Toyota Motor Corp plans to install solar panels on its next-generation Prius hybrid cars, becoming the first major automaker to use solar power for a vehicle.
The plan is to equip solar panels on the roof of the high-end version of the Prius when it redesigns the gasoline-electric hybrid car early next year, and the power generated by the solar system would be used for the air conditioning.
I recently came across Environmental Graffiti, an ecologically conscious site that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Below are a couple of the more recent and interesting articles like 30 incredible abstract satellite images of Earch, i highly recommend checking them out.
Other articles over there you might find interesting:
World’s Most Expensive Places to Have Sex
Magnetic Fields As You’ve Never Seen Them Before [pics]
Scientists Attach Rectal Methane-Collecting Backpacks to Cows
The Wall Street Journal’s Health blog researches some of the more interesting medical diagnostic codes to help track injuries throughout the world. For instance, if you’re injured by a spacecraft, that’s ICD-9 code E845.
And the extended definition notes that the code includes “launching pad accident,” but excludes “effects of weightlessness in spacecraft,” which has its own code (E928.0). And with a little sleuthing they found a reference to the need for these spacecraft codes go all the way back to 1966. No doubt due to the heightened awareness of the space race.
More interesting codes:
FORT WORTH, Texas — An enormous aircraft without transponders traveling up to 2,100 mph — at one time zooming toward President Bush’s Crawford ranch — is similar to the mysterious object dozens reported seeing, according to radar documents examined by a group that studies unidentified flying objects.
The fastest supercomputer in the world, nicknamed “Roadrunner”, is made from commercial parts and it runs Fedora.
In total, Roadrunner connects 6,562 dual-core AMD Opteron procs as well as 12,240 Cell procs (on IBM Model QS22 blade servers). The Roadrunner system has 98 terabytes of memory, and is housed in 278 refrigerator-sized racks occupying 5,200 square feet. Its 10,000 connections – both Infiniband and Gigabit Ethernet — require 55 miles of fiber optic cable. Roadrunner weighs 500,000 lbs.
Besides that link above to the high level specs, this PDF has much more detail you might find interesting including the memory hierarchy and the software stack.
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