Attack on the pentagon results in discovery of new mathematical tile | Science In the world of mathematical tiling, news doesn’t come bigger than this. In the world of bathroom tiling – I bet they’re interested too. If you can cover a flat surface using only identical copies of the same shape leaving neither gaps nor overlaps, then that shape is said to tile the plane. Every triangle can tile the plane. Things get interesting with pentagons. The hunt to find and classify the pentagons that can tile the plane has been a century-long mathematical quest, begun by the German mathematician Karl Reinhardt, who in 1918 discovered five types of pentagon that do tile the plane. (To clarify, he did not find five single pentagons. Most people assumed Reinhardt had the complete list until half a century later in 1968 when R. That same year an unlikely mathematical pioneer entered the fray: Marjorie Rice, a San Diego housewife in her 50s, who had read about James’ discovery in Scientific American. But then the hunt went cold. I blog here about maths.
Graphene supercapacitors created with ‘traditional paper making’ process, rivals lead-acid battery capacity Materials engineers at Monash University in Australia have devised a method of producing graphene supercapacitors that have the same energy density as the lead-acid battery under your car’s hood. Not only are these supercapacitors about 10 times more energy-dense than commercial devices, but the method of producing the graphene inside the supercapacitors seems to be novel as well. The engineers say they used a process that is similar to traditional paper making — and that it could easily and cost-effectively scaled up for commercial production of graphene, and graphene-based supercaps. Supercapacitors are essentially small batteries that can recharge and discharge almost instantly. While this results in a very high power density (lots of watts), their energy density is generally very low (watt-hours). Graphene, however, could change all that. That’s the theory, anyway. Capillary action sucks the graphene flakes together, creating a dense structure that’s similar to paper
Who controls the world? More resources for understanding Occupy Wall Street’s slogan “We are the 99%” had been echoing through the United States and the world for just over a month when James B. Glattfelder and his co-authors released the study “The Network of Global Corporate Control” in October 2011. The study was a scientific look at our global economy, revealing how control flows like water through pipes — some thin, some thick — between people and companies. The finding: that control of our economy is highly tightly concentrated into a small core of top players, leaving us all vulnerable to fast-spreading economic distress. James B. In today’s talk, filmed at TEDxZurich, Glattfelder reveals that the impetus of the study wasn’t at all to validate global protesters. “Ideas relating to finance, economics and politics are very often tainted by people’s personal ideologies. To hear more about how the study was conducted, watch this talk. To answer the question, “Who controls the world?” 1. Download the full list here »
Scrollitelling : quel outil pour vos récits multimédias immersifs ? Un an après Snow Fall, les formats multimédias immersifs (parfois baptisés « scrollitelling ») se multiplient sur les sites de presse, et des outils commencent à apparaître pour épauler les journalistes. Plateformes wysiwyg, extensions WordPress, scripts open source à coder : voici un panorama des solutions disponibles à ce jour. ↑1 » Les plateformes en ligne Pas besoin de mettre les mains dans le code… ou si peu. Scrollkit C’est actuellement la plateforme gratuite la plus aboutie. La fonctionnalité la plus puissante de Scrollkit est son module Skrollr, qui gère les effets de parralaxe de façon plutôt intuitive (à condition de connaître un peu de CSS). La plateforme gère de façon imparfaite le responsive design pour l’affichage mobile, mais ce problème est réglable : le grand point fort de Scrollkit est en effet la possibilité d’exporter le projet en fichier HTML, et de le personnaliser à l’envie – sans aucune dépendance aux serveurs du service. Shorthand Creatavist Racontr Mais aussi… sStory
Unique Metallic Q-Glass Could Be New Class of Solids | Materials Science Q-glass, a new solid alloy that has been discovered in a rapidly cooled mixture of aluminum, iron and silicon, is neither a pure glass, a crystal, nor even a quasicrystal, according to a team of researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Argonne National Laboratory. The round nodules are the q-glass, not crystalline but with a well-defined chemical composition (Leonid A. Bendersky / NIST) “Very weird. The material appears to have none of the extended ordering of atoms found in crystals, which would make it a glass, except that it has a very defined composition and grows outward from ‘seeds’ – things that glasses most assuredly do not do. The solids catalog used to be pretty straightforward. Glasses have neither symmetry. “For one thing, the q-glass seems to have a strict chemical composition Seen under a microscope, it’s clear that, like a crystal, the spherical q-glass regions grow outward from a seed during cooling and exclude atoms that don’t fit.
BREAKING: You Know That TED Talk You Weren't Supposed To See? Here It Is. Nick Hanauer, self-described "super-rich" entrepreneur, gave a pretty compelling TED Talk about how the middle class—not the super-rich—are the real job creators. But TED, which has released over 100 different political videos in the past, thought this one was too partisan and chose not to release it. We didn't notice any flaming partisanship in it. We normally love TED, and were surprised they didn't think this talk was TEDworthy. Under pressure from the Internets, TED finally relented and released the video. The National Journal led the initial charge pushing the controversy angle. Chris Anderson, from TED, offered this official response to the outcry and posted the talk for everyone to see. Next bit of Upworthiness:
OverAPI.com | Collecting all the cheat sheets Samsung sees A4WP wireless charging as the future Source: Wired Wireless charging is becoming an increasingly popular feature in top of the line smartphones. The new Galaxy S4 comes with built in wireless charging, but Samsung doesn’t see the Qi technology (the current standard found in most wireless charging products) used in its new flagship handset as the long term solution. Last year Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm partnered up to form the Alliance for Wirless Power (A4WP), which has since been developing and promoting its new wireless charging specification called WiPower. Although the technology has been in development for a while, this week Samsung stated that it intends to make Qi-based charging obsolete when it releases products using its own WiPower compatible devices. There are some pretty significant differences between Qi and WiPower, both in terms of how they work and what they allow consumers to do with them. Wireless charging using magnetic resonance.
System of Transmission of Electrical Energy SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 645,576, dated March 20, 1900. Application filed September 2, 1897. Serial No. 650,343. (No model.) To all whom it may concern: Be it known that I, NIKOLA TESLA, a citizen of the United States, residing at New York, in the county and State of New York, have invented certain new and useful improvements in Systems of Transmission of Electrical Energy, of which the following is a specification, reference being had to the drawing accompanying and forming a part of the same. It has been well known heretofore that by rarefying the air inclosed in a vessel its insulating properties are impaired to such an extent that it becomes what may be considered as a true conductor, although one of admittedly very high resistance. Referring to the drawing, A is a coil, generally of many turns and of a very large diameter, wound in spiral form either about a magnetic core or not, as may be found necessary.