It is supposed to be about fun, one man told the assembled journalists this morning, as we sat in a conference room facing K Street in Washington, D.C. They gathered us here to set the stage before they went off to battle against a three-letter F-word: the FAA. The Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA), a community-based hobbyist organization founded in 1936, is spending today lobbying Congress for new rules about their airplanes. It's the latest effort to make sure that, whatever future drones bring to the skies, there's still room for children to fly their airborne toys for fun.
Today, hundreds of scientists are gathered in Washington, D.C. for the international summit on genome editing. The three-day conference will discuss the ethical and appropriate use of all genome-editing technologies, but it will likely pay close attention to the newest and arguably easiest method, CRISPR-Cas9, known colloquially as just CRISPR.
On April 15th, 2015, a strange vehicle came from the sky and landed outside the Capitol of the United States in the heart of Washington, DC. Pilot Doug Hughes, who drove his gyrocopter up from Florida before flying it onto the Capitol lawn, wanted to call attention to corruption in politics. The stunning flight and arrival of the novel ultralight helicopter-like plane also caught the attention of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the people tasked with guarding the skies of America from hostile threats. Their challenge: can radar accurately detect a plane as small and slow as the gyrocopter flown by Hughes?
Yesterday, in Hampton, Virginia, about three hours south of Washington, DC, NASA researchers slung a plane into a harness and then sent it crashing into the ground. The researchers were specifically testing Emergency Locator Transmitters, which notify rescuers in the event of a crash. And what a crash they got!
The legal landscape for marijuana in the US has never looked this relaxed. Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, D.C. voted during the recent election season to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Other states reduced the punishments for possessing small amounts of the drug, a move the American Academy of Pediatrics just endorsed. According to polls, more Americans than ever support legalizing Cannabis.
As of 2013, 24 states and Washington, DC, have either legalized marijuana or decriminalized possession of it. One of my friends lives in a state where medical marijuana is now legal, and he has taken full advantage of this to start growing the plant, which helps him manage the symptoms of a chronic illness, in his basement. Rather than use his real name, I'll just refer to him by his online handle, GrowingGreenLED. I've known GGL for years, and I knew that even when it was illegal, he used marijuana for medical reasons. The whole grow-your-own was a new thing for him - and me. Curious about the enterprise, I asked if he'd be willing to chat with me about the ins and outs of growing one's own plants. In particular, I was curious about his all-LED setup.
