Texas TSA pat down ban may be back - The Hill's Transportation Report

Texas TSA pat down ban may be back - The Hill's Transportation Report

Invent the REAL Tricorder for Next $10 Million Dollar X-Prize

Doesn't matter what version of Star Trek you love. From TOS(i.e. The Original Series), through the movies and Next Generation era shows and back to the future with the prequel series Star Trek-Enterprise; there are certain elements that are common to all those shows.

The Tricorder was a plot device to help move the story on as a quick reference tools for Spock or Dr. McCoy. Now in the early years of the 21st century, we have our own communicators and Data PADDS (i.e. cell phones and computer tablets now). But we are still missing out on a fully functional Tricorder.

Here is where the X Prize Foundation and Qualcomm joined up to develope a new competition to enhance health care. The Tricorder X-Prize intends to extend the reach of health information and to provide more services to more people.

Quote: The collaboration between the X PRIZE Foundation and Qualcomm will bring together experts in technology usability, wireless sensors, cloud computing and mobile health to accelerate the convergence of these fields. The winning tool will enable consumers in any location to quickly and effectively assess health conditions, determine if they need professional help and answer the question, "What do I do next?" End Quote.

Quote: Eugene Wesley "Rod" Roddenberry, Jr., son of Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, commented, "It is great to see two amazing organizations -- the X PRIZE Foundation and Qualcomm -- bring the technology of Star Trek to life and make the Tricorder a reality for people everywhere." End Quote.

For greater details, just copy and paste the link below.

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Ref.

1. Commercial Space Watch. "X-Prize and Qualcomm Announce $10 Million Tricorder Prize" press release. May 27, 2011.(http://www.comspacewatch.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=33698).

2. Star Trek (in all its forms). Tricorder reference.

New Egyptian Pyramids Discovered by Infra-Red Satellite Images.

Seventeen lost pyramids and buildings have been discovered in new infra-red images of Egypt in the Saqqara (Sakkara) region. This is the location of the famous city of Tanis.

US Egyptologist Dr. Sarah Parcak confirmed news reports of the new discoveries. More than 1,000 tombs and about 3,000 ancient settlements were also revealed by the satellite survey.

The satellite is in orbit about 700 kilometers in altitute, and the onboard camera can locate objects of about one meter in size. The use of Infra-red imaging to highlight different materials under the surface.

Ancient Egyptians built their buildings out of mud brick. A material that is denser than the soil that surrounds it.

All this material will be presented in a new documentary enttitled Egypt's Lost Cities.

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Ref.

1. BBC. "Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red satellite images" by Frances Cronin. May 24, 2011. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13522957).

Last Flight of my PC-9

Hello blogverse-

I just lost my one and only glow engine powered radio control model airplane today. Seagull Models semi-scale PC-9.

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I was having my friend Ricky fly the model while I shot the video.

My eRC B-25 Flight Videos

These videos were shot on May 7th this year at the Lubbock Oddball RC Society flying site of my eRC B-25J that comes form Hobby Lobby.

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On the maiden flight, I flew without the engine cowlings on the engine nacelles. I wanted max cooling air to reach both motors and ESCs.

LORCS Battlefield Gets Some Street Lights

Well, some of us are getting the itch to get back to work on the RC Tank battlefield. Today, we did some cleaning of of junk. Planned on using some concrete blocks to make some buildings for the city. That way, we don't have to keep picking up and carrying in the buildings once the day's fighting is done.

Finally, Wal-Mart had some real inexpensive solar power yard lights ($1.00 each!). I bought the first six and then later, Ricky purchased aobut 10-12 more and we set them up along the bridge and the main roads in the french town. The pictures to the left here show two daylight snapshots with the solar power light posts set up and in the middle picture, two concrete blocks joined together to form a future building - a store of some kind maybe? The final, nighttime picture shows how effective the lighting is for the battlefield.

The pictures with this post were taken from my new cellphone camera, a Sony Ericsson Xperia. I then email the pictures to myself for eventual use in this blog.

Ninja Robots by Lockheed Martin. What will they come up next?

I FINALLY have something of interest to post on this blog for April...

You will have to read the full article, but Lockheed Martin is working on some non-flying robots for the military. For jobs such as surveillance or dropping off a payload of some kind.

In the article, this prototype robot looks more like a radio control race car than what the title of the article said (i.e. Ninja). Pictured at left is a image download off of the Internet showing Sony's Robo Pets playing soccer in the RoboCup Japan Open in Osaka, Japan.

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Ref.

1. Christian Science Monitor. "Lockheed Martin developing ninja robots" by Jason Schreier. April 15, 2011. (http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/0415/Lockheed-Martin-developing-ninja-robots).

2. Image with article. Sony's pet robots playing soccer in the RoboCup Japan Open in Osaka, Japan. photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP.