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

[MIKA27]

A secret door in Soho is where the finest malts of London lie hidden

For those visiting the London suburb of Soho, and looking to taste some rare malt whiskies, perhaps the finest of the lot, then the Vintage House in Old Compton Street is where one would look to ideally head. This is the place which has the ‘golden door’, or simply the place which has the finest and rarest of whiskies for those who have a finer taste in life. It is perhaps the single place, one would find so much of rare single malt whisky under a single roof. With the world’s premier brewers offering various single malts over the last 20 years, cognacs have taken a bit of a backseat as the favorite beverage of the drinking elite. This secretive place is thus the den, or rather the place to be for single lovers in the area.

This special place, isn’t without it’s share in the historical past. After World War II, US Army Officer George Mullin took a liking to the place. Consequently, he got his daughter married to the then Italian owners, and eventually took control of the outlet. Currently, his son Malcom runs the club and the store. He has ensured that unique malts such as the 16-year old Scapa single malts, are stacked up at the outlet. By the virtue of this, connoisseurs from far and wide from the United States, visit the Vintage House to fulfill their wishes to taste their favorite whiskies.

[Fuzz]

Classic Arcade games deserve a beautiful wooden console system:

Beneath the wooden exterior, the R Kaid-42′s console box is a small 1.8 GHz PC that instantly boots to a homegrown interface that lets you pick between some 2000 classic titles. The console has VGA connectivity so you can connect a display of your own—none is included with the R Kaid-42.

VGA connectivity? Are you serious? I know VGA can handle HD signals (though there is signal degradation in certain circumstances), but why would you not use a digital interface instead of an analog one?

[Tino]

A secret door in Soho is where the finest malts of London lie hidden

For those visiting the London suburb of Soho, and looking to taste some rare malt whiskies, perhaps the finest of the lot, then the Vintage House in Old Compton Street is where one would look to ideally head. This is the place which has the ‘golden door’, or simply the place which has the finest and rarest of whiskies for those who have a finer taste in life. It is perhaps the single place, one would find so much of rare single malt whisky under a single roof. With the world’s premier brewers offering various single malts over the last 20 years, cognacs have taken a bit of a backseat as the favorite beverage of the drinking elite. This secretive place is thus the den, or rather the place to be for single lovers in the area.

This special place, isn’t without it’s share in the historical past. After World War II, US Army Officer George Mullin took a liking to the place. Consequently, he got his daughter married to the then Italian owners, and eventually took control of the outlet. Currently, his son Malcom runs the club and the store. He has ensured that unique malts such as the 16-year old Scapa single malts, are stacked up at the outlet. By the virtue of this, connoisseurs from far and wide from the United States, visit the Vintage House to fulfill their wishes to taste their favorite whiskies.

Soho Whisky Club is a great place, but it is members only unfortunately. The shop is well worth a visit though!

[MIKA27]

VGA connectivity? Are you serious? I know VGA can handle HD signals (though there is signal degradation in certain circumstances), but why would you not use a digital interface instead of an analog one?

Maybe he's sticking to the 'classic' theme by way of keeping it more authentic...?

[MIKA27]

This Decked Out Peugeot Is A Hill-Climbing Beast

The Peugeot 206 is a pretty neat little car, so what if I told you that one of the world’s best drivers has teamed up with the world’s most insane extreme sports operations to belt the 206 up a mountain for the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb? Meet the Peugeot 206 T16, driven by Sébastien Loeb.

Loeb is a madman. He’s won nine (yes, nine) World Rally Championships, and now he’s participating in the Pikes Peak Hill Climb in Colorado with the Peugeot 206 T16 and Red Bull.

Before the big race in June, the Red Bull people decided to let the man and the machine take on the south of France for some testing. The results are spectacular. Just watch how the damn thing rounds corners…

[MIKA27]

8 Animals That Have Unbelievable Defence Mechanisms

http://youtu.be/GMgRmrHpPH8

Compared to these animals, us humans are just so boring. What do we do when we’re scared? Run away. What do we do when we’re hungry? Go to the supermarket. What do we do when we’re outside? Complain about the weather. Well, these animals and bugs can shoot napalm, break bones for claws and so much more.

Kevin Lieber talks about the amazing defence mechanisms of the Hairy Frog, Pangolin, Pistol Shrimp, Bombardier Beetle, Hagfish, Mimic Octopus, Boxer Crab and Goblin Shark. They all basically have superpowers. Why can’t we have superpowers too.

[MIKA27]

These Incredible Maps Were Made With Thousands Of Photographs

Japanese photographer Sohei Nishino created these wonderful pieces of art by actually using individual pictures of landmarks and locations to map out the city. Nishino walks around each city for months and takes the photographs himself. It’s a map that shows you the actual city, not just an outline.

The Diorama Maps are made from Nishino’s experience of travelling around a city. He sketches a rough outline of the city’s layout and then cuts up pictures and glues them into a map. It’s not going to be completely accurate, but you can definitely see the shape and more importantly the soul of the city come to life with his maps.

New York, New York

Paris

Tokyo

Rio de Janeiro

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: The US Navy’s Largest Chopper Is An Aerial Mine Hunter

Submerged mines were once the scourge of sea warfare, silently lurking in bays and channels to blow a hole in your hull. That’s why the US military has developed a trident countermeasure, hunting for the underwater bombs from below the waves, along the surface and from the air, using the biggest bird in the US Navy’s arsenal, the MH-53E Sea Dragon.

Built by famed defence contractor Sikorsky, the Sea Dragon is derived from the equally mammoth CH-53E Super Stallion but features a larger fuel capacity than the US Army version. It’s been in service since 1986, with orders to continue until at least 2017.

The Sea Dragon measures nearly 30m in total length and is 8.5m tall with a 24m rotor diameter. A trio of GE 4380shp turboshaft engines provide the necessary power to lift 55 troops or 14,500kg of cargo as far as 2000km.

While the Super Stallion is outfitted with a large cache of weaponry for airborne assaults, the Sea Dragon is instead primarily employed in long range demining operations, Airborne Mine Countermeasures (AMCM). As such, the helicopter carries a variety of mine-sweeping systems such as magnetic minesweeping sleds, mechanical minesweepers, side-scan sonar, GPS, and Doppler radar. The Sea Dragon’s digital flight-control system is designed specifically to keep the chopper stable as it’s dragging a sled through mine-filled waters. That’s not to say it’s completely defenseless, the Sea Dragon can be fitted with a .50-cal GAU-21 machine gun for its secondary assault support missions and includes a pair of machine gun mine countermeasures.

While recent upgrades such as night vision systems and forward looking infrared (FLIR) will extend the Sea Dragon’s effective operational lifetime, both it and the Super Stallion may soon be replaced by an even more monstrous flying machine, the Sirkorsky CH-53K.

[MIKA27]

How America’s Biggest Bike Share Will Turn NYC Into A Cycling City

CitiBike has landed. Yesterday, amid a scrum of politicians and reporters, city officials introduced the system poised to transform New York street life. But keeping track of 6000 new bikes — not to mention their riders — will be no small chore. And to do it, the city is implementing a handful of smart systems, ranging from modular docking system to solar-powered tail lights.

CitiBike is a long time coming. Other cities, like Boston, DC and Chattanooga (who knew?), have been there first. But New York poses its own unique problems: There’s the simmering culture war between cyclists and pretty much everyone else. There’s the vastly understaffed accident report squad, which has bungled the cases of several cyclists killed in the past year. There’s the infrastructural shortcomings of a densely-populated city where roads are vital economic lifelines — and the claiming of said roads by cyclists is viewed by businesses as nothing short of aggressive.

CitiBike, then, represents a massive experiment. It will put thousands of new cyclists on the road. It will introduce New York to cycling as a mode of transportation, rather than the rarified subculture of Freds,Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and David Byrne. For drivers and longtime cyclists alike, this is a watershed moment, fraught with anxiety. At the same time, for all of the hand-wringing and political backtracking it’s incurred, CitiBike represents the culmination of some pretty remarkable technologies.

The Docks

CitiBike is being funded by a $US40 million sponsorship from — you guessed it — Citibank. But the system itself was designed and built by Public Bike System Company (PBSC, also known as Bixi), a privately-held nonprofit that was formed by the city of Montreal after the successful installation of their bike share system, in 2009. Since then, Bixi has installed similar systems in Boston, DC, Melbourne, and a host of other cities.

Bixi has surprising origin. The system was created by Charles Khairallah, a Canadian robotics engineer, who designed the docking system from scratch. Khairallah is well-known for his ideas about modular robotics — using a simple series of robotic components, his company has designed complex systems for everything from aerospace engineering to HVAC cleaning. “To build traditional robots you might need 100 different kinds of parts,” he said in an interview last year. “With ours, you might need many of only one type of part. This technology is a genetic family of products. We can create different products from mass-produced, identical modules which are scalable for larger or smaller robots.”

That ethos — of durable, simple components that interlock to create a responsive system — is the basis for the CitiBike dock. Each dock is made up of a simple set of parts, which can be assembled in minutes and moved at the drop of the hat. The system is completely wireless and self-sufficient, and its few moving parts are designed to be easily replaced. A photovoltaic array sprouting from the RFID-based payment tower supplies all the power needed to send signals back to the system hub, which keeps track of when a bike is checked out and returned.

The bikes themselves — 20kg tanks, with nitrogen-filled tires, three-speed gears and solar-powered LED lights — are simple by comparison. The real intelligence of Khairallah’s system is embedded in the docks themselves.

The Wayfinding Signage

Last year, a Department of Transportation study revealed that most pedestrians, including locals, are basically wandering through the city in a state of perpetual confusion. Well, not quite. But nearly 30 per cent of visitors, plus 10 per cent of locals, admitted to having been lost in the past week. Many of those interviewed couldn’t say which direction was north. It’s actually shocking those numbers aren’t larger, considering the meager options for a lost pedestrian (ask a street vendor? Go back down into the subway to peer at the map? Find some moss?).

On the heels of that study — and in anticipation of CitiBike — the DoT tapped their longtime collaborators,Pentagram, to create a $US6 million comprehensive wayfinding system for pedestrians. The new signs rolled out in March, and they’re an essential part of the CitiBike docking system. Based loosely on Massimo Vignelli’s classic signage for the MTA, the signs orient cyclists and pedestrians with easy, obvious cues. For example, a transparent overlay of landmark buildings. Or a dotted circle that shows scale in terms of walking time.

It’s not the most glamorous part of the bike share system, but it might be one of the most important. The only bigger liability than a lost, distracted pedestrian is a lost, distracted cyclist.

The App

Every docking station has a limited number of parking spaces. And because there’s a strict time cap on each rental, giving cyclists a guaranteed place to return their bikes is an important part of the system. That’s where the CitiBike app comes in. Developed by Publicis Kaplan Thaler, the Manhattan mega-agency, the app sits atop the Google Maps API, showing nearby stations as pin icons.

The shading of each pin represents the fullness of each dock — that way, you can skim the map and know, immediately, where you’ll be able to dock your rental. You’re also able to favourite stations, route maps and check in on your membership.

Eventually, according to the CitiBike website, the data culled from the app will be shared with the public. That may be a few months down the line — for now, the CitiBike team is sharing basic user information on their blog. How are things shaping up? After only a single day of operation, there are already 16,463 annual members.

A major goal of the Bloomberg administration has been to make the city “smarter”, either through design competitions to retrofit pay phones, by naming a Chief Digital Officer, or by asking developers to parse the city’s deep well of data though the annual BigApps competition. CitiBike, though it hasn’t really been couched as such, is the first full-scale implementation of these ideas. Beneath the teeth-gnashing and turmoil lies a glimpse at the future of our city’s smart urban infrastructure.

MIKA: This is a great system - We have this here in Melbourne (Almost identical) and it's great for tourists and those travelling within the city.

[MIKA27]

Flood-Powered Gate Automatically Raises As The Waters Rise

Deploying the improved infrastructure that will hopefully help prevent future tsunamis from devastating Japan is an expensive endeavour. So researchers are developing new and cheaper ways to protect the country, like this innovative floodgate that deploys automatically when waters come rushing in — no power or human operators required.

And instead of using water-powered turbines or other complicated mechanisms that require constant maintenance, the floodgate simply uses a reservoir underneath and a highly buoyant material. As the flood waters rise, the reservoir fills, and the gate floats upwards, sealing off an area up to 10m across and as high as 5m. So while a tsunami can still rush inland, buildings and other structures can be protected even when electricity’s been knocked out.

[MIKA27]

This BASE Jump Off Mount Everest Is Absolutely Insane

Earlier this month, 48-year-old Russian BASE jumper Valery Rozov took a leap off Mount Everest from an elevation of 23,687 feet. It’s the highest ever BASE jump to date, some 60 years after Everest was first summited.

On May 5 at 2.30pm local time in -18C weather, Rozov leapt into the extremely thin air reaching speeds of 200km/h before hitting the Rongbuk glacier at an elevation of 19,521 feet. He can barely manage an audible “woo” at the end.

Prior to this historic jump, Rozov’s previous high was from an elevation of 21,063 feet. He’s logged over 10,000 BASE jumps. By comparison, Felix Baumgartner, the guy who jumped from space, is 44. What am I doing with my life!?

[MIKA27]

Could Apple be looking at Doubling the iPhones pixel count?

Whispers out of China, where the next iPhone 5S/6′s screen is currently being produced, seem to indicate that Apple’s planning to keep a 4-inch screen on the next iPhone, but double its pixel count in response to the insane PPIs the likes of the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 come packing with their colossal 1080p screens.

A pinch-of-salt rumour for now, of course, but it would make sense for Apple to do something like that if it felt threatened by the latest breed of Android beasts. Doubling the pixel count would make it relatively easy for developers to adjust their apps while not kicking older screen resolutions to the curb.

The thing is, I’m not sure Apple is threatened by the 1080p screen bunch, as its Retina Display on the iPhone 5 looks as sharp as any of the other phones at a normal viewing distance. The whispers also say that Apple’s going to reduce the bezel around the outside of the screen, taking a leaf from the iPad mini, which is pretty much a no-brainer.

So, what do you all think? Is Apple threatened enough to change the display resolution of the iPhone again? With falling share prices, and cries of Apple losing its cool, perhaps it has to do something? We know iOS 7 is going to be radically different with Jony Ive at the helm, but I get the feeling the hardware isn’t going to change much.

[MIKA27]

Sea Level Could Rise 5 Feet in New York City by 2100

By 2100 devastating flooding of the sort that Superstorm Sandy unleashed on New York City could happen every two years all along the valuable and densely populated U.S. east coast—anywhere from Boston to Miami.

And unless extreme protection measures are implemented, people could again die.

Hyperbole? Hardly. Even though Sandy’s storm surge was exceptionally high, if sea level rises as much as scientists agree is likely, even routine storms could cause similar destruction. Old, conservative estimates put the increase at two feet (0.6 meter) higher than the 2000 level by 2100. That number did not include any increase in ice melting from Greenland or Antarctica—yet in December new data showed that temperatures in Antarctica are rising three times faster than the rate used in the conservative models.

Accelerated melting has also been reported in Greenland. Under what scientists call the rapid ice-melt scenario, global sea level would rise four feet (1.2 meters by the 2080s, according to Klaus Jacob, a research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory. In New York City by 2100 “it will be five feet, plus or minus one foot,” Jacob says.

Skeptics doubt that number, but the science is solid. The projection comes in part from the realization that the ocean does not rise equally around the planet. The coast from Cape Cod near Boston to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina is a hot spot—figuratively and literally. In 2012 Asbury Sallenger, a coastal hazards expert at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), reported that for the prior 60 years sea level along that section of the Atlantic coast had increased three to four times faster than the global average. Looking ahead to 2100, Sallenger indicated that the region would experience 12 to 24 centimeters—4.7 to 9.4 inches—of sea level rise above and beyond the average global increase.

Sallenger (who died in February) was careful to point out that the surplus was related only to ocean changes—such as expansion of water due to higher temperature as well as adjustments to the Gulf Stream running up along the coast brought about by melting Arctic ice—not changes to the land.

Unfortunately, that land is also subsiding. Since North American glaciers began retreating 20,000 years ago, the crust from New York City to North Carolina has been sinking, as the larger continent continues to adjust to the unloading. The land will continue to subside by one to 1.5 millimeters (0.04 to 0.06 inch) a year, according to S. Jeffress Williams, a coastal marine geologist with the USGS and the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. The boundary zone where rising crust to the north changes to falling crust to the south runs roughly west to east from central New York State through Massachusetts.

Certain municipalities such as Atlantic City, N.J., are sinking even faster because they are rapidly extracting groundwater. Cities around Chesapeake Bay, such as Norfolk, Va., and Virginia Beach, are subsiding faster still because sediment underneath them continues to slump into the impact crater that formed the bay 35 million years ago.

When all these factors are taken into account, experts say, sea level rise of five feet (1.5 meters) by 2100 is reasonable along the entire east coast. That’s not really a surprise: the ocean was 20 to 26 feet (six to eight meters) higher during the most recent interglacial period.

Now for the flooding: Sandy’s storm surge topped out at about 11 feet (3.4 meters) above the most recent average sea level at the lower tip of Manhattan. But flood maps just updated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in January indicate that even an eight-foot (2.5-meter) surge would cause widespread, destructive flooding. So if sea level rises by five feet (1.5 meters_, a surge of only three feet is needed to inflict considerable damage.

How frequently could that occur? Municipalities rarely plan for anything greater than the so-called one-in-100-year storm—which means that the chances of such a storm hitting during any given year is one in 100. Sandy was a one-in-500-year storm. If sea level rises by five feet, the chance in any year of a storm bringing a three-foot surge to New York City will increase to as high as one in three or even one in two, according to various projections. The 100-year-height for a storm in the year 2000 would be reached by a two-year storm in 2100.

With hundreds of people still homeless in Sandy’s wake, coastal cities worldwide are watching to see how New York City will fend off rising seas. Scientists and engineers have proposed solutions to pieces of the complex puzzle, and a notable subset of them on the New York City Panel on Climate Change are rushing to present options to Mayor Michael Bloomberg by the end of May. But extensive interviews with those experts leads to several controversial and expensive conclusions: Long-term, the only way to protect east coast cities against storm surges is to build massive flood barriers. The choices for protecting the long stretches of sandy coastlines between them—New Jersey, Maryland, the Carolinas, Florida—are even more limited.

As for sea level rise, retreat from low-lying shores may be the best option. Despite the gut reaction of “No, we won’t go,” climate forces already in motion may leave few options.

[polarbear]

Could Apple be looking at Doubling the iPhones pixel count?

Whispers out of China, where the next iPhone 5S/6′s screen is currently being produced, seem to indicate that Apple’s planning to keep a 4-inch screen on the next iPhone, but double its pixel count in response to the insane PPIs the likes of the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 come packing with their colossal 1080p screens.

A pinch-of-salt rumour for now, of course, but it would make sense for Apple to do something like that if it felt threatened by the latest breed of Android beasts. Doubling the pixel count would make it relatively easy for developers to adjust their apps while not kicking older screen resolutions to the curb.

The thing is, I’m not sure Apple is threatened by the 1080p screen bunch, as its Retina Display on the iPhone 5 looks as sharp as any of the other phones at a normal viewing distance. The whispers also say that Apple’s going to reduce the bezel around the outside of the screen, taking a leaf from the iPad mini, which is pretty much a no-brainer.

So, what do you all think? Is Apple threatened enough to change the display resolution of the iPhone again? With falling share prices, and cries of Apple losing its cool, perhaps it has to do something? We know iOS 7 is going to be radically different with Jony Ive at the helm, but I get the feeling the hardware isn’t going to change much.

I have to wonder what Apple could do to blow people away at this point

When the iPhone was introduced it blew peoples minds and left the rest of the industry to catch up

10 years later people still expect every new iPhone to be a revelation and unfortunatly with so many other manufactures on the scene now its harder and harder for Apple to do something that no one has ever seen or thought of.

Even Siri (which is one of the best voice recognition systems i've ever used) was met with a collective "meh" from the public when it came out.

Short of a complete redesign of the hardware and some exceptional features I think that the iPhone will fall into the catagory of "Just Another Smart Phone" within the next few years.

I think the best thing they could do to bring Andriod uses back to the brand would be to get rid of iTunes and introduce a "Drag and Drop" file transfer system like Android phones use. This would make me consider going back to iOS anyway...

[MIKA27]

In the Fog of Battle Acoustic Sensors Pinpoint Gunfire by Measuring Air Movement

U.S. and other militaries consider drone-mounted detectors to assist in reconnoitering the sources of enemy fire during combat

Sensors originally designed to alert pilots of single-engine planes to the location of nearby aircraft are instead finding a military role locating unseen battle threats as far away as 40 kilometers.

The basic technology—the single hot-wire anemometer—has been around for decades, measuring heat dissipated by air (or fluid) movement. A new technology from Dutch acoustics firm Microflown Technologies, BV, uses two far smaller heated wires to measure individual air particles affected by sound waves. About the size of matchsticks, the devices are called acoustic vector sensors. They passively glean information about the source of a sound—including its location, what made it, and its movement, if any. Sounds picked up can emanate from howitzers, helicopters, sniper fire or even conversations.

The sensors' small size and relative simplicity have militaries worldwide, including those in the U.S., India, Singapore and the Netherlands, testing or deploying them. "I was flabbergasted when I first saw this system" in 2011, says Col. Harold Jacobs of the Royal Netherlands Army. “I was really surprised about the simplicity, the amazing accuracy, the size and all the possibilities,” he says.

Microflown says they can be mounted on drones, helicopters and other aircraft as well as on vehicles, buildings or even soldiers’ epaulets. On drones, the sensors would augment what Jacobs calls the "deaf camera" onboard. When an acoustic vector sensor detects a disturbance in the air, it could signal the camera to rotate quickly and capture images of a nearby mortar crew, for instance, that has just fired a round. In such a scenario, that initial mortar round, detected by an acoustic vector sensor, could be used to gather enough data to accurately direct return fire before the enemy relocates or even reloads.

The sensor's probe is one millimeter wide, two millimeters long and 300 micrometers thick. It consists of two resistive platinum strips, each 200 nanometers thick by 10 micrometers wide, stretched parallel across a gap and heated to 200 degrees Celsius when operating. Air particles flow through the gap causing temperature variations in the strips, enabling the system to do two things: First, it counts the air particles to measure sound intensity. Second, without the need for two other sensors to triangulate, it records particle movement, which reveals the x, y and z coordinates of the sound’s source. Researchers have measured its precision at less than 0.1 degree C within one kilometer. A garden-variety PC running Microflown's sound-filtering software—which eliminates engine, propeller and environmental sounds—performs real-time calculations, says Hans-Elias de Bree, co-founder of Microflown and inventor of the sensors.

Engineers have used heated, single-wire anemometers to study airflow for at least 50 years, says Rich Lueptow, a Northwestern University mechanical engineering professor. Microflown seems to be the first to have seen the promise of a miniaturized, double-wire probe, he says.

Andi Petculescu, an associate professor of physics at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, says he considered buying one of Microflown’s sensors, but found it too expensive. Petculescu, who studies topics including quantitative acoustic gas sensing, says he wonders if Microflown would need an ungainly database of sounds against which to compare noise in the field.

De Bree, however, says, "We analyze certain classes of sound and distill the properties, which are sets of statistical features."

Classes include the shock wave of supersonic bullets, muzzle blasts, propeller-driven aircraft and so on. "A shock wave has a set of 10 properties," assigned to it in the system, for example, de Bree says. The system has a sharp memory, too. It identifies a sound source's unique signature after hearing it once. This information could be used, for example, to create a profile on an elusive sniper by plotting when and where attacks happen.

A sound's loudness has the greatest impact on maximum accurate detection range, although ground cover, weather and other factors do affect sensor capabilities to a small extent, de Bree says. The sensors can pinpoint:

• A 155-millimeter howitzer—at 175 decibels—from up to 40 kilometers away
  
• An 81-millimeter mortar—at 180 decibels—from 25 kilometers away
  
• 5.56-millimeter small arms fire—at 155 decibels—from five kilometers away
  
• A normal, 60-decibel conversation from up to 50 meters away
  

Those figures hold regardless of whether a sensor is airborne or on the ground, de Bree says. And although effective individually, networking multiple systems mounted on drones, tanks and soldiers would extend their range to create more-robust battlefield views.

Military representatives from the U.S. and U.K. as well as Russia and Israel stood on a Royal Netherlands Army (RNA) mortar range in 2012 watching a demonstration of the sensor's abilities, Jacobs says. The Microflown sensors that day were integrated with a new Royal Netherlands Navy radar. Jacobs says they were astonished by the system's accuracy.

The mortar-range sensor project, which cost about $1.3 million over two years, spurred an RNA "development roadmap" that includes sensor-equipped drones, helicopters and ground vehicles, Jacobs says. De Bree confirmed that the RNA has ongoing trials putting sensors on air and ground assets. It has purchased four systems that it uses daily in training and safety roles, he added. Two of them are at firing ranges, measuring mortar-crew accuracy.

Acoustics scientist Subramaniam Sadasivan had been working within India's Ministry of Defense on ways to passively learn about nearby aircraft when he saw a research paper referencing Microflown. In short order Sadasivan's project—called Environmental Acoustics Remote Sensing Station—had a Microflown sensor on a ship recording the sound of a drone overhead. He was impressed by Microflown’s technology and, now retired, continues to champion the firm's sensors in unmanned aerial vehicles.

This is not an academic exercise for Jacobs. "In my time as an observer in the Bosnian War I was shot at, but didn't know at first where it came from. I needed a couple of weeks [of harrowing experience] to know where the bullet was coming from," he adds. Microflown's device "can save lives."

Assuming the technology matches early sentiments, it could find new markets outside battlefields. Rich Christiansen, head of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' unmanned aerial vehicle program committee, says it would also be useful for law enforcement when trying to locate shooters.

[MIKA27]

I have to wonder what Apple could do to blow people away at this point

Short of a complete redesign of the hardware and some exceptional features I think that the iPhone will fall into the catagory of "Just Another Smart Phone" within the next few years.

I think the best thing they could do to bring Andriod uses back to the brand would be to get rid of iTunes and introduce a "Drag and Drop" file transfer system like Android phones use. This would make me consider going back to iOS anyway...

I agree 100% I was always an Apple 'Fan boy" owned every iteration of the phone but when iPhone 5 was being released, I didn't even bother, knowing full well the iOS will be pretty much the same, the screen layout and the lack of freedom, so I went the S3 and in honesty, haven't looked back.

I don't want to turn this thread into an Apple vs Android shooting match, each have pros and cons but for me, the S3 blows the iPhone out of the water.

In saying this, my work mobile is an iPhone 5 and I don't mind it, but I no longer sit for hours playing around with it whereas I still do with my S3. If Apple don't change something to a newer scale and bring back the WOW factor, they will end up like Nokia. Look back at the 1990's and early 2000, Nokia were a global force, now... Nokia 'Was' as globally known a brand as Apple is.

I'd love to see a new iOS built for a new Apple iPhone device, I would consider going back if it changes dramatically.

[MIKA27]

Searching for the True Sources of Crime

In his best-selling essay entitled “Guns,” Stephen King contrasts a mass killer's school yearbook picture, “in which the guy pretty much looks like anybody,” and the police mug shot of someone who looks “like your worst nightmare.”

Do criminals look different from noncriminals? Are there patterns that science can discover to enable society to identify potential felons before they break the law or to rehabilitate them after? University of Pennsylvania criminologist and psychiatrist Adrian Raine attempts to answer these and related questions in his book The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime (Pantheon, 2013). Raine details how evolutionary psychology and neuroscience are converging in this effort. For example, he contrasts two cases that show new ways to look at the origins of wrongdoing. First is the example of “Mr. Oft,” a perfectly normal man turned into a pedophile by a massive tumor at the base of his orbitofrontal cortex; when it was resected, he returned to normalcy. Second, we learn of a murderer-rapist named Donta Page, whose childhood was so horrifically bad—he was impoverished, malnourished, fatherless, abused, raped and beaten on the head to the point of being hospitalized several times—that his brain scan “showed clear evidence of reduced functioning in the medial and orbital regions of the prefrontal cortex.”

The significance of these examples is revealed when Raine reviews the brain scans he made of 41 murderers, in which he found significant impairment of their prefrontal cortex. Such damage “results in a loss of control over the evolutionarily more primitive parts of the brain, such as the limbic system, that generate raw emotions like anger and rage.” Research on neurological patients in general, Raine adds, shows that “damage to the prefrontal cortex results in [increased] risk-taking, irresponsibility, and rule-breaking behavior,” along with personality changes such as “impulsivity, loss of self-control, and an inability to modify and inhibit behavior appropriately” and cognitive impairment such as a “loss of intellectual flexibility and poorer problem-solving skills” that may later result in “school failure, unemployment, and economic deprivation, all factors that predispose someone to a criminal and violent way of life.”

What is the difference between an aggressive tumor and a violent upbringing?

One is clearly biological, whereas the other results from a complex web of biosocial factors. Yet, Raine points out, both can lead to troubling moral and legal questions: “If you agree that Mr. Oft was not responsible for his actions because of his orbitofrontal tumor, what judgment would you render on someone who committed the same act as Mr. Oft but, rather than having a clearly visible tumor, had a subtle prefrontal pathology with a neurodevelopmental origin that was hard to see visually from a PET scan?” A tumor is quickly treatable, but an upbringing—not so much.

We also need an evolutionary psychology of violence and aggression. “From rape to robbery and even to theft, evolution has made violence and antisocial behavior a profitable way of life for a small minority of the population,” Raine writes. Theft can grant the perpetrator more resources necessary for survival and reproduction. A reputation for being aggressive can grant males higher status in the pecking order of social dominance. Revenge murders are an evolved strategy for dealing with cheaters and free riders.

Even child murder has an evolutionary logic to it, as evidenced by the statistic that children are 100 times more likely to be murdered by their stepfather, who would have an interest in passing on his own genes over a rival's, than their natural father.

An evolutionary psychology and neuroscience of criminology is the next and necessary step toward producing a more moral world. In Raine's concluding remarks, he exhorts us to “rise above our feelings of retribution, reach out for rehabilitation, and engage in a more humane discourse on the causes of violence.” Although some people may balk at the biological determinism inherent in such an approach and others may recoil from the preference for rehabilitation over retribution, we can all benefit from a scientific understanding of the true causes of crime.

[MIKA27]

Centuries-old frozen plants revived

Plants that were frozen during the "Little Ice Age" centuries ago have been observed sprouting new growth, scientists say.

Samples of 400-year-old plants known as bryophytes have flourished under laboratory conditions.

Researchers say this back-from-the-dead trick has implications for how ecosystems recover from the planet's cyclic long periods of ice coverage.

The findings appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They come from a group from the University of Alberta, who were exploring an area around the Teardrop Glacier, high in the Canadian Arctic.

The glaciers in the region have been receding at rates that have sharply accelerated since 2004, at about 3-4m per year.

That is exposing land that has not seen light of day since the so-called Little Ice Age, a widespread climatic cooling that ran roughly from AD 1550 to AD 1850.

"We ended up walking along the edge of the glacier margin and we saw these huge populations coming out from underneath the glacier that seemed to have a greenish tint," said Catherine La Farge, lead author of the study.

Bryophytes are different from the land plants that we know best, in that they do not have vascular tissue that helps pump fluids around different parts of the organism.

They can survive being completely desiccated in long Arctic winters, returning to growth in warmer times, but Dr La Farge was surprised by an emergence of bryophytes that had been buried under ice for so long.

"When we looked at them in detail and brought them to the lab, I could see some of the stems actually had new growth of green lateral branches, and that said to me that these guys are regenerating in the field, and that blew my mind," she told BBC News.

"If you think of ice sheets covering the landscape, we've always thought that plants have to come in from refugia around the margins of an ice system, never considering land plants as coming out from underneath a glacier."

But the retreating ice at Sverdrup Pass, where the Teardrop Glacier is located, is uncovering an array of life, including cyanobacteria and green terrestrial algae. Many of the species spotted there are entirely new to science.

"It's a whole world of what's coming out from underneath the glaciers that really needs to be studied," Dr La Farge said.

"The glaciers are disappearing pretty fast - they're going to expose all this terrestrial vegetation, and that's going to have a big impact."

[MIKA27]

Radiation Makes A Manned Trip To Mars Impossible With Current Tech

Though Curiosity the rover can explore and see Mars up close, curious men and women of Earth will have to wait a bit longer. NASA reports that a manned trip to Mars is likely impossible with current technology because of radiation.

Curiosity’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) was able to measure the radiation of Mars from inside the spacecraft and found data that makes NASA reconsider the effectiveness of current radiation shielding.Specifically:

The findings, which are published in the May 31 edition of the journal Science, indicate radiation exposure for human explorers could exceed NASA’s career limit for astronauts if current propulsion systems are used.

Two forms of radiation pose potential health risks to astronauts in deep space. One is galactic cosmic rays (GCRs), particles caused by supernova explosions and other high-energy events outside the solar system. The other is solar energetic particles (SEPs) associated with solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun.

Right now, spacecrafts do a better job at shielding against SEPs than they do GCRs. GCRs are highly energetic and penetrate the shielding on current spacecrafts. In order to protect astronauts from being exposed to radiation, NASA might have to invent better shielding. Or invent better something.

Exposure to radiation, which is measured in units of Sievert (Sv), increases the risk of cancer. We know that. Exposure to 1 Sv over time is associated with a five per cent increase in risk of developing cancer. NASA’s acceptable limit for its astronauts is a three per cent increase in risk. Curiosity’s RAD instruments measured an average of 1.8milliSv per day on its trip to Mars. The accumulated dose of the trip, according to Cary Zeitlin, lead paper in the findings and a principal scientist at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, would be equivalent to “getting a whole-body CT scan once every five or six days”. Yeah, that’s too much.

But knowing this doesn’t prevent a manned trip to Mars from ever happening. Knowing this helps protect the men and women who will take that manned trip to Mars.

[MIKA27]

Watch A Scorpion Sting A Guy In Painful Slow Motion

The beauty of slow motion is that it lets you see and analyse every detail of anything in a much more digestible package. Explosions become a dance, athletic achievements become more thoughtful, life becomes even more interesting and idiotic behaviour gets more hilarious. Watching a guy get stung by a scorpion in slow motion? Yeah, that’s hilarious.

The fun starts around the 3:45 mark but there’s a bunch of medical-y, science-y type discussion on why volunteering to get stung by a scorpion is a bad idea. But for most of the sane world, it’s not like we need to hear that to know that.

David Prager of Distort, the guy who signed up to get stung by an emperor scorpion, actually ended up getting stung three times.

[MIKA27]

A Rare Look At Heath Ledger’s Joker Diary

http://youtu.be/j04X3B9-dLU

It wasn’t a secret that Heath Ledger went to extreme lengths to prepare for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight, going so far as to put together a diary from the perspective of the movie’s deranged antagonist. In this one minute clip, Ledger’s father, Kim, gives us a brief glimpse at the contents of that journal.

The clip, which looks to have been taken from the German documentary series “Too Young To Die”, shows Kim Ledger paging through the diary and providing some context to a few of the entries. Unfortunately, it’s hard to make out what Ledger is saying due to the translated narration however, this is easily remedied by switching on the English subtitles.

Here’s a snippet from the interview;

The hospital scene is interesting because when he was a kid, his sister Kate liked to dress him up as a nurse. He was really funny like that … This is a make-up test which was done eight months before. Before the end of the shooting he wrote “bye bye” on the back of the page. It was hard to see this.

It’s a unique insight into the mind of the actor — one can only wander what else is contained inside the diary and if we’ll ever see its contents in full.

[MIKA27]

9 Classic Distilleries That Crank Out Liquor

Even though whisky pre-dates the United States by centuries, it’s an undeniably American liquor. It helped George Washington muster troops during the American revolution. It travelled with settlers making their way out West for the first time.

It’s partially responsible for spurring Prohibition, and, in 1964, Bourbon was officially recognised by congress as “a distinctive product of the USA”.

Why such a rich history? Besides the fact that many early Americans had roots in whiskey-producing countries like the British Isles, perhaps it was the sheer simplicity of the whiskey-making process, which only requires water, fire and grains. And a distillery to house them, of course.

Despite the recent proliferation of craft whiskey-makers, distilleries built during the golden age of whiskey are landmarks. In fact, the buildings in which whiskey is produced are as just a much a part of American heritage as the product that comes out of them. These are some of the classic — and new classic — distilleries from all across the country:

George Washington Distillery: Alexandria, Virginia

Although it’s no longer operational, George Washington’s Distillery at his estate at Mount Vernon has been there since 1797, when a Scottish farm manager suggested it would be a good business venture.

Heaven Hill Distillery: Bardstown, Kentucky

Obviously we can’t talk about American whisky without spending some time in Kentucky. Heaven Hill Distillery produces a number of spirits, most importantly Evan Williams Bourbon, which is the first whiskey on record produced in the state, dating back to 1783, when Kentucky was still a county in Virginia. The 1930s-era warehouses pictured are where bourbon is aged.

Jim Beam Distillery: Clermont, Kentucky

Next stop on the Bourbon trail? Jim Beam, which has been distilling whisky for more than 200 years.

Maker’s Mark: Loretto, Kentucky

Maker’s Mark might be a newer name when it comes to old whisky — it’s only been produced since 1954 — but its facilities are timeless, listed on the National Historic Register of Places since 1974.

Jack Daniels Distillery: Lynchburg, Tennessee

Of course, we must travel down to Tennessee to visit our old friend Jack Daniels, which has been making sour mash whiskey in square bottles out of Moore County since 1866. Included in the National Register of Historic places, it’s the sole remaining distillery in a county where there were once 15.

Willett Distillery: Bardstown, Kentucky

Willett is a bygone distiller of Bourbon and Rye that has recently been resurrected. Shuttered until the 1980s, the Willett family-owned parent company just began making test batches in January 2012. Unfortunately, because of the ageing process, you’ll have to wait as long as 23 years to have a taste.

Kings County Distillery: Brooklyn, New York

Kings County Distillery is the oldest New York City whiskey maker, and it was the city’s first distillery out of the gate when Prohibition ended. It’s housed in the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s 113-year-old Paymaster Building.

Tuthilltown Spirits: Gardiner, New York

Tuthilltown Spirits also gets some New York street cred — it was the first distillery in the state opened after Prohibition. Like many old fashioned distilleries, it also has a gristmill.

St George Spirits: Alameda, California

And now for something completely different, St George Spirits, a craft company housed in an old aeroplane hangar.

[MIKA27]

Scientists Revived 400-Year-Old Plants That Could Help Us Live On Mars

A recently uncovered, perfectly preserved, 400-year-old plant specimen might be the answer to our increasingly important colonisation of other planets — and the preservation of the human race as a whole. You probably already know that human stem cells hold a vast, wildly exciting potential — both in terms of furthering our understanding of the human body and in saving countless lives.

But did you know plants have their very own version of the industrious little cells, called bryophytes, that could prove just as important in saving humanity? That’s exactly what scientists have found and what’s gotten them so excited.

Lead by Catherine La Farge, a team of researchers from the University of Alberta was exploring mosses around the Teardrop Glacier in the Canadian arctic archipelago when they discovered that portions of the (now rapidly receding) glacier were tinted an incongruous green. After taking the sample plant material back to her lab, the team ground up the specimens, placed them in potting soil, and watched with awe as they successfully regenerated from their 400-year-old parent material.

As the glacier recedes at an astonishing rate of 3m-4m per year since 2004, scientists have gained access to an increasing amount of centuries-old plant life frozen in time. Every discovery up until now, though, has been flora of the vascular variety. But it’s this non-vascular sort that, though often overlooked, holds the key to understanding our past and our future.

What’s a Bryophyte?

Vascular plants are primarily defined by the existence of a xylem and a phloem, or in other words, the parts that suck up water and nutrients and send them shooting throughout the rest of the plant. Non-vascular plants, as all you keen observers may have already guessed, don’t have this system — they’re a far more simple breed. Made to freeze and dry out, they’re able to survive in conditions that vascular plants, what with their fancy leaf and stem tissue needing “water” and “food” all the time, could only dream of.

Bryophytes, which fall into this latter category, have to reproduce asexually since they often don’t have access to water, which is key to fertilization. And because of this, depending on its environment, a single bryophyte cell can essentially reprogram itself to grow as an entirely different plant. But that’s not even the exciting part. As La Farge explained:

This has been known forever by biologists who deal with bryophytes. Because if a moose goes through a forest, it might pick up moss in its toes and carry that material somewhere else. So when the plant tissue drops, it will be able to reestablish itself in its new environment and thrive.

It’s as if you could drop a lion in the ocean and have it grow gills.

So… What’s the Big Deal?

As glaciers retreat and a greater variety of plant life surfaces, it’s essentially like peeling a blanket back over a perfectly preserved portion of the past. Dormant, yes — but alive nonetheless. And that’s what makes this discovery so incredible. The knowledge that it’s even possible for plant life to survive in such extreme conditions opens the door to a deeper understanding of this robust group’s cell biology. Which in turn, could very well pave the way towards us figuring out how the hell we’re going to grow plants on other planets — oh, say Mars, for instance.

Because unquestionably, before we can even begin to fantasize about sending people into the red abyss, we’re going to need to test whether or not plants can survive in those kinds of conditions — harsh light, dryness, freezing, etc. And now it seems like we may have found just the plant for the job. Eschews water? Check. Ability to reproduce simply and all by its lonesome? Check.

Doesn’t mind the cold? Double check. Not to mention the fact that it can morph into other plants.

Which is part of the reason why bryophytes represent the second largest lineage of land plants in terms of diversity — 10,000 different species diverse, to be exact. And various, disparate strains will happily live side-by-side; they don’t compete in the way vascular plants do. Rather, they bunch as close together as possible, which allows them to retain the moisture that facilitates their entire biological life cycle. So there’s a reason you’ll always see moss growing in tufts. And though they might be virtually microscopic as single organisms, there’s still plenty about them to find fascinating — especially if you’re a bryophyte enthusiast like La Farge. As she explained to us:

It’s mind boggling, because normally you walk through a forest, and you see green moss on a rock. So you might think oh, that’s a nice moss and move on. But you never stop to think about what that green actually represents. How diverse is it? How many species are we really considering here? I mean, when you’re up in the high arctic, if you pick up just a small packet, say a letter envelope size, you can often get 15 different species of bryophytes in one letter-size collection. It’s pretty amazing.

The Next Stage

There’s still many other organisms that could be lying peacefully under the still-frozen glacier. Scientists knew that fungi, yeast, and bacteria were all able to survive in ice, and they also knew that both vascular plants and mosses could live on the top of a glacier. But this is the first time we’ve really considered the possibility that the stuff peeking out from underneath the glacier just might be alive. Frozen specimens, then, won’t necessarily be considered dead on arrival, leaving researchers with plenty of work ahead of them.

La Farge is particularly interested in moving into the lower latitudes, where the even more rapidly shrinking icecaps are exposing even older glimpses of past life. And all of this will only enhance our newly illuminated understanding of basic life systems — something we’re going to need when we start planting biodomes on other planets.

Of course, tests like that may still be quite a ways off. But at least now, we have plenty of reason to hope.

[MIKA27]

DARPA’s Crazy Mind-Controlled Prosthetics Have Gotten Even Better

We’ve known for a few years now that DARPA-funded prosthetics research is yielding some pretty incredible technology. We’re not talking incredible in the robotic cheetah sense. We’re talking incredible in The Incredibles sense of the term.

Specifically, DARPA is literally building superheroic technology that enables amputees to control prosthetic limbs with their minds, and it’s getting pretty darn good.

In science-fiction terminology, you might say DARPA is building cyborgs, bionic men and women who for one unfortunate reason or another have lost a part of their body. Thanks to science — and a research project that’s years in the making — they can now have it back and will soon be able to live completely normal lives.

This initiative has been around around for a while, but this just-released video of a man using a technique called Targeted Muscle Re-innveration (TMR) for Advanced Prosthetic Control shows how tantalizingly close we’ve come to prosthetic perfection:

Notice how he handles that cup of coffee with relative ease? There’s no Wi-Fi connection making that happen, just his brain and muscles.

The brilliant devices comes out of DARPA’s Reliable Neural-Interface Technology (RE-NET) program. “Although the current generation of brain, or cortical, interfaces have been used to control many degrees of freedom in an advanced prosthesis,” explains Jack Judy, DARPA program manager, “researchers are still working on improving their long-term viability and performance.”

Judy explains that the new prosthetic technology doesn’t plug directly into the brain as some mind-controlled limbs do. Instead, it reads the brain signals that are already pulsing through local nerves and muscles. Indeed, these signals are the some of the same interrupted signals that cause the phantom limb effect. Reconnecting those nerves to a robotic wires seems like a great way forward, and in fact, the military is already moving in that direction. “RE-NET program advances are already being made available to injured warfighters in clinical settings,” said Judy.

DARPA’s not the only one working on this kind of technology. Robotics departments across the country are scrambling to become the first to make the perfect Luke Skywalker cyborg hand or the best robo-arm. Amputee Zac Vawter managed to climb the 103-floors of the Sears Tower last year using a mind-controlled leg:

From here on out, we start to approach Star Trek-scale technology. One step up in sophistication from limbs that connect to nerves and muscles are devices that plug directly into the ol’ grey matter creating what’s called a brain-to-computer interface. A team of researchers built a bulky but functional setup that enabled a paraplegic woman to give herself a drink of water for the first time in nearly a decade. Can you even imagine?

This is only the beginning. We’ve seen bionic eyes help blind people see again. We’ve seen scientists 3D-print livers, blood vessels, jaw bones and stem cells — to name only a few ways we’re printing human parts. There’s even a crazy neuroscientist, Miguel Nicolelis, who’s building an exoskeleton that will enable a paralysed person walk just like a normal person. He plans to unveil it at the next World Cup in Brazil, where he wants the device to help a patient walk out onto the field in front of billions of people. It’s an amazingly brazen idea. But all of these projects are also just plain amazing.

[MIKA27]

Could You Stare At A Samsung Galaxy S4 For 60 Minutes To Win One?

Because the Samsung Galaxy S4 can sense when you’re looking at it, Swisscom hilariously set up a challenge for people to stare at the phone for an hour. If you hit the 60 minute mark, you win a free Samsung Galaxy S4. If you get distracted, you don’t get one. Easy? Not as easy as you think!

It would have been a good ol’ fashioned stare down (you can blink) but Swisscom threw some epic distractions in the simple staring contest. People who played the game were distracted by barking dogs, singers, arguing couples, burning hot dog vendors and motorcycle crashes. I’m pretty sure I would have failed. Though I’m pretty sure I would have failed without any distractions too.