Samsung Safety Truck
Have you ever found yourself driving behind a semi-trailer truck? If you’re on a single-lane highway or road, it can be a nightmare. Even though the truck is driving relatively slowly, you cannot overtake it due to its size, and because you cannot see what is happening in front of the truck.
However, Samsung has developed a solution that may make this problem a thing of the past.
Argentina’s statistics on traffic accidents are among the highest in the world, with most of these accidents occurring on two-lane roads and particularly in situations of overtaking. With this in mind, Samsung developed a technology for trucks that seeks to enrich the lives of people through innovation. But more than that, this time the goal is more ambitious: to save lives.
How Does it Work?
The Safety Truck consists of a wireless camera attached to the front of the truck, which is connected to a video wall made out of four exterior monitors located on the back of the truck. The monitors give drivers behind the truck a view of what is going on ahead, even in the dark of night.
This allows drivers to have a better view when deciding whether it is safe to overtake. Another advantage of the Safety Truck is that it may reduce the risk of accidents caused by sudden braking or animals crossing the road.
Samsung led the prototype development by providing large format display samples, and conducted a test with a local B2B client
Next Steps
Currently, the prototype truck built is no longer operational. So far Samsung has been able to confirm that the technology works and that this idea can definitely save the lives of many people.
The next step is to perform the corresponding tests in order to comply with the existing national protocols and obtain the necessary permits and approvals. For this, Samsung is working together with safe driving NGOs and the government.
Russia Wants Bulgarians to Stop Painting Soviet Monuments To Look Like American Superheroes [via Francke]
According to a report by the Moscow Times, pranksters in Bulgaria are repainting Soviet-era monuments so that Soviet military heroes look like American Superheroes. Needless to say, the Russians are not too happy about it: Russia is demanding that Bulgaria try harder to prevent vandalism of Soviet monuments, after yet another monument to Soviet troops in Sofia was spray-painted, ITAR-Tass reported.
The Russian Embassy in Bulgaria has issued a note demanding that its former Soviet-era ally clean up the monument in Sofia’s Lozenets district, identify and punish those responsible, and take “exhaustive measures” to prevent similar attacks in the future, the news agency reported.
Asteroid strikes 'increase threefold over last 300m years' [via Nina Reznick]
Planet and moon have been hit by more asteroids in the past 290m years than at any time in previous billion
The rate at which asteroids are slamming into Earth has nearly tripled since the dinosaurs first roamed, according to a survey of the scars left behind. Researchers worked out the rate of asteroid strikes on the moon and the Earth and found that in the past 290m years the number of collisions had increased dramatically.
Before that time, the planet suffered an asteroid strike about once every 3m years, but since then the rate has risen to once nearly every 1m years. The figures are based on collisions that left craters at least 10km (6.2 miles) wide.
Writing in the journal Science, the researchers describe how they turned to the moon to examine the violent history of Earth. The Earth and moon are hit by asteroids with similar frequency, but impact craters on Earth are often erased or obscured by erosion and the shifting continents which churn up the crust. On the geologically inactive moon, impact craters are preserved almost indefinitely, making them easier to examine.
Using images from Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the scientists studied the “rockiness” of the debris surrounding craters on the moon. Rocks thrown up by asteroid impacts are steadily ground down by the constant rain of micrometeorites that pours down on the moon. This means the state of the rocks around a crater can be used to date it.
The Gay Penguins of Australia
Two male penguins are raising a baby whose gender is unknown.
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| Sphen, Magic and Sphengic.CreditSea Life Sydney Aquarium |
SYDNEY, Australia — It was a young penguin colony, and all but one of the couples were pretty bad parents.
They would get distracted from their nests, go for a swim or play, and so neglected eggs were getting cold, likely never to hatch. This was normal for inexperienced penguins, and the aquarium managers didn’t worry. Next mating season would be better.
One couple, though, was extraordinary. Not because they were the colony’s only gay penguins, though they were, but because Sphen and Magic looked like they would make great, diligent, careful egg-warming parents. They made the biggest nest, and they sat on it constantly.
Curious, the aquarium managers gave the two males a dummy egg. They took to it. And so then, when a particularly negligent heterosexual penguin couple looked to be leaving an egg exposed (females lay two, but usually only one survives), the aquarium workers figured they would give it to Sphen and Magic.
In October, that egg hatched. Now the chick of a gay penguin union is waddling around an ice enclosure by the touristy docks in Sydney.
When Sphen and Magic became a couple, Australia had just gone through a bitter battle about whether gay marriage should be legal. The human gay marriage debate had brought out thorny personal and religious tensions. These two diligent Gentoos, unaware of the political heat around their courtship, became a larger symbol for the country. If a penguin colony could figure this out, a human nation certainly could.
Up Yours [via Nina Reznick]
This imaginative gadget was designed to get operatives out of difficult situations.
AMONG THE ESPIONAGE ARTIFACTS ON display at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., is the rectal tool kit: a tightly sealed, pill-shaped container full of tools that could aid an escape from various sticky situations. This gadget was issued to CIA operatives during the height of the Cold War, according to museum curator and historian Vince Houghton.
The tools inside the kit include drill bits, saws and knives. “What I see when I look at the rectal tool kit is a great example of problem solving in the intelligence world,” Houghton says. It had to be made with materials that could not splinter or create sharp edges that could injure users. Additionally, it had to seal tightly to not let anything seep in or poke out. According to Houghton, the kits supplied spies with all the tools to break out of a jail cell, and “sometimes this was a matter of life and death.”
Read more
AMONG THE ESPIONAGE ARTIFACTS ON display at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., is the rectal tool kit: a tightly sealed, pill-shaped container full of tools that could aid an escape from various sticky situations. This gadget was issued to CIA operatives during the height of the Cold War, according to museum curator and historian Vince Houghton.
The tools inside the kit include drill bits, saws and knives. “What I see when I look at the rectal tool kit is a great example of problem solving in the intelligence world,” Houghton says. It had to be made with materials that could not splinter or create sharp edges that could injure users. Additionally, it had to seal tightly to not let anything seep in or poke out. According to Houghton, the kits supplied spies with all the tools to break out of a jail cell, and “sometimes this was a matter of life and death.”
Read more
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