A little over two years since Steve Jobs presented his case for it and after the occasionalsetback, the Cupertino City Council has finally given Apple full approval to go ahead with its futuristic campus.In exchange, Apple has agreed to fork over more money to the city in the form of a reduced sales tax rebate -- going forward, Cupertino will only give back 35 percent sales tax instead of the 50 percent it had previously. Indeed, as soon as Apple gets its final permits some time today, it can begin demolishing the former HP headquarters and start building its own. The circular 2.8-million square foot glass-clad structure you see above is the main hub of the whole affair, and is said to have an underground parking facility that can hold around 2,400 vehicles. There'll be a 100,000 square foot fitness center, a 120,000 square foot auditorium, plenty more space for the company's all-important research and development division and of course everything's designed to be as eco-friendly as possible. Don't go planning your desk arrangements just yet though, Cupertino employees, as you'll have to wait until 2016 to move into what Jobs called "the best office building in the world."
Trains are awesome. Their serpentine strings of steel cars travel hundreds of miles an hour, yet give passengers enough stability to sip a tasty beverage. On the other hand, trains are awful. Have you ever seen the sickly cafe cars that serve those drinks?
Stingray movement could inspire the next generation of submarines
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
13-Nov-2013
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Contact: Marcene Robinson [email protected] 716-645-4595 University at Buffalo
The fish's unique way of swimming could improve deep-sea vehicles' agility and fuel efficiency
BUFFALO, N.Y. ─ Stingrays swim through water with such ease that researchers from the University at Buffalo and Harvard University are studying how their movements could be used to design more agile and fuel-efficient unmanned underwater vehicles.
The vehicles could allow researchers to more efficiently study the mostly unexplored ocean depths, and they could also serve during clean up or rescue efforts.
"Most fish wag their tails to swim. A stingray's swimming is much more unique, like a flag in the wind," says Richard Bottom, a UB mechanical engineering graduate student participating in the research.
Bottom and Iman Borazjani, UB assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, set out to investigate the form-function relationship of the stingray why it looks the way it does and what it gets from moving the way it does.
They will explain their findings at the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics. Their lecture, "Biofluids: Locomotion III Flying," is at 4:45 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 24, in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Downloadable images from their research are available here: http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2013/11/013.html.
The researchers used computational fluid dynamics, which employs algorithms to solve problems that involve fluid flows, to map the flow of water and the vortices around live stingrays.
The study is believed to be the first time the leading-edge vortex, the vortex at the front of an object in motion, has been studied in underwater locomotion, says Borazjani. The leading-edge vortex has been observed in the flight of birds and insects, and is one of the most important thrust enhancement mechanics in insect flight.
The vortices on the waves of the stingrays' bodies cause favorable pressure fields low pressure on the front and high pressure on the back which push the ray forward. Because movement through air and water are similar, understanding vortices are critical.
"By looking at nature, we can learn from it and come up with new designs for cars, planes and submarines," says Borazjani. "But we're not just mimicking nature. We want to understand the underlying physics for future use in engineering or central designs."
Studies have already proven that stingray motion closely resembles the most optimal swimming gait, says Bottom. Much of this is due to the stingray's unique flat and round shape, which allows them to easily glide through water.
Borazjani and Bottom plan to continue their research and study the differences in movement among several types of rays.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Stingray movement could inspire the next generation of submarines
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
13-Nov-2013
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| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Marcene Robinson [email protected] 716-645-4595 University at Buffalo
The fish's unique way of swimming could improve deep-sea vehicles' agility and fuel efficiency
BUFFALO, N.Y. ─ Stingrays swim through water with such ease that researchers from the University at Buffalo and Harvard University are studying how their movements could be used to design more agile and fuel-efficient unmanned underwater vehicles.
The vehicles could allow researchers to more efficiently study the mostly unexplored ocean depths, and they could also serve during clean up or rescue efforts.
"Most fish wag their tails to swim. A stingray's swimming is much more unique, like a flag in the wind," says Richard Bottom, a UB mechanical engineering graduate student participating in the research.
Bottom and Iman Borazjani, UB assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, set out to investigate the form-function relationship of the stingray why it looks the way it does and what it gets from moving the way it does.
They will explain their findings at the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics. Their lecture, "Biofluids: Locomotion III Flying," is at 4:45 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 24, in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Downloadable images from their research are available here: http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2013/11/013.html.
The researchers used computational fluid dynamics, which employs algorithms to solve problems that involve fluid flows, to map the flow of water and the vortices around live stingrays.
The study is believed to be the first time the leading-edge vortex, the vortex at the front of an object in motion, has been studied in underwater locomotion, says Borazjani. The leading-edge vortex has been observed in the flight of birds and insects, and is one of the most important thrust enhancement mechanics in insect flight.
The vortices on the waves of the stingrays' bodies cause favorable pressure fields low pressure on the front and high pressure on the back which push the ray forward. Because movement through air and water are similar, understanding vortices are critical.
"By looking at nature, we can learn from it and come up with new designs for cars, planes and submarines," says Borazjani. "But we're not just mimicking nature. We want to understand the underlying physics for future use in engineering or central designs."
Studies have already proven that stingray motion closely resembles the most optimal swimming gait, says Bottom. Much of this is due to the stingray's unique flat and round shape, which allows them to easily glide through water.
Borazjani and Bottom plan to continue their research and study the differences in movement among several types of rays.
###
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
It's the Batmobile, it's a Star Wars Starfighter, no it's actually Nissan's BladeGlider. This is the Japanese company's futuristic electric sportscar design that's built with speed in mind. It has a carbon fiber-covered body that's shaped like a rocket with a narrow nose and a wider rear. Beyond its ...
Call it the un-SDN, if you will. Cisco's new Application-Centric Infrastructure (ACI) initiative promises to tackle networking problems only partially addressed by current software-defined networking.
Cisco does have a good sense of the problem at hand. Networks still have lousy notions of which applications run across them and can't really tell what those apps need. Inspecting packets is slow and error-prone. There has to be a better way -- ergo, says Cisco, ACI.
But is it the only better way?
The idea behind ACI is twofold. First, you have a piece of hardware (in this case, the newly introduced Nexus 9000 switch) that can run either with Cisco-native silicon or third-party chips that supply any number of standard SDN APIs. (Yes, OpenFlow is a third-party option.) Second, you have a software policy controller to define service levels and access privileges for applications using the network hardware. This approach spans both the physical and virtual domains, touted by Cisco as a big advantage.
Cisco claims the SDN problem can't be solved by simply abstracting everything away from the hardware since that's where the actual problems lie. But not everyone agrees with ACI as an answer, and not simply because it consists largely of (what else?) more Cisco hardware.
Cisco's hardware vs. competitors' SDN software That hardware -- mainly, the Nexus 9000 data center switch -- comes from Cisco's $800 million-plus spin-in purchase of Insieme Networks. It's a startup Cisco funded for the sake of creating market-specific network products that flank rather than eclipse Cisco's existing line and are solidly welded to Cisco's bigger business plans.
That's why it's crucial to look at this in the light of Cisco's competition -- mainly VMware, HP, and the rest of the folks who've sunk heavily into OpenFlow as the pill for all SDN ills. Cisco doesn't want to lose out to folks that can market generic switches with software overlays or ODM switches running Linux, nor does it want to be beaten to markets it's yet to penetrate (such as storage and Layer 4-7 hardware) or areas where it's feeling pressure from upstarts like Arista (high-speed low-latency switching).
But ignore the fact that Cisco is pushing more of its hardware as the solution to this problem. What's still hazy about ACI, and one of its biggest possible drawbacks, is how it's meant to be implemented with the very applications it's supposed to help. Only a few details have emerged so far. As Jim Duffy reported in Network World, there's a RESTful API, which implies that the applications themselves have to advertise intent to the controller.
The news that Netflix will offer its wares on Denmark's Waoo! network might not sound like a big deal, but bear with us. It's the third such European deal after Virgin Media in the UK and Sweden's Con Hem, and it raises the possibility that Netflix could be going after one cable operator in every ...
"The fact that I'm an independent media businessman is because no one was interested in co-opting me," Jesse Thorn laughs. It's plenty easy to make light of with a decade's distance and a sunny office overlooking MacArthur Park and the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles. Maximum Fun's Westlake ...
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Darren Black Bear hasn't thought too much about his upcoming nuptials. Maybe khaki pants, and he doesn't mind if guests show up in Halloween costumes even though the wedding will be a rare sight: He and his partner are getting legally married in Oklahoma even though the state bans same-sex marriage.
How? His bloodline.
Black Bear and his partner of nine years, Jason Pickel, plan to walk each other down the aisle Thursday, surrounded by family and friends, before signing a marriage license granted by the Cheyenne Arapaho Tribes. Black Bear, 45, is a member of the Oklahoma-based tribe, which is among the few Native American tribes in the U.S. that allow same-sex marriage.
Like all federally recognized tribes, the Cheyenne Arapaho can approve laws for its land and members. Its code regarding marriage doesn't address gender, referring to the parties simply as "Indians," and requires that one person be a member of the tribe and reside within its jurisdiction.
It was on a whim, sparked in part by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision earlier this year to grant federal benefits to same-sex couples, that Pickel, 36, called the tribe to see if they could marry under tribal law instead of getting married in Iowa or another state where gay marriage was legal.
"Surprisingly enough, they told him that yes, they had already married one couple, and that it's $20 to get married," Black Bear said.
"I'm just really happy we are able to finally get married," Pickel added later at the couple's home in Oklahoma City. "And one day, when we have true equality in all 50 states, we will hopefully have all the same benefits and rights in every state."
At least six other tribes allow same-sex marriage, including the Coquille Tribe in Oregon and the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians in Michigan, states that also ban same-sex marriage, according to national gay marriage advocacy group Freedom to Marry. Other tribes, such as the Cherokee Nation, specifically bar gay marriage.
The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs said it doesn't track how many of the nation's hundreds of recognized tribes allow same-sex marriage.
Like gay couples who legally marry in other states, Black Bear and Pickel won't be awarded state benefits given to married couples in Oklahoma. But they will receive federal marriage benefits, and they said a primary reason they decided to marry was to enable Pickel to be added to Black Bear's health insurance.
Still, both men said they wanted to show their commitment to each other, and to encourage other tribes and states to adopt similar laws. The couple decided to become more outspoken after they were refused a room at an extended-stay hotel in another state because of their relationship, which resulted in Pickel — long the more vocal of the pair — convincing a local television station to report on the controversy.
"We've already seen the best and the worst in each other. We've already experienced all that. We just want the same benefits and we just want to be treated the same," Black Bear said, noting that he was grateful for the tribal law.
"He does keep me centered. I tend to dream big," Pickel added. "I've always been an advocate for equal rights so I guess it's kind of natural that it (the wedding) would be public. I just thought it would be somewhere else — I thought it would be in a different time and a different place before we'd even have this be able to occur."
Black Bear's father, a former tribal council member, said he told his son he would be honored to officiate the wedding in Watonga, a town within the tribe's jurisdictional boundaries.
"I'm not like a lot of ministers, judgmental. I have an open mind. I believe that God loves us regardless and he's given us his love so we have to share that," Floyd Black Bear said.
The pair, who met at a Christmas party in Alabama and moved to Oklahoma about five years ago, are among three same-sex couples who have applied for tribal marriage licenses since 2012, Cheyenne Arapaho Tribes spokeswoman Lisa Liebl said. One couple has already married, while the other recently filed for paperwork.
Black Bear hopes other tribes follow suit.
"The fact that the Cheyenne Arapaho Tribes here in Oklahoma are progressive enough to follow federal guidelines, I'm pretty sure that they'll (other tribes) start issuing marriage licenses within their tribes. I'm hopeful they will," he said.
___
Follow Kristi Eaton on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kristieaton .
Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah attends the first working meeting of the G20 summit in September in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Vladimir Astapkovich/Getty Images
Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah attends the first working meeting of the G20 summit in September in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Vladimir Astapkovich/Getty Images
The Sultan of Brunei said his country would soon be ruled by a set of strict Islamic criminal laws, making Brunei the first Southeast Asian country to institute Sharia Law at a national level.
"Islam has long been the official religion of this tiny country in the Borneo island, which is split into three parts with Malaysia and Indonesia as well. Brunei, with a population of more than 400,000, has one of the highest per-capita incomes in Southeast Asia, thanks to its offshore oil reserves in the South China Sea. Its monarch, who has ruled the country from 1967, is also the prime minister and controls the defense and finance ministries.
"'It is because of our need that Allah the Almighty, in all His generosity, has created laws for us, so that we can utilize them to obtain justice,' Sultan and Prime Minister Hassanal Bolkiah said in a statement.
"The new set of laws under Islamic code, the Shariah Penal Code, would broaden the scope of religious justice that is now limited to some Sharia courts dealing in personal and family issues, such as marriage disputes. The new laws, the sultan said, would go into effect in six months."
The AFP reports that under the new law, an adulterer could be stoned to death, a thief could face a severed limb, drinking alcohol could lead to flogging.
The French wire service reports that Human Rights Watch is calling the legal change "abhorrent."
"Brunei is showing its feudal characteristics as an 18th-century state rather than an important member of a regional Southeast Asian economic and social consensus in the 21st century," Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, told AFP.
Voice of America, a foreign news service funded by the U.S. government, reports the punishments will only apply to Muslims, who make up two-thirds of the country. VOA adds:
"Officials have promised that the new punishments would require a high burden of proof and that their application would be subject to approval by judges.
"In his speech Tuesday, the sultan insisted the new rules will not change his country's relationship with other nations. Some viewed this as an assurance to foreign investors."
If you need an XGA (1,024-by-768) projector that can throw a large image in a tight space, the LCD-based Boxlight Boston X28NST is of obvious interest. In addition to the short-throw lens, which lets it project big images from close to the screen, it delivers a high-quality data image, watchable video (which is more than some data projectors can manage), and the promise of a long lamp life. The combination makes it a strong contender as a short-throw XGA projector for a small to mid-size conference room or classroom.
Short-throw projectors like the X28NST or the Editors' Choice NEC Display Solutions NP-M300WS are more expensive than equivalent models with a standard throw, because their lenses cost more. What justifies the price is the short throw. With the X28NST in particular, I measured a 78-inch wide (98-inch diagonal) image with the projector just 48 inches from the screen. That's less than half the distance a projector with a standard-throw lens would need.
There's little reason to spend extra money for a short-throw projector unless you actually need the short throw. But if you're looking to project a large image in a small room, or have a potential issue with shadows from anything that might get between a standard-throw projector and the screen, a short-throw projector can easily be worth the extra cost.
Basics and Setup With its nine-pound weight, the X28NST is just heavy enough to make it most appropriate for permanent installation or mounting on a cart for moving it from room to room.
Setup is standard for a short-throw projector, with a manual focus and no zoom. Image inputs on the back panel include the usual VGA, HDMI, and composite video ports as well as an S-Video port, a USB A port for reading files directly from a USB memory key, and a mini-USB B port for direct USB display.
In addition, the projector offers a 1.5GB internal memory to let you show images without needing an external image source, and there's a LAN port you can use both to control the projector and to send images and audio over a network. Finally, Boxlight also sells an optional Wi-Fi dongle ($99 list) that will let you send images from PCs, Macs, and iOS and Android phones and tablets. In each case, there are apps available for the most recent versions of OSs.
Brightness and Image Quality The X28NST's 2,800-lumen brightness rating is a touch lower than the more typical 3,000 lumens or so for recent models aimed at small to medium-size conference rooms and classrooms. However, that's not a big difference. As a point of reference, using SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) recommendations, 3,000 lumens is bright enough in theater-dark lighting with a 1.0 gain screen for a 202- to 273-inch image measured diagonally. At 2,800 lumens, the recommended size drops to an overlapping 195 to 264 inches.
Because the X28NST is an LCD-based projector, it has the same color brightness as white brightness, which isn't necessarily true for DLP projectors. That means it maintains brightness for color images better than projectors with a lower color brightness than white brightness. (For more on color brightness, see Color Brightness: What It Is, and Why You Should Care.)
Data image quality is a strong point, with the X28NST scoring well on our standard suite of DisplayMate tests. Colors were fully saturated and vibrant in all modes and color balance was good, with acceptably neutral grays at all levels from black to white.
More important for most data images is that the image maintained fine detail across the entire screen, with both black text on white and white text on black crisp and highly readable at sizes as small at 6.8 points. The screen was also rock solid with an analog (VGA) connection, even with images that tend to cause pixel jitter or dynamic moire patterns. I didn't see any noticeably improvement when I switched to a digital (HDMI) connection.
As expected for a data projector, the X28NST didn't do as well with video as with data images. It handled shadow detail (details based on shading in dark areas) better than most data projectors, but I saw some posterization (shading changing suddenly where it should change gradually) and moderately obvious noise in solid areas, like an expanse of sky or a blank wall. Colors also had a washed out look that indicates a low contrast ratio.
That said, the video was good enough to watch a full-length movie comfortably, which makes the X28NST better for watching video than many data projectors. It also helps that as an LCD projector, it's guaranteed not to show the rainbow artifacts—in the form of flashes of red, green, and blue—that DLP projectors often show. On the other hand, because it's an LCD projector, it doesn't offer 3D support, which is all but standard in DLP projectors today.
Other Issues One other plus that demands mention is the projector's long lamp life, with a rated 4,000 hours in Normal mode or 6,000 hours in Eco mode. Also note that Boxlight offers a Lamps for Life option ($299) that provides replacement lamps for the life of the projector. The only additional cost is for shipping, including for sending the old lamp back to Boxlight. Alternatively, you can buy replacement lamps as needed ($349 list).
A final minor issue is that despite a 10-watt mono speaker the audio system is barely loud enough to fill a small conference room. If you need higher volume or stereo, plan on plugging an external sound system into the projector's stereo audio output.
There's no reason to spend extra on a short throw projector unless you really need the short throw. If you need it, however, the Boxlight Boston X28NST offers a lot to like, including the excellent data image quality, acceptable video quality, and a long lamp life. If XGA is the resolution you need for a small to mid-size conference room or classroom, the Boxlight Boston X28NST can be a great fit.
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It's the Batmobile, it's a Star Wars Starfighter, no it's actually Nissan's BladeGlider. This is the Japanese company's futuristic electric sportscar design that's built with speed in mind. It has a carbon fiber-covered body that's shaped like a rocket with a narrow nose and a wider rear. Beyond its ...
The news that Netflix will offer its wares on Denmark's Waoo! network might not sound like a big deal, but bear with us. It's the third such European deal after Virgin Media in the UK and Sweden's Con Hem, and it raises the possibility that Netflix could be going after one cable operator in every ...
"The fact that I'm an independent media businessman is because no one was interested in co-opting me," Jesse Thorn laughs. It's plenty easy to make light of with a decade's distance and a sunny office overlooking MacArthur Park and the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles. Maximum Fun's Westlake ...
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