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

[MIKA27]

The F-22 Is Finally Seeing Action After 7 Years

A mere seven years (less than two presidential terms) after it was declared fit for combat operations, and then repeatedly grounded for operational issues, the F-22 Raptor has finally had its first taste of war, in the skies over what used to be Syria.

The F-22 fleet has been quietly deployed to a UAE airbase since 2012, originally as a deterrent against Iran’s nuclear aspirations (remember when that was the biggest crisis facing the world?). However, early Tuesday morning these weapons of war streaked across the Syrian sky and rained down ruination upon an ISIS stronghold. You can see video of the strike, recorded by the plane’s onboard synthetic aperture radar over at The Aviationist, or below.

MIKA: OSU!

[CanuckSARTech]

MIKA: Seriously I don't get it with people.... Drop testing mobiles, freezing in liquid nitrogen, now grinding!? None of these are normal uses for a mobile so why should it matter? If you don't like Android, don't buy it, if you don't like Apple, don't buy it either. Just released mobile and ruining it.

Well SAID!!!! Completely agreed here!!

[MIKA27]

Think You Know Everything About Water? Well, You Don’t

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” – Donald Rumsfeld

Who says the days of intelligent discourse within the body politic are over? What Mr. Rumsfeld was so eloquently espousing is a small part of what’s commonly known as epistemology, or the theory of knowledge. Epistemology is a branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge; what is knowledge, how is it acquired, and what value does it have in the course of life. These are some of the questions posed by philosophers, and while those questions may seem simple on the surface, they are anything but simple once you start to dig deeper.

While it’s a fun exercise to ponder what those unknown unknowns might be, in truth, it serves little purpose. In all the libraries, and in all the books, all the blogs and websites, and all the classrooms the world over, the sum total of human knowledge waits to be discovered. Or rediscovered as the case may be.

What follows are some relatively simple concepts that, up until now, may have actually been unknown unknowns for you.

Plato next to Aristotle

Have you ever wondered why warm water freezes faster than cold water? Perhaps you’ve never noticed this odd fact, but you can test it out for yourself, if you wish. Up until November of 2013, no one really had any idea why this should be the case. It’s entirely counterintuitive to physics as we know it. Though some would say physics is counterintuitive to physics as we know it.

It turns out this problem was recently solved, or at least a plausible explanation has been put forward, though there is disagreement. And it has to do with the reason why water, unlike any other liquid, expands when frozen; hydrogen bonds.

You don’t need to be a master’s student in chemistry to understand this either. What happens when water freezes is that during the phase shift (changing from liquid state to solid state) the hydrogen atoms – you’ll remember that water consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom – arrange themselves, with respect to the oxygen, into what’s called an open structure. This means that the hydrogen bonds are forced to stretch in order to maintain their covalent bond with the oxygen atom, and longer hydrogen bonds means more space within the water molecule. Hence water expands when frozen. This effect is also what causes ice to float; it’s less dense than than its liquid state.

Researchers at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University worked out that this hydrogen bond stretching is also responsible for warm water freezing faster than cold.[1] Any high school chemistry student can tell you that hydrogen is attracted to oxygen. That’s why we have water to begin with. But the hydrogen atoms in a single water molecule aren’t exactly monogamous. They’re also attracted to the oxygen in other water molecules. Though, water molecules on the whole are repellant to each other.

What these researchers found is that when water is heated, the repellant force between the water molecules increases, thus increasing the distance between them. The hydrogen atoms don’t let go of their attraction though, and they stretch out even further to maintain a bond with the oxygen in the adjacent water molecules. Now if you remember your physics, you’ll know that stretching a bond like this means that energy is being stored inside it as it expands (heat energy). So, when warmer water is cooled rapidly, the repellant force between water molecules will subside, causing them to move closer together, and in turn causing the hydrogen bonds to shrink, which equals a release of that stored energy. And releasing energy in any system causes cooling. Which means, in effect, warm water being cooled rapidly, is actually freezing twice as quickly; both from the outside and the inside.

What you thought was plain, boring water holds other mysteries too. Did you know that you can build a bridge out of water?

Wasserfaden. That’s the name for a phenomenon that has baffled great minds for more than 100 years. The word is German for water-thread, and the wasserfaden experiment is something to behold.

As you can see from the video, deionized water can spontaneously form a bridge between two beakers when a high voltage current is applied. One of the beakers gets a positive charge and the other a negative charge, and once the current reaches a certain critical voltage, the water will begin to climb a small thread suspended between the beakers, ultimately forming a water bridge. That bridge will remain stable even if the beakers are slowly pushed away from each other, up to 25mm, and once the bridge is formed, the thread – depending on its length – can be pushed across the void and into the second beaker, leaving the water alone to support itself in thin air.

It’s a neat trick, but there aren’t any clear answers for why it happens.

The leading explanation is that a high tangent electrical field is causing surface polarization on the water, which is a term used in electromagnetic theory, and can be thought of as similar to the water being magnetized.[2] The concept is fairly well known in chemical engineering, but why it should have this effect remains unclear.

It was previously thought that sodium ions in the water were being attracted to the negative pole of the current, and subsequently their movement across the bridge was causing a high degree of surface tension. But this has been proven to be incorrect, as the greater the ionization of the water, the less stable the bridge structure becomes.

And so it goes with human knowledge; as we march ahead, forging new paths in science and technology, we’re able to identify new unknowns, and to thereby shrink the massive pool that is that which we do not know we do not know.

All that need be said at this point is, compared to all the works of man and the wisdom held in the universe wide, we really know nothing.

[1] Xi Zhang Yongli Huang, Zengsheng Ma, Chang Q Sun. O:H-O Bond Anomalous Relaxation Resolving Mpemba Paradox. arXiv e-print, courtesy Cornell University LibraryarXiv:1310.6514 [physics.chem-ph]

[2] Álvaro G. Marín and Detlef Lohse. Building water bridges in air: Electrohydrodynamics of the floating water bridge. American Institute of Physics, December 2010. Phys. Fluids 22, 122104 (2010); dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3518463

[MIKA27]

Fill This Metal Blood Bag Flask With Other Life-Giving Liquids

The unique shape of this stainless steel flask makes it look like a blood bag full of life-giving serum for the T-1000 from Terminator 2, and that’s not too far from the truth. The prototype for the Liquid Body Flask was actually created by pumping water into a couple of panels of stainless steel welded together at the edges until they inflated like a water balloon.

But instead of blood or liquid metal, you can fill this flask with whatever life-sustaining liquid you choose; be it water, booze or Hawaiian Punch. It won’t officially be available for sale until November though. [Areaware]

[MIKA27]

Steven Soderbergh Made Raiders Of The Lost Ark Into A Silent Film

It’s hard to say what my favourite thing about Steven Soderbergh’s new remix of Raiders of Ark is. Is it the total lack of dialogue? Or maybe it’s the vivid black-and-white rendering that makes you forget the film is supposed to be in colour. Actually, honestly, it’s the sick 8-bit soundtrack. That’s it.

Soderbergh didn’t transform this 1981 Steven Spielberg classic into a silent monochrome masterpiece just for fun. He actually made the changes to highlight the original director’s mastery of staging, a term he defines as “how all the various elements of a given scene or piece are aligned, arranged, and coordinated.” And the trick works. With just Soderbergh’s sort of awesome score — think Blade Runnermeets Drive — it’s incredible how deeply you’re encouraged to study the shots. (Watch the full film here.)

Indeed, Spielberg is a master. “This filmmaker forgot more about staging by the time he made his first feature than I know to this day,” Soderbergh wrote on his blog, “(for example, no matter how fast the cuts come, you always know exactly where you are — that’s high level visual maths ****).”

So sit back and soak it in. It will feel a little weird at first — most of the experiments on Soderbergh’s blog do. In the end, you’ll love it, though. And you might even learn something. Just click over to Soderbergh’s blog, Extension 765, to see the Raiders of the Lost Ark remix in full.

[MIKA27]

Invisibility Cloaks Closer To Reality Thanks To 'Digital Metamaterials'

The concept of “digital metamaterials” – a simple way of designing metamaterials with bizarre optical properties that could hasten the development of devices such as invisibility cloaks and superlenses – is reported in a paper published in Nature Materials.

Min Gu is a Professor of Optoelectronics at Swinburne University of Technology, Boris Kuhlmey is an Associate Professor of Photonics and Optics at University of Sydney, while Tiffany Walsh is a Professor of Bionanotechnology at Deakin University. This post originally appeared on The Conversation.

Metamaterials are artificially engineered out of microscopic subunits – such as glass, metal or plastic – arranged in a repeating fashion. Once assembled, these metamaterials possess unique properties, such as interacting with light in unusual ways, which aren’t often seen in natural materials.

“The idea behind metamaterials is to mimic the way atoms interact with light, but with artificial structures much smaller than the wavelength of light itself,” said Boris Kuhlmey, associate professor of photonics and optics at the University of Sydney.

“This way, optical properties are no longer restricted to those of the constituent materials, and can be designed almost arbitrarily.”

The material world goes digital

The researchers of the Nature Materials paper, from the University of Pennsylvania, were inspired to develop digital metamaterials by the binary numeral system of Boolean algebra.

The binary system is used internally by most digital electronic devices, such as computers and smartphones. Complex digital devices have their digital information simply encoded as a string of 1s and 0s called “bits”.

The proposed method for digital metamaterials is a simplified way of building metamaterials, yet still allows for complex and diverse properties to be achieved.

“The beauty of the new method is its simplicity,” said Min Gu, professor of optoelectronics at Swinburne University of Technology.

Through the use of simulations in two-dimensional space, the researchers explored the possibility of creating metamaterials with only two specially chosen component parts, called metamaterial bits – analogous to the 1 and 0 “bits” of binary computer code. The arrangement of metamaterial bits represents the “digitising” of metamaterials.

In their study, the researchers chose to use nano-sized pieces of silver and silica (glass) as their repeating metamaterial bits. These are materials that interact with light in very different ways on an individual level. Once they were “digitised”, the resulting metamaterial had its own unique properties, very different to those of its constituent parts.

“The components of the material work together to generate effects or give rise to phenomena that you wouldn’t observe if they weren’t arranged together in 3D (or in this case, 2D) space as an ordered assembly,” said Tiffany Walsh, professor of bionanotechnology at Deakin University.

Sourcing material parts in order to achieve unusual properties of a metamaterial can be time consuming and expensive. This new way of thinking about the design of metamaterials may allow researchers to produce the optical properties they want from the metamaterial using only two component parts.

“What this [research] really does is put a new spin on the idea that with only two set materials arranged with the right portions – one metal, one insulator, here silver and silica – almost any optical property can be achieved,” said Associate Professor Kuhlmey.

Professor Walsh said: “This is like the concept of turning sound waves from analog into digital – and they’ve pushed it into a new realm of physics.

“They’ve been able to take the permittivity – the response of the material when it’s exposed to radiation – and digitised this. They’ve turned it into something that is more readily manipulated.”

Waves and matter collide

One of the key applications for metamaterials lies in their ability to manipulate light.

“We already have knowledge about how to manipulate radiation (such as light) – we can use lenses, like a magnifying glass, for example, which focus light down on a spot; we can use mirrors to reflect light and change its direction,” Professor Walsh said.

“But what these [metamaterials] can do is something more sophisticated: they’re able to bend light, to scatter it, to manipulate it in unusual ways.”

Using their digital method, the researchers showed that it is possible to create certain metamaterials with very low permittivity, which are rarely found in nature. Having control over these properties may open doors to more advanced technological applications, such as invisibility cloaking devices.

“It would be interesting in future to see if such a digital design method can facilitate the construction of optical, or invisibility, cloaks,“ said Professor Gu.

“With varying changes of silver/glass ratios (structured at the nanoscale) it is then in principle possible to make flat lenses and other tiny optical elements,” Associate Professor Kuhlmey said.

“The authors […] showed in simulations that nano-patterned glass/silver structures can then bend light, which is also the principle behind invisibility cloaking.”

He added that fabricating the proposed structures would be challenging but not impossible.

“[it would] require structuring glass and metal with a precision of a few atoms in thickness only – but thinking of metamaterials as binary structures may help devise new nano-patterning lithography (printing) techniques that take advantage of this,” he said.

[Habana Mike]

Steven Soderbergh Made Raiders Of The Lost Ark Into A Silent Film

Watched a good 15 minutes of that - pretty cool. The score reminded me of the ROTLA Atari video game from 1982 though.....

[MIKA27]

Cops Have No Right To Be Angry About The iPhone's New Encryption

Security professionals and joe-schmoes alike cheered Apple’s recent announcement that it would no longer be able to turn iPhone data over to cops. Finally, a guarantee that authorities couldn’t snoop around your text messages! But you know who didn’t cheer? Cops, of course.

Ronald T. Hosko, former Assistant Director of the FBI Criminal Investigative Division, published an opinion piece in The Washington Post today that said as much. Chances are other law enforcement officers and agencies are upset about the new security measures too. They just didn’t write a piece about it for one of America’s largest newspapers.

Specifically, Hosko bemoaned the fact that a seized cell phone helped save a man’s life earlier this year. As the former FBI agent put it, Apple’s announcement last week — and the similar Android announcement that followed it — means that your photos and emails are safer from prying eyes. BUT:

It also means law enforcement officials won’t be able to look at the range of data stored on the device, even with a court-approved warrant. Had this technology been used by the conspirators in our case, our victim would be dead. The perpetrators would likely be freely plotting their next revenge attack.

There are a couple glaring problems with this reasoning. For one, as a security researcher proved earlier this week, it’s not impossible for police to look at this data. It’s just more difficult.

The bigger issue at hand is the assumption that better law enforcement should come at the expense of civil liberties. Sure, cops could probably solve all kinds of crimes if they had more access to citizens’ private data! Maybe we should install police-operated cameras on every street corner, so the police can watch us all the time. Even better, let’s just turn every building into a Panopticon and employ government-run robots to listen in on every conversation.

American citizens care. American citizens were excited about the improved security measures, because they have spent the last year being told about the dozens of different ways that their own government spies on them. American citizens deserve privacy as much as they deserve security.

One more thing: American citizens also don’t really trust cops, and that isn’t helped by the fact that cops have been doing some pretty shady things lately. One only needs to look as far as Ferguson, Missouri to comprehend this truth — and it is a tragic truth.

Criminals are going to commit crime. That’s another tragic truth. And cops spent centuries solving crimes without mobile phone data. I, for one, have faith that they can also figure out how to do that in this new modern era of improved privacy.

[MIKA27]

The Evacuator Makes Jumping Out A Window A Sane Way To Escape A Fire

If a fire starts on a high floor in a skyscraper, there’s a good chance it could cut off the means of escape for everybody on the floors above. But a Dutch company wants to solve this problem with technology that’s not dissimilar to what stuntmen use to stay safe.

It’s called the Evacuator. Installed near windows in skyscrapers, this custom-built device houses a simple cable and pulley system. In the event of an emergency, occupants simply climb into the Evacuator’s harnesses and slowly lower themselves down the side of the building. It looks almost exactly like repelling, except the rate of descent is controlled. This is a good idea, especially since you can count on people evacuating a burning building being a little bit panicked.

The steel cable approach won’t work for every building. For now, the Evacuator can only work on buildings that are less than 300m. And obviously strapping on harnesses and jumping out of a window is going to be pretty scary for your random office worker. For now, the makers of the Evacuator are targeting their product towards workers on high flying construction sites, oil rigs, and wind turbines.

That said, this is an idea other companies are already pursuing. An Israeli company recently unveiled a similar product that comes in the form of a backpack. It has the advantage of being a fair bit smaller than a giant motor you bolt to the wall, but at the cost of asking scared office workers to find their own anchor points. And if all this sounds very scary, you might just consider staying close to the ground.

[MIKA27]

Old SARS Iso-Tubes Are Keeping Ebola Patients Alive On Planes

When doctors are stricken by the infectious disease they are fighting — the recent and ongoing West African Ebola outbreak, for example — you can’t very well stick them on a commercial flight back to the states for treatment. Instead, highly infectious disease (HID) patients must instead be transported under complete biological isolation inside one of these portable, personal clean rooms.

For a long time, the Air Transportable Isolator (ATI) — originally developed in the 1970s by the British Royal Air Force’s Infection Prevention Control Team — was the only available means of moving HID patients while minimising the risk of spreading the infection. Now, in a post-SARs, post-Bird flu world, private contractors have expanded on and enhanced the design.

In America, transportation using this devices was provided by the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland. A rapid response team there was designed to handle not just conventional contagious outbreaks like SARS, Ebola, or Hemorrhagic Fever in exotic locales, but also to respond to any bioterrorism attacks on American soil.

Per the CDC, every step that could be taken to minimize the spread of infection needs to be. The aid workers were clad head to toe in hazmat suits while the isolation tubes themselves worked like miniature surgical suites:

Maximum biological containment is designed to prevent transmission of highly hazardous pathogens and is accomplished in two steps. First, the health-care worker wears an impermeable suit consisting of a lightweight polyvinyl chloride (PVC) coverall, a separate hood, and vinyl boots. A HEPA-filtered respirator powered by a rechargeable battery supplies air under positive pressure for breathing and cooling. HEPA filters are certified to remove 99.7% of particles 0.03 µm to 3.0 µm diameter; each filter is tested with particulate aerosol challenge studies before delivery. Air enters at a rate of 170 L/min through an intake port near the top of the hood and exits through an exhaust valve at its base. Two-way radios permit communication between team members and patients. The suit and respirator ensemble has been tested by the manufacturer by particulate aerosol challenge and meets the standards of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for working in environments with respiratory hazards.

Second, the patient is isolated within a sealed container under negative air pressure maintained by a battery-powered HEPA-filtered ventilation system providing five air exchanges per hour. Two isolators are used: the stretcher isolator, a lightweight unit for initial patient retrieval, and the Vickers aircraft transport isolator (VATI), a larger unit for definitive transport and in-flight care.

The design and construction of the isolators are similar to that of transparent flexible PVC isolators for gnotobiotic animals in biomedical research; the isolators were adapted both for in-patient and transport use. Challenge studies have demonstrated the efficacy of containing aerosolized T-2 bacteriophage during both hypobaric and isobaric conditions. The HEPA filters are certified to remove 99.7% of all particles 0.3 µm to 3 µm in diameter. Isolators have been used to treat in-patients with suspected Ebola, Lassa, and Marburg hemorrhagic fevers. The utility and safety of these isolators for in-patient care have been questioned, and their use in hospitals is not recommended. However, transport isolators, the only available technical means of reliably maintaining airborne isolation in a military transport aircraft, have been successfully used for the aeromedical evacuation of patients with suspected Ebola fever and suspected and proven Lassa fever.

These isolators also included gloved ports so that aid workers can interact with the patient as well as general “docking” ports that enabled the crew to provide the patient with food and supplies like oxygen tanks or IVs without breaking containment. The USAMRIID, which used the units, operated between 1978 and 2010, when the unit was disbanded and its work taken over by the USAF’s Critical Care Air unit.

Today, these types of devices are still used by both other government agencies as well as a number of independent medical flight services and are being actively employed throughout West Africa to evac Western doctors who contract Ebola.

[MIKA27]

The US Once Considered Using 23 Nuclear Bombs To Blast Out A Highway

Rising out of California’s Mojave Desert are the Bristol Mountains, 1200m of rock blocking easy passage through the scorching desert. For decades, Route 66 and the Santa Fe Railway have had to bend south, acquiescing to the mountains’ height. But in the 1960s, at the peak of atomic age, we had a plan to blast through the mountains once and for all — with nuclear bombs, of course.

It began with the Santa Fe Railway Company, which wanted a straighter and flatter path through the Bristol Mountains. The new route would require either a 2-mile long tunnel or cuts 150m deep into the mountain — far too expensive for railroad on its own. It did, however, pique the interest of the Atomic Energy Commission, which was searching for peacetime uses for nukes.

At the same time, California was building Interstate 40, a faster, smoother highway to replace Route 66. Wouldn’t the California State Division of Highways also be interested in a straight shot through the Bristol Mountains as well? Thus, Project Carryall was born.

This nuclear plan entailed a total of 23 bombs: 22 detonated in a row to carve out passage through the moutain and one more to create a giant crater for runoff water. In all, a total of 68,000,000 cubic yards would be excavated. Including the cost of the bombs themselves, the nuclear option would cost $US13.8 million, $US8 million less than the conventional method. “The study group has concluded that this project is technically feasible,” wrote a California highway engineer in a study, “It can be done, and it can be done safely.”

Safely? From our modern perspective, the feasibility report reads as surprisingly cavalier. Workers could enter when the radioactivity had sufficiently decayed — after just four days according to the report.

Perhaps what’s most extraordinary about Project Carryall, which is discussed in the context of America’s highways in Earl Swift’s The Big Roads, is that it was not an extraordinary idea for the time. In the ’60s, the Atomic Energy Commission set up Operation Plowshare, which spent $US770 million over the next decade and a half studying the use of nukes for infrastructure projects. Their ideas ran from nuking a new Panama Canal to creating a new harbor in Alaska.

But most of the ideas, including Project Carryall, stayed on paper. The 1962 test creation of the Sedan Crater in Nevada sparked controversy and fears about unpredicted nuclear fallout. In 1977, Operation Plowshare ended, having created nothing more than craters. Interstate 40 in the Mojave Desert was carved out using conventional bombs.

The optimism and ambition of Operation Plowshare seems dangerously misplaced in a modern world attuned to the dangers of not only bombs but also nuclear power plants. On the other hand, it’s hard to fault scientists, who having discovered a way unleash a powerful force in the world, struggled to find ways to use it for good.

Detonating nuclear bombs on Earth is now banned under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. At the same time, the dream that nuclear bombs can be harnessed to save humanity is not entirely dead, at least in space. Proposals to deflect deadly asteroids headed toward Earth, for example, often rely on the power of nuclear bombs. What would Operation Plowshare have thought about that?

[MIKA27]

The True Story Of The Deadliest Assassination Attempt On Paul Bremer

Between 2003 and 2004 Blackwater security expert Frank Gallagher managed the impossible — keeping Paul Bremer, the de facto head of state for newly invaded Iraq, alive through a violent insurgency. At times, it was a close-run thing. This was one of those times.

In his book, Frank Gallagher has captured all the drama and difficulties of operating in a violent war zone, post-Saddam Iraq. As head of my person security detail, Mr. Gallagher vividly captures the tense and dangerous duty he and his dedicated colleagues from Blackwater carried out under the most trying circumstances. On a number of occasions, some of them revealed in this book, Gallagher and his team literally saved lives — mine and others — through their quick and professional reactions to danger. If you want a flavour of life in post-invation Iraq, this is the book for you. – L. Paul Bremer III, Former Presidential Envoy to Iraq

6 December 2003:

On a Red Zone run, Ambassador Bremer came out of his meeting with Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, at Haki’s house in Baghdad, and turned to me and said he would be going to the airport with the secretary of defence. This was not part of my detailed plan for the day. We had expected to head directly back to the Green Zone and the palace. My initial reaction was to protest the move, but I could see from the look in his eyes that this was not open for debate. I answered, “Yes, Sir” and relayed the information to the team.

The road to BIAP was referred to in many ways — none of them favourable. We usually called it the highway of death, as the insurgents repeatedly targeted and killed coalition forces making the dangerous journey to between the airport and the Green Zone. Adrenaline pumped as I made a mental checklist of the items we had not been able to do to make this trip as safe as possible: no advance team; no helicopter briefing; the route had not been cleared; no idea/intel of events that had occurred on Route Irish that day.

Many major components of a regular mission were not in place. The flip side was that, as this was an unscheduled visit, no one knew we were heading out there, and we would be travelling with the additional man and firepower that accompanied Secretary Rumsfeld. I notified the team that there had been a change in plans and that we were off to the VIP lounge at the airport. Needless to say, some of the radio traffic back to me expressed grave concern about doing the mission, a la “Are you nuts?!”

The twenty minute trip out to the airport was uneventful. However, the eighteen or so car motorcade with US Army Apache helicopters, Kiowa helicopters, and my two Little Birds certainly told everyone in the area something unusual and noteworthy was taking place at the airport this evening. Imagine eighteen vehicles moving as if controlled by one mind. We called it “the motorcade dance.” All were moving within mere feet of each other. All were rolling at 60-70mph. It was a thing of beauty. We arrived safely, and the meeting began.

I gathered my men and explained that getting back to the Green Zone was going to be an adventure, and to make sure that everyone was aware of the dangers — a truly unnecessary step as they all knew the risks. While we had the advantage of surprise on our way to the airport, this would be lost on the return. We should expect a lot of unwanted attention on the way back. We laughed and said our goodbyes to one another and promised to have a cup of mead in Valhalla later that evening. One has to love the macabre sense of humour among security contractors.

At 2320, the meeting broke up. Ambassador Bremer and Brian McCormick came out, and we loaded them into the motorcade. We were the first motorcade to leave that evening, the irony of being the advance motorcade heading down the highway of death was not lost on any of us. Earlier, because we had no idea how long we would be there, I had told Hacksaw to have the Little Birds land at the airport and stay with us. I could not risk having the ambassador come out, and us not having the helos. Our adrenaline levels spiked. It was late. And very dark. The Little Birds were in the air flying top cover and scanning for potential issues. Due to the manpower issues I had only one shooter in each bird, Shrek and another guy.

We had two up-armoured Humvees working as our lead CAT element in front of the protection detail motorcade. Our lead car, driven by Travis T had Riceman sitting in the front-right seat working as the tactical commander. Behind him we had two additional shooters staring intently out the windows, peering into the darkness for signs of trouble. The limo had Q behind the wheel, and I was sitting in the front-right seat with the ambassador directly behind me. Brian Mac was sitting behind Q. The follow car had a driver, and Ski sitting right-front acting as the shift leader. Behind them were two more shooters watching their areas of responsibility, and behind them in the third row we had Doc Jones. Following up as rear security were two more up-armoured CAT vehicles.

From my position in the limo, a level-6 armoured SUV, I could watch Q at the wheel and Hacksaw flying lead helo above. As we progressed, Hacksaw reported a suspicious vehicle backing down an on-ramp on the highway. He radioed that he was going to fly over and check it out. The shift leader gave the command to shift the limo to the left (away from the side of the road and away from the entrance to the on-ramp and toward the center median) while the follow and lead cars shifted to the right.

Seconds later, all hell broke loose.

I heard something hit my window. While I was trying to figure out what it was there was an explosion of light and sound. The limo veered. Q fought to retain control. Temporarily blinded by the explosions we could see nothing. I leaned over the seats to check on the Ambassador and Brian just as the Ambassador asked what had happened. “Bomb and AK fire, Sir,” I told him. Despite the sound of the explosions, we could still hear AKs being fired at us. I asked the boss if he was ok, and he confirmed he was. I could see the back of the limo had sustained severe damage (the rear window was gone and the door itself was bent), and I directed him and Brian to get down. Despite the damage, Q was firmly in control of the vehicle. The bad guys were shooting at the limo as we sped away at roughly 60mph through the smoke-induced fog. Neither Q nor I could see anything more than five feet in front of us. Q was driving purely by instinct and training.

Over the radio, I heard shift leader, Ski, calling out “TUNA, TUNA, TUNA” — our code to drive directly through an ambush, getting off the “X” and out of the kill zone. The smoke cleared and I looked to my right to see the follow car driver about twenty-four inches away from me using his car to shield the limo — his side mirror touching Q’s at 60mph. I asked for a casualty report and learned that two of our four CAT team vehicles were damaged, but limping along. No injuries to any of the detail or CAT team members.

As all this was happening, Ambassador Bremer leaned over and casually asked Brian Mac, “Tell me again why we shouldn’t go to Davos?” They had been discussing the upcoming trip to Davos when the attack happened. And, in typical Bremer fashion. He never panicked, just went right back to the subject at hand.

As the AIC I had to make the painful decision that the damaged CAT vehicles were o their own. I was unsure of the damage to the limo, and the Ambassador’s safety always came first.

The shift leader radioed me again to ask if we were all right. I responded, “That’s an affirm.” Apparently the damage to the limo was far greater than I realised. The follow car guys could see it, we couldn’t. We were advised to slow our vehicle down to make sure we reached the Green Zone safely. Q throttle back to about 45mph. And we made it back.

Inspecting the damage to the motorcade vehicles after arrival we found several bullet holes in the rear of the lead vehicle. The limo had lost its back end (the non-armoured hatch area), the electronic countermeasure (ECM) device had been destroyed, and we found shrapnel and bullet holes in the armoured area just behind the rear seats where the Ambassador and Brian had been sitting. The ECM blocks radio and telephone signals from being able to set off explosive devices. The IED must have been command detonated, meaning that, rather than being radio controlled, it was hardwired to explode when the terrorist pressed a button to initiate the device. In hindsight we concluded we had happened upon the ambush site before the insurgents had finished their nasty surprise for us. They must have shot at us hoping that we would slow down or stop and engage them. There were additional bullet holes in the right side of the car and, of course, one that was even with my head on my window. The follow car had extensive shrapnel damage and bullet holes riddling the body. When the explosion went off the heat from the blast convinced both the shift leader and the driver their feet had been badly burned. Fortunately it had been only painful, not permanent. Fifteen minutes later by CAT vehicles finally limped in. All the tires had been destroyed and they had sustained extensive shrapnel damage.

The ambassador took a look at the car and asked again if everyone was ok. I said we were all fine. He turned and walked to his office and went right back to work. I met with Dan Senor, spokesman for the Coalition Provision Authority (CPA), who asked if incident would be on the news. I told him there was no way we would be reporting it. The ambassador called me to his office, and we talked about keeping the incident quiet and whether he should mention it to his wife or not. I told him he might want to mention it to his wife or not. I told him he might want to mention it because this way if she heard about it, she would know he was safe.

Minutes later, I got a call from Brutus telling me that one of the Dirty 30 teams had been attacked on the road, and that they heard sounds of an attack fifteen minutes before their guys had been hit. I told him the first attack had been against us. Our convoy to the airport had drawn a lot of attention.

I notified Blackwater that we had been hit but suffered no casualties. They thanked me for the briefing. I also called Jimmy Cawley from the Secret Service as gave him the details. I knew the Secret Service would want to know the details firsthand and not through the media, if news of the attack became public. He was thankful that no one was hurt and that Bremer was safe.

Somehow, the news didn’t leak out for two weeks. Who leaked it, I still do not know. Someone in Washington spilled it to the DC press. Very quickly everyone knew about it, and the Iraqi press pressured the ambassador for his reaction. He calmed stated that it had happened two weeks earlier and it had not altered or changed the way he did his job or how he conducted business as evidenced by the schedule that he had maintained since. Dan Senor added at a press conference that the Ambassador had full faith in his security team to keep him safe. There were some family members of guys on the team who were not happy when they heard about it, but we had all survived. No harm, no foul.

In retrospect, I am still not sure who the bad guys thought they were attacking or why no one ever took credit for the attack. The mission to the airport had been unscheduled but extremely high profile, so I think we were just a target of opportunity. Wrong place, wrong time.

That night, after making my calls, I had headed over to Blackwater Boulevard to check on the guys. It was by then about 0100.

Me: “Everybody OK?”

The team, all talking at once: “Damn, that was close.”

“Those *******ers.”

“Have a drink.”

“How’s the boss?”

“****, they almost got us.”

And on it went for about thirty minutes. I trudged back to my trailer and tried to sleep. The adrenaline was slowly wearing off, and my thoughts were filled with the usual thousand “what if” questions. I finally dozed off.

We found out the next day that the IED consisted of eight howitzer shells wired together. Only the first two had gone off. The six that had not exploded were placed in our direction of travel. In other words, as we drove away from the first explosion, we were meant to roll right over another three times more powerful! Thank God the guys who wired it had made a mistake, and that we were moving fast, otherwise the results would have been different.

One more of our nine lives had been used up. How many did we have left?

[MIKA27]

Russian Smokejumpers

To be a smokejumper — the front-line firefighters who parachute into forest fires — in the US, you’ve already got to be a little unhinged. To do the same job in Russia, with antique equipment, for no pay, you must be certifiably insane.

The National Geographic has an in-depth feature following a band of Russian firefighters through their work, and the differences compared to US teams are stark. Equipment is said to be incredibly simple — hand-made shovels, beating down fires with boughs, and burying it in sand is a far cry from an airliner dropping thousands of kilograms of retardant. It’s definitely worth the read. [National Geographic]

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A Bunch Of US High-Schoolers Broke The Paper Airplane World Record

A ‘science’ project for high school kids normally involves making a poster of the periodic table, or perhaps torching things with a small gas burner if your science teacher is a bit Walter White. If you’re also a cadet with the Civil Aviation Patrol, on the other hand, you can make a computer-controlled, record-breaking paper airplane.

To achieve the record-breaking height (96,563 feet), the students attached their one-pound plane to a helium weather balloon, then launched it upwards. Eventually, the balloon burst, the on-board computer (yes, this paper aeroplane had a computer) severed the tether, and the plane glided 81.9 miles before landing. [Fox Valley Composite Squadron]

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Europe’s Insane History of Putting Animals on Trial and Executing Them

On September 5, 1379, two herds of pigs at a French monastery grew agitated and killed a man named Perrinot Muet. As was custom at the time, the pigs—the actual murderers and those that had simply looked on—were tried for their horrible crime, and sentenced to death. You see, with their “cries and aggressive actions,” the onlookers “showed that they approved of the assault,” and mustn’t be allowed to escape justice.

But the monastery’s prior, Friar Humbert de Poutiers, couldn’t bear to suffer the economic loss of all those pigs. So he wrote to the Duke of Burgundy, pleading for him to pardon the onlookers (the friar would allow the three murderers to suffer their fate—he was no scofflaw, after all). The duke “lent a gracious ear to his supplication and ordered that the punishment should be remitted and the swine released.” Records don’t show just how the three pigs were executed, though it was common for offending animals to be hanged or burned alive for their crimes.

Such is Europe’s shameful and largely forgotten history of putting animal “criminals” on trial and either executing them or, for plagues of insects, ordering them to leave town not only by a certain day, but by an exact time. Such irrational barbarism is hard to fathom, but as early as 824 all the way up to the middle of the 18th century, animals were held to the same moral standards as humans, suffering the same capital punishments and even rotting in the same jails.

Beasts Under Burden

In the Middle Ages, Europe was positively lousy with pigs, which were implicated in a number of murders. Here one goes for a baby, which quite frankly has no business just lying around when there’s hungry pigs about.

Europe’s worst serial offenders, it seems, were pigs. According to E. P. Evans, in his sprawling history, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals from 1906, “The frequency with which pigs were brought to trial and adjudged to death, was owing, in a great measure, to the freedom with which they were permitted to run about the streets and to their immense number.” Evans catalogs incident after incident in which pigs chewed off ears and noses and even killed children, one swine going so far as to eat a child “although it was Friday,” a serious violation of church decree that “was urged by the prosecuting attorney and accepted by the court as a serious aggravation of the porker’s offense.” Another more mild-mannered (though no less impious) pig was hanged in France in 1394 “for having sacrilegiously eaten a consecrated wafer.”

Pretty much the entirety of the animal kingdom, though, was subject to the human rule of law. In the appendix of his book, Evans lists some 200 cases of animal executions, and these are just the ones whose records have survived Europe’s tumultuous history. There were executions of bulls, horses, eels, dogs, sheep, and, perhaps most curiously, dolphins—which he gives no information on other than they were tried and executed in Marseilles in 1596.

Usually offending animals were hanged for their crimes. Here, people—who once again don’t seem to find the happening at all strange—gather for the public execution of a pig.

There was a great range of punishments for such critters, which weren’t always sentenced to death. Rats, for instance, were often sent “a friendly letter of advice in order to induce them to quit any house, in which their presence is deemed undesirable,” writes Evans. And in one case, he adds, “a sow and a she-ass were condemned to be hanged; on appeal, and after a new trial, they were sentenced to be simply knocked on the head.”

But capital punishment often went way beyond the brutality of hanging. Even the innocent faced our wrath of judgment: When a Swiss town was gifted a moose by the great naturalist Leonhard Thurneysser in the late 1500s, townspeople “looked upon the strange animal as a most dangerous demon, and a pious old woman finally rid the town of the dreaded beast by feeding it with an apple stuck full of broken needles.” And creatures that were themselves victims, especially of bestiality, would be horrifically executed along with their offending human. In one case “a mule condemned to be burned alive together with a man guilty of buggery” was inclined to kick, so the executioner cut off its feet before setting it aflame.

On the flip side, though, Europeans were capable of compassion toward the beasts they very much relied upon for sustenance and labor. For instance, in one bestiality case in 1750, the victim, a donkey, was acquitted “on the ground that she was the victim of violence,” while a convent’s prior signed a certificate noting that he’d known her for four years and that “she had always shown herself to be virtuous and well-behaved both at home and abroad.” Given the circumstances, it’s a somewhat touching moment in the history of animal welfare.

Bugging Out

The trials of pests like locusts and weevils, though, reached a comic absurdity that’s likely unequaled in European history.

In the 16th century the insects’ most famous public defender was Bartholomew Chassenée (played by Colin Firth in 1993’s The Hour of the Pig), who had first demonstrated his prowess defending rats, which had “feloniously eaten up and wantonly destroyed the barley-crop” of the province of Autun in France. In a crafty bit of lawyering, he argued it was impossible to summon all of his furry clients to court, and they should be excused, writes Evans, “on the ground of the length and difficulty of the journey and the serious perils which attended it, owing to the unwearied vigilance of their mortal enemies, the cats, who watched all their movements, and, with fell intent, lay in wait for them at every corner and passage.”

Now, at this time animal trials were brought to ecclesiastical courts, as states were not fully developed as we would recognize them today. And the courts’ authority lay in the power of excommunication—which bars you from communion and the spiritual advantages of the church—and what is known as anathema, a sort of excommunication for beings (like animals) not belonging to the church. It was the anathema that courts tried to bring upon Chassenée’s pestilent clients, and he was very much a believer in the effects of this powerful curse. Just look at how a priest once anathematized an orchard because its fruits lured kids away from mass, he once noted, and how it lay barren until the Duchess of Burgundy ordered the curse lifted.

The weevil (Rhynchites auratus) that terrorized the French town of St. Julien in the 16th century.

This was, quite obviously, a serious sentence meant for the most pernicious insect and rodent offenders. And no pest plagued 16th-century France more than the weevil, and few towns suffered their wrath worse than St. Julien. Though it never went to trial, the first complaint against the insects was made by grape growers in 1545, resulting in a proclamation for public prayers to account for sins and thus will the weevils away. And indeed they fled.

Alas, 30 years later the weevils returned and the town was forced to take them to court. The trial began on April 13, 1587, with a lawyer named Antoine Filliol assigned as the weevils’ public defender. He argued that his clients had been placed on Earth by God, who would never have put them here without the sustenance to survive. It was just a bit unfortunate that this sustenance happened to be the town’s crops. The prosecution, however, asserted the town’s dominion over the visiting weevils, that “although the animals were created before man,” Evans writes, “they were intended to be subordinate to him and subservient to his use, and that this was, indeed, the reason of their prior creation.”

So we come to a central theological paradox of animal trials: The sins of villagers supposedly brought in the pests, but so too did God intentionally include them in his grand plan for Earth. We as humans are to hold dominion over these creatures, and to deal with them as we please. That means dragging them into court to answer for their transgressions. But is it not God who controls them? Why else would public prayers effectively drive the weevils away?

A page from Evans’ The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals showing confirmed animal trials and executions. What I wouldn’t give to know what exactly those dolphins did to deserve capital punishment.

Beyond the courtroom, the citizens of St. Julien sought a compromise by providing a tract of land near town where the weevils could freely congregate. A suitable spot was selected and officially deemed weevil territory, though according to Evans the citizens reserved “the right to pass through the said tract of land, ‘without prejudice to the pasture of the said animals,’ and to make use of the springs of water contained therein, which are also to be at the service of said animals.” But back in court, the weevils’ attorney couldn’t in good conscience accept the offer of land from the townspeople, notes Evans, “because the place was sterile and neither sufficiently nor suitably supplied with food for the support of the said animals.” This the prosecution roundly rejected, noting that the spot is perfect for the weevils, “being full of trees and shrubs of divers kinds.”

Then, an incredible 8 months after the trial began, the judge handed down a decision sadly lost to history. According to Evans, the last page of the court records has since been destroyed by, no joke, “rats or bugs of some sort.” He adds ever so cheekily: “Perhaps the prosecuted weevils, not being satisfied with the results of the trial, sent a sharp-toothed delegation into the archives to obliterate and annul the judgement of the court.” Based on other similar trials, though, if found guilty the weevils were likely ordered to quit the town by a certain date and time under pain of anathema.

THE LAST PAGE OF THE COURT RECORDS HAS SINCE BEEN DESTROYED BY, NO JOKE, “RATS OR BUGS OF SOME SORT.”

But here’s the brutal irony of animal trials: In pulling even the lowliest bug into our justice system, we personify them, but then in brutalizing them for their supposed misdeeds, we lower ourselves to the brutality we would expect from wild beasts. By this logic, animals are not simply automatons starved of free will—programmed to eat, sleep, mate, and repeat, as so many philosophers throughout history have argued. They’re instead capable of not only making their own decisions, but engaging in complex behaviors, like in the case of the friar’s pigs egging each other on to commit murder.

Long before modern movements to classify animals as beings just as capable of feeling pain and emotion as human beings, medieval Europeans understood perfectly well that beasts could suffer the pains of torturous death. The assumption that animals were in any way capable of understanding the laws and morals of humanity was wildly off-base, sure, but today activists are fighting to grant chimpanzees personhood, and therefore the same legal rights that we humans enjoy. With their patently ridiculous animal trials, it seems that Europeans were, in a way, actually on the right track.

But remember: If the interspecies moral norms don’t fit, you must acquit.

MIKA: Take a look for yourself at the Source document The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals

[MIKA27]

THE GIANT ALUMINUM CHESS SET FIT FOR DISPLAY

Five to eight inch tall chess pieces made of aluminum. Industrial finish on the light pieces. Darkened metal finish on the dark pieces. Inlaid wood with a stained finish for the board. For all intents and purposes, this chess set from Restoration Hardware is as much a statement piece for your table as it is a game. It also appears as if the board folds in half for easy storage, presumably it also holds all the pieces, but we don’t have any idea why anyone would want to hide a piece of art–let alone 32–that they paid a good amount of money for. Don’t get us wrong, it’s definitely not cheap, but like everything else from Restoration Hardware, it will probably end up being an heirloom piece.

Restoration Hardware

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ARDBEG SUPERNOVA SCOTCH WHISKEY

To celebrate the journey of a special batch of Ardbeg Whiskey, which has spent nearly three years orbiting the globe aboard the International Space Station, Ardbeg is releasing a new batch of Supernova, their super-peaty whiskey that hasn't been bottled since 2010. Previous iterations were the peatiest Ardbeg has ever released and the new batch follows suit, delivering a cloud of smoke along with a sweet oily finish. A unique beast that not unlike a Supernova, could be gone in a blink.

[MIKA27]

DUBS ACOUSTIC FILTERS

Finding the balance between blocking out harmful sounds while not making things so muffled that they are difficult to recognize can present quite the dilemma. That's where Dubs Acoustic Filters comes in, developed by acoustic engineers and designers, they are pre-tuned to target specific frequencies, reducing the volume without sacrificing that essential clarity. Featuring a 12 decibel Noise Reduction Rating, Dubs provides the opportunity to fully experience your surroundings without the threat of hearing loss.

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MIKE VETTER EXTRA TERRESTRIAL VEHICLE

It looks like it jumped right from a science fiction film and onto the street, and is nothing short of exceptional. The Mike Vetter Extra Terrestrial Vehicle is a true, one-of-a-kind car, with scissor doors, gull-wing windows, a Chevy 2-liter supercharged motor, dual batteries, and an interior that is all leather, suede and aluminum. Up for sale for the first time, this exclusive futuristic ETV is sure grab attention wherever it goes.

[MIKA27]

NOMOS ZURICH WORLDTIMER WATCH

Travel the world in the push of a button with the Zurich Worldtimer Watch from Nomos. The latest ultra-sophisticated timepiece from the German watchmaker comes with a stainless steel case, galvanized blue dial, rhodium-plated hands, and their first automatic movement with the in-house NOMOS swing system. Push the home button for a smooth transition to one of 24 different time zones to stay current while traveling or just well-informed while at home.

[MIKA27]

The Project To Let Anyone Download And Print Their Own House

If you could go online, select a home, print the plans for free and build it yourself for less than $US80,000 in a few days, would you? That’s the dream behind WikiHouse, an open source home design project that just finished construction of its fourth prototype, a two-storey home that snaps together in just a few days.

Architects have struggled to find a viable model for building cheap, fast, single-family homes since the earliest experiments with pre-fab in the 1900s. It’s an idea we still grapple with today, and WikiHouse is its direct descendent: A project to publish open source building plans online for anyone to download, designed to require only the most basic knowledge of construction to create. The average cost of buying a home in America hovers around $US300,000 — WikiHouse 4.0 can be built from scratch for less than a third of that.

“Since the industrial revolution the dominant idea from industry has been the assumption that if we want to produce homes they have to be provided by really large organisations who build them on our behalf,” said Alastair Parvin, the co-designer of WikiHouse, to The Independent. WikiHouse wants to cut out any and all middlemen, and the 4.0 house is its most advanced and realistic prototype to date.

So how do a bunch of unskilled n00bs put together a house that doesn’t fall apart when you open the front door? Think of it like putting together a model plane from a punch-out cardboard sheet. 350 panels of a product called SmartPly — essentially, a humidity-resistant particle board — are cut into numbered pieces using a CNC mill:

These pieces are then assembled using the number-specific map, requiring no bolts of any kind, a bit like lincoln logs. When pieced together, they form a sturdy skeleton for the rest of the house.

The rest of the home is made from super-efficient, inexpensive off-the-shelf parts. And inside, the structure is “smart” in the sense that you can control every bit of its wiring — from heat to lighting — with your phone. But it doesn’t use HomeKit or Nest or any proprietary connected home we’ve heard so much about. Rather, it uses a Linux computer and OpenHAB, an open source home automation software.

It’s not a “3D-printed house”. It’s actually way cooler than that, because it uses existing rapid prototyping tech that’s widely available for not much money. In that sense, it’s far, far more realistic than the multi-million dollar efforts to “print” whole buildings. In reality, 3D printing as we currently understand it doesn’t make much sense as a building technology.

Given the choice between a one-size-fits-all plastic bunker that costs millions to print and a cheap, light home you can cut out and put together for less than $US100,000, most of us will choose the latter. You can check out WikiHouse 4.0 at the Building Centre in London until September 26.

[MIKA27]

Somewhere Amidst The Explosions Is A New Advanced Warfare Game Mode

We’ve seen the singleplayer and multiplayer modes of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Now it’s time for a little cooperative survival. Well, eventually time. First we dance.

The first minute and a half of this “Power Changes Everything” trailer is dedicated to showing us some incredibly cool visuals from the story mode and online multiplayer. I particularly love the slide and the bit where the player Scorpions the pilot out of the mech. “Get over here!”

Now that you’re over here, a minute and a half in we get the first public look at what’s essentially a horde mode. Shown to judges behind closed doors at E3 earlier this year, Exo Survival pits a team of players against varying waves of enemies. Maybe there’s a wave of drones, followed by a wave of heavy mech suits and topped with some cloaked enemies. That sort of thing, can't wait to grab a copy of this in November!

[MIKA27]

WEDG: An Alternative To Cloud Computing That Will Keep Your Privates Safe

After the recent spate of celeb nude leaks and the years-long Snowden saga, privacy is becoming an ever-hotter topic in the tech realm. That’s where WEDG, a personal cloud that aims to keep your data safe — and out of the reach of the government — comes in.

WEDG is basically a personal server, that offers most of the functionality of cloud services, but without having to trust your personal information to a mysterious server (and without the monthly payments, either). At heart, WEDG is an external hard drive with 512-bit encryption, but its internet-connected capabilities let it enact all the functionalities of Google Drive or Dropbox. Basically, it’s a cloud alternative that will keep your data under the mattress.

At the moment, WEDG is crowdfunding through Indiegogo, with the basic package starting at $US360. For a terabyte of cloud storage — especially storage that you don’t have to pay a monthly fee for — that’s not a bad deal. On the other hand, using a WEDG system means that if your nudes get stolen, you only have yourself to blame. [Indiegogo]

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Japan Tests New 500km/h Maglev Train

Maglev trains have been promised as the future of public transport since about forever, but high-speed magnetic levitation systems are rapidly gaining a serious reputation — something Japan’s public demonstration of its high-speed maglev system is only going to help.

The test was carried out by the Central Japan Railway Company, and was the first public demonstration of the 500km/h high-speed link that will eventually run between Tokyo and Nagoya, with service expected in 2027. The test was a demonstration of ‘L-Zero’ tech, which brings trains to an initial speed of 160km/h, before engaging the maglev system, which slowly brings the train up to the slightly scary 500km/h top speed.

Maglev technology works by using a series of magnets to levitate and accelerate trains, in theory making transit more efficient, and with fewer moving parts to maintain.

[MIKA27]

Planes Will Start Running On Biofuels From Fallen Trees In Two Years

Now here’s some welcome innovation in the airline industry. Southwest Airlines announced today that it will be using biofuel on several of its flights by 2016, purchasing the blended fuel from a Colorado company that salvages “140,000 dry tons of woody biomass feedstock” per year — fallen timber from local forests that might otherwise serve as fuel for wildfires.

The factory, Red Rocks Biofuels, then processes the biomass, transforming it into about 12 million gallons-worth of renewable jet and diesel fuels. According to Southwest, the airline will purchase three million gallons of biofuel per year, for routes originating in the Bay Area.

Of course, three million gallons is not a huge amount for an airline. According to the Dallas Morning News,Southwest buys about 1818 million gallons a year — this greener store wouldn’t even cover the fuel it uses in a single day. But it’s a start, and it’s not the only airline exploring the idea.

Southwest’s announcement means it might beat out the longtime frontrunner in the biofuel race to the skies: Virgin Atlantic. Virgin performed a test flight in 2008 from London to Amsterdam using a biofuel kerosene blend and announced in 2012 that it was going to be using biofuels during some flights by middle of this year, but obviously that has not yet come to pass. Southwest taking the lead on this adds some nice competition to an area where we really need to see some change, fast.