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

[polarbear]

This Jacket Lets You Control Your Body Temperature

As you get older, you just want to simplify your life, have less clutter and maybe have a few jack of all trade go-to items for the outdoors. For instance, take this new jacket from Helly Hansen called the H2 Flow that allegedly keeps you cool and warm when you need it. And it’s super lightweight.

HH’s Hollow Heat Flow (H2) system combines insulation (200g fleece in this case) with both positive and negative spaces (aka holes) and the ability to make the right kinds of adjustments to the garment to better regulate your body temperature. Put another way, heat gets trapped in air pockets in certain areas around the body and the holes in the fleece not only trap that hot air, believe it or not, but also help circulate cool air when you unzip the vents.

It sounds like bulls**t marketing jargon, but I can say from personal experience that it’s not. I have an HH jacket with one of the first Flow systems, and, as someone who tends to overheat pretty easily, it was the first jacket that really let me control the temperature around my body. The H2 Flow is an alternative version of the original that’s been built for lightweight applications.

Here are some vids that better demonstrate the heating and cooling effects of the H2 Flow, which is available in Australia for $249.95.

Sounds like it was invented by someone who lived in Melbourne...

[MIKA27]

WATCH: Boy Hears His Dad’s Voice for First Time

Leave it up to a child to remind us to be thankful for a natural ability most of us take for granted: A 3-year-old’s priceless face was captured on video as he reacted to hearing his father’s voice for the first time. Thanks to a microchip that University of North Carolina doctors implanted inside the child’s brain, Grayson Clamp–who was born deaf–was finally able to hear his father say “Daddy loves you.” He is the first child in the U.S. to receive the implant, which had previously only been approved for adults.

As explained by Dr. Sanjay Gupta in the video above, the young boy received the auditory brain stem implant as part of an ongoing Food and Drug Administration (FDA) trial.

This was the second attempt at restoring Clamp’s hearing: Doctors had previously performed a standard cochlear implant, a device embedded into the side of his skull, but without the life-changing effect, since Clamp was born without a cochlear nerve, which helps the brain process the signals transmitted by the ears.

Although it is clear that Grayson hears something in the video, it’s not yet clear how much he senses. “We don’t know exactly what it’s like for him. We don’t know what he hears–if he hears everything we do. His brain is still trying organize itself to use sound,” Clamp’s mom said.

[MIKA27]

Sounds like it was invented by someone who lived in Melbourne...

Hahahahaha!!! It is super cold down this way. Mainly the Chill factor from the wind. Alot a shirnkage!!

[MIKA27]

Nat Geo Mines Its Unpublished Archives for Precious Gems

Buckets of iron ore are transported to a major steelworks in Hunedoara, Romania, November 1975.

Along with earning a reputation for publishing some of the world’s finest photojournalism over the years,National Geographic has accrued a backlog of unpublished photos as vast as the Kalahari. To mark the Yellow Box’s 125th birthday this year, its editors launched a Tumblr to highlight some of its otherwise forgotten images.

Found is Nat Geo’s productivity-killing photostream, drawn from its sprawling archive of unpublished vintage prints.

“If we haven’t seen them, it’s likely that they aren’t known outside the offices of National Geographic,” says Web Barr, the young designer at Nat Geo who conceived of Found. “Figuring out a way to ‘lift the veil’ even a little bit was something I was determined to do.”

Whether the dreamlike sight of the Mayflower sailing into 1950s New York under the shadow of a looming zeppelin, or the turn-of-the-century visage of an African lion lit by flashlight in the savannah, every image has the air of a classic, and in many cases leaves one wondering how it failed to get published.

These stunning pictures, once buried in the photographic equivalent of anonymous graves, are now circulating in the social media trade winds to be shared, upvoted, reblogged or just nabbed for desktop wallpaper. To Barr, the choice of Tumblr was the obvious way to get pictures up and connected immediately to a built-in online community. Despite the hip platform, everything about the site remains a testament to National Geographic’s history, down to the header typeface lifted from old Society maps.

“In the way that Instagram is our real-time feed from our photographers in the field, we felt Found could be a feed from our past,” Barr says.

To help pull it all together, Barr teamed up with Nat Geo’s archive manager William Bonner, who for 30 years has sifted through the vintage prints in the journal’s 11.5 million image collection. Rounded out by photo editor Janna Dotschkal and designer Roy Wilhelm, the team looks for images that express a unique theme or historical nugget, while keeping to their collective aesthetic. “I’m always reaching for an abstract view to pair against the story,” says Bonner. “Always something quirky, kind of a sideways take.”

The team takes inspiration from the Tumblrs of Life and The New York Times, both of which use the platform to display their own collections of vintage photos. Nat Geo takes its effort one step further by asking Found readers to help with the photos’ histories.

After decades in storage, many prints lack even basic information like location and date. The site hopes to to tap the power of the crowd to fill those gaps with a standing invitation for any information anyone might have about a given photograph. They say they’ve already received a lot of feedback, and future plans for the site include in-depth explorations of the stories behind individual photos.

Some posts on Found stimulate tens of thousands of responses in just a matter of days. The active viewership validates the old-school, hard-bitten exploration of early photographers, which often led to brilliant and dangerous work that has since fallen out of appreciation. Bonner, for one, hopes to see that those responsible for these photos get their due exposure. “Everyone seems to know about National Geographic photography, but people in the art community probably do not know our early photographers by name,” he says. “I would like to change that.”

People enjoying the Gellert Bath, an outdoor swimming pool on the banks of the Danube, January 1930.

A Burchell's zebra at rest in the African terrain.

A replica of the Mayflower sails into New York Harbor with a welcoming fleet, November 1957.

Thomas Jefferson at Mount Rushmore under construction, 1939.

A regular at Le Louis IX in Paris, “Caramel” keeps a client company, May 1988.

A woman stands before limestone cliffs in the Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec, September 1934.

Victoria amazonica water lilies can reach 20 feet in circumference and support up to 300 pounds each. Perching children atop the massive leaves was all the rage in water gardens of the time. Salem, North Carolina, c. 1892.

Fishermen load their catch of sardines into crates on the Adriatic Sea, May 1970.

The base camp of an expedition to Arnhem Land, Australia.

A snow covered double header coal train finishes its run, November 1918.

A girl stands in front of her hut on the Painted Desert in Arizona in 1929.

Friends gather around a summer campfire at Great Point Lighthouse on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, June 1970.

An informal portrait of photographer and explorer Luis Marden in Chichen Itza, Mexico, 1936.

A sailplane pilot glides high above Innsbruck and the Inn River in Austria, July 1961.

A “drugstore cowboy” preparing to deliver orders on his bicycle in Texas, 1938.

Parisians walk on the street past lottery and vermouth advertisements in 1935.

A view of the city as seen from the fountain of Santa Maria in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 1929.

People strolling through a park in Finland during a wet May snowstorm, 1968.

Second Avenue, the main business street in Fairbanks, Alaska, with Christmas decorations lighting the street. Christmas Eve was 40 degrees below zero.

Three grinning men smoke from intricately carved pipes in Austria, January 1961.

A couple rides in a motorboat on Lake Villarrica in Chile, July 1941.

Vendors and pedestrians along a steep staircase in Hong Kong, November 1934.

A tourist stops to get directions from a cop in New Mexico.

Alexander Graham Bell and Mabel kissing within a tetrahedral kite, October 1903.

[MIKA27]

New Drug Could End Chronic Pain Forever

Treating pain is a tricky business — especially when it comes to the chronic, perpetually debilitating kind. For things like back injuries, osteoarthritis and bone cancer, you’re really only left with two options: deal with the often dangerous, unpredictable side-effects of prescription painkillers or suffer through it. But all that might change soon thanks to a Moroccan “cactuslike plant” and its toxins potential to kill localised pain — forever.

Just now beginning to be tested in humans, the painkiller, a toxin called resiniferatoxin (RTX), would work by going directly to the source of pain itself — your body’s neurons. The specific neurons targeted by the compound produce a protein called TRPV1. And this protein is what travels up your spinal column to tell your brain that something is right with that very unpleasant inflammatory sensation. When RTX is injected into the spinal fluid, though, those specific TRPV1-producing neurons get killed dead while normal tissue and other pain-sensing nerves get passed by, totally unharmed.

Though human trials for the potential saviour of the chronically pained are just beginning, tests on dogs (who experience pain very similarly to humans) have been highly promising. And David Maine, director at the Center for Interventional Pain Medicine at Mercy Medical centre in Baltimore, is highly optimistic about new method:

When you can streamline where a drug acts and avoid consequences outside of that, you potentially have a winner.

Obviously, the inability to feel pain in the longterm — even a very specific type of pain — has the potential to be highly problematic. But for those whose chronic pain is effectively crippling or even the terminally ill, this could turn out to be exactly the kind of relief they’ve been waiting for.

[MIKA27]

Pre-Hispanic Chiefs in Panama Were Born to Rule

New discovery provides evidence for inherited power, points to complex culture.

Archaeologist Julia Mayo works at a site called El Caño near the Pacific coast 90 miles southwest of Panama City. During five years of excavation, she has uncovered the burials of gold-laden chiefs from a still-unnamed civilization that flourished for several centuries before the Spanish arrived in the early 1500s.

Now she can say how the chiefs got their power.

The Spanish conquistadores who described this region told of great chiefs who warred almost constantly among themselves, leading their armies into battle to acquire territory and capture enemy warriors who would serve as their slaves.

But how did those leaders move into a position of authority? Did they earn power through years of fierce fighting? Did they have to defeat the ruling chief? Or was power passed down through the generations of a dynasty?

Mayo, a National Geographic research grantee, had those questions in mind as she began to excavate a large circular funerary pit from the pre-Hispanic era.

She's exhumed more than three dozen individuals, and three offered an answer: Boys in this culture seem to have enjoyed rank and privilege from the moment of their birth.

Glimmer of Gold

Her first clue came with a glimmer of gold that appeared in 2009. It was a tiny disk, almost foil thin, bearing the raised image of a crab-shaped creature with a forked tongue and a crocodile's claws. Beneath it lay two crushed cylinders, each embossed with what looked like a plumed serpent.

Mayo was puzzled. She thought she was excavating a cemetery of warrior chiefs from A.D. 700 to 900, but she couldn't imagine how the three miniature pieces of gold might fit in. "At first I said, 'Oh, what bad luck! That disk is so small,'" she remembers.

As Mayo surveyed the deepening excavation one day, the meaning of the artifacts suddenly came to her: They were so small because they belonged to a baby. A boy who was born to rule.

He had been buried face down wearing the regalia of a chief—a breastplate and two cuffs that covered wrists crossed beneath a tiny chin. Clearly he hadn't lived long enough to earn his status, so wealth and power must have been handed down from father to son.

But there was one problem: no bones. The boy must have been so young that his fragile remains hadn't survived in the acidic soil.

As in a court of law, Mayo needed to produce proof of a body—habeas corpus—so she kept digging.

Body of Evidence

In 2011 she found a similar group of gold ornaments—three breastplates, four arm cuffs, and two earrings—as well as a beaded necklace of green stones. But again, no bones.

Finally, during Mayo's most recent field season, which ended late last month, she found the evidence she needed: gold arm cuffs, inscribed with images of the culture's crocodile god, which adorned the skeleton of someone young—a 12-year-old male, according to physical anthropologist Aioze Trujillo of the Universidad Complutense in Madrid.

Close by lay the remains of a supreme chief. Discovered in 2011, he wore gold breastplates, beads, bells, mysterious figurines in fantastical shapes, and arm cuffs also inscribed with images of the crocodile god.

Father and son? Mayo plans to do genetic tests to find out.

But she's already convinced that the pair attests to inherited power. This has great implications for El Caño. "One of the characteristics of complex chiefdoms is that social status is passed down from father to son," she explains. That means this cemetery represents a society that was much more sophisticated than previously believed.

It also means that this site helps build the case for the existence of complex pre-Hispanic cultures in the forests of Central America and northern South America. Unlike the Maya to the north and the Inca to the south, though, these cultures left no monumental stone architecture. Most of their material culture was biodegradable—houses of wood and wattle, roofs of thatch, baskets, mats, animal skins, feathers. But in this place, at least, people worked gold with great skill, and its shimmer endures as a testament to their centuries of prosperity and accomplishment.

[MIKA27]

Downfall: How ‘Italy’s Oscar Schindler’ was exposed as a Nazi collaborator

New evidence suggest that rather than save Jews, wartime police officer Giovanni Palatucci helped to send thousands to their deaths

Forty-five years after his death in the Dachau concentration camp in February 1945, wartime police officer Giovanni Palatucci was included in Israel’s Yad Vashem holocaust memorial as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. The honour was awarded for Palatucci’s key role in saving 5,000 Italian Jews from the Nazis. Thus he joined the pantheon of other Second World War heroes, including the German businessman Oscar Schindler, recognised for having risked everything in an effort to thwart the Final Solution.

Italy has enthusiastically lauded its countryman’s bravery as an example of heroism in the dark days of Mussolini’s race laws. In 1995 the Italian government awarded Palucci the Medaglia d’Oro for civil merit. The Vatican attributed to him the status of martyr and is considering the process of beatification.

But new evidence has called into question Palatucci’s reputation as “Italy’s Schindler” – and suggested that rather than save Jews, he was a willing Nazi collaborator who helped to send thousands to their deaths.

The research by Italian historians and Jewish institutions points instead to the possibility of an outrageous fraud, created by the man’s family and propagated by state institutions tarnished by Italy’s war record.

Even the stock claim underpinning Palatucci’s reputation appears to bear little scrutiny. How, ask critics, did he save more than 5,000 Jews escape a region where officially, the Jewish population was less than half that?

His bravery was said to have occurred between 1940 and 1944, during his time as police chief in the town of Fiume, a port on the Adriatic, which has since become part of Croatia and is now called Rijeka.

The tales of Palatucci’s heroism have been supported by official biographies — the latest of which, “Giovanni Palatucci: a right and a Christian martyr,” by Antonio De Simone and Michele Bianco, says he ensured thousands of Jews avoided the death camps by sending them instead to an internment camp in the southern town of Campagna where they would have been protected by Bishop Giuseppe Maria Palatucci, Giovanni’s uncle.

But Anna Pizzuti, editor of the database of foreign Jewish internees in Italy, told Corrier Della Sera newspaper that this assertion was “impossible”, adding: “No more than 40 Fiume residents were interned in Campagna. And a third of these ended up in Auschwitz.”

Biographies have also mentioned 800 Jewish refugees spirited out of Fiume in 1939 on a Greek ship that was headed for Palestine. This rescue operation, they say, was also the work of Palatucci.

However, port authority documents collected in the Italian State Archives suggest that credit lay with the Jewish Agency of Zurich – and that this was allowed to happen only with the agreement of Palatucci’s superiors, who cruelly refused permission for the poorest to sail.

In his book “Giovanni Palatucci: A True Recollection,” Marco Coslovich disputes even Palatucci’s official role. He says it was clear that “Palatucci never served as chief of police in Fiume,” but rather worked “as an adjunct vice commissioner under the control of superiors who were notoriously anti-Semitic”.

Crucially, he cites documentation that shows Palatucci was happy to obey commands and was considered “irreplaceable” by the head of the police.

Jewish historians in the US agree. This month, a letter from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington to the Primo Levi Centre of Jewish Studies in New York claimed Palatucci was a “willing executor of the racial legislation… and collaborated with the Nazis”.

So how did the Palatucci’s heroic reputation come about? Coslovich and others claim that in 1952 Palatucci’s father Felice and his uncle, the bishop, created the story in order to obtain state pensions for surviving family members.

However, the Italian Ministry of Internal Affairs records, in a memorandum dated July 1952, called into question the claims of heroism attributed to Palatucci. The more important question, therefore, might be: why have these claims persisted?

The Italian historian Simon Levis Sullam said that more than anything, the case of Giovanni Palatucci reflected the nation’s wartime guilt.

“I think Italians have in recent years been overwhelmingly preoccupied with finding and worshipping cases of “good” Italians, instead of dealing with Italian responsibilities during fascism and especially during the Holocaust,” he told The Independent, ahead of his talk at the International Association for Genocide Studies conference in Siena.

He noted, too that “most centre-right governments and [former Italian premier Silvio] Berlusconi personally” had been guilty of making ambiguous statements about Italy’s wartime record and its experiment with fascism. In January this year Berlusconi caused outcry after the Milan Holocaust memorial service by telling journalists that, leaving aside his racial segregation laws, Mussolini was “a leader, who in so many other ways did well”.

Others are also to blame as well, said Dr Levis Sullam, “especially Catholics in North America and in Italy, and also the Italian police”.

“Catholics always prefer to lay an emphasis on their rescue activities, which cannot be forgotten and which saved many lives, in order to avoid the question of the silence of Pius XII during the Holocaust,” he said.

He suggested too, that the Catholic Church was keen to downplay its “contribution on theological and ideological grounds to the formation of modern anti-Semitism, as well as its support of the Fascist and Nazi dictatorships”.

“The Italian police,” he noted, “prefer to salute a supposed hero instead of dwelling on the responsibilities in the arrest of Jews and the confiscation of Jewish property in 1943-45.”

Regarding plans for Palatucci’s beatification, the Vatican says it has now asked a historian to look into the matter.

The Giovanni Palatucci Association has so far stuck by its hero, however, and attacked “revisionist historians”. It cites on its website individual cases where Jews claim relatives were saved by Palatucci’s direct intervention.

And in a key defence of Palatucci, its says that critics who claim it is untenable to suggest he saved 5,000 Jews in an area with a Jewish population of just half that number, have failed to take into account the huge number of migrant Jews from eastern or central Europe who may have been present.

Defenders of Palatucci has long pointed to his death, aged 35, in the dreadful Dachau concentration camp in February 1945 as a way of corroborating the story of his courage.

But the even the circumstances of his demise may belie their cause. It seems he was not sent to Dachau for saving Jews; documents in the state archives say he was incarcerated by the Germans for treason and embezzlement, having passed paperwork relating Fiume’s post-war independence to the British.

[MIKA27]

Trappist brewery under threat from expansion of limestone quarry

Plans will cut water supply to abbey where Belgian monks brew prized Rochefort ale

Since 1595 the Notre-Dame de Saint-Remy-Rochefort abbey in southern Belgium has been plundered, invaded and ravaged by fire, but still today the monks rise each morning to brew a potent dark ale prized the world over for its depth and flavour.

Now production at one of the world's eight remaining Trappist breweries is again under threat, this time from the expansion of a limestone quarry which will cut off their water supply.

The Belgian monks who brew Rochefort say the water from a nearby well is crucial to taste of their sought-after ale, which frequently appears in lists of the best beers in the world.

But plans by a limestone mining company to deepen a quarry in the vicinity of the Abbey threaten to plug the water source that the monks have replied upon for centuries. The Flanders News website reported that the mining firm, Lhoist, had offered to dig more wells to supply the monastery, but the monks are wary that the flavour will simply not be the same.

“We only have guarantees about the quantity, not about the quality of the water,” said a spokesman for Rochefort, Christopher De Doncker. Negotiations are continuing, with beer-lovers hoping for an outcome which will allow centuries of brewing tradition to continue.

Trappist beers are considered some of the best in the world, both because of their strong malty flavours and their scarcity. As they are generally not run as commercial ventures, many of the monasteries limit their supply and focus on maintaining the quality rather than boosting production.

Belgium is home to six of the world's eight surviving Trappist breweries. Monks originally started brewing behind abbey walls for their own consumption, but eventually they were permitted to sell their beers to provide for the poor and to fund restoration work on the monasteries.

Rochefort, which produces one ale with an alcohol content of 11.3 per cent, has seen off threats in the past: a fire in 2010 damaged parts of the abbey, but the monks were unharmed and the vats remained intact. Beer production resumed within days.

[mazolaman]

Surely they can't stop Rochefort.....

[MIKA27]

Hutong Vs Highrise: A Photo Essay On China’s Radical Urban Chrysalis

Beijing is one of the earliest still-existent cities planned around a grid: Its old city is organised around a chessboard-like grid of alleys, known as hutong, that date back at least a millenium. But, as developers in Beijing scramble to built modern towers in the urban core, hutong are disappearing.

German photographer Christopher Domakis has made it his business to document them. Domakis spent three months in China earlier this year, and during his stay, he ended up photographing dozens of hutong, documenting the narrow, centuries-old alleys and corridors as he ran across them. He also travelled widely throughout other Chinese cities, documenting the construction of hundreds of new towers.

According to a report from The Atlantic, over 600 hutong were razed every year during Beijing’s boom in the 1990s:

Seemingly overnight, the city was transformed from a warren of Ming dynasty-era neighborhoods into an ultramodern urban sprawl, pocked with gleaming office towers and traversed by eight-lane highways… Remaining hutong dwellers are worried, and for good reason — they have a lot to lose. Their courtyard houses have survived centuries of war and revolution, the strain of collective ownership, and the turbulence of early economic reform. Passed down from generation to generation, they are often last-remaining monuments to entire family lines.

After an international outcry — precipitated by the destruction of hundreds of hutong to make way for the 2008 Olympic village — preservation groups are seeking to protect what remains — though it’s unclear how successful they’ll be.

Domakis’ images throw this radical urban transformation into relief. In the 1200s, Marco Polo described Beijing as “laid out in squares like a chessboard with such masterly precision that no description can do justice to it.” In a way, he probably would’ve enjoyed the modern-day Beijing: there’s still plenty of masterly precision at work here — but unfortunately, it’s to the detriment of the old city.

Hutong in central Beijing from the air.

[MIKA27]

Happy Hour: 17 Bizarre Bars That Are Awesome

Some bars just want to pour booze down your gullet and collect your cash. Well, all bars want to do that. But some do it with style. Today, we’re looking at bars around the world that draw you in with their quirky, awesome, weirdness.

Do you want salt on your margarita? This bar in Uyuni, Bolivia near some enormous salt flats, is made almost entirely of salt. That isn’t sand on the floor.

November 12, 1954: A customer at the Moka Bar in London’s Soho saves time by using the cafe’s electric razor while he drinks his morning coffee.

People sit behind ice blocks at Icebar Tokyo on August 17, 2009, in Tokyo, Japan. The entrance fee is ¥3500 ($40) with one drink, and customers can borrow a coat upon entry. Everything in the bar including the counter, the wall, table, glasses, chairs are made from blocks of ice cut from Sweden’s Torne river.

Ice bars are actually getting pretty common these days, with locations in Las Vegas, Orlando, London, Paris and Athens to name just a few.

A man watches a model train running along the bar at Bar Ginza Panorama Shibuya Branch on June 3, 2009, in Tokyo, Japan. The bar caters to model train enthusiasts and customers are able to bring their own model trains to run on the tracks.

Pongying Chayad, centre, stands on a scale as his friends look from behind while weighing at Ichub Club, Bangkok’s fat-themed karaoke bar in Bangkok, August 13, 2002. There’s a twice-weekly special at this club: if you and three of your friends together weigh more than 360kg, you get a free bottle of whiskey.

A patron watches live video images of other patrons in the digital nightlife lounge Remote April 19, 2002 in New York City. Remote uses interactive technologies, including 60 video cameras and 100 video screens, to relay live images to guests via closed-circuit television.

Patrons enjoy the traditional Christmas ‘wunderland’ decor in Rolf’s German restaurant December 22, 2004 in New York City. The 19th-century German tavern decorates for the Christmas season with artificial fir trees and pine garlands, Victorian dolls and thousands of Christmas lights.

Game Of Thrones bar

The News Room bar, downtown Minneapolis. This place is gorgeous. It’s like having a drink in a fever dream of Charles Foster Kane. Except pleasant.

Located in Downtown LA, The Lab is a science themed gastropub. It has beakers for vases, leather study chairs, science books everywhere. It’s at USC, but it’s way cooler than your average university bar.

The infamous H.R. Giger bar (and museum) in Château St Germain, Gruyères, Switzerland.

The Clinic Bar, Clarke Quay, Singapore. All the fun of being in the hospital, without all the gross sick people.

I guess that’s one solution to being staggering drunk.

Bringing the beach to you, this beautiful bar called Areia in Madrid, Spain is full of sand, despite being 360km from the ocean. The rugs, pillows and drapery give it a Moroccan feel.

The Himiko, designed by Leiji Matsumoto (Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999), ferries people along the Sumida River in Tokyo by day. By night it becomes a floating bar and nightclub.

Insert Coin(s) Video Game Arcade Bar, Las Vegas.

The Storm Crow Tavern, a hardcore nerd bar in Vancouver, Canada. The phrase Storm Crow appears in World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, and even Magic, The Gathering. Axes, laser weapons and Cthulhu statues abound.

Pixel Winebar, Brussels, Belgium. If you ever admired the landscape in the original Super Mario Brothers and thought, “that looks like a nice place to get drunk”, well, you just found your spot.

[MIKA27]

Alpinestars’ Atem Might Be The Safest Motorcycle Jacket You Can Buy

Nearly all motorcycle jackets available today have bits and pieces that are CE certified, but never before has an entire garment — not just the elbows, shoulder and back armour — been CE certified for rider safety, like Alpinestars’ Atem jacket and suit. After a 12 month-long gestation period and a myriad of new testing processes, the Atem is about as high tech as any modern high performance motorcycle.

In contrast to other jackets, which only include CE armour in the shoulder, elbow and back, the entire Atem jacket was subjected to a series of tests that mimic crash-like conditions. The first of which is an abrasion test that simulates a slide along the pavement. A portion of the Atem’s 1.3mm leather hide is weighted and then dropped several times from every conceivable direction onto a rotating belt with a 60-grit sandpaper-like surface. If the garment can survive for more than 4 seconds, it passes the test and is granted Level 1 certification. The Atem surpassed Level 2, which requires it to remain intact for more than seven seconds.

The second test, the impact cut test, simulates encountering a piece of debris, like glass, while sliding on the road. This time, a portion of the jacket is stretched and mounted onto a block with a rectangular hole. A blade-like “striker” is then dropped from a meter up, travelling at 2.8m per second for impact right above the hole. For Level 1 certification, the max penetration depth should be no more than 25mm. The Atem qualified for Level 2 status, which is set at no more than 15mm.

Next is the burst strength test that evaluates the rigidity and hardiness of the garment and seams when hit with extreme force, like in a crash. A circular sample is placed over a diaphragm that’s clamped around the edges and is then inflated into a dome shape. The pressure required for Level 1 status is about 98 psi, and Level 2 is even higher at 112 psi. And, yes, the Atem achieved Level 2 status in this test too.

Sliding along the pavement at any speed can cause the jacket to move and shift in the opposite direction in which you’re sliding, but the Atem comes with adjustable cuffs in the sleeve and ankles (for the suit version) that keep everything in place, decreasing the chances of road rash. The cone test applies about 3kg of pressure into the sleeve for 60 seconds, and, if it moves no more than 60mm, the garment attains Level 1 status.

Though they achieved nearly every Level 2 certification, the Atem suit and jacket are still only rated at Level 1, because Alpinestars felt it important not to compromise fit and comfort in non-impact areas, like the armpits. Nearly every technological detail from professional MotoGP and WSBK race suits have trickled down into the Atem suit and jacket. The Atem does, however, lack the airbag system found in the race replica version and the accordion panels in the back and knees that allow for greater mobility, which more or less account for the $US1400 difference in price. The Atem suit retails for $US1500, while the jacket goes for $US700.

So is the Atem the safest suit or jacket you can buy? Every crash is unique and no two are alike, so protective gear can only do so much. But knowing that the entire jacket/suit — and not just the hard bits — will keep you safe in a crash is heartening nonetheless.

[MIKA27]

British Spy Agency Taps Fibre-Optic Cables, Gives NSA Public Data

Thanks to more classified documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Guardian is now reporting that a British spy agency has tapped into trans-Atlantic fibre optic cables, allowing them access to everything from email and Facebook messages to internet search histories and phone calls, which they gather indiscriminately. Oh, it’s sharing it with the NSA.

The British agency in question, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), is the overseas equivalent the U.S NSA, but because the extent of data they’re collecting is so massive, they don’t have the “resources” to analyse it all. According to The Guardian:

The sheer scale of the agency’s ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate.

But even if they can’t analyse the information immediately, the GCHQ has managed to store huge quantities of tapped data for up to 30 days in the project known as Tempora, giving them time to sift through hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians private information. This has been going on for roughly 18 months.

However, “a source with knowledge of intelligence” is claiming that the data was collected under entirely legal terms. Even if that proves to be true, the fact that not only are both the United States and Britain working together to collect data, but they’re also doing so arbitrarily in such massive quantity is, to say the least, highly troubling.

[MIKA27]

US Authorities Ready To Ease Restrictions On In-Flight Electronics

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the US Federal Aviation Administration is about to loosen its restrictions on in-flight gadget use — more than a year after it first announced it was mulling the idea.

The Journal explains that a high-level, 28-member advisory panel will recommend to the FAA that it relax restrictions during taxiing, takeoff and landing. The suggestion is based on an investigation launched last August, which aimed to assess just how dangerous electronic devices are aboard flights.

While the advice to be given by the panel isn’t finalised, opinion seems to suggest that current regulations “have become untenable”. While it’s unclear what the exact recommendations will be, they’re expected to allow more freedom for gadget use inside aeroplanes — and some devices, like ereaders, will likely be permitted for use throughout the entire flight. mobile phone calls won’t be covered just yet — but baby steps, people, baby steps.

The FAA’s reluctance to change policy on gadgets has been broadly criticised by everyone from politicians to consumers, and it seems likely that any softening of the rules will be greeted with open arms. Certainly, it can’t come soon enough — the current guidelines are based on regulations that have remained unchanged since 1966.

[MIKA27]

Walk-Through Metal Detectors Were Invented To Catch Thieving Employees

Today we walk through metal detectors to get into courthouses, airports, and even concert venues. But back in the 1920s the first walk-through metal detectors weren’t invented for finding weapons (or nail clippers), they were invented for searching would-be thieves.

Primitive handheld metal detectors date back to the 19th century, but it wasn’t until the 1920s that two scientists in Germany devised a way to search factory workers for stolen machine parts without having to frisk every employee one by one. Little did they realise that it would be the wave of the future.

In the mid-1920s, H. Geffchen and H. Richter of Leipzig invented the walk-through metal detector — their “radio detective” — for a large manufacturing plant in Germany. Without any physical contact, their invention made “an effective search of every person leaving the premises” and determined “with certainty, and instantaneously, whether he is carrying with him any object of a metallic nature.”

No more troublesome pat-downs that waste time and leave room for error. Now your employer-sponsored humiliation can be quick and automatic!

The April 1926 issue of Radio News magazine ran an illustration of the device on their cover, which proclaimed, “Radio Oscillator Detects Thieves”. The magazine explained that workers were sent through the machine single-file as an attendant wearing headphones looked on, listening for the metal detector to alarm.

In the illustration which accompanies this article, the apparatus with the amplifiers which produce the audio-frequency oscillations is shown at the right, standing on the window ledge. The attendant beside it wears the telephone headset, which is connected to the two circuits as described, and notes the change of sound, if any, as each man passes. The degree of sensitiveness to the presence of metal, attained by the use of this apparatus, is astonishing.

The author of the article for Radio News noted that even the smallest metallic objects are picked up by the Germans’ invention:

Even watches and keys can be detected with certainty; in practice the apparatus would be set to an adjustment a little less than critical, so that the smaller bits of metal need not cause signals in the phones. In order to prevent the purpose of the detector being defeated by the presence of lunch cans, thermos flasks, or other property of the workmen, a shelf is provided at the side of the wicket, as shown. The employee leaves any metal articles before passing through the wicket; and then returns to get them, before leaving through the main gate.

The article goes on to explain that if the metal detector is set off, the attendant will use a small handheld “searching coil” on the individual to determine if he’s hiding something. Pat-downs were promised to become a thing of the past with such futuristic technology!

If the detector shows the presence of an undue amount o f metal on a person passing through the gate, he maybe then searched with more care. A small “searching coil” is provided for this purpose, which acts on a similar principle to the larger circuit. By moving this coil over the body of the person searched, the location of any piece of metal is determined accurately in an instant. This auxiliary coil may be made so sensitive that it will respond with certainty not only to coins in the pockets, but also to the presence of a stickpin in the cravat or of metal fillings in the teeth; and that without actually coming in contact with the person thus searched.

But this wasn’t the first time suspicious employers harnessed the latest technological wizardy to inspect their employees. Back in 1919, a South African diamond mine started using X-rays to search their workers for any diamonds they may have hidden in body cavities or even inside self-inflicted cuts.

So I guess the next time you’re going through airport security, just let the TSA agents know that while their inspection may seem intrusive to you, it’s really no worse than Germany in the 1920s or South Africa in the 1910s. Trust me, it’ll go over well.

[MIKA27]

Scientists Just Built The Most Detailed 3D Brain Map In History

The human brain is an insanely complex organic computer. Although it still has plenty of secrets, we’re now a little bit closer to figuring it all out. Building on a decade of research, an international team of neuroscientists have just put the final touches on the most sophisticated 3D map of the human brain that the world has ever seen.

The digital map, called BigBrain, was made from carving up a real one. The team of researchers, led by Katrin Amunts of the Jülich Research Center in Germany, took the brain of a deceased 65-year-old woman and painstakingly sliced it into 7400 cross-sections, each thinner than the width of a single human hair. From there, scientists used microsopes to scan the slices for a total of 1000 hours, generating about a terabyte of data. Then supercomputers spent years crunching it all into a cohesive 3D model. The result is a super high-res model with a resolution of 20 micrometres, roughly 50 times more detailed than your average image that comes from normal scans of still-intact brains. That’s close enough to see neurons in microscopic detail.

And this is only the beginning. The BigBrain map is part of the larger Human Brain Project, a $US1.3 million dollar initiative that’s shooting for a fully functional, supercomputer brain simulation as its final goal. That’s still a long way off, but this insanely detailed map of neurons is bound to help.

The researchers plan to make the full dataset available for free online, so hopefully that will manifest in some sort of awesome 3D-brain fly-through or something, Oculus Rift-enabled if at all possible. In the mean time, the team has already cut into their second brain, hoping for even better results on this second pass. Digital humans, here we come.

[MIKA27]

On the Run to Moscow, Edward Snowden Keeps Americans Guessing

Photos of Edward Snowden President Barack Obama are printed on the front pages of local English and Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong June 11, 2013.

Six days before boarding a flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, warned the U.S. government of further disclosures of classified information. “The truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped,” he said in an online chat with the Guardian newspaper.

He was not bluffing. On Saturday, The South China Morning Post reported additional details of the N.S.A.’s spying program in Hong Kong and China, including details of the U.S. government hacking Chinese mobile phone companies, Chinese university computers and a major telecommunications company. One day later, the government of Hong Kong denied a U.S. request to arrest and deport Snowden in a statement that included a reference to the disclosures of NSA hacking in South China.

The question now is how much more information Snowden is prepared to release, and what kind of protection that information can provide. The answers to those questions may go a long way in determining the legacy and effect of Snowden’s actions. Up to now, Snowden has won sympathy from the American public, with 54% of the country supporting his disclosures, and 30% disapproving in a poll from early June. His disclosures up to that point focused largely on the legal framework and powers of electronic surveillance by the NSA. Snowden said last Monday that he had no contact with the Chinese government in Hong Kong. “I only work with journalists,” he claimed.

At the root of Snowden’s challenge is an emerging irony. He says he is motivated by outrage at the surveillance powers of the United States, which he argues tip towards tyranny, but he has since provided valuable information about U.S. spying to China, a country with a far more aggressive surveillance state, and he has now fled to Russia, where there is little check on the intrusive powers of the state. (A recent Amnesty International report on Russia noted increasing repression in the face of peaceful political protest, new laws restricting freedom of speech and assembly, official harassment of human rights defenders, and systemic human rights abuses by the state against the Russian people.) Snowden has reportedly asked for asylum in Ecuador, a country where journalists face criminal defamation charges for criticizing the government and the United Nation’s has raised concerns about extrajudicial murders by military and police forces.

Snowden has also argued that there is no nobility in turning himself over to U.S. authorities to face prosecution. “It would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside prison than in it,” he said on Monday. But the tradition of civil disobedience, with which he has identified, has often distinguished itself from traditional law breaking by submitting to the legal process. As civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., put it, “If you confront a man who has been cruelly misusing you, and say ‘Punish me, if you will; I do not deserve it, but I will accept it, so that the world will know I am right and you are wrong.”

In the Guardian interview, Snowden made clear that he no longer believes he will get a fair trial in the United States. The American people, by contrast, do believe he should face trial. The same TIME poll, from June 10 and 11, found that 53% of the country felt those who leaked classified data that might damage national security should be prosecuted. Only 28% of Americans felt he should not be prosecuted.

The fact that Snowden was able to flee Hong Kong is yet another embarrassment for the Obama Administration, which has struggled to handle the Snowden disclosures. The Justice Department waited weeks to request his extradition from Hong Kong, and apparently was unable to arrange cooperation with the government during that time. “Obviously this raises concerns for us and we’ll continue to discuss with the authorities there,” a senior administration official wrote in an email to reporters Sunday of Hong Kong’s decision to let Snowden leave.

But at this point further disclosures may be inevitable. Snowden has claimed that his capture or death will not prevent them, suggesting copies of the files he possesses are already in the hands of others. For a U.S. government focused on preventing other self-styled whistleblowers from following in his footsteps, the more crucial challenge now maybe in debating the substance of Snowden’s actions on the world stage. If he continues to be seen as a hero, who has done something good, Obama’s reputation as a civil libertarian will also continue to face pressure.

The White House has said that Obama plans to address the matter further. Just how aggressively Obama chooses to take Snowden on may depend, in large part, on how the American public digests Snowden’s latest actions, and what he does next.

[MIKA27]

The Surface Of Venus Looks Really Hot

It’s kind of hard to scope things out on Venus because the surface probes we send get obliterated pretty quickly by the heat.

Pictures of Venus’ surface do exist, though, and this one shows “large circular domes” that look pretty darn hot. The domes are thought to be magma erupting through vents, in a process that happens on Earth too, called volcanism.

The Magellan spacecraft circled Venus from 1990 to 1994 and used radar to map its surface.

The picture above is computer generated based on those data. To get a sense of scale, the circular domes on Venus are estimated to be about 25km across, so we’re not talking about some little magma bubble here.

How long until Earth is just as inhospitable?

[MIKA27]

Flytecam Is A Streamlined GoPro Challenger

Whether you need another action option or not, Flytecam is a 1080p POV video camera that’s looking to compete. It has specs that land it between GoPro’s lowest and middle tier offerings, but it’s supposed to be cheaper and doesn’t require waterproof or shock resistant cases.

Flytecam has a rubberised body, is waterproof down to 3 meters, has an 120-degree lens and shoots 60fps for slow motion in 720p.

It claims a three hour battery life and was developed alongside a “flytemount” that uses neodymium magnets and rubber teeth to secure the camera for mounting (see below).

Pre-order is starting soon and pricing alone will decide whether this is a legitimate competitor (the base model GoPro is currently $378). But Flytecam’s creators claim that they started the project “because we couldn’t find a product that we really wanted, (and most certainly couldn’t afford).” OK, well then it better be cheap.

[MIKA27]

Watch This Porsche Flirt With Mountainous Death

This is a 2010 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup belting its way up Pikes Peak for a test.

Jump ahead to about a minute in to see the Porsche take-off up the mountain like nobody’s business.

[Fuzz]

The Surface Of Venus Looks Really Hot

So, what? Shorts?

[MIKA27]

A Rifle-Turned-Slingshot That Shoots Knives Is Terrifying

This week Joerg busted out the deactivated M16A1 rifle (which he obviously has) and turned it into a slingshot. The launcher band mounts on the underside of the rifle barrel, and the weapon shoots two Cold Steel “Hide Out” neck knives aka really scary/sharp little suckers.

The slingshot can shoot two knives at once or one at a time. The best image from this video is probably Joerg testing the slingshot on a watermelon and then breaking it open to reveal the two knives inside.

MIKA: Fuzz... Don't ask me why or how he does these awesome things, the answer is simple... "Because he can!"

[MIKA27]

This Insane Carbon Fiber Hammock Bathtub Is The Epitome Of Relaxation

The eternal debate — of whether to soak in the tub or lounge in a hammock — has just been rendered moot, thanks to this stunning carbon fibre hammock tub that lets you do both at the same time. Made by the UK company SplinterWorks, it’s called the Vessel, and it makes for an awesome centrepiece for your bathroom, assuming you’ve got the room for it (and the cash).

At just under nine feet long, the Vessel is actually considerably longer than your standard tub, making it particularly ideal for taller bathers. And the layers of carbon fibre that make up its curvy form are filled with foam core so it’s better insulated than a regular tub too, keeping your water warmer for longer.

Installation does appear a bit tricky, however, since you’ll need to install a drain on the floor to allow the Vessel to empty, as well as a standing faucet to fill it. And when it comes to mounting the tub you’ll need walls that are strong enough to not only support the weight of the water, but a bather as well. Complications aside, if you’re redoing a bathroom and desperately want to impress your friends, whatever ridiculous price tag SplinterWorks is charging for the Vessel is no doubt worth it. Especially when you discover it comes in an assortment of colours, including silver, bronze, and even pink.

[MIKA27]

The Meta-Mappers: How You’re Being Watched Isn’t How You May Think

By now, most of us are either entirely paranoid about the avenues of government surveillance that are now known to be underway, or we’re just tired of hearing about it. After all, whatever has only recently been going on in the press has, in fact, been underway for years now, and if people not just in America, but in all parts of the globe are essentially able to be subjected to broad surveillance, then this has been the case already for quite some time.

Whatever can be known about you and your lifestyle, whereabouts, and daily actions, probably is known, and despite the public outcry, there is really little that can be done about it in the immediate sense. However, there is a widespread belief that when we hear our governments are “watching us,” that this is meant in the very literal sense: the small cameras on our phones and computers, for instance, are constantly used to observe our activities, or our telephone calls are directly observed and listened to by an operator in an underground base somewhere beneath the desert.

In truth, this is far less likely than many may realize… and while that should provide some level of comfort for those concerned about their privacy being invaded, it doesn’t mean that information isn’t collected in other ways. Intelligence agencies have much better ways of tracking your every move than watching you through tiny cameras or eavesdropping on cell phone calls… and it all has to do with data that is literally about the information your mobile devices produce. Welcome to the world of Metadata, where apparently anything you haven’t imagined yet already is now becoming possible.

An article featured at the McClatchy Newspapers site recently discussed how data that is stored about what you do with your smartphone, for instance, offers a gold mine of valuable data about what a user is doing, including time stamps, global positioning, access to personal information, and a variety of other subtle bits of information which can constitute an incredible window into an individual’s life:

A former senior official of the National Security Agency said the government’s massive collection of metadata allowed the agency to construct “maps” of an individual’s daily movements, social connections, travel habits and other personal information.

“This is blanket. There is no constraint. No probable cause. No reasonable suspicion,” said Thomas Drake, who worked unsuccessfully for years to report privacy violations and massive waste at the agency to his superiors and Congress.

Metadata “is more useful than (the) content” of a telephone call, email or Internet search, Drake said in an interview. “It gets you a map over time. I get to map movements, connections, communities of interest. It’s also a tracking mechanism.”

And of course, accessing this kind of information, as we’ve already seen, is apparently nothing that requires a warrant in order to lawfully search.

One of the biggest criticisms many of us have had, however, is whether the collection of such data has truly been useful as a safeguard, in terms of being able to prevent potential acts of terror. While knowledge of such instances, if they exist, might be helpful to those of us who have been critical of the programs, what we now have been told is that while such cases do exist, we have not been told about them for security reasons:

At a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill, FBI Director Robert Mueller said metadata obtained under Section 215 of the Patriot Act had helped authorities “connect the dots” in investigations that had prevented 10 or 12 terrorist plots in recent years. Mueller defended the collection of metadata, saying there were plenty of safeguards in place that protect Americans’ privacy.

Thus, those among us who have criticized invasive programs on the grounds that they have been largely ineffective must now consider whether or not this had merely been our perception, based on a lack of data being released by government about the operations. After all, revealing precisely how they had thwarted potential acts of terror might have clued the rest of us in on the fact that such broad-scale monitoring programs had been in place, right? But is this technology, and what we are told it is capable of doing, enough to justify the fact that anyone, anywhere, and at any time, can be monitored and “followed” using complex data the technology around us produces? In the world of today, there don’t have to be cameras on every corner to know what a person may be doing… in fact, there don’t have to be cameras at all, because there is actually surveillance technology you carry around with you in your pocket that does far better than what observation through any camera lens or cell phone earpiece could ever achieve.

[MIKA27]

There’ll Be Nowhere To Hide When These Robot Apes Take To The Trees

If you thought the prospect of being chased down by one of DARPA’s terminator-wannabes was horrifying, there’s a whole new flavour of terror for you to consider: the iStruct robo-ape. It’s just barely limping along for now, but it’s easy to imagine it galloping out of your nightmares someday soon.

The robo-ape — developed by DFKI (the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence) — is still in its early testing phases, as is plenty apparent by its slowly, careful gait. But the form factor has already proven itself pretty versatile in nature, and it seems plenty possible that this thing will be lurching and climbing around in no time.

What exactly DFKI is attempting to accomplish with its robo-ape isn’t totally clear, but the admittedly vague description suggests it’s all about melding robots’ locomotive structures with sensors and internal wiring. The result are “intelligent structures”, robotic analogues for biological structures like legs that move and feel, or a full-on artificial spines. It’s a step closer to building robots like they are real living creatures that just happen to be made out of metal and plastic.

Clearly this can only mean one thing: there’s an army in the making, and a Planet of the Apes and Terminator crossover will be real life. Better get to work on developing some robot bananas in the meantime.