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

[MIKA27]

This Clip-on Handgun Attachment Makes Bullets Non-Lethal

A California company called Alternative Ballistics has developed an easy-to-install accessory for hand guns that promises to make bullets non-lethal allowing law enforcement to incapacitate a suspect without causing life-threatening injuries.

The most important feature of the accessory, called The Alternative, is that it doesn’t interfere with the operation of a handgun in any way once it’s clipped onto the muzzle. The weapon’s sights still work, and other accessories like flashlights can still be attached.

So how do you make a speeding bullet less lethal? That’s easy, you simply reduce its speed. The Alternative holds a hollow metal sphere on the end of a gun’s barrel that’s designed to catch a bullet as it leaves the weapon and hitch a ride, in a manner of speaking.

The metal sphere, made from a proprietary metal alloy, will reduce the speed of a bullet by up to 80 per cent while spreading out the point of impact on a target. So when it makes impact there’s less chance of it piercing flesh and causing serious internal injuries. Still, it hits the target with enough force to knock a person down, just like a non-lethal bean-bag round would, but with far more accuracy.

Designed as a single-use accessory, The Alternative’s orange plastic support is automatically ejected from a handgun after a shot has been fired, allowing law enforcement to immediately continue firing with regular rounds as needed. Because it’s so easy to install, teaching officers to use the accessory can be incorporated into regular firearms training with minimal additional time or cost. And because it can be carried on their person at all times, it’s a non-lethal alternative that’s always within quick reach so there’s a better chance it will be used more frequently. [Alternative Ballistics]

[MIKA27]

Now You Can Help Scientists Track Animals In Mozambique From Your Sofa

Everyone wants to help the environment, but all of that actually doing stuff takes a lot of effort, right? Then good news as a new project has launched which will let ordinary people, with no scientific background, contribute to a scientific mission to track the recovery of the Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique.

The park has had a troubled recent history as it has endured two major wars (one for independence, then a civil war). Apart from the obvious human cost, the wars also damaged the large animal populations in the park, and harmed biodiversity. But excellently, it seems that the park is starting to recover and the numbers of lions, elephants, antelope and others are hopefully increasing.

The researchers have partnered with “citizen science” platform Zooniverse to launch the WildCam Gorongosa project, which aims to crowdsource analysis of thousands of photos, so that data which can’t easily be processed by computers can be analysed much more quickly than if the scientists were such repetitive tasks themselves.

The way it works is pretty simple: You head over to the WildCam Gorongosa website and you’ll get shown images taken by one of the cameras in the park and all you need to do is click and flag up any animals that appear in the photo. You don’t have to be an expert as there’s a panel to the right which will help you narrow down exactly what sort of animal you’re looking at. Even if you’re not 100% sure or get it wrong it doesn’t matter – because the idea is that thousands of people will help analyse the same data there can be built-in error correction by showing the same images to multiple times to different contributors.

And if you’re feeling competitive, you can even create a user account and track your animal-spotting stats.

This isn’t the first project of its kind – Zooniverse, the platform it is built on, has been used for a number of similar crowd-sourced projects. It started life five years ago with Galaxy Zoo, which took thousands of images from the Hubble Space Telescope with the aim of classifying the different types of galaxies into spiral, disc-shaped and so on. Since, other projects have included analysing scans of handwritten ship log books and tracking penguins.

If you’re already a fan of Snapshot Serengeti and/or Chimp & See, you’ll definitely want to check this one out, as we explore trail-camera photos from the Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, and discover the wealth of wildlife within.

If you head over to the WildCam Gorongosa website you can get started helping to save the world, one lion at a time.

[MIKA27]

Watch Bear Grylls Feed President Obama A Nasty Old Piece Of Salmon He Found

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwh3cGlKmbI

“This has got to be one of the best days of my Presidency,” Obama tells the camera shortly before Bear Grylls feeds him a nasty old piece of bear-ravaged salmon he found beside a river in Alaska.

While on last week’s big Alaskan adventure, the President took a day to film an episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls. It will air this fall on NBC and these are the first clips we’ve seen from it.

No word on whether or not Obama drank any of Bear’s urine.

[MIKA27]

This Guy Turned His Dorm Room Fridge Into An Oversized Playable Game Boy

You can buy stick-on decals that will make your fridge look like a giant Game Boy, or you can do what Daniel d’Entremont did and actually turn your fridge into a giant playable Game Boy using a Raspberry Pi 2.

The most important part of d’Entremont’s hack, which involved removing and hollowing out the tiny fridge’s door to accommodate the LCD display and other electronics, was that it still keeps drinks cold, even while someone is playing Tetris on the front. After all, who wants to waste space in a tiny dorm room with a fridge that doesn’t keep your libations cool?

The upgrades took d’Entremont about nine hours to complete, which is obviously the best use of anyone’s time at college. And if it turns out that he’s actually an art history major, hopefully someone will convince him to switch over to engineering or computer science before it’s too late.

[MIKA27]

The First Human Head Transplant Will Take Place In 2017

Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero grabbed the world’s attention this past winter when he announced his plans to perform the first human head transplant. Many doubted that such an outrageous procedure would ever see the light of day. Now, Canavero has a date on the books.

Thirty-year-old Russian computer scientist Valery Spiridonov is set to become the world’s first head transplant patient in December 2017. Spiridonov suffers from a rare genetic muscle-wasting condition known as Werdnig-Hoffmann disease. There’s currently no known treatment.

As you might not want to imagine, the procedure will be filled with challenges and uncertainties. There’s the hair-raising possibility that the head will reject the body or vice versa. The spinal cord might not fuse properly. Even if everything goes well, there’s no telling whether Spiridonov’s mental capacities or personality will remain the same. He’s entering totally uncharted medical territory.

Then again, a successful human head transplant could open doors in terms of restoring independence to severely disabled people. And to Spiridonov the risks are worth it.

“When I realised that I could participate in something really big and important, I had no doubt left in my mind and started to work in this direction,” Spiridonov told the Central European News. “The only thing I feel is the sense of pleasant impatience, like I have been preparing for something important all my life and it is starting to happen.” [Fox News]

[MIKA27]

If We Burned All Of Our Fossil Fuels, We'd Melt Antarctica

If we burned all the coal, oil and gas that’s left in the ground, we’d melt Antarctica and global sea levels would rise as much as 60 metres over the next ten thousand years. Coastal cities from New York to Shanghai would wind up deep underwater.

That’s the disturbing conclusion of a new modelling paper that appears today in Science Advances. It sounds pretty pessimistic, but in a world where the basic premise of climate change is under constant attack, scientists have begun turning to extreme scenarios to make their point crystal clear. The new study is the first to model the effects of unfettered fossil fuel burning across the entire Antarctic ice sheet.

“Our study shows that if we don’t leave most of the carbon in the ground, we are going to melt most of the ice on this planet,” lead study author Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution told Gizmodo.

Burn It All

There are roughly 10,000 billion metric tons (Gt) of carbon-rich fuel sitting beneath our feet, according to a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Human activities have already caused the release of some 555 Gt of carbon dioxide since the beginning of the industrial revolution. If we’d like to cap ourselves at 2ºC of global warming over the long term and avoid catastrophic climate change, we’ve got to limit our future emissions to another 600 Gt of carbon or less, says the IPCC.

But what if that doesn’t happen?

In their paper, the researchers used an ice-sheet evolution model to study Antarctica under future emissions scenarios ranging from 100 Gt (very optimistic) to 10,000 Gt (burn it all!). The models, which account for atmospheric and oceanic warming and changes in Antarctic snowfall patterns, tracked the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere, the loss of Antarctic ice, and the resultant global sea level rise over the next 10,000 years.

Chart showing how Antarctic ice would be affected by different emissions scenarios. (GtC = gigatons of carbon). Image Credit: Ken Caldeira and Ricarda Winkelmann

Consistent with other models, the researchers find that the West Antarctic ice sheet becomes highly unstable under an emissions scenario that leads to 600 Gt of additional carbon release. In that scenario, the world would see 0.6 to 0.9 metres of sea level rise this century, and up to 2 metres over the course of a millennia. That’s a risky, but perhaps manageable amount.

“The West Antarctic ice sheet may already have tipped into a state of unstoppable ice loss, whether as a result of human activity or not,” study co-author Anders Levermann said in a statement. “But if we want to pass on cities like Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Calcutta, Hamburg and New York as our future heritage, we need to avoid a tipping in East Antarctica.”

Under emissions scenarios that lead to 1000 Gt additional carbon or more, the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica begins to retreat, eventually yielding another three to four metres of sea level rise. And under even worse scenarios, all bets are off. From the paper:

Other marine based drainage systems become unstable under higher emission scenarios, until most of the marine ice is eventually lost to the self-reinforcing feedback after about 2500 GtC of cumulative carbon release….With unrestrained future CO2 emissions, the amount of sea-level rise from Antarctica could exceed tens of metres over the next 1000 years and could ultimately lead to the loss of the entire ice sheet.

“We show for the first time that there is sufficient fossil fuel in the ground to melt effectively all of Antarctica, eventually producing close to 60 metres of sea level rise,” Caldeira says.

Short Term Uncertainty

To Robert Kopp, a Rutgers paleoclimatologist who studies past changes to the Antarctic ice sheet, these numbers aren’t all that surprising.

“The warmer scenario is a 10 degree warming scenario, one in which we’ve turned the climatological clock back 40-50 million years,” Kopp told Gizmodo. “That long ago, there wasn’t a large ice sheet in Antarctica. That’s kinda what you’d expect to be the long-term response.”

In Kopp’s mind, the major uncertainty is how long it will take us to get to that point. “The near-term change is harder to figure out than the long term change,” he says, explaining that when modelers add or subtract fine-scale physical mechanisms, the century predictions can fluctuate dramatically.

“You may have a better idea of how far you’re going to be driving over an hour versus over the next five minutes,” he says.

While the short-term consequences of unabated carbon emissions aren’t totally clear, it seems there’s only one way things can end for Antarctica if we do burn all of our fossil reserves. The tremendous long-term melt has to do with the fact that CO2 is a pretty long-lived greenhouse gas.

“The Earth stays hot for a long time,” Caldeira says. “Even though, in all of our scenarios, most of the fossil fuel is burnt within a century or two, the CO2 persists in the atmosphere for many thousands of years.”

These are some pretty darn sobering facts, but aren’t we being just a little alarmist here? After all, we’re still hoping to limit our carbon emissions to an additional 600 Gt of carbon. We’d have to really screw up to burn nearly 20 times that amount, wouldn’t we?

Yep, we would! But the fact remains that we’re running out of time to meet our 600 Gt / 2ºC warming target. If we don’t come to some serious carbon reduction resolutions at the Paris climate conference this December, we’ll be steering ourselves into very uncharted territory.

Perhaps we need a little dose of worst-case to kick our bums into gear.

[MIKA27]

Let's Watch Ten Minutes Of Star Wars: Battlefront Gameplay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGRuSVpdWo8

Because it’s there, and it’s amazing.

A calming sensation wafted over me as I watched this video, recorded during the closed alpha test on PC and uploaded to YouTube by Jake McNeill (via Gamespot). I’ve been worrying over the new movies lately — probably due to the toys hitting stores — and this clip helped me come to terms with it. No matter what happens, I’ll still have Hoth to fall back on.

Of course by “fall back on” I mean “die on,” over and over again.

[MIKA27]

1974 PONTIAC FIREBIRD TRANS AM 455 SUPER DUTY

The 455 Super Duty version of the 1974 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am is widely considered to be the last of the original high-performance muscle cars. As the restrictions on engine emissions became ever more stringent the compression ratios dropped, power output plummeted and 1/4 mile times increased for the first time in decades.

The last holdouts in this long battle with environmental legislation were the engineers at Pontiac, who somehow managed to get the performance version of their 455 cubic inch (7.5 litre) V8 approved for production – a feat many considered impossible.

This Super Duty engine featured a strengthened cylinder block with 4-bolt main bearings and additional iron in certain stress points for increased strength. A nodular iron crankshaft was used with enhancements over the stock version, the connecting rods and pistons were made from forged aluminium and the cylinder heads had been re-designed to increase flow.

In early 1973 the Trans Am 455 Super Duty was road tested by the boffins at Car and Driver, to say they loved the car would be a significant understatement. They took the car to the Orange County International Raceway in Irvine, California for 1/4 mile testing and managed a best time of 13.751 seconds. Needless to say they were very impressed with the performance – especially considering the fact that their test car was fitted with an automatic transmission.

In 1974 Pontiac built just 212 examples of the Trans Am 455 Super Duty, there were a few reasons for the relatively low numbers but perhaps first and foremost was the effect of the 1973 Oil Crisis. Gasoline prices had shot up to unheard of levels which had resulted in 7.5 litre V8s suddenly looking a little excessive.

The car you see here is a recently restored 1974 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am 455 Super Duty in its original factory colour scheme with its original matching numbers engine and chassis. It’s not known how many of the 212 cars from this model year have survived but its unlikely there are many that present as well as this one, if you’d like to add it to your own collection it’ll be selling at the Barrett-Jackson Las Vegas Auction on the 24th to the 26th of September 2015.

If you’d like to read more about the car or register to bid you can click here.

[MIKA27]

Elon Musk and Past Nuclear Explosions on Mars

In an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk proposed his own solution for raising the temperature on Mars to make it habitable for humans: “Drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles.” While some are debating whether this is feasible and if it will actually work, perhaps we should consider others who say that there have already been nuclear explosions on Mars that didn’t appear to be successful and instead left the Red Planet in the poor and radioactive it’s in today.

Martian polar ice caps contain water and carbon dioxide which a nuclear explosion might release into the atmosphere, causing an eventual greenhouse effect that would heat the planet and liquefy water. It might take thousands of devices and centuries for the eventual warming to occur – if it does at all.

These explosions might instead cause a cloud cover that creates a nuclear winter, making the planet even less hospitable than it already is and killing any microorganisms that are living on or below the surface. There is some thought that this may have happened before.

Locations of ancient nuclear blasts according to Dr. John Brandenburg

In his 2015 book, “Death on Mars: The Discovery of a Planetary Nuclear Massacre,” physicist Dr. John Brandenburg proposes that Mars was once inhabited and its two advanced civilizations – Cydonians and Utopians – were hit by nuclear explosions triggered by alien invaders, wiping them out and leaving high concentrations of Xenon-129 in the atmosphere. Dr. Brandenburg has also theorized that a separate natural nuclear explosion could have given Mars its red color.

Mushroom cloud photographed by India’s Mars Orbiter Mission

Then there’s the mushroom cloud on Mars seen in an image taken in 2014 by the India’s Mars Orbiter Mission. No explanation has been given for the cloud nor why the orbiter just happened to be pointed at the spot when and where it occurred. If it was a nuclear explosion, it didn’t help.

Is Musk serious or just throwing ideas against a Martian crater wall to see what sticks? Should we nuke Mars into a better place?

Have we heard this before? Should Elon instead focus on electric cars and making Earth a more hospitable place for humans?

[MIKA27]

NBA Legend Moses Malone Passes Away

Three-time NBA MVP and Pro Basketball Hall of Famer Moses Malone died Sunday in Norfolk, Virginia, at the age of 60.

Det. Jeffrey Scott of the Norfolk Police Department confirmed that Malone died in a Norfolk hotel room. He said there was no indication of foul play. Malone's body was discovered when he failed to report to a celebrity golf tournament in which he was scheduled to play.

"We are stunned and deeply saddened by the passing of Hall of Famer Moses Malone, an NBA legend gone far too soon," NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. "Known to his legions of fans as the 'Chairman of the Boards,' Moses competed with intensity every time he stepped on the court.

"... He was among the most dominant centers ever to play the game and one of the best players in the history of the NBA and the ABA. Even more than his prodigious talent, we will miss his friendship, his generosity, his exuberant personality, and the extraordinary work ethic he brought to the game throughout his 21-year pro career. Our thoughts are with Moses' family and friends during this difficult time."

Malone, named one of the NBA's 50 greatest players, was the Finals MVP in 1983, as he led the Philadelphia 76ers to the title.

"Moses holds a special place in our hearts and will forever be remembered as a genuine icon and pillar of the most storied era in the history of Philadelphia 76ers basketball," the 76ers said in a statement Sunday.

The 6-foot-10 center averaged a double-double -- 20.6 points per game and 12.2 rebounds -- while playing for eight teams over 20 NBA seasons and led the league in rebounding six times -- including five straight seasons from 1980-85.

His 16,212 rebounds still rank fifth on the NBA's all-time list, while his 27,409 career points rank eighth. The 12-time All-Star also holds NBA records for offensive rebounds in a career (6,731), season (587) and game (21).

"When I talked to his son [Moses Malone Jr.] this morning, he couldn't get it out," former Houston Rockets teammate John Lucas told ESPN. "I kept saying, 'What are you saying?' And he told me. ... I was shocked. Moses was one of the best people that I had ever met. ... A true professional, on and off the court."

Moses Malone Jr. told Fox 26 Houston that his father was his "best friend."

"He taught us so much about life. He came from nothing," Malone Jr. said. "He taught us how to work hard and respect people, love your family and always do the right thing. He's a good person. He was always there to help people. He cared about people who had less than him."

Malone was the first player to go pro right out of high school, signing with the Utah Stars of the American Basketball Association in 1974. He played the following season for the Spirits of St. Louis before moving to the Buffalo Braves after the ABA-NBA merger in 1976.

He also played for the Rockets, 76ers (twice), Milwaukee Bucks, Washington Bullets, Atlanta Hawks and the San Antonio Spurs, with whom he finished his career during the 1994-95 season.

His No. 24 was retired by the Rockets, with whom he won the MVP in 1979 and 1982.

"Everyone in the organization is deeply saddened by the passing of Moses Malone," Rockets owner Leslie Alexander said in a statement. "Moses was a true gentleman and one of the great Rockets and greatest NBA players, of all time. He will be forever missed. Our deepest condolences go out to his family and friends."

Malone joined the 76ers in 1983 and added his third MVP award while leading the 76ers to that championship after making his famed "Fo', Fo', Fo'," prediction that the Sixers would win their playoff series in four-game sweeps.

He wasn't far off: The Sixers lost just one game in that postseason before sweeping the Lakers in the NBA Finals, with Malone winning finals MVP award after averaging 26 points in that postseason.

"No one person has ever conveyed more with so few words -- including three of the most iconic in this city's history," 76ers CEO Scott O'Neil said. "His generosity, towering personality and incomparable sense of humor will truly be missed."

Malone's death comes shortly after the passing after another 76ers center, Darryl Dawkins.

Malone was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001 and attended the induction ceremonies for the year's class in Springfield, Massachusetts this weekend before returning to his native Virginia.

[MIKA27]

WOODFORD RESERVE DOUBLE DOUBLE OAKED BOURBON

Woodford Reserve amped things up a couple years ago with the release of Double Oaked, and now, they've taken things even further with Double Double Oaked Bourbon. The most recent release in their Distillery Series — which Master Distiller Chris Morris uses to experiment with special batches — sees Double Oaked matured for an additional year in heavily toasted lightly charred new oak barrels. More time in the barrel means more complex flavors, including a spicier finish you won't find in regular Double Oaked.

[MIKA27]

Blue lava is real and it is here on Earth

ELECTRIC blue lava glowing brightly as it creeps down a mountainside looks like something out of a UFO film.

But these staggering new photographs were taken right here on Earth.

They look digitally enhanced but this molten rock really does glow blue – naturally.

The bizarre phenomena happens at the Ijen volcano – in Indonesia – and you can go to see it for yourself.

MYSTERIOUS: Ijen volcano Indonesia – from afar

It is a two-hour walk to the volcano

The blue glow is caused by sulphur gas bursting from cracks in the volcano and igniting at 6,000C.

The flames can shoot out 16ft high.

The lava reaches temperatures of 6,000C

Sulphur lava creates blue flames on other valances but Ijen's crater is the biggest in the world.

It is a two-hour hike to the mountain and another 45 minutes down to the lava.

The glow is caused by sulphur

Photographer Reuben Wu took these snaps at night so they are only lit by the flames and moonlight.

They pictures have literally lit up the internet.

You can see more of his images on his website.

[MIKA27]

China Could Be The First Country To Land On The Moon's Far Side

The far side of the moon has long been a tantalising mystery. But China, a latecomer to the lunar landing game, could soon make history as the first country to touch its surface.

State media reports from China this week confirm the country’s intention to send a Chang’e-4 landing probe to the far side of the moon before 2020. Previous probes have imaged the far side of the moon, but if successful, China would become the first country to land on it.

With its Chang’e spacecraft series — named after the moon goddess in Chinese mythology — China has spent the last several years building the capacity to perform an ambitious lunar sample return mission.

In December 2013, China landed a Chang’e-3 on the moon’s Earth-facing side, becoming the third country in the world to touch our nearest neighbour. Last year, China completed its first lunar return mission, with a Chang’e-5 test vehicle swinging around the moon’s far side, snapping a gorgeous photo of the Earth (above), and sending its sample return module back home.

According to Zou Yongliao, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the goal of Chang’e-4 will be to study geologic conditions and low frequency radio waves.”If we can can place a frequency spectrograph on the far side, we can fill a void,” Yongliao said.

If that wasn’t enough, the Chinese space program is creeping up yet another major accomplishment this fall, with the impending launch of its new Long March 6 rocket.

[MIKA27]

Get Your Next Iron Bank Withdrawal In Quarters -- Game Of Thrones Pinball Is Here

Don’t act so surprised that pinball is still a thing, sometimes knocking around a steel ball can be just as satisfying as gunning down a room full of virtual zombies. And even moreso when the table features swords, dragons, and even the Iron Throne from Game of Thrones.

The latest creation from Stern Pinball has players choosing their allegiance — be it to the Starks, Lannisters, Greyjoys, Baratheons, Martells, or Tyrells — and then battling against the other families in 3D castles and other environments.

The dragon at the top of the table is animated and breathes fire across the land through a clever use of animated LEDs, and in addition to sound effects from the series, actor Rory McCann who plays Sandor Clegane — aka The Hound — narrates the action.

Serious Game of Thrones collectors, or arcade owners, will probably want to opt for the Limited Edition version of the pinball table which comes with a hefty $US8,795 price tag. But Premium and Pro versions are also available for $US7,595 and $US5,995 respectively, if you’re already overdrawn at the Iron Bank.

[MIKA27]

Legendary Pictures Releases Krampus Trailer:

With a delightful mix of holidays and horror, Legendary Pictures has released a new trailer for their Christmas-themed thriller: Krampus.

The lack of holiday spirit from young Max, dismayed by his family fighting, unleashes a demonic force, “Santa’s shadow”, known as Krampus. This thing is as evil as they come, and hell-bent on punishing non-believers. The fractured family must bind together to stay alive, as traditional holiday icons turn malevolent and attack. What makes this film even more spooky is that it’s based on an actual ancient legend!

Also part comedy, the movie contains stars Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Allison Tolman, Conchata Ferrell, Stefania Lavie Owen, and Krista Stadler.

Krampus and the other creatures in the film were created by a teamwork between Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, a formidable duo renowned for the amazing work they tackled on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, along with King Kong and many more.

Michael Dougherty (Trick ‘r Treat) did the writing and directing, while Zach Shields and Todd Casey co-wrote. Production was done by Legendary’s Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Alex Garcia, and Dougherty. Universal Pictures will be releasing the film on December 4.

[Habana Mike]

This Is How You Assemble A 21st Century Spacecraft

You’re looking at the critical first manufacturing step being taken to get the United States on the way to Mars.

NASA has just published a whole set of images taken on Saturday in the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where Lockheed Martin engineers welded together the first two segments of theOrion crew module, in preparation for Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1).

The core of the Orion spacecraft consists of seven large aluminium pieces. The first weld connects the tunnel, that allow astronauts to move between the module and other spacecraft, to the forward bulkhead, which houses many critical systems such as the reentry parachutes.

Welding a spacecraft, however, requires the highest possible technology level our age can offer. As theofficial NASA press release states:

Engineers have undertaken a meticulous process to prepare for welding. They have cleaned the segments, coated them with a protective chemical and primed them. They then outfitted each element with strain gauges and wiring to monitor the metal during the fabrication process. Prior to beginning work on the pieces destined for space, technicians practiced their process, refined their techniques and ensured proper tooling configurations by welding together a pathfinder, a full-scale version of the current spacecraft design.

Through collaborations across design and manufacturing, teams have been able to reduce the number of welds for the crew module by more than half since the first test version of Orion’s primary structure was constructed and flown on the Exploration Flight Test-1 last December. The Exploration Mission-1 structure will include just seven main welds, plus several smaller welds for start and stop holes left by welding tools. Fewer welds will result in a lighter spacecraft.

During the coming months as other pieces of Orion’s primary structure arrive at Michoud from machine houses across the country, engineers will inspect and evaluate them to ensure they meet precise design requirements before welding. Once complete, the structure will be shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida where it will be assembled with the other elements of the spacecraft, integrated with SLS and processed before launch.

According to the plans, when everything is completed the Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) flight will test Orion and SLS (Space Launch System) rocket together on September 30th 2018, and the spacecraft will fly around the Moon during a seven day mission. Until then, feast your eyes on these awesome factory photos.

Looks like a pretty damn fancy Roulette wheel to me.....

[MIKA27]

New Discoveries Could Explain What Happened To The Lost Colony Of Roanoke

CROATOAN. The word was found written on a fencepost in the lost colony of Roanoke, and it still intrigues us after 425 years. But this 16th century settlement is more than a legend. It’s also the subject of archaeological and historical investigations that are now starting to yield answers.

The search for the island’s so-called lost colony is uniquely American. Groups dedicated to searching for the lost colonists are diverse, ranging from scientists to weekenders and organised amateurs who have turned the search into a tourism opportunity, boat rides included. Roanoke has been immortalised in ghost stories, and played a role in the colonial tension that underpins so much of US culture. Facebook groups are dedicated looking for the DNA of the lost settlers in modern-day Americans, possibly descended from the marriage of remaining settlers to Indians, thanks to ubiquitous genetic testing.

Over the past few years, the momentum behind the search has increased, spurred by recent technological advances in archaeology. As we learn more about it, the disappearance of Roanoke’s colonists has become an incredibly compelling moment in US history — one that involves great scientists and mathematicians, extreme weather events worse than anything we’ve seen today, and a far more complex set of events than a group of 16th century Europeans simply vanishing into thin air.

Site X

Many recent discoveries about Roanoke have been spurred by the First Colony Foundation, a non-profit founded 11 years ago in North Carolina. In 2012, a member of the foundation noticed two patches in a425-year-old map of the coastline painted by John White, the leader of the colonists. In 1587, White went back to England for supplies and returned to find only the remains of the Roanoke colony and the word “CROATOAN.”

His map of the area, which is in the British Museum, had never been examined using modern technology like x-ray spectroscopy, infrared imaging, and raman spectroscopy. First Colony asked the museum to take a closer look at the document — known as the Virginea Pars map — and the new analysis revealed the biggest break in the search for the lost Roanoke colonists in centuries.

A new analysis of John White’s 1580s map of Virginia revealed a hidden marking beneath a patch

Beneath one of White’s patches was a blue-and-red symbol marking the location where Roanoke’s colonists tried to resettle. It’s about 60 miles west of Roanoke itself. This interpretation of the map makes sense because it fits with White’s own writings, where he describes a plan to move the colony “50 miles into the maine” once he got back from England. Could the colonists have moved during the years he was away? Perhaps they split up, with some moving to the fort’s marked location, while the reference to CROATOAN was a signal that others had moved to nearby Croatoan Island (today known as Hatteras Island) to await White’s return.

And so Site X was born: A rough approximation of the location of this mysterious hidden fort marking.

Archaeologists use ground-penetrating radar to determine dig sites, below. First Colony Foundation.

It’s here that archaeologists from First Colony have been digging for the past two years. In August, the foundation announced that it had found remarkable archaeological evidence of 16th century Europeans at Site X. Among more than 30 artifacts recovered here (including artifacts like nails and ceramics from both Indian and European sources that date from well after the Roanoke era) they found shards of a type of ceramics called Surrey-Hampshire Border ware. These helped researchers pin a date on the site.

Border ware, as it’s often called, was common among settlers of the Virginia company. But when the company failed in 1624, no new colonists were bringing the stuff to the area. Thus, finding it at Site X is a pretty good indication that at least some of the artifacts found dated from the time of the Roanoke colonists.

The shards, along with a few other artifacts and the new map findings, “suggest the likelihood that a small number of Roanoke colonists were present at Site X for an undetermined length of time,” the archaeological brief concludes. The response to the news has been “overwhelming,” said First Colony’s Nick Luccketti, an archaeologist on the dig. It could be proof that Roanoke colonists survived beyond the confines of the island where they left their last known trace of existence.

“I think it’s a very exciting possibility,” said New York University historian Karen Ordahl Kupperman, whose book Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony is a lynchpin for modern scholarship on Roanoke. Kupperman has studied Roanoke for decades, developing a hypothesis that the colonists may have broken up into distinct groups and assimilated into local Indian communities (Croatoan was the name of an Indian group who lived on Roanoke, as well as the name of the present-day Hatteras Island).

There’s also a good chance we’ve figured out what drove the settlers from their island. “They knew that Roanoke wasn’t a good place to build a settlement,” Kupperman says. They were painfully aware that there was little fresh water available to the colony — especially not during a historic drought.

The Terrible Drought

As Kupperman explains in her book, another thread in the Roanoke saga deals with drought — specifically, a “mega-drought” seemingly caused by a horrible El Nino.

In 1998, an archaeologist at the College of William and Mary named Dennis Blanton published a paper inScience reporting the results of a tree ring analysis of some very, very old bald cypresses in Virginia. Blanton himself described his findings as “incredible:” The worst drought in 800 years took place in the three years after the colonists arrived at Roanoke. The absolute worst season occurred in 1587, right after White left for England.

“The Roanoke and Jamestown colonies have both been criticised for poor planning, poor support, and for a startling indifference to their own subsistence,” wrote Blanton. “But the tree-ring reconstruction indicates that even the best planned and supported colony would have been supremely challenged by the climatic conditions of 1587-1589 and 1606-1612.” Further south, Spanish colonists were suffering, too. In fact, a Spanish colony on what is today known as Parris Island, in South Carolina, was also abandoned due to drought in 1587.

“It was the worst possible time to try to start a colony,” says Kupperman. Even the Indians, who were well-established on the Outer Banks, would have suffered — and since the colonists needed to trade with them for food, the Europeans would have only made things worse.

Could this severe weather have caused the demise of the colony? We will probably never know for sure. But this unprecedented drought could have spurred the colonists to move towards Site X, seeking better water sources and farming conditions.

A Lost Era of Renaissance Science

Oddly, Americans’ obsession with the vanished colonists has led to a kind of historical amnesia about the legacy of Roanoke — at least beyond the mystery.

As Kupperman points out, before Sir Thomas Ralegh (or Raleigh as it is often spelled) organised the Roanoke colonists, he sent two other missions to the New World. One, which began in 1585, brought some of Europe’s best scientific minds to North America. Ralegh organised the 1585 expedition to survey the region for England, and he sent people like Thomas Harriot, then a young mathematician, and Ralegh’s assistant, Joachim Gans, a German metallurgist, and of course John White, the eventual leader of the Roanoke colony, the discoverer of its disappearance, and an avid watercolorist.

Together, the trio carried out what Kupperman calls “major scientific work” in the New World.

“The towne of Pomeiock,” by John White.

Gans has been called “the first technologist or material scientist in English America.” He was an expert in mining, and immediately set up a workshop to examine local rocks for precious ores. The metal-flecked remains of his lab, which Harriot used for scientific experiments as well, were uncovered by archaeologists on Roanoke in the early 1990s.

Why did Ralegh want a metallurgist on his crew? Keep in mind, this was a mission that was meant to bring back information about the resources for the taking in this New World. Resources like metals and minerals — which an expert like Gans could identify — would provide proof that a colony was worth supporting.

Then there was Thomas Harriot: A polymath whose discoveries rivaled those of the most famous scientists of his day, but weren’t well-known until this century. Most of his work remained unpublished — perhaps because he was suspected of atheism, Kupperman suggests — but in our time, he has been revealed as remarkably prescient. Not only did he make major breakthroughs in optics, but he is now widely thought to have been the first person to draw a picture of the moon while observing it through a telescope — before even Galileo.

As his papers have been rediscovered over the past 100 years, Kupperman says, “he’s now considered up there with Keppler and Galileo and the major Renaissance scientists.” Besides being a prolific scientist, Harriot also gave us our most vivid look at this new world. One of the few things he did publish was his account of the mission, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. His research was bolstered by his knowledge of Algonquin, which he learned from two Algonquin leaders who journeyed back to England with the first Virginia expedition.

“The Carte of All the Coast of Virginia,” a map that was engraved by Theodor de Bry but based on John White’s own map, published in Thomas Hariot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia.

And then there was White, arguably the most lucid example of this historical amnesia surrounding Roanoke. Most of us know White in one way: As the man who found the abandoned colony. His discovery of the word CROATOAN was, for centuries, all the evidence we had of the colony’s fate. White was also the grandfather of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the US. Dare was numbered among the lost colonists, and her name that has inspired its own genre of ghost stories tied to this history of the region.

But White was also an artist, and his work represents some of the only visual documentation of Indian life in sixteenth century America. Part of his role on the mission was to capture the Indians’ way of life. His paintings are vivid, precisely detailed, and give us a glimpse of Indian farming, dress, social conventions, and more. But they also show us how the Europeans interpreted their customs.

75 paintings by White were shown at the British Museum in 2007, rekindling interest in the work of both White and Harriot once more. They are “an incomparable record of America’s natural resources and native society as they were when Old and New worlds met,” as Kim Sloan put it in her introduction to the exhibition’s companion book. “We have no picture of Jamestown except for a rudimentary triangle on a map, nor do we have a representation of Plymouth or Boston,” Kupperman writes in her own book. “We all owe a debt of gratitude to John White and to Sir Walter Ralegh, who recognised the necessity of sending a painter and a scientist to his American colony.”

Yet those incredible images, and what they meant for Europe, are pretty much forgotten alongside the accomplishments of those first colonists — at least outside of academia. “It’s really important,” Kupperman says, yet “it kind of fades away.”

The amnesia effect feels familiar, considered in context with the way we consume information today — when nuggets of mystery explode into mushroom clouds of sensation. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being excited or intrigued by the “lost colony,” but the ghost story is, in many ways, less exciting than the fact that this 500-year-old mystery is beginning to unravel thanks to technological leaps forward and clever historical re-readings of evidence long forgotten.

It’s strange to think that as we get further away from a discrete event in time, our odds of understanding it get better. The forward march of technology is responsible for the biggest Roanoke breakthroughs of the past two decades.

“When I was just starting out, an archaeologist told me that the best practice is to leave half of the site un-dug,” Kupperman recalls. “They didn’t have ground penetrating radar 50 years ago, and who knows what they will have that will allow them to survey large areas and find evidence in the future.” As to the First Colony Foundation’s latest finding, the organisation plans to continue the search and test their hypothesis that Roanoke’s legacy extended far longer than previously thought. For now, “what limits our research is ability to raise funds,” as Luccketti told me. Plenty more soil remains to be searched, and down the road, it’s entirely possible that cheaper, better technology will make that search a little easier and a little cheaper.

Our collective obsession with the lost colony is also what has spurred its continued study — in some ways, the tall tale is an essential part of the real story. So piece by piece, the puzzle of Roanoke has become more complete over the past century. And it’s likely the most important pieces are yet to come.

[MIKA27]

American Airlines accidentally used the wrong plane to fly to Hawaii

This goes without saying, but planes aren't like socks. You can't mix and match them. Each is uniquely identified and has a precise schedule with the airlines. That's why it's pretty shocking to hear that American Airlines used the wrong plane on August 31st to fly over a hundred passengers from LA to Honolulu on flight 31.

Passengers in Los Angeles boarded and took off in an Airbus A321. That's the right model of plane, but it wasn't exactly the right plane. Not only did this A321 have a different tail number from the plane that should have flown the route, but it wasn't certified to fly a long over-water route.

Specifically, the A321 variant used by American Airlines lacked ETOPS (Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards) from the FAA, according to Brian Sumers, an aviation expert who first reported on the incident. The certification is required for planes with two engines to fly long-range routes far from emergency landing sites — like that from the west coast to Hawaii. With certain levels of certification, the planes are approved to fly for up to three hours with only a single jet engine in operation. The FAA strictly forbids the use of non-certified planes on such routes.

Although the mixup is an odd one, it may not have been a particularly dangerous one. According comments from an American Airlines spokesperson, both A321 variants are both equipped with similar safety gear, including life rafts. While the equipment on board is similar, Sumers reports that airlines only seek certification for planes that fly extended operation routes since the verification can be time-consuming and costly.

In a statement, airline spokesperson Casey Norton said, "When we noticed it, we immediately undertook an internal investigation, and we alerted the FAA." Norton added, "We are checking our internal procedures, everything that led up to the departure ... We have gone back and made some changes to software systems."

It appears American noticed the mixup too late, however: the plane completed its flight to Hawaii instead of rerouting to LA. The plane was then immediately flown back to LA, empty, and the scheduled return flight was canceled.

It's not clear how the wrong plane ended up going down the runway at LAX, but it might have to do something with new equipment changes on the route. American only started using its A321s on the LA to Honolulu route a couple of weeks before the incident — it previously used Boeing aircraft for the flight.

[MIKA27]

Malcolm Turnbull Resigns As Communications Minister

Wanted: new Federal Communications Minister. That’s right. Malcolm Turnbull has just resigned his position as Communications Minister in a bid to seize the Prime Ministership from Tony Abbott.

After months of speculation over whether Turnbull would challenge Abbott for the nation’s top job, the Communications Minister decided it was time to change the leadership.

Turnbull has just held a press conference in Canberra where he said that it’s time for “a new style of leadership”.

In order to challenge the Prime Minister, Turnbull resigned his position as Communications Minister.

All this is set against the backdrop of the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network, which is holding hearings in Canberra today. The hearing has since been suspended.

Developing…

MIKA: This clown couldn't even manage the NBN...

[Fuzz]

Malcolm Turnbull Resigns As Communications Minister

MIKA: This clown couldn't even manage the NBN...

But Malcolm was the man who brought the internet to Australia!

[MIKA27]

FBI Didn't Bother To Check Facts Before Accusing Physicist Of Being A Spy For China

Temple University physics professor Xiaoxing Xi made headlines back in May, when he was indicted for allegedly sharing “sensitive” information with colleagues in China about a piece of laboratory equipment used in his superconductivity research. Xi maintained his innocence from the start. On Friday, he was vindicated: the U.S. Justice Department dropped the charges against him, with a vague statement about new information coming to light.

This “new information” came in the form of several sworn affidavits from leading scientists confirming that schematics Xi sent to Chinese scientists had nothing to do with the proprietary device. Apparently nobody involved in the investigation thought to run their case past knowledgeable scientific experts before bursting into Xi’s suburban home with guns drawn, ransacking his house, and leading him off in handcuffs in front of his wife and daughter.

“I don’t expect them to understand everything I do,” Xi told the New York Times. “But the fact that they don’t consult with experts and then charge me? Put my family through all of this? Damage my reputation? They shouldn’t do this. This is not a joke. This is not a game.”

Xi’s ordeal is just the latest in a string of similar recent cases, as the U.S. government cracks down on so-called “economic espionage.” A government-employed hydrologist in Ohio, Sherry Chen, was cleared of similar charges in March. And around the same time Xi was indicted, in an unrelated case, federal prosecutors in San Francisco accused a Chinese professor and five other Chinese nationals of stealing wireless technology from American companies.

The case against Xi concerned a non-disclosure agreement he signed back in 2006 with Superconductor Technologies Inc. (STI) in exchange for access to a prototype device he co-invented called a “pocket heater.” (Xi did that work for Conductus, which later merged with STI.) That sounds like something you shove in your pockets to keep warm during the winter in upstate New York. It’s actually a handy device for creating ultra-thin films of a superconducting material called magnesium diboride.

That’s Xi’s specialty. Spraying these kinds of thin films over other, less conductive materials can eliminate electrical resistance at very low temperatures — something of critical importance for the electronic circuitry used in everything from smartphones to supercomputers. So it’s of great interest to electronics manufacturers, telecommunications companies, and the U.S. Department of Defence, to name a few. Here is a video of Xi talking about his research.

The proverbial smoking gun in the Justice Department’s case was a May 14, 2010 email Xi sent to Chinese contacts about delivery of unspecified technology to a lab in China, as well as three other emails Xi sent later that year to other Chinese colleagues, offering to help them build a world-class thin film laboratory. Those exchanges seemed to suggest that Xi was trying to leverage his access to U.S. trade secrets for a prestigious appointment in China.

Assuming the unnamed technology was the pocket heater, investigators figured they had their man and charged Xi with four counts of wire fraud in May, alleging that he “repeatedly reproduced, sold, transferred, distributed, and otherwise shared the Device and the technology of the Device with and exploited it for the benefit of third parties in China, including government entities.” Although he was soon released on bail, Xi was forced to step down as department chair at Temple and was placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the case. His passport was confiscated (he is a naturalized US citizen), and he faced a maximum sentence of 80 years in prison and a $US1 million fine.

There was just one problem: the blueprints Xi shared with those Chinese colleagues weren’t for the pocket heater covered by the NDA at all, according to sworn statements from various scientists — including Ward S. Ruby, who co-invented the device. Rather, they concerned two different devices, along with other unrelated work on oxide thin films, none of which qualified as sensitive or restricted.

“These weren’t problems that made the case weak; these were problems that made the case non-existent,” Xi’s lawyer, Peter Zeidenberg, told APS News, the newsletter of the American Physical Society (APS), the largest professional organisation for physicists in the U.S. (Zeidenberg also defended Sherry Chen.) Xi was merely “engaged in routine academic collaboration.”

Zeidenberg tsaid that the U.S. government is justifiably concerned about leaked trade secrets to China, drawing an analogy with the fight against terrorism. “No one doubts how serious a threat that is,” he said. “But there is a danger of over-reacting to these threats in a way that could harm innocent people.” In Xi’s case, the government’s response smacks of racial profiling. As Zeidenberg told the New York Times, “If he was Canadian-American, or French-American, would this have ever even got on the government’s radar? I don’t think so.”

Michael Turner, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics in Chicago and a former APS president, confessed to being stunned at the failure of investigators to seek out the appropriate scientific expertise before indicting Xi. “What is slipping through because we don’t have the expertise to properly understand and accurately identify sensitive technology?” he told Gizmodo via email.

Current APS president Sam Aronson released the following statement about Xi’s exoneration:

“The leadership of the American Physical Society is immensely relieved to learn of the government’s dismissal of the charges against Professor Xiaoxing Xi. We are deeply concerned for Professor Xi and his family regarding the ordeal that they have recently endured. We hope that Professor Xi will rapidly be able to resume his research and teaching career in physics. On behalf of our members and the physics community, we are continuing to explore ways to work with US government entities to provide guidelines that we can communicate widely, in order to ensure the safety of scientists collaborating in perfectly legitimate ways with Chinese colleagues.”

Temple University provost Hai-Lung Dai did not immediately respond to our request for comment on whether Xi will resume full teaching and research duties now that his name has been cleared. There is also the question of whether Temple will help cover his legal fees — which are no doubt substantial — given that he wrote the emails that led to his indictment while doing work on behalf of the university.

Xi told APS News that the indictment may have seriously harmed his research program by delaying several potentially ground-breaking papers, since he was only allowed limited contact with his group over the summer. He was working on nine ongoing projects that rely on federal grants, several of which are coming up for renewal; not having results could put those grants in jeopardy.

Mostly, though, he wants to move on with his life. “I am relieved and really hope that this will [be] the end of a nightmare,” Xi said. “Of course, the damage has been done. I don’t know how long [it] would take for me to repair it.”

[MIKA27]

A Double Meteor Impact Hit Sweden 468 Million Years Ago

In the Swedish county of Jämtland, two large craters mark the site of a rare event: a double meteorite impact. The larger crater of the pair, a few miles south of the city of Östersund, is about 4.7 miles wide. A few miles away lies a smaller crater, nearly half a mile wide. The two craters are the first proven site of a double impact that researchers have identified so far.

The impacts were part of a rain of meteorites that battered Earth during that period: the shrapnel of a collision out in the asteroid belt 10 million years earlier. “Around 470 million years ago, two large asteroids collided in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and many fragments were thrown off in new orbits. Many of these crashed on Earth, such as these two in Jämtland,” explained geologist Erik Sturkell in a statement.

Jämtland is on dry land today, but 458 million years ago, it lay beneath 1600 feet of ocean. When two large meteorites plummeted through Earth’s atmosphere and into the ocean that is now Jämtland, their impact forced the ocean outward in a huge wave and dug a pair of huge craters in the sea floor.

For about a minute and a half, the two new craters were dry. Then, says Sturkell, “The water rushed back in, bringing with it fragments from the meteorites mixed with material that had been ejected during the explosion and with the gigantic wave that tore away parts of the sea bed.”

Sturkell and his colleagues linked the two craters by comparing their layers of rock and sediment. They found that the layer just above the level of the impact was the same age in both craters, and the sequence of layers above that was the same in both craters.

[MIKA27]

GAMEVICE FOR APPLE IPHONE 6

For a gamer on the go, your phone is your console whenever you are away from home, and for the gamer with an iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, or 6s Plus, travel time is about to get that much better. The talented team at Gamevice put their name on the gaming map by building a system that turned iPads into full-fledged mobile gaming consoles. Now they’re back in the lab, developing a new version built for Apple’s latest iPhone iteration.

Gamevice smashes through the barriers of touch screen gaming, giving your phone a level up by adding ABXY fire buttons, a classic D-Pad, and dual analog joysticks, as well as power and pause buttons. It comes equipped with an audio DAC – 3.5mm headphone jack, 200 mAh battery with 4 LED power indicator, and a lightening connector so no matter how many times you die, your Gamevice never will. The device will retail for $99 when it hits the retail scene this holiday season. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

BRABUS MERCEDES-BENZ AMG GT S

Heads won’t just turn; with a top speed of 201 mph, heads will whip when an uber sleek BRABUS upgraded Mercedes-Benz flies past. Since 1977 BRABUS has been offering aftermarket alterations, specializing in Mercedes-Benz, Smart, and Maybach vehicles, and this year heading into the 2015 Frankfurt Auto Show, the AMG GT S is going rogue.

With the addition of their newly developed PowerXtra B40 600 performance kit, BRABUS is ramping the sports car up to 600 horsepower and giving it a peak torque of 750 Nm (553 lb-ft). They’re stepping up the exterior with aerodynamic-enhancement components of clear-coated carbon, 21″ Monoblock F forged wheels, a sports suspension with a smorgasbord of settings, and a lightweight titanium, electronically muffled exhaust system. Inside they’ve added fine leather interiors and inlays of carbon and precious wood, just in case the superlative vehicular performance and envy of every guy alive wasn’t quite enough for you. The vehicle will be making its debut at the 2015 Frankfurt Auto Show.

[MIKA27]

INFENTO CONSTRUCTIBLE RIDES

Infento is like a real-size Lego or Meccano kit where you can build unlimited real rides together with your child! With several kits to choose from such as a wagon, tricycle, or bike, the unique rides are all constructed using a single hex tool, and all parts are designed to be multi-functional and multi-adjustable, meaning that when you´re in for something different or when a child outgrows their ride, the endless possibilities of Infento simply brings you a new ride

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5fQah7pmj8