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

[MIKA27]

Watch the Shockwave of an Explosion at Mexico’s Popocatépetl

Volcanism at Mexico’s Popocatépetl is highly punctuated, especially during its current level of activity where domes of lava grow in the summit crater. These domes occasionally collapse or are destroyed by explosions that can lessen the pressure on the magma beneath to create an even larger explosion. This is akin to popping the top off a shaken bottle of soda — the dissolved bubbles come out of solution rapidly as the pressure is released and you get an explosion of soda.

Today, Popocatépetl had one of those explosions, and thanks to the beautiful weather in Mexico and some nice placement of webcams surrounding the volcano, the explosion was caught on some pretty amazing webcam footage compiled by webcamsdemexico (see above). The video is short, only 30 second long, but after the first few seconds of calm, the explosion occurs, sending a dark grey plume into the atmosphere above the volcano. Now, these explosions come with a lot of force, and you can see after the initial explosion is how the clouds of water vapor around Popocatepetl shudder as the explosion front moves past.

Then quickly, the upper flanks of the volcano turn grey from the rapid raining out of ash and volcanic debris (tephra). It is a little surprising how little the clouds actually care that the explosion just occurred at first, but as the explosion continues in this sped up video, the clouds do begin to show more disruption from the hot ash and volcanic gases being released during the explosion. You can also notice how the plume reaches neutral buoyancy not too far above the volcano (bigger the explosion, the higher it can reach before this happens) as the plume begins to spread laterally (to the right in this video) into that classic shape. My guess is the plume was a few kilometers tall by the time the video ends.

You can see how pulsatory the eruption is as well, with the dark plume churning like steam from a steam engine. This might be due to new magma rising in the conduit, feeding the eruption as it continues. However, even with all this fury, the volcano went back to looking idyllic with only some minor puffs of ash within two hours after the explosion (see below) and only the grey ash on the slopes to show for the seemingly giant explosion. Even as impressive as that explosion seems, these ash and tephra deposits usually are wiped clean out of much of the geologic record by rains as they are only a few centimeters thick near the volcano and millimeters thick further away.

[MIKA27]

The Rise Of The Surveillance State (As Predicted In 1967)

Uncle Sam might soon be spying on you with a vast, computerised network. At least that was the eerie prophecy of The Atlantic in 1967.

In an article by Arthur Miller (a law professor at the University of Michigan, not the playwright) readers were introduced to the rise of centralized data collection, and how a futuristic data centre might be exploited in the future. Like, say, today.

Miller describes a dystopian world where computers can store vast amounts of personal, medical and financial data. He warns that while this information could prove incredibly useful, it could easily become vulnerable to nefarious entities in the government, private industry, or even individuals.

“Even the most innocuous of centres,” Miller writes, “could provide the ‘foot in the door’ for the development of an individualised computer-based federal snooping system.”

Back in 1967, the ARPANET — the precursor to the modern internet — was still two years away from making its first connection. But Miller foresaw the dangers of networked computing, an irresistible temptation for the development of a surveillance state by any tech-savvy government left unchecked by its people.

There are further dangers. The very existence of a National Data centre may encourage certain federal officials to engage in questionable surveillance tactics. For example, optical scanners — devices with the capacity to read a variety of type fonts or handwriting at fantastic rates of speed — could be used to monitor our mail. By linking scanners with a computer system, the information drawn in by the scanner would be converted into machine-readable form and transferred into the subject’s file in the National Data centre.

Miller’s vision of machines reading all our handwritten mail, while quaint, seems just as plausible given recent revelations by the FBI.

However, it’s the automated monitoring of computer communications that resonates most for those of us here in the year 2013.

Miller’s image of a push-button surveillance state was creepy, but firmly planted in midcentury visions of tomorrow. Especially since push-buttons were supposed to be the liberators of humanity, freeing people to work smarter in the projected leisure society of the 21st century.

Then, with sophisticated programming, the dossiers of all of the surveillance subject’s correspondents could be produced at the touch of a button, and an appropriate entry — perhaps “associates with known criminals” — could be added to all of them. As a result, someone who simply exchanges Christmas cards with a person whose mail is being monitored might find himself under surveillance or might be turned down when he applies for a job with the government or requests a government grant or applies for some other governmental benefit. An untested, impersonal, and erroneous computer entry such as “associates with known criminals” has marked him, and he is helpless to rectify the situation. Indeed, it is likely that he would not even be aware that the entry existed.

These tactics, as well as the possibility of coupling wiretapping and computer processing, undoubtedly will be extremely attractive to overzealous law-enforcement officers. Similarly, the ability to transfer into the National Data centre quantities of information maintained in nonfederal files — credit ratings, educational information from schools and universities, local and state tax information, and medical records — will enable governmental snoopers to obtain data that they have no authority to secure on their own.

By the end of his article, Miller calls for legislation to protect the data of American citizens. Miller wasn’t the only one calling for privacy legislation around this time. The following year, Paul Armer of the RAND Corporation would testify in front of a Senate subcommittee raising some of the very same concerns about the emergence of a snooper society. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Armer read Miller’s article.

Miller’s article appeared in the November 1967 issue of The Atlantic, nearly 50 years ago! But needless to say, that art could would fit in nicely with the newsstands of today. Just check out the latest issue of The New Yorker.

As best I can tell, Miller’s dystopian surveillance state without much in the way of due process is here. The only question that remains seems to be what the hell we can do about it.

[MIKA27]

The Dust Bowl Skyscrapers That Were Supposed To Make It Rain

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was vicious. Crops were ravaged, dust clouds darkened the sky, and thousands fled the Great Plains to look for work elsewhere. But one meteorologist in France had an idea that very much appealed to the parched farmers and ranchers of yesteryear — enormous weather-manipulation towers that would dwarf the Empire State Building.

The October 1935 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics took an illustrated look at a proposal by one Bernard Dubos, who thought that his system might provide some much needed rain, more or less on demand. The process was supposed to work by drawing warm water at a pumping station at ground level into the hollow, Bugle-shaped concrete and steel tower. The rising air in the tower would be cooled and produce condensation.

But this rain wasn’t going to come cheap. Dubos predicted that his rain towers would cost about $US10 million each. Or about $US135.6 million, adjusted for inflation.

From the magazine:

A French meterologist, Bernard Dubos, proposes to produce rain by lending Nature a hand; in other words, helping her to carry out her routine process of drawing heated, water-laden air from the surface of the earth, and cooling it (by expansion into thinner atmosphere) until the water comes down again.

His project, illustrated here, is to put up stupendous towers of concrete, hollow within, which will create drafts in the same manner as a factory chimney. The ascending air column will carry water up with it, as vapor; and whirling vanes will distribute it in all directions. By this means, M. Dubos believes, the natural moisture of the air can be readily increased. Such a tower, steel reenforced, and two-thirds higher than the Empire State Building, would cost about $US10,000,000, it is estimated, and be of great scientific as well as climatic value.

Needless to say, the Dubos rain towers were never built. Which may be just as well; the Dust Bowl was awful, but at least there was no Mud Bowl to have to clean up after.

[MIKA27]

Scenes from Brazil's Angry, Nationwide protests:

Anger over a bus ticket price fare hike in the Brazilian megapolis of Sao Paolo has blown the lid off a seething pot of frustrations and tensions. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets across the country, protesting the corruption and social inequities that make up life in this booming, emerging Latin American giant. Anger centers on lavish state funding for events like the 2014 World Cup, while infrastructure, education and health care get neglected.

A young student shouts slogans during a protest against the millions of dollars Brazilian government spending for the FIFA Confederations Cup Brazil 2013 and World Cup Brazil 2014, at the Obelisco of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais state, Brazil

Demonstrators join hands as they protest against the Confederation's Cup and the government of Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff outside the national congress in Brasilia

Demonstrators gather during a protest in front of the Brazilian National Congress in Brasilia, Brazil

Protesters, one holding a Brazilian flag, burn trash to block a street near the sate legislative assembly building during a protest in Rio de Janeiro

Police officers take cover during clashes with demonstrators, who tossed fire crackers at them, in front of the state legislative assembly in Rio de Janeiro

Protesters try to invade the state assembly during a protest in Rio de Janeiro

A policeman lies injured on the ground after clashing with demonstrators during a protest in Rio de Janeiro

Police officers take cover as they retreat away from demonstrators during a protest near the state legislative assembly in Rio de Janeiro

A military police pepper sprays a protester during a demonstration in Rio de Janeiro, (Pricks! A real threat with a handbag and cigarette!?)

An injured demonstrator is helped by fellow protesters and treated by a doctor, left, who said the man was shot in the shoulder, during a protest in Rio de Janeiro,

Demonstrators shout anti-government slogans behind a banner, which reads as 'violence', during one of many protests around Brazil's major cities in Sao Paulo,

[OZCUBAN]

Great thread mate keep it up

[Skyfall]

So this exists...............http://lighterwatch.com/

[MIKA27]

How Hijackers Commandeered Over 130 American Planes — In 5 Years

For several years during the Vietam Era, hijackings were astonishingly routine in American airspace. Desperate and deluded souls commandeered over 130 planes between 1968 and 1972, often at a pace of one or more per week. WIRED contributing editor Brendan I. Koerner tells the story of this forgotten criminal epidemic in his new book, The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking, which comes out today.

In this exclusive excerpt, Koerner recounts the early days of the “Golden Age,” when Cuba was the skyjackers’ destination of choice and the airlines thought they had everything under control.

MOST SKYJACKERS EARNESTLY believed that upon reaching Havana, their sole destination during the mid-to-late 1960s, they would be greeted as revolutionary heroes. “In a few hours it would be dawn in a new world—I was about to enter Paradise,” one skyjacker recalled thinking as the runway lights at José Martí International Airport came into view. “Cuba was creating a true democracy, a place where everyone was equal, where violence against blacks, injustice, and racism were things of the past. . . . I had come to Cuba to feel freedom at least once.”

But though Fidel Castro welcomed the wayward flights in order to humiliate the United States and earn hard currency—the airlines had to pay the Cuban government an average of $7,500 to retrieve each plane—he had little but disdain for the hijackers themselves, whom he considered undesirable malcontents. After landing at José Martí, hijackers were whisked away to an imposing Spanish citadel that served as the headquarters of G2, Cuba’s secret police. There they were interrogated for weeks on end, accused of working for the CIA despite all evidence to the contrary. The lucky ones were then sent to live at the Casa de Transitos (Hijackers House), a decrepit dormitory in southern Havana, where each American was allocated sixteen square feet of living space; the two-story building eventually held as many as sixty hijackers, who were forced to subsist on monthly stipends of forty pesos each. Skyjackers who rubbed their G2 interrogators the wrong way, meanwhile, were dispatched to squalid sugar-harvesting camps, where conditions were rarely better than nightmarish. At these tropical gulags, inmates were punished with machete blows, political agitators were publicly executed, and captured escapees were dragged across razor-sharp stalks of sugarcane until their flesh was stripped away.

One American hijacker was beaten so badly by prison guards that he lost an eye; another hanged himself in his cell.

Yet graphic news reports about this brutal treatment did little to slow the epidemic’s spread. Every skyjacker was an optimist at heart, supremely confident that his story would be the one to touch Castro’s heart. The twenty-eight-year-old heir to a New Mexico real estate fortune hijacked a Delta Airlines jet while inexplicably dressed as a cowboy; a sociology student from Kalamazoo, Michigan, forced a Piper PA-24 pilot to take him to Havana because he wanted to study Communism firsthand; a 34-year-old Cuban exile diverted a Northwest Airlines flight back home because he could no longer bear to live without his mother’s delicately seasoned frijoles.

By July 1968 the situation had become dire enough to warrant a Senate hearing. The FAA was represented at the hearing by a functionary named Irving Ripp, whose testimony was devoid of even the slightest hint of hope.

“It’s an impossible problem short of searching every passenger,” Ripp testified. “If you’ve got a man aboard that wants to go to Havana, and he has got a gun, that’s all he needs.”

Senator George Smathers of Florida countered Ripp’s gloom by raising the possibility of using metal detectors or X-ray machines to screen all passengers. He noted that these relatively new technologies were already in place at several maximum-security prisons and sensitive military facilities, where they were performing admirably. “I see no reason why similar devices couldn’t be installed at airport check-in gates to determine whether passengers are carrying guns or other weapons just prior to emplaning,” Smathers said. But Ripp dismissed the senator’s suggestion as certain to have “a bad psychological effect on passengers … It would scare the pants off people. Plus people would complain about invasion of privacy.” None of the senators made any further inquiries about electronic screening.

Two weeks after the Senate hearing, a deranged forklift operator named Oran Richards hijacked a Delta Airlines flight. Somewhere over West Virginia, Richards jumped from his seat and pulled a pistol on the first passenger he encountered in the aisle—a man who just happened to be Senator James Eastland of Mississippi. Though the Delta crew eventually talked Richards into surrendering in Miami, the skyjacking of a national political figure represented a dangerous new twist to the epidemic. Almost immediately the State Department proposed a novel anti-skyjacking solution: free one-way flights to Cuba for anyone who wished to go, provided they vowed never to return to the United States. But Castro refused to accept these “good riddance flights”; he had no incentive to help America curtail its skyjackings, which gave him excellent fodder for his marathon sermons against capitalist decadence.

Unwilling to spend the money necessary to weed out passengers with dark intentions, the airlines instead focused on mitigating the financial impact of skyjacking. They decided that their top priority was to avoid violence, since passenger or crew fatalities would surely generate an avalanche of bad publicity. As a result, every airline adopted policies that called for absolute compliance with all hijacker demands, no matter how peculiar or extravagant. A November 1968 memo that Eastern Air Lines circulated among its employees made clear that even minor attempts at heroism were now strictly forbidden:

The most important consideration under the act of aircraft piracy is the safety of the lives of passengers and crew. Any other factor is secondary … In the face of an armed threat to any crew member, comply with the demands presented. Do not make an attempt to disarm, shoot out, or otherwise jeopardize the safety of the flight. Remember, more than one gunman may be on board … To sum up, going on past experience, it is much more prudent to submit to a gunman’s demands than attempt action which may well jeopardize the lives of all on board.

To facilitate impromptu journeys to Cuba, all cockpits were equipped with charts of the Caribbean Sea, regardless of a flight’s intended destination. Pilots were briefed on landing procedures for José Martí International Airport and issued phrase cards to help them communicate with Spanish-speaking hijackers. (The phrases to which a pilot could point included translations for “I must open my flight bag for maps” and “Aircraft has mechanical problems—can’t make Cuba.”) Air traffic controllers in Miami were given a dedicated phone line for reaching their Cuban counterparts, so they could pass along word of incoming flights. Switzerland’s embassy in Havana, which handled America’s diplomatic interests in Cuba, created a form letter that airlines could use to request the expedited return of stolen planes.

As the airlines labored to make each hijacking as quick and painless as possible, the epidemic only grew worse. Eleven flights were commandeered during the first six weeks of 1969—a record pace. The hijackers included a former mental patient accompanied by his three-year-old son; a community college student armed with a can of bug spray; a Purdue University dropout with a taste for Marxist economics; and a retired Green Beret who claimed that he intended to assassinate Castro with his bare hands.

At the behest of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, the FAA formed a special anti-hijacking task force to develop possible solutions to the crisis. The group was immediately inundated with thousands of letters from concerned citizens, who recommended inventive ways to frustrate skyjackers:

installing trapdoors outside cockpits, arming stewardesses with tranquilizer darts, making passengers wear boxing gloves so they couldn’t grip guns, playing the Cuban national anthem before takeoff and then arresting anyone who knew the lyrics. The most popular suggestion was for the FAA to build a mock version of José Martí International Airport in a South Florida field, so that skyjackers could be duped into thinking they had reached Havana. That idea sparked serious interest at the agency but was ultimately discarded as too expensive.

John Dailey, a task force member who also served as the FAA’s chief psychologist, began to attack the problem by analyzing the methods of past skyjackers. He pored through accounts of every single American hijacking since 1961—more than seventy cases in all—and compiled a database of the perpetrators’ basic characteristics: how they dressed, where they lived, when they traveled, and how they acted around airline personnel. His research convinced him that all skyjackers involuntarily betrayed their criminal intentions while checking in for their flights. “There isn’t any common denominator except in [the hijackers’] behavior,” he told one airline executive. “Some will be tall, some short, some will have long hair, some not, some a long nose, et cetera, et cetera. There is no way to tell a hijacker by looking at him. But there are ways to differentiate between the behavior of a potential hijacker and that of the usual air traveler.”

Dailey, who had spent the bulk of his career designing aptitude tests for the Air Force and Navy, created a brief checklist that could be used to determine whether a traveler might have malice in his heart. Paying for one’s ticket by unconventional means, for example, was considered an important tip-off. So, too, were failing to maintain eye contact and expressing an inadequate level of knowledge or concern about one’s luggage. Dailey fine-tuned his criteria so they would apply to only a tiny fraction of travelers—ideally no more than three out of every thousand. He proposed that these few “selectees” could then be checked with handheld metal detectors, away from the prying eyes of fellow passengers. Most selectees would prove guilty of nothing graver than simple eccentricity, but a small number would surely be found to be in possession of guns, knives, or incendiary devices.

In the late summer of 1969, the FAA began to test Dailey’s anti-hijacking system on Eastern Air Lines passengers at nine airports. When a man obtaining his boarding pass was judged to fit the behavioral profile, he was discreetly asked to proceed to a private area, where a federal marshal could sweep his body with a U-shaped metal detector. One of Dailey’s assistants secretly videotaped this process, so the FAA could ascertain whether travelers took offense at the intrusion.

Dailey pronounced the experiment a roaring success, noting that his profile selected only 1,268 out of 226,000 passengers; of those beckoned aside for a brief date with the metal detector, 24 were arrested on weapons or narcotics charges. More important, selectees rarely seemed to mind the extra scrutiny; when interviewed afterward, most said they were just happy to know that something was finally being done to prevent hijackings.

Satisfied with the subtlety of Dailey’s system, the airlines began to voluntarily implement the program in November 1969, right after Raffaele Minichiello, an Italian-American Marine, famously escaped to Rome on a hijacked Boeing 707. Almost immediately, hijackings in American airspace dwindled to a handful—just one in January 1970, and one more the following month. Janitorial crews started to find guns and knives stashed in the potted plants outside airport terminals, possibly left there by aspiring skyjackers who lost heart after seeing posted notices that electronic screening was in force.

But there were two fatal flaws in how the FAA’s system was implemented. The first was that pilots and stewardesses were not told which of their passengers were selectees. If a hijacker claimed to have a bomb, the crew had no way of knowing whether he had been searched prior to boarding—and thus no way of determining whether his threat was a bluff. All they could do was err on the side of caution and obey the hijacker’s every command.

The system’s more fundamental weakness, though, was the fact that it depended entirely on the vigilance of airline ticket agents. They, rather than professional security personnel, were responsible for applying Dailey’s checklist to every passenger they encountered. Over time the agents’ attention to detail was bound to flag as they processed thousands upon thousands of harried customers each day. It is simply human nature to grow complacent.

[MIKA27]

So this exists...............http://lighterwatch.com/

Perfect for a cigar smoking James Bond!!

[MIKA27]

Diary of Second World War German teenager reveals young lives untroubled by Nazi Holocaust in wartime Berlin

Newly published diary hailed as remarkable documentary evidence of how millions of Germans relied on collective indifference to endure the horrors of war

Her neighbourhood was bombed by the allies, the Jews around the corner were being sent to Auschwitz and the Red Army had launched its final assault on Berlin. But Brigitte Eicke, a teenaged German, was unconcerned. She was far more interested in going to the cinema, dancing to gramophone records and trying to cope with a "disastrous" perm.

The 15-year-old Berlin schoolgirl, nicknamed "Gitti", started keeping a diary in December 1942, when the German capital was being bombed nightly and the Nazi Holocaust was killing thousands. As a trainee secretary, she recorded her daily experiences to improve her stenography skills.

Now, some 70 years on, her diary has been published for the first time in Germany and is being hailed as remarkable documentary evidence of how millions of Germans relied on collective indifference to endure the horrors of war and ignore the brutality of the Nazi rule.

Entitled Backfisch im Bombenkrieg (teenaged girl in bombing war), Eicke's diary is an often banal account of everyday life. She started writing it just months before Anne Frank began her diary, but the contents could hardly be more different.

"Gitti is merely a cog in the wheels that kept Nazi Germany turning," is how Der Spiegel magazine described the author last week.

"She is a young woman skilled in the art of blotting out ugliness, willing to believe what she's told and, ultimately, one of the lucky ones," it added.

Here is Gitti's entry for 1 February 1944: "The school had been bombed when we arrived this morning. Waltraud, Melitta and I went back to Gisela's and danced to gramophone records." In another raid on her Berlin neighbourhood in March 1943, two people are killed, 34 are injured and more than 1,000 are made homeless. Gitti writes: "It took place in the middle of the night, horrible, I was half asleep".

In November 1944, Hitler is trying to cripple the advances made after the D-Day landings by planning an offensive in the Ardennes, but Gitti – by now a member of the Nazi Party – is more concerned about her hairdo. She writes that she has just been given a "disastrous" perm by her hairdresser and is worried about going to work "looking a fright".

Then on 2 March 1945, while Hitler's troops are trying to halt the Red Army's advance just 60 miles east of Berlin, Gitti, now 18, goes to the cinema. She writes: "Margot and I went to the Admiralspalast cinema to see Meine Herren Söhne. It was such a lovely film, but there was a power cut in the middle. How annoying!"

The humdrum tone is all the more disquieting when it comes to the steady disappearance of Berlin's Jews – an issue that receives only one mention in the entire diary. On 27 February 1943, she ends a trivia-packed account about how she and her friend Waltraud go to the opera and get chatted up by soldiers on the way home with the entry: "Jews all over town being taken away, including the tailor across the road."

Brigitte Eicke is now 86. She still lives in east Berlin's Prenzlauerberg district, where she lived during the war. Just around the corner from where she worked as a secretary, there was a "collection centre" for Jews who were being sent to the Auschwitz death camp.

In a recent interview to coincide with the publication of her diary, she said: "My son always said to me: how could you be so oblivious? But I never saw a thing." She added: "There were some Jewish girls in my first class photograph taken in 1933 but, by the time the next one was taken, they were all gone. When I asked my mother about them, she said they had moved to Palestine."

Decades would pass before she grasped the enormity of the Nazis' crimes. "It was only when I visited Buchenwald in 1970 that I saw photographs of the camps. It took me years to realise what had gone on," she said.

Unlike thousands of young German women, Brigitte Eicke appears to have escaped being raped by Red Army troops when they took Berlin. But she lost her father and an uncle on the eastern front. Some German commentators have suggested that her naive and apolitical account of her experiences was an unconscious survival attempt.

"We just muddled through, we had no choice," is how she describes it.

[MIKA27]

Cheating Ourselves of Sleep

Think you do just fine on five or six hours of shut-eye? Chances are, you are among the many millions who unwittingly shortchange themselves on sleep.

Research shows that most people require seven or eight hours of sleep to function optimally. Failing to get enough sleep night after night can compromise your health and may even shorten your life. From infancy to old age, the effects of inadequate sleep can profoundly affect memory, learning, creativity, productivity and emotional stability, as well as your physical health.

According to sleep specialists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, among others, a number of bodily systems are negatively affected by inadequate sleep: the heart, lungs and kidneys; appetite, metabolism and weight control; immune function and disease resistance; sensitivity to pain; reaction time; mood; and brain function.

Poor sleep is also a risk factor for depression and substance abuse, especially among people with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Anne Germain, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. People with PTSD tend to relive their trauma when they try to sleep, which keeps their brains in a heightened state of alertness.

Dr. Germain is studying what happens in the brains of sleeping veterans with PTSD in hopes of developing more effective treatments for them and for people with lesser degrees of stress that interfere with a good night’s sleep.

The elderly are especially vulnerable. Timothy H. Monk, who directs the Human Chronobiology Research Program at Western Psychiatric, heads a five-year federally funded study of circadian rhythms, sleep strength, stress reactivity, brain function and genetics among the elderly. “The circadian signal isn’t as strong as people get older,” he said.

He is finding that many are helped by standard behavioral treatments for insomnia, like maintaining a regular sleep schedule, avoiding late-in-day naps and caffeine, and reducing distractions from light, noise and pets.

It should come as no surprise that myriad bodily systems can be harmed by chronically shortened nights. “Sleep affects almost every tissue in our bodies,” said Dr. Michael J. Twery, a sleep specialist at the National Institutes of Health.

Several studies have linked insufficient sleep to weight gain. Not only do night owls with shortchanged sleep have more time to eat, drink and snack, but levels of the hormone leptin, which tells the brain enough food has been consumed, are lower in the sleep-deprived while levels of ghrelin, which stimulates appetite, are higher.

In addition, metabolism slows when one’s circadian rhythm and sleep are disrupted; if not counteracted by increased exercise or reduced caloric intake, this slowdown could add up to 10 extra pounds in a year.

The body’s ability to process glucose is also adversely affected, which may ultimately result in Type 2 diabetes. In one study, healthy young men prevented from sleeping more than four hours a night for six nights in a row ended up with insulin and blood sugar levels like those of people deemed prediabetic. The risks of cardiovascular diseases and stroke are higher in people who sleep less than six hours a night. Even a single night of inadequate sleep can cause daylong elevations in blood pressure in people with hypertension.

Inadequate sleep is also associated with calcification of coronary arteries and raised levels of inflammatory factors linked to heart disease. (In terms of cardiovascular disease, sleeping too much may also be risky. Higher rates of heart disease have been found among women who sleep more than nine hours nightly.)

The risk of cancer may also be elevated in people who fail to get enough sleep. A Japanese study of nearly 24,000 women ages 40 to 79 found that those who slept less than six hours a night were more likely to develop breast cancer than women who slept longer. The increased risk may result from diminished secretion of the sleep hormone melatonin. Among participants in the Nurses Health Study, Eva S. Schernhammer of Harvard Medical School found a link between low melatonin levels and an increased risk of breast cancer.

A study of 1,240 people by researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland found an increased risk of potentially cancerous colorectal polyps in those who slept fewer than six hours nightly.

Children can also experience hormonal disruptions from inadequate sleep. Growth hormone is released during deep sleep; it not only stimulates growth in children, but also boosts muscle mass and repairs damaged cells and tissues in both children and adults.

Dr. Vatsal G. Thakkar, a psychiatrist affiliated with New York University, recently described evidence associating inadequate sleep with anerroneous diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children. In one study, 28 percent of children with sleep problems had symptoms of the disorder, but not the disorder.

During sleep, the body produces cytokines, cellular hormones that help fight infections. Thus, short sleepers may be more susceptible to everyday infections like colds and flu. In a study of 153 healthy men and women, Sheldon Cohen and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University found that those who slept less than seven hours a night were three times as likely to develop cold symptoms when exposed to a cold-causing virus than were people who slept eight or more hours.

Some of the most insidious effects of too little sleep involve mental processes like learning, memory, judgment and problem-solving.

During sleep, new learning and memory pathways become encoded in the brain, and adequate sleep is necessary for those pathways to work optimally. People who are well rested are better able to learn a task and more likely to remember what they learned. The cognitive decline that so often accompanies aging may in part result from chronically poor sleep.

With insufficient sleep, thinking slows, it is harder to focus and pay attention, and people are more likely to make poor decisions and take undue risks. As you might guess, these effects can be disastrous when operating a motor vehicle or dangerous machine.

In driving tests, sleep-deprived people perform as if drunk, and no amount of caffeine or cold air can negate the ill effects.

At your next health checkup, tell your doctor how long and how well you sleep. Be honest: Sleep duration and quality can be as important to your health as your blood pressure and cholesterol level.

[MIKA27]

Costa Rican Murder Shines Light on Poaching, Drug Nexus

Police are still looking for environmentalist Jairo Mora Sandoval’s murderers.

The murder of an environmental activist in Costa Rica has shaken the country's ecology-minded public and has cast a light on what appears to be the growing overlap between animal poaching and drug trafficking on the country's Caribbean coast.

Early on the morning of May 31, masked gunmen abducted 26-year-old Jairo Mora Sandoval from a vehicle he was using to patrol a desolate beach to protect nesting leatherback turtles from poachers.

Four international volunteers who were accompanying Mora were bound and taken to a nearby shack, from which they eventually escaped. Mora's body was found later the same day, facedown in the sand and exhibiting signs of torture,according to police and witnesses.

More than two weeks later, police continued to search for Mora's killers.

The murder has triggered shock and revulsion throughout Costa Rica. At recent candlelight vigils for Mora across the country, protesters called on government officials to bring those responsible to justice and to make good on promises to strengthen protections for Costa Rica's natural treasures and the people who defend them.

"The government has failed in its responsibilities," said social psychologist Carolina Rizo, as she stood in the rain amid hundreds of other demonstrators at a vigil last week in San José, Costa Rica's capital.

"It's been left to young volunteers to do what the state should do," she said. "To be as ecological as our image suggests would require a commitment to laws and standards. People don't do the jobs they're supposed to do."

"Low Presence of Authority"

With a history of political stability, a relatively low crime rate, and dozens of protected areas teeming with biodiversity, Costa Rica markets itself as an idyllic travel destination for eco-adventures and outdoor family fun.

But many officials share Rizo's concerns that weak and ineffective enforcement of Costa Rica's environmental laws belies the country's image as an eco-friendly tropical paradise, especially on the sparsely populated, impoverished Atlantic Coast.

"It's an area where there is an extremely low presence of authority," said Juan Sánchez Ramírez, an investigator with the nation's Environment Ministry. "The government has neglected the region. People must find a way to live by whatever means they can."

For many people on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast, Sánchez and other officials say, that means trafficking in protein-rich eggs ransacked from turtle nests. Turtle eggs flavored with hot sauce are served in popular restaurants and sold by street vendors along the Caribbean coast.

At the same time, the poachers have been drawn into the tightening grip of drug runners coming north up the coast from Panama and Colombia in souped-up speedboats designed to outrun authorities.

"The geographical position of the country makes it an ideal place for the transit and warehousing of drugs," said Erick Calderón, commander of Costa Rica's uniformed police, the Civil Guard, in the palm-fringed coastal city of Puerto Limón.

"But it's not all in transit," he said. "Some of it stays here and, worse yet, traffickers are using drugs to pay local distributors. That means it has to be consumed here, which creates and sustains a local market."

According to officials and residents of the Limón area, cash-strapped users are turning to turtle eggs to finance their addiction, even trading the eggs directly to drug dealers for powdered cocaine. A single nest can yield up to 90 fertile eggs, and egg poachers, known as hueveros, frequently dig up several nests in a single night's work. The eggs are sold on the black market for $1 each.

Poachers now brandish high-powered weapons that were rarely seen before on Costa Rica's shores, most notably AK-47s. "The police don't even have AK-47s," said Sánchez, the environmental investigator, "but the traffickers have them."

His claim is borne out by colleagues who worked with Jairo Mora and have reported confrontations with heavily armed poachers while patrolling Moín Beach, a beautiful and desolate stretch of coastline just north of Puerto Limón.

Nowhere to Hide

The very conditions that have made the area's beaches a favorite nesting spot for magnificent leatherbacks and other turtles—their remoteness and the lack of artificial light or human infrastructure—make them a haven of choice for smugglers and poachers.

And that makes them ever more dangerous for the environmentalists who are trying to save the critically endangered turtles.

"Sometimes the [drug] boats come directly onto the beach," said one resident. "That's why they don't want anyone out there patrolling. They don't want people to see what's going on."

There's no comprehensive way to prevent turtle nests from being pillaged, advocates say, without a permanent police presence on every stretch of beach during the four-month nesting season.

"The poachers are always watching us from the trees," said Vanessa Lizano, head of Moín's Costa Rican Wildlife Sanctuary, who was a close friend of Mora's. "So if we hide the nests or move the eggs to another place on the beach, they find them anyway."

For Lizano and her colleagues, the preferred method is to gather eggs shortly after they've been laid—or even while the mother turtle is laying them—then bury them in a hatchery that's guarded by volunteers.

But one night last year, masked assailants raided the hatchery at gunpoint, confiscating cell phones and walkie-talkies while making off with the entire trove of 1,500 eggs.

Activists have reduced their own nightly patrols along Moín since Mora's death, even as police have stepped up their presence. Like NGO personnel and volunteers, the police typically employ foot patrols out on the sand, shadowed by a vehicle that must maneuver through dense palm groves along a narrow dirt track paralleling the beach.

It's an assignment fraught with risk, said police commander Calderón, and also with frustration.

"The poachers can see our headlights from far off," he said. "They hide their eggs and run into the forest. They pick up where they left off as soon as we're gone."

While much of Costa Rica's Atlantic Coast is protected as part of the national park system, Moín Beach is not.

Supporters of Jairo Mora Sandoval are petitioning the government to make the 15-mile-long beach a national park to honor the memory of the valiant young man who gave his life to protect the nesting turtles.

[MIKA27]

Recipe of the week: SECO DE CABRITO

LAMB BRAISED IN BEER WITH CORIANDER

A classic dish from northern Peru that has a delicious combination of flavours. The sauce has a little heat and the coriander dominates, but this is tempered perfectly by the sweetness of the peas and potatoes.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

3 tbsp vegetable oil

1kg lamb (mixture of leg and shoulder), cut into large chunks

1 large red onion, thinly sliced

3 garlic cloves, crushed

1 amarillo chilli (or use orange scotch bonnet), deseeded and chopped

1 tsp ground cumin

1 large bunch of coriander, roughly chopped

Juice of 1 lime or Seville orange

250ml beer (Peruvian Cusqueña or other premium lager)

500g new or small waxy potatoes, peeled

1 red pepper, deseeded and thinly sliced

250g peas

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a large saucepan or flameproof casserole over a mediumheat.Add the meat, and brown well on all sides.

Remove from the casserole. Add the red onion and sauté until soft and then add the garlic and cook for a further minute.

Return the meat to the casserole along with the chilli and the cumin. Season with salt and pepper.

Put the bunch of coriander and the citrus juice in a food processor or blender and blitz to a paste, adding a little water if necessary. Add two-thirds of this to the meat, along with the beer. Cover, bring to the boil and then simmer over a low heat until the meat is very tender – this should take at least 1½–2 hours.

Add the potatoes and red pepper and cook for a further 20 minutes. Add the peas and simmer until they are soft and until much of the liquid has evaporated. Stir in the remaining coriander mixture.

Serve with steaming-hot white rice.

[MIKA27]

19 Amazing Time Capsules Still Underground (And What’s Inside Them)

I love time capsules. But more often than not, they’re extremely boring. Most American time capsules from the 19th and 20th centuries contain a Bible, some stamps, a few coins and plenty of newspapers. Some throw in an American flag for good measure.

But every once in a while there’s something fascinating inside — something that makes you feel like you’re not wasting everybody’s time going through the pageantry of unearthing these incredibly low-tech time machines.

I first became interested in time capsules when I discovered that they often contain predictions about what life will be like when they’re opened, but even when they don’t have predictions for the world of the future, time capsules can still offer a fascinating peek into how past generations lived and how they wanted to be remembered.

Following is a list of some of my favourite time capsules that (as far as we know) are still sitting in cornerstones, hiding in vaults or buried underground.

George Lucas Time Capsule

• Buried at Skywalker Ranch circa 1997.
  
• Lucas says he doesn’t even know all of the things that are inside, but years ago he said that it contains “a lot of artifacts from Star Wars and from the company.”
  

University of Pennsylvania

• Buried 1940, scheduled to be opened in 2040.
  
• The time capsule itself weighs 450-pounds and contains a speech that President Franklin D. Roosevelt made at the school. While it’s unclear what else might be in there, weighing in at 450 pounds one hopes it could be a cryogenically frozen President Roosevelt himself.
  

Billings, Montana Campfire Girls Adventure Group Troop 23

• Buried 1976, scheduled to be opened in 2076 (America’s Tricentennial).
  
• Contains a “Princess” telephone, digital watch, box of bullets, tapes of music and news programs, and Bicentennial stamps with a 1976 postmark.
  

Bunker Hill, Los Angeles

• Buried 1961, and was supposed to be opened May 9, 2011 though I’ve found no record that anyone has bothered to dig it up.
  
• Contains antique telephone equipment like transistors, solar batteries, and operator’s headsets.
  

National Millennium Time Capsule in Washington, D.C.

• Buried in 2000, scheduled to be opened in 2100.
  
• The time capsule includes important objects from history, including a piece of the Berlin Wall, a Hostess Twinkie, a helmet from World War II, a mobile phone, and Louis Armstrong’s trumpet.
  

English High School, Boston

• Buried in 1970, but has no scheduled opening.
  
• The time capsule is said to contain hockey legend Bobby Orr’s sweatshirt, but the other items remain unknown.
  

Crystal Lake, Illinois

• Sealed in 1976 and planned to be opened in 2076.
  
• Contains a $US1,000 government bond.
  

Martin Luther King Jr. Time Capsule

• Buried in 1988 at the Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. and scheduled to be unearthed in the year 2088.
  
• The capsule contains some of Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal possessions along with audio cassettes people of the 1980s recorded.
  

Bell County Kentucky Time Capsule

• Sealed August 19, 1967, instructed to be opened August 19, 2017.
  
• Said to contain more than 240 items, including tape recordings from the era.
  

Los Angeles Bicentennial Time Capsule

• Buried 1976 and scheduled for a 2076 opening.
  
• This time capsule couldn’t be more 1970s L.A. if it tried. The capsule contains a dress worn by Cher, a pet rock, a skateboard, and the Laker’s Jerry West’s No. 44 basketball jersey among other memorabilia. The capsule itself is a propellant tank designed for the Mariner 9 mission to Mars.
  

Pershing Square underground garage (Los Angeles)

• Assembled 1951, with a scheduled opening of 2951.
  
• It’s not clear what’s in the time capsule, but given that it’s 225 pounds and built to last 1,000 years, it could be good.
  

Steve Jobs Time Capsule

• Buried at a conference in Aspen in 1983, but remains lost.
  
• The time capsule likely contains an early mouse and other audio recordings from Steve Jobs.
  

Great Bend, Kansas Centennial Capsule

• Buried 1972, opening date not scheduled.
  
• Contains audio tapes, a $US1,000 check, and things that people of Great Bend threw in haphazardly from their pockets. It was a minor scandal in the town that people didn’t prepare more by bringing things that had some value (sentimental or otherwise) to the time capsule burial. But the impromptu assembly and largely unknown contents makes this one a capsule I’ve always wanted to uncover.
  

Prudential Insurance Company, Los Angeles

• Sealed in a cornerstone in 1948, scheduled to be opened 2021.
  
• Contains microfilm and other items unknown. The cornerstone was made out of a two-ton piece of the Rock of Gibraltar, presented to the company by the British government.
  

Drake Well, Pennsylvania

• Buried in front of “Today Show” cameras in 1959, this time capsule was supposed to be opened in 2000 but remains lost as far as I can tell.
  
• This time capsule contains seeds from 33 states, a film (probably 16mm) by the National Petroleum Institute, and a letter from President Eisenhower.
  

Seward, Nebraska “World’s Largest Time Capsule”

• Sealed in 1975, supposed to be opened July 4, 2025.
  
• This time capsule is a 45-ton vault which includes a Chevy Vega car, clothing from the 1970s and over 5,000 other items.
  

Crypt of civilisation, Oglethorpe University

• Sealed 1940, and supposed to be opened in 8113.
  
• Includes contributions from high profile people and groups including the King of Sweden and the Kodak company. The crypt includes many books, an original movie script of Gone With The Wind, seeds, typewriter, a sewing machine, and some other high-tech gadgets of the day like two TV receivers.
  

Westinghouse 1939 Time Capsule

• Sealed at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and is supposed to be opened in 6939.
  
• The time capsule contains microfilm, newsreels, seeds and fabrics.
  
• 3,000 copies of the book documenting the time capsule were distributed to museums and libraries around the world.
  

Westinghouse 1964 Time Capsule

• Sealed at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, and it’s supposed to be opened in 6939.
  
• Electronic watch, electronic toothbrush, among hundreds of other items compiled as a sequel of sorts to the first Westinghouse time capsule in 1939.
  

MIKA: Those last few capsules will be opened a far way off and I highly doubt human Civilization will be around.

[MIKA27]

Feds Digging In Oakland Township Searching For Hoffa’s Remains

OAKLAND TOWNSHIP (WWJ) – Federal agents are digging up a field in Northern Oakland Township in hopes of finding the remains of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa.

The feds Monday morning began their search of a property in northern Oakland County. The dig — the latest in what’s been nearly a 40-year search — is the result of extensive FBI interviews with a former mobster. Mafia underboss Tony Zerilli told WDIV-TV in an exclusive interview earlier this year that Hoffa was buried in a shallow grave on the property which is believed to be owned by a family with mob ties.

Zerilli, who was second in command with the Detroit mafia, said he was told by a mafia enforcer that Hoffa was abducted, killed, and brought to the Buhl Road site. The original plan, according to the mobster, was to bury him there temporarily, then later move his body near a hunting lodge in northern Michigan.

Zerilli, now 85, was convicted of organized crime as a reputed mafia captain. He was in prison on July, 30 1975 — when Hoffa disappeared from a Bloomfield Township restaurant — but says he was informed about Hoffa’s whereabouts after his release.

All these years later, why continue to search for Hoffa’s body?

WWJ Newsradio 950 spoke live Monday morning with local mob expert and author Scott Bernstein who said he doesn’t believe there is a body to be found, but, “… I think that the crime itself has taken on an unbelievable amount of legs to … keep the story in the headlines for 35 years-plus,” he said.

“It’s a giant black eye for the FBI. It’s a piece of local folklore that will always … beg the attention that it gets,” Bernstein said. “And I think in that regard, you know, it speaks for itself.”

Bernstein believes Hoffa’s body was disposed of in an incinerator.

“That said, you have to follow this lead because it’s probably the most credible lead that the FBI’s ever gotten … on this case,” said Bernstein, due to the fact that Zerilli, the son of Detroit mafia founder Joe Zerilli, is the most credible person ever to have come forward with information.

Robert Foley, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit division, says the agency Monday executed a search warrant at the site.

He said the warrant is sealed and didn’t take questions from reporters.

The former head of Detroit’s FBI office, Andrew Arena, says federal agents have spent a few months narrowing down a certain area of this farm for the search — which he expects to take about a week.

“The evidence recovery team is going to go in and they’re gonna do a grid search of the area. If they have not already, they’ll probably bring in the ground piercing radar to kind a take a look at the area and, you know, it’s gonna take a while,” Arena said.

“They don’t just come in with a bulldozer and a backhoe and start digging … They’re gonna take a look at the area, cordon it off, and then go section by section.”

Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, a prosecutor at the time of Hoffa’s disappearance, says he doesn’t think anything will come of this dig. “I’ve been through this so many times. We’ve been down this trail, this dead-end street — I can almost think of a dozen separate times,” Patterson said.

“We sent out the backhoes and tore up property, tore down barns or what have you, and … I don’t care how good the tip is in this instance. I am really pretty much a pessimist on this one,” Patterson said.

Oakland Township residents are skeptical, too.

“I’m shocked that this is happening out here, and I just don’t think it’s for real,” said Sharon McKay, who joined a curious crowd of onlookers. “There’s so many other places that they’ve looked, and they haven’t found him. Why now?”

Speaking at the scene, Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, said he hopes this will finally bring the cold case to a close.

“It’s my fondest hope that we can give that closure, not just to the Hoffa family, but also to the community. Stop tearing that scab off with every new lead and bring some conclusion,” he said. “It’s long overdue, and certainly, you know, the FBI is committed as we all are to … bring that to that point.”

Zerilli has been promoting a book, “Hoffa Found.” A website says the book will reveal details about Hoffa’s death.

Hoffa was president of the Teamsters union until 1971.

[MIKA27]

Termites Feast On Woman's Life Savings

CHINA -- A Chinese woman almost lost her life savings recently when termites invaded a wooden drawer in which she kept a plastic bag containing 400,000 yuan: the equivalent of $65,000 U.S. dollars.

It was only after the woman decided to redecorate her house in Guandong Province that she noticed the termites had dined on her nest egg. According to the Guangzhou Daily, the money was given to the woman by her children.

A local bank generously scanned the remaining cash and was able to identity 340,000 yuan which means the termite's meal ultimately cost the woman roughly $9,786.

Maybe this time she'll try saving her money in the bank.

[MIKA27]

A Disturbed John McAfee Teaches You How To Uninstall His Software

John McAfee is one weird guy, and this video only serves to bolster that reputation. Uploaded to YouTube last night, it’s a hilarious — and entirely NSFW — video that sees the man himself teach you how to uninstall McAfee Antivirus.

The thing is full of bad language, misogyny partial nudity, drug references… all the kinds of things you’d expect from a video starring John McAfee. Above all, it’s actually really quite funny. Enjoy.

[MIKA27]

This Watch Will Tell You If You’re Too Drunk To Drive

Drink driving is obviously dumb, but it can sometimes be difficult to tell what kind of effect a beer has had on your body. Fortunately, Tokyoflash’s latest watch straps a breathalyser to your wrist so you can keep your blood alcohol concentration in check.

Blow into the sensor housed on the side of the watch, and the LCD will change colour to reflect your alcohol intake: green is sober, and red is well over the limit. There’s even a little on-board game to check your reactions.

Like most Tokyoflash watches, the time is particularly tricky to read — but maybe that’s another mechanism through which you can check your sobriety. For the next 48 hours, the watch will sell for $US100; you can buy it direct from Tokyoflash.

[MIKA27]

Remember When Big Brother’s Only Weapon Was CCTV

When I was a kid, there was no image more closely associated with surveillance than the CCTV camera. Big Brother is watching, we were warned. The government is keeping tabs on you with video cameras on every street corner. Soon they may even install cameras in your home, they insisted. Honestly, that may have been preferable to what we ended up getting.

In many ways, the CCTV camera is a terribly inefficient device to monitor a population. Sure, they’re handy after the fact, like in the case of the tragic bombing at the Boston Marathon. But if you really want to stop someone from doing something violent and horrendous, you need indications of what that person is going to do in the future. Cameras on every street corner may help identify patterns of behaviour, but they’re obviously less valuable than monitoring electronic communication like emails, instant messages, phone calls and texts.

Revelations in the past month that the NSA has been monitoring domestic electronic communications — beyond any idea of what the American public had come to expect — has rendered idea of persistent surveillance via TV images downright quaint. But that was certainly the surveillance future in 1960.

The May 15, 1960 edition of Arthur Radebaugh‘s Sunday comic “Closer Than We Think” imagined the police station of tomorrow as a sort of always-connected war room. The dispatch officer might have dozens of TV cameras in front of him, each showing different parts of a given city. A terrifying image of police overreach? Sure. But somehow less terrifying than our reality here in the 21st century.

In the world of tomorrow, transistors and diodes will do more than squad cars to enforce the law. In fact, the day of the electronic policeman is already at hand!

Television is now monitoring expressways in Detroit and reporting on ticket availability at Pennsylvania Station in New York. In the future, similar systems will help smash crime, using sunlight when available and infrared “snooper” rays the rest of the time. All findings will be transmitted automatically to police dispatch rooms, where one officer will see his entire precinct in a cluster of closed circuit TV screens.

It’s funny how quickly the imagery of what constitutes a total surveillance state can change. Security cameras aren’t the symbol that they once were. Of course, CCTV monitoring by police is still an issue for privacy advocates around the world. And who knows precisely what will happen when a broad network of security cameras teams up with the NSA supercomputers running programs like PRISM and PRISM’s (yet unknown) dystopian brothers? But no matter what the police and government surveillance initiatives of the future look like, the camera all by its lonesome will feel like a comically impotent symbol.

The government may always be watching. It’s just that now know that it’s not with a camera, but with code.

[MIKA27]

Science Has Literally Built Luke Skywalker’s Robotic Hand, Touch And All

Amputees may one day regain actual feeling thanks to DARPA and researchers at Case Western University, who have created what we thought was once only possible in science fiction. As apart of DARPA’s Reliable Neural-Interface Technology (RE-NET) program, CWRU’s flat interface nerve electrode (FINE) system has demonstrated that it can provide enough sensation to give amputees the ability to feel their way around, just like Luke Skywalker.

DARPA’s RE-NET program studies the longevity and viability of brain interfaces and their accompanying peripherals. What Case Western’s FINE system does is provide direct sensory feedback by intertwining itself with what nerves are left intact. So instead of relying on visual feedback to make a prosthetic work or do what the amputee wants, FINE allows them to feel and touch their way around.

Alternatively, researchers at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago have built and demonstrated a different type of interface that’s visually driven. Called targeted muscle re-innervation (TMR), the nerves from amputated limbs are rewired to work with existing muscles, like the below video. (Previously posted)

If this sounds familiar to you, you’re not alone. This is basically what happened when Luke lost his hand at the end of Episode V and was fitted with a bionic hand. Amazing! DARPA says it will continue to evaluate the existing programs under RE-NET through 2016. Let’s hope they find a long-term solution before then.

[MIKA27]

Buildings Based On Human Bone Structure Could Be The Future Of Cities

Biomimicry borrows design solutions from the embedded intelligence within animals’ bodies — chiefly from other species. But it occasionally also borrows from within the human body. For example, a new study from MIT suggests that buildings of the future could be built with super-strong materials based on the structure of human bones.

In a study published yesterday in Advanced Functional Materials, MIT researchers explain how studying human bones led to the creation of three super-materials. Human bones, you see, are made up of microscopic layers of collagen (the stuff your tendons are made from) and hydroxyapatite (which is more like your teeth). Together, they form a stronger structure — a bit like brick and mortar — and make our bones capable of withstanding an incredible amount of force.

The MIT group applied the same principle to three synthetic materials, layering them on a microscopic scale using a 3D printer. The result was a hybrid material with a staggering 22 times the strength of any single material. Wired UK writer Liat Clark explains:

The team first designed the three materials using computer software: bone and nacre (mother of pearl); mineral calcite and a snakeskin-like diamond-patterned material. Each material [...] would be made from two synthetic materials to “micrometer resolution”, with one acting as the bricks and the other the cement. The mother of pearl-type material was made from a microscopic structure that looks like a wall, while the calcite saw the materials swapped round so the cement was actually made up of the stiffer material, and the bricks the softer.

The paper describes these hybrids as “metamaterials,” and posits that the future of of architecture lies in figuring out how to spend less energy fabricating more efficient buildings. By altering the hierarchical design of materials on a micro level, architects may, eventually, end up altering the way buildings are constructed at a macro scale. In fact, plenty of designers are experimenting with similar ideas — for example, using parametric modelling software to optimise the shape of columns based on stress loads.

Markus Buehler, the head of MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a lead author on the study, describes the findings as a way to borrow from nature while pursuing the future. “The geometric patterns we used in the synthetic materials are based on those seen in natural materials like bone or nacre, but also include new designs that do not exist in nature,” he said in a statement. “As engineers we are no longer limited to the natural patterns. We can design our own, which may perform even better than the ones that already exist.”

The biggest challenge, so far, is one of scale: 3D printing is still too expensive and inaccurate to scale production up to the building scale. Still, as Harvard’s Jennifer Lewis put it, “this research is a wonderful example of how 3D printing can be used to fabricate complex architectures that emulate those found in nature.”

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: The New Fastest Helicopter On Earth Can Fly At An Insane 480km/h

Most helicopters are built for hovering, not for speed. But the Eurocopter X3 is built for both. The demonstrator tilt-rotor aircraft proved as much when it set a pair of air speed records earlier this month.

Based on the Eurocopter EC155, the X3 is a hybrid helicopter. That is, in addition to its five blade main and tail rotors, the X3 is also outfitted with a pair of stubby wings (similar to those aboard the Mi-24 HIND but with propellers instead of missile pods) that provide up to 80 per cent of the aircraft’s lift. A pair of 2270HP Rolls-Royce Turbomeca RTM322 turboshaft engines drive all four rotors and allow for a 3800m service ceiling and blindingly fast speed.

On June 7, the X3 blew through the previous air speed record for helicopters by cruising at 255 knots (472km/h) during a 40-minute flight over Southern France near Istres. This acheivement followed the X3 topping 263 knots (487km/h) during a descent just days before. “It’s no exaggeration to say that the X3 is clearly in its element at high speeds.” said Eurocopter test pilot Hervé Jammayrac.

“While flying at both 255 knots and 263 knots, the X3 performed exactly as it has throughout its flight envelope, exhibiting outstanding stability and providing a low vibration level without any anti-vibration system.”

Since its maiden flight in 2010, the X3 has ammassed over 140 hours of air time. And though this particular demonstrator will likely be retired at the year’s end, the X3′s turboprop technology is slowly making its way into production. “Helicopters can fly relatively fast and the noise footprint for people living around the airport is relatively similar to current traffic noise, so vertical lift can still play a role in commuting people, providing you can design an aircraft that delivers higher speed at reasonable cost,” said former Eurocopter CEO Lutz Bertling. “I believe we could well see the first serial products which could do the job with a smaller number of passengers — say 19 seats — at the beginning of the 2020s, and I could imagine seeing larger aircraft with 30-40 seats in the mid-’20s.”

While these hybrid aircraft are significantly faster than conventional helicopters, the X3 cannot keep up with turboprop planes — yet. But, for a helicopter, its speed is utterly amazing.

[MIKA27]

James Gandolfini dead at 51: 'Sopranos' star suffers massive heart attack in Italy

Actor James Gandolfini is dead at 51. A source tells the Daily News he suffered a massive heart attack in Italy.

James Gandolfini, the New Jersey-bred actor who delighted audiences as mob boss Tony Soprano in “The Sopranos” has died following a massive heart attack in Italy, a source told the Daily News.

“Everyone is in tears,” the source close to the 51-year-old TV tough guy said.

James Gandolfini (center) is best known for his role as Tony in HBO's 'The Sopranos,' acting alongside Tony Sirico (from left), Steven Van Zandt, Michael Imperioli and Vicent Pastore.

A press-shy celeb who got his start as a character actor and became famous relatively late in his career — thanks to his breakout role on “The Sopranos,” Gandolfini has largely avoided the spotlight since the last season of the beloved show aired in 2007.

James Gandolfini (right) with 'The Sopranos' creator David Chase.

The burly Westwood, N.J. native has appeared in several supporting roles since then, playing the director of the CIA in “Zero Dark Thirty” and the gruff blue-collar father of a wannabe rock star in “Not Fade Away” last year.

Gandolfini hit Broadway in 2009 with the Tony Award-winning comedy “God of Carnage.”

James Gandolfini and his wife Deborah Lin, who gave birth to a baby girl in October. The couple married in Hawaii in 2008

.

“I seek out good stories, basically — that’s it,” he told The Star-Ledger last December.

James Gandolfini (from left) played a tough-guy mob boss on 'The Sopranos' with costars Steven Van Zandt and Tony Sirico.

“The older I get, the funnier-looking I get, the more comedies I’m offered. I’m starting to look like a toad, so I’ll probably be getting even more soon.”

Gandolfini’s wife, former model Deborah Lin, gave birth to a baby girl last October. The couple married in Hawaii in 2008.

The Sopranos family from the wildly popular HBO drama series 'The Sopranos.' The series ran from 1999 through 2007 and starred Edie Falco (from left), James Gandolfini, Robert Iler and Jamie-Lynn Sigler.

Gandolfini — who spent part of his early career supporting himself as a bartender and nightclub manager — also has a son with his ex-wife, Marcy Wudarski.

Actress Edie Falco (left) and actor James Gandolfini attend the premiere of 'Boardwalk Empire' at the Ziegfeld Theatre in 2010. Falco and Gandolfini played opposites in Broadway's 'God of Carnage' in 2009

His first break came in 1992 when he landed a role in a Broadway version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” that starred Alec Baldwin and Jessica Lange.

Smallish parts in major films followed — Gandolfini played a submarine crew member in “Crimson Tide” in 1995 and a gangland bodyguard in “Get Shorty” the same year.

James Gandolfini won three Emmy Awards for his role as Tony Soprano.

Fame came for the Italian-American actor after 1999, as “The Sopranos” garnered critical acclaim and cult popularity on its way to becoming a TV classic.

Gandolfini won three Emmy Awards for his sparkling depiction of protagonist Tony Soprano, a mobster trying to balance the mundane stresses of family life and his unusual occupation: organized crime.

MIKA: RIP

[MIKA27]

Nokia Purity Pro Headphones Review: Drowning Out The World Comes At A Price

These headphones are full-on, and I don’t just mean the sound.

What Is It?

The Nokia Purity Pro headphones is a pair noise-cancelling, Bluetooth-enabled headphones. They’ll set you back $349.

What’s Good?

The Purity Pro does a lot of things right.

First and foremost, the noise-cancelling is great. It won’t drown out all the sound around you, but it takes the bass tones out of the sound, allowing your music to drown out the rest. Perfect.

Presumably you’re going to want to crank your favourite track up to 11, and you can do that on the Purity Pro without letting the person next to you on the bus in on the action. From our tests, we couldn’t find any sound leakage even in the quietest of offices.

That, on top of the excellent noise-cancelling makes for a very nice listening experience.

Plus, you’ll be listening for ages: the Purity Pro headphones run for days. I took them on a flight to London and back without having to charge them. Running them wirelessly gets you about 20 hours of battery.

What’s Bad?

The controls on the back of the headphones are a bit weird. The Play/Pause, Skip and Volume functions work nicely when used wirelessly, but they deactivate when you plug the cable in. That’s because these headphones are primarily designed for Nokia Lumia handsets (naturally), so be prepared to get fiddly when you want to change songs on your Android or iOS device.

Also, from $350 headphones, you’d expect the sound to be a little better. Volume isn’t as loud as it could be and the bass and mid-tones are missing that “oomph” if you will.

Worst of all on these headphones, though, is the way you look while wearing them. Make no mistake: no matter what colour you get these in, you will look like an idiot outdoors.

Should You Buy It?

If you’re happy to look a bit silly for the sake of great sound, then the Purity Pro headphones are for you. A pro-tip to turn down the level of silly you’ll have to endure is to buy these headphones in black: a slightly less ostentatious colour.

[Fuzz]

This Watch Will Tell You If You’re Too Drunk To Drive

Kisai watches are pretty cool. I've got 2 of them, the RPM and the Seven (in blue), though I want to get it in red too.

You'll never be able to just tell the time by looking at a Kisai watch, though. You always have to figure out what the time is!

[MIKA27]

Airshow Acrobatics Viewed Through a Heat Sensitive Camera are utterly mesmerising:

Planes strutting their stuff at airshows is already pretty cool. In search of a publicity stunt, though, the makers of an infrared camera have been filming the stunts at the Paris Air Show through an infra-red camera. The results are pretty damn cool.

I mean, the Red Arrows and Eurofighter are always gonna look pretty badass; but through the lens of a camera costing tens of thousands of pounds, even a boring old airliner puts on a good show. Now, if they could just find some decent music to set it to…