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Driving while blind? Maybe, with new high-tech car

Ken Thomas
Associated Press
Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:33 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/National Federation of the Blind
Could a blind person drive a car? Researchers are trying to make that far-fetched notion a reality. The National Federation of the Blind and Virginia Tech plan to demonstrate a prototype vehicle next year equipped with technology that helps a blind person drive a car independently.

The technology, called "nonvisual interfaces," uses sensors to let a blind driver maneuver a car based on information transmitted to him about his surroundings: whether another car or object is nearby, in front of him or in a neighboring lane.

Advocates for the blind consider it a "moon shot," a goal similar to President John F. Kennedy's pledge to land a man on the moon. For many blind people, driving a car long has been considered impossible. But researchers hope the project could revolutionize mobility and challenge long-held assumptions about limitations.
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Rocket

ISS crew capture robotic spacecraft

Lester Haines
The Register
Mon, 05 Jul 2010 05:09 UTC
Progress 38 docks at second attempt

The International Space Station crew successfully captured the Progress 38 spacecraft yesterday, after the unmanned Russian supply vessel sailed past the orbiting outpost on Friday.

A telemetry failure 25 minutes before the scheduled docking prompted last week's unscheduled flyby. The cause was a glitch in the TORU teleoperated rendezvous and docking system, provoked by "the activation of the TORU 'Klest' TV transmitter*, which created interference with TORU itself", NASA explains.
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Rocket

'Huge airships to carry freight starting 10 years from now'

Lewis Page
The Register
Fri, 02 Jul 2010 04:25 UTC
Flying zeppelin
© The Register
'Fresh fruit, vegetables, flowers and other foreign luxuries' will arrive like this.

Ex UK.gov top boffin's amazing claim

The long-touted idea of using airships to replace cargo aircraft is in the news again, courtesy of former head government boffin Professor Sir David King, who says "this is something I believe is going to happen".

King's remarks were reported by the Guardian this week. The former UK chief scientific adviser, nowadays turned big cheese at Oxford uni, was addressing a green biz forum there.
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Rocket

Last shuttle mission shifted to Feb 2011

Lester Haines
The Register
Fri, 02 Jul 2010 04:09 UTC
NASA firms up dates for final two flights

NASA has announced that the last space shuttle mission - Endeavour's STS-134 to the International Space Station - will now lift off on 26 February next year.

Discovery's STS-133 mission, meanwhile, is scheduled for 1 November. NASA explains: "The target dates were adjusted because critical payload hardware for the STS-133 mission will not be ready in time for the previously targeted date. With Discovery's move, Endeavour had to plan for its next available window, which was February."
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Rocket

Robotic cargo spacecraft misses rendezvous with ISS

Dan Goodin
The Register
Fri, 02 Jul 2010 04:05 UTC
Zooms past as crew members watch

An unmanned Russian cargo ship missed its scheduled rendezvous with the International Space Station on Friday after a telemetry lock between the two spacecraft failed. Engineers are scrambling to figure out why.

The robotic Progress 38 spacecraft sailed past the station as its crew tried in vain to regain telemetry with the it, NASA officials said. The ship was a couple miles away from the station when it zoomed by, so it never posed a threat to the six-person crew.

"The Progress literally flew past the station, but at a safe distance from the outpost," NASA commentator Rob Navias said. "The station crew reported seeing the Progress drift beyond their view, as they worked to reestablish telemetry with the spacecraft."
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Nuke

Superpowered energy-storing wonder stuff created in lab

Lewis Page
The Register
Mon, 05 Jul 2010 03:59 UTC
Future exploding laptop battery = nuclear bomb going off

US-based boffins say they have created a never-seen-before type of ultra-bizarre stuff in the lab by using incredible pressures similar to those found deep inside planets. The scientists believe that their creation is capable of storing an unfeasible amount of energy.

"It is the most condensed form of energy storage outside of nuclear energy," says Choong-Shik Yoo, chemistry prof at Washington State uni.

Yoo and his colleagues created "novel two- and three-dimensional extended non-molecular phases" of xenon difluoride (XeF2) by squashing their samples incredibly viciously. This was done using two small "anvils" made of diamond, rammed together by powerful machinery.
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Control Panel

Meet the Eyeborg: Canadian Man Replaces Eye with Video Camera

Tom Chivers
The Telegraph
Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:45 UTC
A Canadian man has replaced his own false eye with a camera-eye of his own invention - and will let the world see what he sees via a live video link.


Rob Spence, a Toronto-based film-maker, lost his right eye in a shooting accident on his grandfather's farm when he was a teenager. Now 36, he decided some years ago to build a miniature camera that could be fitted inside his false eye. A prototype was completed last year, and was named by Time magazine as one of the best inventions of 2009. He calls himself "the Eyeborg guy".

The eye contains a wireless video camera that runs on a tiny three-volt battery. It is not connected to his brain, and has not restored his vision. Instead it records everything that he sees.

More than that, it contains a wireless transmitter, which allows him to transmit what he is seeing in real time to a computer.
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Camera

Iran Unveils Human-Like Robot


Breitbart
Sun, 04 Jul 2010 04:51 UTC
Image
© Agence France-Presse
The first Iranian Human like robot named 'Surena', is seen at a conference centre during a ceremony to mark National Industry and Mine Day in Tehran on July 3.
Iran has developed a new human-like walking robot to be used in "sensitive jobs," government newspaper Iran reported on Sunday.

Soorena-2, named after an ancient Persian warrior, was unveiled by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday. It is 1.45 metres (4.7 feet) tall and weighs 45 kilograms (99 pounds), the report said.

"Walking slowly like human beings with regular arm and leg movements are among its characteristics," it said. "Such robots are designed and developed to be used in sensitive and difficult jobs on behalf of a person or as help."

The report did not elaborate on the robot's capabilities.
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Arrow Down

Apple's iPhone Mea Culpa: We're "Totally Wrong"

Josh Kleinbaum
NBC: Bay Area
Fri, 02 Jul 2010 07:01 UTC
Image
© Getty Images
Company admits it uses the wrong formula to compute iPhone signal strength

For two weeks, Apple dismissed rumors of a faulty antenna in the new iPhone 4 as nothing more than scuttlebutt. Any phone has these problems, Apple officials said. Buy a case to fix it.

Friday, Apple came clean: The antenna works just fine. But the software that displays signal strenth doesn't. The company has been using a faulty formula to determine signal strength in its phones for years.

"Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong," Apple said in a letter from two executives posted on its website Friday morning.
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Blackbox

Supernovae don't make the biggest atoms

Kate McAlpine
New Scientist
Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:07 UTC
Image
© NASA/SAO/F.Seward/ESA/ASU/J.Hester & A.Loll/JPL-Caltech/Univ Minn/R.Gehrz
Not such a versatile atom factory
They are the brightest of stars, but supernovae may not forge the heaviest elements. That's the suggestion arising from analysis of a new model of the particle winds that rush from the cores of supernovae.

The only two elements formed in abundance shortly after the big bang were hydrogen and helium. All the heavier ones must have been forged by fusing these smaller nuclei together. The high pressures and temperatures inside ordinary stars can account for elements up to a certain size, but making elements bigger than iron, which has a nucleus containing 26 protons, requires some other mechanism.

That's where supernovae come in. These exploding stars blast neutrinos from their cores to their surface at close to the speed of light, kicking protons and neutrons out of other atoms as they go. This creates a "wind" within which neutrons and protons fuse to form the nuclei of small atoms. Further protons, neutrons and atoms join in to make larger ones.
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