Meet Hannah Herbst, A 15-year-old From Boca Raton, Florida, Who Just Might Be The Nation’s Top Young

Byzantine 'flat-pack' church to be reconstructed in Oxford after spending 1,000 years on the seabed

Centuries before the Swedes started flat-packing their furniture, the Holy Roman Emperor Justinian had his own version, sending self-assembly churches to newly conquered parts of his empire.

Now one of the “Ikea-style” churches, which spent more than 1,000 years on a seabed after the ship carrying it sank, is to be reconstructed for the first time in Oxford.

The Byzantine church will be on display at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology as part of the exhibition Storms, War and Shipwrecks: Treasures from the Sicilian Seas, opening in June. 

Paul Roberts, co-curator of the exhibition, said: “Everything in the exhibition will be from under the sea. It’s very different from what’s been done before. Read more.

This is in our computer lab in the library

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the myriad of options in the haircare section of your local store, but it turns out that of all those products, the formula within most shampoo and conditioner doesn’t vary much across brands. 

A new Y Combinator company, Function of Beauty, is looking to change all that.

The company lets the user choose a scent and describe their own hair type, with options from straight to curly, dry to oily, and thin to coarse hair. From there, users can choose different hair goals, combining things like strengthening to heat protection to anti-frizz. 

Function of Beauty currently offers 450 million different combinations based on hair type and goals.

(via Function Of Beauty, Backed By Y Combinator, Offers Customized Shampoo And Conditioner | TechCrunch)

Watch: A haircut may not solve homelessness — but it can make all the difference for these women.

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Why I'm Naming a New Plant Species After The Martian

Truth be told, while much of what my fellow botanists and I do is pretty cool (and often challenging), there isn't much that would find its way into a blockbuster hero film. That is, until now.

So, a new plant related to the potato is being named after Mark Watney and this makes me very happy.

“My lab group has decided to name this new species Solanum watneyi after Mark Watney, the book/film character who shows us all that botanists can be cool, too.” - Dr. Chris Martine, Professor at Bucknell University

Don’t feel drowned by your habits, we all know smoking doesn’t make sense, we all know somebody who is sick because of smoking. You have the power to stop smoking. Or replace your bad habits that hinder your life with good habits that help it progress. I have a client that used to smoke, now every time she is craving a cigarette she does 50 squats, no smoking now for 2 months, but great muscle tone in her legs! This is what I mean when I say love yourself… Not your reflection. Your actions are a reflection of how you see yourself. Big up all those who have stopped smoking, stopping smoking or even thinking about it! If you have stopped let me know how long for, if you are stopping let me know how and why. If you are thinking about it hopefully you will read the comments and try to stop. #spartanfam #strength #health #streetart

Artificial optical materials could allow cheaper, flatter, more efficient detectors for night vision and other uses

A new way of taking images in the mid-infrared part of the spectrum, developed by researchers at MIT and elsewhere, could enable a wide variety of applications, including thermal imaging, biomedical sensing, and free-space communication.

The mid-infrared (mid-IR) band of electromagnetic radiation is a particularly useful part of the spectrum; it can provide imaging in the dark, trace heat signatures, and provide sensitive detection of many biomolecular and chemical signals. But optical systems for this band of frequencies have been hard to make, and devices using them are highly specialized and expensive. Now, the researchers say they have found a highly efficient and mass-manufacturable approach to controlling and detecting these waves.

The findings are reported in the journal Nature Communications, in a paper by MIT researchers Tian Gu and Juejun Hu, University of Massachusetts at Lowell researcher Hualiang Zhang, and 13 others at MIT, the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and the East China Normal University.

The new approach uses a flat, artificial material composed of nanostructured optical elements, instead of the usual thick, curved-glass lenses used in conventional optics. These elements provide on-demand electromagnetic responses and are made using techniques similar to those used for computer chips. “This kind of metasurface can be made using standard microfabrication techniques,” Gu says. “The manufacturing is scalable.”

Read more.

A good way to remember the human bones in the body. Dope pic

www.learninghumananatomy.com

Maps like these allow us to see the city in a new light – not just as a massive consumer of energy, but also as a potential powerhouse.

Dr Anne Maassan on the solar potential of cities.  (via thisbigcity)

Making an impact

ESA - Clean Space Programme logo. 25 September 2015 When a rocket is launched into space it crosses all layers of the atmosphere and interacts with them. How much impact does a launch have on the atmosphere and can we quantify the effect in such a way that we can take mitigation measures? These are only a few of the questions raised by the Clean Space AtILa (Atmospheric Impact of Launchers) project. Neil Murray explains: “It is difficult to use computer modelling to precisely monitor what happens when a rocket is launched as the size of the plume is far smaller than the scale of the climate models that we use to model the atmosphere”.

Picture perfect liftoff

Therefore two strategies were worked out to model the impact, one started from the size of the plume and this was allowed to develop over time and space to the size of the climate model and used as the boundary conditions of the climate model. Another strategy started from the size of the larger model and introduced sub-grid models which modelled the plume within the climate model grids. Both models gave surprisingly similar results. So far it has been thought that chlorine, which is converted from the oxidizer (ammonia perchlorate) in the solid booster fuel mixture, has had the main effect on ozone depletion in the immediate area where the plume is emitted.

Computations conducted at ONERA using the CEDRE code

The latest studies have shown that alumina particles, i.e., oxidised aluminium, which is also present in the solid rocket fuel, may also have a significant ozone depletion effect depending on the particle size. “If the particles are on the micrometer scale they would quickly fall out of the sky and have little impact on the atmosphere. However, the smaller the particles, the higher their combined surface area and the longer they remain suspended in the air, which means that their potential catalytic effect in ozone reduction could also be much higher.” Therefore it is imperative that quantitative data is collected to be able to accurately measure and predict the impact by mathematical models.

Computations conducted at ONERA using the CEDRE code

The first step towards quantitative data is the kick-off of an activity organised in cooperation with DLR whereby a solid rocket motor model in a wind tunnel will be used to simulate the evolution of particles in a representative rocket chamber and to then interpolate this to the conditions at launch. From these measurements accurate models will be developed for predicting the development of alumina particles under real launch conditions. So why not just use real launch data? “It is not that easy to make these measurements during a real launch and so far no data has been collected for European launchers. Up to now we have mainly been relying on data measured by NASA during launches in the 1990s, however, the representativeness of this data with respect to European launchers is questionable. This ultimately leaves us with the task of somehow collecting such flight data and it is something that we are discussing at length.“ 

Ariane 5 ECA V184 climbout

"Even when we are able to make real-time measurements during a launch it still is a large task to interpret this data correctly and extrapolate this to all launches, as daily changes in the atmosphere and the time of the launch are just a few parameters that severely influence the effect. Luckily we are working with some of Europe’s experts in climatology!” The AtILa project aims to understand the impact of launching its rockets into space by modelling the rocket plumes from their origin in the rocket chamber up to their impact on a global scale using climate models. This is one of the projects that ESA carries out under the Clean Space initiative which has carried out life cycle assessments for the space industry in order to monitor the effect of each space project on the environment. Implementing eco-design strategies into every phase of a space project is the ultimate aim of this initiative. ESA links: Life cycle assessment training at ESA: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Clean_Space/Life_Cycle_Assessment_training_at_ESA Virtual rocket launches will probe atmospheric effects: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Clean_Space/Virtual_rocket_launches_will_probe_atmospheric_effects Considering hydrazine-free satellite propulsion: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Clean_Space/Considering_hydrazine-free_satellite_propulsion ‘Green’ satellite fuel designed to make space safer: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Green_satellite_fuel_designed_to_make_space_safer About Clean Space: What is Clean Space?: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Clean_Space/What_is_Clean_Space Why is it needed?: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Clean_Space/Why_is_it_needed What are its objectives?: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Clean_Space/What_are_its_objectives Images, Text, Credits: ESA/CNES/ARIANESPACE/Photo Optique Vidéo CSG/Service POV du CSG. Best regards, Orbiter.ch Full article