David Guerra
Mr. Porfido
Web and Design
2/26/15
Period-7

Jet Packs

Jetpack manufacturer Martin Aircraft of Christchurch, New Zealand, went public Tuesday on the Australian Stock Exchange. Stock prices will soar, because who doesn't want a jetpack? After raising $21 million in its initial public offering, the company is promising 2016 delivery of its first model: a contraption boasting a reported 30 minutes of flight time at a max speed of nearly 46 miles per hour and altitudes of up to 3,000 feet.  

David Guerra

Mr. Porfido

Web & Design
2/17/15
Period-7

MEGA DROUGHT

There is no precedent in contemporary weather records for the kinds of droughts the country's West will face, if greenhouse gas emissions stay on course, A NASA study said. No precedent even in the past 1,000 years. The feared droughts would cover most of the western half of the United States, the Central Plains and the Southwest. Those regions have suffered severe drought in recent years. But it doesn't compare in the slightest to the 'mega droughts' likely to hit them before the century is over due to global warming. Even if emissions drop moderately, droughts in those regions will get much worse than they are now, NASA said.

Tech Article 2/12/15

David Guerra
Mr. Porfido
Web & Design
2/12/15
Period-7

Mist Cloud

We may all feel like we're under a cloud from time to time, but in hot and dry climates having your own personal misting cloud is as uplifting as it can get.

In Dubai, the Gulf State mega-city situated in one of the hottest parts of the world, the benefits of evaporative cooling have long been known. Neighboring Saudi Arabia is already one of the world's largest dairy producers and its massive indoor herds are kept at an even 21 and 23 degrees Celsius with gigantic misters. Now one group of designers is reinventing the technology for human beings, devising a system that uses motion tracking and ceiling-mounted misters to provide each pedestrian with their own cooling spray.

David Guerra
Mr. Porfido
Web&Design
2/5/15
Period-6

Ancient Scrolls Unraveled by X-Rays

For years, researchers have used X-ray technology to get a deeper look at anything from molecules to ancient tombs. Basically, you blast an object with X-rays, and different elements in the object reflect those X-ray beams back at different patterns. However, the Herculaneum scrolls presented a unique challenge: The scrolls were scorched and sealed, and the text was written with black, carbon-based ink. The current X-ray techniques weren't enough detect the pattern variations between the ink and the papyrus, so researchers tried something new.

Their new approach, called X-ray phase-contrast tomography (XPCT), builds a higher-definition image by detecting the slight relief between the letters and the papyrus. The letters rise just one hundred microns above the papyrus, but that’s enough to build a clearer picture than any other technique.