Archive for May, 2012

Pumping a steady stream of sunlight-blocking particles into the stratosphere to fight global climate change would leave us with inescapable hazy and white skies such as those found over big cities, according to new research.

“The skies would be whiter/hazier everywhere, including on weekend getaways to the mountains,” study lead author Ben Kravitz of the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University told me in an email today.

Just in time for the summer season, so-called robot lifeguards are hitting the beach on both coasts of the U.S.

“E.M.I.L.Y. is a means to assist lifeguards and first responder who respond to drowning victims,” Bob Lautrup, the robot’s co-inventor and president of Hydronalix told me Monday.

Jens Molbak ’80 didn’t fancy himself an innovator while studying for his MBA at Stanford University. He was just tired of lugging a jar of coins every time he moved in his 20s.

“I ended up with an innovative idea and going off and pursuing it,” says the inventor of the Coinstar machines that turn grubby loose change into cash. Along the way, he learned that “innovation is a skill that can be taught … there is a process, a discipline, to go through.”

A steam train built in 1937 is getting a makeover that will turn it into a “higher-speed” locomotive that runs on biocoal, a coal-like fuel made with woody plant material.

When finished, the train will be able chug along existing tracks at speeds up to 130 miles per hour without contributing to the greenhouse gas pollution blamed for global warming.

The U.S. military is plowing $90 million into a university-led research program to rapidly accelerate the development of lighter and stronger materials to better protect soldiers and vehicles.

The same tools that enable the development of this next generation protective gear could, of course, also be used to develop more lethal weapons – bullets designed to penetrate the toughest materials.

Astronauts on missions to Mars and other worlds will almost certainly bring along a few robot helpers. A team of industrial design students is helping NASA make sure those robots are easy to control from the comfort of a spaceship.

Astronauts aren’t lazy, they are “extremely busy,” Maria Bualat with the Intelligent Robotics Group at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, told me.

Researchers are working on a new software tool that will allow us to tap other people’s brains as we try to make sense of information online.

In the United States, we collectively spend 70 billion hours a year trying to mentally process the data we collect as we surf the Web and try to decide things such as what new gadget to buy or where to go on vacation.