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Science

Who Wants Yellowcake?

It turns out that when Lehman Brothers went belly-up last fall, it was left with a lot more than just irate investors and billions of dollars in debt. One of the bank’s remaining assets is a sizable supply of yellowcake—the type of uranium that is enriched for use in nuclear reactors and weapons.

Science

Can People Safely Eat Cat Food?

Let's take a look at the ingredients in a typical can of cat food: meat by-products, chicken by-product meal, turkey by-product meal, ash, taurine. Nothing too horrible, but in general, these things don't constitute a healthy human diet, says Dawn Jackson Blatner, a registered dietitian with the American Dietetic Association. "That said, I'm fully confident that your body can handle kitty chow."

Technology

If You Dropped a Corn Kernel From Space, Would it Pop During Re-Entry?

There’s a little bit of water inside each kernel of popcorn, and if you can heat the kernel above 212°F, that water should boil, turn into high-pressure steam, and pop the kernel. But in orbit, things aren’t so simple. First off, the cold vacuum of space would suck all the water out of the kernel before it could pop the corn. So any ordinary kernels would drop, not pop. But let’s say we figured out a way to keep the kernel watertight. In that case, it all depends.

Technology

Heavy Lifter

NASA will fire up its latest rocket this April for its first test flight. Ares 1 is designed to haul a 25-ton payload, making it capable of ferrying either six astronauts to the International Space Station or four astronauts to low-Earth orbit, where they can transfer to another vehicle and head to the moon. The rocket contains two stages: a reusable solid rocket booster and an engine powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. If all goes well with Orion, NASA’s planned crew vehicle, Ares 1 will be whisking the first crews into space by 2015.

GluBam Construction

The bridge Yan Xiao built in Leiyang with GluBam was the town’s first. Each beam that spans the brick columns was created using Xiao’s novel process of transforming irregular bamboo into a practical building material. First he tore strips of bamboo from the stalk and arranged them in such a way as to provide the most strength. He then coated the strips with glue and compressed them in a self-built hydraulic press into beams, 33 feet long and up to three feet wide, each capable of supporting eight tons. Xiao says that the beams cost just 20 percent as much as imported lumber.