Monday, February 4, 2008

Um, wow. This video comes from a test firing of the Navy’s Elecromagnetic Railgun (EMRG), which was carried out yesterday at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia. The gun—which generates a powerful electromagnetic field to hurl projectiles at extremely high speeds—is rated at 32 megajoules, but the railgun engineers have to work up to that number slowly: this test was designed to reach a record-setting muzzle energy rating of 10 MJ. (The actual number turned out to be 10.64 MJ, according to Collin Babb with the Office of Naval Research.)
I like your idea, but you should take it one step further. People generally don't care how strong their signal is, just whether it works or not. So, really, we don't need bars, we just need one icon to tell us if it has a strong-enough signal or not. For those technophiles that have super-PDA phones, they should have an app that gives them every concievable piece of data on their signal, including strength, data rate, cell tower number, etc. They love that stuff! But the other 95% of us just need a "yes" or a "no."

I mean, honestly, are you really not going to make that call if you only have one bar, and wait until later for a stronger signal? No. You're going to do what everyone does, which is try to make the call anyway just to see if maybe it goes through. The only reason we need the signal indicator, at all, is so we can look down at our phone, AFTER our call fails, and figure out why it failed. So, my vote is for "yes" or "no" and let's leave it at that.

Partnership between bbc.co.uk and AbilityNet

My Web, My Way is a new website which aims to help arm our audience with the tools and understanding which will enable them to make the most of the world-wide web (not just bbc.co.uk), whatever their ability or disability.

The site provides advice and help to all those people who would benefit from making changes to their browser, operating system, or computer to be able to view bbc.co.uk and the rest of the web in a more accessible way.

The site is not only for those with disabilities (visual, hearing, motor, cognitive or learning impairments) but also, for example, for those people with minor vision impairments who would not consider themselves to have a disability.

The site also provides a guide to getting the most of the accessibility features that BBC New Media are increasingly putting into bbc.co.uk.

The site has been developed and maintained through a partnership between bbc.co.uk and AbilityNet, a leading UK computing and disability charity. It is based on AbilityNet's origina

variable frequency transformer

America cannot produce all the power it drinks. It has to get help from its neighboring countries like Mexico to satisfy her. So power transfer between two grids must take place.

Circuits employing semi conductor devices were used for this purpose. But there is a problem. The power flowing in grid is in the form of AC-alternating current. This AC cannot be controlled using semiconductors. For that purpose we convert the AC to DC-Direct Current. Using the circuits we can alter any parameters of the power such as amplitude, frequency, phase etc. After that, DC is converted back to AC, ie we synthesize AC. But this AC is not as good as natural AC. The problem is harmonic distortions. As we change DC to AC a spike appears at each pulse, which is a noise and is undesired, but hard to eliminate

about new technology

Americans have always been on the move. Perhaps this trait comes from the fact that we're all descended from pioneers of some sort or another, but the fact is that even now, we hate to stay still. Which is why gadgets that allow us to stay connected and productive while we're on the move are so popular