Head Blaze

A wonderful machine to lift marbles up and then let them down again.

The FanWing experimental aircraft opens up a new area of aerodynamics Designs to establish a means of integral lift and thrust using a horizontal-axis wing rotor are recorded back as far as the late 19th century. Some of the experiments started to take off but did not sustain flight. The FanWing blown-wing solution offers both basic proof of concept and a steady trajectory of improved and controlled flight performance. Continue Reading »

A robot capable of automatically sorting rubbish into six categories of recycled waste using laser detectors has been developed by scientists in Japan.

The device, created by Mitsubishi Electric Engineering Corp and Osaka University researchers, identifies different plastic materials among rubbish and sorts them into piles.

Consisting of a robotic arm, the robot measures 5ft 6ins (1.7m) by 6ft 9ins (2.1m) and uses five laser beams and sensors to detect a range of different plastics for recycling purposes. Continue Reading »

Engineering researchers have crafted a flat surface that refuses to get wet. Water droplets skitter across it like ball bearings tossed on ice. The inspiration? Not wax. Not glass. Not even Teflon. Continue Reading »

NASA’s Deep Space Network is building new antennas to improve communications and the first phase will take place at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Australia. This image of the Canberra complex shows four Deep Space Network antennas. The Deep Space Network is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Image credit: NASA/JPL/CDSCC Continue Reading »

In many industries, air travel is an unfortunate necessity, and we all know that there are just some vacation destinations that can’t be accessed any other way. People are constantly looking for simple ways to green their air travel, but thanks to one popular airline, the skies are about to more eco-friendly– fast. Continue Reading »

Are we as big as we think we are?   But I guess the question is really, is the universe as small as we believe it to be?

There are many topics in Astronomy that are fascinating, but one of the most intriguing is the Bootstrap Hypothesis. This cosmological idea contends that as we examine the larger and larger things in the universe, they are ultimately microscopic parts of a far larger universe, one that merges with the very small. In essence, it contends that we are all living in a universe inside ourselves.
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Imagine having clothes made out of this stuff, this should be interesting when it makes it to market.  Put me down for a couple of yards.

A Tokyo-based venture called ideal Star [JP] has developed a new method that makes it possible to produce solar cells in the form of flexible and thin threads. The company is supported by a total of six Japanese universities and the government.

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When you see antibiotics throw at almost every illness in the US results like this is a hard pill to swallow for Americans.  It seems to be the American way to take a pill for everything.  Time to start thinking smart and not keep filling the pockets of the drug companies.

OSLO, Norway — Aker University Hospital is a dingy place to heal. The floors are streaked and scratched. A light layer of dust coats the blood pressure monitors. A faint stench of urine and bleach wafts from a pile of soiled bedsheets dropped in a corner.

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Researchers at Florida State University have discovered crystals that could lead to super security chips as well as contribute to the discovery of materials that expand the capacity of electronic storage devices by 1,000 to 1 million times.

The security chips could store encrypted data written two different ways — electrically and magnetically — making extraction of the data more complex and so more difficult for attackers to decrypt. Continue Reading »