Tag Archives: interesting research

Coffee Grinders Used to Be a Mystery. A New Device Might Solve It

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Imagine my excitement, then, to finally have a piece of equipment that could potentially depict how well a coffee grinder works in granular detail. Specifically, I’ve got a DiFluid Omni ($900), a new device that promises something heretofore unknown: the chance for home coffee geeks to graph out the particle size distribution of a batch of coffee. (It also has a colorimeter, to assess the lightness or darkness of a roast.)

Source: Coffee Grinders Used to Be a Mystery. A New Device Might Solve It | WIRED

As someone who likes good coffee this made me laugh. Wired is paywalled but it has good writers and interesting stories.

How DARPA Trucked Its Massive Radio Frequency Testbed Across The United States

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Colosseum may look like a data center, but in reality, it’s a massive radio-frequency emulation testbed that DARPA built for its Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2). SC2 has been a three-year competition to demonstrate the validity of using artificial intelligences to work together in order to use wireless spectrum more efficiently than operating on pre-allocated bands would be.

Source: The Forklift Ballet: How DARPA Trucked Its Massive Radio Frequency Testbed Across The United States IEEE Spectrum – IEEE Spectrum

Scientists invented air conditioners for the climate change age

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Their invention looks a lot like a solar panel. A flat metal panel is covered in a sheet of the material—a high-tech film—the trio invented. The material reflects the light and heat of the sun so effectively that the temperature beneath the film can drop 5 to 10-degrees Celsius (9 to 18-degrees Fahrenheit) lower than the air around it. A system of pipes behind the metal panel are exposed to that colder temperature, cooling the fluid inside before it’s sent out to current-day refrigeration systems.

Source: Scientists invented air conditioners for the climate change age — Quartz

First ever plane with no moving parts takes flight

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In the prototype plane, wires at the leading edge of the wing have 600 watts of electrical power pumped through them at 40,000 volts. This is enough to induce “electron cascades”, ultimately charging air molecules near the wire. Those charged molecules then flow along the electrical field towards a second wire at the back of the wing, bumping into neutral air molecules on the way, and imparting energy to them. Those neutral air molecules then stream out of the back of the plane, providing thrust.

Source: First ever plane with no moving parts takes flight | Science | The Guardian

New material could up efficiency of concentrated solar power

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Above a certain temperature, it becomes possible to replace the steam with supercritical carbon dioxide. This works more efficiently, potentially providing a boost of more than 20 percent, but it requires temperatures in excess of 1,000K. That makes things a bit more challenging, given that many metals will melt at such temperatures; others will react with carbon dioxide under these conditions. Finding a material that could work involves balancing a lot of factors, including heat and chemical resistance, ea

Source: New material could up efficiency of concentrated solar power | Ars Technica

Watch This Net Capture Orbital Space Debris for the First Time in History

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The RemoveDEBRIS satellite consists of a large, 220-pound main satellite that carries two smaller cubesats and a net. The mission involves deploying these cubesats as artificial space junk and them capturing them to demonstrate the effectiveness debris removal technology. The first cubesat was successfully captured on Sunday evening with a net after six years of testing the technology on Earth.

Source: Watch This Net Capture Orbital Space Debris for the First Time in History – Motherboard

Going up! Japan to test mini ‘space elevator’

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The test involves a miniature elevator stand-in—a box just six centimetres (2.4 inches) long, three centimetres wide, and three centimetres high.

If all goes well, it will provide proof of concept by moving along a 10-metre cable suspended in space between two that will keep it taut.

Source: Going up! Japan to test mini ‘space elevator’

This Man Is Building an Armada of Saildrones to Conquer the Ocean

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This plan rests on Richard Jenkins, an engineer, sailor, and adventurer who invented the saildrone more or less by accident. Jenkins doesn’t act like one of Silicon Valley’s world-conquering capitalist nerds. For starters, he tends to skip the usual platitudes about disruption to focus on sailing, beer, and sailing with beer. “What’s the definition of a sailor?” he asks while launching one of the drones off the Alameda dock. “A primitive organism for turning beer into urine.”

Source: This Man Is Building an Armada of Saildrones to Conquer the Ocean – Bloomberg

Guatemala’s Maya Society Featured Huge ‘Megalopolis,’ LiDAR Data Show

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In what’s being hailed as a “major breakthrough” in Maya archaeology, researchers have identified the ruins of more than 60,000 houses, palaces, elevated highways, and other human-made features that have been hidden for centuries under the jungles of northern Guatemala.

Source: Guatemala’s Maya Society Featured Huge ‘Megalopolis,’ LiDAR Data Show