I can't refrain myself from posting these.... im awestruck on hearing this.....
| | a small pack of locally produced coffee beans cost just short of 1 billion Zimbabwe dollars. A decade ago, that sum would have bought 60 new cars
By Angus Shaw
Harare - Weary Zimbabweans are facing a new wave of price increases that will put many basic goods even further out of their reach: A loaf of bread now costs what 12 new cars did a decade ago. Independent finance houses said in an assessment Tuesday that annual inflation rose this month to 1,063,572 percent based on prices of a basket of basic foodstuffs. Economic analysts say unless the rate of inflation is slowed, annual inflation will likely reach about 5 million percent by October. As stores opened for business Wednesday, a small pack of locally produced coffee beans cost just short of 1 billion Zimbabwe dollars. A decade ago, that sum would have bought 60 new cars. And fresh price rises were expected after the state Grain Marketing Board announced up to 25-fold increases in its prices to commercial millers for wheat and the corn meal staple.
The economy was on shop clerk Jessica Rukuni's mind as she left the public swimming pool in downtown Harare's central park with three disappointed children. She found the new admission price of 100 million Zimbabwe dollars - 30 US cents - out of reach. "The point is that it's far too much for most people who don't get US dollars," she said. Her income is the equivalent of about one US dollar a day, and her family has one basic meal daily. The collapsing economy was a major concern of voters who dealt longtime President Robert Mugabe a defeat in March 29 elections. His challenger, Morgan Tsvangirai, topped the poll but did not win the simple majority needed to avoid a runoff. The two face each other in a second round June 27. Mugabe was to officially launch his runoff campaign with a rally at his party's headquarters in Harare on Sunday, the state-run Herald newspaper reported Wednesday.
The opposition's campaigning has been hampered by violence blamed on Mugabe's government and party. The opposition claims Tsvangirai is the target of a government assassination plot and he has been out of Zimbabwe since shortly after the March 29 first round. He plans to return to Zimbabwe to campaign for the runoff once security measures are in place, his aides have said. Mugabe, speaking as he reviewed graduating police cadets Wednesday, said the opposition was fanning violence. Independent observers have said that while there have been some retaliatory attacks by the opposition, the vast majority of the attacks have been carried out by Mugabe supporters. Mugabe accuses the United States, the European Union and especially former colonial ruler Britain of using their economic influence to back his opponents and bring about his ouster. He has severed ties with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other financial organizations.
Zimbabwe's official annual inflation was given by the government as 165,000 percent in February, already by far the highest in the world. The government has not updated that - the state statistical service has said there were not enough goods in the shortages-stricken shops to calculate new figures. The economic decline has been blamed on the collapse of the key agriculture sector following the often violent seizures of farmland from whites. Mugabe claimed the seizures begun in 2002 were to benefit poor blacks, but many of the farms went to his loyalists. "The crunch is going to come when local money is eroded to the point it is no longer acceptable" in commercial activities or as earnings, especially by longtime ruler Mugabe's loyalists, said independent Harare economist John Robertson. Already, more transactions are being done in US dollars, both openly and in secret. Manufacturing industries, running at below 30 percent of their capacity, reported growing absenteeism by workers facing soaring commuter bus fares.
Well i still can't imagine how a life would be under these circumstances... When we at India fight to curb even at 10% and most western countries fighting it out at less than 5%, one million is total anarchy..... Seems Mugabe is unwilling to quit whatsoever happens there.. How do the citizens survive ?? When america voicing for global peace and prosperity why can't they help with their hand out.... Probably they dont have any oil resouces do they ??? This is the latest article i managed to get somewhere....  Harare - Weary Zimbabweans are facing a new wave of massive price increases that put many basic goods out of their reach. Independent finance houses said in an assessment Tuesday that annual inflation rose this month to 1 063 572% based on prices of a basket of basic foodstuffs. As stores opened for business Wednesday, a small pack of locally produced coffee beans cost just short of 1bn Zimbabwe dollars. A decade ago, that sum would have bought 60 new cars. A loaf of bread cost 200m Zimbabwe dollars - enough for 12 new cars a decade ago. Fresh price rises were expected after the state Grain Marketing Board announced up to 25-fold increases in its prices to commercial millers for wheat and the corn meal staple. The economy was on shop clerk Jessica Rukuni's mind as she left the public swimming pool in downtown Harare's central park with three disappointed children. She found the new admission price of 100m Zimbabwe dollars - 30 US cents - out of reach. The divorcee's income is the equivalent of about one US dollar a day. Her family has one basic meal a day. One kilogram of chicken more than doubled to 1nb local dollars Tuesday and rental for a two-bedroom apartment rose from this month's end to 22bn Zimbabwe dollars - eight times the May price. Inflation will reach 5m% The state Rent Board, where unfair or inflated rental hikes are reported, has had no working telephones for several months, a telephone operator at the Ministry of Housing said. In the economic meltdown, manufacturing industries, running at below 30% of their capacity, reported growing absenteeism by workers facing soaring commuter bus fares. Economic analysts say unless the rate of inflation is slowed, annual inflation will likely reach about 5m percent by October. Zimbabwe's official annual inflation was given by the government as 165 000% in February, already by far the highest in the world. "The crunch is going to come when local money is eroded to the point it is no longer acceptable" in commercial activities or as earnings, especially by longtime ruler pres. Robert Mugabe's loyalists, said independent Harare economist John Robertson. Already, more transactions are being done in US dollars, both openly and in secret. Robertson said sectors of the economy - phone services, the supply chain, maintenance of equipment or manufacturing - may collapse one at a time, but a country continues to exist even in chaos or anarchy. "In the end, a country must fall into line with international financial standards to balance its books" as experience in once-inflationary Latin American countries has shown, he said. He said that meant re-engaging with international financial institutions, lenders, donors and investors traditionally dominated globally by Western countries, the main source of hard currency. Mugabe has severed ties with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other financial organisations. But Mugabe's "Look East" policy to attract trade and investment from China and Asia has yielded a fraction of what is needed to halt inflation. In the fastest shrinking economy outside a conventional war zone, much of the nation's crucial savings have been used up in government borrowing and spending without corresponding productive income. "It is as though a starving man has eaten his left foot and starts eating his right foot to survive in the short term," Robertson said. - Sapa-AP
ZIMBABWE’s inflation rate has hit one million percent, a number that beggars belief and signals the end of that country’s formal economy. It is simply no longer possible to place a price on anything because it is rising by the minute and all purchases now become acts of negotiation or bartering. The unimaginable number — 1 063 572 percent, to be exact (21 May 2008) — is not a thumbsuck. It is the considered opinion of independent finance houses, reports wire service Sapa. “As stores opened for business Wednesday, a small pack of locally produced coffee beans cost just short of 1bn Zimbabwe dollars. A decade ago, that sum would have bought 60 new cars.” Other statistics throw the economic crisis into sharp relief: A loaf of bread cost 200 million Zimbabwe dollars at the time the story was written. It will be much more by the time you read this. A number in the region of 5 million percent is being predicted for October. Government’s official figure for February was already 165 000 percent, the highest in the world, the report said. The fact that refugees from xenophobic violence in South Africa are preparing to return to a country where the economy is in such a parlous state is testimony to the hell they have experienced in this country. But Zimbabwe’s economic ruin, its gerrymandering of electoral processes, its purchase of vast amounts of Chinese armaments and its human rights abuses remain acceptable to South Africa’s political elite. Why else would President Thabo Mbeki regularly visit Mugabe in Harare? Why else would South Africa say that the arms transaction which had the world aghast took place “between two sovereign nations”? The reality is that this country is paying a heavy price for Zimbabwe’s failure. A price that is growing with every day of dithering.
MY LITTLE MARCH GIRL `Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) COME to the pane, draw the curtain apart, There she is passing, the girl of my heart; See where she walks like a queen in the street, Weather-defying, calm, placid and sweet. Tripping along with impetuous grace, Joy of her life beaming out of her face, Tresses all truant-like, curl upon curl, Wind-blown and rosy, my little March girl. Hint of the violet's delicate bloom, Hint of the rose's pervading perfume! How can the wind help from kissing her face,— Wrapping her round in his stormy embrace? But still serenely she laughs at his rout, She is the victor who wins in the bout. So may life's passions about her soul swirl, Leaving it placid,—my little March girl. What self-possession looks out of her eyes! What are the wild winds, and what are the skies, Frowning and glooming when, brimming with life, Cometh the little maid ripe for the strife? Ah! Wind, and bah! Wind, what might have you now? What can you do with that innocent brow? Blow, Wind, and grow, Wind, and eddy and swirl, But bring to me, Wind,— my little March girl. ( The above poem appeared in Dunbar's 1899 Lyrics of the Hearthside. It was discovered in Poem of the Week)
I was at the Central Railway Station 1:30 AM. The Station was Very Clean with neat benches and open surroundings that facilitate natural air-flow. I sat a bench and was almost about to doze off caressed by the incessant & gentle morning breeze.
Then this girl came. Unkempt hair that had turned brownish, double pig tails, an oversized yellowish T-Shirt that came upto her knees, dirty finger nails, chaffed lips and smears of dust on her young face signified that she has never had a roof over her head. I am guessing that the lady who was sleeping with 2 more children beside her was her mother. What kept this child awake at that unearthy hour, I do not know.
The eyes did not have a shine, the lips were moving but there wasn’t any sound. The hands were moving but nothing was created - a story was being told, without any imagination.
The girl had befriended a dog. The dog was sleeping peacefully and the girl was patting it’s head - I doubt if the dog’s own mother would have cared any better.
I called her and was met with no recognition. I slowly ambled across. I smiled. That seemed to disarm her and she smiled back with tiny yellow teeth. I asked her why she was patting the dog - she says “That’s what Ma does to make my younger brother sleep; she says this way he’ll sleep well.”
I am speechless. Some thing tells me that maybe I can offer her some biscuits. I walk to the Railway Store and get a packet of biscuits. I offer her - she takes it gladly. The dog shows some signs of stirring.
She opens the packet. She takes all the biscuits out and arranges them on a piece of plastic she obtains from near her mother’s head. She divides the business into 4 equal groups and 1 larger lot. I am curious.
I ask her. She says “this for me, this for this(the dog), this for ramu(pointing to one sleeping child), this for ravi (pointing to the other sleeping child) and this(ther larger lot) is for Ma.” I ask “why so much for Ma?” She says “Ma says she is two and my baby brother is inside her tummy. So she should eat more.”
If that was a question as her enquiring eyes suggested, I had no answer. Such generosity under such a circumstance from a young girl of about 4 years, stumps me.
What did she do to deserve this? Is it right to punish someone for their mistakes in the previous births? Is Karma so ruthless that it will not even provide a fair chance to someone?
   Contact is a responsive floor based installation which allows visitors to use their kinetic energy to generate audiovisual forms that will interact with the user, and communicate with each other.
The folks playing with quantum computers have been claiming for years that their gadgets will one day make today’s supercomputers look like quivering lumps of jelly. But so far, their computers have yet to match the calculating prowess of a 10-year old with ADHD. The most exciting work so far has been on universal quantum logic gates, the building blocks of any computer. A number of groups have built and demonstrated these and one team even took their gates for the computing equivalent of a run round the block by factorising the number 15. The trouble is that, to do anything useful with universal quantum gates, you need at least dozens and preferably hundreds of them, all joined together. And because of various errors and problems that creep in, that’s more or less impossible with today’s technology. Which is why a breakthrough by an Australian group led by Andrew White at the University of Queensland is so exciting. They have built and tested quantum logic gates that are vastly more powerful than those that have gone before by exploiting the higher dimensions available in in quantum mechanics. For example, a qubit can be encoded in a photon’s polarisation. But a photon has other dimensions which can also be used to carry information, such as its arrival time, photon number or frequency. By exploiting these, a photon can easily be used as a much more powerful three level system called a qutrit. This is how the Ozzie team have exploited the idea: during a computation, their gates convert qubits into qutrits, process the quantum information in this more powerful form and then convert it back into qubits. All using plain old vanilla optics. That allows a dramatic reduction in the number of gates necessary to perform a specific task. Using only three of the higher dimension logic gates, the team has built and tested a Toffoli logic gate that could only have been constructed using 6 conventional logic gates. And they say that a computer made up of 50 conventional quantum logic gates could be built using only 9 of theirs. That’s a significant reduction. What’s more, they reckon that these kinds of numbers are possible with today’s linear optics technology. That means these guys are right now bent over an optical bench with screwdrivers and lens cloths at the ready, attempting to build the world’s most powerful quantum computer. We may see the results–a decent factorisation perhaps–within months. Could it be that Australia is about to become the center of the quantum computing world? Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0804.0272: Quantum Computing using Shortcuts through Higher Dimensions
The arxiv isn’t usually the place where climate scientists make predictions about global warming but yesterday, they made an exception. A group led by James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists who works at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences, warned that global warming is having much worse effects on Earth’s climate than thought. They say without immediate action, humanity is in danger of “seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.” The background, in case you’ve been stuck on a desert island for the last few years, is that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have doubled from 180 ppm in pre-glacial times to 385 ppm today, most which has come since the industrial age began. “Humanity today, collectively, must face the uncomfortable fact that industrial civilization itself has become the principal driver of global climate,” says Hansen and co. So what to do? The International Panel on Climate Change suggests that global warming of more than 2-3 degrees C may be dangerous, the EU says we should attempt to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees C while Hansen himself has said that 1 degree C should be the maximum we should tolerate. This last estimate implies a maximum level of CO2 of 450ppm. Now Hansen says he was wrong and that we need to aim for a CO2 level of only 350 ppm to be sure of maintaining the climate in the state we’re used to. Because if we carry on as we are, the world is going to change in ways that hard to imagine. I’ll let Hansen do the rest of the talking: “Present policies, with continued construction of coal-fired power plants without CO2 capture, suggest that decision-makers do not appreciate the gravity of the situation. We must begin to move now toward the era beyond fossil fuels. Continued growth of greenhouse gas emissions, for just another decade, practically eliminates the possibility of near-term return of atmospheric composition beneath the tipping level for catastrophic effects.” Frightening stuff. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126: Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim? Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0804.1135: Supporting Material
Wow! Every now and again a paper on the arxiv leaps out at you and today there’s work from Indiana University in Bloomington that has got my eyeballs on stalks. Get this: a team led by Martin Jarrold is claiming to have found evidence of superconductivity in aluminium nanoclusters at 200 K . Yep, 200 K. The current world record for high temperature superconductivity is 138 K for a cuprate perovskite so that’s a massive jump. The background to this is that two years ago Yuri Ovchinnikov at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics in Moscow and Vladimir Kresin at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California predicted that metal nanoclusters with exactly the right number of delocalised electrons (a few hundred or so) could become strong superconductors. Now Jarrold and his buddies (Kresin and Ovchinnikov among them) have found the first evidence that this prediction is correct in individual aluminium nanoclusters containing 45 or 47 atoms . And they found it at 200 K. A few caveats. Before a claim of superconductivity can be made, physicists require three unambiguous and repeatable lines of evidence. The first is obviously zero electrical resistance. The second is the Meisner effect in which the superconductor reflects an external magnetic field. And finally there must be evidence of a superconducting phase transition, such as a jump in the material’s heat capacity when superconductivity occurs. What Jarrold’s team have measured is the last effect–a massive change in an individual nanocluster’s heat capacity at 200 K. That’s an important pillar of evidence which is consistent with superconductivity but it is not yet a slam dunk. Jarrold and his team are simply time-stamping their efforts by publishing on the arxiv and you can bet your bottom dollar that they’re looking for other evidence right now. Even with that proviso, this looks to be an important breakthrough which should be straightforward for other groups to replicate. The group’s work is not yet peer-reviewed. That’ll be an important step too. Jarrold will be only too mindful that the field of high temperature superconductivity is littered with the corpses of physicists who have made premature claims. But for the moment, sit back and admire. 200K…wow! That’s room temperature in Siberia at certain times of the year. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0804.0824: Evidence for High Tc Superconducting Transitions in Isolated Al45 and Al47 Nanoclusters Earlier ref: arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0603733: Shell Structure and Strengthening of Superconducting Pair Correlation in Nanoclusters
“In 2001 Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras was jailed in a Spanish prison for drug related offences. Whilst imprisoned, Trashorras established regular contact with Jamal Ahmidan who was serving time for a petty crime. Both individuals embraced radical Islamic fundamentalist ideas within the prison and were recruited in the Takfir wa al-Hijra group, a Moroccan terrorist groups linked with al-Qaida . Following their release, Ahmidan became the leader of the terrorist cell that conducted the Madrid bombing. In a drugs-for-bombs exchange with a third party, Trashorras provided the explosives for the 13 backpack bombs that killed 191 people and injured hundreds.“
So write Vassilis and Panos Kostakos in the department of computer science and the University of Bath in the UK, who have come up with a system that they say could spot and monitor these kinds of interactions in prisons. Their idea? Fit inmates with RFID tags that allow their positions to be monitored, and then number crunch the resulting data sets to see who spends the most time with whom. Not exactly rocket science but the Kostakos’s have an even more frightening idea. Why not test the idea by anonymously monitoring the movements of students, residents and workers of the city of Bath by listening out for their bluetooth-enabled devices as they move around the city. And that’s what they’ve done. What the Kostakos found is that it is straightforward to capture data on people’s encounters using bluetooth. In fact they captured data on 10,000 unique devices during the 6 month study. Yep, that’s 10,000. Exactly how much you can tell about these encounters isn’t clear. But hey, this is only a demonstration (either that or they’re keeping schtum about the juicy details). Of course, it’s already possible to make inferences about encounters between individuals using the location information from cellphone networks. But that isn’t easily accessible to ordinary folk and in any case has a blunt resolution of a mile or so. Bluetooth, on the other hand, gives your location to within 10 metres or so. The moral? Turn off your bluetooth enabled devices when in the city of Bath (and anywhere else). In other hands, this kind of data could be dangerous. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0804.3064: Intelligence Gathering by Capturing the Social Processes Within Prisons
Here’s an interesting effect discovered by a group of Iranian physicists at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran (it’s not often we hear from these guys). They placed a thin film of water in a square cell and applied two perpendicular electric fields. One was an external electric field. For the other, they used two copper electrodes to generate a voltage across the cell like an electrolysing cell (although no chemical reaction took place). So they had a pair of electric fields at right angles acting on this thin film. The unexpected result is that the film of water begins to rotate. The team has a number of movies of the effect on its website. They call it a liquid film motor and it’s a quite extraordinary effect. At one point they divide their cell into nine smaller ones and the liquid in each cell rotates in exactly the same way. The question is: what’s causing the rotation? The team can easily control the direction and speed of rotation by varying the relative angle and direction of the electric fields, which rules out the possibility that convection is causing the rotation (something that is seen when a field is applied to some thin films of liquid crystals). Neither does adding salt to water change the effect, ruling out the possibility that ion movement directs the flow. The rotation occurs in polar liquids but not in non-polar ones so the intrinsic dipole moment of the molecules seems to be crucial. People have been observing the electrohydrodynamics of various types of thin films for a good few years but nobody has seen anything like this. Just what’s going on remains a mystery. But the puzzle shouldn’t overshadow what looks like an important discovery that could have widespread industrial application in microfluidic devices for mixing. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0805.0490: A Liquid Film Motor
Tiny remote control helicopters have become all the rage in the last few years as lightweight motors and materials have plummeted in price. But if you’ve ever played with one, you’ll know how hard they are to control. That’s not the result of poor construction. Small helicopters are harder to control than big ones because of the laws of physics: moments of inertia drop in proportion to the fifth power of vehicle size. This gives small helicopters quicker response times, making them more agile. But the real killer is that the main rotor tip speed in a small helicopter is the about the same as it is for a large helicopter. So the ratio of the rotor moments to the moments of inertia can become huge and unmanageable. That’s when you need to develop a model of helicopter dynamics so you can design remote control systems or an autonomous flight control system that can manage this agility, say Hardian Reza Dharmayanda and pals at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea. And that’s what they’ve done in this paper: built and tested a control system for a Yamaha R-50 helicopter, which uses a two-bladed main rotor with a Bell-Hiller stabilizer bar. The next step, they say, is to make the helicopter fully autonomous using their model. These guys may be re-inventing the wheel but it’s interesting to see how they’re doing it. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0804.4757: Analysis of Stability, Response and LQR Controller Design of a Small-Scale Helicopter Dynamics
 However, amazing your regular, rectangular, boxy speakers may sound, they definitely miss out on the funk factor. For a pair of great-sounding speakers that don’t need to scream for attention, lay your hands on these Bang & Olufsen delights, called BeoLab 5. They look like UFOs docked to big cones, and sound like audiophile heaven. With each speaker running on 2,500 watts of power, they can go loud – very loud – while retaining a clean, crisp sound. B&O also boasts that the speakers sounds great no matter where you stand, bringing you stereo sound even if you’re standing right out in the lawn. Additional information is available at the Bang & Olufsen site
 Fed up of carrying rechargeable AA batteries and their chunky charger? Well, UK’s Moxia Energy has a solution. Their latest USB cells, which look and work like normal AA batteries, hide a little USB connector under the lid. So the next time you are running out of juice, all you have to do is pop this baby into a USB port and recharge. Then again, with the number of USB ports available around the place, chances are you will
The business world moves in cycles and I am wondering if we are entering a new era. With the US perhaps in a recession in seems to me that business leaders have pulled their horns in and are cutting back. Here we go again. Short term it makes the numbers look good. But where are the leaders with vision? The leaders that want to take a risk and invest in the future? Perhaps they no longer work in large businesses anymore.
This made me think. What is the next phase after innovation? Does anyone know? I would like to hear from anyone what they think the next era is? We have had customer centric, quality, six-sigma, or innovation. What is next? Are these all a fad or just passing ships in the night?
Perhaps we are entering a new age–one in which people have to learn to think better and faster. By this I mean generative not process thinking. The second type of thinking can be done better by computers. But the first, Generative Thinking (at Speed) is the way of the future. Any employee should be judged on what value they generate for a customer, supplier, partner, employee or shareholder.
But here is the rub. Most people do not know how to do generative thinking. Most managers love precedent; to follow what has been done before; to avoid mistakes. But this is the opposite of generating original insights and ideas. Thus most leaders are caught in a bind of their own making. Value is created more and more by generative thinking which is the very type of approach they are not comfortable with nor encourage.
Generative thinking creates exceptions rather than conformity, experiments rather than follows procedures and asks new uncomfortable questions and does all this at lightning speed.
This is an uncomfortable reality for most leaders. So if you are a generative person go and form your own business or at the very least, go and find a leader that appreciates you. You are entering the generative thinking era so don’t waste your talents on managers who have never generated a thing in their life.
Ken Hudson, Founder IdeaSpace
Becoming a first time mother is full of new experiences and worries, starting from the moment you discover you’ve conceived. Everyday activities such as driving can become worrisome, especially when you find that everything from your favorite jeans to your seatbelt no longer fit the way they used to! The Tummy Shield is an Australian-based product designed to protect your little one in utero whenever you are driving. With a combination as simple as a cushion and safety strap, expectant moms are able to guard their most precious cargo without a lot of hassle. 
It was created by an Australian inventor over many years of testing and hard work. He became commited to creating a safer seat belt after his 7 month pregnant wife was involved in a minor car accident that he believed caused brain damage to their first child. To use, simply place the Tummy Shield cushion and fasten with buckle. You may need to use an extension piece if you are bigger or further along in your pregnancy. Put on your seat belt as you normally would, and then pull it away so you can fasten it securely to the provided hook. With your seatbelt now safely away from the tummy area, you have just successfully beaten the odds of fetal death that often occur in even moderate automobile accidents. You can watch a video of the product here or below.
You can purchase the Tummy Shield through their official website , or by visiting other fine online retailers. Hat tip to Make World Better.
 U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part of the U.S. Department of Defense will see to the development of an aircraft that will need to land but once every five years. Yes, only once every 5 years! The project is called Project Vulture!
The idea is to create a plane that can operate under its own power, in low altitudes, (still in the stratosphere). In addition during those five years the aircraft is in flight it is expected to perform intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR), and communication missions. It’s a big project.
As of now DARPA has taken on only 3 contractors to do the job. These 3 contractors are: Boeing, Lockheed, and Aurora Flight Sciences. Their mission is to create this unmanned aerial vehicle the DARPA wants. So far, Aurora Flight Sciences is the only company to unveil an actual unmanned aerial vehicle concept. It is called the Odysseus and is a lean machine.
The Odysseus, still only a concept, will have the ability to use solar energy to power the aircraft during daylight, and store solar energy to power the aircraft at night. In addition the aircraft will adjust its wings into a Z configuration. This configuration will help maximize the amount of solar energy collected on the surface of the Odysseus. The aircraft must also have the ability to split into three separate planes and is required to be able to carry a 1,000-pound payload.
When split in 3, the planes have a wingspan of approximately 50 meters, or 164 feet, but when connected the wingspan measures “longer than that of three Boeing 767s”.
On Aurora’s team are: BAE Systems, C.S. Draper Laboratories, and Sierra Nevada Corporation to help out. Each teammate will focus on different aspect of the plane. For example, “BAE will focus on payloads, sensors, and concept of operations and employment.”
What can be the Potential use for a plane like the Odysseus? Aurora foresees, “global climate change research, weather monitoring, and regional-scale telecommunications”.
Via Ecogeek and Cleantech.
Bluetooth headsets and other devices allowing handsfree operation of your cellular device are rising in popularity, and usefulness. Why conform to the masses with their over-the-ear ear pieces? Why not stand out and communicate in style via bluetooth technology? If you're the type who would love to make a statement, then the Flying Saucer Car Bluetooth Handsfree may be for you. 
The flying saucer-like device operates on the Bluetooth 1.2 spec meaning you'll get an approximate range of 30 feet. The device includes support for voice recognition dialing included on most modern cell phones, call received technology, and echo and noise suppression to help improve call quality while on the road. Despite the fact that talk and standby times are very important for such devices, the company's website does not get into specifics for each, instead, choosing to simply state: "...long talk and standby time." Fantastic! I'm sold, aren't you?
The device has a standard lithium ion battery and comes with a 12/24 volt car charger. Also included in the package is a user manual and a car mounting bracket. The device starts at $55 each for purchases of one to five units. Further "incentive" exists to buy more, however, as the price drops by one whole dollar for bigger purchases.
Via Gadget Venue
|
