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Blog – Page 11922

It’s looking like 2016 will be the year virtual reality hits the mainstream now that Oculus Rift is on the brink of shipping and Google Cardboard is into the millions of units sold. Now, we finally know when Sony is releasing its new VR headset too. GameStop CEO Paul Raines revealed the PlayStation VR will launch in the third quarter of this year during a live television interview.

“We will launch the Sony product this fall,” said Raines, “and we’re in discussions with the other two players.” Shortly after blurting out the PlayStation VR release date, Raines redirected the conversation to GameStop’s dominance in gaming hardware sales. To watch the flub, jump to the 2:40 mark in the clip below:

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Plasmonics, the study of how electrons behave in a metal under an electromagnetic field, requires the use of specialty coherent light sources as a basic tool. Optical interferometry can potentially become more important in biomedicine if only the technology could be made more compact, practical, and proven useful.

Toward that end researchers at Brown University have developed a way of using plasmonics techniques without using a coherent light source at all. This allows optical interferometry at the nanoscale and should lead to new types of biomedical sensors that can do rapid wide spectrum analysis for a variety of markers.

Here’s more details about the technology from Brown University:

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FBI not able to hack a phone is really starting to make them look really bad. Granted Apple has created a more advance encryption format on their phones; however, FBI is supposed to be a lot more advance than this.

Why would you want your smart phone encrypted? To protect the information on it should it get lost or stolen, and to ensure no one has tampered with your data.

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Japan is studying the black holes.

This week the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully launched a new space observatory designed to study black holes, dying stars and the history of galaxy clusters. The X-ray Astronomy Satellite, known as ASTRO-H, will be able to detect X-rays more than 10 times fainter than its telescope predecessor, Suzaku.

ASTRO-H was launched on the Japanese launch vehicle H-IIA from Tanegashima Launch Center on Wednesday, February 17th at 3:45 am EST. Within hours, the satellite deployed its solar arrays and was functioning normally.

It’s tradition for Japan’s astronomy satellites to be given a provisional name before launch and be renamed once they’re in orbit. After its successful launch, JAXA announced ASTRO-H was renamed to Hitomi, a Japanese word that refers to an eye’s pupil, which is like an aperture collecting light for an eye.

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Electric Hybrid Train Powers Up

HYPSTAIR Project Reaches Significant Milestone.

A major step towards electric powered air travel was achieved on 9th February 2016 with the power-up of the world’s most powerful hybrid electric powertrain for aviation in a project led by Pipistrel. Hybrid-electric powertrains are a new breed of aviation propulsion, which extend the range of all-electric aircraft while being environmentally friendly and quiet. The 200 kW propulsor developed during the project HYPSTAIR delivers the power equivalent to a typical general aviation piston engine and can run in three modalities: electric-only mode using batteries, generator-only mode or hybrid mode combining both power sources.

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