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Micro stories - small news bits too small to have their own thread

Science explains that you're probably drinking coffee at the wrong time

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So many of us wake up in the morning and immediately seek out coffee like the brown water addicted fools we are. ASAP Science, however, explains that that is completely the wrong way to do it. We’re not maximizing the caffeine or our body’s natural energy, instead, the right way to drink coffee is to wait.

It sounds blasphemous but science ain’t always what we want to hear.

 
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We Can Now Make Computer Chips Out of Wood

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We’re one step closer to biodegradable gadgets. These computer chips are made almost entirelyout of wood.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison teamed up with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Products Laboratory to fashion the new semiconductor chip. The paper was published today in Nature Communications.

See, most of a computer chip is composed of a “support” layer that cradles the actual chip. The research team replaced that support layer’s non-biodegradable material with something called cellulose nanofibril (CNF), which is flexible, wood-based, biodegradable—all things that can make a device way less hazardous.

“Now the chips are so safe you can put them in the forest and fungus will degrade it,” says Professor Zhenqiang Ma, who led the team. “They become as safe as fertilizer.”

A possible roadblock was the fact that wood can expand or shrink based on how much moisture it sucks in from the air. The fix? Glaze the CNF film with an epoxy coating, a substance that makes CNF more resistant to water. In addition to wicking away moisture, the coating also made the CNF smoother.

The result: a sustainable “green chip” that’s cheaper and less toxic than the materials currently used in electronics. Every little bit helps when we’re piling landfills with thrown out phones, especially when dangerous chemicals in existing computer chips, like gallium arsenide, can leak into the ground. Perhaps this new technology could lead to, say, entire phones being made out of wood-based materials, creating a landscape of responsible electronic devices.

Most phones, tablets, and other portable gizmos are made out of stuff that isn’t biodegradable and is toxic to the environment. Plus, gadgets go obsolete so quickly, prompting folks to rapidly chuck older versions. But using a wood-based material to build the bulk of a computer chip could lead to less harmful devices in the future.
 
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U.S. Air Force Certifies SpaceX for Military Space Missions

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The U.S. Air Force has announced that SpaceX is now certified to launch military and spy satellites. That means that the United Launch Alliance, a joint effort between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, no longer holds the monopoly on national security space missions.

The news, announced late yesterday, comes after two long years of negotiations between SpaceX and the U.S. military. Over that time the company has managed to soundly demonstrate its abilities to put things in space—something the Air Force has now recognized. “SpaceX’s emergence as a viable commercial launch provider provides the opportunity to compete launch services for the first time in almost a decade,” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said in a statement.

This is something we can all be happy about, too, because the breaking of a monopoly means competition—and that means saving tax-payer money. “Ultimately, leverage of the commercial space market drives down cost to the American taxpayer and improves our military’s resiliency,” added Deborah Lee James in her statement. For some perspective, Bloomberg reports that SpaceX plans to launch government satellites for around $100 million aboard its Falcon 9 craft, while United Launch Alliance charges $160 million or more for the same service using its Atlas V rocket.

In other words, contracts seems to SpaceX’s for the taking. And we can perhaps expect to see the company taking on these kinds of missions soon: the Air Force will be issuing a request for GPS III launch services as early as June. SpaceX will no doubt clamor to lend a hand, but it will probably be a while before it’s actually putting the satellites into space.
 
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The U.S. Air Force has announced that SpaceX is now certified to launch military and spy satellites. That means that the United Launch Alliance, a joint effort between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, no longer holds the monopoly...

This is something we can all be happy about, too, because the breaking of a monopoly means competition—and that means

....no more relying on ULA which was using Russian RD-180
engines.
 
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Give us your satellites, we will launch them

That would allow India to determine the relative location of US Spy satellites, which is obviously unacceptable to the US military, NRO and NGA. The ULA, and now SpaceX, deal with military satellites only (Those from the USAF, USN and SPAWAR). Electro-Optical, Radar Imaging, Remote Sensing, GPS Block IIIA, I can't image the National Reconnaissance Office or National Geo-spatial Intelligence Agency would be too happy if India was launching our spy sats.

Past NROLs - the satellites themselves retain fuel to perform maneuvers away from the launch platform, decoys are often released as well.
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For civilian space exploration, we'll rely on SpaceX too (or other regional space assets). We'll cooperate with our international partners, but there is no chance our intelligence asset launches will be outsourced.
 
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Meh ... you guys are gonna call india anyway for tech support

Actually, that would be SPAWAR. I worked there while in the USN. It deals with USN satellite communications and recon. Why would the US ask for tech support for Russian rockets and US-made satellites that are managed from US soil?

SPAWAR Systems Center Atlantic



Tiny Lasers on Microchips Could Help Self-Driving Cars "See" The Road

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Since self-driving cars don’t have drivers, the cars have to perceive their surroundings themselves. Lidar is a great option—it’s like radar but with lasers instead of radio waves—but it’s big and pricy. However, a new kind of lidar from DARPA could change that.

DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense’s emerging tech branch, announced the new tech last week: It’s lidar that’s small enough to be put on a microchip. These tiny scanners can help self-driving military vehicles survey surrounding terrain to steer, improve targeting capabilities, detect nearby chemical or biological weapons, and more. They’re calling the new system SWEEPER. It sweeps data-gathering lasers back and forth more than 100,000 times a second, which is 10,000 times faster than current lidar.

Right now, lidar systems are big, honking, ugly things that stick out from the bodies of experimental cars—meanwhile, DARPA’s little lidar chips could be discreetly blanketed all over a vehicle. And while lasers are super accurate and can generate great maps for self-driving cars, they’re guided by mechanisms that are often big, slow, and sensitive to temperature swings and impacts.

Not only is SWEEPER cheaper, but it also steers the lasers without using mechanical means. Instead, it uses tiny arrays of emitters that “control the direction of selected electromagnetic signals by varying the phase across many small antennas,” a press release says. Since SWEEPER is smaller and less expensive, it opens more doors to commercial use.

With lidar (an acronym standing for light detection and ranging), the lasers bounce off whatever’s nearby, and then travel back to the sensor. The distances the lasers travel are measured and are used in conjunction with tools like GPS to generate data detailing the environment. SWEEPER covers a 51-degree range, which might not seem like a lot—but it’s the widest field of view ever achieved by such a small scanner. These miniature sensors could be tiled to gather data from many different points and collect it in a single panorama.

Josh Conway, DARPA project manager, explained: “This wide-angle demonstration of optical phased array technology could lead to greatly enhanced capabilities for numerous military and commercial technologies, including autonomous vehicles, robotics, sensors and high-data-rate communications.”

We’ve got a long way to go until self-driving cars are smart enough for widespread adoption—but tech like this is bringing that future into clearer focus.
 
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It's been a slow news day, so how about some interesting history?

Let The OSS Teach You How To Take Out A Tank Using Only Crushed Walnuts


This informative little film shows you how to take out an enemy tank. All you need is a condom, and a thing called caccolube.

There’s not much to say about this film — except that after you see it, you realize that the Office of Strategic Services was much better at fighting Nazis than it was at naming its Nazi-fighting tools. Is it even worth it to take out a tank if you have to use something called “caccolube” to do it? Caccolube itself is just crushed walnuts, gritty powders, and anything else you don’t want, mixed in with the oil in your engine. The oil itself will dissolve the container, letting the powders loose.

Also, does anyone else note the fact that he tactfully says, “looks like something else”? What oh what could he mean by that?
 
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Opps:partay:

Some Knucklehead In the Military Accidentally Shipped Live Anthrax


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Some bonehead at an Defense Department lab accidentally shipped live anthrax spores to government and commercial recipients through a commercial shipping service. What a goof!

They were supposed to be shipments of dead anthrax spores, but there was a mix-up. A lab in Maryland already received the package of potentially fatal biological weapons. Labs in Texas, Wisconsin, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, California, Virginia, and the Osan air base in South Korea were also shipped anthrax. Awkward!

Four people have been treated as a precaution for exposure to anthrax, and the Defense Department stopped all pending shipments until it completes an investigation.

You’d think that a donkey move like this would only happen once, but accidentally sending potentially fatal lab samples is a thing that happens with surprising frequency. The Center for Disease Control accidentally mailed a deadly strain of bird flu last year. Then vials of smallpoxmysteriously appeared in a Maryland lab, begging the question: How the hell did no one notice that vials of smallbox went missing?

It looks like “paying close attention and making sure you don’t expose people to serious illnesses” is fairly low on the necessary steps to take while handling potentially catastrophic biohazards. Shortly after finding the abandoned smallpox, the FDA admitted it also found over 300 vials of various scary pathogens, including dengue fever. And the US doesn’t have a monopoly on sending out bioweapons by mistake: U.K. government lab inadvertently mailed live anthrax out back in 2012, because someone grabbed the wrong tubes.

So back to whatever chucklegoof made the wacky anthrax mess-up: They’re just one in a disturbingly long line of government handlers of potent bioweapons to adopt a rather CASUAL attitude over where their harmful charges end up.
 
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Once again, slow news day, so how about something else?

I Raced My Hummer On An Actual Race Track


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A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from a racing instructor named Ron, asking if I wanted to get some track time in my Nissan Skyline GT-R. So I pondered Ron’s question for several minutes, and I really thought about it, and then a light bulb went off in my head. And this is how I ended up on a race track with a 7,000-pound military vehicle designed to support a machine gun turret.

You’d know all about my Hummer track day if you followed me on Twitter, because I’ve beenexcitedly posting pictures all week that show my Hummer with a bunch of race-prepped track cars. But here, today, I’m going to actually tell you what it was like to drive my Hummer on the race track. I’ve also created a video documenting the experience, which I highly suggest you watch, because the entire thing felt like showing up to a rallycross in a dump truck.


So here’s what happened. First, I should say that I was expecting a relaxed event, given the rather casual nature of Ron’s e-mails. (At one point, he said: “I love doing stupid things with vehicles.”) But then I showed up, and I realized this event was far from casual. Although this was merely a National Auto Sport Association (NASA) practice day, there were guys with heavily modified, track-only Porsches. Guys with Corvettes that looked like LeMans race cars. Guys with trailers that cost more than a Princeton degree. One guy was using a BMW X5M as his tow vehicle. It was around this time I started to realize that I was going to die, and my place of death was going to be New Jersey Motorsports Park.

But Ron calmed my nerves by informing me that I wouldn’t be going out on the track with any of those guys. Instead, he said, I’d be going out at lunchtime. This made me happy, because it meant that a) I wouldn’t be taking away track time from anyone, and b) I wouldn’t be killed.

Unfortunately, my fears returned when I started talking to a few of the other drivers. One instructor, Jordan, gave me a brief overview of what I could expect from the course, before noting that I had picked a great track for my Hummer adventure. “Why’s that?” I asked.“Because,” he replied, “there’s a lot of runoff.”

So there wasn’t much faith in the Hummer when we set off a few minutes later with Jordan in my passenger seat as an instructor (“I’m going to wear my fire suit”) and Ron following behind in his Subaru BRZ with a GoPro mounted to the hood. Several other drivers also decided to tag along on the track, because – let’s be honest here – you don’t turn down hot laps with a Hummer in favor of a track day sandwich and a bag of Fritos.

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So how was the Hummer on the track? I think I can sum it up for you in one word: Slow. Actually, just “slow” doesn’t quite do it. Glacially slow. Pathetically slow. Insanely slow. So slow that I think we could’ve easily been passed by a 9-year-old boy with a Razor scooter and a racing helmet.

It turned out that the Hummer was going so slowly that everyone’s fears about my safety were largely unfounded. Jordan, my girlfriend, my friends – they were all worried something bad might happen. But the Hummer could hardly muster up enough speed to get into “something bad” territory. Instead, our situation would’ve been more accurately described as “residential speed limit” territory. After I maxed out at 65 miles per hour on the track’s longest straightaway, Jordan amusingly informed me that his BMW M3 race car hits 140 in the same spot.

But don’t think for a second that I wasn’t going all-out. You’re going to watch the video and you’re going to think that I slowed down, or I was easing up to protect the Hummer, or I lowered my speed so I wouldn’t die in a giant fireball shaped like a file cabinet. But this is not the case. I was absolutely, 100 percent, balls to the wall, foot on the floor, from the moment we got out on the track. It wasn’t me that was keeping speeds down. It was the fact that the Hummer has the same horsepower as a Jetta, but weighs as much as a bowling alley.

Of course, the Hummer track experience was about more than just speed. Here’s another thing I learned about driving a Hummer on a race track: it’s absolutely terrifying. You’ve got all these cars buzzing around you, but you have no idea where any of them are, because a) your mirrors are buzzing just as much as the cars, and b) you’re driving a vehicle the size of a rural school district. So you kind of fling it into corners randomly and guess where other vehicles are located based on their sound, which is not unlike how I expect a blind person would drive a Hummer around a race track.

And then there’s braking. Before we got started, I assumed the Hummer would have so much brake fade that it would only manage about two laps before the wheels began shooting flames the size of a giant redwood. But here’s the thing: when you’re only doing about 40, you don’t really jam on the brakes. You just kind of tap them, and place the Hummer in the proper line, and hope to God you aren’t about to flatten a Miata. By the last lap, Jordan had stopped telling me to brake for most of the turns.

Interestingly, however, I do have one piece of praise for the Hummer: cornering. Even though the Hummer has enough suspension travel to climb over a wood-paneled PT Cruiser, the damn thing managed to stay surprisingly flat in the corners. And I don’t mean “oh, the body roll was so mild that I only vomited twice afterwards.” I mean the thing stayed dead freakin’ flat, to the great surprise of me and Jordan. Later, I realized this is probably because we never got up enough speed to cause body roll.

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Unfortunately, my excellent Hummer track day experience ended after only about five laps. Here’s what happened: initially, Jordan told me he could feel things getting hot on his side of the Hummer. At first, I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or infer that he was getting tired of driving around a race track in a vehicle the size of a school bus. But just a few minutes later, coolant started bubbling up over the hood, indicating that, indeed, the Hummer had enough. And so, like so many highly tuned, hugely expensive, track-prepped race cars before me, I steered over into pit lane. “You don’t have to put on your turn signal,” Jordan said.

When we opened the hood, we discovered there was no leak, no loose hose, no giant problem with the engine. Instead, the issue was simple: the Hummer had gotten hot after five laps at full throttle, and the coolant’s expansion tank had spit up a little coolant. I breathed a sigh of relief: the Hummer wasn’t broken. It was merely saying: Stop doing this, you giant asshole.

So we did stop. We let the NASA guys get back to their track day, and we drove home to Philadelphia on the wide open highway at full throttle; pedal to the floor; maximum Hummer velocity. Along the way, we were passed by several semi trucks.
 
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Once again, slow news day

I'll say:(. Apart from Google showing off stuff I don't care about, this was all I noticed and it isn't even too interesting:enjoy:.

The ISS Is Being Torn Apart (and Neatly Put Back Together)

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Yesterday, the International Space S1tation’s Permanent Multipurpose Module known as Leonardo was detached from the spacecraft. But don’t worry: it was part of a planned move, in order to make it easier for more visiting spacecraft to dock with the orbiting laboratory.

The 10-tonne module was first unbolted by NASA astronauts Terry Virts and Scott Kelly, before it was repositioned using the Space Station’s main robotic arm. This image shows the view of the move from the hatch window in the Unity Node of the Station. Now the team will perform a series of leak checks, before opening the door to the module later today. The Leonardo module is used to store cargo bags, spare parts and food, as well as the personal belongings of astronauts, like clothes and wash kit.
 
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MIT's Robot Cheetah Now Jumps While Running, So Walls Won't Protect You

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MIT has already demonstrated that its incredibly nimble and fast robot cheetah can run free without the need for cables or safety tethers. But now it’s not only able run down its prey out in the open, it can also jump without losing its stride. So when the robot uprising eventually happens, ducking behind a wall isn’t going to help you. Thanks, MIT!


This video actually shows the robot cheetah clearing obstacles just over 15-inches tall while running, and without the need for a single cable tether while it’s being tested outside the lab. MIT claims this is the first four-legged robot that can run and jump over obstacles autonomously, so if it’s chasing you down an alley, you can forget about knocking over trash cans to slow it down.
 
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