Anyway, Steve has an organization called i-Tec that teaches indigenous people technology… and these people in turn can use the technology to reach others for the gospel. One item that they have developed is a car that flies… yes, a car that flies! See the great video below that shows a bit more about that.
See another related post from this past September, “A flying car? — yep! It’s real! And no chitty-chitty-bang-bang either!“
]]>
Okay, so on to better things… like bed bugs! Did you know that Bedbugs have been making a come back in recent years? 6 decade ago they were almost gone… but the little suckers just won’t die! Kinda like Jason in Freddy vs. Jason…. (I have not seen the movie, but that quote from the trailer years back stuck out in my brain when I typed that. Anywho… See the infographic below about bedbugs and this article that helps to point it out.
Where my wife and I live, Dallas, is not in the top 15 cities that have bedbugs, but where my in-laws live, in Denver, they are #6. Wow! I guess it’s too cold for the bugs outside so they have to snuggle up against someone to get some body heat, and sip on some blood that has that cool rocky mountain air and water flowing through it. Good luck Mountain friends!
The FAA approved the Terrafugia Flying Car, which look pretty awesome! It will be available next year, and as long as you have a pilot’s license and $194K, you’re good to go!
The test prototype has been flying for about a year, but plane-maker Terrafugia will unveil its production-class plane next month at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual convention in Oshkosh, Wisc.
The Transition drives like a car, uses normal high-octane gasoline, has front-wheel-drive and even comes with airbags. Its fuel economy is about 30 miles per gallon. But unlike your Prius, it can unfold its wings and fly. You’ll only need a one-third of a mile strip for a runway, meaning you could conceivably use your own street. It is powered by a rear propeller and flies about 115 miles per hour.
Okay,… Hmm…. I think that for the price, I would want more than 30 mpg, but that it take regular gas — to be able to get to work … oh in about 4 minutes!… that might be worth thinking about it more when the price comes down $150K to a more affordable price.
Burning up the golf score card!
Over the weekend, a golfer’s routine swing in the rough at the Shady Canyon Golf Course in Irvine, Calif., struck a rock. Not so different from the way you play, right? Only this time, the impact caused a spark, and the spark set off a blaze that eventually covered 25 acres, according to the Steven Buck, General Manager of Shady Canyon Golf Course, and required the efforts of 150 Orange County firefighters, writes the Associated Press.
Wow. And I felt bad the time I shanked a ball through the window of a house too close to the fairway. That was nothing compared to this!
The golfer’s name is being withheld, which is probably for the best, and no charges are going to be filed. Fortunately, it all could have been much worse. As it was, the blaze required both helicopters and on-the-ground crews.
The conditions were ripe for a blaze, with dry brush from a recent heat wave just waiting for the right spark. Like, say, one caused by metal on rock.
Read more at Yahoo Sports News.
]]>But I do say that I enjoy the geeky side in me that enjoy the classic Back to the Future movies. I don’t know, but watching this video just made me happy. Enjoy!
“Ke$ha’s annoyingly catchy ‘Tik Tok’ won’t die, thanks in part to clever mash-ups like the Star Trek one and this “Tik Tok to the Future.” Set to scenes from 80s flick fave Back to the Future, the pop ditty gives a fresh perspective on the residents of fictional Hill Valley.”
]]>
This car was debuted late 2009 and already has many pre-orders. The car will go about 100 miles on a single charge. (Not perfect for my commute to work – nor my pocketbook, but it should work for many people!)… This is a great idea that has been around and used for years, but Nissan is making the bold step of mass producing the car. The cost will run you about $32 K, but there are tax benefits from the US federal government of up to $7500.
But could we one day have wind powered cars? that is even better than electric!
Despite modern forecasting techniques, wind remains a fickle element. It’s seasonal, dependent on storms and highly variable. Can we really count on wind to deliver steady, reliable energy for our cars?
It is possible that wind could become one part of a portfolio of alternative energy resources that could someday replace more traditional coal, natural gas and oil electricity plants. Keep reading to find out why wind can’t power a national fleet of cars, but may work well as one tool in a larger toolbox of energy sources waiting to make the United States a greener and more fuel-efficient country.
See the full story on wind-powered car technology at HowStuffWorks.com.
]]>
New research suggests that the flu’s secret formula for effectively evolving within and between species appears to be a balancing act—producing enough mutations to spread and adapt to its environment but not so many that they lead to its demise.
“This research presents an attractive strategy for tackling the flu—making the influenza virus kill itself by amplifying the number of mutations made beyond the desired level, which is lethal for the virus,” says Baek Kim, professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Rochester and lead study author…
“(The) team has developed some very important new methodology for studying the function of the flu polymerase that could easily result in the development of new antivirals or other methods to control influenza,” says John Treanor, chief of the Infectious Diseases Division at Rochester.
Full story at Futurity.
]]>
A kitten born in West Virginia shocked local veterinarians when it entered the world with two faces—like two distinct faces, not like the Batman villain. Vets haven’t pinpointed an exact diagnosis, but say the adorable kitty is either a conjoined twin or suffering from a protein synthesis that caused the mutation.
See the short AP News video below on the story:
]]>
In high school, I took a physics class where we did a Rube Goldberg experiment. Everyone in the class did this by splitting up into groups and coming up with ideas for our projects. In simple terms, a rube goldberg project is something that takes many actions, to come out with one final action. Often the many actions use simple machines/tools (such as a wheel, wedge, weight, levy, etc.) to help produce your final end result.
(Our group, by the way, made up of Wilson Wise, David Townsend, and Amanda Gibbs (maybe?) put together a rube goldberg where the final result was to open a PEZ dispenser). It was fun, I think.)
When put to music, and done all in one take — wow! – you can get a great result! See this video from the band Ok Go. (This video, at the time of the posting, out after only 2 months has received about 13 million views on youtube. That is pretty outstanding!)
To learn more about the American cartoonist Rube Goldberg and how these fun projects have come to be known as “Rube Goldberg Experiments,” see the Rube Goldberg Wikipedia page.
]]>
This is a video that is rising on Digg right now as a simply example of how to clean up the oil spill in the gulf. Trust the farm boys! They know their dirty water and hay!
The people doing the clean, I heard, were taking suggestions on the best way to clean up the oil. May that was just a rumor, but that is sad if it’s true that they were taking suggestions on how to fix this major problem.
I don’t know how this might be replicated across millions of square miles in the gulf, but if it can be easily done, — at least to portions of the affected areas — then it is worth a shot, I think!
Who knows? These guy might just be on to something…
]]>
Studies have shown that even though it is called the Miss Universe Pageant, that over the past 57 times that the pageant has been held that every single time, Earth’s contestant has won hands down while the rest of the world has not even bothered to bring anything worth showing — literally! … I mean, maybe they did bring something, and they disguised themselves has Miss Rama-lama-ding-dong, who has never made a showing as far as I know!
So, c’mon! —
Earth: Won 57 times.
The rest of the universe: A big fat zero times!
Can it really rain frogs?
When frogs blanketed Egypt in the book of Exodus, it was a sign of deep, deep trouble. And that was only plague No. 2 out of 10. If you’ve ever woken up to a few inches of frog carpet outside your door, you know it’s not a pretty picture.
Of course, you probably haven’t woken up to such a grisly scene. You probably haven’t been driving around in a storm and had your car pelted with what you thought was hail but turned out to be frozen frogs. But other people have. While it’s not the most common weather phenomenon in the world, it’s not as rare as you might think. It happens all over the world, at least since the first century A.D. — when the Roman naturalist known as Pliny the Elder described the event — and as recently as 2005 in Serbia.
You might hear a report of raining frogs — and other unexpected objects, some not even organic — at least once a decade or so. Amphibious rain seems to be picking up in frequency. In the last 20 years, newspapers have found more opportunities than ever to write about frogs falling from the sky. For unknown reasons, Britain appears to be especially susceptible in recent years. The cause of frog rain in general is less mysterious, although still a bit of a brow-furrower at times. It’s also just as gross as many of us imagine. That final scene in the 1999 film “Magnolia,” which left most movie goers jaw-droppingly disgusted and a little impressed, is apparently a pretty accurate portrayal of the phenomenon, according to newspaper accounts.
In this article, we’ll find out what’s actually going on when frogs rain down and what happens when they fall from the sky. Incidentally, frogs aren’t the most common creatures to accompany rain. You’ll understand why when we look at the process of frog rain on the next page.
But our first question is the most obvious one: How in the world do the frogs get up in the sky in the first place?
Frog Rain Causes: The Flight of the Amphibians
The plague of frogs mentioned in Exodus began in Egypt.
It’s hard to get a good mental picture of frog inundation that doesn’t have Moses standing off in the distance. The biblical image of a slimy, surprising mass is tough to avoid. However, there’s actually a pretty simple explanation for the whole thing: It involves whirlwinds and low-weight creatures.
Frogs can weigh as little as a few ounces. But even the heavier ones are no match for a watery tornado, or a waterspout, as it’s called when a whirlwind picks up water. The series of events that can lead to frog rain go something like this:
A small tornado forms over a body of water. This type of tornado is called a waterspout, and it’s usually sparked by the high-pressure system preceding a severe thunderstorm.
As with a land-based tornado, the center of the waterspout is a low-pressure tunnel within a high-pressure cone. This is why it picks up the relatively low-weight items in its path — cows, trailer homes and cars get sucked up into the vacuum of the vortex. But since a waterspout is over water and not land, it’s not automobiles that end up caught in its swirling winds: it’s water and sea creatures.
The waterspout sucks up the lower-weight items in the body of water as it moves across it. Frogs are fairly lightweight. They end up in the vortex, which continues to move across the water with the high-pressure storm clouds. When a particularly powerful storm hits land, the waterspout might go with it.
When the storm hits land, it loses some of its energy and slows down. The pressure drops. Eventually, the clouds release the water they’re carrying. As the rain falls, the vortex eventually loses all the pressure that’s keeping it going, and it releases whatever it has picked up in its travels. Sometimes, this cargo includes frogs.
The end result is frog rain. Sometimes it’s a few dozen frogs — or a couple hundred or even thousands. And usually, it’s not just frogs. Frogs get top billing because of their role in Exodus, but waterspouts can carry all sorts of items.
###
Also see the article, “Other Weather Phenomena: It’s Raining Tomatoes” (and quid and worms and fish!) — ACK!
The above articles were taken from HowStuffworks.com.
]]>
Really, a T-shirt that can make you bullet proof? — Maybe it might work, but dude! What a bruise it would leave! Maybe some internal bleeding too! Heres the story:
Boron-treated T-shirt can stop speeding bullet, says scientist
- Tee dipped in third-hardest material
- Can capture bullet, says professor
- Also blocks ultraviolet rays, radiation
THE humble T-shirt may soon be strong enough to stop a speeding bullet.
Scientists in the US have developed a flexible shirt made of the same material used in tank armour, by combining carbon in the shirt with the third-hardest material on Earth, boron.
“It could even be used to produce lightweight, fuel-efficient cars and aircrafts,” Xiaodong Li, from the University of Southern Carolina, wrote in the journal Advanced Materials.
The plain white T-shirts are dipped into a boron solution, then heated in an oven at more than 1000C, which changes the cotton fibres into carbon fibres.
The carbon fibres react with the boron solution and produce boron carbide – the same material used to make bulletproof plates in armoured vests.
The resulting material was stiffer than the original cotton tee, but still flexible enough to be worn as such.
“We expect that the nanowires can capture a bullet,” Prof Li said.
But bullets are just the beginning for the new miracle material.
Prof Li said the T-shirts could also block “almost all” ultraviolet rays, and possibly life-threatening neutrons emitted from decaying radioactive material.
###
(Original story taken from: News.com.au)
]]>