MoodRaisers | Published News | Science & Technology

Amazing Realistic New Robot 2010 (Actroid-F)

airehbgil — Sat, 14 May 2011 02:24:56 -0200

Cool realistic robot, looks so real. The guy controls it by moving I think, it seems to have a variety of differentt abilities, it can talk as well.

Swiss "Jetman" flies over Grand Canyon

airehbgil — Fri, 13 May 2011 06:06:19 -0200

Details about the flight, achieved one day later than planned and away from the media spotlight, were announced by Rossy's publicity handlers on Tuesday, after swissinfo.ch reported the successful completion of the stunt based on confirmation from two people close to the event.

Amaizing LEGO GBC 20 modules - increadible !

adminko — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 05:01:52 -0200

20 GBC modules. 4 modules(screw,sweeper,shovel,pump) based on Philo's . The module at 5:24 based on Isogawa's. The pneumatic module at 7:00 using Linmix's image. Some other modules being inspired by GBC fan's.

Easy - Make Potassium Iodide For Your Self

blznhazl — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 19:38:19 -0200

Here I make potassium iodide from elemental iodine and potassium hydroxide. 3I2 + 6KOH == 5KI + KIO3 + 3H2O The coproduct of potassium iodate can be separated easily because it is far less soluble in water, and to ensure it was all precipitated out I immersed the solution in an ice bath. This video is a good demonstration of how things really go when you do chemistry yourself. You start with a bunch of assumptions, and a lot of the time many of these are proven wrong and you have to figure out another way to do it. For example, the additional heating I had to do and the fact that I used too much iodine. I've added a number of annotations to highlight this as well.

Time square video screens hacked! (Howto)

shagines — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 02:05:20 -0200

Time square video screens hacked! Howto.

From author: the way it works is pretty simple: plug in transmitter into the iphone 4 and play back any video clip through the ipod feature or through the camera roll. the transmitter instantly sends the video signal to the video repeater and the video repeater overrides any video screen that it's being held next to it. i chose times square for my demo because it has lots of video screens to try it on. it is also one of the most monitored and secured areas in new york city and that made it that much more fun :).

Whale shark feeding frenzies mystify, enlighten scientists | MNN - Mother Nature Network

bendavis — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 22:44:48 -0200

Plankton boom allows scientists closer look at the largest, but most elusive, fish in the world.

If this year is like the last few, one of the most mysterious creatures in the world will soon descend upon the waters off of the Yucatan Peninsula. The blue, plankton-rich waters will become an all-you-can-eat haven for hundreds of giant whale sharks, an annual event known as "afuera."
As writer Jim Tharpe wrote on March 7 in the Washington Post, the sharks feed on plankton at the ocean surface in a "swirling mass." Nowhere else do whale sharks gather in such numbers in full view of human eyes – and researchers are using the opportunity to learn more about these elusive giants.

"Amazingly, the largest fish in the world, which is the whale shark, is one of the least known," Rafael de la Parra, a biologist and coordinator for Mexico's whale shark conservation Domino Project, told LiveScience. [Images of whale sharks]

Mystery beasts
The sharks live their lives largely out of the sight. Little is known about where they go and what they do when they aren't in shallow-water feeding groups like the ones in Mexican waters. Satellite tags, which beam back information about animals' whereabouts, have given some hints, said Robert Hueter, the director of the shark research center at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida.

Hueter, de la Parra and their colleagues have tracked 42 whale sharks from the Yucatan area with satellite tags since 2003. They've found that the animals swim massive distances. One female turned up in the Southern Hemisphere halfway between Brazil and Africa. She'd traveled a minimum of 4,500 miles (7,242 kilometers) in 150 days, not including vertical distance diving or any curves on her route.

"We're working on the hypothesis that they are going down there to give birth to their pups, at least that's one place that they're going," Hueter told LiveScience. The theory is consistent with observations of small whale sharks in the area, he said, but so far the team hasn't seen another female take the same journey.

The whale sharks also take deep dives. The deepest observed dive, Hueter said, was 6,325 feet (1,928 meters) below the ocean surface – more than a mile and a quarter. The sharks make these dives in a long, slow glide, Hueter said, leading researchers to speculate that it's a way for the animals to cover long distances without expending much energy.

Reproduction riddle
The reason for the deep-sea excursions isn't the only whale shark mystery. No one knows anything about how the animals breed, said Jennifer Schmidt, a biologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has studied the genetics of the animals. One of her studies suggests that female whale sharks may save up sperm from a single mating to fertilize multiple pregnancies, but whale shark courtship has never been observed.

"The genetics tell us that there seems to be a large degree of migration and interbreeding between animals around the world," Schmidt told LiveScience. "There must be a place where adult males and females meet to breed, but we don't know where that place is."

Most feeding aggregations seen around the world are made up of adolescent males, Hueter said. The sharks that feed in Mexico are a slightly more inclusive slice of whale shark life, with more adults and females present. Still, the sex ratio is 2.6 males to every female, and no one knows why.

Diving for clues
Nonetheless, studies of the Yucatan feeding frenzies have answered some questions about whale sharks. For one: What do they eat? The sharks are drawn to the site by an upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water that leads to plankton blooms. Plankton is the main source of sustenance for these filter-feeding sharks. In particular, the afuera area – so named because it is "outside" the Mexican government's official protected zone for the sharks – is a spawning spot for a type of tuna called the little tunny. The fish probably spawn at night, Schmidt said, and their eggs rise to the surface in the morning.

Next, she said, "the sharks come in and literally swim at surface level with their mouths wide open just vacuuming in the eggs."

Because the sharks feed at the surface, researchers have been able to figure out how they eat, as well as how much. It turns out that whale sharks have a unique filtration system: Their mouths are equipped with pads that "look like scouring pads from your kitchen," said Philip Motta, a biologist at the University of South Florida who has studied the afuera whale sharks' feeding behavior.

As the sharks swim along, water probably hits these pads at an angle, Motta told LiveScience. The water continues through, but the plankton get deflected toward the back of the throat. The set-up probably prevents the filtering pads from getting clogged, Motta said.

"There's no other fish that has anything like this," he said.

For all their size (they can grow to more than 40 feet, or 12 meters, in length) whale sharks don't eat as many calories as might be expected. According to research by Motta and colleagues published last year in the journal Zoology, a 20-foot (6.2 meter) whale shark is estimated to consume 6,721 calories (28,121 kilojoules) per day. In comparison, a moderately active human man should consume around 2,500 calories per day.

It's impossible to know in advance whether the sharks will stay "afuera" or aggregate inside the protected zone this year, de la Parra said, but the research team plans to continue research on the sharks' genetics, growth and movements. They're also monitoring whether ecotourism affects the sharks' behavior. Numerous boats carry tourists out to feeding aggregations to get close to the sharks, Hueter said, which is good for conservation awareness. However, he said, many sharks already show signs of run-ins with propellers and boats, so ecotourism can be a threat.

Hueter and his Mote Marine Lab team aren't sure if they'll have funding to continue studies in Mexico this summer. They're watching a few remaining satellite tags from previous seasons, Hueter said. They are also monitoring shark populations in the northern Gulf of Mexico, looking for contamination from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It's likely to be tough, Hueter said, but the team hopes to draw blood from swimming whale sharks to check their health. As filter feeders, he said, whale sharks are particularly vulnerable to ocean pollution.

"They can't just keep their mouths closed and swim away and feed somewhere else," Hueter said. "Even if oil is present in microdroplets that have been dispersed, they are processing a lot of volume of water, and even the smallest trace of pollutants can become concentrated on their gills."

A Day Made of Glass... Made possible by Corning.

shevileyez — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:53:19 -0200

Cool concept video by Corning about what can be done using their glass technology in digital and physical environments. Lots of interesting ideas. Where is the multi-user interaction?

Watch "A Day Made of Glass" and take a look at Corning's vision for the future with specialty glass at the heart of it.

Could The Windows Tablets Delay Be A Disaster or Just Shrewd Move?

vtupuola — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:03:30 -0200

Analysis: It sounds like Microsoft has decided that the best way to address the iPad is with a full version of Windows that's been thoroughly reworked for tablets.

When is Microsoft going to have a version of Windows that can power tablets that have a chance at competing with the iPad? Bloomberg's Ian King and Dina Bass are reporting that the world's largest software company won't release anything until 2012's back-to-school season. They don't use the words "Windows 8? in the story, but if they're right about the timing, it sounds like Microsoft has decided that the best way to respond to the iPad is with a version of full-blown Windows that's been thoroughly reworked for tablets (rather than the plain ol' Windows 7 which failed to storm the tablet market back in early 2010).

Then again, it may have other, speedier plans. ZDnet's Mary Jo Foley wrote about Windows Embedded Compact 7, a version of the operating system based on the same guts as Windows

Phone 7. It's already out, and meant for a variety of devices, including...tablets! But maybe simple ones focused on the consumption of content rather than creation. (With Apple's demos of versions of iMovie and GarageBand for the iPad, I hope there's nobody left who insists that the iPad is purely, um, consumptive.)

If Bloomberg's right and the first serious iPad challengers that run Windows won't show up until the fall of 2012, Apple will have something like an 1830-month head start on Microsoft. First-generation Windows 8 tablets will compete against third-generation iPads and other devices from RIM, HP, and others which have been through at least a couple of revisions. It's going to be really, really late to a party that's in progress right now.

It sounds like a recipe for futility. But I'm not sure whether it's any more dicey a proposition than the one other Apple rivals are pursuing, which is to get into the race sooner rather than later. It's now eleven months since the iPad shipped, and the products arriving to compete with it still feel a bit like they're still pulling on their running shorts as they enter the race. (Motorola's Xoom, while not without its virtues, shipped without three of the key features which are supposed to make it an iPad-beater: 4G wireless, Flash, and a MicroSD slot. It also came with a copy of Android 3.0 Honeycomb that's crashed on me more in a couple of weeks than my iPad has in the last eleven months.)

The first round of iPad challengers are dealing with a major gotcha: Apple, too, is running as fast as it can. Now that the company has revealed the iPad 2, we know what it's been focusing on: making the tablet thinner, lighter, and slicker, so it feels less like a computer and more like the "magical" device it's been talking about all along. End result: RIM's PlayBook and HP's TouchPad, which looked a little less polished than the iPad from an industrial-design standpoint, have fallen further behind before they've even shipped.

Microsoft could hastily knock out something that looks like it was hastily knocked out. Or it could bide its time, building a version of Windows for tablets that's ambitious and impressive from the get go. At this point, the latter strategy seems at least as reasonable as the first one.

After all, the history of technology products is rife with major successes that weren't the first contenders in their category -- or even the second, third, fourth, or fifth arrival. Microsoft's DOS showed up years after the first personal computers shipped. Google was a latecomer to the search-engine wars. The iPhone entered what seemed to be a mature smartphone market; the iPad jumpstarted the tablet market that had fumbled along for a couple of decades without any success stories. In each case, lollygagging seemed to help rather than hurt.

Mind you, we know very little about Windows 8 other than that it'll run on the ARM-architecture chips that are well suited to tablets as well as x86 processors. It could still be a big snooze. But in a world of 1.0 tablets, there's a chance, at least, that abstaining from competition until you have something closer to a 3.0 is a rational move.

The new interpretation - Jetpack Skis by Troy Hartman

ghkitzman — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 10:49:16 -0200

How cool is that ?

Watch this - CONAN ipad 2 Review

joeliecea — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 07:34:58 -0200

There are some serious moments tho...

Impressive iPad 2 Review - Hands On [HD]

cpeltes — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 07:28:22 -0200

Lol.

3D Bio Printer: Print Your Organs

carolittasutton — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 07:19:12 -0200

With this technology we can live without any restrictions !

Keepon dancing to Spoon's "Don't You Evah"

babygurl_ch — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 05:01:26 -0200

The robot Keepon (developed by Hideki Kozima and programmed by Marek Michalowski) dancing to the Spoon song, "Don't You Evah." Keepon and Spoon will reunite at WIRED NextFest in LA September 10, 2007 for Creative Commons. This video is available to the public under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 license. For information about what uses this license permits, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. See http://wirednextfest.com http://beatbots.org http://creativecommons.org http://spoontheband.com