In 1967 Parnelli Jones was on the verge of winning the Indianapolis 500 in Andy Granitelli's Pratt & Whitney gas turbine racer, when a transmission part broke too close to the end of the race to recover from. So impressive was his performance that rather than risk having the race taken over by non-piston machine, they re-regulated turbines requiring them to have no more than 14 square inches of air intake, effectively crippling their performance. Parnelli commented at the time that he thought they could adapt and win anyway.

The facts of history and of mechanics remain. Turbines are one of those things suppressed, whether purposefully or not, by a status quo threatened.

Rusty's answer is "gravity tractor", right? Same as last time this story ran. That one included the fact that he wanted to build and presumably sell said widgets. Since he hasn't, that's hardly today's technology.

Today's technology would be something already tested. Say, the cable and reel used on the shuttle's tethered power generation experiment. Land a large reel of cable, anchor the end, and let centripedal force throw the reel out. After it's tens of kilometers out, the center of gravity will have shifted and the rotation will have slowed. Figure the best direction to throw the rock, wait for the rotation to get it close to that, and blow explosive bolts on the anchor. It doesn't take much change in trajectory to turn a hit to a miss if it's done early enough.
   

In the absence of specifics, I can only wonder whether they used a flat bed or a hand held.

How they get from brain activity they know virtually nothing about to the abstraction of social value is beyond me. It's beyond them too, but they don't let that slow them down.

The brain responds to familiarity. The more prior associations that had been formed due to a particular stimulus, the more those associations are re-activated when presented with the same stimulus. The brain also responds to unfamiliarity, but in a different manner. The experimental design to test for these is called 'go/no-go'. AFAICT they just did a memory test here.
 

"Astronomers know of a number of other galaxies with straight arms, such as the pinwheel galaxy M101. So ours probably looks something like this."

Astronomers know of spirals and barred spirals. TFA says SOME of the arms are straight. There aren't many 'both' spirals. Most likely the different shapes of arms represent this galaxy's original arms and those of the galaxy it absorbed, in which our sun originated. Compared to the problems of evolving differently shaped arms, this is the simpler explanation, and testable by observation.

"I am looking for a virus with which I can infect the lab computers (only connected to local network, no outside network connection) that would be easy for the students to remove by hand. Can the Slashdot community point me in any directions?"

Yes. Teach them some useful Computer 101 stuff instead of wasting time on stuff that makes the computers useless. If you must cover the subject let them read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris Before you infect any machines, you should too.

Will they be scraping even more mountains off the planet to get to it? Will they fill the remaining creek beds up with the effluvia from getting to it? Will they keep even more public roads under a permanent state of "repair" and detour to disguise the fact that they're simply ruining more tax funded roadway with heavy machinery? Will they drive residents out of even more entire towns due to blasting damages and constant noise from heavy machinery? Are they going to do anything with the energy rather than find cheaper ways to dig coal? WV has two industries, coal and railroad. If they replaced coal money with energy money the railroads would die. They won't let that happen. They've been fighting off a 3/4 MV high tension line for years, you think they're going to allow an energy exporting industry to pop up, string wire for multi MV lines and sell electricity to its neighbors now that they're got them hooked on WV coal? I lived there are loved it. But I realized the state is owned by stockholders for whom green is considered a place to dig. Even of they took advantage of a chance to do something good, they wouldn't do it right -- they'd do it cheaply to maximize profits and the population would suffer the effects. WV *was* green. It's owners don't give a shit about green.
   

"Of course, if you have multiple machines running behind a router or modem then you're going to have a difficult time pinning down which machine might have the infection."

If you call turning off your machines and running them one at a time to check each machine's response "difficult", then you can damn well pay the neighbor kid to come over and do it for you, just like you paid him to come over and get your Internet Explorer brand computers surfing on the infotube highway in the first place. While he's there, have him take out that "MOE - DEM" thingy. Those blinking lights are just slowing things down.

No, different motions help prevent it. Once inflamed, repetitive motion of any sort is more likely to aggravate it. If there's permanent damage, any repetitive motions will exacerbate it to the extent that motion uses the damaged parts, and trying to force use on other parts taking up the slack can irritate them. Changing positions between equally unsuitable orientations will in turn irritate the damaged part and stress the as yet undamaged. The position that uses the injured parts least and the uninjured maximally and proportional to their abilities will be least likely to cause strain, pain and more injury. Using that position with the mechanism requiring least effort is optimal.

I've got one very damaged wrist and one embedded titanium bar, both victim of several accidents and far too much surgery for body parts to endure without accumulating more damage in the repair process. I can't write with a pencil for more than two minutes due to the tendons being as much scar tissue as anything else.

But my thumbs work fine by themselves. Thus I use trackballs like the Logitech M570. Once learned and used at highest response speed, I can, for instance, play an entire game of solitaire in less than 100 seconds. The rest of the hand rests on the device with very little movement required to trigger the buttons, thus the least effort is required to support them. I tried many different methods before finding this. It's the least tiring, in fact not at all, nor do I end up hurting after. Since my arm rests on the table, I don't even use the braces anymore.

1. It is a balloon. Not even the people who fly these for a living call them spacecraft. Says WikiP: "A spacecraft is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight." This thing popped when it rose above too much atmosphere. It was not designed for space. It was still in the stratosphere when it failed according to design.

2. The Karman line is the generally accepted edge of space at 100 km (62.5 mi). This is where an aircraft would have to fly so fast to get lift from the thin air that it would achieve orbital velocity in the attempt and so wings would be superfluous. The US has awarded astronaut wings to pilots flying above 50 miles. This doesn't change the objective criteria of the Karman line.

3. The CSXT GoFast achieved space altitude (72 miles) on May 17 2004 and is the only unmanned civilian craft to do so to date. It was designed for a flight profile carrying it into space and so was a spacecraft. As was SpaceShip One, the only civilian manned spacecraft to date.

4. Reaction Research Society hit 50 miles in 1996. Hunstville L5 passed this 19 mile mark, but was ballooned launched and so not entirely spacecraft.

5. No amateur spacecraft made from off the shelf or home made components has achieved even a 50K ft altitude according to Tripoli records. With Tripoli and the National Association of Rocketry's recent facing down ATFE over the definition of 'explosives', the FAA et al. is redefining amateur rocketry to include power up to 200,000 lb-ft sec and a concominant (and easily achieved with this power) 93 mile altitude. Most motors in this range are "experimental" ie. home made, but there are a few commercially available motors that can be staged and/or clustered for this power, the 152mm dia + 96" Loki Research P motor at 80kN-sec each being the largest you can currently put on your credit card. 11 of these will put you just under the FAA's proposed limit. 12, and you have to apply to NASA's office of space transportation for a permit. Expect an amateur spacecraft to make the flight, because now it's a matter of qualifying for the license and buying the parts.