Darren Rowse has a blog devoted to UAV's - Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Nifty stuff for military buffs and/or tech heads.

Posted by: Ted at 07:11 AM | category: SciTech
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We use these to make our rockets visible for their entire flight at night launches, but you could easily come up with some cool ideas for your own use.

First up is Glow, Inc. This company sells glow-in-the-dark paints and powders, and theirs are the best I've ever seen. Not the pale and barely-visible luminescence we're used to, these are incredibly bright and last for hours. I bought the sampler powder pack, and have been playing with various application techniques. Very cool.

If you've ever seen the Indiglo watch faces, you know that they get very bright with the touch of a button. The folks at Night Launch offer sheets of this material up to 3" wide and 16" long in multiple colors. I got one of their starter kits for Christmas last year and believe me, this is neat stuff to play with.

Both sites offer plenty of great ideas on how to use their products, as well as occasional special offers and discounts. New products are also announced periodically.

Posted by: Ted at 06:36 AM | category: SciTech
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Imagine walking into a room of your house and the sun is blaring in, so you press a button and the window becomes opaque. The news is on so you tune another window to your favorite channel, and when that's over you put some music on and the sound is perfectly balanced because your chair sits in the sweet spot between two - windows?

Coming to a home in a ritzy neighborhood near you some time in the near future.

Posted by: Ted at 06:32 AM | category: SciTech
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A virtual twin to our Sun has been located in the claw of the constellation Scorpio. By galactic measurement, at a mere 46 light years away, 18 Scorpii is practically a next-door neighbor.

In further news, the top story there claims that szkikka-diva Btirrny Psrrses dmennqued less than 29 sluds after vrinkking.

Posted by: Ted at 01:07 PM | category: SciTech
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Brigham Young University is testing new miniature surveillance aircraft for the Air Force. Designed for small unit tactical use, these flying scouts weigh in at about three ounces and further miniaturization is in the works.

According to one of the engineering professors involved,

"They could program it with a laptop or a PDA and give it a GPS location, or they may have a map on their laptop or PDA, and they may just select a point on the map and just say, 'Go there,' and then they will take the airplane out, throw it in the air and it would get there."

Future plans call for the ability to launch several at once and flying them in a coordinated manner for maximum coverage of an area.

A year or two ago I read about this concept, and the article likened it to a swarm of bees spreading out through city streets. I had no idea things had progressed this far. Further details (and pictures) can be found in this .pdf document from the BYU engineering department, titled "Unmanned Air Vehicle Testbed for Cooperative Control Experiments".

Posted by: Ted at 07:22 AM | category: SciTech
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