Installing the Spire Atop One World Trade
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey released this dizziness-inducing video of construction workers installing the final section of spire atop One World Trade Center. Some seriously brave ironworkers erected the final piece of the building on May 10.
“Using a crane located high above street level, ironworkers lifted the final two pieces off a temporary work platform on the roof of One WTC and attached them to the previously installed 16 sections of spire,” the authority wrote on its Youtube post. “During the installation, ironworkers set and tightened 60 bolts at an altitude of 1,701 feet in the air.”
They report the building now stands at 1,776 feet high, making it the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and the third tallest in the world. Huzzah, engineering!
May 16th, 2013
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Science of Mosh Pits May Mean Safer Crowds, Better Game and Movie Graphics
The casual observer of talks being given at this month’s American Physical Society meeting, happening this week in Baltimore, can be excused if the first association he or she makes isn’t with a freewheeling heavy metal concert.
Yesterday, March 20, saw a session on spin multiplets and plasmon satellites in photoemission spectras, a talk on block versus stripy antiferromagnetism in Fe-based spin-ladder materials, and new crystal structures in hexagonal CuInS2 nanocrystals, among other indecipherable—but probably very interesting—subjects.
Today, though, the physicists meeting at the Hilton Baltimore Holiday Ballroom 1 will be getting all riled up. From exactly 5:06 p.m. to 5:18 p.m., the sky will split open, the heavy metal gods will descend, attendees will thrash and gnash like tomorrow will never come, and all will be right with the world.
That is, if the Georgia Tech team scheduled from 4:54 to 5:06 keep their talk on ants engineering habitats that reduce locomotion control requirements on schedule.
March 21st, 2013
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New British Antarctic Research Base Opens for Business
Have a look at the British Antarctic Survey’s new $40 million research station, which is set to become fully operational this month.
February 7th, 2013
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New Video Process Reveals Heart Rate, Invisible Movement
MIT video analysis experts have developed a new way to amplify subtle shifts in color and motion that are normally invisible to the naked eye.
The result of their work: video that could be used to accurately detect pulse rate based on the human face’s rhythmic flush, monitor babies’ breathing or study the movements of buildings, cranes and mechanical devices.
“You can think about what we’ve made like a microscope, except for video,” says doctoral student Michael Rubinstein, whose team came up with the now patented analytical process they call Eulerian video magnification. “It’s a tool to amplify small spatio-temporal variations you can’t normally see.”
See the video after the jump.
February 1st, 2013
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