December 06, 2001 -
Quiet revolution on the track - The Economist,
Designing F1 racing cars has little to offer makers of family saloons.
But it is helping to create a whole new approach to solving problems
in engineering design. HOW looks deceive. Streamlined as the modern
Formula One (F1) racing car and its American cousin in the
Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) series may seem, when it comes
to slipping through the air they are more like barn doors than the
average family car. To eke out more miles per gallon of fuel, car
makers from Detroit to Nagoya have learnt to give their models the
slippiest of shapes. In aerodynamic terms, the average car nowadays
has a “drag coefficient”—a measure of its resistance to being moved
through the air—of between 0.3 and 0.4. Open-wheel racing cars, by
contrast, can have drag coefficients that are twice as big. So much
for racing improving the breed...
December 06, 2001 -
Unzipping the server - The Economist, A new standard
called Infiniband promises to clear the communication bottleneck among
servers. Will it catch on fast enough to save computer makers that are
slugging it out at the lower end of the market?
December 10, 2001 -
Sweet Meteorites - NASA NEWS, Scientists have
discovered sugars in a meteorite, adding to the list of complex
organic molecules that have been found inside space rocks. A NASA
scientist has discovered sugar and several related organic compounds
in two meteorites -- providing the first evidence that another
fundamental building block of life on Earth might have come from outer
space. Dr. George Cooper and co-workers from the NASA Ames Research
Center found the sugary compounds in two carbon-rich (or
"carbonaceous") meteorites. Previously, researchers had found inside
meteorites other organic, carbon-based compounds that play major roles
in life on Earth, such as amino acids and carboxylic acids, but no
sugars...
December 08, 2001 -
Ginger's Scheme All in the Lean (with photos) - By Noah
Shachtman, Wired News, Let's get at least this much straight: the
mega-hyped Segway Human Transporter does not read the rider's
thoughts. While the mainstream media have oohed and ahed over the
souped-up scooter -- debating whether "Ginger" will radically alter
urban planning, Amazon.com's productivity or the nature of
transportation -- scant attention has been paid to how the damn thing
actually works. Here now is a layman's attempt to explain...
December 12, 2001 -
The Technology Behind The Segway - By: Mark Hachman,
ExtremeTech.com, For all of its hype, the Segway Human Transporter
superscooter is a remarkable piece of engineering. In an interview
Tuesday, executives at Segway LLC, Manchester, N.H., described the
technology behind the device code-named "Ginger", a personal
transportation machine that uses a complex series of sensors and
gyroscopes to balance a human passenger on a pair of wheels...
December 03, 2001 -
Macromedia opens Net to the disabled - By Gwendolyn
Mariano, Special to ZDNet News, Macromedia on Monday plans
to launch a new product that helps designers and developers
create Web content accessible to everyone--particularly those
with disabilities. The San Francisco-based software developer
said it will offer an Accessibility and E-Learning Solutions
Kit that includes templates, an online course on
accessibility, and other tools and resources. The launch comes
as U.S. government departments and agencies work to conform to
Section 508, an amendment to the Rehabilitation Act that
requires them to use technology that accommodates the needs of
disabled workers. In addition, Web sites created by federal
agencies must be accessible to the disabled. The amendment
became law in June...
December 03, 2001 -
Chinese folk remedy fights cancer - By
Charlene Laino, MSNBC, — Plant compound sparks chain
reaction that kills tumor cells, Chinese folk medicine has
yielded a promising new approach for treating cancer. Using a
dash of logic and modern lab techniques, Seattle scientists
have shown that a compound extracted from the wormwood plant
seeks out and destroys breast cancer cells, while leaving
healthy cells unscathed...
December 03, 2001 -
IT’ may revolutionize transportation - ASSOCIATED
PRESS, NEW YORK,
Inventor Dean Kamen unveils Segway, a one-person scooter. Capping months of speculation about his
mysterious innovation, an inventor unveiled the device Monday — a
gyroscope-stabilized, battery-powered scooter that he hopes will
revolutionize short-distance travel...
