Monday, April 30, 2012

Heidi Klum to Launch Collection at Babies R Us

This fall, the Project Runway judge and mom of four is launching a baby and kid collection, Truly Scrumptious, at Babies R Us.

matt leinart cyber monday 2011 cyber monday 2011 turkey pot pie turkey pot pie southern university regenesis

A Yosemite Time-Lapse So Beautiful It Looks Fake [Video]

When you love the story you are telling, it shows. It can't be faked. Such is the case with this breath-taking time-lapse video of Yosemite and the Sierras. It took filmmaker Shawn Reeder two years of shooting to make this staggering piece of beauty he calls Yosemite Range of Light. Go full screen HD or go home. [Shawn Reeder via The Atlantic via Peta Pixel via Laughing Squid] More »


chipper jones dancing with the stars cast mickael pietrus heart transplant the international preppers geraldo

Akamai: Global Average Connection Speed Dropped 14% In Q4 2011, Down 5.3% in U.S.

state_of_the_internetAccording to Akamai's latest State of the Internet report, the average Internet connection speed around the world was 2.3 Mbps by the end of 2011. That's down about 14% from the previous quarter. In the U.S., which ranks thirteenth in this report, the average connection speed in the last quarter of 2011 dropped 5.3% to 5.8 Mbps. In total, eight out of the top 10 countries in Akamai's report saw their average connection speed decline compared to Q3 2011. Worldwide, speeds declined in 93 of the countries included in this report and only increased in 41 countries.

colts colts big ten tournament 2012 dennis quaid bruce weber fired notorious big biggie smalls lyrics

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

How Can Missoula's Top Specialist in Women's Health Physical ...

Providing specialized women?s health physical therapy requires extra education, experience, and drive to provide passionate and considerate care. Meet women?s health physical therapy expert, Tara Mund, DPT.

In a recent interview, Tara described new and helpful science that she applies in her work with her growing women?s health patients at Alpine Physical Therapy.

In the interview, I asked Tara this question: When people think of women?s health, are they aware what a specialist in women?s health physical therapy does to help their patients? She replied: ?I think it?s becoming mores, but I think there?s a lot of people who just don?t know that [certain] physical therapists can help address these issues and that were out there to help.?

Which issues? Stress and urge incontinence, pelvic pain, pelvic organ prolapse, fecal incontinence, among other conditions.

To discover what a specialist in this area can do, join Tara?s interview by clicking the video player below.

For more information about Tara and how she can help you or your loved ones, please visit our women?s health webpage at www.HerHealthMT.com by clicking here.

boston globe google maps 8 bit mirror mirror robyn texas relays meniscus the colony

When AI Gets Too Smart, It'll Be Dumb Again [Humor]

What will we do when artificial intelligence becomes self-aware? Nothing! It'll be too caught up with the existential issues that sentience brings with it to do anything more than marvel at its own intelligence. Maybe. [xkcd] More »


jennie garth peter facinelli chicago bears marques colston buffalo bills jessica simpson golden state warriors free agents nfl 2012

For entrant in Sikorsky helicopter contest, a lift of faith

Up, up and not quite away.

That's the frustrating story of human-powered helicopters and the prize coveted by virtually everyone who has designed the cumbersome beasts and tried to get them aloft.

So far, nobody has come up with a muscle-driven machine capable of hovering for 1 minute and rising 3 meters ? requirements for the Igor I. Sikorsky Prize, an honor the helicopter industry has dangled before aeronautics buffs for 32 years. The prize has been offered so long that the booty, initially $10,000, became embarrassingly small. Now it's $250,000 and still unclaimed.

Despite the skeptics, Neal Saiki, a 45-year-old Santa Cruz engineer, chases the Sikorsky dream, building unlikely craft that are part bicycle, part super-sized pinwheel.

"We're so interested in bigger and faster, we're so used to going to the moon or looking at stars that are light years away that this goes against the grain," he says. "But it's one of the last aviation frontiers."

The Sikorsky has gnawed at him since 1989, when he led a team at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo that built the first muscle-driven chopper to get off the ground. But the 7.1-second flight, which soared all of 8 inches off the floor of a Cal Poly gym, wasn't nearly enough to take home the prize.

Still, it was a heady day. Onlookers cheered as Greg McNeil, a fellow engineering student and bike racer, pedaled furiously. Saiki, grasping a safety rope at the end of a 100-foot rotor, urged him on, twirling his hand over his head and yelling, "Up! Up! Up!" Clad in a white dinner jacket and black bow tie, Saiki looked as if he had sauntered in on his way to the prom. "If you're setting a world's record," he explained in an interview decades later, "you might as well look good."

But Saiki still didn't have the Sikorsky, and it bugged him. After graduating from Cal Poly with a master's degree in aeronautical engineering, he worked for NASA but soon turned entrepreneurial. He invented a hanging cot for climbers and designed high-end mountain bikes ? but the Sikorsky was always churning in his imagination, just out of reach.

For a while, he tried his hand at creating another entry for the Sikorsky sweepstakes. In 1994, five years after the DaVinci III lifted off oh so briefly, his ongoing dream went up in smoke: A forest fire swept through his workshop near San Luis Obispo, destroying the Penguin, another human-powered chopper he'd been building with high hopes.

A trim man with a passion for rock climbing and samurai swords, Saiki sold his house in 2006 to start Zero Motorcycles, a pioneering manufacturer of electric cycles in Santa Cruz. In a management shake-up last year, he left Zero, saying he wanted to spend more time with his four children ages 1 to 11. He also announced ? unsurprisingly, to those who knew him ? that he intended to build a human-powered helicopter.

"I've always wanted to go back and have another try at it," Saiki said. "Now I've got the time, and I don't have the day-to-day financial pressures."

So far, Saiki has spent more than $100,000 to create the craft he calls the Upturn. He works in his garage, has ultra-lightweight parts fabricated all over the country and runs tests at a friend's private hangar, far from prying eyes. This summer, he hopes to make his bid in front of witnesses appointed by the American Helicopter Society International, the prize's sponsor.

"We want to make sure we can win it before we do that,'' Saiki said. "It's a very large, very fragile aircraft and a million things can go wrong."

A human-powered helicopter has no known use. According to conventional scientific wisdom, it would have to weigh less than a couple of checked bags but span a good-sized barn. Some experts doubt that such a craft can fly for a full minute, even with muscle power provided by an elite cyclist.

The fundamental challenge is daunting. Airplanes accelerate gradually, essentially lifting skyward on a ramp of air. Helicopters, however, shoot straight up ? a feat that requires a jolt of energy so big that it is beyond the capability of most in-shape pedalers.

"Humans can only deliver so much," said Matt Tarascio, a helicopter engineer who coordinates the contest and works for its chief funder, Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. "In industry, we'd just put in a bigger engine."

Then there's the problem of weight. To get off the ground, a helicopter must churn an immense volume of air. To do that with the measly power provided by a human, the chopper's rotors must make up for their lack of speed with huge dimensions. But those big rotors ? sometimes longer than the Wright brothers' first flight of 120 feet ? can be exceedingly floppy, and stiffening them adds more weight.

"Just getting off the ground is a significant achievement," Tarascio said.

As time draws closer for Saiki's shot at the prize, he's raising money to remake key parts and shave 15 pounds off his craft. Every few weeks, he trucks it to the hangar in 17 pieces and, with a small crew, takes as long as six hours to assemble it. They grapple with high-tech puzzles of vibration and instability but also contend with low-tech problems, like looping a rope for a safety harness over a girder six stories off the ground. After trying a bow and arrow, Saiki managed it with a fishing rod.

Over the years, there have been about 20 attempts at the Sikorsky. The rules are strict: no batteries, no lighter-than-air gases, no parts jettisoned from midair, no drugs to amp up the pilot, no wind. Ground-based crew members may touch the craft to help keep it stable at takeoff and landing, but not during flight. It must hover over a 10-meter-by-10 meter square, an area roughly the size of eight compact parking spaces.

Besides Cal Poly's DaVinci III, only two of the elaborate gizmos have lifted off. In 1994, students at Nihon University in Japan flew their Yuri I for 19.46 seconds, rising to 8 inches. Last May, the University of Maryland's Gamera, named for the huge, fire-breathing turtle of Japanese monster films, cleared the floor for 11.4 seconds.

In Santa Cruz, Saiki and his crew have run a few test flights at a local high school gym, barely large enough to accommodate the Upturn's two delicate foam rotors. At one point, the 90-pound craft's balsa wood seat flew off its titanium-and-carbon fiber frame like a piece of cheap scenery, dumping Greg McNeil, the bike racer who piloted the DaVinci III 23 years ago.

"It looked like we'd come off the ground, and once that happens there are all these funky loads pulling on the cables," said the 44-year-old McNeil, who could be Saiki's pilot once again. "Any weak points in the craft get stressed."

McNeil said he's just 3 or 4 pounds heavier than the 135 he weighed in college. He and some other Cal Poly pals, all engineers, are assisting Saiki, who is in touch with his former mentor, a now-retired Cal Poly engineering professor named William Patterson.

Patterson, a Vietnam War helicopter pilot who was shot down in Laos, was the driving force behind Cal Poly's entry in the Sikorsky contest.

"My students figured it was something they could build in a couple of days," he said.

It took eight years.

steve.chawkins@latimes.com

airhead atherosclerosis steven tyler tropic thunder carnie wilson missing reese witherspoon pregnant

Monday, April 23, 2012

Just a Cute Dog Sidestepping On a Treadmill Like a Boss [Video]

Check out this puggle—a pug and beagle mix—sidestepping on a treadmill. Like a boss. Why? Because he's a puggle sidestepping on a treadmill, that's why. If I tried to do this I would smash my jerkface against the ground. [The Dogs] More »


prop 8 larry bird maria menounos proposition 8 ricky martin chauncey billups caucus results

Video: Demon pendulum (Americablog)

Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

fast times at ridgemont high soylent green phil davis george st pierre aldon smith friday night lights nick santino

Hominick, Yagin, Browne and Rothwell pocket UFC 145 bonuses

The bonuses for UFC 145 were given to main card fighters, who put on a more exciting show than the preliminary bouts. Mark Hominick and Eddie Yagin's bloody decision was awarded Fight of the Night. Ben Rothwell's quick knockout of Brendan Schaub won Knockout of the Night, while Travis "Hapa" Browne won Submission of the Night for his arm triangle of Chad Griggs. Each bonus gave the fighter an extra $65,000.

nfl mock draft project m rubio washington redskins colts colts big ten tournament 2012

Some Tulsa blacks doubt rampage will prompt change (Providence Journal)

Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

portland news tibetan mastiff manny pacquiao pacquiao blanche blanche gloria allred

Friday, April 20, 2012

Nokia's Q1 2012 financials: $9 billion in sales can't stop a $1.7 billion loss

Image

Nokia's released the bundle of spreadsheets that comprise its 2012 Q1 financials, just a week after it acknowledged that it would make a loss, despite bullish sales of the new Lumia 900. The numbers reveal that the company had net sales of €7.4 billion ($9.7 billion), down from €10.4 billion ($13.6 billion) at the start of last year. Net sales are down 30 percent year-on-year, which means the company's posting a loss of €1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) for the first three months of 2012. That loss is broken down as €772 million to restructure Nokia Siemens Networks, €101 million to restructure the Devices & Services and Location & Commerce departments, principally in shedding employees and relocating its factories to Asia. It had forecasted an operating margin of three percent below "break even," and says it's likely to remain that way well into the second quarter.

Stephen Elop pointed out that much of the loss is due to both increased competition and the costs of restructuring, but also seemed to tacitly confirm rumors we'd heard that UK carriers have been resistant to Nokia's new direction, saying that establishing momentum in the country has been "challenging." However, it's still promising to arrest the slump and in a statement to Moody's on Monday, the company pledged that it was prioritizing "cash conservation" exercises, although its liquid cash reserves have fallen 24% in a year, meaning that the company's only got €4.8 billion ($6.3 billion) put aside for a rainy day.

Nokia's Q1 2012 financials: $9 billion in sales can't stop a $1.7 billion loss originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Apr 2012 06:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceNokia (PDF)  | Email this | Comments

lori berenson lori berenson the incredibles jon bon jovi dead new jersey plane crash kobe bryant wife bonjovi dead

Following Up Kevin Forts, Breivik's US Sympathizer (Little green footballs)

Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

radar weather nascar weather channel noaa mike brown jacoby ellsbury jacoby ellsbury