Wearables continue to be a big trend in the technology industry.This report reminded me that I had six months of news about wearable tech in my archives. Follow over the jump to read and watch it.
Technology you can throw on your wrist, foot, ear, head to track x, y or z--you name it and it appears to be cooking at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.
At the end of Set back your clocks, including the ones for insulin pumps, I told my readers to "stay tuned for the Sunday entertainment entry." It's still coming, probably at 7 PM EST.*The time has arrived.
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*Midnight Greenwich Time is now 7 PM, not 8 PM, so that's when the stats for the next day begin.
John Edgar Browning is a Marion L. Brittain Postodctoral fellow at Georgia Tech, and teaches classes on the horror genre of literature and film. One of his particular areas of expertise is vampires, specializing in the Dracula figure in popular culture. Brittain Fellows like Browning tailor their courses to their own research interests while meeting state and university objectives and outcomes.He's not the first scholar I've written about who studies vampires. In Sustainability news from campuses on the campaign trail for the week before Memorial Day, I included a press release from the University of Wisconsin about the scholarship of Tomislav Longinovic, who explored the vampire as a metaphor for malignant nationalism. I wonder if Browning is aware of Longinovic's work. If not, I have three words for him: Bela Lugosi's Dead.*
Students, faculty, and staff take part in Humans vs. Zombies, or HvZ, a weeklong game of tag with short missions and strategy mixed in.If it's Sunday when "The Walking Dead" is being shown, there will be zombies.
“Being a human is fun because it really tests your ability,” says computer science major, Rachel Clark. “Every day you survive feels like a pretty neat accomplishment.” The zombie life, Clark said, is also fun, but less stressful. “It’s also more common for zombies to casually hunt in groups, which makes a great chance to meet new people.”
Hillary Clinton currently has the highest net favorability of any 2016 White House contender. But to put her 19 percent favorable rating in context, she's tied with Boba Fett, the bounty hunter who froze Harrison Ford in carbonite.Ingraham shouldn't laugh too hard. After all, someone posing as Darth Vader ran for President of Ukraine on the Internet Party ticket this spring before his candidacy was rejected. Too bad about that. His campaign would have been more fun to report on that what actually happened in Ukraine this summer.
None of the 2016 hopefuls is polling higher than Darth Vader... These numbers suggest that if "Star Wars" were real and Darth Vader decided to enter the 2016 presidential race, he'd be the immediate front-runner.
Which is brighter--a flurry of Perseid fireballs or a supermoon? Sky watchers will find out this August when the biggest and brightest full Moon of 2014 arrives just in time for the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower.Follow over the jump for more of the past week's space and astronomy news originally included in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Ebola outbreak) on Daily Kos.
J. P. Telotte is a professor of film and media studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the author, most recently, of "Science Fiction TV."Follow over the jump for another quote from the essay and examples of how I've explored the same themes.
The 1930s saw numerous science fiction films centered around apocalyptic, sometimes climatic, destruction: “La Fin du Monde” (France, 1931) predicted a comet’s collision with the Earth; “Deluge” (United States, 1933) was the story of a giant tsunami resulting in a worldwide flood; “Things to Come” (England, 1936) predicted world war and a civilization-destroying plague; “S.O.S. Tidal Wave” (United States, 1939) showed the destruction of America’s East Coast by massive tidal wave.
All these films were not as much forward-looking predictions of real apocalypse as they were metaphorical responses to the widespread economic and political crises of the day. Floods and plagues became stand-ins for contemporary upheaval, in this case a way to address the anxieties that attended the Great Depression and post-World War I shock.
This is what our genre films tend to do best — not detail the realities of specific problems so that we might avoid them, but rather represent our most pressing cultural anxieties.
The labor market continued a sizzling pace of economic recovery in July. The economy created 209,000 new jobs while the unemployment rate edged up only incrementally from 6.1 percent to 6.2 percent. However, the latter increase occurred only because 329,000 workers enter the labor market over the last month. According to Thomas "Danny" Boston, an economics professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, when so many workers enter or re-enter the labor market, it is an optimistic sign that jobs are increasingly available. But the current growth comes with some worries.All of the above would be great news if it weren't for the likelihood that the Fed is about to take away the punchbowl of zero interest loans within the year to combat the possibility of inflation. Paul Krugman thinks this is wrong-headed, but that's a topic for another entry. Instead, I'll continue on to the University of Michigan, which reported Consumer confidence: Favorable job and wage growth boost spending, also on August 1, 2014.
The job gains were spread across all key industries, including construction (22,000) and manufacturing (28,000). Private non-goods producing sectors also experienced significant employment gains, including retail trade (26,700), business and professional services (47,000) and health care and social assistance (25,400).
One concerning outcome of the labor market picture is the fact that unemployment among Blacks increased notably from 10.7 percent to 11.4 perecent. However, the increase was caused primarily by over 200,000 Blacks entering or re-entering the labor market in July. Unemployment among whites and Hispanics remained constant at 5.3 percent and 7.8 percent, respectively.
ANN ARBOR—More rapid job creation, higher wages and gains in household wealth have eased the financial strains on households as well as supported more favorable buying plans for vehicles and household durables, according to the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers.Follow over the jump for good news about the state's economy from MSU and better news from Wayne State about the regional economy.
Conducted by the U-M Institute for Social Research since 1946, the surveys monitor consumer attitudes and expectations.
While consumers considered their current financial situation to now be in the best shape since the start of the Great Recession, those gains have not caused consumers to confidently expect a continuation of robust growth in the year ahead, said U-M economist Richard Curtin, who directs the surveys.
Nonetheless, confidence is sufficiently high to expand consumption by an annual rate of 2.5 percent in 2014.
The summer of 2014 will be bathed in moonlight as three perigee "supermoons" occur in consecutive months: July, August, September.Supermoon Saturday: Supersized Full Moon Rises This Weekend
Get ready for a supersized moon. One of the biggest full moons of the year — a so-called "supermoon" — will light up the night sky on Saturday (July 12), but is only the first in a lunar triple-play this summer.Yes, one not-so-rare event inspired an even rarer one.
During this weekend's supermoon, the July full moon will appear about 30 percent brighter and 14 percent closer than a typical full moon. Last year, the full moon of June made headlines with its super luminosity. In 2014, skywatchers will see three supermoons this summer, one each during the back-to-back full moons in July, August and September.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Brazil can still make the positive glow from hosting the 2014 FIFA World Cup last for years if it starts right away building programs that will unite citizens long after the event is over, a University of Florida study has found.This internal political effort is important, as Brazil is also hosting the Summer Olympics in two years. A lot of the same problems will be played out again on an even larger scale with the Olympics, at least in terms number of venues and potential disruption, so Brazil will need to learn from its mistakes or risk more unrest over sport--and not just rioting over the results of the matches.
That’s the opportunity South Africa missed after it hosted the 2010 World Cup, and Brazil has even more to lose if it does the same, said Heather Gibson, a UF tourism, recreation and sport management professor.
“There’s obviously a lot of dissent over hosting and the amount of money being used to host the event when there are many more pressing social issues,” she said. “Tread lightly and show the people that they also get a share in any of the benefits.”
In the run-up to the World Cup, Brazil saw large-scale protests across the country that focused on the government’s decision to spend billions on the event instead of on correcting social ills such as homelessness. While the number of participants has dwindled with the games underway, some demonstrators have continued their activities.
The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force said lung cancer screening for many chain-smokers and former smokers should be done with a CT scan instead of an X-ray.I’ll have more to say about smoking in another entry. For now, follow over the jump for the rest of the stories about cancer research.
On a warm afternoon in August 2003, in rural Ohio, a high-voltage power line brushed against some untrimmed tree limbs. The action tripped a relay that immediately shut off the power it was carrying. As system operators worked to understand what was happening, three more lines sagged into trees and were shut down. Joining power lines were forced to shoulder the extra burden until they, too, failed.This is an important enough event that I ask about it in the class worksheet for The End of Suburbia and repeat it again in WNWO talks blackout.
What ensued that day was a cascade of failures throughout the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. In all, 50 million customers lost power for up to two days. For many, this blackout served as a wake-up call to the fragility of the electric energy grid.
More than 10 years later, our electric power system continues to be challenged. In the United States, 149 power outages affecting at least 50,000 customers occurred between 2000 and 2004, a number which grew to 349 between 2005 and 2009. In 2012, the prolonged power outages in New York and New Jersey caused by Hurricane Sandy once again demonstrated the system’s vulnerability.
8. Summarize the size, causes, and effects of the blackout of August 2003; include how peak usage contributed to the crisis.The Georgia Tech article gives answers to all of that question except the part about peak usage. Here's that part of the answer from Still hot enough for you?
The late Russell Simmons mentioned that the power grid was most vulnerable between 4:00 PM and 5:00 PM on hot days because all three sets of customers, residential, commercial, and industrial, were online at the same time.That's an answer, but it's not a solution. According to Georgia Tech, this is.
A phenomenon called a “voltage collapse” can cause a blackout when electricity demands reach a critical level, even if there is sufficient power generation to meet the demand. The Northeast Blackout of 2003 led utilities and the government to team up to install a phasor network throughout the United States.In other words, this solution is part of the "smart grid," which promises "improved energy efficiency, optimization of power supply and demand, and greater transparency into power consumption." I hope my favorite Rambling Wrecks are right about that one, but even they acknowledge this is a necessary but not sufficient part of the solution. I just hope the rest of their ideas--integrating renewable energy sources, analyzing energy policies, and securing utilities from cyber attacks--are sufficient so long as enough electricity is generated.
By placing phasor measurement units at critical points in the network, operators can assess system stress. Miroslav Begovic, a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, helped to develop a methodology that uses the data collected from phasor measurement units. System operators can quickly assess the state of the power system and determine in real time whether it is in danger of a blackout.
Expedition 38 astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins ventured outside the space station on Dec. 21, for the first in a series of spacewalks to remove and replace a faulty coolant pump module. The pump is associated with one of the station's two external cooling loops, which circulate ammonia outside the station to keep both internal and external equipment cool.Follow over the jump for more from NASA, including a retrospective of this year’s events, plus bonus reports from campuses on the campaign trail about IceCube.
The previously planned mission of Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraft has been moved to no earlier than mid-January. The postponement will allow ample time for the station crew to focus on repairing the pump module, which stopped working properly on Dec. 11.
With a more than ninety percent probability that Comet ISON broke apart from a major heating event on its approach to the sun Thanksgiving Day, the search is on for what's left of it. NASA will use a variety of space and Earth based telescopes to monitor the comet over the next several weeks, before the fate of ISON can be confirmed. Also, Orion's heat shield, Blue Origin milestone, Rover Challenge, Stone awarded medal and Celebrating Centaur.Follow over the jump for more.
Tongue-Controlled Wheelchair Outperforms Sip-and-Puff WheelchairsThe Rambling Wrecks have more in Clinical Trial Shows Tongue-Controlled Wheelchair Outperforms Popular Wheelchair Navigation System, Posted November 27, 2013 | Atlanta, GA.
After a diving accident left Jason DiSanto paralyzed from the neck down in 2009, he had to learn how to navigate life from a powered wheelchair, which he controls with a sip-and-puff system. Users sip or puff air into a straw mounted on their wheelchair to execute four basic commands that drive the chair. But results from a new clinical study offer hope that sip-and-puff users like DiSanto could gain a higher level of independence than offered by this common assistive technology.Follow over the jump for more health research from UCSD, Texas A&M, University of Georgia, and University of Massachusetts.
In the study, individuals with paralysis were able to use a tongue-controlled technology to access computers and execute commands for their wheelchairs at speeds that were significantly faster than those recorded in sip-and-puff wheelchairs, but with equal accuracy. This study is the first to show that the wireless and wearable Tongue Drive System outperforms sip-and-puff in controlling wheelchairs. Sip-and-puff is the most popular assistive technology for controlling a wheelchair.
The Tongue Drive System is controlled by the position of the user’s tongue. A magnetic tongue stud lets them use their tongue as a joystick to drive the wheelchair. Sensors in the tongue stud relay the tongue’s position to a headset, which then executes up to six commands based on the tongue position.
On Thanksgiving Day, Comet ISON passed about 685-thousand miles above the surface of the sun -- the comet's closest approach on a projected path around our solar system's star. Data from this close encounter is providing clues about the comet and its interaction with the solar atmosphere -- which can help us understand more about the sun itself. Also, Holiday delivery, Satellite to Japan, Chief Scientist's visits, High tech agreement, Bug off and more!Follow over the jump for more from NASA plus a bonus article from Georgia Tech on a surprising finding from Curiosity.
