Commercial space shuttle prototypes fly through wind tunnel testing

A pair of companies developing their own commercial space shuttles are presumably trying to flatten their hair after some rigorous wind tunnel testing. First up, Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos (the guy behind Amazon), a company that's remained pretty quiet on its efforts to shuttle astronauts to the International Space Station. Its Space Vehicle setup will plump for a biconic shape (seen above), with a flattened side and a split flap. According to Blue Origin's president, Rob Meyerson, the shape allows greater volume than traditional designs, but forgo the "weight penalty" of winged craft. Compared to earlier capsules, the Space Vehicle's shape, with its fuselage flap to generate lift, should also give it better control on re-entry to earth.

Juggling for wind tunnel time, Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser has also been blasted with smoke to test its own air resistance credentials. Its module would lauch from the top of the rocket, and glide (as much as anything that costs this much can) back to earth like NASA's own space shuttles. The Dream Chaser is planning its first flight for this fall. You can check out its more traditional take on the future of space travel after the break -- and decide which of the two you'll want sending your children to the mines.

[Picture credit: Blue Origin, SNC]

Continue reading Commercial space shuttle prototypes fly through wind tunnel testing

Commercial space shuttle prototypes fly through wind tunnel testing originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sunday Links (Theagitator)

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Sunday Links (Theagitator)

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Origin PC joins the 11-inch, rebadged gaming laptop party, outs the EON 11-S

Last week may have drawn to a close, but the march of Clevo news continues. On the heels of Maingear announcing an 11-inch gaming notebook, Origin PC is throwing its own ultraportable into the ring: the EON 11-S. Though this is a new model for the company (the smallest laptop it's ever sold, in fact), it's not quite fresh to us: this is the same exact Clevo-made notebook Maingear unveiled two days ago, only re-badged under Origin PC's brand and available in a wider range of colors. As far as performance goes, then, that means you can expect Ivy Bridge processors, a 2GB NVIDIA GT 650M GPU, Optimus graphics-switching technology and a battery rated for 6.5 hours of runtime. In Origin PC's case, the laptop starts at $999 (compared with $1,099 for Maingear), though you'll have to head over to Origin's site for a breakdown of what specs you'll be getting at that lower price.

Gallery: Origin PC EON 11-S

Continue reading Origin PC joins the 11-inch, rebadged gaming laptop party, outs the EON 11-S

Origin PC joins the 11-inch, rebadged gaming laptop party, outs the EON 11-S originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gingrich to leave presidential race next week, media reports say (Washington Bureau)

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If you're reading this, you might be a baboon

Scientists have found that baboons are adept at pattern recognition, being able to?distinguish between real and fake four-letter words about three out of four times.

Dan the?baboon?sits in front of a computer screen. The letters BRRU pop up. With a quick and almost dismissive tap, the monkey signals it is not a word. Correct. Next comes, ITCS. Again, not a word. Finally KITE comes up.

Skip to next paragraph

He pauses and hits a green oval to show it is a word. In the space of just a few seconds, Dan has demonstrated a mastery of what some experts say is a form of pre-reading and walks away rewarded with a treat of dried wheat.

Dan is part of new research that shows?baboons?are able to pick up the first step in reading ? identifying recurring patterns and determining which four-letter combinations are words and which are just gobbledygook.

The study shows that reading's early steps are far more instinctive than scientists first thought and it also indicates that non-human primates may be smarter than we give them credit for.

"They've got the hang of this thing," said Jonathan Grainger, a French scientist and lead author of the research.

Baboons?and other monkeys are good pattern finders and what they are doing may be what we first do in recognizing words.

It's still a far cry from real reading. They don't understand what these words mean, and are just breaking them down into parts, said Grainger, a cognitive psychologist at the Aix-Marseille University in France.

In 300,000 tests, the six?baboons?distinguished between real and fake words about three-out-of-four times, according to the study published in Thursday's journal Science.

The 4-year-old Dan, the star of the bunch and about the equivalent age of a human teenager, got 80 percent of the words right and learned 308 four-letter words.

The?baboons?are rewarded with food when they press the right spot on the screen: A blue plus sign for bogus combos or a green oval for real words.

Even though the experiments were conducted in France, the researchers used English words because it is the language of science, Grainger said.

The key is that these animals not only learned by trial and error which letter combinations were correct, but they also noticed which letters tend to go together to form real words, such as SH but not FX, said Grainger. So even when new words were sprung on them, they did a better job at figuring out which were real.

Grainger said a pre-existing capacity in the brain may allow them to recognize patterns and objects, and perhaps that's how we humans also first learn to read.

The study's results were called "extraordinarily exciting" by another language researcher, psychology professor Stanislas Dehaene at the College of France, who wasn't part of this study. He said Grainger's finding makes sense. Dehaene's earlier work says a distinct part of the brain visually recognizes the forms of words. The new work indicates this is also likely in a non-human primate.

This new study also tells us a lot about our distant primate relatives.

"They have shown repeatedly amazing cognitive abilities," said study co-author Joel Fagot, a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research.

Bill Hopkins, a professor of psychology at the Yerkes Primate Center in Atlanta, isn't surprised.

"We tend to underestimate what their capacities are," said Hopkins, who wasn't part of the French research team. "Non-human primates are really specialized in the visual domain and this is an example of that."

This raises interesting questions about how the complex primate mind works without language or what we think of as language, Hopkins said. While we use language to solve problems in our heads, such as deciphering words, it seems that?baboons?use a "remarkably sophisticated" method to attack problems without language, he said.

Key to the success of the experiment was a change in the testing technique, the researchers said. Thebaboons?weren't put in the computer stations and forced to take the test. Instead, they could choose when they wanted to work, going to one of the 10 computer booths at any time, even in the middle of the night.

The most ambitious?baboons?test 3,000 times a day; the laziest only 400.

The advantage of this type of experiment setup, which can be considered more humane, is that researchers get far more trials in a shorter time period, he said.

"They come because they want to," Fagot said. "What do they want? They want some food. They want to solve some task."

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Interactive Whiteboard Pen Writes on Anything ? No Whiteboard Required

An interactive whiteboard can be a prohibitively pricey addition to any conference room or classroom. But now a company called Interphase is launching an interactive display system that can deliver virtual whiteboarding without expensive, physical hardware.

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Struq Secures $8.5 million From Reed Elsevier, Pentech, Allen & Co

The problem with internet advertising - and there are many - is that while there are plenty of users who interact with ads, the hard part is working out which users are actually the most valuable to advertisers. While the advertising industry normally sends one brand message and blasts it out across all channels, Struq, an advertising platform startup, works out which users show behavioral patterns that make them statistically more likely to purchase. But instead of showing them the one brand message it shows video or display ads most likely to chime with that user. To that end it's attracted the attention of major backers today, with a significant $8.5 million funding round from Reed Elsevier Ventures, Pentech Ventures and Allen & Company LLC.

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TSX pushes higher as Europe sentiment improves

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Jason Segel Opens Up About Dating Michelle Williams

Jason Segel is being a perfect gentleman about his new romance with Michelle Williams. Now that their relationship has gone public, the actor has had to field questions about the Academy Award nominee.

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It?s Just A Flesh Wound: Apple Stocks Down For Fifth Consecutive Day

Apple stock fell 4.1% on Monday, continuing a five day skid and a trend that has drained $50 billion in market capital from the company and dropped share price from a high of $643 on April 10 to its current price of $580. Apple has been flying high lately, weathering dual storms of Jobs-Cook succession and, most recently, Mike Daisey's Foxconn fabrications. The stock is up in early trading and many analysts are holding firm to an expected 700 target, calling this a "softening" and not a correction.

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Help for land-mine victims in Kabul

After three decades of war, Afghanistan is littered with land mines. A nonprofit employs disabled land-mine victims to make demining equipment, and funds rehabilitation clinics.

By Olivia Katrandjian,?Contributor, Arthur Nazaryan,?Contributor / March 30, 2012

? A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.

Skip to next paragraph

?Haroon Hamdard edged toward a suspected explosive device lying in a field in western Afghanistan. His job as a demining worker was to identify such devices and figure out how to render them harmless. But the young worker stumbled. His foot hit a rock that tumbled forward and detonated a small bomb. Mr. Hamdard was left in critical condition, and lost his right arm. He was fitted with a barely functioning prosthetic arm. The married father of one was unemployed for the next six years. Hamdard finally got a job at Spark, a workshop in Kabul funded by a US nonprofit where people who have been disabled by land mines make demining equipment. Sale of the equipment funds rehabilitation clinics, one of which will finally outfit Hamdard with a better prosthetic arm.

After three decades of war, Afghanistan is littered with land mines. Insurgents have been increasingly conflating foreign aid with foreign occupation and demining organizations feel the brunt of this. The majority of nongovernmental workers detained by armed groups in 2011 were deminers ? the Taliban tend not to appreciate those who try to remove their bombs. Many Afghans continue to be injured by land mines, but the level of care Hamdard received is rarely available outside Kabul.

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Eli Manning and Rihanna: Coming to SNL!

Eli Manning, New York Giants quarterback and MVP of Super Bowls XLII and XLIV, will host Saturday Night Live gig on May 5, the NBC show announced.

The musical guest that night? None other than Rihanna!

Manning previously appeared on the program five years ago, but only as audience member when his big brother Peyton Manning hosted the broadcast.

It will be Rihanna's third musical appearance on SNL.

The five-time Grammy winner visited the late night institution in October 2010, with Mad Men star Jon Hamm handling hosting duties on that occasion.

[Photos: WENN.com]

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