For homeowners interested in producing clean energy to power their homes, Skystream offers a residential wind turbine that, in areas with reliable wind, can reduce or eliminate their monthly utility bill. For a cost of about $12,000, the Skystream 3.7 will produce roughly $60 worth of electricity per month (This is a monthly average, as the energy production is highly variable depending on wind conditions during the year). Once installed, the turbine stands between 37 and 70 feet tall and has a twelve foot diameter rotor.
The turbine comes with a five year warranty and is designed to run for twenty years maintenance free. Not all locations are suitable for turbine installation so it is best to check a wind map for a specific site’s wind conditions.
For a story of a satisfied Skystream customer, you can read an account from a Maine couple who made their purchase last year.
The Skystream 3.7™ is a new generation residential wind generator that hooks up to your your home to reduce or eliminate your monthly electrical bill. It’s the first all-inclusive wind generator (with controls and inverter built in) designed to provide quiet, clean electricity in very low winds. This makes Skystream ideal for residential homes and small businesses.
As part of the mission to send astronauts to the moon by 2020, engineers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston have built a concept rover capable of handling the rough terrain on the lunar surface. “This rover concept changed the whole paradigm,” said Diane Hope, program element manager for NASA’s Exploration Technology Development Program at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.
The vehicle is driven by an on board driver or via remote control and can drive forward, reverse and even sideways on six pairs of independently steered wheels. The suspension can raise and lower the chassis, allowing astronauts to climb on and off. It can also raise and lower individual wheel sections to drive over a debris field.
Spacesuit engineer Dustin Gohmert drives NASA’s new lunar truck prototype through the moon-like craters of Johnson Space Center’s Lunar Yard. The lunar truck was built to make such off roading easy, with six wheels that can be steered independently in any direction. In addition, the steering center can turn a full 360 degree, giving the driver a good view of what’s ahead, no matter which way the wheels are pointing.
YouTube has released a free analytics tool for YouTube account holders. While it does not appear that analytics data will be available to track unique vs. repeat views or to measure full vs. partial downloads, new features will be released on an ongoing basis.
Here are a few details from the blog post announcing the release. “YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.”
Under pressure from net neutrality advocates, Comcast Crop. (cmcsa) has decided to discontinue its efforts to delay file transfers that use the BitTorrent protocol. Comcast had been delaying BitTorrent file transfers in a misguided attempt to stop illegal file sharing because of the large bandwidth demands placed on the Comcast network by a small number of users.
In addition to illegal file sharing, Comcast had also been throttling legal internet video files transferred via BitTorrent. Video files that had the potential to take viewers away from Comcasts’ cable offerings. BitTorrent Inc. will now work with Comcast to develop network capacity solutions for ever increasing rich media content.
“BitTorrent acknowledged the need of ISPs to manage their networks, especially during times of peak congestion. “While we think there were other management techniques that could have been deployed, we understand why Comcast and other ISPs adopted the approach that they did initially. Recognizing that the Web is richer and more bandwidth intensive than it has been historically, we are pleased that Comcast understands these changing traffic patterns and wants to collaborate with us to migrate to techniques that the Internet community will find to be more transparent,” said Eric Klinker, BitTorrent’s Chief Technology Officer.”
The conceptual design of the Super Tower features living space as well as commercial enterprises for 100,000 people. The 5,000 foot tall structure would also feature an ice rink, public gardens, a fire station and farmer’s market. This building is not likely to be built and the design is more an exercise of architectural imagination.
The tower is broken up into a hierarchy of municipal areas. The smallest; the neighbourhood occupies a single floor - approximately 600 people, the next; the village covers 20 floors and approximately 6000 people. The tower is finally divided into three super-districts; upper, mid and lower of 33,000 people each.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator currently under construction in Geneva, Switzerland is nearing completion. This $6 billion dollar accelerator will soon be used to conduct experiments that will recreate conditions found at the beginning of the universe. The LHC may find explanations for dark matter and dark energy and could even discover the ‘God Particle‘.
A National Geographic article has a full explanation of what the LHC experiments hope to reveal, while The Telegraph provides an informative video of “the biggest experiment ever”.
The camera is designed for urban warfare situations and can handle the impact “when thrown or launched from a significant distance.” Toss it through a window of a terrorist hideout and see what’s going on inside without exposing any personnel to the risk of physical injury. Macroswiss has an animated demo of the camera and other proprietary special warfare technologies in action on their website.
DESCRIPTION
The unit is roughly in the shape of a ball and is split into two halves. When deployed, the top half rotates with respect to the base.
The bottom of the unit is flat. The weight of the unit has been specifically distributed so that it will automatically right itself so that the flat base is on the ground, regardless of the starting position.
The upper part of the unit contains a camera and a motor. When turned on, the motor causes the upper part of the SRTC to rotate, allowing the camera to have a panoramic view of the surrounding area. A micro-transmitter then broadcasts the video signal up to 300m.
Interested in seeing how you would look playing the part of Indiana Jones or another character from a favorite movie? The possibility will soon be available thanks to a new service to be introduced by Oddcast. The service, called 3D VideoStar, “allows users to create their own personal videos by simply uploading their photo. 3D VideoStar automatically mashes the user’s photo onto a prescribed video scene, creating the illusion that the user is part of the video.” The demo site has a few examples, some impressive, of the technology in action.
