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The Lead
Honeybees Trained to Find Land Mines
May 21, 2013 | by Darko Bandic and Dusan Stojanovic, Associated Press | Comments
Mirjana Filipovic is still haunted by the land mine blast that killed her boyfriend and blew off her left leg while on a fishing trip nearly a decade ago. It happened in a field that was supposedly de-mined. Now, unlikely heroes may be coming to the rescue to prevent similar tragedies: sugar-craving honeybees.
NASA's Curiosity Rover Drills Again
May 21, 2013 9:08 am | by The Associated Press | Comments
The space agency said Monday that Curiosity has bored a hole in a second rock and will transfer...
NASA Builds Unusual Testbed for Analyzing X-ray Navigation Technologies
May 21, 2013 9:06 am | by Lori Keesey, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center | Comments
Pulsars have a number of unusual qualities. Like zombies, they shine even though they’re...
Iron-Platinum Alloys Could be New-Generation Hard Drives
May 21, 2013 8:55 am | by University of California - Davis | Comments
Meeting the demand for more data storage in smaller volumes means using materials made up of...
North Star Imaging Releases efX-CT 1.6 & efX-DR 1.0
May 21, 2013 11:12 am | by North Star Imaging | CommentsNorth Star Imaging has unveiled its latest versions of Computed Tomography and Digital Radiography software – efX-CT 1.6 and efX-DR 1.0. These releases feature many new capabilities that are industry firsts and not available anywhere else in the marketplace. The new software releases focus heavily on speed, automation, and image quality.
New Coilcraft CPS Short Form
May 21, 2013 10:25 am | by Coilcraft CPS | CommentsThe Coilcraft CPS Short Form Catalog is a comprehensive reference to the company’s four lines of RF and power magnetics for critical applications. This 24-page catalog presents detailed specifications on magnetic components for a wide range of applications, including signal generation and processing, RF, power, impedance matching, LED drivers, timing and much more.
TTI, Inc. Vice President of Quality to Speak at SMTA/CALCE Counterfeit Symposium
May 21, 2013 10:01 am | by TTI, Inc. | Tti, Inc. | CommentsTTI, Inc. Vice President Total Quality, Kevin Sink, is slated to speak at the SMTA/CALCE Electronic Parts and Supply Chain Counterfeit Symposium June 25-27, 2013, in College Park, Maryland on the University of Maryland campus.
Photos of the Day: Bomb Smelling Bees
May 21, 2013 9:16 am | by Darko Bandic and Dusan Stojanovic, Associated Press | CommentsBees gather at the entrance of a hive during a scientific experiment at the Faculty of Agriculture at Zagreb University. Croatian researches, working on a unique method to find unexploded mines that are littering their country and the rest of the Balkans, are confident they can use bees for detecting land mines.
Non-Wetting Fabric Drains Sweat
May 21, 2013 9:00 am | by University of California, Davis | CommentsWaterproof fabrics that whisk away sweat could be the latest application of microfluidic technology developed by bioengineers at the University of California, Davis. The new fabric works like human skin, forming excess sweat into droplets that drain away by themselves, said inventor Tingrui Pan, professor of biomedical engineering.
Judge Tosses Ex-BP Executive's Obstruction Charge
May 20, 2013 6:01 pm | by Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press | CommentsA federal judge on Monday dismissed one of the two counts in the indictment of a former BP executive who was charged with concealing information from Congress about the amount of oil that was leaking from the company's blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
Panel: Apple Uses Firms Outside U.S. to Avoid Taxes
May 20, 2013 5:00 pm | by The Associated Press | CommentsApple Inc. employs a group of affiliate companies located outside the United States to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. income taxes, a Senate investigation has found. The world's most valuable company is holding overseas some $102 billion of its $145 billion in cash, and an Irish...
GM Giving Paid Internships to 110 HS Students
May 20, 2013 3:26 pm | by The Associated Press | CommentsGeneral Motors is kicking the tires on a unique new internship program for Detroit-area high school students. GM has hired 110 students for paid summer internships, the automaker said Monday in announcing the formation of the GM Student Corps, a program that combines service, education and mentoring.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Faster, Stronger, Lighter
May 20, 2013 1:43 pm | by Jennifer Chu, MIT | CommentsThese days, aerospace engineering is all about the light stuff: building airplanes with lighter wings, fuselage and landing gear in an effort to reduce fuel costs.Advanced carbon-fiber composites have been used in recent years to lighten planes’ loads.
Kinks and Curves at the Nanoscale
May 20, 2013 1:38 pm | by Joshua Brown, University of Vermont | CommentsOne of the basic principles of nanotechnology is that when you make things extremely small—one nanometer is about five atoms wide, 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair—they are going to become more perfect.
Robots Learn to Take a Proper Handoff
May 20, 2013 1:35 pm | by Jennifer Liu, Disney Research | CommentsA humanoid robot can receive an object handed to it by a person with something approaching natural, human-like motion thanks to a new method developed by scientists at Disney Research, Pittsburgh in a project partially funded by the International Center for Advanced Communication Technologies (interACT) at Carnegie Mellon University and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
Add Boron for Better Batteries
May 20, 2013 1:32 pm | by Mike Williams, Rice University | CommentsFrustration led to revelation when Rice University scientists determined how graphene might be made useful for high-capacity batteries. Calculations by the Rice lab of theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson found a graphene/boron anode should be able to hold a lot of lithium and perform at a proper voltage for use in lithium-ion batteries. The discovery appears in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.
Dream Chaser Testing Begins
May 20, 2013 1:28 pm | by NASA | CommentsSierra Nevada Corporation's (SNC) Space Systems Dream Chaser flight vehicle has arrived at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, CA, to begin tests of its flight and runway landing systems. The tests are part of pre-negotiated, paid-for-performance milestones with NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP), which is facilitating U.S.-led companies' development of spacecraft and rockets that can launch from American soil.
GE Healthcare Investing $17M in New SC Plant
May 20, 2013 1:24 pm | by The Associated Press | CommentsGE Healthcare is investing $17 million in a Florence, S.C. plant that will turn helium gas into supercool liquid needed for medical imaging. The company, which is a unit of General Electric Co., announced Monday it's building a 5,000-square-foot facility next to its existing magnetic resonance plant. GE expects 10 of the 50 jobs created to be permanent.
UW-Milwaukee, Johnson in High-Voltage Pairing
May 20, 2013 9:29 am | by Thomas Content, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | CommentsThe climb the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee faces to make a name for itself in research and local economic development can best be seen at the site of an abandoned staircase. On the ground floor of the engineering building on Cramer Street, where that stairwell once stood, is the Energy Advancement Center - the largest "dry lab" at any academic institution in North America.
