NASA is going back to the Moon! We’ll follow the crew of Artemis II every step of the way.
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Lab Gloves May Be Skewing Microplastics Data
The topic of micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) has become increasingly prevalent over the past years, as amidst dismissal and panic, researchers attempt to distinguish just how much of a problem MNPs truly are. The most essential problem here is that we are still developing the tools to accurately measure the levels of MNP contamination. Recently, [Madeline E. Clough] et al. demonstrated in an article published in Analytical Methods how gloves worn in laboratory settings can create false positive MNP signals.
As we covered previously, detecting MNPs is tough due to the detection methods used, many of which rely on interpreting signals from methods like pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS), with protocols for this and other methods still being worked on, particularly on how to filter out false positives.
The article by [Clough] demonstrates how dry contact of lab gloves on samples can deposit stearate salts – left over from their production, which are subsequently misidentified as being MNPs, specifically polyethylene (PE). These false positives occur with µ-Fourier transform infrared (µ-FTIR) spectroscopy and µ-Raman spectroscopy, but can occur with Py-GC-MS as well, as has been determined previously. Substances like the fatty lipids that are commonly found in the human body, and in particular the brain, will closely match the PE signature.
With these very common stearate salts now also a likely source of contamination with MNP measurements, it just becomes more obvious that it’s incredibly hard to make accurate assessments about any hazards of MNPs until we can determine their presence with any level of reliability.
With Affordable Storage Options Dwindling, Where To Store Our Data?
These days our appetite for more data storage is larger than ever, with video files larger, photo resolutions higher, and project files easily zipping past a few hundred MB. At the same time our options for data storage are becoming more and more limited. For the longest time we could count on there always being a newer, roomier, faster, and cheaper form of storage to come along, but those days would seem to be over.
We can look back and laugh at low capacity USB Flash drives of the early 2000s, yet the first storage drive to hit 1 TB capacity did so in 2007, with a Hitachi Deskstar 7k100, only for that level of capacity in PCs to not really be exceeded nineteen years later.
We also had Blu-ray discs (BD) promise to cram the equivalent of dozens of DVDs onto a single BD, with two- and even four-layer BDs storing up to a one-hundred-and-twenty-eight GB. Yet today optical media is dying a slow death as the sole remaining cheap storage option. NAND Flash storage has only increased in price, and the options for those of us who have large cold storage requirements would seem to be decreasing every day.
So what is the economical solution here? Invest in LTO tapes using commercial left-overs, or give up and sign up for Cloud Storage™ for the low-low price of a monthly recurring fee?
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Simulating The AVR8 For A Browser-based Arduino Emulator
It’s always nice to simulate a project before soldering a board together. Tools like QUCS run locally and work quite well for analog circuits, but can fall short with programmable logic. Tools like Wokwi handle the programmable side quite well but may have license issues or require the cloud. The Velxio project by [David Montero Crespo] is quite an excellent example of an (online) circuit simulator with programmable logic and local execution!
It’s built largely around Wowki’s AVR8JS library for Arduino simulation. All CPU simulation occurs on the local computer, while sketch compilation happens on the backend using official Arduino tools. But this was certainly not the most impressive aspect of the project. Likewise, Velxio features RP2040 execution using the rp2040js library. It also features the execution of some ESP32 derivative boards built around the RISC-V architecture using the RiscVCore.ts library.
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Flying Cell Towers For Lower-Latency
When the inevitable Kessler Syndrome cascade sweeps Starlink and its competitors from Low Earth Orbit in what will doubtless be a spectacular meteor shower of debris, the people behind Sceye and its competitors are going to be laughing to the bank. That’s because they’re putting their connectivity rather lower than orbit — in the stratosphere, with high-altitude dirigibles.
The advantages are pretty obvious: for one, the dirigible isn’t disposable in the way the very-low-orbit satellites Starlink and its planned imitators use. For another, the time-of-flight for a signal to get to a dirigible 20 km up is less than a tenth of the time it takes to get 480 km up — and that affects latency. Thirdly, the High Altitude Platform System (HAPS) concept won’t require any special transmitters. Regular cellular modems using ordinary 4G and 5G bands and speeds are usable, which eliminates a big barrier to rollout.
Pocket-Sized E-Ink Gets A Firmware Upgrade
Not so long ago, e-ink devices were rare and fairly pricey. As they have become more common and cheaper, some cool form-factor devices have emerged that suffer from subpar software. [Concretedog] picked up just such a device, and that purchase led to the discovery of a cool open-source firmware project for this tiny gadget.
[Concretedog] described the process of loading the firmware, which is just about as easy a modification as one can make. You plug the e-ink display into your computer, visit a website, and can flash it right from there. Once the display is running the CrossPoint Reader firmware, it unlocks some new tricks on this affordable reader. The firmware lets you turn the device into a WiFi hotspot and upload books wirelessly, or it can connect to an existing network to add files that way. It also enables rotating the display and KOReader syncing if you have multiple devices you read from.
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Making The Case Against Markdown
For some reason, Markdown has not just become the format of choice for giving READMEs in GitHub repositories some flair, but also for writing entire websites and documents. In a recent rant, [Burak Güngör] covers all the ways in which Markdown is a good idea as a basic document formatting concept and how its implementation is absolutely atrocious.
Even without straying into the minefields helpfully provided by other Markdown dialects beyond CommonMark, there is already plenty here to indulge in. The very idea of Markdown as a ‘simple text formatting syntax’ breaks down the moment you look at the available formatting styles and how they translate into HTML. Worse, the sheer complexity of parsing Markdown makes it vulnerable to a regular expression denial-of-service (ReDoS) attack.
This is where the question arises of whether Markdown is truly a text formatting aid or trying to be a programming language that just happens to usually spit out HTML documents, as, at some point, you’re basically writing something that approaches a regular expressions engine in its nightmarish implications.
Building A Vise Stand With Pen-Like Retracting Wheels
Old shop tools have a reputation for resilience and sturdiness, and though some of this is due to survivorship bias, some of it certainly comes down to an abundance of cast iron. The vise which [Marius Hornberger] recently restored is no exception, which made a good stand indispensable; it needed to be mobile for use throughout the shop, yet stay firmly in place under significant force. To do this, he built a stand with a pen-like locking mechanism to deploy and retract some caster wheels.
Most of the video goes over the construction of the rest of the stand, which is interesting in itself; the stand has an adjustable height, which required [Marius] to construct two interlocking center columns with a threaded adjustment mechanism. The three legs of the stand were welded out of square tubing, and the wheels are mounted on levers attached to the inside of the legs. One of the levers is longer and has a foot pedal that can be pressed down to extend all the casters and lock them in place. A second press on the pedal unlocks the levers, which are pulled up by springs. The locking mechanism is based on a cam that blocks or allows motion depending on its rotation; each press down rotates it a bit. This mechanism, like most parts of the stand, was laser-cut and laser-welded (if you want to skip ahead to its construction, it begins at about 29:00).
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