STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

If Darth Vader Had A Car, It Would Be This Killer Cadillac Concept

I don’t like Cadillacs, but I’d drive the hell out of this concept by Ondrej Jirec, a Czech student at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. If Darth Vader had a car, this would be it. (Although I’m sure Sark — the villain from the original Tron — would drive one too.)

Its name is the Cadillac Estill — it’s a futuristic super car concept that, according to Jirec, “links to the history of the Cadillac brand but is not retro.“

The desired result was to create a concept that maintains clues from the history of the Cadillac brand and introduces a futuristic and fresh vision. The history clues were a fuselage suspended between two long body sides — a good example is the 1970 Cadillac Eldorado. Taking this pure form study, stripping down from all details, and taking it as a building theme for the whole concept, those were the main inspiration for the development of this concept.

The interior layout is built around the driver experience. The passenger seat is pushed slightly back so the driver can reach the feeling of being in a true race car, inspired by the Cadillac Le Mans heritage.

Ondrej Jirec is a Czech Transportation Design student at the Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, California, who received a Mr Otis and Mrs Bettina Chandler full endowed scholarship from 2008 to 2013. He has worked at General Motors and Honda R&D in California, Aston Martin in the UK, and Stile Bertone in Torino, Italy.

[MIKA27]

Dive Into This Digital Battleship In The Name Of Conservation

For nearly three-quarters of a century, the USS Arizona has rested practically untouched in the waters of Pearl Harbor, acting as both the final resting place of and enduring tribute to the 1100 marines and sailors that lost their lives aboard it. Today, the National Park Service and Autodesk unveiled the results of an intensive modern survey that will soon allow anyone in the world to virtually explore the battleship in all her former glory.

Building off its previous success digitising obscure and rarely displayed artifacts from the Smithsonian’s massive collection, Autodesk has teamed up with the NPS to construct a near perfect digital recreation of the USS Arizona war memorial.

Since the Arizona is, first and foremost, an active military cemetery, both the Navy and the NPS (upon taking stewardship of the site in 1980) have been careful to avoid disturbing it. So, in the 70-plus years since it sank, the Arizona has only been surveyed twice — once during the initial wartime salvage operation and again in 1983. Those surveys were crude by today’s standards — the ’83 effort involved having dive teams draw 90cm square sections of the site, by hand, to create a composite map of the site — but were considered state-of-the-art at the time.

However, there has been renewed concern over the battleship’s condition in recent years, given what salt water does to steel. “The park service was pretty sure that things were changing down there,” Pete Kelsey, Strategic Projects Executive at Autodesk, told Gizmodo during a recent phone interview. “So the idea was to take a really close look at the ship and the memorial.”

Over the course of 10 days between last November and this past April, a team of divers equipped with the latest digital survey tools — from laser scanners to subsea LiDAR — poured over the wreckage, constructing a detailed map of the site. “We did that using several kinds of sonar: multibeam scan sonar mounted to the [survey] vessel, a diver-portable multibeam unit, a stationary sonar.” Kelsey explained. “On the laser side we had a traditional terrestrial laser scanner to do the memorial — the actual building — inside and out. We actually found some folks in Colorado that make a laser scanner that works underwater [designed for deepwater oil well inspection]” which was employed as well.

“Plus, we had a bunch of historical data from the park service — GPS and some beautiful hand drawn maps which were the result of the survey in the 1980s,” he continued.

The massive data set collected from this survey is now being utilised to create an interactive 3D model of the Arizona that will not only help the NPS monitor and preserve the site without disturbing it but also assist the agency in educating the public about the events of 7 December 1941 and their historical significance.

“We have an existing model of the Arizona based on the 1983 drawings,” NPS spokesman Daniel Martinez, the NPS’s Chief Historian, told Gizmodo. “But if we had a model that people could interact with, people all over the world would be able to get a sense of the size shape and scale of the ship.”

Autodesk and the NPS have just released the results of the survey during a Memorial Day ceremony at Pearl Harbor. The model should be completed and made available on the internet later this year. As an educational outreach and teaching tool, the models could prove invaluable. “Once you have those models, you’re really only limited by your imagination.”

[MIKA27]

Veteran Tells How Killing A Young German Soldier Haunted Him For Life

In this day of remembrance for all of those who fought to defend the US, I thought it would be good to hear the heartbreaking story of Joseph Robertson, a World War II veteran who had to kill a young German soldier face to face, during the Battle of the Bulge. Listen — and think.

Robertson (on the left) fought with the 30th Infantry Division. Four years before his death at the age of 90 he told the story about what happened to his son in law John Fish Jr (right).

He said it was the saddest moment of his life — which haunted him every night of his life, even while he knew this young kid would have killed him just the same. But that doesn’t matter. If you’re a normal human being, killing another human being will leave a mark on you.

Obviously, Robertson was affected by PTSD. Today we know a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder and veterans of modern wars get treated for these and other mental illnesses derived from their time in combat. But, back then, little was known. Most people assume that PTSD is a relatively modern sickness, but the truth is that every soldier since the beginning of time has been exposed to the same extremely stressing moments, accidents, death, and atrocities that would leave any healthy person scarred for life. All of them — unless they were psychopaths — have suffered PTSD in various degrees.

Robertson, like all the men and women of his generation, not only had to fight a war against the dark forces of Nazism, fascism and Imperial Japan. They had to get back to build their countries and their own lives, all with a tremendous psychological weight over their shoulders and without any help.

And that’s why, if you see any veteran today (No matter where you hail from in the world), you should go to salute them as the true human heroes they are and say thank you.

[MIKA27]

Look At This Monstrous Moving Machine Illuminated By Starlight

No, this enormous diesel powered beast is not a discarded movie prop from James Cameron’s Aliens. He is Otto, one of the two huge transporters of the Atacama Large Millimetre Array radio telescope field, at the high site of Chajnantor Plateau, Atacama Desert, Chile.

Otto, and his twin, Lore move the 12m, 86-tonne dishes across the Chilean plateau. Both transporters were specially designed and built for the ALMA. You can read more about them in a previous Gizmodo article:

They measure 20 meters long, 10 meters wide and 6 meters high, spreading their 130-ton weight over 28 tires. Each transporter is powered by a 700HP diesel engine (actually only about 450HP given the altitude and thinness of air) and carries 3000 litres of fuel. And if you thought it was tough for the engines to breath up there, the backrest of the driver’s seat is shaped to allow him to wear the necessary oxygen tank while driving. These two vehicles top out at a brisk 20 km/h or 12 km/h when carrying an antenna.

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: WWII Germany Hunted Tanks With Explosive Goliath Beetles

While the Russians were busy training dogs to deliver their tank-stopping charges (like a bunch of arseholes), Nazi Germany took a more technocentric approach to its anti-armour efforts. The result: a deadly R/C mini-tank laden with more than 90kg of explosives. Thank goodness these things were so easy for the Allies to disarm.

Dubbed the SdKfz 302 (Sonderkrafahzeug, German for special-purpose vehicle) but better known as the Leichter Ladungsträger (light charge carrier) to its Nazi operators and the Goliath to the Allies, this unique weapon of war was first developed in occupied France in 1940 by French vehicle designer Adolphe Kégresse. Upon learning that the Germans had taken an interest in his vehicle, Kégresse (not unlike Bugatti) attempted to hide his prototype from the Nazis by sinking it in the Seine river. Unfortunately, officials from the Wehrmacht (the German Department of Homeland Security) were able to recover the prototype and had German automaker Carl F W Borgwand put it into production.

The Goliath stood a foot tall, four feet long, and could carry anywhere from 50kg to 100kg of explosives. Its tracks allowed the remotely operated vehicle to scale the walls of trenches and battlefields but slowed its top speed to just 10km/h. It was controlled via joysticks connected by three 650m long cables — one each for steering, throttle and load detonation.

The Goliaths were originally equipped with electric motors when they made their battlefield debuts in 1942 across the European theatre — finding extensive use with Panzer and combat engineering units. However, at 3000 Reichsmarks a pop, these motors proved far too expensive and maintenance intensive for use in what was essentially a remote controlled wheelbarrow filled with dynamite. As such, the electric motor was quickly swapped out for a cheaper, simpler and far louder gas engine. This turned out to be a boon for Allied forces.

With the loud puttering of a gas engine, Allied forces could easily locate the Goliaths before they found their way to their targets then deactivate them simply by cutting the control wires. The Polish resistance employed this tactic to great effect during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 while the Americans that faced these diabolical devices at Normandy deactivated them with the help of concentrated off-shore artillery barrages.

In all, more than 7500 Goliaths were produced between 1942 and the end of the war. Their effectiveness during the war is certainly up for debate but these devices helped set the stage for postwar ROV and UAV developments.

[MIKA27]

From Star Wars To Indiana Jones, The Surprising Acting Career Of Game Of Thrones' Maester Pycelle

After a long and celebrated career, British actor Julian Glover probably feels like he’s due for a win. Currently, as Grand Maester Pycelle on Game of Thrones, he’s ahead of the game — well, he’s alive. Which is more than you can say for his other famous roles on the big screen, which seem to have a running theme of Man Who Tried Too Hard Before Coming To A Sticky End.

Going on past experiences, it doesn’t bode well for Pycelle. Here are the big failures Glover has been encumbered with in the past.

1980: Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

As General Maximillian Veers, Glover got on Darth Vader’s good side by inventing the AT-AT walker and leading the Empire attack on the Hoth Rebel base. He even single-handedly destroyed the shield generator before his AT-AT got hit in the face with a lame Rebel snowspeeder.

There’s several versions of what happened to Veers after. He either died in the accident, or lost his legs and went into a downward career spiral due to his former strong ties to Vader.

But his most humiliating moment, by far, was becoming one of the original YouTube viral videos back in 2006 when he was Punk’d mercilessly by Vader.

It’s one of the ones where you have to watch to the end:

Result: Career brown-noser humiliated by own employer, even after unlucky death in rebel uprising.

1981: For Your Eyes Only

According to Kiss Kiss Bang! Bang!: The Unofficial James Bond Film Companion, Glover was considered for the role of James Bond in Live and Let Die.

Roger Moore got the part, but Glover was given his shot at revenge eight years later when he was signed up as Aristotle Kristatos in Bond’s 12th big screen outing.

Kristatos — a Greek businessman with smuggling ties — appears at first to be Bond’s ally, putting the spy on the trail of the missing British Automatic Targeting Attack Communicator (ATAC).

In reality, Kristatos is a KGB contractor using Bond to redeem the ATAC for his own ends. He nearly succeeds, but Bond single-handedly takes out his men in a cliff-top monastery raid.

Result: A classic villain end for Glover – beaten, surrendering, then killed by a supporting actor after pulling a hidden knife on Bond.

1989: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Glover was reunited with Harrison Ford and George Lucas when handed the role of American businessman Walter Donovan. Again, it was be another Icarus role, aka the man who flew too high, when Glover reached for the ultimate prize, the Holy Grail.

Again, he was to play the part of ally-turned-adversary.

Donovan – secretly a Nazi Party member – convinces an unwitting Henry Jones (played by Sean Connery, in a neat link to Glover’s Bond past) and his son to find the Grail for him. He ends up shooting Henry, forces Indy to clear all the traps and promptly chooses the wrong cup to drink from.

Result: Grasping businessman crumbles into a screaming pile of bones.

2011: Game of Thrones

So, has Glover finally learned anything about climbing the greasy pole from all of this?

So far, as Grand Maester Pycelle, he’s been on shaky ground. He sucked up to the Lannisters while serving the Targaryens, which resulted in disaster for his king Aerys.

He sucked up to Cersai by betraying Tyrion’s confidence regarding the marriage of her daughter and got thrown in prison as a result.

But currently, he’s back by the King’s side – no doubt Tywin Lannister remembered how he’d advised Aerys to let him through the gates. And he’s learnt how to keep his head low, showing in moments when he’s alone that he’s far more fit and mentally agile than he lets on.

Result: So far, the head-down, mustn’t grumble approach has worked out well for Glover as Pycelle. Let’s see how long it lasts this time.

And for the rest of us there’s a clear message from all of this.

In Glover’s own words to Ralph van den Broek at The Indy Experience:

“Always choose the pewter cup. It applies to everything. An allegory for life.”

[MIKA27]

'A Million Ways To Die In The West' Trailer Has An Excellent 'Back To The Future' Gag

When you talk about timeless film trilogies, Back To The Future is up there with one of the best of all time, even if it struggled towards the end. Thankfully, Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy and Cosmos fame (yes, really) decided to throw a cute Back To The Future Joke into the trailer for A Million Ways To Die In The West, starring Doc Brown himself.

Don’t blink! You might miss it. Great scott!

[MIKA27]

Iraq Vet Killed In Gunfight With Police Was Turned Away by VA Hospital

Agency, amid overcrowding scandal, says case of Kansas City soldier suffering from PTSD symptoms is under investigation

The bloodstained floor of his father’s garage is a long way from the Iraq streets where Isaac Sims served two tours of duty in the U.S. Army’s famed 82nd Airborne Division, but it was there that the violence finally caught up with him.

Tortured by symptoms of PTSD, turned away by an overbooked Veterans Administration hospital—his mother says she pleaded with doctors to let him sleep on the hospital floor—Sims was shot by Kansas City police on Sunday after they answered a neighbor’s 911 call. Police say Sims was firing a gun from inside his parents’ home and was killed when he moved to the garage and leveled the weapon at the SWAT team.

Family members don’t believe that the 23-year-old veteran was a threat to police. “With his sniper training, if he was shooting at them he would’ve hit them,” his sister Shawnda Anderson told TIME. But everyone could agree that the root cause of the confrontation was that Staff Sergeant Sims was falling to pieces, and felt like he had nowhere to turn.

“He was in so much turmoil from seeing so many dead bodies in Iraq,” said Anderson. Patricia Sims, mother of the dead soldier, put it this way: “The last six months have been such a nightmare for him. The V.A. kept saying, ‘we’ll get to you later.’ ”

Officials at the Veterans Administration hospital in Kansas City referred questions about the case to Washington, where a V.A. spokesperson said that the “matter is currently under investigation.” Citing federal privacy laws, the agency declined to discuss any specifics of Sims’s case.

Still, the reality of V.A. overcrowding has been commanding headlines and driving Congressional hearings for weeks, driven by revelations that some hospitals have falsified records to mask long wait times. As the daughter of a Korean War veteran, wife of a Vietnam vet, and mother of a veteran of the Iraq War, Patricia Sims knows a lot about the V.A. system, and she said Tuesday that the Kansas City hospital is “great compared to a lot of places” in the system. “But they’re slow; they’re overbooked; they put him off and they put him off and now he’s dead.”

She spoke as friends and family members moved dazedly around the scene of the young man’s death in eastern Kansas City. The family car was on blocks—disabled by police during the stand off, she said. Meanwhile, a funeral home was refusing to collect the body on behalf of the family without payment up front. Shawnda Anderson said that her parents weren’t even sure they wanted to pay a funeral home: to bury their son would only confirm that he is truly gone.

According to family, Sims lived an itinerate childhood, traveling the country from one trailer park to the next as his father pursued work as an electrician. A gentle, peacemaking sort of boy, he never grew tall (his sister puts him at 5-foot-3, but according to a Facebook post, he preferred to say 5-foot-5). But he was wiry and dogged, and at 17 enlisted in the Army for what he intended to be a career.

Instead, after six years and two combat tours, he mustered out, suffering from unspecified disabilities. Unmoored, he began abusing drugs—huffing aerosols primarily—and behaving erratically, his mother said. According to one source who had been briefed on his medical history, Sims suffered “nightmares, flashbacks—just massive Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” with symptoms easily triggered, yet seemingly impossible for him to discuss.

In April, after pleading guilty to two counts of domestic violence, Sims came under the supervision of Municipal Court Presiding Judge Ardie Bland. Widely admired for his work with troubled veterans, Bland placed Sims on probation through a program jointly run by the court and the V.A. Launched in 2009, the Veterans’ Treatment Court tries to restore veterans to “law abiding, productive lives within the country they have defended,” according to municipal court spokesperson Benita Jones. The probation was to include intensive treatment, random drug testing, and frequent reviews.

Sims was distraught over the conviction, which crushed his hopes of starting a new career as a police officer, his mother said. Increasingly alarmed by her son’s deterioration, she offered to send him with a blanket to the V.A.’s in-patient mental health facility, reckoning that a soldier doesn’t need a bed to sleep in. Instead, the intensive treatment envisioned by the special court failed to materialize in time.

“We are saddened by such a tragic loss,” Judge Bland said in a statement. “Our hearts must now go out to the family of Mr. Sims with our prayers and support. We will continue our efforts in the Veterans’ Treatment Court, in his honor and in honor of the others that have served this country.”

A memorial fund has been established in Sims’ name at the United Credit Union.

According to police: A neighbor reported shots fired from the Sims home shortly after noon on Sunday. The SWAT team fanned out, surrounding the house, and the inhabitants of the 2300 block of Lawndale Avenue were evacuated to safety. Hostage negotiators quickly researched the soldier’s story in hopes of coaxing him out. But “things went rapidly downhill,” in the words of one witness, and in a spatter of gunfire Isaac Sims went down, dead on the battlefield that had consumed his life.

And there was one more fallen soldier to mourn on Memorial Day.

MIKA: A truly sad story IMO

[MIKA27]

ECOOL UNDERGROUND BEER COOLER

We tend to think that the refrigerator we currently have in our kitchen is the best way to keep our beers cold, but for some, fridges are not an option. Whether you’re living off-the-grid, living environmentally conscious, or you just think this is one badass contraption, the eCool Underground Beer Cooler is a great way to keep your booze at an optimum drinking temperature.

The device may look like something delivered from outer space, but it’s actually quite simple. The eCool stores your beers underground, taking advantage of the natural lower temperatures, and when you crank the mechanism up top, out comes a cold one. Like we said, we love our fridges, but storing 24 canned beers in the dirt sounds like a pretty awesome idea to me. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

Australian Police, Government: Change Your Apple ID Password ASAP

In the wake of some Apple IDs being compromised and users’ iPhones and iPads being held to ransom, Stay Smart Online and NSW Police have some advice: change your Apple ID password as soon as possible, and avoid any possible headaches in the future.

The advice is not unexpected, and it’s a straightforward enough procedure to actually change your password, but it goes to show how widespread Apple’s devices are throughout Australia — owning an iPhone or iPad is entirely mainstream these days. It’s also good to see the police and Australian government taking an active interest in citizens’ online safety.

When you do change your Apple ID password, make sure you don’t reuse an old one, or one that you’ve used on other websites. Using a strong password (within Apple’s password rule structure) is also strongly recommended.

Apple device and Mac users should be aware that they may be targeted by hackers who lock you out of your device before demanding payment of a ransom.

In recent hours, a number of Australian Apple users have reported the ransom attack targeting their devices. The information available is limited and may be updated as more information emerges.

With the possibility that this attack is linked to your ‘Apple ID’, affected users are advised to change your Apple ID password as soon as possible.

[MIKA27]

Mad Guys Joke As A Tornado Comes To Destroy Them

I can’t understand why Dan Yorgasson kept recording an incoming tornado instead of getting the hell out of there as fast as possible. He just gets into a truck with a friend and waits to get taken away like Dorothy, all the while laughing and swearing.

[MIKA27]

Scientists Think A Wormhole May Be In The Centre Of Our Galaxy

If Zilong Li and Cosimo Bambi of the Fudan University in Shanghai are correct, what we thought was a massive black hole in the centre of our galaxy could be a wormhole that would allow instantaneous travel between two points in space and time. In fact, it may be the gateway to a different universe.

They even go beyond that — their paper says that every supermassive black hole candidate in other galaxies can actually be wormholes created in the early universe.

The supermassive black hole candidates at the center of every normal galaxy might be wormholes created in the early Universe and connecting either two different regions of our Universe or two different universes in a Multiverse model.

Their theory may sound fantastic, but it’s not a completely crazy idea. Wormholes are allowed under the Theory of General Relativity. In fact, while they have never been observed, this hypothetical topological phenomenon of space-time was first postulated by Albert Einstein himself and his friend Nathan Rosen.

But while the equations indicate that they may exist — and, so far, General Relativity has been accurate in its predictions — we need to actually detect one to prove they exist.

Li and Bambi think this will be possible in a couple of years, when a new instrument called Gravity becomes operative at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer, the European Space Observatory located on the top of Cerro Paranal, 74.5 miles (120 kilometers) south of Antofagasta, Chile. From their paper:

Indeed, the origin of these supermassive objects is not well understood, topological non-trivial structures like wormholes are allowed both in general relativity and in alternative theories of gravity, and current observations cannot rule out such a possibility. In a few years, the VLTI instrument GRAVITY will have the capability to image blobs of plasma orbiting near the innermost stable circular orbit of SgrA∗, the supermassive black hole candidate in the Milky Way. The secondary image of a hot spot orbiting around a wormhole is substantially different from the one of a hot spot around a black hole, because the photon capture sphere of the wormhole is much smaller, and its detection could thus test if the center of our Galaxy harbors a wormhole rather then a black hole.

If confirmed — and that’s a big IF for now — does this mean that we will be able of instantaneous intergalactic travel by going to the center of our galaxy? We can’t say now. What we know is what is possible under Einstein’s general relativity. The theoretical work says that

1) Wormholes can exist.

2) Wormholes would allow matter to travel faster than light (FTL) because, while objects passing through a wormhole would still move at sub-light speeds locally (therefore obeying Einstein’s first commandment:Thou shall not travel faster than light!) they will go from one point of the universe to the other much faster than a beam of light travelling outside the wormhole, through regular space.

3) Wormholes would allow to travel in time. This is way too complex to explain here, but you can make your head explode at any time by reading this.

4) Wormholes may connect different universes, which ties with the idea of many parallel universes derived from quantum mechanics. This avoids any time paradox because,according to some recent theories, “a particle returning form the future [through a wormhole] does not return to its universe of origin but to a parallel universe.” I know, Marty, my mind is collapsing into a tiny black hole right now.

This all means that we really don’t have a clue about what may be happening yet when going through a wormhole. We just have a lot of equations that seem to work and, according to Zilong Li and Cosimo Bambi, the possibility of testing the existence of wormholes in the very near future using a new scientific instrument.

And that, my friends, is very exciting on its own, no matter what the final result is.

[MIKA27]

Growing up in the shadow of the mafia

Luigi Di Cicco was the son of a mafia boss, and most people expected him to follow in his father's footsteps. He could easily have fallen into a life of life of money, crime, violence, jail - but he broke free.

When Luigi Di Cicco was coming home from school one day in a small town near Naples he heard what he thought were fireworks.

"Who's celebrating?" he wondered, as he approached his house. "And why?"

Then came the appalling explanation.

Two of his uncles were lying dead in pools of blood in the road. They were both mafia men. The explosions he heard had been gunshots - an ambush by a rival clan.

At the time Luigi was 11 years old, and growing up in a world consumed by organised crime.

"It was the mid-80s. The years of wars and the spilling of blood in the streets," he writes in a new book about his extraordinary childhood.

"That night I was so traumatised that I hoped I'd be involved in some kind of accident - that I'd be in a coma for a long time and wake up only when everything was over.

"Of my childhood I only have ugly memories."

His father, Giuseppe, was in jail on the day Luigi was born.

He only got the news that he had a son when a relative in a prison courtyard shouted up at his cell.

"It's a boy!" he heard through the bars.

Luigi's father and uncles were steeped in the Camorra, as the mafia underworld is known in the Naples area.

The network of clans has been described as Italy's most murderous crime syndicate, preying on the communities around it by means of extortion and protection rackets. Rival factions wage feuds as they battle to control the drugs trade.

For a time, Giuseppe Di Cicco had lived the warped mafia dream.

He was the classic Boss. He controlled territory around the small town of Lusciano. He would go about in big cars, and he had a tailor who made sure he was always impressively dressed.

But by the time his son was born, Giuseppe was already paying for his very serious crimes. He had been given an 18-year prison sentence, later extended to life.

The only contact between father and son came every few weeks at visiting time in high-security prisons.

"I grew up going around the maximum security jails," writes Luigi. "It sounds like a joke, but that's how I learnt the geography of Italy."

Throughout his childhood he felt the absence of his father acutely. There was a constant longing to be closer to him.

On the night before a visit Luigi would not be able to sleep.

"I'd just be thinking of meeting him. I was so excited. I wanted the guards to be faster letting us in. Then my father would appear, and I felt like I had everything that I had been missing."

Luigi's parents had not been married when Giuseppe began his long jail sentences.

But despite their circumstances, they eventually decided they wanted a wedding, and it was held in prison.

Six-year-old Luigi was there.

"These were people fulfilling their dream of getting married, but then they were forced to separate the same night. My father going back to his cell. My mum alone at home," he says.

"I remember having a lot of fun with my cousins. But when I look at the pictures I realise that it was a very sad occasion."

Meanwhile Luigi was growing up in a house run by his father's mafia brothers, and there were often police raids.

"Our house was like a fortress, with CCTV... fences," he says.

"So when the security forces came, it would be by surprise in the middle of the night. It was chaotic. They would come with dogs, helicopters... I was very scared. I just wanted to disappear."

During one raid Luigi saw the police leading one of his uncles out of a bathroom. He was astonished. He had been sure his uncle had been out of the house when the police burst in.

But going into the now-deserted bathroom he saw that concealed under the tub there was an iron ladder leading to an underground chamber.

His uncle had been down there. Luigi had had no idea that the hiding place existed.

This was all going on in a town very much in the Camorra heartland.

Young men were being drawn into the criminal network, and among a strata of Lusciano's population there was constant interest in the affairs of the mafiosi - much talk in bars and cafes about who had just been arrested, who might be coming out of prison, and so on.

And in this atmosphere, young Luigi had a certain status.

"When I would go out into the streets, I was seen as the son of a Boss - as the family's future 'Capo'. I was already respected when I was 15 or 16," he says.

"These people would shake your hand and look into your eyes with respect."

And then there was one remarkable day when Luigi's father was allowed to make a visit to Lusciano. One of his brothers had recently been killed in a road accident, and Giuseppe was being permitted to pay his respects at the grave.

Amid a massive police security operation, this local Boss was brought to the cemetery.

And as word spread a crowd gathered. People wanted a chance to see and greet the revered mafioso - so much so that Luigi claims the police told them to form an orderly queue.

As the father and son walked between the graves it was the only time in the boy's childhood that the pair would be together in their home town.

Luigi was well into his 20s before Giuseppe was freed.

The son seems to have refused to engage mentally with the crimes of his father, to think what his father's victims might have endured.

"I only knew he was the Boss of this family who governed most of our zone," Luigi says.

"As for the rest I've never wanted to go into it. I've never wanted to go into the details, sincerely, to understand... if he'd been accused of murdering two, or three. I was always in the dark."

As we talk, Luigi starts to break down. As he weeps he reaches into a briefcase and pulls out a newspaper from just a few months ago.

Giuseppe Di Cicco stares out of its front page - it's a police mug-shot. Luigi's father, now in his mid-60s, has been arrested again. He and 12 others are accused of involvement in mafia activity, including carrying weapons, extortion and threatening violence.

Luigi seems to have loved his father unconditionally. Some people would find that hard to understand, I say - knowing the life that Guiseppe Di Cicco had led.

"I wasn't stupid," he replies.

"I knew my father was in jail because he hadn't done good things. My dad made a choice. A wrong one. But he never made me make the same choice. He could have - but he didn't."

However deeply immersed in crime Luigi's father may have been, he always wanted a different life for his son - continually urging him to build a future away from the world of the mafiosi.

He admits that there were "tempting occasions" when he could easily have gone into the family "business", but he was strong enough to make his own way.

He dropped out of school, and then began door-to-door selling. Later he did his military service, and then found work in a kitchen in a town further north in Italy - away from his roots.

As time went by he got married and had a child, and today he runs a restaurant in the seaside town of Civitavecchia.

"I'm not a hero," he says.

"But I can't help feeling that it wasn't easy to avoid falling into the trap that life had extended before me.

"My life shows that evil can be rejected. That you can chose a different path - full of sacrifices, and suffering, and mistakes. But one that allows you to enjoy freedom, the people you love and the beautiful things in life."

Luigi hopes his story may be an example to other young people back where he came from in southern Italy who might be tempted to take the wrong path.

Luigi Di Cicco is co-author, with journalist Michele Cucuzza, of Gramigna: Vita di un Ragazzo in Fuga dalla Camorra (The Weed: Life of a boy in flight from the Camorra) published in Italian by Piemme

[MIKA27]

Quebec friends find kidnapped baby through Facebook

Four young people in Quebec are being hailed as heroes after they helped find a baby stolen from a hospital in Trois-Rivieres a day after she was born.

Police had issued an alert on Monday night with a photo of the suspect, who was dressed as a nurse.

The four friends were already searching for the baby when one saw the photo on social media and recognised the woman.

They went to the suspect's home and called police when they saw the car described in the alert.

Quebec police said the suspect, a woman in her 20s, was in police custody in hospital. The baby was returned to her parents within three hours of the alert.

The baby's mother and father, Melissa McMahon and Simon Boisclair, posted a Facebook photo and message on Tuesday thanking police officials, media and anyone who shared the photo for helping find their child.

Ms McMahon praised "four marvellous people, whom we had the chance to meet, [who] identified this woman thanks to Facebook".

'Best moment'

The woman, dressed in red hospital scrubs, allegedly took the child saying she needed to weigh her.

She then drove away in a Toyota Yaris with a "Baby on Board" sign, police say.

Ms McMahon said in her Facebook post she tried to chase after the woman when she realised she was not a nurse

"The powerlessness we felt in this situation was difficult to accept... to no longer have her in my arms after barely 16 hours of life was unreal."

Melizanne Bergeron, her sister Sharelle Bergeron, Marc-Andre Cote and Charlene Plante decided to start looking for the child when they first heard she had been stolen from a hospital in Trois-Rivieres

They were already in their vehicle when they saw the suspect's photo and description.

Ms Plante told broadcaster CTV she recognised the woman as a previous neighbour.

"I know her because the police came sometimes," she said.

When they arrived at the residence, they saw the vehicle listed in the alert and called police.

Ms Bergeron told reporters police arrived quickly and broke down the woman's door.

"Thirty seconds after, the baby was in the hands of the police,'' she said. "It was the best moment in my life. We were crying."

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Snowden: ‘There Are Some Things Worth Dying For’

The NSA leaker said he sees himself as a patriot in his first interview with a U.S. television network, which aired Wednesday night

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, stands by his decision to leak a huge collection of classified National Security Agency documents that revealed extensive, global U.S. government surveillance programs.

“There are some things worth dying for,” Snowden said in an interview with NBC News’ Brian Williams that aired late Wednesday, “I think the country is one of them.” The interview was his first with a U.S. television network since he fled from Hawaii to Hong Kong a year ago with classified materials.

Snowden has been living for the better part of a year under asylum in Russia and said if given the opportunity he’d like to go home.

“If I could go anywhere in the world, that place would be home,” he said. The leaker made similar comments in an interview in January.

Snowden told Williams he attempted to travel to Latin America to seek asylum after leaving Hong Kong, but was left stranded in Moscow airport after the U.S. revoked his passport. The Kremlin granted Snowden temporary asylum, which expires at the end of July and which Snowden says he will ask to extend. He has been charged in the United States with theft and espionage.

Secretary of State John Kerry had harsh words in response to Snowden’s statement that he’d like to return to the United States.

“Edward Snowden is a coward,” Kerry told MSNBC. “He is a traitor. And he has betrayed his country. And if he wants to come home tomorrow to face the music, he can do so.”

In his denunciation of Snowden, Kerry said, “Patriots don’t go to Russia,” but Snowden told NBC that he sees himself as a patriot.

“I’ve from day one said that I’m doing this to serve my country,” he said.

In his lengthy interview Wednesday, Snowden scolded his critics for exploiting the trauma of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to justify the surveillance programs he exposed. Intelligence officials have defended the programs as essential tools in the effort to combat terrorism.

“I’ve never told anybody this. No journalist,” he said. “But I was on Fort Meade on September 11th. I was right outside the NSA. So I remember — I remember the tension of that day. I remember hearing on the radio the planes hitting. And I remember thinking my grandfather, who worked for the FBI at the time, was in the Pentagon when the plane hit it. I take the threat of terrorism seriously. And I think we all do.”

Snowden fired back at assertions made by American officials that he was little more than low-level tech support for the intelligence community, saying he was “trained as a spy” and worked undercover for both the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency. He also rejected the assertion, made to TIME by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, that he is being controlled by Russian intelligence officials. “I have no relationship with the Russian government at all,” he said.

Despite his stated desire to come back, Snowden brushed off questions about whether or not he would make a deal with the U.S. government in order to return.

“My priority is not about myself,” he said. “It’s about making sure that these programs are reformed — and that the family that I left behind, the country that I left behind, can be helped by my actions.”

[MIKA27]

“Wild Men” May Be Lurking in North America’s Remote Woodlands

“I thought it was a feral human,” Mike Wooley recalls of the incident, arguably the strangest to occur during his time as an outdoorsmen. “I had heard about them, and done some reading about them.” Recalling the events of that December day in 1981, Wooley soberly tells of something frightening that occurred in the Louisiana backwoods that changed his life.

“It was a beautiful day, a perfect day for a hunt.” Wooley arrived at his deer stand, located down an old logging road in an area he had hunted frequently, and parking his vehicle halfway down the road, he walked to his tree stand, climbed into it, and silently enjoyed the cool air of the day while waiting for signs of game in the area.

After some time, the sound of an animal crashing through the brush caught his attention. Accompanying the sounds had been a small doe, which darted directly toward his stand and nestled beneath it, breathless. Wooley initially thought the tired deer had been chased by a larger potential mate, and waited eagerly for the buck to appear so it could be claimed.

What appeared instead defied every concept of what “should” exist here in Louisiana, or anywhere else.

A tremendous humanoid, covered in short hair, appeared instead, headed directly toward the deer, and Wooley’s tree stand, seemingly unaware of the hunter resting in it above. The figure approached to just a short distance of twenty yards before it stopped and, becoming alert to Wooley’s presence, peered up at him, its face wrenching angrily.

“As far as a Bigfoot, I thought that was something that (only) existed out in California. I thought that was something somebody made up to make money off of.” Contrary to his previous feelings, Wooley watched the thing for several frightened moments, eventually raising his hunting rifle and observing the thing’s face through the scope, though afraid to shoot anything that looked so human.

“The face was too human. The eyelashes, the teeth, the jaw structure, the forehead. The face was light brown, like it had a dark sun tan. But I couldn’t pull the trigger, because something told me this ain’t right. It’s not the right thing to do.”

The thing growled at Wooley in a way that reminded him of a lion’s roar, to which a loud whistle echoed from someplace up the ridge, as though in response. The “wild man” became alert to this, and appeared to respond with a similar whistle, then looked back at Wooley, who by now had chosen to take action. Leaping from the tree stand, he took off up the wagon road, attempting to close the short distance between his truck, and the location where this strange and feral intruder had now begun to pursue him.

Wooley made it to his truck, and turning to fire a warning shot, watched as the wood on a nearby tree splintered only feet away from the approaching man-beast. He then entered his truck and left, watching behind him as a second humanoid emerged from the brush, which joined his initial pursuer to watch him as he sped away from terrifying experience.

If anything, Wooley is lucky to have survived this alleged encounter with something that, if not human, had been remarkably close, but still different enough to arouse confusion about what he had seen, and whether killing it in self-defense would be ethical, or even lawful. Wooley hadn’t been quick to accept the idea of a Bigfoot standing before him, and despite thinking it could have been someone in a costume, had initially questioned whether some kind of “feral human” might have stood before him, upon observing the details of it’s face through the scope on his rifle.

While the idea of Bigfoot–a large, hairy manlike beast purported to exist in the North American wilds–is and has been a popular cultural phenom for the last half century or more, less often is the issue of actual feral humans discussed in relation to supposed Bigfoot encounters. Science does not accept the existence of such creatures as a reality (yet, at least). But on the subject of feral humans existing in remote areas, there may indeed be some compelling, if not frightening supporting data.

In what led to the authorship of the Missing 411 book series, author and retired law enforcement officer David Paulides had begun researching strange disappearances in National Parks (which, it should be noted, he does not view in direct correlation with things like Bigfoot reports, instead taking a more objective, statistical approach to his investigations). However, one of the most compelling cases Paulides began to study early on had been the disappearance of a young boy, Dennis Martin, who vanished from within sight of his father in the summer of 1969 near Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

One of the most striking details of the case (and one which National Park Service documents pertaining to Martin’s disappearance failed to note) had involved a strange observation made shortly after Dennis Martin went missing, a short distance away near the area of Rowans Creek. Mr. Harold Key and his family had been walking a trail in the area looking for wildlife–in particular, any sign of black bears nearby–when they heard “an enormous, sickening scream.” Within moments, Key’s son pointed out a bear nearby, located up the ridge from them. Mr. Key, upon observing the “bear” his son had spotted, determined this to be not a bear, but a “dark figured, rough-looking man” attempting to remain concealed behind a thicket.

The man, which Key didn’t manage to view in clear detail, had purportedly been carrying something over his shoulder; Harold Key, unaware of Dennis Martin’s disappearance earlier that afternoon, supposed that the figure might have been a moonshiner who had trying to hide from them. Upon learning days later of the search for Dennis Martin, Harold Key notified the FBI about what he and his family had seen the same afternoon Dennis went missing.

Dennis Martin was never found, although the footprint of a small boy’s Oxford-style shoe was located a few days after he vanished, and within 3.5 miles of Spence Field, where the Martin family had camped the night before. Several years afterward, an illegal ginseng hunter would come forward, claiming he had found the skull and other remains of a small boy in the same vicinity; however, a search of the area yielded no results so many years after the fact, as the man had feared that he might be arrested for his illegal activity in the area that led him to the discovery.

Still, along with the Oxford print by the nearby Pigeon River, the case of the “rough looking man” had been the other in a pair of leads later cited by retired National Park Ranger Dwight McCarter, which he had wished had been more carefully examined. During meeting between Paulides and McCarter in 2011, the retired Ranger had discussed “wild men” that were known to have lived in the area at the time of the Martin disappearance; however, these were not any sort of “wild creature” apart from mere humans which had made a conscious choice to live off the land. One of these individuals, according to McCarter, had even “worn a bear skin” around his person while trudging through the forest. Is there any connection that could be made between a wild or feral human in the Great Smoky Mountains National Forest, and the disappearance of Dennis Martin?

It should be noted, however, that the purported location of the child’s remains that were observed by the ginseng hunter had been three miles from Spence Field, and in the same direction of the shoe print searchers found by the Pigeon River; the location where Harold Key and his family heard the chilling scream just prior to observing a “rough looking man”, possibly carrying something on his shoulder, had been nine miles from the location. Unfortunately, due to the circumstances of the testimony provided by the ginseng poacher, no success came with subsequent searches for the mystery child’s remains, and thus no hard proof that a body was indeed found in that area can be offered.

The idea of “feral” wild men living off foraging and, at times, theft from hikers and campers in wilderness areas is more common than many would think. In 2013, Caity Weaver wrote an article on this with the rather sensational headline, “Feral, Thieving Mountain Men Keep Emerging from America’s Woods, Unwillingly.” In it, she discussed a pair of arrests of men who had been operating very similar to Dwight McCarter’s mention of “Wild Men” in the Smoky Mountains:

Early last week, authorities in Utah arrested Troy Knapp, the notorious “Mountain Man” outlaw, who had been robbing and defacing cabins in the southern portion of the state for nearly a decade. Two days later, officers from the Maine Warden Service arrested a legend known to locals as “the backpack burglar,” who had been living alone deep in the woods of Central Maine, burglarizing camps for 27 years.

The latter of these men had existed (unlawfully, mind you) for nearly three decades in Central Maine, an area which,in terms of climate, might present far greater perils than the locations of Wooley’s encounter with a beastly “feral human,” or even that of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park along the borders on North Carolina and Tennessee. Weaver went on to note of Christopher Knight, Maine’s mystery wild-man, that

Officers reported that Knight was clean-shaven, wearing a pair of clean jeans and a clean shirt. (His campsite included a makeshift shower protected by firs.) He told police he had spoken to only one other human since 1986: a hiker he encountered on a trail in the mid-1990s with whom he’d exchanged a brief hello… Knight, who offered no explanation as to why he decided to live alone in the woods for 27 years (“He said he frequently asks himself that same question,” said a Maine State Trooper), expressed “shame and remorse” over his burglaries and added that he was relieved to longer be living in solitude. He’s currently in jail on charges of burglary and theft.

Knight obviously didn’t fit the description many would stereotypically append to a purported “feral human” or “wild man,” unlike the mystery man clad in a bear’s skin that Dwight McCarter described to David Paulides. Still, it is interesting to consider the things that might drive a person to live in solitude like this for so long, and of course, the lengths to which they would go to survive. Obviously, theft is a common attribute… and depending on the individual, how much more would it take for the abduction of a small child to take place? Park Rangers had noted that food supplies for creatures like bears had been extremely low in the summer of 1969, with one unhealthy and emaciated bear reportedly released from capture near a feeding plot for deer. Arguably, anything living in the area would have faced the strains of this kind of food shortage; whether or not the culprit had been a bear or not is irrelevant.

To suppose instances of “wild” or feral humans living in remote areas is not intended to undermine the possibility that a creature like Bigfoot might exist. Nor is it offered here as an alternative explanation for things seen by the likes of Mike Wooley and other outdoorsmen who claim having encounters with man-like beasts.

But even for men who seek such monsters, it is hard to deny that in many cases, the most frightening beasts available to the mind are those which walk on two legs; no question over the existence of a Bigfoot is needed just to see the concern this statement entails, and the grim possibilities regarding strange disappearances of people from our National Parks it might suggest.

[MIKA27]

Who Was the Man in the Iron Mask?

For more than thirty years, a mysterious masked prisoner known only as “Eustache Dauger” was incarcerated under the regime of Louis XIV—first at the king’s fortress in Pigernol, and later at the Bastille. (The Straight Dope‘s Cecil Adams runs through the story here.) He died in 1703, and by most accounts his secret died with him—but public speculation about his identity only increased in the years following his death. Voltaire, who was something of a prankster, created the modern legend more than a half-century later by describing the mask as iron (it was more likely made of black velvet) and famously proposing that the prisoner was King Louis XIV’s unacknowledged brother, a theme that carries over into Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers novel The Man in the Iron Mask (1850) and subsequent film adaptations.

io9′s Esther Inglis-Arkell recently endorsed the most plausible theory to date, which is that the Man in the Iron Mask was actually a disgraced French general by the name of Vivien de Bulonde, who abandoned the Siege of Cuneo (and his equipment, and his wounded soldiers) in 1691 in anticipation of an enemy’s nonexistent reinforcements. This theory was advanced by military cryptologist Etienne Bazieres (1846-1931), who decoded a previously indecipherable letter from Louis XIV reading as follows:

His Majesty knows better than any other person the consequences of [bulonde's] act, and he is also aware of how deeply our failure to take [Cuneo] will prejudice our cause, a failure which must be repaired during the winter. His Majesty desires that you immediately arrest General Bulonde and cause him to be conducted to the fortress of Pignerole, where he will be locked in a cell under guard at night, and permitted to walk the battlements during the day with a…

And that’s as far as Bazieres could directly decode the passage—the word that appears at the end of that sentence is not one that appears in Louis XIV’s other encoded letters. Curiously, “masque” would work; it wasn’t a word Louis XIV used elsewhere. And both Bulonde and the masked man were imprisoned at Pignerole. And the masked man was arrested shortly after the Siege of Cuneo, following transmission of the letter.

Could it have been someone else? Possibly—but unless we exhume the masked prisoner’s mysterious grave (marked only “Mathioly”) and discover DNA evidence that gives us a better lead, the best working theory is that he was, in fact, Vivien de Bulonde.

[MIKA27]

The Secret of the One-Inch Punch

Bruce Lee was a symbol of a lot of things: athleticism, showmanship, commitment to an art form, exoticization of Chinese culture by Hollywood, and the capacity of a gentle personality to unexpectedly commit acts of violence. And all of these cultural roles are summed up very well in the one-inch punch.

Victor Tran talks about the cultural significance of the one-inch punch, and short power in general, in this seven-minute documentary:

The one-inch punch looks physically impossible. It clearly isn’t, but the physics behind it are weird and counterintuitive. And as Stanford University neuroscientist Jessica Rose explained last week in Popular Mechanics, short power relies as much on your brain and your hips as it does your fists:

‘When watching the one-inch punch, you can see that his leading and trailing legs straighten with a rapid, explosive knee extension,’ Rose says. The sudden jerk of his legs increases the twisting speed of Lee’s hips—which, in turn, lurches the shoulder of his thrusting arm forward … ‘Muscle fibers do not dictate coordination … and coordination and timing are essential factors behind movements like this one-inch punch.’

The one-inch punch looks mysterious to us because we have a superficial understanding of what punches are: we think of them as fist, elbow, and shoulder motions, and traditional Western heavyweight boxers rely enough on upper-body strength that it’s usually easy for us to maintain this illusion while we’re watching them. But if you’ve watched women’s boxing or lower-weight-class men’s boxing, you already know the importance of stance and the degree to which it can compensate for muscle weight—unless you’re huge it’s not physically possible to deliver a good punch from most positions, and the ability to coordinate the entire body in order to deliver an effective punch is one that takes years of practice and considerable neuroplasticity.

The one-inch punch shows just how much that practice, and neuroplasticity, can accomplish.

[MIKA27]

Are You Ready to Eat Insects?

In a way, this article’s headline is a bit silly; eating insects has always been a big part of the human story. (If it wasn’t, who would have ever had the idea to try crawfish?) But it hasn’t caught on in the high-production, high-consumption context of industrialized nations, and if it does, it just might save the world. That’s only a very slight exaggeration.

In this PBS NewsHour piece, veteran journalist Spencer Michaels follows entomophagists Monica Martinez, Brian Fisher, Florence Dunkel, and Daniella Martin. And by the time they describe why they eat insects (and why they think the rest of us should consider it), it’s hard to rationally disagree with them (especially when the worst thing Martinez’s customers have to say about grubworms is that they’re too bland):

Earlier this month, the charming Big Cricket Farms took the entomophagy movement a step further by successfully funding a Kickstarter campaign to mass-produce cookies and “chirps” (tortilla-style cricket chips) made from cricket flour, which is exactly what it sounds like.

The products are high-protein, relatively low-carb, and apparently still taste a little bit like crickets, which is by most accounts not at all a terrible thing, once you get used to it.

[MIKA27]

U.S. Air Force Decision Leaves a HAARP-Shaped Hole in the Hearts of Conspiracy Buffs

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), a joint military research project supervised by the University of Alaska that focuses on using the ionosphere as a possible wireless communications medium, is coming to a close over the next several months. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), DARPA director Arati Prabhakar, and U.S. Air Force deputy assistant director David Walker discuss HAARP’s successes, and the need to move past it, during this U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing (and it’s one of the more interesting U.S. Senate subcommittee hearings you’ll watch):

This is terrible news for people who think it was something other than a research program. As the HAARP Wikipedia page delicately puts it:

HAARP is a target of conspiracy theorists, who claim that it is capable of modifying weather, disabling satellites and exerting mind control over people, and that it is being used as a weapon against terrorists. Such theorists have blamed the program for causing earthquakes, droughts, storms and floods, diseases such as Gulf War Syndrome and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, and the 2003 destruction of the space shuttle Columbia. Commentators and scientists say that proponents of these theories are “uninformed,” as most theories put forward fall well outside the abilities of the facility and often outside the scope of natural science.

You might think that the U.S. government would be reluctant to shut down a facility that can control our minds and wreak doom on anyone at will, but hey, nobody thought they’d consider eliminating Saturday mail delivery either.

You can read up on some recent HAARP data here, courtesy of Stanford’s VLF Group. As you can see, it’s not quite the cutting-edge piece of scientific equipment that it was when it was built in 1993—but scientists are continuing to make as much use of it as they can, and will no doubt continue to do so until its last day of operation.

[MIKA27]

$10 Million Yacht Tips Over On Its Maiden Voyage

Well, that’s not supposed to happen. Not when you spend $US10 million on a 27m yacht. Not when that $US10 million 27m yacht is embarking on its maiden voyage. Not when a boat, let a lone a $US10 million 27m yacht, is never supposed to tip over sideways.

Daily Picks and Flicks found this hilarious footage from Yachtvid showing the boat tipping over. I wonder if a person’s ego is momentarily deflated when ego purchases go bad. Well, at least it’s still floating, right?

[MIKA27]

A Simple Blast Of Laser Could Help Your Teeth Grow Back

Teeth don’t grow back, as your dentist might like to remind you while revving up the drill for a root canal. But scientists have now found a way to regenerate dentin, the hard stuff in the middle of the tooth, right in the mouth. It’s surprisingly simple too — all it takes is a blast of laser.

In a study published today in Science Translational Medicine, a Harvard-led team lays out how a low-power laser can trigger stem cells in the tooth to form dentin. Currently, damaged dentin is replaced with synthetic material, like when you get a filling or a root canal.

The current study builds on years of anecdotal reports about low-power laser stimulating skin or hair growth. (Yes, at the same time high-power lasers do the opposite.) Something about laser light stimulates certain biological pathways in cells. Scientists have now figured what that something is when it comes to dentin. A blast of laser induces reactive oxygen species, which are chemically active molecules that then activate a growth factor to stimulate dentin growth.

Although studies have regenerated parts of a tooth from stem cells in a petri dish before, the laser procedure can happen right in the month. This study’s authors got it to work in tiny rodent teeth, and now they’re continuing onto human clinical trials in hope it could someday replace some current dental procedures. I don’t know if the thought of even low-power lasers makes the dentist less terrifying, but I’d take it over a root canal.

[MIKA27]

Pirate Bay Founder Captured By Police After Two Years On The Run

The elusive founder of The Pirate Bay, on the run for two years, has been arrested by police in Sweden. He now has to serve the eight-month sentence for copyright infringement that he was sentenced to in 2010 — although the site itself won’t be affected.

Peter Sunde’s conviction for copyright infringement was finalised in February 2012, after his appeal to Sweden’s supreme court was rejected — a repeated appeal was again rejected in late May this year. Apparently hiding out in Germany for the last 27 months, the Pirate Bay founder was apprehended in the south of Sweden a few days ago.

It’s been eight years since the original case was brought against The Pirate Bay, when its Web servers were raided by Swedish police; despite legal troubles the site was up and running within three days. Two of the four key figures behind the site have already served their prison terms, and Sunde is the third — the fourth, Fredrik Neij, is still in hiding somewhere in south east Asia.

Of course, Sunde’s arrest and imminent jailing to serve his 2010 sentence won’t affect the running of the site itself. The Pirate Bay is currently registered to a domain in the Republic of Seychelles, and at the moment seems impervious to any legal challenges mounted against it.

[MIKA27]

Teleportation Is Real and Here’s Why it Matters

It ain't the stuff of Star Trek, but quantum physics can make it possible to do things that mystified even Einstein

The future has a way of becoming the past. Men on the moon? Check. Picture phones? Thank you, Skype. But teleportation? Not so much. The idea of breaking yourself down to your constituent molecules, beaming yourself across space and reassembling somewhere else sounds cool, but there are problems. For one, there’s The Fly. For another, it’s monstrously difficult.

But teleporting information is another matter. And in a new study just published in Science, researchers at the Delft Institute of Technology in The Netherlands have revealed that they’ve done just that—sort of.

What the Dutch physicists did involved something called quantum entanglement, which Einstein once described as “spooky action at a distance,” a term that pretty much describes what it is. Entangled particles are sort of the dysfunctional couples of quantum physics. You know that long-distance relationship you had in college that didn’t really work out and every time you and your significant other got on the phone or exchanged an e-mail you wound up getting into a fight and feeling a whole lot lousier than you did five minutes before? That’s action at a distance.

The same is true of entangled particles, except if quantum theory is right, the interaction can take place across infinite distances and instantaneously. That means that the spin rate and direction of one particle—which is how the behavior of these things are measured–will determine the spin rate and direction of its entangled partner on the other side of the universe, effectively simultaneously.

How does it work? Easy: First quantum stuff happens, then more quantum stuff follows and there are lots of equations that explain it all but they’d definitely give you a headache and they’d make you feel lazy for taking a gut major like political science as an undergrad—or at least that’s how they make me feel—so spare yourself that.

The point is, the Delft researchers proved the principle by isolating target entangled electrons inside two supercooled diamonds placed 10 meters—or 33 ft.—apart, creating what one of the physicists described as “miniprisons” for them. They then maniupulated their spin rate and determined that the behavior of one indeed continued to determine the spin of the other, and vice versa, even at that distance. Something similar had been achieved before, in 2009, by University of Maryland researchers, but the experiment worked only one out of every 100 million attempts. This one succeeded 100% of the time. Next, the Dutch plan to expand their work—literally—trying to see if the quantum entanglement holds at a distance of 1 kilometer, or .62 mi.

This matters for reasons that go beyond just allowing you to say things like spooky action at a distance, though that is admittedly pretty cool. Spin rate, to a quantum particle, counts as information, and information is what computers traffic in. But unlike traditional bits of information, which can have only one of two values—1 or 0—quantum bits, or qubits, can have an infinite number. Computers built of quantum particles entangled at a distance could be to contemporary computers what contemporary computers are to scratch marks on a flat stone. Don’t trade in your MacBook yet—but don’t say you weren’t warned.

[MIKA27]

Amazing LEGO Creation Breaks World Record in Budapest

Things in the LEGO world just got serious.

A new world record was broken just this week in Hungary, Budapest when LEGO architects placed the finishing Rubik's Cube ornament on the top of the massive Lego skyscraper.

Reaching 34.76 meters (114 feet), the tower was officially registered with the Guinness book of World Records as well as the LEGO Store in Budapest on May 25.

Constructed in front of St. Stephen's Basilica, the structure was created as a group effort. Dozen's of school children and specialized workmen banded together to assemble the tower using hundreds of thousands of LEGO bricks.

When asked about his reasoning behind the project, Mayor Antal Rogan explained:

This is a modern obelisk behind us, it shows that with lots of minute engineering knowledge & diligence how we can call attention to the fact that this is one of the most beautiful squares of Budapest.

The tower certainly has turned the publics eye to the lovely square.