NASA’s “deployable energy absorber” may appear to be a couple of oversized sponges attached to the bottom of a helicopter, but you could be looking at a safety system that helps occupants survive a helicopter crash — or even any kind of air-to-ground impact.

It’s a bit like an airbag for helicopters, one that NASA aerospace engineer Karen Jackson, one of the driving minds behind the project, said of the technology that she’d “like to think the research we’re doing is going to end up in airframes and will potentially save lives.”

Right now, though, things are still very early. The test you see in the video above is of a helicopter falling rather gently from a height of 35 feet. Even still, the dummies inside didn’t look so stressed out after it. Wait — do crash dummies ever show signs of stress?

Via CNET

Continue reading...

Do you have $7,500 burning a hole in your pocket? Are you also in the market for an all-in-one stereo system? Well then, you should take a look at the McIntosh MXA60 Integrated Audio System, made buy the high-end audio company behind the $250,000 McIntosh Reference System.

This system features “a high-performance 75-watt-per-channel amplifier, a CD/SACD/MP3 player, vacuum tube preamplifier, an AM/FM/RBDS Tuner, and 2-way bass reflex custom loudspeakers. All that is housed in metal casing with anodized aluminum accents and backlit glass faceplates with Peak Reading Wattmeters.” And for that kind of money, it had better sound damn good.

McIntosh Labs via Uncrate

Continue reading...

One way to save energy is to be fully aware of how much you’re using. That’s the mission of The Energy Detective 5000, otherwise known as TED 5000. Connect a couple of sensors to your main power switch box, plug the powerline gateway into an electrical outlet, connect it to your network, and suddenly you can access a graphical interface showing you exactly how many kilowatts you’re using over days, weeks and months. We hooked up the TED 5000 in our Midwest Test Facility, and it turns out we’re not using as much energy as we thought.

Continue reading...

 Looks like someone took the chainmaille Instructable to a whole new level with this bit of armor made from a ton of beer tabs. He even managed to get yellow and green tabs to add a design to it. Great job! Link
By: fungus amungus

Continue reading...

One of the most basic and reliable rules of computer hardware is this: two screens are better than one. And Onkyo is using that rule to their advantage with their new DX dual-screen laptop. It has a pair of 10.1-inch screens that slide out, effectively doubling the screen real estate of a standard small laptop.

The specs include “1.6GHz Athlon Neo MV-40 CPU, ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and 3x USB jacks, Oknyo’s offering starts with 2GB (not 1GB) of memory standard expandable to 4GB, a 320GB 5,400rpm disk (not 160GB), Gigabit Ethernet, and 32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium.” Not too bad for $966, don’t you think?

Impress via Engadget

Continue reading...

You may have seen the Hackable Christmas card Instructable by ian. Well now you have a chance to win one of those cards for yourself. Each of the runners-up in the Homemade Holidays Contest will win one card in addition to the $50 from Shapeways and the Pro membership and t-shirt! We’d like to than…
By: fungus amungus

Continue reading...

By the time the Chevy Volt electro-carriage rolls out to its first lucky drivers late next year, it’ll be iPhone- and BlackBerry-smart. At the L.A. Auto Show, a Chevy suit flashed the above slide, revealing a BlackBerry displaying the Chevy Volt’s battery charge status.

The iPhone and Blackberry apps will start out with the ability to control when the Chevy Volt gets charged, with the Volt letting your cellphone know when it’s all juiced up and ready to go. Chevy hinted that other cellphone platforms will eventually be able to converse with the Volt, too.

We’d like to see the Volt transmit lots more data to the iPhone, working like the Garmin EcoRoutes ESP we showed you last month. Its selectable screen shows the inner workings of the car’s engine, such as real-time fuel economy, a tachometer, throttle position, intake manifold pressure, coolant temperature, intake air temperature, and emissions.

As a bare minimum, the Volt should be able to receive the iPhone’s audio via Bluetooth. But we think the snazzy car will be ultimately capable of much more than that. We’ll see exactly what Chevy has planned — the company says it’ll reveal more details about these apps soon.

GM Volt, via Jalopnik

Continue reading...

Art | Craft | Food | Games | Green | Home | Kids | Life | Music | Offbeat | Outdoors | Pets | Photo | Ride | Science | Tech It’s beginning to look like make-mas! There are only two weekends left to make holiday decorations, food, and gifts f…
By: fungus amungus

Continue reading...

When you’re rolling around with a Playstation 3 and a projector strapped to your chest, the world becomes your TV. Just point yourself at a wall and you’ll turn it into your own personal arcade, gathering crowds around you as you rock house in Uncharted 2.

Sure, you’ll need a boatload of batteries on your person, and it’s not the most practical thing in the world, but it sure is a nice change of pace from your couch.

Reg Hardware via Gizmodo

Continue reading...

AT&T is not a great cellphone service provider. Recently, Consumer Reports reported that of the nation’s major carriers, AT&T is the worst carrier in every category (service, data, customer support etc) in nineteen out of twenty-six cities surveyed. In the study, Verizon was the overall winner.

Neither result is surprising. The iPhone is a fantastic little computer, but its service can be laughable. Whenever a friend of mine switches from Verizon to AT&T, I realize that my days of talking to him or her on the phone are numbered. My iPhone-toting friends and relatives’ voices won’t come through clearly; they’ll drop my calls, and there are whole neighborhoods where their phones won’t even ring. But how much does network quality really matter? Here’s why AT&T will continue to have a strong, devoted customer base despite shoddy service and high prices — as long as it has exclusive rights to the iPhone.

Continue reading...

Rarely do I get at all excited about hybrids (even though I write about them often enough). But the Honda CR-Z hybrid is cool enough for me to reconsider my stance on the fuel-friendly vehicles. In a throwback to the CRX, a hot little hatch Honda made in the late 80’s and early 90’s, the CR-Z will be a two door coupe with a hybrid drivetrain that marries good looks with high fuel economy.

The CR-Z brochure has been leaked online as well as engine specifications, and it makes me want the car all the more than the concept did.

Read more of this story »

Continue reading...

Google is onto something. Not only does the company lure us into trusting it with our entire digital lives, but now it is giving away the secrets of the Intarwebs, and in particular, the Chrome browser. That’s right, it all works with rubber bands, and other mechanical contrivances. Finally, this is explained to us. We’ve always wondered.

By the way, isn’t this a clever, pitch-perfect video?

YouTube, via Gizmodo

Continue reading...

Sometimes the simplest decorations are simply the best. Not everyone has that flamboyant decorator’s touch. These bud vases hold a single bloom, and seem to defy physics. The secret’s in the magnets.

Strong magnets in the base of the vase hold it solidly in place to a steel plate hidden beneath your table cloth. And honestly, it also looks great with the steel plate in plain sight. A set of five of the 9.5″ thin beauties costs $40.

If you can’t imagine ever learning how to arrange flowers, this is a cool way to make you look like a pro. Just keep your credit cards away from those magnets.

Via ThinkGeek

Continue reading...

Yesterday, my former colleague, blogger par excellence, Jesus Diaz, wrote a wonderful story about a strange spiral light that appeared in the night skies above Norway early yesterday morning. An alien firework display! The Scientology head honcho Xenu pulling the plug out of his immense scientology bathtub!! Xanadu nightclub, Tronso, opens its doors for the first time!!! Space’s answer to the LHC!!!! Sorry, it was me, I farted!!!!!

Well, pups, you’re all wrong (well, those suggestions were all mine, so: My bad; Soz mum; etc etc.) The current explanation is actually something that is completely man-made — although I draw the line at using the word prosaic: because the thing that caused these otherworldly effects so isn’t prosaic. The video below should clear the mystery up for you.

Continue reading...

Get together a group of talented 3D artists, project their work onto buildings with a battery of powerful projectors, and here’s the result. NuFormer Digital Media is calling this techno-artform “the communication tool of 2009″ for good reason — the projections show you something you’ve never seen before.

The artists can custom-fit their mind-bending designs to any building, bringing architecture to life using a blend of technology and art. Could this be the way people decorate their houses for Christmas ten years from now?

Here’s another example of NuFormer’s work, in a 3D video mapping projection created for Volvo:

Continue reading...

By now the odd designs and unorthodox functionality are not a surprise when it comes to Tokyo Flash watches, but when a particularly fashionable timepiece is released it’s worth noting. The new Kisai Tenmetsu comes in black and silver is definitely one of the better designed devices in the company’s minimalist arsenal.

Of course there’s the requisite arcane time telling functions to figure out, but thankfully the watch comes with instructions in Japanese and English. You can pick up the aluminum design gem for just 21,000 yen ($238) and see video of it in action here.

Via Tokyo Flash

Continue reading...

An F/A-18 mission support aircraft shadows NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, 747SP during a functional check flight Dec. 9, 2009. The flight included an evaluation of the aircraft’s systems, including engines, flight controls and communication. Image Credit: NASA/ Jim Ross

Continue reading...

Unprecedented flares from the blazar 3C 454.3 in the constellation Pegasus now make it the brightest persistent gamma-ray source in the sky. That title usually goes to the Vela pulsar in our galaxy, which is millions of times closer. These all-sky images, which show the numbers of high-energy gamma-rays captured by Fermi’s Large Area Telescope on December 3 and November 18, clearly show the change. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

Continue reading...

NASA Satellites noticed that Tropical Cyclone Cleo had reached its maximum strength, and was now moving into areas that will weaken it. Cleo’s maximum sustained winds were near 115 mph (100 knots), with gusts to (138 mph) 120 knots today, December 9, 2009.

Two NASA satellites, Aqua and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite captured three different views of Cleo earlier today. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on Aqua captured an infrared and visible image of Cleo, while TRMM was able to see the rate of rainfall within the storm.

Continue reading...

Titanium dioxide, the same inexpensive white pigment that protects us from sunburns, can be converted into a material that absorbs sunlight and could greatly increase the efficiency of solar energy cells. Until now, however, researchers had not been able to overcome the inherent wide band gap associated with the different energy levels, or bands, of the electrons. This limits the material to absorbing only ultraviolet light and results in less than 1 percent conversion efficiency. In a paper published by a multi-institutional team that includes theorist Zhenyu Zhang and experimentalist Gyula Eres of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the researchers report on a conceptually novel doping method that can tune the band gap of titanium oxide to capture the more abundant visible component of the solar spectrum. This innovation to a large extent removes what has been a major materials barrier to the better utilization of the sun’s energy and, in terms of cost and efficiency, has huge implications fo

Continue reading...

Microchip manufacturers have long faced challenges miniaturizing transistors, the key active components in nearly every modern electronic device, which are used to amplify or switch electronic signals.

Now, researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, Purdue University and IBM have successfully grown silicon-germanium semiconducting nanowires for potential use in next-generation transistors.

Continue reading...