Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com where
Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brandon. Welcome to this week's
Speaker 1: Friday news round up. One of the biggest things in
Speaker 1: technology this week is the release of Intel's new Thunderbolt
Speaker 1: port into the wild. Think of it as a USB
Speaker 1: port on steroids. The new MacBooks from Apple have this
Speaker 1: port and it can transfer data at ten gigabits per
Speaker 1: second bi directionally, making it about twice as fast as
Speaker 1: USB three point oh. To put it into perspective, Thunderbolt
Speaker 1: can transfer a one gigabyte file in about one second
Speaker 1: if the device holding the file can keep up with
Speaker 1: that rate. If you Google interesting reading number six, you
Speaker 1: can see a video demonstrating the speed of Thunderbolt. The
Speaker 1: video shows a file streaming in one direction and a
Speaker 1: video beam going in the other direction to drive a monitor.
Speaker 1: It is a pretty amazing speed for a little cable,
Speaker 1: and it ought to make it possible to transfer huge
Speaker 1: files in the future. Flip. Speaking of speed, the new
Speaker 1: McLaren MP four Dash twelve C for two thousand twelve
Speaker 1: has gotten a lot of attention this week. This truly
Speaker 1: is a supercar. It's made out of aluminium carbon. It
Speaker 1: has a twin turbo V eight engine that generates nearly
Speaker 1: six hundred horsepower and it can go from zero to
Speaker 1: sixty in three point two seconds and has a top
Speaker 1: speed of about two hundred and five miles per hour.
Speaker 1: But one of the most interesting things about it is
Speaker 1: the air brake. In heartbreaking from high speed, the spoiler
Speaker 1: on the back of the car tilts up vertically like
Speaker 1: a little wall to grab air and slow the car
Speaker 1: down faster. The only problem is the two dollar price tag.
Speaker 1: But ignoring that, it's a beautiful car. If you google
Speaker 1: brain Stuff MP four you can see a couple of
Speaker 1: videos showing this car in action. Blip. Speaking of cars,
Speaker 1: there's a great article in Interesting Reading number six two
Speaker 1: that talks about changing your oil. Do you need to
Speaker 1: change your oil every three thousand miles as many of
Speaker 1: the oil change places will suggest to you, or can
Speaker 1: you go longer? The three thousand mile oil change turns
Speaker 1: out to be a myth. It's a myth because the
Speaker 1: motor oil made today is much better than it used
Speaker 1: to be. It contains detergent stabilizers and viscosity enhancers. If
Speaker 1: you look at your owner's manual, it probably tells you
Speaker 1: to wait six thousand miles or more between oil changes,
Speaker 1: and the reason for that is because that is how
Speaker 1: long the oil really does last. Now and many cars
Speaker 1: now have automated systems that either calculate oil changes based
Speaker 1: on things like engine temperature in rpm, or that actually
Speaker 1: measure oil life by doing little chemical analysis on the
Speaker 1: oil in the crank case. If your car has a
Speaker 1: system like this, let it tell you when to change
Speaker 1: the oil. You do not need to change it every
Speaker 1: three thousand miles. Blip In tablet news, the Motorola Zoom
Speaker 1: made it out to reviewers this week and got a
Speaker 1: lot of buzz. People are generally happy with it, and
Speaker 1: they see it as a major iPad competitor, but they
Speaker 1: note a lot of little uncomfortable drawbacks and the price,
Speaker 1: which is said at about eight hundred dollars right now,
Speaker 1: is making nobody happy. You can find a review by
Speaker 1: googling Interesting Reading number six, which brings us to the
Speaker 1: second piece of tablet news, which is that the iPad
Speaker 1: two will be announced next week on March two. Although
Speaker 1: the Zoom looks pretty good right now because it's being
Speaker 1: compared to the year old iPad one, it's likely that
Speaker 1: the iPad two will fix many of the differences in
Speaker 1: terms of things like cameras and screen resolution, and that
Speaker 1: will really narrow the gap. One other thing on the
Speaker 1: tablet front to consider is battery life. This week, both
Speaker 1: think pad and HP are claiming incredible battery life of
Speaker 1: up to thirty hours or more on a charge in
Speaker 1: some of their new notebook computers. Expect some of these
Speaker 1: batteries saving technologies to make it down to tablets as
Speaker 1: well in the near future, and their battery life could
Speaker 1: get to be extraordinarily long, both because of the battery technology,
Speaker 1: the energy saving technology, and the fact that processors for
Speaker 1: tablet computers are starting to consume less and less power blip.
Speaker 1: This week, the world's tiniest computer was announced. It's a
Speaker 1: one cubic millimeter computer in size, yet it is a
Speaker 1: complete computer that includes the processor itself, memory, and a
Speaker 1: wireless transmitter. One amazing feature is the low power consumption,
Speaker 1: only five point three nanowatts. It marks the beginning of
Speaker 1: millimeter scale computing and it should help to bring field
Speaker 1: of smart dust much closer to reality. You can read
Speaker 1: more by googling interesting reading number six nine two blip.
Speaker 1: There's this thing called space weather, and it sounds like
Speaker 1: something out of a sci fi horror film. A giant
Speaker 1: solar flare erupts on the Sun, hits Earth and completely
Speaker 1: cripples a power grid and much of the communication infrastructure.
Speaker 1: But it could happen. In fact, it already has happened,
Speaker 1: but it was back in eighteen fifty nine, before there
Speaker 1: were power grids and cell phones. In eighteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: the flare was so bright that people could read at night.
Speaker 1: The last flare of any real importance happened in nine
Speaker 1: eight nine. It was minor compared to eighteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: but it took out a power grid in Ontario. The
Speaker 1: reasons scientists are talking about solar storms now is because
Speaker 1: the solar cycle lasts eleven years and we're due for
Speaker 1: a peak in the next year or two. The problem
Speaker 1: is that a strong storm now could affect so many
Speaker 1: different things, not just power grids, but also the GPS
Speaker 1: system and cell phones and much more prolific computer systems.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you can do? A large scale power
Speaker 1: grid failure could create problems with things like access to
Speaker 1: drinking water, refrigeration, gasoline, and money. To be prepared, you
Speaker 1: would want to stock up like you would for a
Speaker 1: major hurricane blip. Can a shirt make you a better athlete? Maybe,
Speaker 1: at least if you play in the NFL. Imagine a
Speaker 1: shirt that contains sensors for things like acceleration, pulse, and
Speaker 1: breathing rate. The shirt can also transmit the data out
Speaker 1: to Bluetooth devices. NFL players have started to wear shirts
Speaker 1: like this from under Armour, and it's thought that the
Speaker 1: extra data will help coaches improve player performance. Eventually, the
Speaker 1: shirts will make their way down to the retail market
Speaker 1: and normal human beings will be able to wear them.
Speaker 1: I guess to make us better, stronger, faster, and all that. Blip.
Speaker 1: Amazon started to compete with the Netflix streaming service this week.
Speaker 1: Amazon has been competing with Netflix sort of with its
Speaker 1: pay per view movies. You pay Amazon two or three
Speaker 1: dollars to rent a movie for a twenty four hour
Speaker 1: period of time. But now Amazon is streaming movies and
Speaker 1: TV shows just like Netflix, and the services free to
Speaker 1: people who have already signed up for Amazon Prime. Amazon
Speaker 1: Prime is best known for giving you free to day
Speaker 1: shipping on your purchases. The selection on Amazon right now
Speaker 1: is a little sparse compared to Netflix, but it's also
Speaker 1: cheaper than Netflix. Another company who appears to be getting
Speaker 1: into the same kind of space is Direct TV, which
Speaker 1: has been talking about its ability to stream six thousand
Speaker 1: movies and TV shows at no extra charge to its customers. Blip.
Speaker 1: When you buy a PC, you pay for the computer itself.
Speaker 1: We all know that, but if you ever considered the
Speaker 1: cost of the computers elector tricity, this could be especially
Speaker 1: relevant if you have a desktop machine and it contains
Speaker 1: a high end graphics card. It turns out these graphics
Speaker 1: cards consume a lot of power, as do high end CPUs.
Speaker 1: Tom's Hardware did an analysis of this, and your computer
Speaker 1: plus it's graphics card could in theory be costing over
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars a year just for the electricity it
Speaker 1: takes to run it. So when you're purchasing a PC,
Speaker 1: you might want to keep the energy consumption in mind.
Speaker 1: If you're on a budget, a hundred dollars per year
Speaker 1: is not an insignificant amount of cash. Blip. One thing
Speaker 1: that took the Internet by storm in February is a
Speaker 1: video that shows an Esure waterfall that really works. You've
Speaker 1: probably seen the drawings by mc escher that show an
Speaker 1: impossible waterfall. The water runs downhill in a channel, but
Speaker 1: because it's an optical illusion, the water is really running
Speaker 1: uphill and then it spills over a waterfall to drive
Speaker 1: a water wheel where the process we're peats. It makes
Speaker 1: sense in a drawing, but the YouTube video shows one
Speaker 1: of these waterfalls working in real life. Obviously, it can't
Speaker 1: be true because it would be a perpetual motion machine,
Speaker 1: but it certainly looks real. You're left to wonder how
Speaker 1: they made the video. If you google brain stuff waterfall,
Speaker 1: you can see the video and also an explanation of
Speaker 1: how the video might have been created. It's really an
Speaker 1: interesting trick if the explanation is correct. Blip. Another water
Speaker 1: based video this week is a promotional video for something
Speaker 1: called the jet lev Flyer. This is a piece of
Speaker 1: technology that uses the power of water jets to let
Speaker 1: a person fly over a lake. The person wears a
Speaker 1: backpack that contains two water nozzles that look a lot
Speaker 1: like the ends of a fire hose. There's one on
Speaker 1: either side attach to this backpack. Water shoots out of
Speaker 1: these nozzles to create enough thrust to lift the person
Speaker 1: out of the water up to about twenty ft high
Speaker 1: hand controls allow the person who's wearing the backpack to
Speaker 1: change the angles of the nozzles to control flight. Supplying
Speaker 1: all the high pressure water that these nozzles need are
Speaker 1: two large hoses that connect down to this boat like
Speaker 1: object in the water. The boat has an engine driving
Speaker 1: a pump, and it follows along behind the person in
Speaker 1: the air as the two hoses kind of drag it along.
Speaker 1: Is this practical? No? Is it inexpensive? Probably not? But
Speaker 1: would it be fun to try? Probably? You can watch
Speaker 1: the video by googling interesting Reading number six nine and
Speaker 1: decide for yourself if you give something like this a
Speaker 1: try blip. Also an interesting Reading number six nine is
Speaker 1: the latest robotic hand that is quote nearly identical end
Speaker 1: quote to a human hand. It's called the DART hand,
Speaker 1: where DART stands for dexterous anthropomorphic robotic typing. Yes, the
Speaker 1: hand is precise enough to do tie, being at about
Speaker 1: twenty words per minute, and it's laid out much like
Speaker 1: your human hand. Is laid out with muscles in the
Speaker 1: forearm and wires carrying the motion down to the fingers
Speaker 1: like tendons do in a real human hand. So in theory,
Speaker 1: one day Watson will be able to not only press
Speaker 1: the button, but also type out his answers if he
Speaker 1: wants to blip. An accidental discovery involving lab mice may
Speaker 1: have uncovered a cure for baldness. The accident involved a
Speaker 1: chemical designed to block a stress hormone called CRF. The mice,
Speaker 1: because of genetic modifications, produced too much of this hormone.
Speaker 1: As a result, the mice would become bald on their backs.
Speaker 1: By blocking CRF. As part of another experiment on digestion problems,
Speaker 1: the scientists noticed that the blocking chemical fix the baldness
Speaker 1: as well. Now it's time to test the same idea
Speaker 1: in humans and see if it works there as well. Blip.
Speaker 1: Google is sponsoring a thirty million dollar prize for the
Speaker 1: first team that can land on the Moon and drive
Speaker 1: for five meters with a little rover. This week, Google
Speaker 1: pick twenty nine teams that will be allowed to compete
Speaker 1: for the actual prize. One of the front runners is
Speaker 1: a team called Astrobotic Technology. They already have a contract
Speaker 1: for a ride that will get them to the Moon
Speaker 1: on top of a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket. Their craft
Speaker 1: will soft land on the Moon and then deploy its
Speaker 1: solar powered pyramid rover. In theory, this competition could be
Speaker 1: completed as early as two thousand and fifteen, and from
Speaker 1: there is anybody's guess how many different missions can be
Speaker 1: launched to the Moon by private explorers. Blip. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten, we heard a lot about solar and
Speaker 1: wind power, and there was a good reason for it.
Speaker 1: According to one report, the amount of solar energy being
Speaker 1: captured on Earth doubled in two thousand and ten. The
Speaker 1: world added the ability to generate about sixteen billion watts
Speaker 1: of solar electricity in a single year, roughly doubling the
Speaker 1: amount of electricity previously generated from the Sun. This happened
Speaker 1: despite the economic downturn. People think it happened because the
Speaker 1: price of solar power is falling very quickly, and because
Speaker 1: big players are getting into the solar power field now,
Speaker 1: especially in Europe. The price of solar panels are down
Speaker 1: to dollar eighty per watt right now, half that three
Speaker 1: years ago. The United States and China accounted only for
Speaker 1: about seven percent of the total. It really is Europe
Speaker 1: that's driving the solar energy push right now. Blip. And
Speaker 1: finally there's a piece of really really good news on
Speaker 1: the medical front this week. Currently, there are a number
Speaker 1: of diseases that modern medical science can cure. Things like
Speaker 1: scurvy and ricketts are virtually unheard of anymore. We've taken
Speaker 1: giant steps with things like ulcers, and vaccines have cut
Speaker 1: way out on many viral diseases. But there's only one
Speaker 1: disease that human beings have completely eradicated, and that smallpox.
Speaker 1: No one on earth gets smallpox anymore. We could be
Speaker 1: at the point of eradicating another disease next year. It's
Speaker 1: a parasite called the guinea worm. This worm can get
Speaker 1: to be up to a meter long inside a patient
Speaker 1: and it's disgusting. Used to be that millions of people
Speaker 1: had this parasite, but now it's down to hundreds. So
Speaker 1: how has it been eradicated? In order to reproduce, this
Speaker 1: worm has to wiggle its way through the skin and
Speaker 1: release its eggs into water. By quarantining everyone with the
Speaker 1: disease and keeping them away from water, the number of
Speaker 1: worms has been decimated. With luck, the last cases will
Speaker 1: be contained as well, and this worm will be history.
Speaker 1: It will be completely dead and no one will get
Speaker 1: this disgusting parasite anymore. That would be a major triumph
Speaker 1: for people in Africa. Flip and finally there's a new
Speaker 1: car that shows that the arrival of robotic automobiles is
Speaker 1: getting closer and closer. They're already cars that can automatically
Speaker 1: steer themselves into a parallel parking place, and now the
Speaker 1: Volvo S sixty sedan is gaining the ability to stop
Speaker 1: if it sees a pedestrian in front of it. It
Speaker 1: uses a radar system that can look out in front
Speaker 1: of the car as well as a camera, and it
Speaker 1: allows it to see, so to speak, pedestrians that are
Speaker 1: in the path of the vehicle, and if it detects
Speaker 1: a pedestrian that's out there, it will automatically break the
Speaker 1: vehicle for you if you don't take steps to avoid
Speaker 1: the pedestrian. Obviously, this is great news if you are
Speaker 1: a pedestrian and a Volvo S sixty is headed right
Speaker 1: towards you, but it also shows how much more automated
Speaker 1: cars are becoming. In the near future. We can expect
Speaker 1: to see things like pedestrian avoidance, lane following, automatic breaking
Speaker 1: if a horrors stopped in front of you, and so
Speaker 1: on on more and more cars. All of the articles
Speaker 1: that we've discussed this week are available on the blogs
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. The easiest way to
Speaker 1: find them is either to go to the blogs, or
Speaker 1: you can just go to Google and type in the
Speaker 1: words interesting reading plus the number of the article. This
Speaker 1: week we've covered interesting reading number six nineties and six three.
Speaker 1: Until next time, I'm Marshall brain Have a great weekend.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, doesn't
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and don't forget to check
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