Month: September 2017

High altitude balloon-drone

The unique GNSS “StarLight” LTA system is predicted to persist on station against prevailing winds at very high altitudes for 4 months for a fraction of the cost of a satellite. Solar electric energy provides the necessary power for all systems including both motors for station keeping and customer surveillance payloads.

Toyota solid-state car

Toyota is working on an electric car powered by a solid state battery that significantly increases driving range and reduces charging time. Toyota aims to begin sales of solid battery electric cars in 2022. “We want our electric cars to go 500 km on a single charge. And for this, we want rechargeable batteries that can generate 800 to 1000 watt-hours per liter.” That would be 3x the energy density of today’s best Li-ion batteries.

Get To Know Coworkers

It’s not that we hate talking to our coworkers, it’s just that we don’t have time for it. And also we hate it. This guide gives you 8 great ways to connect with your co-workers while keeping them at a long, comfortable distance.

6. Photoshop Their Face Into One of Your Photos
There comes a time in every friendship when you take your first photo together. If you’re too busy working on other important things and avoiding them, jump straight to the milestone using a photo editor. Everyone will be sure to be jealous at how fast your new friendship has evolved! Of course, don’t actually show this picture to anyone. Now, that would be weird.

Kobrick Coffee Co.

The great buzzed and wired bard of the Jazz Age would have liked Kobrick Coffee, where the baristas are cross-trained as mixologists and the creative synergy between the twin disciplines of craft coffee and craft cocktails rises to the level of art. From early morning until late afternoon, the place churns to the rhythms of aproned barmen grinding beans for espresso and tapping pitchers of steamed milk to break up the bubbles. By 20:00, the lights are dimmed, candles and dainty bud vases are set out, and a menu board rolls back to reveal a handsome liquor cabinet. Sitting permanently atop the counter is a tall and intricate Japanese cold-brew apparatus, in which the makings of a Negroni drip slowly through freshly ground coffee, for the 3 Hour Kyoto Negroni.

Mondo 2000 returns online

I’ve found what RU has posted a surprisingly satisfying mix of reprints of old magazine content, summaries/commentaries on the print magazine (and its predecessors, High Frontiers and Reality Hacker), and new content, including new music from RU Sirius and friends. I’m really interested to see where he takes it. He’s not able to pay for contributions at this time, but so far, the response of interest to get involved, to write for it, seems high.

Skeuomorphic hell

Alone, each plugin is hideous in its own unique way. A panel of 3D knobs here, a pixelated oscilloscope there. But when a project really gets cooking, one can amass 8 or 10 of these interfaces overlapping each other on the screen at once, and that’s when skeuomorph hell really comes into focus. I don’t know why audio software has looked like this for the better part of 20 years, but I’d like to honor these sins of UI with a tour of some of the most egregious examples.

Nanodrills

Researchers demonstrated single-molecule nanomachines that can target diseased cells and then kill them by drilling through the cell membrane. The single-molecule nanomotors are 1-billionth of a meter wide and spin at 3m rotations per second. They’re activated by ultraviolet light and could also be used to deliver drug treatment into the cells

IRB delenda est

Many people took My IRB Nightmare as an opportunity to share their own IRB stories. From an emergency medicine doctor:

Thanks for the great post about IRBs. I lived the same absurd nightmare in 2015-2016, as an attending, and it’s amazing how your experience matches my own, despite my being in Canada. 1 of our residents had an idea for an extremely simple physiological study of COPD exacerbations, where she’d basically look at the patient and monitor his RR, saturation, exhaled CO2 temporal changes during initial treatment. Just as you were, I was really naive back in 2015, and expected we wouldn’t even a consent form, since she didn’t even have to talk to the patients, much less perform any intervention. Boy I was wrong ! The IRB, of course, insisted on a 2-page consent form discussing risks and benefits of the intervention, and many other forms. I had to help her file over 300 pages (!) of various forms. Just as in your case, we had to abandon the study when, 2 years after the first contact with the IRB, they suggested hilarious “adjustments” to the study protocol “in order to mitigate possible risks”.