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

[MIKA27]

This Is What Happens When Galaxies Collide

This amazing image shows how messy space can be, as two galaxies collide and deform each other — creating new stars as gas and dust are pushed and pulled in all directions. Captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the picture shows the star-forming spiral galaxy NGC 2936 and its elliptical companion NGC 2937 — known collectively as Arp 142.

NASA explains what’s going on:

Gas and dust drawn from the heart of NGC 2936 becomes compressed during the encounter, which in turn triggers star formation. These bluish knots are visible along the distorted arms that are closest to the companion elliptical. The reddish dust, once within the galaxy, has been thrown out of the galaxy’s plane and into dark veins that are silhouetted against the bright starlight from what is left of the nucleus and disk.

The interaction causes the orbits of the stars in the elliptical galaxy to be radically altered — so it’s a relief that our humble little galaxy isn’t undergoing a similar collision.

[MIKA27]

Bolts From The Blue: The Beauty Of Lightning

Nothing more romantic than a discharge of energy that allows the atmosphere to restore electrostatic balance, lightning nonetheless thrills us, frightens us and holds us spellbound. As the National Weather Service draws our attention to this powerful phenomena, TIME’s photo editors offer a selection of stunning images showcasing a powerful force that kills around 50 people in the US each year

Lightning is seen above buildings during a storm in central Shanghai, Aug. 15, 2012.

A multiple exposure photograph shows lightning striking above Maseru, capital of Lesotho, Sept. 27, 2011.

Summer rain storms and lightning roll across the plains near the Petrified Forest National Park, in Navajo, Ariz., Aug. 31, 2011.

Lightning strikes over the Puyehue volcano, over 500 miles south of Santiago, Chile, June 6, 2011.

A lightning bolt strikes through an ash cloud erupting from the Grimsvotn volcano in Iceland, May 21, 2011.

Lightning strikes near the Statue of Liberty in New York City, Oct. 11, 2010.

Lightning streaks across the sky as lava flows from a volcano in Eyjafjallajokul, April 17, 2010.

Lightning strikes above a cheetah with adolescent cubs on termite mound in Maasai Mara, Kenya, Sept. 22, 2009

Lightning strikes over the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) as the ship transits through the Persian Gulf, March 28, 2007.

Lightning strikes as the players leave the field due to the electrical storm during the NatWest Series One Day International between England and Australia played at Edgbaston in Birmingham, United Kingdom, June 28, 2005.

A lone lightning bolt strikes the ground beneath an isolated supercell thunderstorm at sunset in Kansas, June 5, 2004.

Lightning strikes the Empire State Building in New York City.

Lightning strikes during an electrical storm at night in the Grand Canyon.

[Orion21]

Solve the worlds energy issues . . .

Figure out how to harness and store the awesome amount of energy in each bolt. I'd like to see a TED Talk on that

[MIKA27]

How They Put 8,500 Digital Zombies in a Single World War Z Scene

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: There are a crap-ton of zombies in World War Z. Thousands of them. They swarm everything from city blocks to helicopters in a manner best described as ants on an anthill in a nature documentary. And nearly all of them were made on computers.

They’re called “agents” — digital bots programmed by visual effects artists to move in a certain pattern — and it took nearly a year to achieve the zombie volume seen in the massive Israel wall-scaling scene. And what is that volume? Around 8,500 “agents” per shot, according Scott Farrar, the visual effects supervisor who led the charge to put them in World War Z.

“The single hardest thing about that was just making those piles look right without something going wrong,” Farrar said in an interview with Wired. “You’re always battling with what looks good and cool in a movie and still feels real.”

If it’s possible for thousands of undead organizing themselves into a corpse pyramid to feel “real,” thenWorld War Z feels real. The flick, which opened Friday, serves up more than a few close-ups of humans being bitten and turned into zombies (a super-rapid change that causes them to retch and contort in very unconventional ways) and large-scale scenes of hordes of Zs crawling over one another in search of live flesh. And although other scenes used a combination of human actors in zombie make-up and digital agents, the swarms of Zs in the Israel scenes were “100 percent [computer] animation,” Farrar said.

However, if it seems like they’re moving in slightly human ways, that’s because they were modeled after real people – some 80 contortionists from Budapest who the effects crew observed in order to get their zombies’ weird, twisted infection/conversion process just right. But then once they programmed their “agents” they still had months and months of work to do to get the swarms just right.

“You can look at these shots every day for months and then all of the sudden you’re almost ready to go to final and somebody will spot something that’s wrong in the shot,” Farrar said. “It’s like Where’s Waldo?”

For Farrar — who previously worked on everything from Cocoon to Transformers — it was a chance to do something new in a zombie flick. And, yes, he knows World War Z’s sprinting undead and their chomping, gnashing teeth aren’t the normal lumbering walkers we’re used to seeing. That was the point.

“This idea of just stumbling around didn’t make any sense. So we broke with tradition in many ways,” Farrar said. “We weren’t trying to be like another movie, we were trying to be like, ‘What would be real? What would be the science behind it if this were real?’ They wouldn’t even put their hands out in front of them; they would dive for the prey with the teeth. They just keep going until they get that bite.”

[MIKA27]

Solve the worlds energy issues . . .

Figure out how to harness and store the awesome amount of energy in each bolt. I'd like to see a TED Talk on that

A great idea. One would assume simple in the scheme of things yet no one has attempted??

[MIKA27]

Cassini captures gigantic hurricane on Saturn in exquisite detail

Jupiter's Great Red Spot may get most of the attention, but it's hardly the only big weather event in the Solar System. Saturn, for example, has an odd hexagonal pattern in the clouds at its north pole, and when the planet tilted enough to illuminate it, the light revealed a giant hurricane embedded in the center of the hexagon. Scientists think the immense storm may have been there for years.

But Saturn is also home to transient storms that show up sporadically. The most notable of these are the Great White Spots, which can persist for months and alter the weather on a planetary scale. Great White Spots are rare, with only six having been observed since 1876. When one formed in 2010, we were lucky enough to have the Cassini orbiter in place to watch it from close up. Even though the head of the storm was roughly 7,000 km across, Cassini's cameras were able to image it at resolutions where each pixel was only 14 km across, allowing an unprecedented view into the storm's dynamics.

The storm turned out to be very violent, with convective features as big as 3,000 km across that could form and dissipate in as little as 10 hours. Winds of over 400 km/hour were detected, and the pressure gradient between the storm and the unaffected areas nearby was twice that of the one observed in the Great Red Spot of Jupiter.

By carefully mapping the direction of the winds, the authors were able to conclude that the head of the White Spot was an anti-cyclone, with winds orbiting around a central feature.

Convection that brings warm material up from the depths of Saturn's atmosphere appears to be key to driving these storms. The authors built an atmospheric model that could reproduce the White Spot and found that shutting down the energy injection from the lower atmosphere was enough to kill the storm. In addition, observations suggest that many areas of the storm contain freshly condensed particles, which may represent material that was brought up from the lower atmosphere and then condensed when it reached the cooler upper layers.

The Great White spot was an anticyclone, and the authors' model suggests that there's only a very narrow band of winds on Saturn that enable the formation of a Great White Spot. The convective activity won't trigger a White Spot anywhere outside the range of 31.5° and 32.4°N, which probably goes a long way toward explaining why the storms are so rare.

Although the 2010 storm was also monitored using Earth-based instruments, both it and the polar hurricane show the value of having an observatory in residence at Saturn (and, by extension, at other planets). The local observations allow a much more detailed view of what's happening within the Great White Spot; without them, it would be impossible to have built the detailed model of the event. In the case of the polar hurricane, the feature was largely invisible except in the infrared from most of Cassini's time in orbit, as no light reached it during the winter of Saturn's northern hemisphere. The only reason the storm could be imaged is because Cassini was around long enough and could take a carefully planned orbit to make observations.

[MIKA27]

Samsung launches three different flavors of its Galaxy Tab 3

Samsung has introduced three different sizes of the Galaxy Tab 3 in the hopes that there's at least one that fits you just right. The company announced today that its US customers will be able to buy a 7-inch tablet for $199, an 8-inch option for $299, or 10.1-inch option for $399.

Samsung writes that the "portfolio" of tablets is supposed to offer consumers "more options," but one could also view the move as the company hedging its bets. With a 7-inch model, for instance, Samsung can compete head-to-head with the ever-popular Asus Nexus 7 while also offering varying sizes for those who might want a larger form factor—or a choice over other similarly sized Android tablets.

Your choice is not limited to screen size, however. The Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 will feature a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 8GB of storage with expandable memory, a 1024×600 resolution TFT display, and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The 8-inch variant features slightly better specifications, with an Exynos 1.5GHz dual-core processor with 1.5GB of RAM, a 1280×800 resolution TFT display, and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, as well as a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera and 16GB of storage. The last of the family of new tablets borrows from each of its siblings, sporting the same resolution as the 8-inch Galaxy Tab 3 and the same camera specifications as the 7-inch model. The biggest difference is its Intel Z2560 1.6GHz dual-core processor, though it only has 1GB of RAM.

In an attempt to win you over, Samsung is also packing each device with extras. Each of the Galaxy Tab 3 devices will come with preloaded content and Galaxy Perks, like a $10 voucher for buying apps, books, movies, and music through Google Play; one year of free Boingo hotspot service; three free months of Hulu Plus; and two years of Dropbox with 50GB of storage.

All three Wi-Fi only tablets will be available in white and what Samsung is calling "gold brown" beginning July 7, with preorders for the devices starting tomorrow at participating retailers.

[MIKA27]

OS X is holding back the 2013 MacBook Air’s 802.11ac Wi-Fi speeds

Apple's 2013 MacBook Air doesn't look like much of an upgrade from the outside, but the story is different on the inside. We've spent the better part of a week using the new Air and measuring just how Intel's new Haswell processors, the PCI Express-based SSD, and the 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter change the laptop compared to last year's model.

The new Wi-Fi chip was the change that I was the most eager to get my hands on. I'm always looking to boost my network speeds, but I've been waiting for hardware based on the new 802.11ac standard to become more widely available before upgrading everything on my network. Reviewing both the new Air and Apple's new 802.11ac-capable Airport Express Base Station simultaneously would give me a chance to see just how close the lauded "Gigabit Wi-Fi" would come to fulfilling its promises. I was unpleasantly surprised by the results.

Both the 2012 and 2013 MacBook Airs use four antennas to transmit data—two to send data and two to receive it. Each set of antennas can theoretically send and receive 150Mbps (or 18.75MBps) using 5GHz 802.11n for a total of 300Mbps (37.5MBps). Under 802.11ac, the size of each stream is increased to 433Mbps, making for a maximum theoretical link speed of 866Mbps (108.25MBps) in the 2013 MacBook Air. Actual network transfer speeds rarely (if ever) come within spitting distance of these theoretical maximums, but we would at least expect the actual 802.11ac transfer speeds to increase by a similar percentage compared to 802.11n.

Information about my network: To test network speeds, I copy files down from my local file server, a Mac Mini running OS X 10.8.4 and connected to the router via a Gigabit Ethernet cable. In this case, I'm copying down exactly 12GB of data spread over three large files and calculating the average MBps based on how long the transfer takes. The router is about ten feet away from the computer and there's a clear line of sight between the two, and the 5GHz band near my apartment is very clear—there's only one other 5GHz router that's in range. There's no channel overlap between the two. We're measuring a megabyte as 1024KB as Windows does, not 1000KB as OS X does.

Regardless of whether I used the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) or Microsoft's Server Message Block (SMB), however, I couldn't realize anything approaching this 189 percent speed increase on the new Air. At best, the 2013 Air was 70.3 percent faster to transfer the files over SMB and 50.6 percent to do it over AFP. I was already planning on doing more exhaustive testing on this before running our review, but then I saw that AnandTech's Anand Shimpi was having the same issues as I was and had already formulated a hypothesis based on how OS X handles TCP window sizing.

In essence, the TCP window size defines the amount of data that a server can send before the client has to acknowledge that the data has been received. A smaller window size can be good for slower or less reliable connections—since the server and client check in with each other more often, it reduces the amount of time spent re-sending chunks of data that were dropped in transit. A smaller window can be harmful to a fast connection, though, since the amount of time spent acknowledging instead of sending data can effectively cap your maximum transfer speed. It is, of course, much more complicated than this. This post digs a bit deeper into the complexities, but this quick explainer should be sufficient to explain why the new MacBook Air's transfer speeds are as low as they are.

For file transfers over the SMB and AFP protocol, Shimpi found that the TCP window size would not scale beyond 64KB, limiting his own file transfer speeds to about 21.2MBps (extremely similar to the 21.71MBps speeds we got over 802.11ac). File transfer speeds over the FTP and HTTP protocols could go faster, but in no case did OS X scale up the window size to 256KB, which Shimpi determined to be the optimum window size for 802.11ac-speed transfers. He attempted to set the TCP window size manually without changing the transfer speeds, however, so he admits that there may be something else wrong here. Either way, transfer speeds in OS X are much lower than they should be.

Shimpi believes this problem is limited to OS X's Wi-Fi networking stack, since transfers over his (and our) Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet cable weren't limited in the same way. He couldn't get the 2013 MacBook Air's Wi-Fi adapter to connect at 802.11ac speeds in Windows, but we were able to take his work one step further and verify that both the Wi-Fi adapter and the Airport Extreme Base Station work fine in Windows 8.

Now that's more like it—wired Ethernet still trounces the wireless speeds, but the 2013 Air transfers files 158.1 percent faster than the 2012 Air running the same operating system. That's much closer to the 189 percent increase in theoretical networking transfer speeds promised by 802.11ac.

Some variation between the two operating systems is to be expected. They're very different under the hood, after all, and Microsoft's strong commitment to the enterprise (and the file servers therein) makes it unsurprising that Windows' file transfer speeds are generally a bit faster than OS X's. However, the discrepancy between the Windows 802.11ac speeds and OS X speeds is too large to be explained away by networking optimizations alone. Windows is, at best, about ten percent faster over Gigabit Ethernet and 43.6 percent faster over 802.11n, but it's 117.7 percent faster over 802.11ac.

Based on our and Shimpi's tests, it seems entirely likely that Apple will be able to fix the issue in software, and I would be surprised to see OS X 10.8.5 or OS X 10.9 ship with the same issues. This is Apple's first-ever 802.11ac product, after all, and some bugs (including those that are reportedly causing connectivity issues for some users) are to be expected. Early adopters beware, though: if you're expecting the new MacBook Air and your brand new 802.11ac router to make your wireless speeds skyrocket, you might be stuck waiting on a fix from Apple.

A full review of the 2013 MacBook Air, including an assessment of its CPU, GPU, new SSD, and battery life, will be available later this week.

[Habana Mike]

Molecules - they look just like we thought they did:

http://petapixel.com/2013/05/31/scientists-take-amazing-high-res-photos-of-molecules-forming-chemical-bonds/

[MIKA27]

Molecules - they look just like we thought they did:

http://petapixel.com...chemical-bonds/

Thank you for sharing!

[MIKA27]

Leap Motion Controller Hands-On: The Future Is Magic

Greasy fingers are the bane of touchscreens, obscuring the display behind snail trails of oil and streaks of grime. Forget that mess. Leap Motion has promised hands-free PC navigation for months now. After some hands-on time, we can confirm that the future is here, and it’s amazing.

As a brief refresher, the Leap Motion Controller tracks your hand and finger movements in three-dimensional space, allowing users to recreate multitouch input without actually touching anything. You just wave your hands and wiggle your fingers in the air over it and boom, your computer responds.

It will be available for Windows 7 and 8, as well as Mac OS X 10.6 and above, when the $US80 device hits store shelves on July 29 (though if you pre-ordered, it’s out on the 22nd). It won’t be available for mobile to start but the company is looking into potentially integrating the technology with a number of OEMs.

With a few waves of your hands, both native applications — from web browsers to Google Earth — and system navigations respond instantly to your commands. The company is also developing Airspace, an online hub for LeapMotion-enabled applications.

“Everything you can do with a touch-based system, like Windows 8, can now be accomplished with LeapMotion technology. We want our users to have a magical experience, with easy and natural movements in the air leading to amazing interactions. This is the foundation for our approach to existing systems,” David Holz, co-founder and CTO of LeapMotion, said in a press statement. “But this is only the beginning. The potential for our 3D interaction technology is really unleashed by applications built specifically for LeapMotion, helping drive the future of computing.”

It tracks both hands — their position, angle, rotation, orientation, everything — in real time, as well as the positions and movements of all three joints in all 10 fingers. The controller registers everything within a roughly foot-tall, 18-inch-wide dome-shaped area surrounding the controller and is wildly accurate, picking up even minuscule finger twitches. During the demo, used Google Earth to fly around Lower Manhattan like I was the kid from Flight of the Navigator, I played a 3D variation of Brick Breaker using my index fingers as paddles to punch, poke, and prod the ball around the arena, and I navigated around both OS X and Windows 8 systems by swiping my hands through the air.

It was strange, initially, getting used to moving the cursor without grabbing a mouse or tapping the screen but it only takes a second to get the hang of the process. The controller can also be set to use either basic controls (taps, swipes, and other common input commands) or more advanced gestures, which helps ease you into it as well.

Granted, I played with this device for all of 15 minutes in a controlled environment (LeapMotion’s SF office) but that was a glorious quarter hour; I felt like Tony Stark using the Jarvis UI. July 29 can’t come soon enough.

[MIKA27]

Barack Obama Singing Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ Will Make You Smile

It’s kind of a crappy Tuesday so far, but don’t fret: Barack Obama is here to cheer you up with his awesome rendition of the Daft Punk chart-topper, Get Lucky.

There’s something really special about hearing the leader of the free world recite the lyrics “we’re up all night to get lucky”, even if he’s being hand-puppeted into it by the magic of technology.

Barackdubs on YouTube have a bunch of other great pop covers, too if you’re keen on this one.

[MIKA27]

20 secret passageways and hidden rooms hiding in plain sight:

History can be told in terms of secret passageways, hidden rooms, and obscure tunnels. Wars have been won and lost by them, coup d’états sprung, and entire countries altered thanks to a well-place nook or crannie. There are also plenty of modern-day uses, as you’ll see below—from drug smuggling tunnels from Tijuana to hidden doors that protect your most valuable chianti. Check out 20 of the best, below.

Probably the oldest hidden passageways can be found in the pyramids of Egypt. Below is the Cheops, the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza Necropolis, and the gallery which leads upwards to the entrance to the burial chamber.

Here’s a centuries-old disguised entrance to a hidden reading room in the National Library in Vienna, Austria.

The Củ Chi tunnels in Vietnam were used as hiding spots during combat. They also bore communication and supply routes, hospitals, food and weapon caches and living quarters for guerrilla fighters.

Another secret room at the former Ford Country Day School, a 30,000-foot Tudor mansion in Los Altos Hills, California.

A hidden passageway leads to this bunker restaurant in Lviv, Ukraine. The restaurant is dedicated to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

Entrance to Underground Hezbollah Warehouse. On September 6, 2006, during an IDF operation in the central sector of southern Lebanon, Israeli soldiers found a Hezbollah bunker filled with weaponry and rocket launchers hidden under trees.

This 220-yard tunnel, in Tijuana, Mexico, crossed the border beneath the US and Mexico, and was widely used by drug smugglers. Its entrance? The cabinet underneath a bathroom sink inside a warehouse in Tijuana. It was raided in 2012.

There are plenty of modern passageways built for personal security, or simply just entertainment. This billiards room has a secret passageway created by Creative Home Engineering, a company that specialises in custom construction.

A bookcase that leads to a weapons storage room, also by CHE.

Bookshelves? No, that’s a disguised door.

The wood paneling makes for a perfect disguise for this hidden door.

Is that a stone wall? No, it is a stone door to a wine cellar.

A mirror that opens to a vault.

Just another stone wall? No, that’s another stone door.

There is a secret room under the stairs.

Yet another door hidden behind a wood panel.

A hidden garage in the bottom floor of a historic Victorian apartment on Oak Street in San Francisco’s Upper Haight district.

Inspired by library racks that also use this system, these rolling shelving units hide complete rooms.

The Hidden Doors company made this, um, hidden door, which leads to a home gym.

[MIKA27]

Neat Freaks, Rejoice: This Smartphone Car Charger Doesn’t Tangle

The world is full of perfectly serviceable smartphone accessories. Hell, every Apple Store seems to have an entire wall built of them. So for a product to make any real noise in the overcrowded category, or to even really justify its existence in the first place, it has to do something different. The Band, a smartphone car charger by accessory outfit Tylt, brings one big innovation to the table. Its chunky, ribbon-style cable is constitutionally tidy and utterly immune to tangles.

When NewDealDesign, the San Francisco-based agency tasked with rebranding Tylt, set out to find the accessory maker’s new marquee product early last year, the car charger was far from an untapped category. There were dozens available on the market, many of which worked fine and looked nice enough themselves. The problem, the firm’s designers found, was the state those chargers inevitably settled into after a few weeks of in-car use: jumbled up in the no-mans land between the front seats.

The root of that problem was in the design of the cords themselves. Researching the field, the designers saw that the existing products generally defaulted to something similar to the standard tubular charging cable, or, in some cases, a car phone-throwback spiral design. “No one actually took the physicality of the cable and the connector and did something completely new with it,” says Gadi Amit, NewDealDesign’s president and principal creative. “Nobody challenged the fundamentals of how this object behaves in space and what kind of folding characteristics it has, or what kind of signature it has within the car.”

After playing with a few new morphologies, the team happened on a promising alternative: a thick, flat band. Its stiffness prevented the scourge of tangles and did much to mitigate the chronically disorganized look of other cables. “It was immediately recognized as a huge improvement,” Amit says.

Granted, the novel cable wasn’t quite as inconspicuous as those it sought to replace. But instead trying to tone it down, the team embraced the bold look. They found a supple, touchable rubber to use for the band itself, and put out the product in three bright colors, in addition to the typical understated black. The result is something fairly unique for the category–a car accessory that announces itself, rather than just trying to blend in among the cup holders and the e-brake. It’s the rare gadget charger thattries to grab your attention. “It has presence,” Amit says. “You step into your buddy’s car and see it over there and say, ‘wow, what is it?’”

Of course, there were risks in doing things differently. Tylt could have found that people weren’t looking for presence in their car gizmos. But the design–either its utility or its novelty–has succeeded in generating some attention. Amit says Tylt has seen a significant uptick in sales over the previous model.

You can read more or grab one for $40 over on Tylt’s site.

[MIKA27]

iPhone case? Game controller? It's both, and it's back

With game controller support headed to iOS 7 in just a few months, the line-up of third-party hardware is already starting to take shape.

The latest: the Flipside, an iPhone case that can expand out to add buttons and controls for games. It's also got solar cells that can recharge the case itself.

If this looks and sounds familiar, it's because the same product was pitched on Kickstarterin December, though was halted before it could be completed. Nonetheless, it raised a little more than US$8000 of its US$135,000 funding goal. Things are different this time, according to creator Justice Frangipane.

"We have gotten a few investors since our Kickstarter launch, and are in a better place to move forwards," Frangipane said. "We also hired an ex-military [colonel] who is doing the electronics, who is simply amazing."

The result is a redesign that adds a larger solar cell to recharge the case, as well as slightly larger control pads.

What hasn't changed is that the hybrid case still uses Bluetooth to connect, instead of relying on a physical Lightning connector. A purportedly leaked controller design from Logitech a week ago used Lightning, suggesting that the first round of cases would rely on Apple's newer iOS plug technology, which has the benefit of allowing users to operate such devices on aeroplanes, where the use of Bluetooth is not permitted. On the other hand, using Bluetooth means the controller promises to be compatible with a slew of other gadgets, like Android phones and computers.

One other thing that's changed is that the project now needs a much smaller US$40,000 to get off the ground. It also comes at a time when game controllers seem like they might actually get some ubiquitous developer support, with Apple building those tools into iOS 7, something that Frangipane thinks will make a big difference.

"We believe now that people are aware of Apple's position that we are in a much better place to go back into crowd funding," he said.

The retail price for the case — should it meet its goals — will be US$99, Frangipane said, though early backers can snap one up for US$60. The project itself is running through the beginning of August.

http://youtu.be/fr2ess9NJJc

[MIKA27]

Biggest Dead Zone Ever Forecast in Gulf of Mexico

Oxygen-deprived area may be size of New Jersey, scientists say.

A possibly record-breaking, New Jersey-size dead zone may put a chokehold on the Gulf of Mexico (map) this summer, according to a forecast released this week.

Unusually robust spring floods in the U.S. Midwest are flushing agricultural runoff—namely, nitrogen and phosphorus—into the Gulf and spurring giant algal blooms, which lead to dead zones, or areas devoid of oxygen that occur in the summer.

The forecast, developed by the University of Michigan and Louisiana State University with support from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, estimates a Gulf dead zone of between 7,286 and 8,561 square miles (18,870 and 22,172 square kilometers). The largest ever reported in the Gulf, 8,481 square miles (21,965 square kilometers), occurred in 2002.

On the flip side, the Chesapeake Bay—the country's biggest estuary—will likely experience a smaller-than-average dead zone this summer.

The forecasts are made using computer models, which are based on U.S. Geological Survey data of nutrient runoff in U.S. rivers and streams.

National Geographic talked to forecast contributor Donald Scavia, an aquatic ecologist at the University of Michigan, about dead zones—and why we should care about them.

What's a dead zone?

A dead zone, which occurs in the oceans and Great Lakes, is an area usually in the bottom waters where there's not enough oxygen to sustain life. It's generally caused by algae stimulated by lots of agricultural nutrients in surface waters. When nutrients enter the water, [they] create an algal bloom. [When] the algae sink, bacteria start decomposing them, which uses up the [available] oxygen.

During summer, what you have is a stratified water column that inhibits oxygen from the atmosphere getting down to the deep water. As the bacteria use up oxygen, it's not being replenished, so oxygen concentrations decrease until you get to two milligrams of oxygen per liter of water, which is bad for fish. Below that, fish that can will leave that area. Other organisms that can't [leave] die.

What are examples of organisms that would die?

Animals that live on the bottom. Worms, clams, the kind of things that fish like to eat. Some fish may have trouble.

Why do we track and study dead zones?

It's important because most often those areas that become uninhabitable by fish, are preferred habitat for fish. To draw on an analogy that's ironic, it would be like taking thousands of square miles of land in the Midwest out of production. People wouldn't like it.

So dead zones are an invisible issue.

Yes. They're deep in the bottom waters, and you can't see oxygen.

What was your reaction to your finding that the Gulf of Mexico may have a record-breaking dead zone?

To be honest, I was expecting that, mostly because of reports of massive flooding in the Midwest. The nitrogen and phosphorus in the floodwaters drive the problem.

What's causing the spring floods?

In recent history, the number of larger and more intense storms has been increasing—most climate models suggest storm intensity is going to continue.

Is the news that the Chesapeake Bay's dead zone is small promising?

It's not really, because people in the area are not doing enough nutrient management—it was a dry spring. The amount of nutrients going into systems is really dependent on rainfall. The more water you get, the more nutrients you get going in there. The real management issue—regardless of whether it's a wet or a dry year—is you've got to keep the nitrogen and phosphorus on the land and not in the rivers.

Is that mostly done by state regulations?

It's actually mostly controlled by the Farm Bill, the main funding mechanism for conservation in agriculture. The problem with the Farm Bill is there's far more money for supporting commodities and subsidies and not enough into conservation. I'm not blaming farmers—farmers do what the Farm Bill pays them to do—but we need a Farm Bill that's smarter and supports more conservation programs. (The most recent Farm Bill, which is updated every five years, was rejected by the House of Representatives on Thursday.)

Do dead zones have lasting effects on the environment?

There's a sense in the Chesapeake, Lake Erie, and the Gulf of Mexico that repeated dead zones are somehow making systems more sensitive to nutrients. For instance, the same amount of nutrient load now is producing larger dead zones than a decade ago.

We think it has something to do with residual organic matter that's carried over from one year to the next, or from the changing types of organisms living in the ecosystem.

What should the public know about dead zones?

The key thing is they really have the potential to devastate the fishing industry—for instance, shrimp in the Gulf, walleye in the Great Lakes, and striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay. The solution is really to be more aggressive in dealing with pollution coming from agriculture.

[CanuckSARTech]

Barack Obama Singing Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ Will Make You Smile

It’s kind of a crappy Tuesday so far, but don’t fret: Barack Obama is here to cheer you up with his awesome rendition of the Daft Punk chart-topper, Get Lucky.

There’s something really special about hearing the leader of the free world recite the lyrics “we’re up all night to get lucky”, even if he’s being hand-puppeted into it by the magic of technology.

Barackdubs on YouTube have a bunch of other great pop covers, too if you’re keen on this one.

Looks like the B man himself just responded to this one 14 minutes ago: "I'm fantastic". LOL.

[MIKA27]

It’s Good This Plane Wasn’t Flying When Its Engine Exploded

Yesterday, this Airbus A330 was zipping down the runway of Manchester Airport, UK, ready to take off and head to the Dominican Republic. And then, holy crap, its jet engine exploded.

Sat on that plane, the passengers must have been very, very, very relieved that it was still on the ground rather than in the air. Also, great control on the part of the pilot as he kept it together while the craft began to snake across the runway.

[MIKA27]

This Brilliant Train Hack Guarantees You’ll Never Fall

The only thing worse than getting on a full train where there’s no place to sit is getting on an even fuller train where there’s no place to brace yourself. But here’s a brilliant hack that not only guarantees you’ve always got something secure to hold onto, but also something no one else has put their dirty hands on: a toilet plunger.

Our cartoon heros have been using plungers to climb walls and stick to ceilings for years, and apparently in real life the bathroom accessory has other uses too. You’ll just want to make sure you can get it unstuck from the ceiling well before the subway arrives at your stop.

[MIKA27]

A New Echolocation Algorithm Can Map Spaces Based On Sound Alone

There is precedent for echolocation in the natural world: bats can navigate based on the echo of their chirrups; and blind humans, at least anecdotally, sometimes develop remarkable sound-based spatial skills. But using sound to accurately map a space in three dimensions? That’s new.

This week, scientists at the École Polytechnique Fédérale, in Lausanne, in Switzerland, published a study showing how a newly developed algorithm uses sound to measure the dimensions of a space. Their system only requires four standard microphones — placed anywhere in any space — and a sound as small as a finger snap to generate a model. It’s a bit like the spatial triangulation used by 3D scanners — except this system uses sound, rather than light. A PhD student at EPFL named Ivan Dokmanić explains:

“Each microphone picks up the direct sound from the source, as well as the echoes arriving from various walls. The algorithm then compares the signal from each microphone. The infinitesimal lags that appear in the signals are used to calculate not only the distance between the microphones, but also the distance from each microphone to the walls and the sound source.”

The group began by testing the system in a six-sided room, but went on to accurately map part of the ornate Lausanne Cathedral, the 900-year-old church in the heart of city. The study — which appeared in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — only presents the team’s initial research, which they plan to continue with over the next few years.

But that hasn’t stopped the team from speculating about how the technology could be applied. According to Dokmanić, architects could eventually use the algorithm to get accurate measurements of a particular building or site. Likewise, acoustical engineers could use it to create amphitheatres whose shapes are based on an ideal sound. There are also plenty of more world-changing uses: 000 operators could determine what type of room a caller is in. At the same time, as with all powerful technology, it’s possible to imagine this kind of system being used for more sinister purposes. Either way, it’s a fascinating piece of research — check out the report here.

[MIKA27]

This WWII Mickey Mouse Gas Mask Was Supposed To Be Less Creepy Somehow

Sometimes, parents have to explain things to their kids in more child-friendly terms. During World War II, that meant outfitting a child with a weird Mickey Mouse gas mask.

It was 1942, just about a month after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Fearing imminent chemical attack on American soil, the US government issued thousands of gas mask to civilians. But the smallest citizens couldn’t fit into the regulation-sized masks. They were too heavy and too big. Plus, aren’t those things scary?

Well, while the Mickey Mouse mask might have soothed children, it was possibly scarier for mum and dad. Designed to fit kids 18 months to four years old, the mask was supposed to be worn as a sort of game, to take away some of the fear out of a chemical attack. Although, the masks probably weren’t supposed to be so freaky. Sure, a child might be safer. But a mother might look at her toddler and think the real enemy was not the Axis powers across the ocean, but the tiny human with the head of a cartoon mouse with a perma-grin sitting in her lap.

Anyway, with Disney’s approval, Sun Rubber Company produced 1000 of these strange masks in 1942. In 1944, it actually won the Army-Navy E for Excellence for producing them. Sun was supposed to make other versions of the pint-sized mask featuring other cartoon characters later on, but for whatever reason never did.

There aren’t very many surviving Mouseketeer masks — one belongs to the US Army Chemical Museum at Ft McClellan, Alabama. There’s another one at the 45th Infantry Division Museum in Oklahoma City, and there’s another prototype at the Disney Archives in Burbank. But otherwise, these eerie pictures are the only evidence of the odd relic of WWII.

[MIKA27]

Razer’s Surround Software Could Turn Regular Headphones Into 7.1 Cans

We’d all love to be able to blast sound to the high heavens, but, sadly, most of us lack the space and/or patient neighbours willing to put up with it. Well, today, gaming gear giant Razer is announcing new software that it claims will be able to turn your ordinary headphones into a professional-grade set that emulates 7.1 channel sound. And from now until the end of the year, the software is free, so why not give it a shot?

Razer’s new Surround software uses what’s called “virtual surround sound” to create the effect of being actually physically bounded by a seven-channel array of speakers. It accomplishes this magic using processing algorithms that tweak the audio signal coming out of your computer before your headphones drivers actually reproduce the sound.

Razer claims that the software will work with any set of headphones, but you’ll have to run a calibration program before the effect will work properly. In theory, this could work, but as with any tech that claims to turn one thing into something else it is not, we’ll believe it when we hear it.

Now the software isn’t exactly “free” per se. In exchange for the software, Razer is asking that users make a contribution to Child’s Play, a charity that supports children in hospitals. Seems like a worthy cause. If you wait until 2014 to buy the software, you’ll pay the regular cost of $20 to Razer. Bottom line: If you’re into PC gaming, but not into spending a lot on gaming headset, the Surround software seems like it could be worth a shot.

[MIKA27]

Sony’s SmartWatch 2 Promises To Be Better This Time

We really wanted to love Sony’s SmartWatch last year, but we couldn’t, which is to say, it made us want to bite our own arms off. Sony is back at it again though, and the sequel looks like a real improvement over the previous generation.

For starters, the SmartWatch 2 has a bigger screen and higher resolution (1.6 inch, 220 x 176 pixels) and claims to have greater brightness than the previous version, so you can more easily read it in sunlight. It has a longer-lasting battery and it’s water-resistant (IP57). We found last year’s model to be a pain to pair with your phone, but this year’s model has NFC, which generally makes linking your gadgets as simple as tapping them together. The UI has been reworked to make it more similar to Android, which will hopefully me more intuitive, and, unlike last year’s, it can actually continue to do things (like read downloaded emails) even when disconnected with your phone.

From the photos above, it’s actually pretty attractive. It has an aluminium body and comes with a stainless-steel wristband. The watchband can be swapped out for any standard 24 millimetre wristband, which leaves your styling options very open. It will also work with a wider range of Android phones than the previous model.

The SmartWatch 2 will ship globally in September of this year. No word on price yet, but last year’s model launched at $150, to give you some idea. Here’s hoping these improvements add up to make a real difference.

[MIKA27]

This Guy Says he can fly an Electric plane 3,500 Nonstop miles across the Atlantic:

COSTA MESA, Calif. — It’s just after 10 on a Thursday morning and Chip Yates — whose energy is exceeded only by his imagination — is on his fourth errand of the day. He’s in a small fabrication shop in a nondescript industrial park, with a few minutes to kill.

He examines some steel and aluminum tubing being fitted to the front of a somewhat worn composite airplane that looks like it’s going backward. They will be the prototype for a “refueling” probe for his most imaginative project to date.

Yates is a pilot. He got his license a year ago. Despite his inexperience, he has a dream. A crazy, outlandish, almost insane dream. He wants to repeat Charles Lindbergh’s historic flight across the Atlantic — in an electric airplane.

Lindbergh was the first to fly solo across the Atlantic when he made the flight in 1927. Electric aviation is in its infancy, and its longest flight thus far is less than 1,000 miles. Yates plans to fly 3,500 miles, and do so at least as fast as Lindbergh did.

He is quite serious about this. And as crazy as it sounds, his efforts have caught the attention of the Navy.

Yates says “maybe 20 percent of my motivation” for the idea, which came to him during a vacation on Catalina Island, stemmed from his desire to be a pilot. It isn’t fame or fortune as a pioneer that drove him, it was the engineering challenge.

“It wasn’t about how I can make money,” he says. “It was about how I can spend money.”

When he isn’t pushing the limits of electric vehicles, Yates, 42, is a patent and intellectual property consultant. It pays the bills generated by his abiding passion: inventing stuff. He is perhaps most famous for building an electric motorcycle that beat top-tier race bikes and set a land speed record at 197 mph.

That is nothing compared to the electric airplane project.

To fulfill the ambitious goal, Yates must overcome the great disadvantage of electric drive-trains — their limited range. His solution is to use unmanned aerial vehicles that will provide additional electricity during the flight. That’s another way of saying he will use autonomous battery packs that will meet him in flight, transfer energy to the plane and return safely to an airport.

This is so far beyond anything that’s been accomplished in electric aviation as to sound impossible. Electric aviation has only become something approaching practicality for hobbyists happy to fly slowly and silently within a short radius of home. There are some ideas for extending range, but no one is considering anything approaching what Yates is proposing. His idea makes the Solar Impulse transcontinental flight on solar power seem sensible.

You could argue he’s nuts, but the same was said of the early pioneers of flight, who, through trial and error and sheer force of will flew further and faster than anyone thought safe or sane. And while some are discounting Yates as a crackpot, he has the Pentagon’s attention. Electric aircraft have very little acoustic or thermal signature, making them well-suited to reconnaissance missions. The Navy recently signed a cooperative research agreement allowing Yates to work with the branch’s China Lake testing facility in southern California.

Not everyone is convinced that Yates is anything but a hot-rodder in an airplane, and his track record thus far – which includes a dead stick landing six days after getting his pilot’s license – has some calling him reckless.

“He’s not typical of the aviation industry,” concedes Erik Lindbergh, a pilot who is the legendary aviator’s grandson and a proponent of electric aircraft. “He’s young and he’s a breath of fresh air in that he’s willing to risk it all and do what he sets his mind to.”

Such things are far from Yates’ mind as he stands in the fabrication shop.

“I’ve got 20 minutes to kill,” he says, looking at his watch, then at the airplane. “What can I do in 20 minutes?”

Building an airplane is easy. Building an electric airplane isn’t much harder. Building one that can cross an ocean is difficult. There are two ways to do this. You can, like Solar Impulse, build an absolutely immense airplane, cover it with photovoltaic cells and cruise at a leisurely 30 mph.

Yates, who used to race motorcycles, has no interest in this.

“Flying electrically, really slow, doesn’t provide humanity anything,” he says.

He isn’t after airliner-like speed. Lindbergh averaged just over 100 mph in Spirit of St. Louis. Yates wants to go at least that fast. If that means inventing some method of aerial recharging, so be it. But without the multi-million dollar budget of a project like Solar Impulse, Yates must get creative. Yates, moving at the speed of a pit-lane mechanic at the Indy 500, grabs a part from the shelf. It’s a hub from a GMC Denali, and it will link the bespoke carbon-fiber propeller to the electric motor at the back of the plane.

“It’s $170 at Kragen,” he notes.

Using the GMC part is not only cheaper, it’s safer. It’s a proven design and less likely to fail than anything he might come up with.

“That’s the key to pushing the limits,” he says. “Don’t push them all by biting off unnecessary technical risk.”

It’s this kind of low-budget DIY ingenuity that allows him to do things like build an electric motorcycle capable of almost 200 mph. That bike provided the motor, which Yates says will produce about 258 horsepower.

“We donated it to a museum,” he says of the record-setting electric motorcycle. “I don’t think they needed a $30,000 motor to sit hidden inside the bike.”

Twenty minutes becomes 40 as installing the hub takes longer than anticipated. After quickly washing up, Yates jumps in his car and speeds to his next appointment, multitasking all the way. “I’ve got to call my patent attorney real quick,” he says. Who doesn’t?

Yates was raised in Pittsburgh and spent his late teens at a military academy in Indiana before finding his way to southern California. He skipped college and went to a police academy, but never became a cop. Instead he landed an engineering apprenticeship. A few years later he was in Hong Kong working for toymaker Lanard, where he invented the “Fliplash” car. It was very successful and earned him a promotion. But Yates wanted to move beyond toys.

He was chasing an MBA at USC – where he invented and patented a high-end corkscrew – when a chance meeting led to a job in Boeing’s licensing and intellectual property group. It allowed him to hone his negotiating skills while learning the ins and outs of the patent world. That provided the experience he needed to become a consultant, an occupation that provides the time, and money, to pursue his passions.

It was after this when Yates was in his late 30s when and decided to go motorcycle racing. Eighteen months later, he was running with the pros in World Superbike.

That didn’t go so well. A crash landed him in the hospital with a broken pelvis and plenty of time to think. So he started thinking of building an electric motorcycle – not one for well-heeled urbanites happy to putter around at 60 mph, but a bike for guys who ride like he does.

“I wanted to build a bike that could do AMA lap times,” he says, referring to the American Motorcyclist Association, racing’s governing body. “That was the only condition I put out there.”

Yates sunk more than $250,000 into the project. The result was an aesthetically challenged but lightning-quick machine capable of beating race-prepped Ducatis and Suzukis. After setting records, including the benchmark for an electric motorcycle at 197 mph, at Bonneville in 2011 and making an amazing run at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, Yates retired the bike.

By the end of the year, he was working on his next idea – flying across the Atlantic. Yates spent the first few months of 2012 working out how to get started. To test the electric drivetrain, he bought a used Long-EZ, an airplane renowned for its ability to fly far and fast with minimal power.

The Long-EZ, a two-seat composite airplane designed by the legendary Burt Rutan, has its main wing in the back, with the engine. A small “canard” wing is up front by the pilot. It’s odd, but famous for its efficiency and speed. Yates is using it as a platform on which to work out the details of mid-air recharging and see how far he can push the 440-volt, 80 amp-hour lithium-ion battery that will power his airplane.

He’s still designing the airplane that will cross the Atlantic. It will look a lot like a glider, with a wingspan of about 100 feet. But it will weigh roughly 26,000 pounds – about as much as a mid-size business jet. Batteries will comprise about 80 percent of the mass, providing a range of around 700 miles. By comparison, the Solar Impulse airplane crossing the country right now has a wingspan of 208 feet and weighs 3,500 pounds and a range limited by pilot endurance.

With a lift to drag ratio of 35:1, the airplane will be more like a glider than anything else. His plan is to take off from New York with one of the flying battery packs attached to the airplane. He’ll use an electric launch cart to accelerate the massive airplane to take off speed. That first flying battery pack will stay aboard for a bit less than four hours before being jettisoned and landing in Canada.

A second battery pack will meet Yates, and connect via a cord and probe similar to how military planes refuel. The two will fly attached as the main airplane uses the electricity from the battery pack. This method will be repeated with a third battery pack as he flies east. In the middle of the Atlantic where Yates will be furthest from land, he will by flying on internal batteries only. Eventually he will meet a fourth flying battery pack that will be able to land in Ireland, and a fifth battery pack that will take him to Paris.

Yates acquired the Long-EZ early last year. He and his team immediately went to work converting it to electric power. By late spring, they had something capable of flight. Then Yates realized he was missing a key component.

His pilot’s license.

Rather than follow the traditional path of hiring an experienced test pilot, Yates figured he’d do it himself. The airplane was a known quantity – the Long-EZ has been around since the late 1970s – the only difference was the fuel. So he spent two months earning his license. He had it less than a week before making his first flight in the electro-EZ at Inyokern airport in southern California’s Mojave Desert, on July 6.

The next day he set an unofficial speed record for an electric airplane by flying 202 mph, eclipsing the previous benchmark by more than 30 mph. It proved to be a bit more than the system could handle, though, and several cells in the battery pack ruptured. Yates made an emergency landing, barely reaching the runway to make his first dead stick landing.

Many in the aviation community found it all a bit reckless. Maybe he was. But in the early days of flight, advancements often cost aviators their life. Yates acknowledges the risk, but believes he has proceeded as safely as possible.

Tom Peghiny, who designed and built an ultralight airplane in the 1980s and helped shape the light sport aircraft category in the 1990s, has been flying long enough to see many ideas come and go. And today he’s working on electric airplane designs himself. He says guys like Yates, with their outlandish ideas and far-fetched dreams, are the ones who push aviation forward. Change comes in great leaps, not small steps, he says.

“Self-funded and acting much like a techno hot-rodder, it’s great that there are still people like willing to go for it like Chip Yates,” he says. He doesn’t know Yates personally, but is impressed by his background and his approach.

“With regard to his company’s plan for transoceanic electric flight with unmanned power drones, you have to take him seriously,” Peghiny says.

In the coming months, Yates will begin testing new systems on the airplane, including the mid-air refueling probe and a new battery pack. He’s enlisted a renowned test pilot, **** Rutan (Burt’s brother) who has flown everything from combat jets to the Voyager, the first airplane to fly around the world on a single tank of gas.

Somewhere in his crazy schedule in the coming months, Yates hopes to make another run up Pikes Peak and race a gasoline-powered Long-EZ this fall. And there’s that research agreement with the Navy, which has Yates pondering new uses for his electric airplane. But his eyes remain on his primary goal – crossing the Atlantic on battery power alone.

It’s a crazy plan, with uncertain benefits for aviation and more than a few things that can go horribly wrong. Of course, the same was said of the Wright brothers.

And Lucky Lindy, for that matter.

“Without some risk takers, we just don’t make progress that fast,” the grandson Erik Lindbergh says. “So I really applaud him for his willingness to risk. On the other hand, I hope he stays alive.”

[MIKA27]

Top Italian football clubs raided by finance police investigating tax-dodging and money laundering

Latest scandal to shake nation's sport turns focus on Juventus, Inter, AC Milan and Lazio

Italy's top football clubs including Juventus, Inter, AC Milan and Lazio were among the 41 squads raided by finance police today on suspicion of tax-dodging and money laundering.

In total 18 Serie A clubs and 11 Serie B clubs plus 12 from the minor leagues are being investigated in the latest corruption scandal to shake Italian football. Authorities are still investigating a series of high profile betting scams.

Naples magistrates suspect the 41 football clubs have evaded tax payments by listing bogus costs connected to non-existent players' contracts negotiations. La Stampa reported this morning that during the raids police officers seized players' contracts.

The warrants that magistrates handed to police list conspiracy and money laundering, as well international tax evasion and false invoicing.

The 18 Serie A clubs raided this morning (including some relegated at the end of the last season) are: Parma, Chievo, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Siena, Roma, Fiorentina, Atalanta, Pescara, Genoa, Juventus, Torino, Parma, Lazio, Napoli, Udinese, Sampdoria, Palermo and Catania.

Investigators stressed the investigation was at an early stage. They said, however, that their probe will consider the activities of sports agents Alessandro Moggi (son of the former general director of Juventus Luciano) and Alejandro Mazzoni, both of whom have already been the subject of search warrants in the past few months.