Homer's Glove
Peter Homer, an unemployed former aerospace engineer, earlier this month claimed the first payoff in the NASA-backed Centennial Challenges competition by building a better spacesuit glove.

Homer, who spent 10 years working as a design engineer for various aerospace firms but who's been unemployed since February, clinched the $200,000 prize with a spacesuit glove that proved more comfortable, durable and flexible than gloves currently used by spacewalking astronauts, Discovery News reports.

NASA turned to cash-prize competitions in an effort to solve some of its technical problems with low-cost, innovative solutions. To that end, Homer bought most of the materials for his gloves at local shops in his hometown of Southwest Harbor, Maine, and on eBay, according to Alan Hayes with Volanz Aerospace, the nonprofit educational organization NASA selected to run the competition.

"When I started, I didn't know anything about making a glove," Homer said in a statement after the two-day competition. "I had to learn that, and also design and make my own test equipment, metal parts and do my own fabrication."

Peter Homer performs tests with his homemade spacesuit glove.
Credit: SPACE.com/T. Malik

Dell Dinosaur
Michael Dell, the 42-year-old chairman and chief executive of Dell Inc., donated a collection of materials this week to the Smithsonian, including his employee badge, one of the company's newest computers and a PC Limited (Dell's original brand) computer made in 1985, reports The Associated Press.

The collection of items opened this week as part of a temporary exhibit called "Treasures of American History," housed at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The objects join an Altair computer, a first-generation IBM PC and an original Apple Macintosh in the museum's collection.

Does the fact that something made in 1985 can be displayed in a history museum make anyone else feel old?

Gender-Based Taxation
Women should be taxed at a lower rate than men to help more of them into work and reduce the gender pay gap. At least, that's the idea floated by two American economists who argue that fiscal "affirmative action" is the best and most practical way to "achieve equilibrium in the workplace."

With around three quarters of American men either in work or looking for work, compared to only six out of 10 women, Alberto Alesina of Harvard University and Andrea Ichina of Bologna University argue that a two-tier tax system would make fiscal — as well as moral — sense.

"One could obtain more tax revenue with the same average tax rates by reducing the rates on women of a certain amount and increasing that of men by less," they argue.

Going Cycling? Wear a Wig
Ian Walker, a psychologist at the University of Bath in England announced results of a study "in which he played both researcher and guinea pig," according to Scientific American.

Walker hypothesized that wearing or not wearing a helmet influences how drivers share the road with a bicyclist. "Walker attached ultrasonic sensors to his bike and rode around Bath, allowing 2,300 vehicles to overtake him while he was either helmeted or naked-headed."

Accident Analysis & Prevention published Walker's findings in March, showing that when he wore a helmet, drivers typically drove an average of 3.35 inches closer to his bike than when he did not wear a helmet.

However, if he wore "a wig of long, brown locks — appearing to be a woman from behind — he was granted 2.2 inches more room to ride.

The extra leeway granted to him when he pretended to be a woman, he explained, could result from several factors, including drivers' perceptions that members of the fairer sex are less capable riders, more frail or just less frequent bikers than men.

Speaking of Hair…
Every day, three refitted Winnebago mobile homes roll into Silicon Valley high-tech companies such as Yahoo Inc., eBay Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Genentech Inc. to offer haircuts.

The service, by Onsite Haircuts, "illustrates Silicon Valley's distinctive work culture and is welcomed as firms seek to motivate workers and give them a sense of community," reports Reuters. Ultimately, experts say, such an environment boosts productivity.

Not sure how a haircut in the parking lot boosts productivity, but what the hell.

Did You Know?
Female astronauts on the space shuttle can pee standing up.

According to BBC this week:

It's all to do with air flow. The lack of gravity on the shuttle and the space station mean a water-flush system is not an option. You don't need a particularly vivid imagination to see the potential problems. Instead, on the shuttle, urine and faeces [sic.] are carried away by rapid flow of air. The good news for fans of convenience is that, on the shuttle at least, urinating standing up is possible. A funnel-on-a-hose contraption is included so that astronauts — both male and female — can urinate standing up. Or sitting down if they prefer. They just attach it to the toilet using a pivoting bracket.

Space toilets use air flow, as water flushes have drawbacks in zero gravity.
Credit: BBC

Now you know.

Killer iPod
iPods can cause cardiac implantable pacemakers to malfunction by interfering with the electromagnetic equipment monitoring the heart, according to Jay Thaker, co-author of a study presented to a meeting of heart specialists at the Heart Rhythm Society annual meeting yesterday.

Reuters reports:

The study tested the effect of the portable music devices on 100 patients, whose mean age was 77, outfitted with pacemakers. Electrical interference was detected half of the time when the iPod was held just 2 inches from the patient's chest for 5 to 10 seconds. In some cases, the iPods caused interference when held 18 inches from the chest. Interfering with the telemetry equipment caused the device to misread the heart's pacing and in one case caused the pacemaker to stop functioning altogether.

Thaker concluded that iPod interference can lead physicians to misdiagnose actual heart function.

Also, Thaker is a 17-year-old student at Okemos High School in Okemos, Michigan.

In Somewhat Related News…
"Battle dancing" can also cause cardiac arrest and, consequently, death.

DIY 3-D Fabrication Machine Makes Sugar Sculptures
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories' 3-D fabricator is now fully operational and has been used to print several large, low-resolution, objects out of pure sugar.

According to Evil Made Scientist Labs via Digg:

The general idea of our build process — that of stacking solid two-dimensional printed layers — is actually common to most solid freeform fabrication methods. Our machine employs what we believe is a fairly novel low-cost technology to accomplish this: selective hot air sintering and melting (SHASAM).

The process is much like a low-cost version of Selective Laser Sintering or Selective Laser Melting, which are commercial processes used for plastic and direct metal printing. However, rather than using a high-power CO2 or YAG laser — $5k and up — the online DIYers use hot air created with the help of a $10 heating element. Trading off a laser for a heat gun provides lower resolution but at much lower cost. The approach is different from other fab projects such as Fab@Home in that it has a comparatively large printable volume, but less need for precision and high resolution.

An Integer of Your Very Own (or for Ma)
The guys at the anti-DRM blog Freedom To Tinker are handing out 128-bit integers to anyone who wants one.

The bloggers intend to highlight the fact that a number of powerful entertainment and technology companies recently asked several Web sites to remove a similar 128-bit string from their pages, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as the string in question can be used to decrypt — and copy — HD-DVD disks. (Of course, such a heavy-handed approach only prompted bloggers to republish and distribute the string ALL over the Web. In the case of Digg, the entire front page comprised only stories that in one way or another were related to the hex number.)

Naturally, the Freedom To Tinker project-issued integers were also used to encrypt something (in this case, a haiku poem). This means, should anyone try to reproduce your personal string, you should be able to make them remove it using the DMCA as legal ammo.

So how's about giving mama a shiny new integer of her very own for Mother's Day?

The Milky Way as Seen From Death Valley:

Click image for larger view.
Credit: Dan Duriscoe, U.S. National Park Service (via Astronomy Picture of the Day, May 8)

The Snowflake Cluster versus the Cone Nebula:

Click image for larger view.
Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, P. S. Teixeira (via Astronomy Picture of the Day, May 9)


Cheers.