SpaceX continues to make progress in private space exploration. Their vehicle called Grasshopper took off, and then landed straight up! It looks like special effects from a movie. The demonstration proves that a rocket can land intact.
On Thursday, March 7, 2013, SpaceX’s Grasshopper doubled its highest leap to date to rise 24 stories or 80.1 meters (262.8 feet), hovering for approximately 34 seconds and landing safely using closed loop thrust vector and throttle control. Grasshopper touched down with its most accurate precision thus far on the centermost part of the launch pad. At touchdown, the thrust to weight ratio of the vehicle was greater than one, proving a key landing algorithm for Falcon 9. The test was completed at SpaceX’s rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas.
The Yitzhak Rabin High School in Kfar Saba, Israel, collected information from teachers on junior class students, supposedly to identify troublemakers ahead of a field trip to Poland. The teacher collating the information on a spreadsheet accidentally emailed the internal document to the students who signed up for the trip.
Though some students were described as "pleasant" and "quiet," many others were given insulting labels such as "big baby," "sicko," and "not too bright."
One student was said to "have a voice like a 4-year-old girl," while another was flagged for having "a thing" for boys.
Students showed up at the school this morning with their individual put-downs taped to their shirts.
One of the students who found themselves on the infamous spreadsheet said she would have a hard time looking her teachers in the eye after this. "We are very angry," she told YNet.
Israel's Ministry of Education is launching an investigation into the incident. Link -via Daily of the Day
Researchers at King's College London were able to grow teeth from human epithelial cells taken from gums. They grew these teeth in the mouths of mice, which is a long way from growing them in humans, so don't expect to regrow your teeth if you're already on the way to losing them.
In the latest study they took human epithelial cells from the gums of human patients, grew more of them in the lab and mixed them with mesenchyme cells from mice.
The mesenchyme cells were cultured to be "inducing" - they instruct the epithelial cells to start growing into a tooth.
Transplanting the cell combination into mice, researchers were able to grow hybrid human/mouse teeth that had viable roots, they reported in the Journal of Dental Research.
Unfortunately, we don't yet have a photograph of a mouse flashing his toothy hybrid mouse-human smile. Link -via Gizmodo
Making a music video for your upcoming bar mitzvah is becoming a thing, but this one stands out from the crowd. Jorel is turning 13, and he will become a man next month. If the party is anything like the Queen-themed save-the-date video, it will be rockin'! -via Viral Viral Videos
Our most ancient, most reliable sense -- the sense of smell -- may be more simple, more complicated, and more intriguing than most scientists realize.
Several researchers have spent forty years and more learning how to measure exactly what a frog's nose tells the frog's brain. They want to understand how the frog's brain knows what the nose is saying.
They have found things that are different from what anyone expected. And different from what most biologists believe about how noses talk to brains.
Do Frogs and People Smell Differently?
Why a frog? Because it's been easier (and most, but these days not all, would say more palatable) to experiment with a frog's nose in a frog than with a person's in a person.
The only way to tell what's really going on in the system -- the olfactory system -- is to measure what's happening there while a creature is smelling a smell. (You can learn a lot by removing pieces and studying them outside the body. But each piece is in there for a reason -- and can behave differently when it's been yanked out.)
It is possible to monitor individual cells in the business end of a nose, in the frog. People have gotten detailed information about how those cells -- the sensory neurons -- actually behave when they get a whiff of something.
Frogs were the first to reveal their nasal secrets, because they were the easiest to work with. Now rats and other animals are being studied this way, too. How much does the frog nose-and-brain tell us about the human nose-and-brain? Probably quite a lot. The olfactory system seems organized pretty much the same way in amphibia (frogs, salamanders, newts), in mammals (rats, mice, probably humans, too) and even in some of the simplest eukaryotes (a eukaryote, remember, is any creature whose cells each have a nucleus.)
Nyasuke is an interceptor extraordinaire! You'e not going to get a ball past him, without at least a deflection. This is the same cat that impressed you with his high jumping abilities last year. Oh yeah, Nyasuke has his own blog, too! Link -via Daily Picks and Flicks
The Skytree broadcast tower in Tokyo is the world's tallest tower. It was carefully designed to withstand Japan's earthquakes and other natural disasters, and it gives a whole new look to the city's skyline.
It towers above the surrounding buildings, more than double the height of its neighbors. In fact, there’s only one structure on Earth taller: Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. Completed on February 29, 2012 and opened to the public in May that year, the Tokyo Skytree broadcasting tower soars 2,080 feet (634 meters) into the sky, with the top sometimes obscured by clouds. Although it misses out on being the tallest structure in the world, the Tokyo Skytree can take comfort in the fact that it is the world’s tallest tower.
Get a closeup look at this wonder of the modern world at Tech Graffiti. Link
In 1968, a teen magazine called FaVE, which received many letters addressed to various celebrities, published a letter addressed to Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame. The unnamed young girl said she felt like an outcast, as she was biracial and felt rejected by both whites and blacks. She ended it with "I guess I'll never have any friends." Leonard Nimoy replied in the next issue, speaking of Mr. Spock's experience as a child of a Vulcan father and a human mother. A small excerpt:
"Spock learned he could save himself from letting prejudice get him down. He could do this by really understanding himself and knowing his own value as a person. He found he was equal to anyone who might try to put him down -equal in his own unique way.
"You can do this, too, if you realize the difference between popularity and true greatness. It has been said that 'popularity' is merely the crumbs of greatness.
"When you think of people who are truly great and have improved the world, you can see that they are people who have realized that they didn't need popularity because they knew they had something special to offer the world, no matter how small that offering seemed. And they offered it and it was accepted with peace and love. It's all in having the patience to find what you yourself have to offer the world that's really uniquely yours.
The reply covers two pages, which you can read in scans of the magazine at My Star Trek Scrapbook. Link -via Buzzfeed
The first episode of a web series called School of Thrones imagines prom time at Westeros Valley High School. I've never seen Game of Thrones, but I've seen a lot of high school movies, and this gets that part right, at least. May contain spoilers if you aren't current with the TV series. You can follow new episodes every week at the School of Thrones YouTube channel. Link -via Metafilter
If you ever laughed at someone who put a Post-it note over their webcam lens because you thought they were being paranoid, you might want to think about doing it yourself. You don't even need to be a skilled hacker to spy on unsuspecting users, as the software for doing it is available, and connections to entertaining users are traded around. The malware is a remote administration tool (RAT) that can attack your computer, allowing someone you don't know to access your files, your activities, and you. They can also taunt you by controlling what you see.
If you are unlucky enough to have your computer infected with a RAT, prepare to be sold or traded to the kind of person who enters forums to ask, "Can I get some slaves for my rat please? I got 2 bucks lol I will give it to you :b" At that point, the indignities you will suffer—and the horrific website images you may see—will be limited only by the imagination of that most terrifying person: a 14-year-old boy with an unsupervised Internet connection.
The Post-it note idea isn't a cure-all, since hackers can still access your files. The kicker is that this technology does have legitimate uses, which opens the door for abuse. Learn about this creepy hobby and how you can protect yourself at Ars Technica. Link -via Metafilter
Many celebrities go by a stage name that is far removed from the name they were born with. In this Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss, you're challenged to recall ten celebrities' birth names. The easy part is that it is a multiple-choice quiz; the hard part is that some of those choices are strangely similar, but only one is correct. I scored 90%, because that's how many I knew. Link
DevianbtART member Hogan McLaughlin drew a series of images that imagine the characters of the TV series Game of Thrones as gothic animated figures from a Tim Burton film. See a gallery of them at Unreality. Link
Imperial College in London unveiled their plans for a new campus called Imperial West. An architectural model is customary for such events, but this one is a cake! Cake artist Michelle Wibowo of Michelle Sugar Art created the edible sculpture, which took 80 hours and 66 pounds of sugar -and some broccoli for the trees. Nice looking campus -and I bet it was tasty, too! See more pictures at the artist's blog. Link-Thanks Michael Christian!
The Fangweng Restaurant in Hubei Province, China, is located conveniently near the popular Sanyou Cave tourist destination. But what may strike you as more impressive is that the eatery appears to hang on the side of a cliff! If you didn't know this ahead of time, you might be surprised, because the entrance gives no clue. You must walk down a passageway that juts out over the Happy Valley of the Xiling Gorge to get to the dining hall. Once there, most of the tables are safely inside a cave, with just a few on a ledge over the chasm. Read about this restaurant and see more pictures at Spot Cool Stuff. Link -via the Presurfer
You think you have trouble walking on ice, snow, and rocks -try living in Antarctica with a body built for swimming. Luckily, none of these falls seem to have ended in serious injury. Maybe blubber is good for cushioning as well as insulation! This compilation is from the BBC show Penguins - Spy in the Huddle. -via Amy Oops
