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Odor-Free Underwear Coming Soon to a Retailer Near You


Truthfully, there's just not enough work being done in the area of advanced underpants, so we're absolutely elated to hear that textile experts at Japan Women's University in Tokyo are picking up the slack and moving forward with an amazing development. Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese astronaut to live on the International Space Station, is current testing the "odor-free" clothing, and it's said that he can rock the same drawls without any pungent smells for a solid week. The garb is designed to "kill bacteria, absorb water, insulate the body and dry quickly," and as if that wasn't awesome enough, they're also flame-resistant and anti-static. The best news? There are already talks of bringing this stuff to the commercial realm. Don't deny it -- you're already thinking of how stellar it'd be to wash clothes just once per month.

Computers

College Students Contact Space Station With Self-Built Radio System

While putting a call in to the International Space Station and chatting up an astronaut for a full ten minutes would likely be more than enough to satisfy most science classes, a group of students from Humber College in Toronto decided to go one big step further and do so with a radio system that they designed and built themselves. According to the school, that makes it the first time that's ever been done by students at the college level, which provided some well-deserved bragging rights for the students and their instructor, who said that they're "playing way, way above their league."

Be sure to hit up the link below for a video of the big moment and, of course, the complete NASA control room-esque geek out.

Computers

Computer Virus Found on Space Station

Computer Virus Invades the International Space Station

When humans go into space, they're protected from the cold extremes by armored walls, thick glass and airlocks. They're also prevented from coming into contact with any potential space bugs thanks to their completely sealed suits. Their computers, apparently, are completely exposed to the elements, being shot up into space with nary a virus scanner aboard. No surprise, then, that computers on the International Space Station have been infected with a common computer virus.

The virus is Gammima.AG and is the type that runs in the background and steals usernames and passwords, with the hopes of hijacking people's accounts to a variety of popular Asian online games. Fortunately, this is hardly a major threat to our orbital security, but it suggests that our space security may need to be tighter. NASA is pledging to install scanners on any laptops destined for orbit, and we're hoping it also has them back on Earth, too. [From: BBC News]

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