Canada knows a thing or two about robots and space. Did you non-Canadians know that the robotic arm in the Space Shuttles was designed, built and delivered by the Canadians to NASA? It’s True.

Now they’re doing their part again to help build out the rest of the International Space Station in the form of Dextre, a $200Mil robot that will perform exterior construction and maintenance. The value here is that it means the astronauts will have to make fewer trips outside the capsules, enabling the ‘bot to do more of the grunt work, riding along the Canadian-built ‘mobile servicing system’ on the exterior.

Here’s some of the specs:

- Can be remotely controlled from the ground or the ISS

- Size is about 3.7 meters

- Lifespan is about 15 years

- Dexterous enough to manipulate objects the size of a phone book to a phone booth

redOrbit has much more information.

This is a photo (links to the NOAA site) of a large thunderstorm over West Africa as seen from the International Space Station several weeks ago:

Click to see the original on the NOAA weather service site.

All this page does is (randomly?) display either a blue page or a red page. Refresh a few times and try it out.

http://www.sometimesredsometimesblue.com/

Aliens Might Be Moving Stars to Communicate With Us
Universe Today
Move stars around into patterns? That’s pretty crazy stuff. Sure, but there isn’t any physical reason why it isn’t possible; it happens all the time when galaxies collide. Of course, a spray of stars hurled into intergalactic space at random is different from a great big peace sign.

‘Gravity Lamp’ lasts 200 years, never needs to be plugged in
Dvice
A Virginia Tech student has won the Greener Gadget Award for a clever LED lamp that gets all of its power from gravity, which is a seriously renewable resource. Working kind of like a grandfather clock that needs to be wound in order to work, the lamp has a weight that’s raised up every day. As the day goes on, it slowly lowers, with that movement powering the LEDs.

Astronaut to Wear Boxer Shorts For Science, 2 Weeks Consecutive w/o Bathing
MSNBC
A Japanese astronaut will put on special boxer shorts and gym wear during his upcoming mission to see if the newly developed high-tech clothing can boost comfort levels on the International Space Station, Japan’s space agency said Friday.

Goolag Tool Lets Google Aid Hackers
Washington Post
The hacking group Cult of the Dead Cow has released a tool that should make Google hacking a little easier for novices. CalledGoolag, the open-source software lets hackers use the Google search engine to scan Web sites for vulnerabilities.

Tracing human diversity through the ages
San Jose Mercury News
A coalition of Stanford scientists has released the most detailed road map yet of human diversity, offering insight into the emergence and restless migration of the world’s populations.

MakeUseOf has a great article that taught me a lot about how to make better use of RSS feeds by reviewing 14 interesting RSS Feed applications that consume your feeds in a unique manner, as opposed to consuming them in your same old feed reader.

I have probably close to 200 feeds I monitor and some of these applications just might make me a little more productive. Take for instance something like SendMeRSS which forwards my favorite feeds to my inbox.

Then there’s Pingie which sends them to my mobile via SMS, or SpokenText which converts my feeds to speech files and you can subscribe to them as podcasts!

Check out the full list of 14 other ways to use RSS Feeds.