Tech & Science Archives - Page 37 of 114

The Ford Car That Not Even Armor Piercing Bullets Can Break

March 11, 2016 By Deborah Campbell Leave a Comment

No, unfortunately it’s not the Bat Mobile being placed in the service of American police task forces; instead, it is a new technique in building police interceptor sedans and SUVs that Ford applies in car doors that can stop armor-piercing bullets. That way, Ford will become the first in the United States to reach the very highest of body armor standards, as they were set by the Justice Department. That being said, the doors that Ford has designed can stop even a .30 caliber bullet shot from an AK-47 or other high-powered rifles of the likes.

Ballistic panels are something that Ford has been offering the police since early 2008 but were not approved until now. The reason behind this is the simple fact that Ford’s previous models of bulletproof doors would only protect against handgun fire and non-armor piercing bullets. The original request for better-protected vehicles came from police teams in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. That led Randy Freiburger, a Ford engineer, to start working on designing a better-protected car that included top notch bullet protection.

And it turns out that the United States is far from the danger of armor-piercing ammunition minus the very few and occasional occurrences; studies state that in some states outside of the U.S., however, armor-piercing bullets are a threat that can be encountered on a daily basis.

The manner in which Ford managed to achieve top grade ballistic protection in their vehicle doors is via a build that implies two different layers of material. The first one – the outer layer – is ceramic tile that falls into the ballistic grade category. It’s not impenetrable, but its effect on the bullet is what counts: as soon as a bullet hits this surface, its energy is dispersed, and the material causes the bullet to break down into pieces.

Then the second layer comes into action. This one is made from aramid fiber, and it is the very same material that is normally used for Kevlar. The purpose of the second layer is to catch the shrapnel from the bullet from causing further damage. Engineers who have designed the panels mentioned that in the event that a bullet hits in the same place twice, the door would still be able to withstand the impact to some degree.

However, this new change comes at a cost. The ballistic door panels weigh a lot more and cost more too. The current price that a Ford-built armor-piercing bullet proof car door costs a minimum of $1,500.

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YouTube Gaming Makes Mobile Game Streaming Possible

March 10, 2016 By Cristopher Hall Leave a Comment

The latest version of the YouTube gaming app has a surprise for us. What do you think you need to stream your favorite games? A much higher than average computer, a stable connection and throw in a few pieces of professional equipment if you want to make things classier? Google disagrees; Google thinks that the next step of game streaming is to make it mobile. And by that we mean the fact that the tech giant has just released a build that allows you to play your favorite mobile phone games and stream t for others to watch.

However, so far this feature has only made it in several areas around the globe. More specifically, it is only available in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Canada at the current time, but will most likely be stretched out to the rest of the world when it starts picking up public. Not to mention that the only platform that can currently take it is Android.

And come to think of it, this change was blatantly in our face and soon to happen given the fact that mobile technology these days is becoming more and more proficient, and will most likely soon reach the capabilities of average computers. 3D gaming has developed onto the mobile platform – whether we’re talking smartphones or tablets – at an alarming rate in the past years, luring some companies into doing things such as devising controllers for your phone.

And because streaming is an unexplainable but extremely powerful source of entertainment of our days (see famous YouTubers that own gaming channels such as PewDiePie), Google realized it was about time it was made available for the mobile medium as well. Think about this: your phone has the technology, if not a strong 4G connection, then surely a stable WiFi back at home at least, an inbuilt webcam and a microphone. Provided that you remember to not cover the camera with your thumb while you play, this will be just like regular gaming streaming.

The YouTube Gaming app comes with a multitude of features that were made for both the streamers and the viewers. While streaming can be down live whenever you decide for it from a simple drop down menu, anyone watching you via mobile doesn’t need to have their freedom sacrificed and remain in the app fullscreen to be able to hear you while they reply to a text. Instead, they get pop out the stream and concern themselves with what they need to do while the video is still running.

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Google Chrome Music Lab Offers Musical Education

March 10, 2016 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

The tech giant is unmistakably attempting to tackle dozens of projects simultaneously, as another one dubbed Chrome Music Lab just hit the news feed this morning. According to Google, this is a feature that comes to help out in things such as educations – whether we’re talking academic or personal – by employing a series of experiments that allow the users to explore various musical pieces and understand how they work.

But this is not a feature that comes for no reason whatsoever. It has been created as a way to celebrate this year’s Music in Our Schools Month. As a result, Chrome Music Lab was made available and accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The feature was also made to be particularly easy to use and user-friendly, regardless of the age of the user. Very young children, mid-schoolers and adults alike can easily explore the workings of music using a variety of platforms: desktops, tablets and smartphones alike are compatible with the website that hosts the Music Lab.

The Chrome Music Lab consists of 12 different ‘experiments’ that you can play around with, each one depicting a different aspect of music, which you can pretty much figure out from the title of the experiment. The listings so far include Rhythm, Spectrogram, Chords, Sound waves, Arpeggios, Kandinsky, Melody Maker, Voice Spinner, Harmonics, Piano Roll, Oscillators and Strings.

All of the above are made thanks to the collaboration of coders and musicians that made use of the Web Audio API and open source code. The API permits creating and editing music within the browser, while the open source quality offers anyone experienced and willing the freedom to experiment and create their own version of experiments in the Music Lab, for example.

All of the previously submitted experiments make use of colorful animations, clear sounds and very easy to understand illustrations of how sound from various instruments work, how chords work, and even giving you a little freedom in creating some accidental songs while playing with it. Every one of the 12 currently present on the website are cleverly made and intuitive in making the experience as pleasant for the user as possible as it doesn’t let things get too hectic.

This is a great method that teachers and educators could apply in schools to not only give children an easier way of understanding the workings of music but also nurture their creative spirit.

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MRO Is Celebrating 10 Years of Orbiting Mars

March 10, 2016 By Nancy Young Leave a Comment

NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has now been in the Red Planet’s orbit for ten years, something that we celebrate this March 10^th. The MRO is a spacecraft that NASA poured $720 million back in the early 2000s, and it was built alongside the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. After its launch on August 12^th, 2005, the space shuttle successfully reached Martian orbit exactly ten years ago. After five months of aerobraking, the MRO entered its final position, joining up with five other active space crafts that had been doing the same since.

The MRO is responsible for a multitude of discoveries that humanity has made about the mysterious Red Planet, the very same that we one day hope to colonize and turn into our smaller home in space. Being equipped with an entire arsenal of scouting, surveying and analysis tools such as cameras, spectrometers, radars and many more, the MRO has transferred fantastic amounts of data back to Earth regarding the geology, weather, climate, stratigraphy and particular features of Mars’ surface.

The MRO mission was originally planned to last just a mere two Earth years, long enough for it to map the landscapes of Mars for potential future landing missions – manned or otherwise. Many such landings were, as a matter of fact, achieved by landers such as the Phoenix, further allowing mankind to explore and study particular areas of the Red Planet. A great amount of interest was shown towards the Martian Arctic where scientists believed they may find water ice.

Its two-year long mission got extended in the end, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter then taking upon the role of communication and navigation system for other probes travelling for the surface and orbit of Mars – whether they are rovers or problems.

However, as its mission began, the MRO took a considerable time to get its first pieces of visual data back to Earth. The first high-resolution image taken by the MRO happened as late as September 29^th, 2006. Although the picture was taken from orbit, it showed a shocking amount of detail, being able to resolve items that were as small as 90 cm in diameter. One of such photos that were taken depicts the Candor Chasma region of Valles Marineris on Mars, showing geography that strongly resembles a place where rivers could’ve flown at one point in the very distant past; millions of years to be more exact.

The MRO mission is still, to this day, set to an indefinite duration and most likely, it will remain in commission for a long time to go.

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Some of Earth’s Dust Is Full of History

March 9, 2016 By Michael Turner Leave a Comment

A paper published in the Physical Review Letters journal written by Michael Bennet suggests that subatomic dust particles found on the surface of the Earth as a result of meteorite collision appear to be the result of stellar explosions. Stellar explosions that happened long before our solar system even existed. Possibly even before the Milky Way coalesced.

This is the conclusion that scientists have reached as part of the ongoing experimental nuclear physics research happening at Michigan State University. Here is where the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory can be found, and this is also where scientists were able to study and reveal the nature of what they now call ‘pre-solar grains,’ after prolonged researches on whether these particles belonged to classical nova explosions or not.

The researchers that were in charge of this project had a multitude of theories regarding the origin of said submicroscopic particles; according to them, they could have originated from a classical nova, but also from other phenomena such as thermonuclear explosions happening on the surface of small stars that can be found in a binary star system.

According to scientists, such naturally occurring but rare events where a system of planets orbits around not one, but two stars are the source of huge amounts of stellar material being released outwards into space. Some of this material is even believed to become the foundation and coalesced into the formation of new solar systems.

But ending up with this discovery took the scientists through numerous steps in order to be able to determine the origin of the particles. One of the first experiments being performed on this topic was conducted by the very same team working at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. What they did was to thoroughly study the radioactive nuclei of these particles, only to realize that they were dealing with a high amount of isotope silicon-30 that contains 14 protons and 16 neutrons; an isotope extremely rare on our planet.

This led the scientists to the conclusion that there is a process of heavy recycling taking place in our universe, where particles and material expelled by other stars doesn’t seem to be lost. Instead, it helps give birth to other solar systems, other stars, and other planets. And imminently, other types of spatial objects.

This process could repeat indefinitely as the material remains the same on a microscopic level. Whether this confirms the scientists’ theory that the amount of matter in our universe is not only finite but also actually the exact same amount that it has been since the Big Bang expansion billions of years ago is yet to be revealed.

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Ford Making the Move on the Driverless Car Market

March 9, 2016 By Kenneth Scott 1 Comment

While the autonomous vehicle market doesn’t practically exist yet, most top carmakers in the world are already thinking a decade ahead and applying for driverless car patents. The best example is probably Ford, which – having already reached the stage where they’re testing their driverless cars in harsh weather conditions to perfect the sensors – is also busying itself with patenting new and ambitious projects.

The latest patent that comes on behalf of Ford is a windshield entertainment system, which I’m going to go ahead and call a ‘momentary discharge of overzealousness’. Carmakers around the world are judging that 2020 will be the year where semi-autonomous vehicles will be hitting the market, given the stage of development their prototypes are in at the current time. Fully automated and driverless cars, however, won’t become a thing for us until the estimated 2030. Even with less than a decade and a half of waiting ahead of us, and yet the patented concept is still amazingly cool.

At least, they get to say they were first when things really do really go down that path.

The patent was published recently by the U.S. Patent Office and gives off some information regarding the way Ford envisions the entertainment system that will lie inside your amazingly smart and independent car. The concept is very reminiscent of how drive-in theaters work, except the cinema is actually driving with you, in the car.

Even though that would’ve been very futuristic and fun to witness, the windshield doesn’t start rendering images as you would expect but instead features a roll-down screen that deploys from above it and has a projector displaying images on it. Going by the same type of thinking, Ford even said that this concept could easily be applied to any other flat surface; say, the rearview mirror. Naturally, in that case, it could display other types of information, and not play “Game of Thrones” while the non-driverless truck behind you is blaring its horns at you.

This is the kind of example that is particularly enticing to witness, even if it’s set to happen in the not so near future. The patent clearly makes clever use of either very new or even upcoming technologies. Rollable displays, for example, were first showcased this year at CES 2016, and it was only a matter of time until someone thought of a great way to put them to use.

Still, we’ve got plenty more Consumer Electronics Shows to attend until we get to watch and doze off to anything in our smart, self-driving cars.

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Google Almost Plans Your Trips by Itself

March 9, 2016 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

The new Destination feature that is now part of Google can help anyone plan a business trip or a vacation with a minimal amount of effort on your end. And it’s all baked into Google too, making it easy for you to find destinations, find out flight and hotel prices and much more without any other necessary downloads or other apps. Its only downside is the fact that it’s only available on mobile alone.

Destinations is a very nifty tool that offers you instant information on your particular queries, allowing you to compare data on the go and help you make your choices on a well-documented basis. Places to go, costs of doing so, places to stay and flight information are all pieces of data the feature will provide you when you use it.

But the Destinations feature may not seem that easy to access as it has no direct widget or button to tap in order to be taken to it. Instead, the method you can access it is, as a matter of fact, even more intuitive. By adding the word ‘destination’ or ‘vacation’ to the end of a query, after you’ve specified a location will return you all the available options it has found. Afterwards, the feature provides you with several filters that you can use to refine your search. Flexible dates, ratings, prices and so on.

Selecting a location will provide you with an entire series of images and information regarding it: popular tourist sites, national holidays and events that you may be interested in.

Afterwards, by tapping on the ‘Explore’ button, you can find even more information that you may find relevant to you. Things such as weather conditions for the selected period, finding out when the destination of your choice is most popular based on the information that other users have provided. After the initial parameters have been chosen, the feature will allow you to ‘Plan a trip’, listing you the rates and prices for flights and hotels for the next half a year. Or your preferred date of choice, if you list it. Swiping left and right through the estimated trip price menu will display the fluctuation of how much it would cost you to visit your chosen country over a prolonged amount of time.

Lastly, once everything is good and decided, you can actually go ahead and book a flight from within the feature. The app refers to the airline’s own website to purchase your airplane tickets. Reservations can’t be made directly from Google Destinations, but you will be forwarded to the reservations center site.

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Pluto May Have Its Planet Status Reinstated

March 8, 2016 By Deborah Campbell Leave a Comment

The very long history of one of the smallest and furthest away object in our solar system, Pluto may have its planet status reinstated after it was revoked back in 2006. The reason behind that was a nearly unanimous vote that due to Pluto’s size and position in the solar system, along with the discovery of several other small planets displaying similar features in what was later called the Kuiper Belt. Instead, it became a dwarf planet in accordance to the 424 astronomers who attended the meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Prague in 2006.

Ever since New Horizons probe’s flyby of Pluto that was done in the summer of 2015, new data is being extracted from the wide variety of images that were captured from various altitudes and positions. Along with its floating glaciers in the Sputnik Planum and wildly diverse geological formation, a more recent observation that scientists made when studying the images of Pluto may just be the first step towards reinstating it as a planet.

A particular image displaying the surface of the dark Pluto from an angle shows the very thin layer that is its atmosphere. However, the detail that brought a considerable amount of debate regarding the image in question is the presence of several wispy areas on the very edge of the atmosphere; almost as if there were clouds present on Pluto. Scientists have called them ‘extremely bright low altitude limb haze’ instead, as it is not yet certain what the exact nature of those masses is.

Researchers on the New Horizons project believe that they are composed of nitrogen, methane as well as other gases otherwise existent in Pluto’s atmosphere.

This does not, however, bring direct evidence that Pluto should once again be considered a full-fledged planet as it does not pertain to any of the requirements that scientists have decided are necessary in order for a space object to be considered one.

Pluto is a very unusual object in our solar system, displaying an elliptical orbit that takes it 248 Earth years to complete. It is a lot more elongated than the orbits of the other eight planets in our solar system, as well as displaying an inclination of 17 degrees in relation to the other orbits present. While Pluto fulfills the basic requirements, it acts as if is being pulled away by a different object, straying from the normal orbit around the Sun.

If the discovery of ‘clouds’ turns out to be true, scientists may consider rephrasing the requirements that an object must present in order to be considered a planet, and as a result, Pluto being reinstated as the 9^th planet of our solar system.

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Facebook Opening New Doors for Article Writers

March 8, 2016 By Cristopher Hall Leave a Comment

Another partnership that Facebook has made with the developer of leading publishing software WordPress brings writers an easier method of posting articles via the Instant Articles feature. This new update hasn’t been noticed by a great number of users so far as the feature in question was only pushed to a limited and rather small number of publishers. However, come April 12^th, the new feature, and the WordPress integration will be made available to the entirety of Facebook users, writers, bloggers and regular users alike.

So thanks to this Facebook – Automattic partnership, writers will be able to post, modify and update content even easier than before thanks to the direct WordPress plugin that will exist within Facebook itself. While it may not seem like a groundbreaking implementation, the Instant Articles feature will greatly assist those accounts that are connected to both platforms.

It is estimated that more than twenty-five percent of all the websites that exist worldwide are powered by the WordPress publishing software. Along with all the benefits of having both your editing and publishing tools along straight into the media environment that you wish your posts and articles to reach, the WordPress plugin has another several functionalities. One such functionality is the provided ability for content creators to adapt the format of their blogs and articles to suit mobile versions of their articles. This will increase the readability, the format as well as the loading times of said webpages on mobile means.

This new Instant Articles feature also includes several optimization improvements for media and visuals for the content creators’ articles. During its preview demonstration, developers showcased how the plugin can benefit writers using a demonstrative example from the Foreign Policy magazine – with and without the Instant Articles feature.

According to Chris Ackermann, a Facebook engineer that has also worked on the development of Instant Articles integration, there are two ways in which publishers can use the tool. The more fundamental method entails only activating the plugin to create Instant Articles when they use standard WordPress templates. Alternatively, the tool also offers a more detailed and customized production feature for those who wish it, allowing you to make use of multiple additional features.

Considering the partnership with WordPress, the Instant Articles feature may gain a lot more ground in the near future. While the Facebook feature has existed since last year, there weren’t many publishers who were able to make use of it.

Now, with the addition of the WordPress plugin as well as the benefits regarding advertising revenue, a larger number of users may start using it once it goes live globally in April.

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The Uncanny Employment That Google Made

March 8, 2016 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

Google recently made a move that raised a huge question mark above the head of various members of the public – the employment of 4chan founder Chris Poole. Poole is a notorious presence in the online community, especially when it comes to bringing people together; or rather set them up for a method of freely expressing themselves under the anonymity of the internet.

In other words, Chris “Moot” Poole is the face of the very controversial website 4chan that he founded back in 2003, originally intended as an image-sharing hub for those interested in and fans of Japanese anime. An unquestionably innocent project, you would think, but given the website’s lack of censorship, 4chan soon became a rather controversial place to be in, at times becoming downright offensive to groups and individuals and the birthplace of the concept that we nowadays call ‘memes’.

However, Poole sold its website to the founder of the popular Japanese message board 2channel – the very inspiration of 4chan, before it went off track into an entirely different direction that nobody saw coming.

But while you cannot place the blame of an entire rather gigantic community on the name of one person, the public reacted with the least enthusiasm when they heard that tech giant Google had actually hired Poole in their company, for an unknown position. While no official information has been provided on the nature of Poole’s role in Google, rumors hint that he may be placed in charge of the failing Google Plus social platform.

According to Poole’s blog in a post he made right after the announcement that Google was picking him up, whatever position he will be occupying within Google will be making use of his experience of working for a dozen years in building online communities. While this isn’t the only likely option that Poole has at Google, it is most likely that Google+ will fall into his responsibility.

Google Plus has had an abysmally low rate of success with its users, who almost always chose the more popular alternatives when it came to social platforms. Despite numerous efforts that Google made to make up for the failings of its social platform, attempting to appeal to a different group of targeted users and whatnot, Google+ is currently still slowly advancing towards its imminent death.

Is Poole’s employment a sign that Google is giving its social platform another chance, or will the former 4chan founder play a completely different role within the company?

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