James Bessen wrote Learning by doing. Bessen returns to Marx’s 19th-century weavers to prove that as humans work with new technologies over the long term, they improve them and boost their own fortunes in the process. So, yes, when the power loom was invented, in 1785, it shifted weaving from farms to factories, instantly increasing …
SpaceX will construct a one-mile test track adjacent to their Hawthorne, California headquarters. They have invited teams will to test their human-scale pods during a competition weekend at the track, currently targeted for June 2016. The knowledge gained here will continue to be open-sourced. The hyperloop test track will be 1-mile long, 6 feet in …
President Obama signed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (H.R. 2262) into law. This law recognizes the right of U.S. citizens to own asteroid resources they obtain and encourages the commercial exploration and utilization of resources from asteroids. “This is the single greatest recognition of property rights in history,” said Eric Anderson, Co-Founder and …
Teeth are the most natural, noninvasive source of stem cells. Dental stem cells, which are easy, convenient, and affordable to collect, hold promise for a range of very potential therapeutic applications. We have reviewed the ever-growing literature on dental stem cells archived in Medline using the following key words: Regenerative dentistry, dental stem cells, dental …
A team of astronomers have used the LCOGT network to detect light scattered by tiny particles (called Rayleigh scattering), through the atmosphere of a Neptune-size transiting exoplanet. This suggests a blue sky on this world which is only 100 light years away from us. The result was published in the Astrophysical Journal on November 20 …
On November 7, 2015, a CCTV newscast showed that China is making great progress in this new weapons area, showing images of a laser weapon, the Low Altitude Guardian II (LAG II), destroying airborne targets at a military test site. It is China’s most powerful laser weapon in the public domain (there are reports of …
The Solowheel takes some time to learn but it won the Wired rideable review. However, the Wired reviewer would not commute with any of these handsfree scooters. The reviewers at Slate had a lot more trouble and never got over the learning curve. The reviewers at Slate really enjoyed folding electric scooters. However, electric scooters …
Unison has installed and commissioned the world’s largest and most powerful all-electric pipe bending machine, at the Norwegian offshore and maritime services company, Westcon Yard AS. Capable of generating a colossal 660,000 Nm of continuous, servo-controlled torque, the custom-designed machine will be used for precision bending of thick-walled carbon steel pipes up to 10 inches …
One scientist who thinks he knows how to safely genetically edit humans is Jinsong Li, a biologist at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences. Earlier this year, Li managed to use CRISPR to edit a gene that causes eye cataracts in mice, creating healthy newborn animals with “100 percent” success. The way Li’s team did …
University of Washington researchers figured out how to make a laser refrigerate water and other liquids under real-world conditions. Researchers used an infrared laser to cool water by about 36 degrees Fahrenheit — a major breakthrough in the field. The discovery could help industrial users “point cool” tiny areas with a focused point of light. …
Mathematical modeling enables $100 depth sensor to approximate the measurements of a $100,000 piece of lab equipment. The system uses a technique called fluorescence lifetime imaging, which has applications in DNA sequencing and cancer diagnosis, among other things. So the new work could have implications for both biological research and clinical practice. “The theme of …