light-years of space and plowing into the outer gas and dust of the smaller one.
The smaller galaxy is being transformed by the radiation and the jet is being bent before shooting millions of light-years farther in a new direction.
"What we've identified is an act of violence by a black hole, with an unfortunate nearby galaxy in the line of fire," said Dan Evans, the study leader at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. He said any planets orbiting the stars of the smaller galaxy would be dramatically affected, and any life forms would likely die as the jet's radiation transformed the planets' atmosphere.
Black holes are generally thought of as mysterious cosmic phenomena that swallow matter, but the supermassive ones that occur at the center of many -- possibly all -- galaxies also set loose tremendous bursts of energy as matter swirls around the disk of material that circles the black hole but does not make it in.
That energy, often in the form of highly charged gamma rays and X-rays, shoots out in powerful jets that can be millions of light-years long and 1,000 light-years wide.
Scientists are just beginning to understand these jets, which not only transform matter in their path but also help produce "stellar nurseries," where new stars are formed.
Evans's collaborator, Martin Hardcastle of the University of Hertfordshire in England, said the collision they have identified began no more than 1 million years ago and could continue for 10 million to 100 million more years. Hardcastle called the collision a great opportunity to learn more about the jets.
"We see jets all over the universe, but we're still struggling to understand some of their basic properties," he said. "This system . . . gives us a chance to learn how they're affected when they slam into something -- like a galaxy -- and what they do after that."
The two galaxies are more than 1.4 billion light-years away from the Milky Way galaxy (a light-year equals about 6 trillion miles). But they are close to each other in cosmic terms -- about as far as the distance from Earth to the center of the Milky Way. That the two appear to be moving toward a merger may have played a role in creating such a powerful jet from the larger galaxy's central black hole.
The researchers said that the collision would have no effect on Earth, but the process is one that could play out in our galaxy a billion years into the future.
The galaxy Andromeda is the closest to the Milky Way, and the two are gradually coming closer to each other. In time, astronomers say, the two will merge, and the process may cause the dormant central black holes in either the Milky Way or Andromeda to become active and begin sending out similarly powerful jets.
If a jet were to hit Earth, Evans said, it would destroy the ozone layer and collapse the magnetosphere that blankets the planet and protects it from harmful solar particles. Without the ozone layer and magnetosphere, he said, much of life on Earth would end.
"This jet could be causing all sorts of problems for the smaller galaxy it is pummeling," Evans said.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said the discovery illustrates how researchers can now observe astronomical phenomena using many different tools and understand how they behave at many different points along the electromagnetic spectrum. Only when scientists measure a galaxy at all different wavelengths, he said, "can you really understand what's going on."
In making their discovery, the researchers used data from three orbiting instruments -- the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope -- as well as ground-based observatories including the Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico and Britain's Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network. The Astrophysical Journal will publish the results next year.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Guess-the-google
About the game
After creating Montage-a-google, several people wrote to me suggesting I make a game based on the same technology. Montage-a-google is a simple web app that uses Google's image search to generate a large gridded montage of images based on keywords (search terms) entered by the user. Guess-the-google reverses this process by picking the keywords for you, the player must then guess what keyword made up the image - it's surprisingly addictive.
The game requires version 8 of the Flash player or higher to run, you can get the latest version here.
I hope you enjoy the game, happy guessing!
Friday, December 14, 2007
Desktop shows real-time view of Earth
I get a kick out of those desktops that constantly change the display to show various pictures and scenes located on the hard drive. While it is interesting to see the latest vacation photos, or kid grinning like a fool, most of us probably want something slightly classier. Earthdesk looks like a typical wallpaper of the Earth in both day and night mode, but as you work throughout the day, you'll notice something — the Earth moves across your screen, with continents going in and out of darkness. The accurate shading of day and night also causes cities around the world to light up.
Earthdesk uses geographic and time zone stats to display real-time global cloud cover (at three hour intervals), allowing you to track hurricanes or see smoke created by major fires. If you are more interested in seeing the big blue marble from a different view, you can switch the map projections to show political, enhanced satellite, and natural maps.
Windows users can span the map across multiple monitor screens, but those using a Mac get an added bonus; you can display multiple maps across multiple screens, meaning you can track that hurricane to see if it is going to hit your political enemies. Earthdesk will only set you back $24.00, and might be a good gift idea for the budding geographer.
Xeric Design via Cool Hunting
Architecture these days has never been more advanced: Buildings are making their own energy and using ice as air conditioning. Creative buildings don't always involve special technology, however. One could build a home shaped like a giant toilet or shoe, for example. We've found nine buildings that are sure to disorient their residents, either by making them feel like mice in giant land, or by making them extremely dizzy. Check them out after the jump.
The Toilet
The World Toilet Association recently had its first general assembly meeting — what better way to celebrate than to build an enormous toilet-shaped home? This house contains four bedrooms and four accompanying bathrooms, each with a deluxe toilet and other attractive amenities like whirlpool tubs and motion sensors that turn on classical music when you enter. It's located south of Seoul in South Korea. If you're in the neighborhood, stop by to explore. For just $1 you can increase your awareness and appreciation of fancy porcelain thrones.
The Basket
Longaberger's 500 employees head to work every morning to be cradled in the cubicles and offices in this enormous basket. This seven-story building with 150-ton handles serves as Longaberger's corporate headquarters and turns 10 years old this year. The company is known for its hand-woven baskets, but we were surprised to find that it also makes wrought-iron furniture and fancy-pants candles. Perhaps they can be inspiration for another office, should the company ever need to expand.
The Cubist-Inspired Guitar
The University of Iowa opened this building last year as part of its school for art and architecture. The Art Building West is shaped like this Pablo Picasso guitar sculpture. Its interior is filled with cubist-style oblique angles. The building is truly a mixture of art and architecture, though whether it makes students of those subjects dizzy during class is another question entirely.
Shoes
This shoe-shaped building was built in 1948, perhaps in some sort of overzealous post-war fit of creativity. Located in Hellam Pennsylvania, it was used for a while as the guesthouse (it has three bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen and living room) of Mahlon N. Haines, who was the owner of a local shoe empire. It was an ice cream parlor for many years after Haines death, but is now a museum teaching visitors about the eccentric life of its creator.
This smaller shoe-shaped building was built all the way across the country in Bakersfield, California, in 1947, just one year before its Hellam cousin. It was built to be a shoe repair shop, and later it was sold with the stipulation that it would remain a shoe-related business. The store that the shoe currently houses is called the Big Shoe Repair and was still fixing soles when we called it last week.
Upside-Down HousesHere's a building that's shaped like: a house. A house that's been blown over and uprooted by the Big Bad Wolf, that is. The upside-down house opened this year in the small town of Szymbark, Poland, and has become one the country's major tourist attractions. It's apparently quite disorienting on the inside and was built by a Polish businessman as a kind of protest against governmental actions that are detached from reality — think Poland under the Communists and the world's current treatment of the environment. Poland doesn't have a monopoly on flipped houses, however. There are others, to be found in Japan (top picture) and Florida (right), respectively.
We know that iPod obsession knows no bounds, so it was almost inevitable that someone would construct an iPod-shaped building. And where better to put it than in that city of insanely tall and insanely weird buildings, Dubai? The iPad even sits in a dock. Construction for the building began in March, and is set to be completed by the end of 2009.
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