NOAA/PMEL’s first North Pole Web Cam was deployed on April 28, 2002. In order to conserve power and reduce satellite transmission time, web cams are programmed to send a limited number of images per day from the North Pole. The cameras are dynamically programmable, so PMEL can communicate with the cameras to change the configuration [...]
Using little more than a webcam and a laser, a young engineer has built a cheap 3D scanner that dovetails perfectly with the Makerbot and other desktop fabricators. It could be used as part of a copying system that would allow hobbyists to duplicate solid objects at home. “The technology exists to do this kind [...]
Vienna, Austria-based science writer Chelsea Wald is taking part in a two-week Marine Biological Laboratory journalism fellowship at Toolik Field Station, an environmental research post inside the Arctic Circle. To see the current conditions in Toolik, check out the Webcam. It’s easy to hate the cottongrass tussock (officially Eriophorum vaginatum). Everyone from early Alaskan explorers [...]
Mere telephone calls aren’t good enough? Video calls don’t push the envelope far enough? Japanese researchers may have just what you need: a life-size robot that speaks, moves, and blinks your phone calls at you. Called the Telenoid R1, the robot has sensors to transmit the movements and sounds of your caller and motors that [...]
There’s a foul stench at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter. A college spokesman says “Perry” the corpse flower began to open — and smell — around 11 p.m. Thursday. They expect Perry will be fully open sometime Friday. The rare flower, with the scientific name of titan arum, emits a pungent odor that’s been [...]
The hardy team of biologists stationed on the Farallon Islands, a minuscule set of outcroppings in the Pacific just west of San Francisco, suffers a lot of inconveniences. After all, they’re living on islands made up mostly of rocks, drinking filtered rainwater and using solar power that wanes during the short days of winter. [...]
This real-time ultraviolet image of the Sun measures a mid-temperature region of the Sun in a transition zone between the surface and the roughly 1-million-degree corona (the Sun’s atmosphere), Gurman says. Brighter and darker features are all manifestations of the Sun’s magnetic field. The brightest areas indicating strong magnetic fields. Dark stringy areas cooler than [...]
Using an off-the-shelf digital camera, Rice University biomedical engineers and researchers from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center have created an inexpensive device that is powerful enough to let doctors easily distinguish cancerous cells from healthy cells simply by viewing the LCD monitor on the back of the camera. The results of the [...]
Hurricane Alex continues to make a steady course over the southwestern Gulf of Mexico towards the northeastern Mexico and extreme southern Texas Gulf Coast. A few bands of showers and thunderstorms are already reaching the Texas coast, and conditions will continue to deteriorate Wednesday. Hurricane Warnings are in effect from Baffin Bay, Texas to [...]
Golden Gate Park – Wide View PenguinCam. View of the Penguins in the Golden Gate Park. The California Academy of Sciences is a world-class scientific and cultural institution based in San Francisco. Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, is a large urban park consisting of 1,017 acres (4.12 km2; 1.589 sq mi) of [...]