Concrete may have found it's killer app in graphene, a single-atom thick building block of graphite. Concrete uses it's strength in tension, so the idea is to use nano-sized graphene balls to provide additional strength to the cement matrix and also give it an electrical conductivity similar to metal (with a theoretical conductivity of 10000 S/m). Read more about the project and take a look at the new materials on C&EN. In the latest of a series of recent announcements, the US Navy announced that the US is looking to create a microgravity aircraft trainer. This would be a full motion simulator that could simulate gravity, airflow and acceleration all with real-time feedback. The US Air Force is doing something similar, as well. It's too early to say when either of these might actually appear, but the Navy program seems to be further along. There's a new member of the group. The World Anti-Doping Agency has introduced hair analysis to it's testing protocol. While it won't be able to test for some substances until later in 2017, the intent is that this could provide a reliable way to test for things like synthetic testosterone and erythropoietin (EPO) in the future. The technology still has to overcome some obstacles. For instance, what a WADA rep said was that "we don't know how to sample or how to analyze hair." They also have to work out the cost, which will vary according to the type of hair (human hair grows at different rates depending on the person, it seems). Read more about it at the Washington Post. An interesting study published in Nature Biotechnology looks at a large number of genes and associated mutations that confer resistance to the antibiotic kanamycin in bacteria. They've been used in agriculture for decades. It's estimated that it would be the world's second most used antibiotic, after penicillin. If you've not heard of it, 3D printing is a method of making things out of plastic that layers over itself, building up until the item is formed. It's a manufacturing method that offers low startup costs and a wide variety of products. Unfortunately, the items it's currently been used for don't seem very sustainable. In an effort to address that, NASA has created a new class of materials and methods that promise to be better for the environment. The new materials that result are part of a class of metal alloys that don't involve melting and can use a variety of metals that don't require a lot of high-temperature processing. The new alloys are being developed for use as rocket nozzles and fuel tanks. They're also being used to make structural components. Read more about it on Engadget. What happens when the time is right and you've got kids and bills to pay? Well, maybe you choose a smaller house. That's what happened to me. I'm about to pay a penalty on a house that is too large for us, and so I'm looking at downsizing. We've got plenty of ideas, and right now we're working on getting ready for a sale, so hopefully we'll sell in short order, and we'll move into a smaller house before the end of the year. I've heard that you need at least 40-square feet of living space per person (including a dog, should you have one). And when I last updated my mortgage, I learned that we were paying $550 more per month for the larger house than we would for a smaller one. What to do? What does all this mean? This is what needs to change. There are other things you should consider, such as how you'll keep your bills current with a smaller house (we're considering a mortgage payment of maybe $3500 per month). We've looked at how much it would cost us to cover a mortgage on a smaller house, and it's way more than $3500. But if you want to do the same and do it well, there are all kinds of things you can do. You can learn how to live in less space (maybe 20-25-square feet per person), and how to make it work. Some people are looking for simplicity, and will make do with less, while others want to keep their space as big as they can get away with. I think we can do this; we'll need to save. We need to make some changes to the yard and fix up the house we have now before we look to sell. And hopefully our house will sell quickly. But for those of you who are stuck in bigger houses, make your decision and give us some tips if you have them! I'd love to hear them. Maybe you're already doing some of these things, and I hope so. My new year's resolution is to get into my attic and clean it up. For those who don't know, I live in a ranch style home, and the majority of my attic is open space. There is a partial wall between a bathroom and the rest of the house, with a crawl space underneath. I've got a basement that's a little bit larger than the attic, which goes all the way to the roof. The difference is that I want the walls and insulation to be sealed. And that will happen soon, thanks to my brother. He worked with a contractor, and the whole attic is now sealed, insulated, and painted. We had to go through my dad's workshop and clean out the old insulation. I hope that means that it's all taken care of. My brother-in-law also used my dad's old tool collection to paint the rafters. He used the painter's tape to protect the edges, which you can see in the pictures. Then I added three different kinds of insulation, and now I'm all set. My brother said that if I don't use it, then the insulation could be worth a lot more when I decide to sell. My dad probably wouldn't have kept it in good condition if he had known he was going to sell it. My dad spent a lot of time in his workshop, and he was well into the 60's before he had health issues. He never wanted to retire. He always said it wasn't his turn. And that's kind of how I feel too, but time will tell. He might never retire, but I might be able to help him a bit with the project I'm about to undertake. When I had my daughter, my mom was about 80-years old. So I feel as though I have a lot to accomplish myself, but it's important that I set a good example for my children. I'm looking forward to what 2016 holds. I want to have the freedom to do something like this again in ten years. It's a lot of work, and so I'm definitely looking forward to it. That's all for now. More later, and I hope you all had a good Christmas and a happy new year. It's another video for this year's Hackaday Superconference! This one is called "The HAT and the Ouija Board," and you can watch it below. It's a talk I gave during the day, and I covered the HAT and the project's purpose and how it's better than other hardware. I also covered some of the things we're doing to secure it, and how it can help you connect with your environment. We showed the software version, and showed some of the things we're working on to secure the device as it talks to the environment. We did some demo work with a small computer to showcase some of the new features, but the whole talk was on the board itself. We even got our act together and actually did a HAT contest last year, and had a prize, which turned out to be the same as the Hackaday Prize. For those who didn't know about the HAT, there's more details about it at the hackaday.io web site. The board is a small square board you can put a bunch of different sensors and hardware on. You put it in a box, plug it in and add inputs to it, and it becomes a mobile sensing device. You can get data from it. You can get audio from it. You can play it music. You can put one of those sensors up to your mouth, a magnet and the thing closes, allowing you to talk to it. It's a physical computing device. We're going to put as many sensors on it as we can. You can get a little HAT, for about $8, and the more you buy, the lower the price. It might not seem like much of a thing, but you might be able to use it for something. And it's just tiny. It's actually quite amazing how small it is. We had a couple people do some modifications, and you can see what they did