Enterprising students at MIT have turned a gas-guzzling 1976 Porsche 914 into an eco-friendly electric car, able to reach a top speed of 100 mph with a range of 130 miles on a single charge.
The student project took off last year when Valence Technology Inc. donated 18 lithium phosphate rechargeable batteries valued at $2,030 each, plus a battery-management system. The team began by removing the original engine, exhaust lines and fuel tank and installing an electric motor and motor controller, the batteries and battery-management system, a battery charger and various smaller components. Each of the batteries is equipped with a built-in computer that monitors its conditions--ideal for the data-gathering task.
However, getting all the computers to communicate with one another and with the battery-management system--a separate computer--proved a challenge. While the students had made great strides with a commercial converter kit, they ultimately had to scrap it because it was designed to handle 12 conventional lead-acid batteries rather than 18 lithium ion batteries. They subsequently redesigned the wiring and reprogrammed both the motor controller and the battery controller.
William Roberts of the University of Western Ontario has published his research that explores whether or not animals have a human-like sense of time with concepts of past and future.
The research team, led by Roberts, designed an experiment in which rats visited the ‘arms’ of a maze at different times of day. Some arms contained moderately desirable food pellets, and one arm contained a highly desirable piece of cheese. Rats were later returned to the maze with the cheese removed on certain trials and with the cheese replaced with a pellet on others.
All told, three groups of rats were tested in the research using three varying cues: when, how long ago or when plus how long ago.
Only the cue of how long ago food was encountered was used successfully by the rats.
Time is overrated anyway.
“This research,” said Roberts, “supports the theory I introduced that animals are stuck in time, with no sense of time extending into the past or future.”
The April issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry has an interesting report involving research into paranoia. It appears the general populace is far more paranoid than initially thought.
In our daily interactions with others, we pick up on facial and other cues that help us judge whether or not to trust another person. These judgments, however, are error-prone and can lead to exaggerated or unfounded fears about threats from others. These paranoid thoughts can range from thinking strangers are looking at you critically, or that others are spreading nasty rumors about you, to the feeling that others are deliberately trying to harm you in some way.
I personally believe paranoia serves a great evolutionary service, as without it, we probably wouldn't be here as a species. It's when the feeling cripples you that problems arise, rationality melting away.
Freeman and his colleagues equipped 200 volunteers with virtual reality headsets. The volunteers stepped into a virtual London underground subway, where they walked around during the four-minute trip between stations. Scattered throughout the train car were avatars that breathed, looked around and sometimes met a participant's gaze. One avatar read a newspaper and another occasionally smiled if looked at.
The participants reacted differently to the same avatars. While the volunteers most commonly perceived the virtual train riders as friendly or neutral, nearly 40 percent of participants reported at least one paranoid thought.
"It is an excellent example of the importance of interpretation," Freeman told LiveScience. "Two people can see the same things but draw completely opposite conclusions."
Have you ever had a paranoid experience that changed the way you approached a specific situation? Did it turn out to be real or was it all an illusion?
Space agencies are always on the lookout for cost-saving measures, but this tops them all. Japanese scientists at Tokyo University's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics have made a paper airplane that actually passed a wind-tunnel durability test.
In a test outside Tokyo in early February, a prototype about 2.8 inches long and 2 inches wide survived Mach 7 speeds and broiling temperatures up to 446 degrees Fahrenheit in a hypersonic wind tunnel -- conditions meant to approximate what the plane would face entering Earth's atmosphere.
While it's doubtful the aging shuttle fleet will be replaced by paper airplanes anytime soon, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is earmarking $300,000 a year for the next three years to further the research.
It's long been rumored the cartoon relationship between Heckle and Jeckle bordered on the obscene, but new research has revealed the true purpose of the aviary chums: they're hungry as hell.
Amanda Seed of the Max Planck Institute has been investigating the cooperative tactics of rooks and has determined that, yes, rooks can work together to acquire food. It was previously believed that only primates showed this trait.
They placed a 60 centimetre-long tray laden with food just out of the reach of two rooks placed inside a box. The rooks could see the food through a slit but had to use string thread through eyeholes at the back of the tray to drag it through the slit towards them.
To get their meal, however, the rooks were also forced to team up. Pulling just one end of the string simply unthreaded it without moving the tray. Only when the birds each pulled one end of the string simultaneously did the tray move.
Let's say you're sitting around the International Space Station with nothing to do, which really doesn't sound feasible, but please, play along. Anyway, you happen to have a boomerang and enough empty space to give it a toss and study what happens.
Question: Will a boomerang thrown in micro-gravity come back or will it simply keep flying straight and bonk Dextre the Robot on the head?
An answer to this burning question now exists, thanks to Endeavour Mission Specialist Takao Doi, who is currently in orbit around the Earth. If you answered, "No, no way a boomerang would return," then you are....wrong! Bzzz!
From AFP:
Astronaut Takao Doi "threw a boomerang and saw it come back" during his free time on March 18 at the International Space Station, a spokeswoman at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said on Friday.
Doi threw the boomerang after a request from compatriot Yasuhiro Togai, a world boomerang champion.
"I was very surprised and moved to see that it flew the same way it does on Earth," the Mainichi Shimbun daily quoted the 53-year-old astronaut as telling his wife in a chat from space.
A video of this monumental event should be released in the next few days. Now for the Frisbee experiment.
