A Mystery: Why Can’t We Walk Straight? from NPR on Vimeo.
Try as you might, you can’t walk in a straight line without a visible guide point, like the Sun or a star. You might think you’re walking straight, but as NPR’s Robert Krulwich reports, a map of your route .Read more...
From the GE website:
The energy that’s generated when you stop a train is substantial. In a conventional train engine, that energy is dissipated as heat and lost to the atmosphere. But we’re working on technologies that can capture and store that energy, using the hybrid dynamic braking .Read more...
The New York Times debates car culture and bike lanes in New York City. Robert Sullivan writes:
On the argument that bike lanes should be eliminated given that they are not used during the winter, which I guess means no one noticed me biking around all this week, trying .Read more...
Fingerprints in the New York Times.
Researchers have found a way to mathematically calculate the rarity of a fingerprint.
Although fingerprints are unique to every individual, crime scene prints are usually incomplete patterns taken off doorknobs or glass.
Knowing the rarity of a partial print could be useful to forensic scientists who .Read more...
CarFit is a new program funded, in part, by the AARP that seeks to improve safety among senior drivers.
David S. Loughran and The New York Times debate traffic safety and senior drivers:
It is undeniable that physical and cognitive degeneration at older ages compromises driving ability. Research conducted by .Read more...
The New York Times looks at Microsoft’s fight with pirates:
The arrival of organized criminal syndicates to the software piracy scene has escalated worries at companies like Microsoft, Symantec and Adobe. Groups in China, South America and Eastern Europe appear to have supply chains and sales networks rivaling those of .Read more...
Joseph B. White at the Wall Street Journal looks at the decline in car crash deaths:
The number of drivers involved in fatal accidents who were eating, talking on a phone or otherwise distracted rose 42% from 2005 to 2008. But that’s just one way to read a new .Read more...
The New York Times examines the brain–up close.
Cerebellar Purkinje neurons, 2003. This photomicrograph shows a portion of the cerebellum in which only one type of neuron — its Purkinje cells — has been illuminated by a genetically encoded fluorescent protein; meanwhile, other classes of neighboring neurons that .Read more...
The Infrastructurist writes about a new idea for speed trap cameras:
“Strategically placed traffic cameras will photograph all passing cars. Drivers exceeding the speed limit are sent tickets, while those obeying it are pooled into a lottery funded by the fines. Every now and then a randomly selected .Read more...
