NASA's
Laser-Powered Aircraft -Sci Daily, Oct 10, 2003
Teams from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., NASA's Dryden
Flight Research Center at Edwards, Calif., and the University of Alabama in
Huntsville have demonstrated a small-scale aircraft that flies by means of propulsive
power delivered by a ground-based laser. The laser directs beam at specially
designed photovoltaic cells carried onboard to power the plane's propeller.
The balsa-wood plane has a five-foot wingspan, and weighs only 11 ounces. We covered an early iteration, that used a search light to power the plane, on Moontraveller site.
Grid
of Anthrax Cure-Sci Daily, Oct 10, 2003
Oxford University's Department of Chemistry has accumulated data on some 300,000
molecules which look like promising candidates [with 12,000 being marked as
particularly promising] to form the basis for a cure for anthrax. The project
was launched on 22 January and took less than four weeks to complete. It involved
using screensaver time on 1.4 million personal computers in over 200 countries,
screening some 3.5 billion molecules as possible inhibitors of the assembly
of the anthrax toxin.
12:28:18 PM 
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