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Comment Re:"Drone" vs "R/C Plane"? (Score 1) 196

This is incorrect. The FAA issued _guidelines_ (AC 91-57) in 1981 suggesting that RC planes adhere to a 400 AGL ceiling. The AMA - the private RC pilot's association - has a 400 AGL ceiling within 3 miles of an airport, and requires VLOS and a spotter when flying first person view. Pilots, especially glider pilots, routinely exceed 400 feet, and one popular competition class (ALES) starts off with a climb to 200 meters.

Comment Re:Reality check... (Score 1) 164

Depending on the process used, the carbon fiber to epoxy ratio can be rather high. For a DIY-style wet layup, 50/50 carbon/epoxy is reasonably good. For a compression molded or pultruded element (this particular case is probably compression molded), 70/30 carbon/epoxy ratios are more likely. Also, since the Young's modulus of CF is way, way higher than for the filler, essentially all of the load is carried in the carbon.
Image

Florida Man Sues WikiLeaks For Scaring Him 340

Stoobalou writes "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been accused of 'treason' by a Florida man seeking damages for distress caused by the site's revelations about the US government. From the article: 'David Pitchford, a Florida trailer park resident, names Assange and WikiLeaks as defendants in a personal injury suit filed with the Florida Southern District Court in Miami. In the complaint filed on 6th January, Pitchford alleges that Assange's negligence has caused "hypertension," "depression" and "living in fear of being stricken by another heart attack and/or stroke" as a result of living "in fear of being on the brink of another nuclear [sic] WAR."' Just for good measure, it also alleges that Assange and WikiLeaks are guilty of 'terorism [sic], espionage and treason.'"
PlayStation (Games)

USAF Unveils Supercomputer Made of 1,760 PS3s 163

digitaldc writes with this excerpt from Gamasutra: "The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has connected 1,760 PlayStation 3 systems together to create what the organization is calling the fastest interactive computer in the entire Defense Department. The Condor Cluster, as the group of systems is known, also includes 168 separate graphical processing units and 84 coordinating servers in a parallel array capable of performing 500 trillion floating point operations per second (500 TFLOPS), according to AFRL Director of High Power Computing Mark Barnell."
Biotech

Lizard Previously Unknown To Science Found On Vietnam Menu 133

eldavojohn writes "A lizard long served on the menu in the Mekong Delta has recently caught the attention of scientists when it was noted that all animals in the species appeared identical as well as female. The species appears to be a hybrid of two other species (like a mule or liger). But the curious thing is that this hybrid isn't sterile — it reproduces asexually. The species, known for some time in Vietnam, has now officially been named Leiolepis ngovantrii."

Comment Re:Where you go matters -- for grad school (Score 2, Informative) 256

Actually, all the R&D done by grad students is paid for by you. The vast majority of our funding comes from the US Gov (DARPA, NSF, NIH, etc), a bit from private sources (Gates Foundation, etc), and a tiny, tiny amount from internal funding. Funding grants pay our salaries, purchase equipment, pay for lab space, etc. Pretty much the only time a professor will get money directly from the school is when they're starting out, in which case they'll typically get 200k - 1 million to get a lab started. Undergrad tuition pretty much goes to pay for non-research profs, and administration.
Image

Woman Jailed For Starting Office Fire To Leave Work Early 136

A Florida woman was sentenced to nine months in jail, followed by five years of probation, for starting an office fire so she could get out of work early. From the article: "Pasco sheriff's investigators said Michelle Perrino, 40, started a fire at Bayonet Point Oxygen on May 12, 2009. Perrino drew suspicion when she mentioned the fire's origin — a filing cabinet — during an employee meeting. Employees had not been told where the fire started." I hope she had the good sense to start the fire on Friday so she could have a long weekend.
Power

Traffic-Flow Algorithm Can Reduce Fuel Consumption 328

thecarchik writes "New projects from German automakers Audi and BMW promise to ease congestion simply by looking at traffic signals and driving style, in an effort to smooth the flow of traffic. Through a test course in Munich, vehicles were able to post phenomenal fuel efficiency gains simply by adjusting the timing of traffic lights depending on traffic volume — to whatever speed provides a so-called 'green wave' of four or more synchronized signals."
Biotech

A Genetically Engineered Fly That Can Smell Light 111

An anonymous reader writes "It sounds like a cool — if somewhat pointless — super-powered insect: a fly that can smell light! Researchers added a light-sensitive protein to a fruit fly's olfactory neurons, which caused the neurons to fire when the fly was exposed to a certain wavelength of blue light. Adding the protein specifically to neurons that respond to good smells, like bananas, makes for a light-seeking fly."
Real Time Strategy (Games)

StarCraft II To Be Released On July 27 220

Blizzard announced today that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the first game in a series of three, will be released on July 27. The game will contain the Terran campaign (29 missions), the full multiplayer experience, and "several challenge-mode mini-games," with "focused goals designed to ease players into the basics of multiplayer strategies." It will launch alongside the revamped Battle.net, which we've previously discussed. Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said, "We've been looking forward to revisiting the StarCraft universe for many years, and we're excited that the time for that is almost here. Thanks to our beta testers, we're making great progress on the final stages of development, and we'll be ready to welcome players all over the world to StarCraft II and the new Battle.net in just a few months."
The Internet

BitTorrent Calls UDP Report "Utter Nonsense" 238

Ian Lamont writes "BitTorrent has responded to a report in the Register that suggested uTorrent's switch to UDP could cause an Internet meltdown. Marketing manager Simon Morris described the Register report as 'utter nonsense,' and said that the switch to uTP — a UDP-based implementation of the BitTorrent protocol — was intended to reduce network congestion. The original Register report was discussed enthusiastically on Slashdot this morning."
Transportation

Online Carpooling Service Fined In Canada 541

TechDirt is reporting on a disappointing development out of Canada. An Ontario transportation board has fined PickupPal, a Web-based service for arranging carpools, because a local bus company complained of the competition. (TechCrunch apparently first broke the story.) "[The transportation board has] established a bunch of draconian rules that any user in Ontario must follow if it uses the service — including no crossing of municipal boundaries — meaning the service is only good within any particular city's limits. It's better than being shut down completely, and the service can still operate elsewhere around the world, but this is yet another case where we see regulations, that are supposedly put in place to improve things for consumers, do the exact opposite."

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