AfriCanCode: Ghana teachers switch to digital learning

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AfriCanCode Ghana

Despite the dual challenges of low internet penetration and a switch to virtual teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers in Ghana have embraced the opportunity to learn 21st century digital teaching skills during this year’s Africa Code Week Train-the-Trainer campaign. Ghana has a fast-growing population that more than doubled from 14.2 million people in 1989 to … Read more

iPhone and Apple Watch magnets are strong enough to disrupt pacemakers

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By Matthew Sparkes Apple’s iPhone 12 has magnets that can affect pacemakers or other medical implants Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/Shutterstock Apple’s iPhone 12 and Apple Watch 6 can disrupt medical implants such as pacemakers if they are held too close to the body, warn researchers. Such implants often feature a “magnet mode” designed to be deliberately … Read more

NASA tests a new heat shield featuring Spiderweave

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AHF347_004_S1 The team behind the "umbrella-like" deployable heat shield design called ADEPT, or the Adaptable, Deployable, Entry and Placement Technology, is testing out a new material to deliver science payloads on future missions to Mars and beyond. Called Spiderweave, the new woven fabric will make it safer for larger vehicles to safely pass through the atmosphere of more distant locations. It can also be packed up at launch and stored in a compact space. When sending science to other worlds, saving space and enabling safer atmospheric entries are top priorities. ADEPT could help achieve both of these goals. Previous ADEPT heat shield iterations involved stitching together individual panels to comprise the heat shield. But engineers found that could often lead to points of increased stress and other discontinuities within the material. Spiderweave uses a new design architecture where materials are continuously woven into the heat shield?s fabric, avoiding these issues. This summer, Spiderweave was put to the test in the arc jet facilities at NASA?s Ames Research Center in California?s Silicon Valley, where the ADEPT team observed how the material held up when exposed to temperatures above 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Those extreme temperatures mimic the conditions a vehicle experiences when entering a planetary atmosphere. Building on the previous work of the ADEPT project, including a sounding rocket flight test in 2018, supported by NASA?s Flight Opportunities program, where the heat shield was deployed in space and safely returned to Earth, the Spiderweave material is making science possible on worlds both near and far. ADEPT is funded by the Game Changing Development program within NASA?s Space Technology Mission Directorate, with support from the Flight Opportunities program. The textile company Bally Ribbon Mills developed the Spiderweave Material as a part of NASA?s Small Business Innovation Research program.

By Gege Li Photographer Patrick Viruel/NASA THIS spectacle captured at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, could have important ramifications for future space missions. The material in the photo might one day allow vehicles to safely enter the atmospheres of other planets without burning up, as well as free up more room inside … Read more