Book Reviews
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Monday, April 26, 2004
![[Item Permalink]](http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/images/ur_bullet.gif){kind=small} -- Comment()
Morphing Plane Wings for Efficient Flights: "Airplanes, whether manned or unmanned, need to travel at various speeds. For example, a surveillance plane needs to fly fast to reach its destination point. Then, it needs to reduce its speed to achieve its surveillance mission. But with its fixed wings, it doesn't offer the same level of efficiency during these two phases. That's why Penn State engineers have devised airplane wings that change shape like a bird and have scales like a fish. Right now, the team has only built a tabletop model. So it will be a long time before you catch a plane and watch the wings disappear by looking through the window." [Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]
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We live in an encrypted world (you don't survive without it) -- Comment()
It seems that using computers and working on the net requires layers of encryption. At home, I'm connecting throuh a WPA-secured WLAN connection to an ADSL broudband router. To secure my net connection between ADSL and the intranet at work, I'm using Cisco VPN, which encrypts the traffic. So, this is already two levels of encryption (WPA between iBook and base station, VPN between iBook and intranet). In addtion, I'm using encryption in the application level: https, imaps, ssh etc. Some uses of encryption are still just possibilites, such as using S/MIME or PGP for signing and encrypting e-mail messages, but some day these may be routine as well. And I almost forgot: on the iBook you can use FileVault to encrypt your home directory for added protection. It seems that encryption is everywhere, you just can't be without it. This has been a bonus for mathematicians and computer scientists who work with number theory and related fields. Perhaps other fields of mathematics should invent similarly important uses for their research as well?
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