The cataclysmic events in the Horsehead Nebula (as photographed by Hubble) make the Milky Way look like a walk in the park.
I heard some interesting commentary on Coast to Coast AM last night. Robert Zimmerman, stated that the planet finding, Kepler Telescope is on "borrowed time". Kepler is equipped with 4 gyroscopes, one of which is broken. The spacecraft can still function on 3 gyros, but one of the three remaining is overheating and could fail at any moment. If that happens, the mission is over and Kepler will fail.
What does this have to do with mathematics?
I had a question at the beginning of the day on Thursday, which I shared through Twitter.
Gotta admit. Starting the day at #beyondtextbooks wondering whether @discoveryed knows exactly how hard writing *math* curriculum is.
— Christopher (@Trianglemancsd) March 28, 2013
The question got louder in my head as the day progressed.
Humans are able stick their arms into cluttered areas like a refrigerator or reach across a table set for dinner without knocking anything over. Robots aren’t so good at that. In fact, until now, researchers generally design robots to not touch anything except for the object for which they’re reaching.
However, a robotic arm developed by a team lead by Charlie Kemp, associate professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, has sensors that cover its entire “arm,” helping it touch other objects gently, while reaching for a specific item.
