From the petition:
Hi all. This is my photo that should be going into the yearbook, but we know how finicky the school systems can be. I'm hoping that with enough signatures, my school simply can't turn this down.
Edit: To clarify, the school HAS NOT YET DECLINED this photo. This is my pre-emptive strike just in case such a thing were to happen. I wanted as many backers as possible before the deadline of September 15th.
The world's first-ever smartshoe is called Le Chal, which means "let's go" in Hindi. Designed by Anirudh Sharma, who works at the MIT Media Lab, and Krispian Lawrence, these shoes work as haptic navigation devices that connect to your smartphone.
The basic idea is pretty simple. You simply tell your phone where to go using the app's voice recognition software, and the app uses GPS to plot the course from your current location. Once you're on your way, the shoes vibrate when it's time to turn—on the left side for a left turn and on the right for a right turn. The vibrations become more intense as you get closer to your destination.
The technique, which is still in experimental stages, takes advantage of a rare mutation that makes one percent of people of European descent resistant to HIV.
Using a new "genome editing" tool, researchers are hoping to be able to insert the mutation into the cells of other people - and they've already proved the basic principles work using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), Peter Aldhous reports for New Scientist.
The new genome editing technique is much more precise than tradition forms of genetic engineering, as it places a sequence of gene into a pre-designated area of the genome, rather than at random locations. By using this technique, researchers led by Yuet Kan from the University of California, San Francico, have managed to alter the genome of iPSCs, which can turn into any cell in the body. As predicted, when the scientists grew these iPSCs into white blood cells, they were resistant to HIV.
Rabe formed in an instant when a large rock slammed into the surface of Mars long ago. It may have started as a normal, if large, impact crater, but things change. The cause of the flat floor isn't well known, but likely due to volcanic deposits filling it, plus material blown in over time.
Actually, that last bit is very important. Mars has an atmosphere, though a thin one, pushing down with less than 1% of the pressure on the surface as Earth's air does here. But it's enough.
