West Harlem in NYC isn’t exactly known for its robust industrial capabilities. Nor is zinc particularly—well, ever—used as a secondary, rechargeable battery. But that’s not going to stop the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) from developing both into an energetic powerhouse.
     |
The odds of suffering an intracerebral (IC) hemorrhage during your lifetime (1 in 50) are almost as terrifying as the as the chances are that it will kill you (4 in 10) if it does happen. IC hemorrhages (and the edemas, or clots, they produce) account for 11 percent of all strokes, and are far more likely to severely disable you than the effects of a lesser ischemic stroke. But this clot-busting device might just turn the odds in your favor.
| |
Even with the VH-71 helicopter project
| |
Almost all early sawmills utilized water power to drive their sawblades, and were therefore located on riverbanks. This made delivering wood a breeze—just chop down a patch of timber upriver, push the felled logs into the water, and float them down to the mill. In narrow stretches of water, the logs could be pushed down individually, in wider stretches they could be lashed together into sturdier rafts. And on Russia’s Volga and Vetluga rivers, they were assembled into giant inverted pyramids and loaded onto massive barges like these.
| |
A nation’s military does more than defend sovereignty. Most also act as first responders, delivering humanitarian aide to disaster victims. But, as Hurricane Katrina demonstrated in the US, getting supplies into areas affected by natural disasters (or even forward operating bases) is far easier said than done. That’s why a collaboration of European nations have spent more than a decade developing a heavy transport plane fit for the 21st century, the Airbus A400M Atlas.
| |
Getting anywhere in Washington DC traffic can be a nightmare, even if you’re the leader of the free world and have a motorcade at your disposal. But at least the president can hop aboard Marine One (the fleet of presidential helicopters) and rotor to his next appointment instead. The VH-3D Sea Kings that currently shuttle the POTUS around have been ready for retirement since 2003. So why has it taken so long to find a suitable replacement?
| |
In the 1980s, the US Air Force only knew about roughly 5,000 pieces of space debris orbiting our planet. By 2010, that number had tripled to 15,639 objects. And our current space trash tracking system can’t even detect some of the smaller bits zipping around up there. That’s why the USAF is developing a new iteration of the venerable "Space Fence" that’s both more precise and more cost effective than its predecessor.
| |
Humans have long wished to see through the eyes of other animals—like Bran Stark’s Warg ability, say—but so far the best we’ve achieved is mounting GoPros on them
| |
America’s current combined fleet of civilian and military weather monitoring satellites are quickly nearing the end of their operational life spans. It’s a big deal; these satellites provide accurate weather reports for a lot of major government agencies including NASA, NOAA, and the Department of Defense (not to mention our allies). But while the DoD scrambles to replace its aging Defense Meteorological Satellite Program and the Europeans are launching their own HD weather stations
| |
In conventional combat aircraft, the target generally needs to be in both the pilot’s field of vision and within the sights of the plane itself. That is, the plane needed to be pointed in the general direction of whatever you’re shooting at. But in the case of the new Eurofighter Typhoon, pilots can squeeze off a few Sidewinders at bogies incoming from any direction thanks to a super helmet that links their eyes to the plane’s electronic brain.
| |
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
