Tools for learning: This fall, all fifth- and sixth-graders at the Forney (Texas) Independent School District will be hauling all their textbooks around all the time. Oh, and each will also be carrying around 2,000 works of literature.
The texts will be digital, stored on IBM laptop computers.
Mike Smith, superintendent of the fast-growing district in the Dallas suburbs, sees technology solving a perennial problem – a shortage of textbooks and months-long delays getting new ones.
Forney is the nation’s first district to sign up with IBM Corp. for notebooks loaded with content from software company Vital Source Technologies Inc. of Raleigh, N.C.
“If the students have all of Shakespeare’s works loaded on their notebook, the school doesn’t need to go out and buy all of those books,” said Will Moore, an executive in IBM’s education business. “And the real benefit is that it’s all interactive and searchable.”
And now for something completely different: Particle physicist Carl Haber specializes in the science of smashing atoms. He never imagined his work would one day collide with cultural history.
But now, four years after hearing a radio report on the challenge of preserving aging audio recordings, his newfound method of rescuing the classics is music to archivists’ ears.
Haber and a fellow physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Vitaliy Fadeyev, have found a way to digitally map the grooves in warped or damaged shellac records and wax cylinders – and play them back using a sort of virtual needle.
To do so, they use the same optical scanning method – powered by a microscope and computer technology – that physicists employ for measuring the journeys of subatomic particles.
The technique detects and filters any scratches, as well as clicks and pops from dust. It works with vinyl, too, though such records aren’t as fragile to need it.
Roughly 2.5 million music and spoken-word recordings are stored in the Library of Congress – the project’s sponsor – but some are more than a century old and very delicate. Archivists risk further damage if they use a real stylus to play and re-record them.
New meaning behind the term “liquidity”: Army scientists are working on a liquid body armor for clothing that stays flexible during normal use but can harden to stop a projectile when hit suddenly.
Researchers hope the liquid could be used in sleeves and pants, areas not protected by ballistic vests because they must stay flexible.
The liquid, hard particles suspended in a fluid, is soaked into layers of Kevlar, which holds it in place. Scientists recently had an archer shoot arrows at it to see how well the liquid boosted the strength of a Kevlar vest.
“Instead of the arrow going through the Kevlar, it is completely stopped by the Kevlar vest – and sometimes just bounces right off,” said Norman Wagner, a University of Delaware chemical engineering professor who is working on the project.
Vests treated with the liquid have also blocked stabs from an ice pick, and researchers are doing more tests to see if it can stop bullets or shrapnel, too.
The project, which has been under way for about three years, is a joint venture between the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the University of Delaware’s Center for Composite Materials.
Associated Press
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