When anthropologists first overflew the area, they saw women and children in the open and no one appeared to be painted. It was only when the plane returned a few hours later that they saw these individuals covered head-to-toe in red. Tribes in the Amazon paint themselves for all kinds of different reasons, one of which includes when they feel threatened or are aggressive. Other uncontacted groups in the region, whose homes have been photographed from the air, are in severe danger from illegal logging in Peru and populations are being decimated..
Article Link: www.dailymail.co.uk
Monthly Archive for May, 2008
Texas based KumoTek announces the KumoTek KT-X bipedal humanoid robot developed in cooperation with Japanese Vstone. KumoTek has built an entire education system around their robots called Robot P.E.T.S. (Robots Promoting Education Through Science), which is designed to pull kids away from video games and launch them into the world of robotics science and mechanical engineering..
KT-X Lite: 13 motors – $990 USD.
KT-X: 17 motors – $1,290 USD.
KT-X Gladiator: 20 motors – $1,490 USD (rotating hips and torso).
Article Link: www.i4u.com
Video Link: www.youtube.com
This is a time lapse of gravity wave action from the Tama, Iowa KCCI-TV webcam in the United Sates on 6 May 2007. In the earth’s atmosphere, gravity waves are important for transferring momentum from the troposphere to the mesosphere..
Info Link: www.wikipedia.org
Video Link: www.youtube.com
Taking its inspiration from the grasshopper, a tiny two-legged robot that stores elastic energy in springs has leaped 27 times its own height, smashing the record of 17 times set by a previous robot.
Later they want to build a wire superstructure to make the robot automatically regain its feet when it lands and add wings to let it glide like a real grasshopper while airborne. After that they hope to add solar panels, some simple sensors and a microprocessor. These would allow the robot to control its hopping and possibly communicate with other robots in the swarm, as well as recharge its battery..
Article Link: www.newscientist.com
Video Link: www.youtube.com
NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars yesterday after its 422-million-mile (679-million-km) flight from Earth to Mars after launching on Aug. 4, 2007. Phoenix is to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander’s robotic arm. For more information and photos follow the link below..
Official Website: www.nasa.gov
The as-yet-unnamed robot from the non-profit group SRI uses electro-adhesion to cling to the wall, generating electrostatic charges between the wall substrate and itself to keep from falling. The technology uses a very small amount of power and shows the ability to repeatedly clamp to wall substrates that are heavily covered in dust or other debris..
Article Link: www.popularmechanics.com
Video Link: www.youtube.com
Andrew who is a 17 year old from Flint, Michigan, United Sates is building himself his own electric vehicles. He says on his blog “I’ve always had an interest in vehicles of any kind. I also have a do more with less attitude, and a concern for what the petroleum industry is doing to our society and our environment. I want to show how easy it is to convert to electric, and how practical these vehicles are for everyday driving.”
You can check out his first build which was a 1988 Mazda Ute or his new project which is a 1992 4-door Toyota. Also you can follow his progress on his own blog. All linked below..
1988 Mazda B2200: www.evalbum.com
1992 Toyota Tercel: www.evalbum.com
Official Website: http://greenflightev.blogspot.com
This ad may be a few years old but its still very inspiring. The message behind this Greenpeace ad is that the oceans get too little credit for their oxygen production, as well as their capacity to absorb CO2..
Article Link: www.treehugger.com
Video Link: www.youtube.com
This is a very interesting video on galaxies in the universe and how they act and collide with one another..
Video Link: www.youtube.com
BrightSource Energy has just raised a massive $115 million in Series C funding and has added some big new names to its list of investors including Google.org, BP Alternative Energy, StatoilHydro Venture and Black River. Solar Thermal Energy is where they use large mirrors to heat a pool of water to produce steam and power trubines which then produce electricity. The video below is from BrightSource and is of the construction of their Israeli pilot plant..
Article Link: www.earth2tech.com
Video Link: http://video.google.com
These may look similar, but are vastly different. On the left we have Galaxy M101, and on the right Typhoon Rammasun. Rammasun was only a thousand kilometers or so across while M101 (aka the Pinwheel Galaxy) spans about 170,000 light-years. These do look amazingly alike tho, each with arms exhibiting the shape of a simple and beautiful mathematical curve known as a logarithmic spiral..
Article Link: http://apod.nasa.gov
The outer skin of the Airbus A380 has to be designed to get this monster off the tarmac. The world’s biggest airliner is light but also tough thanks to incredible glass fibers shown in the video below..
Article Link: www.nationalgeographic.com
Video Link: www.youtube.com
This Doomsday Vault is part of an effort to protect the planet’s diminishing biodiversity. The facility was dug deep into the frozen rock of an Arctic mountain on Spitsbergen, one of 3 Arpichelago Islands in Norway. Any seeds stored here will be secure for centuries, or longer. As well as protecting against the loss of multicultural diversity, the vault is going to provide the salvation for restarting agricultural production at the regional or global level in the wake of a natural or man-made disaster..
Article Link: www.cbsnews.com
Video Link: www.youtube.com
As clouds of toxic ash and dust tower into the sky, they ionise the air, generating an explosive electrical storm. Colossal forks of lightning spark around the noxious plume as it spews from the volcano’s crater, creating an image of raw, terrifying energy, as if the air itself were ablaze..
Article Link: www.dailymail.co.uk
The article linked has a great series of photos of a Giant Panda which is native only to China. The photos go from day 1 through to day 120..
Article Link: www.lifeinthefastlane.ca
Solar rooftop installations just got a lot easier. Lumeta, a subsidiary of construction heavyweight DRI, has developed a solar panel sticker, the Power-Ply 380. The panels are half as heavy as concrete roofing tiles and can be tailored to fit on most tile designs. The company says its convenient peel-and-stick solar technology allows it to be installed almost twice as fast as regular rack-mounted panels, a claim put to the test in the video below..
Official Website: www.dricompanies.com/lumeta
Article Link: www.treehugger.com
Video Link: www.youtube.com
A female wildebeest vigorously defending her Calf from an African Wild Dog pack. This video has a happy ending where the Dogs decide to discontinue the assault after some time..
Info Link: www.wikipedia.org/African Wild Dog
Video Link: www.youtube.com
A robot developed by roboticists at the University of Pennsylvania is made of modules that can recognise each other, even when kicked apart the modules can reassemble into one robot..
Article Link: www.newscientist.com
Video Link: www.youtube.com
The mission of the X PRIZE Foundation is to bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. The Foundation fosters innovative, high-profile competitions that motivate individuals across all boundaries to solve grand challenges. The prizes are worth millions and capture the imagination of the public to draw attention to the goal.
Current X Prizes are:
Space – Google Lunar X PRIZE ($20 & $5 Million Dollar Prizes)
Medicine – Archon X PRIZE for Genomics (Multi-Million-Dollar Cash Prizes)
Automotive – Progressive Automotive X PRIZE ($10 Million Dollar Prize)
Official Website: www.xprize.org
Info Link: www.wikipedia.org
Video Link: www.youtube.com
Brian Cox talks about his work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Discussing the biggest of big science in an engaging, accessible way, Cox brings us along on a tour of the massive project..
Official Website: www.ted.com
Video Link: www.ted.com/talks/view/id/253
ZME Science has another nice article, this time on the 5 tallest waterfalls from around the world, including pictures and descriptions. I’ve listed the five and their heights, and a picture of the tallest. Once again I find it interesting that they are all around the same height..
1. Angel Falls in Venezuela – 979 meters.
2. Tugela Falls in South Africa – 948 meters.
3. Tres Hermanas in Peru – 914 meters.
4. Olo’upena Falls in Hawaii – 900 meters.
5. Yumbilla, Catarata in Peru – 895.5 meters.
Article Link: www.zmescience.com
(Photo of Angel Falls by a.caccuri)
This is a short clip from the Mountains episode of the BBC Planet Earth series. The crew looked for snow leopards for days in the Himalayan mountains till when they were about to leave, they got reports of some and got this great footage..
Article Link: www.wikipedia.org
Video Link: www.youtube.com
The International Space Station (ISS) is a research facility currently being assembled in space. Assembly of ISS began in 1998. The space station is in a low Earth orbit and can be seen from Earth with the naked eye, it has an altitude of approximately 350 km (217 mi) above the surface of the Earth, and travels at an average speed of 27,700 km (17,210 statute miles) per hour, completing 15.77 orbits per day..
Official Website: www.nasa.gov
Video Link: www.youtube.com
Did you know there’s a black hole in the center of our galaxy? Kasey-Dee Gardner asks the astronomer who discovered it 3 questions..
Video Link: www.youtube.com
This video about “Imagining the Tenth Dimension” is from a book by Rob Bryanton. The video explains 10 dimensions using simple drawings to help you understand..
Official Website: www.tenthdimension.com
Video Link: www.youtube.com
