And The Dancer Notes The Ballroom

This would have been so empowering for my ALS-stricken grandfather

Obi Dining Robot Helps Disabled People Feed Themselves - Robotics Trends

The Obi robot dining companion gives people with disabilities the power to feed themselves. Obi is a robot arm that can scoop food from a bowl and deliver the food to your mouth.

Obi was built by Jon and Tom Dekar, the father-son duo that founded Obi parent company DESῙN in 2010. They spent the next six years refining Obi’s design, securing investors, sourcing suppliers, and testing prototypes. The first Obi prototype was designed in 2006 by Jon, a University of Dayton engineering student, who saw the challenges faced by people with disabilities as varied as his aging grandfather and a 6-year-old girl with Arthrogryposis.

“Every day, millions of people must be fed by caregivers, and they find the experience to be conspicuous and frustrating,” Jon said. “Feeding oneself is a basic human need, and there was no good solution available. I became inspired to change that.”

Oops

When humans “domesticated” fire 400,000 years ago they made the right combination of conditions – longer periods with close human contact, plus smoke-damaged lungs – for tuberculosis to mutate from a harmless soil bacterium into our number one bacterial killer, according to new research.

How To Be A Troll, And Win Wars

Under Sun Pin’s direction the Ch’i armies, which were advancing into Wei, followed the dictum “Be deceptive.”

P’ang Chüan arrogantly believed the men of Ch’i to be cowards who would flee rather than engage mighty Wei in battle. Therefore, Sun Pin daily reduced the number of cooking fires in the encampment to create a facade of every-increasing desertion. He also effected a tactical withdrawal to further entice P’ang Chüan into the favorable terrain at Ma-ling where the Ch’i commander concealed ten thousand crossbowman among the hills.

P’ang Chüan, apparently afraid that he would miss an opportunity to inflict a severe blow on the retreating Ch’i army, abandoned his heavy forces and supply train and rushed forth with only light units. Arriving at night, the combined Wei forces were ambushed as soon as they penetrated the killing zone.

In addition to being decisively defeated by Ch’i’s withering crossbow fire, 100,000 Wei soldiers needlessly perished because of their commander’s character flaws and hasty judgement.

The battle of Ma-ling is apparently the first recorded conflict in which crossbows were employed. The quote is taken from “Evolution of Conflicts and Weapons in China” in The Art of War by Sun Tzu.

aurora and the milky way over the manistee lighthouse

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10 “Out of This World" Facts About the James Webb Space Telescope

Wouldn’t it be neat to see a period of the universe’s history that we’ve never seen before? That’s exactly what the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be able to do…plus more!

Specifically, Webb will see the first objects that formed as the universe cooled down after the Big Bang. We don’t know exactly when the universe made the first stars and galaxies – or how for that matter. That is what we are building Webb to help answer.

Here are 10 awesome facts about this next generation space telescope:

1. The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s largest and next premier space observatory. It will extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space telescope and observe the birthplaces of stars, galaxies, planets and life over billions of years.

2. It is named after James Webb, NASA’s second administrator and champion of our science.

3. At 3 stories high and the size of a tennis court, it will be 100 times more powerful than Hubble!

4. It is so big that it has to fold origami-style to fit in the rocket, which is only 5.4 meters wide…And then it will unfurl, segment by segment, once in space.

5. The telescope will observe infrared light with unprecedented sensitivity. It will see the first galaxies born after the Big Bang over 13.5 billion years ago.

6. Webb’s infrared cameras are so sensitive they must be shielded from light from the sun, Earth, and moon. The 5-layer sunshield is like having sunblock of SPF 1 million.

7. Webb will orbit the sun 1 million miles from Earth, where the telescope will operate at temperatures below -390 F (-235 C).

8. Webb’s mirrors are coated with a super thin layer of gold only about 1000 atoms thick to optimize their reflectivity in the infrared.

9. Webb will launch from French Guiana in 2018. It is launched near the equator because the faster spin of Earth there gives the rocket an extra push.

10. Webb is an international mission, with contributions from the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency. Once operational, scientists from all over the world will be able to use Webb to explore our solar system, planets outside our solar system, stars and galaxies.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Constellations and the Calendar

Did you recently hear that NASA changed the zodiac signs? Nope, we definitely didn’t…

…Here at NASA, we study astronomy, not astrology. We didn’t change any zodiac signs, we just did the math. Here are the details:

First Things First: Astrology is NOT Astronomy…

Astronomy is the scientific study of everything in outer space. Astronomers and other scientists know that stars many light years away have no effect on the ordinary activities of humans on Earth.

Astrology is something else. It’s not science. No one has shown that astrology can be used to predict the future or describe what people are like based on their birth dates.

Some curious symbols ring the outside of the Star Finder. These symbols stand for some of the constellations in the zodiac. What is the zodiac and what is special about these constellations?

Imagine a straight line drawn from Earth though the sun and out into space way beyond our solar system where the stars are. Then, picture Earth following its orbit around the sun. This imaginary line would rotate, pointing to different stars throughout one complete trip around the sun – or, one year. All the stars that lie close to the imaginary flat disk swept out by this imaginary line are said to be in the zodiac.

The constellations in the zodiac are simply the constellations that this imaginary straight line points to in its year-long journey.

What are Constellations?

A constellation is group of stars like a dot-to-dot puzzle. If you join the dots—stars, that is—and use lots of imagination, the picture would look like an object, animal, or person. For example, Orion is a group of stars that the Greeks thought looked like a giant hunter with a sword attached to his belt. Other than making a pattern in Earth’s sky, these stars may not be related at all.

Even the closest star is almost unimaginably far away. Because they are so far away, the shapes and positions of the constellations in Earth’s sky change very, very slowly. During one human lifetime, they change hardly at all.

A Long History of Looking to the Stars

The Babylonians lived over 3,000 years ago. They divided the zodiac into 12 equal parts – like cutting a pizza into 12 equal slices. They picked 12 constellations in the zodiac, one for each of the 12 “slices.” So, as Earth orbits the sun, the sun would appear to pass through each of the 12 parts of the zodiac. Since the Babylonians already had a 12-month calendar (based on the phases of the moon), each month got a slice of the zodiac all to itself.

But even according to the Babylonians’ own ancient stories, there were 13 constellations in the zodiac. So they picked one, Ophiuchus, to leave out. Even then, some of the chosen 12 didn’t fit neatly into their assigned slice of the pie and crossed over into the next one.

When the Babylonians first invented the 12 signs of zodiac, a birthday between about July 23 and August 22 meant being born under the constellation Leo. Now, 3,000 years later, the sky has shifted because Earth’s axis (North Pole) doesn’t point in quite the same direction.

The constellations are different sizes and shapes, so the sun spends different lengths of time lined up with each one. The line from Earth through the sun points to Virgo for 45 days, but it points to Scorpius for only 7 days.  To make a tidy match with their 12-month calendar, the Babylonians ignored the fact that the sun actually moves through 13 constellations, not 12. Then they assigned each of those 12 constellations equal amounts of time.

So, we didn’t change any zodiac signs…we just did the math.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Residence in Woody Creek, Colorado

Perched at the rivers edge, this Pampiano Residence by Studio B consists of an addition to the existing house as well as a detached garage with a dwelling unit above. The new architecture reinterprets the existing house and marries the project as ‘a whole’ through its use of materials, patterns and massing.

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One of the Huffington Post's article on the GOP convention included this at the end.

Less pollution and lighter, more efficient bricks? Yes, please

THIS ROBOT DOESN’T HAVE A FACE BUT IT’S STILL ADORABLE

I love you, Vyo!!!!