contamination
Latest
Toxic coast: Cleaning up a century of industrial waste in New Jersey
The Quanta Resources Superfund Site is one of 1,335 contaminated sites across America that the EPA deems most urgently in need of a clean-up. If Superfund status is any indicator, New Jersey has the dirtiest dirt in the country, and the Gold Coast has some of the dirtiest dirt in New Jersey.
Everyday RFID tags could help spot food contamination
You might not need special sensors or old-fashioned inspections to tell whether food has gone bad. If MIT has its way, the tags you already find on your food might do the job. Its researchers have developed a wireless system, RFIQ, that detects potential food contamination based on minute changes in the signals emanating from the RFID tags you often see on containers. As different materials absorb different amounts of the tags' electromagnetic frequencies, you can use a reader to spot changes in response signals and identify food contamination. If a foodstuff dries out, for instance, you'd notice a different signal than when it was still moist.
Apple filed a patent for a keyboard that isn’t ruined by dust
When Apple unveiled its 2015 MacBook, reviewers quickly discovered its keys were flatter than ever, with single-digit millimeters of travel between their pressed and unpressed states. At first, we heralded this as a miraculous accomplishment in ever-thinner laptop computing, which carried over virtually unchanged into the next years' models. But all was not well. The complex 'butterfly' switches that enabled the incredibly-slight travel distance had kept dirt out -- until it got in and had nowhere to go, mucking up keys and effectively disabling keyboards, according to some reports. It seems Apple filed a patent for a contaminant-proof keyboard back in 2016 to solve the issue.
Suppliers and retailers will use blockchain to keep food fresh
IBM has joined with a group of food supply companies and retailers to use the computing company's blockchain tech to keep food fresh. Currently, it can take up to two weeks to track down the source of contaminated foodstuffs. But just like tracking cryptocurrency transactions all over the world, this consortium will harness IBM's enterprise blockchain services to give its members access to a constantly-updating ledger of food, from source to store.
Lights out on a ghostly James Webb Space Telescope inspection
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) might be the most important scientific instrument ever developed. It'll peer back in time over 13 billion years to the early universe and look for signs of life around the recently discovered TRAPPIST-1 planetary system.
Editorial: Android's problem isn't fragmentation, it's contamination
This thought was first given voice by Myriam Joire on last night's Mobile Podcast, and the simple, lethal accuracy of it has haunted me ever since. All the hubbub and unrest about whether Google is trying to lock Android down or not has failed to address whether Google should be trying to control the OS, and if so, what the (valid) reasons for that may be. Herein, I present only one, but it's arguably big enough to make all the dissidence about open source idealism and promises unkept fade into insignificance.
