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Blog Archives
“REvolution of Computing” (CSE Faculty Lecture)
The Science & Engineering Library is pleased to invite you to a lecture by Professor Ryan Kastner entitled, “REvolution of Computing.”
Should We Worry About a War in Space With China?
The idea was straightforward and simple from this magazine editor’s standpointparlay the buzz about China’s lunar ambitions into a conjectural story about the weapons and tactics of a lunar battle. But my “battle for the moon” scenario started to fall apart immediatelymostly because the moon is of such little military utility. Read more »
2011 Ford Transit Connect Electric Test Drive
Livonia, Mich. The electric vehicle market in the U.S. is tiny right now, less than half of 1 percent of all vehicles sold. The Nissan Leaf is blazing the trail as the first modern EV for public sale, but more are coming, including the Ford Transit Electric. For Ford’s first EV since the Ranger EV, the company partnered with Azure Dynamics to quickly adapt the van for electric propulsion. It’s marketed primarily to fleet and commercial buyers, which Ford hopes will capture real-world data that will help future EVs. Eco-conscious families will also be able to purchase the van, but the $54,000 starting price will likely mean few take that route. In any case, let’s take a closer look. Read more »
The (Promising) Future for Flying Cars
Even at its best, the Golden West Airshow in Olivehurst, Calif., is not one of the country’s premier aviation events. The annual weekend-long celebration of light sport and experimental aircraft usually attracts only a few thousand spectators to Yuba County Airport. This year’s turnout is especially light. High winds have kept some performers away and are preventing small-plane pilots from flying in to the venue, but the show must go on.
How to Start a Tablet Company (and Compete With Apple’s iPad)
How many tablets were launched at the Consumer Electronics Show this year? Well, there were the big announcements, such as the Motorola Xoom (which won a Popular Mechanics Editors’ Choice Award), Toshiba’s as-yet-unnamed tab, Research In Motions’ BlackBerry PlayBook, Asus’ Eee Pad Slider and the Dell Streak. With the exception of BBerry’s PlayBook, which uses RIM’s own operating system, most of these tabs are using Android. Forward-looking tabs such as the Xoom and Toshiba device should launch with the made-for-tablet Honeycomb Android build. Tablets launching in the near term will be running the older Froyo version. Read more »
How to Use a Droid to Fly (and Crash) an AR.Drone Quadricopter
One of the coolest, and harshest, truths about the AR.Drone remote-control quadricopter is that you fly it with an iPhone. It’s squarishabout 2 x 2 feetand it looks like a foamy futuristic racing beetle. Its four propellers are ensconced within soft foam bumpers, and it costs $299. Basically, it’s one of the costliest and most drool-inducing pieces of hardware in the PM officenot counting the power tools, of course. Read more »
Bioengineers ‘Pump’ Life Into Post-Heart Attack Therapies
Bioengineers ‘Pump’ Life Into Post-Heart Attack Therapies
San Diego, CA, January 18, 2011 — Bioengineers at UC San Diego are one step closer to improving therapies for heart attack victims. A paper recently published in Biomaterials called “Hydrogels with time-dependent material properties enhance cardiomyocyte differentiation in vitro,” describes how the researchers measured the increase in stiffness that occurs in heart muscle as it develops and then mimicked that change in a modified version of a biological material called hyaluronic acid. Pre-cardiac cells grown on these materials were found to mature into adult heart cells better than when grown on materials that did not stiffen. This process occurred despite not having the proper chemical signals around them and shows how important stiffness can be to cells.
The World’s 18 Strangest Movie Sets
Background: The Empire Strikes Back was the first sequel of the Star Wars franchise. Before Star Wars became synonymous with CGI, painstaking work was done to complete realistic setsnot to dazzle, but to make the experience more believable. Read more »