Five innovations that will define tech in 2013
Vivek Wadhwa is a vice president at Singularity University and a Washington Post columnist.
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The von Karman vortex street of shed vortices that form the wake of a stationary cylinder are a classic image of fluid dynamics. Here we see a very different wake structure, also made up of vortices shed from a cylindrical body. This wake is formed by two identical cylinders, each rotating at the same rotational rate. Their directions of rotation are such that the cylinder surfaces in between the two cylinders move opposite the flow direction (i.e. top cylinder clockwise, bottom anti-clockwise). This results in a symmetric wake, but the symmetry can easily be broken by shifting the rotation rates out of phase. (Photo credit: S. Kumar and B. Gonzalez)
President Eisenhower warns Americans against the danger of the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell address - January 17, 1961.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Faster-than-light travel. A boon to every space sci-fi (except 2001) and something that is much looked to as a the one and only cure for humans in ability to explore the universe with spacecraft. This is all well and good except that FTL travel violates one of the most famous and successful theory…
Obit of the Day: The World’s Oldest Person
Besse Cooper was born on August 26, 1896, the same year as F. Scott Fitzgerald. President Grover Cleveland was finishing his second term in the White House. The Wright Brothers were making bicycles, not airplanes. Women would not vote for 24 more years.
When Mrs. Cooper passed away on December 4, 2012, she was the oldest person in the world, at 116 years and 100 days, according to Guinness World Records. She had held the title since January 2011 when she was more than 114 years old. (In May of that year Maria Gomes Valentim of Brazil was discovered to be older, and for 45 days Mrs. Cooper was second. When Mrs. Valentim died, Mrs. Cooper regained the title.)
Growing up in Tennessee - in a log cabin - she attended what is now East Tennessee State University and was certified as a teacher. She moved to Georgia after graduation to find a job. (She did and earned $35 per month.) In 1924, she married Luther Cooper. He passed away in 1963. She never remarried.
The Coopers had four children who are all still living: Angeline (1929), Luther, Jr. (1932), Sidney (1935), and Nancy (1944). At the time of her death she also had 12 grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren, and two great-great grandchildren.
Mrs. Cooper, who joined the women’s suffrage movement years before the passage of the 19th Amendment, voted in every election beginning in 1920, except for two. (She and her husband did not vote for Gov. Thomas Dewey in 1948 because they assumed that he would easily defeat President Truman. She did not vote in 2012 either.)
Asked last year by Guinness for her secret of long life she replied, “I mind my own business, and I don’t eat junk food.”
Note: Upon the death of Mrs. Cooper, Dina Manfredini of Des Moines, Iowa, became the oldest person in the world. She is 115 years old and will turn 116 in April 2013.
Sources: The Walton Tribune, CNN, Huffington Post, and Wikipedia
(Image of Mrs. Besse Cooper from February 2011, just after she was named the oldest person in the world is copyright Dan Goldman/AP and courtesy of The NY Daily News.)
Some other supercentenarians featured on Obit of the Day:
The Oldest Man in the United States
The World’s Oldest Pediatrician
The World’s Oldest Leap Year “Baby”
The World’s Oldest Sitting Judge
The Last Veteran of World War I
Re-Timer ready to reset sleep
The portable device, which is worn like a pair of sunglasses and emits a soft green light onto the eyes, will help to counter jet lag, keep shift workers more alert and get teenagers out of bed by advancing or delaying sleeping patterns.
Psychologist Professor Leon Lack, the device’s chief inventor, said that the light from Re-Timer stimulates the part of the brain responsible for regulating the 24-hour body clock.
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