Month: June 2019

Enlarge / Wind turbines near Palm Springs, Calif. (credit: nate2b / Flickr)

A remarkable thing happened in the US in April. For the first time ever, renewable electricity generation beat out coal-fired electricity generation on a national level, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA). While renewable energy—including hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass—constituted 23 percent of the nation's power supply, coal-fired electricity only contributed 20 percent of our power supply.

There are seasonal reasons this happened in April. Wind power generation tends to be higher in spring and fall, hydroelectric generation usually peaks as winter snow melts, and lengthening days mean more solar power can be fed to the grid.

In addition, people use less electricity in spring, as it's not cold enough to need a lot of heating and not warm enough to require lots of air conditioner use. Coal-fired power plant owners, expecting this low demand, often use spring and fall to take their power plants offline for regularly scheduled maintenance.

Enlarge (credit: AntonioGuillem)

On Wednesday, a Vice article alerted the world to the creation of DeepNude, a computer program that uses neural networks to transform an image of a clothed woman into a realistic rendering of what she would look like naked.

The software attracted widespread condemnation. This is an “invasion of sexual privacy,” legal scholar Danielle Citron told Vice.

The software's anonymous creator explained how it worked to Vice's Samantha Cole:

Enlarge / Batter must be distributed evenly to get uniform thickness in a perfect crepe. (credit: Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images)

Order a crepe from a professional vendor and they'll likely cook it on a blade, a flat heated surface that distributes the batter evenly to get just the right consistency in the final crepe: uniform thickness with no unsightly lumps. But home cooks typically make crepes in a frying pan, which can make the process a wee bit trickier.

Still, no worries, all you home-cooking crepe lovers—physics has come to the rescue. According to the latest experiment results of two scientists, the trick is all in the wrist. They described their research in a recent paper published in Physical Review Fluids.

It all started when co-author Mathieu Sellier of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand expressed frustration to his wife that he could never get his homemade crepes to come out just right. "My wife said, 'Being a fluid dynamicist, you should be able to fix this problem,'" he told New Scientist. He found a willing collaborator in Edouard Boujo, a physicist at the Ecole Polytechnique in France. They set out to investigate, conducting multiple experiments making yummy crepes for their respective daughters, who were naturally delighted to participate in the scientific process.

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  A classic SUV profile [credit: BradleyWarren Photography ]

Back in the days when BMW attended auto shows, it would show off a dizzying array of vehicles. Coupes, roadsters, hybrids, SUVs, fastbacks—you name it, and BMW sold it. Yet there was one glaring omission as one wandered through BMW's cornucopia of cars: a three-row SUV. If you were a fan of the Ultimate Driving Machine but had outgrown the X5 due to an accumulation of children and/or stuff, there was no choice but to look elsewhere for your luxury SUV needs. With the launch of the full-size, three-row X7, BMW has not only given its fans a reason to upgrade—it has built an SUV that anyone looking at a GLC, Q7, XC90, or Range Rover Discovery should look long and hard at.

At first glance, the X7 cuts a familiar profile. It has the same general outlines as the compact X3 and mid-size X5, but this vehicle has nicer proportions than either. At the front is a super-sized kidney grille bracketed by a pair of slim LED headlights. It's classic SUV silhouette from the side, with the most noticeable feature being the longer rear doors, designed to make entry into the third row easier. The back side sports slim LED lights and a chrome bar that spans the rear liftgate, a design feature borrowed from the 7-series sedans.

No matter what your viewing angle is, one thing is crystal clear: this is a serious, full-size SUV built for doing full-size SUV things. For most folks contemplating full-size SUVs, that means being able to transport six or more passengers in ample comfort. The X7 excels here. But what about going off-road?

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  Standing at the top row of the MOCR looking forward. The consoles are all lit via internal LEDs powered by a Crestron commercial lighting system, and the positions are all dressed to appear as if the controllers had all gotten up mid-shift and walked out and left all their stuff behind. [credit: Lee Hutchinson ]

HOUSTON—Following the completion of a multi-year, multi-million-dollar restoration, NASA's historic Apollo Mission Operations Control Room 2 ("MOCR 2") is set to reopen to the public next week. The $5 million in funding for the restoration was partially provided by NASA, but the majority of the money was donated by the city of Webster, the Houston suburb where the Johnson Space Center is located. Another half-million in funding came from the general public via a Kickstarter campaign (disclosure: your humble author was a backer).

For the past two years, historians and engineers from the Kansas Cosmosphere's Spaceworks team have been lovingly restoring and detailing the 1,200-pound (544kg) historic sage green Ford-Philco consoles that populated the control room—repairing damage from decades of casual neglect and also adding in the correct control panels so that each console now correctly mirrors how it would have been configured for an Apollo flight.

Ars was invited to view the restored MOCR 2 last week as the final finishing restoration touches were still being applied. We conducted some interviews and shot some photos while technicians and construction workers bustled around us, hammering and screwing the last bits and bobs into place. The room's lighting system was in the process of being worked on, and the room flickered several times between fully illuminated daytime lighting and dim twilight—providing an even more accurate glimpse of what it might have looked like during an actual mission.