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

[MIKA27]

Russian Meteor Shock wave Circled the Globe Twice:

The 10,000 ton asteroid that exploded above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February produced such a powerful shockwave that it raced around the world twice, according to a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Researchers report that 20 world-wide monitoring stations, designed to detect ultra-low frequency sound waves emanating from nuclear-test explosions, managed to record the waves produced by the asteroid’s explosion for the first time ever.

Traveling at hypersonic speeds, near Mach 60, the meteor experienced increasing air pressure as it pierced the denser part of Earth’s atmosphere, finally imploding 14 miles (23 kilometers) above the Earth. Hundreds of fragments rained down, with the largest pieces weighing up to half a ton.

Fragments of the Chelyabinsk meteorite are examined under a microscope at the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry in Moscow.

The research team also confirmed that the blast from this 56-feet-wide (17-meter-wide) space rock had an estimated force of 460 kilotons of TNT—equivalent to about 30 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.

The February 2013 event now ranks as the second largest impact on Earth since the Tunguska fireball in 1908. The 1908 event released nearly ten megatons of TNT and scorched millions of trees over hundreds of square miles.

The last comparable meteoroid atmospheric detonation occurred above the skies of Sulawesi, Indonesia, back in 2009 and was measured at 50 kilotons.

Scientists estimate a Chelyabinsk-like airburst occurs about once a century, while a much bigger Tunguska-like event, thankfully, may only come around once every few centuries.

[MIKA27]

Neuroscientist Says Human Head Transplants Are Totally Possible

At least one Italian scientist is completely and totally serious that head transplants on humans might soon be possible.

In a new paper, Dr Sergio Canavero, a member of the Turin Neuromodulation group, discusses how scientists have been experimenting with head transplants on animals for more than 40 years. But these doctors Frankenstein haven’t ever been able to complete the final step of connecting the spinal cord of one subject to the spinal cord of the other. Canavero thinks he’s found a solution:

The greatest technical hurdle to [a head transplant] is of course the reconnection of the donor’s (D)’s and recipients ®’s spinal cords. It is my contention that the technology only now exists for such linkage….

everal up to now hopeless medical connections might benefit from such a procedure.

A head transplant — not to be confused with the equally crazy brain transplant — involves decapitating a head and reattaching it to a donor body. Hypothetically, it’s a solution for quadriplegics experiencing widespread organ failure. It’s not going to help those people walk again, but say their bodies were failing them and their brains were still functioning? A head transplant would be a last resort.

Canavero uses the example of Case Western Reserve scientist Robert White to make his case. In 1970, White completed a head transplant with Rhesus monkeys. It was mostly successful — the recipient monkey was able to hear, taste, smell and see, and it survived for a while after the operation was complete.

But the procedure is incredible risky. Both patients have to be in the same operating room, and the head being transplanted has to be cooled to between 13C and 15C. The donor body must also be chilled and placed under cardiac arrest. Surgeons must move fast to attach the head, and once that’s done, the donor body’s heart can be restarted, and the rest of the body’s systems revived.

In summary, you have to be killed and chilled in order for a head transplant to happen.

The final step is the all-important spinal cord reconnection. This step has never even been attempted, so this is very, very theoretical. But Canavero cites an experiment from last week from Case Western Reserve and the Cleveland Clinic where scientists were able to sever and reattach the spinal cord in rats with moderate success. The rats were able to urinate again, but they couldn’t walk successfully. Canavero says this is possible in humans, by cutting cords with a super sharp knife then mechanically connecting the spinal cord of one person to the spinal cord of the other, fusing them together using a plastic, like polyethylene glycol.

Obviously this is all hypothetical. Very, very hypothetical. And there are plenty of ethical issues that come into question. But who knew Frankenstein had any basis in reality?

[MIKA27]

Samsungs new smartphone has highly diruptive Blowjob Feature:

http://youtu.be/g49C8OOIWbU

There’s nothing the new Samsung Apex can’t do. The smartphone lets you check your email, stream video, and it even gives you a blowjob (Moderators, the original article articulated this worse! ).

Seriously, smartphones these days are just full-service products. The take on smartphone market one-upsmanship obviously takes things to an unhinged level. But at least Samsung wouldn’t be stepping on anybody’s patent. I think.

[MIKA27]

Pierce Brosnan's 'darling daughter' Charlotte, 42, dies after three-year battle with ovarian cancer

Pierce Brosnan’s daughter Charlotte has died of ovarian cancer aged 42 after a three-year battle with the disease.

The actor paid tribute to his "darling daughter" in a statement which read: “On June 28 at 2pm my darling daughter Charlotte Emily passed on to eternal life, having succumbed to ovarian cancer.

“Charlotte fought her cancer with grace and humanity, courage and dignity. Our hearts are heavy with the loss of our beautiful dear girl.

“We pray for her and that the cure for this wretched disease will be close at hand soon.”

Charlotte’s mother Cassandra Harris, Brosnan’s first wife, died from the disease aged 43 in 1991.

The actor adopted step-daughter Charlotte and her brother Christopher in the 1980s after the death of their father and both children took Brosnan’s name. Brosnan and Cassandra had another son together, Sean, in 1983.

The James Bond actor married second wife journalist Keely Shaye in 2001 and the couple have two children together.

Charlotte is survived by her daughter Isabella, 15, her son Lucas, eight, and long-term partner Alex Smith.

[MIKA27]

Christian Bale Won't Be in 'Justice League'

'Dark Knight' star says he'll pass torch to the next Batman

Christian Bale will not reprise his role as Bruce Wayne/Batman in DC Comics' upcoming Justice League movie. The film's screenwriter, David S. Goyer, confirms that this incarnation of Batman will be a rebooted character.

Bale already hinted that he wouldn't return as Batman unless Christopher Nolan opted to do a fourth installment of his Dark Knight series – though the director's already decided against that.

"Chris [Nolan] always said he wanted to make it one film at a time," Bale told Entertainment Weekly. "And we ended up sitting there looking at each other, saying ‘We're about to make the third.' We never really knew if we were going to get to be there, but if that was how it was going to be, this was where it should end as well."

Bale went on to say that he hasn't spoken with anyone about the Justice League movie, though he wasn't upset to see the role of Batman go to a new actor: "It's a torch that should be handed from one actor to another. So I enjoy looking forward to what somebody else will come up with."

[MIKA27]

FANTASTIC DRIFTWOOD SCULPTURES FROM KNOCK ON WOOD

On the ocean shores of Washington State lie heaps of treasure… but it’s invisible to many eyes. The piles are masses of driftwood washed ashore from the tall woods of the northwest, and artist Jeffro Uitto is using it to create exquisite sculptures and furniture.

From a truly majestic rearing horse to a soaring eagle, Jeffro has a talent for finding just the right piece to make his works look gracefully realistic. To realize these pieces he spends hours sorting through his massive collection of wood collected on the shores of Tokeland, the banks of Smith Creek and in the valleys of the Willapa Hills.

Jeffro has been working with wood sculpture since he was in high school. When he isn’t surfing, he works out of a shop in Tokeland, Washington where he stores and dries the wood, and works with his pieces. Visitors are often impressed by the number of hand-made tools he employs in creating his pieces – each one perfectly tailored for the large scale job at hand. You can see more of Jeffro’s fantastic work, including many more furniture commissions, at Knock on Wood.

[MIKA27]

HEARTBREAKING FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS FROM TWITTER

“The barista put 3 pumps of caramel in my macchiato today. I clearly said 2!” Life is tough for “first-worlders” sometimes, so what’s the best way to vent these struggles? Twitter of course!

What better way to broadcast frustration about “serious problems” than to you 1,500 close friends around the web. This hilarious collection of tweets pokes fun at this all too common trend, juxtaposing stock images of despondent first world people dwelling on the sad trivialities of their lives.

These images are probably a wake-up call for some of us… too involved in the small stuff in our lives to look closer at what really matters and what should actually be a big deal.

[MIKA27]

MOTORCYCLE DIARIES: 1 MAN, 503 DAYS, 83,459 MILES

We all have dreams, but some of us turn them into a reality. Before he dives into his doctoral studies, Alejandro Chacon decided to pursue the adventure of a lifetime. He sold everything he had and left his home in El Paso, Texas to drive halfway around the world!

He went through Mexico, Central America, reached the Southernmost tip of Argentina, then went up through the Amazon and back up North all the way to Alaska and all the way home 503 days. His trip totaled 83,459 miles and he was able to see 22 countries along the way. He documented his adventures with his GoPro camera and compiled the highlights into the video below.

Alex has driven through every weather condition imaginable, camping at gas stations and parks, couch surfing, staying at hostels or with anyone kind enough to offer him shelter. He is riding to raise funds for Children of Uganda. Follow Alex and his adventures on his blog where you can also donate to keep his adventures going or hire him as a consultant to plan your very own adventure through South America!

MIKA: Pretty awesome stuff. You can also donate by Clicking here.

[MIKA27]

RUSSIANS RISK JAIL TIME CLIMBING PYRAMIDS FOR PICS

What we’ve been seeing lately is that some people will go to great lengths, risking jail time and their lives to get the perfect picture.

A team of Russian tourists have broken the law, climbing the Great Pyramids to bring us this collection of images. To get these risky shots, the photographers waited hours after closing time to escape the guards, knowing that getting caught could be punishable by up to three years in prison.

Although there is a reason for the rules, to preserve these national treasures, it’s pretty cool to see the pyramids from this perspective. But now that the novelty is over, let’s hope this doesn’t inspire copycats because security has most likely gone up since the release of these pictures. See more images from this dangerous excursion on EnglishRussia.com.

[Orion21]

Mika you are awesome. I love checking in on this thread when you post. Keep it coming!

[MIKA27]

Mika you are awesome. I love checking in on this thread when you post. Keep it coming!

Many thanks my friend, I love posting these and appreciate your post.

[MIKA27]

Command A Fleet Of Carry-Ons With This Supersonic Jet Fighter Luggage

Why put your luggage in the belly of an aircraft when your luggage can be the belly of an aircraft? Enter the Aviator collection, suitcases that look like they could take the flight to your destination all on their own.

Designed by Timothy Oulton, the Aviator collection is a four-piece set with a distressed aluminium finish designed to evoke the classic F-14 Tomcat’s badass titanium skin. And inside that metal shell is awesome fighter-jet blueprint suedette.

The only real downside is that while Aviator suitcases look like they’re made out of real fighter jet, they aren’t; it’s ordinary, flightless metal. Likewise, they can’t actually fly. But if you’ve got a few hundred dollars just lying around and are willing to trade conveniences like wheels for pure style, you can find these bad boys at a limited selection of retailers for prices starting at $400. Just slightly cheaper than your own fleet of jets.

[MIKA27]

Douglas Engelbart, Inventor Of The Computer Mouse, Has Died

Douglas C. Engelbart had a simple idea which would change the world of computing forever: he invented the humble — but now pervasive — computer mouse. Sadly, Engelbart has passed away.

When Engelbart was 25 he worked in a government aerospace laboratory in California — but that wasn’t enough. He needed more. Fortunately, he had somewhat of an epiphany: a grand vision of an information age which could expand human intelligence.

From there, he developed a series of inventions and innovations that pushed the limits of technology and made the Internet and the modern personal computer what they are today. But one invention stands out, head and shoulders above the rest: the computer mouse.

Having established an experimental research group at Stanford Research Institute called the Augmentation Research centre, he worked on a raft of computer interface devices. His first prototype mouse, built in 1963, was made of wood — wood! — with cute little metal wheels, and the device picked up its now universal name because of the cord that extended from its rear.

By the time he gave the now-famous Mother of All Demos, during which showed off a raft of technology, in December 1968 at the Convention Centre in San Francisco, it was a fully functioning input system. The device clearly rose to fame — but, like many an inspirational inventor, Engelbart never received any royalties for his mouse invention. He was content with merely changing the world.

Engelbart died on Tuesday July 2nd, aged 88, at his home in Atherton, Calif. His family has explained that the cause was kidney failure.

[MIKA27]

15 Tools That Helped Pioneers Survive On The American Frontier

American culture unapologetically romanticises the lives of the first pioneers. Through rose-coloured glasses, we see Manifest Destiny as fate, leading our heroic ancestors across a perfectly manicured landscape. In reality, the frontier was a terrifying, dangerous wilderness. And you were only as good as the tools you carried.

Pioneers were responsible for clearing their own land, building their homes, defending themselves, sewing their own clothes and hunting for their own food. And the devices and tools they brought with them — severely limited by weight and size — were vital lifelines to succeeding in all of those pursuits. So what were they?

An allegorical depiction of “American progress” carries telegraph wire westward. Behind her, settlers follow with stagecoaches, conestoga wagons, and railroads, symbolising the virtue of taming the western frontier. But, in truth, such conveniences took decades to appear.

This was the reality most settlers knew. A family in front of a typical sod house, in 1886, in Nebraska, Custer County. Instead of a plush toy the boy on the right is holding a young bull. Note the ornament high on the facade.

Pioneers would make their own clothes, from shearing the wool and spinning it into thread, to actually weaving the fabric and finally fashioning it into a garment.

A spinning wheel from the 1820s.

The print below shows two women preparing supper on a small, portable stove — a relative luxury — in front of their tents, in 1866.

A grain reaper was a vital piece of agricultural machinery. Invented by Cyrus H. McCormick in 1831, this contraption still serves as the basis for modern-day grain harvesting machines.

A grain fanner, from the 1850s, would blow air through wheat to separate the chaff — an otherwise time-consuming task.

Crude ferries made river crossing incredibly dangerous. Here, people cross the Red River, in Texas, during a flood in 1874.

“You need only one soap: Ivory soap,” proclaims this ad from 1898, which shows a pioneer washing with a novelty — floating! soap, at his campsite. You can observe other household objects and tools in the background as well.

Messengers were sent to warn the settlers of the Indian uprising, seen here in an illustration from 1899. Note the hand-operated plow and broad axe in the picture.

Farm kitchen cutlery and kitchenware.

By the late 19th century, families were more established. Here, we see a family standing in front of sod house with windmill on roof of adjoining building. Coburg, Nebraska, 1884-85.

Frontier utility knives: a butcher knife, a skinning knife and a small antique paring knife.

This apple crusher and cider press was high-tech for its time.

A cast iron stove from the 1820s.

A carving bench let craftsmen whittle and carve comfortably.

A lambskin money vest, from 1853, was designed to (at least in theory) protect a settler’s valuables. The vest has three rows of button pockets for holding gold and silver coins, the medium of exchange in California.

And finally the two ultimate survival tools for the pioneers. First, a colt revolver…

…and second, a Winchester.

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: This Thorium Reactor Has The Power Of A Norse God

The uranium-235 and uranium-238 we use in modern nuclear fission reactors are humanity’s single most energy-dense fuel source (1,546,000,000 MJ/L), but that potent power potential comes at a steep price — and not just during natural disasters. Its radioactive plutonium byproducts remain lethally irradiated for millennia. That’s why one pioneering Nordic company is developing an alternative fuel that doesn’t produce it.

When uranium is used in a conventional Light Water Reactor, it’s converted into plutonium (and if the U238 isotope is used, the result can be fissable Pu239). Even without the danger of weapons-grade plutonium proliferating from a country’s stores of radioactive waste, there’s not really an easy way to dispose of the byproduct. Our best answer so far has been burying it and hoping for the best. Instead, Thor Energy — a subsidiary of the Oslo-based Scatec group — wants to burn up that store of plutonium to power the very reactors that created it. All its system needs is the addition of thorium. A lot of it.

Luckily, thorium (Th232) is an abundant — albeit slightly radioactive — element. It’s estimated to be four times as common as uranium and 500 times as much as U238. It’s so common that it’s currently treated like a byproduct in the rare-earth mining industry.

Problem is, naturally occurring thorium doesn’t contain enough of its fissable isotope (Th231) to maintain criticality. But that’s where the plutonium comes in. What Thor energy did was mix ceramic thorium oxide (ThO2) with plutonium oxide (nuclear waste) in a 90:10 ratio to create thorium-MOX (mixed-oxide). The thorium oxide acts as a matrix that holds the plutonium in place as its used up.

This stuff could very well revolutionise nuclear power. Thorium-MOX can be formed into rods and used in current generation (Gen II) nuclear reactor with minimal retrofitting. Ceramic thorium has a higher thermal conductivity and melting point than uranium, meaning it can operate at a lower (and safer) internal pellet temperature with less chance of a meltdown, fewer fission gas emissions, and extended fuel cycles.

Most importantly, thorium doesn’t convert into plutonium — precisely the opposite, in fact. That is, the process consumes plutonium. We could be looking at a means of not only halting the growth American nuclear waste sites but actually reducing our stores of plutonium while simultaneously reducing the danger of nuclear proliferation. Sure, the thorium system does create waste of i’s own, but irradiated thorium doesn’t oxidize and remains more stable as it decays. What more could you want?

Thor Energy is currently testing the new technology on the small scale. A prototype reactor will power a paper mill in the town of Halden, Norway for the next five years. If the fuel proves to be commercially viable during that test, we could see a sea change in nuclear power by the end of the decade.

[MIKA27]

Paint Made From People: The Fascinating History Behind Extinct Colours

You’d think a paint named “mummy brown” would be the product of good marketing. In fact, it dates back to the 16th century, when actual mummies were ground up and sold as paint. On Hyperallergic today, Allison Meier takes a look at the surprisingly riveting history of extinct pigments.

It’s common knowledge that certain pigments — including the green paint that likely killed Napoleon — were eventually discovered as toxic and abandoned. But there are plenty of common colours that went extinct for other reasons. A few highlights from Meier’s list:

• Indian Yellow, unique because it contained the urine of Bihar province cows that were fed only mango leaves and water (it was eventually outlawed).
  
• Lapis Lazuli, the deep ultramarine that Yves Klein must’ve admired, made from the ground-up, eponymous precious gem (today, it goes for $US360 per 5g).
  
• Mummy Brown, the aforementioned pigment made from the ground-up remains of actual Egyptian mummies (both of the human and cat variety). “By the 16th century, despite legal restrictions, exporting mummies from Egypt to Europe to be ground up and used as ‘medicine’ was big business,” explains Art in Society. It was used up until the 19th century, when the supply of mummies ran dry.
  

It’s also worth pointing out that there’s a whole industry dedicated replicating these colours, if only just for preservationists working on restoring great works that used them.

[MIKA27]

Where The Most Important Part Of Your Battery Comes From

Lithium’s kind of a big deal. It powers everything from our gadgets to our cars — really our entire modern world. And that’s not changing any time soon; some analysts estimate that demand could grow up to 25 per cent over the next several years. But how does one harness the power of a metal that bursts into flame every time it gets wet? How do you even get it out of the ground?

What is Lithium?

Lithium (Greek for “stone”) is the third element on the periodic table, a silvery-white alkali metal that’s soft enough to be cut with a table knife. It’s also the lightest metal on Earth, as well as the least-dense solid element. It has the equivalent density of a plank of pine wood, and half that of water. It floats in oil (and water too, though that’d end very badly since, you know, alkali go boom), and since it’s reactive with moisture in the air, pure lithium is typically stored in anaerobic conditions and covered in either mineral oil, petroleum jelly, or some other such non-reactive liquid.

That’s not to say that you can just dig a hole and pull out a chunk of lithium. No, it’s far too corrosive and reactive for that; in fact, lithium never occurs freely in nature. Instead it’s always found as a compound, often in pegmatitic minerals, as well as in ocean water, brines, and clays. Problem is, even though lithium is relatively abundant — it is the 33rd most common element — it’s very diffuse throughout nature, which means that collecting and concentrating it into a commercially viable form is a massive pain.

How Did We Discover It?

Johan August Arfwedson first isolated lithium from petalite — a crystalline substance — in 1817. Over the next few decades, a number of researchers teased out the basic physical conditions of the metal. By 1855, chemists Robert Bunsen and Augustus Matthiessen had discovered a means of precipitating large amounts of lithium from lithium chloride via electrolysis, which led to small-scale production in 1916 and commercial-scale lithium production by 1923.

Lithium was used in WWII as a high-temperature grease for aircraft engines, thanks to its high melting point and the fact that it’s significantly less corrosive than the calcium soaps used previously. Lithium also played a major role in the Cold War. The lithium-6 and lithium-7 ions were used to create tritium, a boosting compound used to increase the efficiency and yield of hydrogen bombs, as well as a solid fusion fuel itself.

From the late 1950s until the mid-1980s, the US was the dominant global lithium producer. Over roughly a quarter century, the US amassed a stockpile of 40,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide from production sites in Nevada and North Carolina. America supplied 80 per cent of the global demand for lithium in 1976, and continued its dominance until 1984, when one of the largest deposits on the planet was discovered in Chile (and again in 1997, when mining began on another massive deposit in Argentina).

So, What Do We Do When We Find It?

Turns out the US only holds a fraction of the massive lithium deposits of Chile and Argentina. They’re the two largest producers, in that order, churning out 60 per cent of the world’s annual supply. Australia and China combine for another 30 per cent. The remaining 10 per cent accounts for smaller producers like the US and Russia. The US Geological Survey estimates total worldwide lithium reserves at 11 million tonnes. interestingly, half of that supply is thought to actually reside in Bolivia, along the eastern face of the Andes. Overall, the USGS estimates there’s at least 4.9 million tonnes of lithium in the Bolivian hills.

Historically, lithium has either been mined from brines or from hard rock mining. Hard-rock lithium mining is just like other traditional mining operations: dig a big hole, pull out the rocks you want, send them off for processing. The problem with applying that to lithium is that extracting the substance from solid rock is an incredibly time-consuming, energy-hogging and cost-intensive ordeal. Since lithium is so diffuse, you have to pull a lot of rock out of the ground just to get a little bit of the good stuff.

Instead, far more economically efficient, brine-based extraction methods have been developed. Both Chile and Argentina (as well as China, Russia and the United States’ only operating lithium mine in Clayton Valley, Nevada) use the brine pool method. Brine itself is, as Western Lithium explains:

The brines, volcanic in origin, are present in desert areas and occur in playas and salars where lithium has been concentrated by solar evaporation. In the salars (saline desert basins sometimes known as salt lakes or salt flats), the brine is contained at or below the surface and is pumped into large solar evaporation ponds for concentration prior to processing. When the basin surfaces are predominantly composed of silts and clays with some salt incrustation, they are referred to as playas. If the surface is predominantly salt they are called salars. Although the fundamental character of the deposits is similar, there is great variability in size, surface character, stratigraphy, structure, chemistry, infrastructure and solar evaporation rates.

The largest such brine pool resides in the world’s largest salt flat, Bolivia’s Salar de Uyini.

The Foote Mineral company used to operate a lithium brine pool in Silver Peak, Nevada and provides this deeper look as to how lithium is extracted:

The Foote Mineral Company is recovering lithium from solar evaporated saline brines at Silver Peak, Nevada. The brines are pumped from beneath a playa surface inside a closed basin. The playa deposits consists of mixtures of clays, silts, sands, and evaporites, many of which are saturated with saline brines down to known depths of 600 feet.

Brines are probably present below this depth, for gravity studies have indicated the unconsolidated sediments reach depths of 1500 feet. The genesis of the Silver Peak deposit is apparently related to volcanic activity and the area is characterised by hot springs, cinder cones, and lava deposits. The brine pumped from wells contains 300 ppm of lithium and 10-15 wt. % of other dissolved solids. The playa surface is well suited for solar evaporation. The brines are pumped into a series of solar evaporation ponds and after they reach saturation a series of salts are precipitated. The sequence of salts precipitated is NaCl, a mixture of NaC1 and glaserite (KNa(SO4 )2 ), and then these two plus Ka As a consequence of the evaporation, the lithium concentration is increased to approximately 5000 ppm. The effective evaporation season at Silver Peak begins in April and commonly continues through October. It is necessary to accumulate sufficient brine by October to operate the processing plant through the winter months. Lithium is recovered from the brine by precipitating lithium carbonate.

Just four companies — Talison Lithium, Rockwood Holdings, Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile and FMC— account for 95 per cent of worldwide lithium production and all use the industry standard method of precipitating pure lithium from molten lithium chloride (LiCl) using electrolysis. This process is of course performed in an air and water free environment to avoid a reaction.

Where Do the Batteries Come In?

In the video above, Leyden Energy offers us a view inside their li-ion battery plant and a behind the scenes tour of its production facility.

Meeting Demand

We’ve got roughly 900 million vehicles on the road worldwide, and not enough lithium reserves to replace very many of them with battery-powered alternatives. “Since a vehicle battery requires 100 times as much lithium carbonate as its laptop equivalent, the green-car revolution could make lithium one of the planet’s most strategic commodities,” says Mary Ann Wright of Johnson Controls-Saft, a lithium-ion battery producer.

“To make just 60 million plug-in hybrid vehicles a year containing a small lithium-ion battery would require 420,000 tons (380,000 tonnes) of lithium carbonate – or six times the current global production annually,” William Tahil, research director at Meridian International Research, told Barrons. “But in reality, you want a decent-sized battery, so it’s more likely you’d have to increase global production tenfold. And this excludes the demand for lithium in portable electronics.”

To span that supply shortage, numerous alternative sources for lithium have been explored. One promising system is to use the brine pulled up by geothermal pumps. A cadre of seven geothermal plants in the Salton Sea have been able to pull about 15,000 tonnes of lithium (as well as a fair amount of zinc) from their pipes annually. It’s simply a matter of filtering the dissolved minerals from the water.

[MIKA27]

Bone Marrow Transplants Remove All Sign Of HIV In Two Men

It’s turning into quite a year for HIV treatment. First, a baby girl was functionally cured of the HIV virus, then 14 adults were successfully treated with early-stage ARV drugs. Now, two men with longstanding HIV infections have been freed from HIV drugs thanks to bone marrow transplants. We’re really getting there.

The two men — one of whom became infected with HIV “in the early years of the epidemic“, the other as a baby — were given bone marrow transplants at the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Centre in Boston to treat cancers of the blood. But tests have since shown that as their cells were replaced by those from a donor the level of HIV virus present in their bloodstreams steadily dropped until it became undetectable.

The men have since stopped taking antiretroviral medication — and there’s been no sign of the virus returning. Doctors haven’t been able to identify the HIV virus in their tissue either — but since it’s able lay dormant at low levels and later become active, the pair are being monitored closely. The research was presented at the

nternational Aids Society conference in Kuala Lumpur this week.

It’s not the first time bone marrow transplants have been used to treat HIV. Back in 2010 a patient in Berlin underwent a similar procedure, receiving marrow from a donor who had genetic resistance to HIV. Such donors are incredibly hard to find though — so the latest results, which used normal donors, is an exciting new development.

That isn’t to say it’s a practical one, however. There’s a 15-20 per cent mortality rate tied to marrow transplants, and even then the drugs used to suppress immune reaction against the donor cells can cause problems for patients — especially those with HIV. But let’s not do down what is an amazing medical discovery. While we should still be cautious about claiming we can cure HIV, it’s beginning to look more and more likely that it could be the case.

[MIKA27]

Can This Off-Centre Hammock Really Be As Comfy As A Bed?

No one’s ever called the hammock industry out on false advertising, but the image of someone comfortable napping in a net suspended between two trees is a lie. Finding your way in and out of a sagging hammock is an ordeal equal to mounting Everest, and once you’re in, you’re swallowed up by netting that’s slowly leaving its imprint on your bare skin. So if the bizarrely shaped Sky Bed sleeping hammock delivers on its promises, it could revolutionise how we all spend long weekends.

The Sky Bed’s most notable feature is its innovative asymmetric design that actually ends up providing a surprisingly flat place to stretch out when used with a foam or inflatable sleeping mat. So while it feels like you’re camping on the floor of a tent, you’re still kept off the cold ground overnight.

And instead of rope webbing, the Sky Bed is made from ripstop nylon so if it ends up pressed against your bare skin, there won’t be much evidence of it afterwards. At $95 it’s certainly on the more expensive side of hammocks, but it’s definitely not obscenely overpriced. Besides, would you rather drop $50 on a hammock you’ll use once and remember how uncomfy they are, or spend a little more on this option and never want to have to climb out of it?

[MIKA27]

6 Radical Infrastructure Schemes That Almost Changed NYC Forever

The East River? Oh, that thing was dammed up and a new City Hall was thrown on top of it. The Hudson? Filled it with traffic years ago. New Yorkers have never been prudes about changing the natural landscape of their city, but if you dig into the archives, you’ll find dozens of ideas so radical, they make present-day Gotham feel like a nature reserve.

These days, the ballooning cost of construction combined with environmental and preservation issues conspire to make extreme infrastructural projects a moot point. Hell, it’s taken almost a century to build the 2nd Avenue Subway. But in the middle of the 20th century, a booming economy and a renaissance in public infrastructure made it seem like anything was possible in New York — literally, anything.

Six plans from those years follow, ranging from the grand to the gargantuan. Makes Bloomberg’s Vision 2020 plan look a bit puny in comparison, no?

Infill the Hudson River, 1934

In March, 1934, Modern Mechanix featured the daring plan of Norman Sper, “noted publicist and engineering scholar” (maybe publicist meant something different back then?), who envisioned adding 26sqkm of land to Manhattan by infilling the mighty Hudson River. Sper proposed creating a massive, multi-layered grid that would connect New Jersey to Manhattan, solving problems like housing and transit which, according to the editors, “are threatening to devour the city’s civilisation like a Frankenstein monster”.

It’s hard for us to imagine the optimism felt about modern engineering in the 1930s and ’40s. Today, Sper’s plan seems like folly.

But the magazine asked a handful of established engineers about it, and many of them described it as visionary. “Provided with sufficient money and time, particularly money, the project could be carried through to completion with unquestionable success,” said one engineer. “…It would be quite in keeping with President Roosevelt’s rehabilitation and N.R.A. plan and put an enormous army of men to work. I heartily endorse the plan, though I am fully aware of the almost insurmountable impediments which appear at first study of the idea.”

Estimated cost: $US17 billion*

Build a Massive Hudson River Airport, 1946

The man who owned the Chrysler Building — William Zeckendorf — was behind this idea to build “Manhattan’s Dream Airport.”

Zeckendorf proposed a 144-block-long floating airport on the edge of the Hudson River, where planes could take off on the long roof and boats could dock at its edges.

It’s hard to know how New Yorkers of the day reacted to the plan, which was sited on the edge of what was then a still-developing neighbourhood. But as Untapped Cities points out, a similar (but satirical) plan to turn Central Park into an airport received over 85,000 earnest signatures — which should tell you something about how “green space” stacks up against “long cab rides” for most modern-day New Yorkers.

Estimated cost: $US35 billion*

Draining the East River, 1924

According to the editors at Popular Science, in 1924, New York was loosing $US1.5 million a day on traffic congestion. The solution?

Get rid of the East River, of course. Dr John A. Harriss, a “special deputy police commissioner in charge of traffic,” was the progenitor of this particular scheme, which would’ve required the construction of two dams — one at the Williamsburg Bridge, the other near Hell Gate in Harlem. In between, Harriss envisioned a broad avenue of cars and small pedestrian routes, centred by a massive new City Hall. Basically, Brasilia in New York City.

A Super-Highway Slicing Through SoHo, 1940-1962

The mercifully unfulfilled Lower Manhattan Expressway was one of Robert Moses’ plans to modernise Manhattan. LOMEX, as the plan is known, came close to levelling a huge 14-block swatch of Lower Manhattan to build a 10-lane highway stretching from the Holland Tunnel to the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges. Moses envisioned the highway edged on both side by gigantic public housing complexes.

We actually have LOMEX (along with the destruction of Penn Station) to thank for the development of historic preservation in New York City. Jane Jacobs led the fight against the project, and ultimately, it was abandoned. It’s hard to imagine that anyone ever seriously entertained the idea — but we need only look across the East River to see what could have been, since Moses was central in creating the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the highway that required the razing of thousands of homes in each borough.

Estimated cost: $US749 million*

A Geodesic Dome Over Midtown Manhattan, 1960.

Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome was proposed with the best intentions: It would have created a bubble of clear air stretching from the Hudson to the East River, between 21st St and roughly 64th St. Of course, in reality, it likely would’ve led to strict urban segregation in Manhattan, between those “inside the bubble” and those without.

Estimated cost: $7.5 billion*

A Bridge Over the Hudson, circa 1915

Ever wonder why there are no bridges between Lower Manhattan and New Jersey? One of the main reasons is that too many massive freighter ships passed through the bay on their way to Manhattan’s docks. But architect Alfred C. Bossom envisioned a seemingly simple solution: A bridge 200 feet above the waterline, more than enough space for ships of the day to pass unfettered.

Bossom christened his idea the Victory Bridge, angled as a celebration of the end of World War I. The concept never took of, perhaps because of the sheer size and cost (the towers themselves would’ve been more than 800 feet high), but Bossom was right on, in some ways: The Holland Tunnel was completed underneath the exact same route, in 1927.

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: How The Army Of The Future Will Share Battlefield Intelligence

Military technology doesn’t simply spring forth fully formed from a DARPA engineer’s head like some GI Athena. It requires extensive development cycles and field testing before it’s put on the front lines.

At this year’s semi-annual Network Integration Evaluations (NIE) at the White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, Army researchers put a trio of technologies through their paces. Technologies that could radically alter how future wars are waged by delivering a more complete battlefield view to troops in the line of fire.

Aside from testing the devices themselves, the NIE gives commanders a chance to integrate the new technology into their existing tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs). “Over the last few NIEs, the network has become much more stable than it was,” said Col. Beth Bierden, chief of the Network Integration Division at Brigade Modernization Command. “We are able to get at the TTPs and figure out mission command and do all that kind of stuff much more now than we have in the past, when we were really just trying to figure out the architecture.” Here are three systems expected to make the biggest impact on tomorrow’s battlefield.

Nett Warrior

Originally known as the Ground Soldier System, the Nett Warrior is an integrated situational awareness system for dismounted combat leaders (those not sitting in a HumVee or remote command centre). It’s a mini-map that notes every squad member’s positions (to avoid friendly fire and set more effective crossfires) as well as a host of other pertinent tactical and navigation information that’s shared amongst the squad over secured radio waves using Rifleman Radios.

It effectively becomes a tiny, mobile ad hoc network — known as the On-The-Move self-forming network — whose voice, data, and GPS information can be displayed either on a mobile handset or on the soldier’s HUD. What’s more, commanders can use the system to access Secret or Sensitive-but-Unclassified ISR information during on-the-fly mission planning. And even if the commander is incapacitated or killed in action, the next-most senior member of the group will be able to pick up where the previous commander left off.

Warfighter Information Network — Tactical Increment 2 (WIN-T)

Domestic carrier coverage is spotty even in the boondocks of Iowa; what makes you think you’ll get any bars in the wilds of Afghanistan? So instead of relying on the Big Three, future soldiers will carry their network along with them. Known as the Warfighter Information Network – Tactical Increment 2, this network will form the basis of the entire Army’s secured troop communication services.

WIN-T will enable commanders to track (via voice, video and data) and coordinate a mobile and dispersed strike force from anywhere on the battlefield while remaining tapped into the Army’s intel network. The system consists of infrastructure and network components that securely relay satellite and terrestrial tactical communications (known as Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance — C4ISR) between individual soldiers and command.

So rather than shouting into a walkie-talkie during the pitch of battle to get status updates from the squad’s radio operator, the WIN-T network will allow commanders monitor and redeploy forces in real time as well as transmit tactical information — everything from Ku-band RADAR and Super High Frequency datalinks to GPS and the Secure, Mobile, Anti-Jam, Reliable, Tactical – Terminal (SMART-T). Think of it as a secured, miniature internet that exists only within a theatre of operations but spans from the front lines to the rear guard.

Distributed Common Ground System

There are a lot of moving pieces on a battlefield. So to make sure that elements from the army, air force, navy and marines are all on the same page, there’s the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS).

The DCGS is the primary means of analysing and disseminating ISR data — from the weather forecast to threat assessments — collected by the Air Force’s U-2, RQ-4 Global Hawk, MQ-9 Reaper and MQ-1 Predator drones. It comprises 45 geographically distinct, networked sites manned by a mixture of active-duty, national guard and reservists service members. And while previous human-based systems required weeks of analysis to deliver actionable results, the cloud-based DCGS churns through millions of data points in near real time.

“It was not that long ago that intelligence analysis was a very labor-intensive business,” explained Col. Charles Wells, the project manager for the Army’s wing of the DCGS. “With the cloud and with lightweight applications that run analytics, we can now look through all that data — all 20 million records — and literally in a matter of seconds to minutes get a diagram that has been provided and start the analysis from there. We’re not having to filter the data. We’re not having to look at a subset of the data. We’re looking at every one of those records in real time, and getting an answer.”

This allows commanders worldwide to deliver accurate, actionable intelligence faster than ever before and will help save American lives.

[MIKA27]

This creepy Spiderbot i sincredibly life-like:

If you’ve got $1,350 burning a hole in your pocket and an arachnophobic friend you love to terrorize, the folks at Robugtix will happily trade your heard-earned money for this incredibly lifelike robotic spider called the T8.

The robot’s 3D printed outer shell and limbs hide a complex inner network of electronics and a total of 26 individual servo motors that facilitate its realistic motions. Officially available starting in September, were it not for the T8′s giant cyclops eye, the robot would be hard to distinguish from a real spider were it to scamper across your floor. One thing’s for certain: we’re gonna need a bigger shoe.

MIKA: I so want one of these. My wife hates Spiders. MWhahahahaha!!

[MIKA27]

Check out these amazing, chilling stereoscopic images of World War I:

A Toronto photography studio has stumbled across a stereoscopic camera, and its photographic slides, that captured scenes of World War I in 3D. The resulting images are chilling — but incredibly striking, too.

The images, acquired using a handheld stereoscopic camera called the Verascope, were captured by French soldiers. They show scenes from the trenches, streets, and battlefields of World War I and, while the pictures are striking in 2D, the 3D GIFs add an unnerving, chilling feel to the scenes.

Visitors to A Nerd’s World in Toronto can use a special 3D viewer to see the slides for themselves — but some, such as the ones shown here, have also been rendered as GIFs. Check ‘em out.

[MIKA27]

The Playstation 4 will ship with an AR game, but not the camera that it needs:

There are rumours Sony left out the PlayStation 4 Eye camera to beat the Xbox One on price. That’s fine, I guess; it’ll be a $70.00 -odd add-on you’ll just have to buy separately. So why the hell is Sony shipping an augmented reality game bundled with the PS4 that you can’t use unless you buy the camera too? That’s just dumb.

Every PS4 will apparently come with The Playroom just like Nintendo bundled Wii Sports with the Wii. It’s basically a demo to show you what the PS4 can do with the DualShock 4 and the PS4 Eye, so it would make more sense to, you know, bundle it with the PS4 Eye, right?

Anyway, it seems you’re getting it, regardless of whether you’re into all that AR and camera-based stuff or not. This definitely makes it look like Sony intended to ship the Eye with the PS4 until it heard the price of the Xbox One.

[MIKA27]

This headset cleaims to be able to over-clock your brain:

Do you wish you could think and react faster? Without taking drugs? Well good news, because this new “Foc.us” headset reckons it can speed you up by firing electricity into your noggin. Yes, really.

I say claims, because frankly, it seems a bit of a farce. At the very least it’s highly unproven science, and considering your brain is a sensitive, precision piece of apparatus, messing with it when you don’t know what you’re doing seems incredibly dangerous to me.

The manufacturer of Foc.us reckons that by sending jolts of electricity into your brain — a therapy called Transcranial Direct-Current Stimulation – you can rev up the old grey matter and speed up your processing of information, thinking and reactions. Now, tDCS does have a foot in reality, as it’s thought this kind of direct electrical stimulation could potentially be used to treat stroke victims, but it’s very early days for even that kind of therapy. Meanwhile, when it comes to enhancing normal, healthy brains, there’s a small amount of evidence that a carefully controlled and monitored amount of electricity delivered to the right areas of the brain could enhance your mental capacity.

The trouble is, it’s certainly not totally proven, and it’s a dangerous thing to be doing if you’re not a highly-trained neuroscientist or, hell, a brain surgeon. Right now we don’t even know what a safe current is for this kind of thing, so you could literally be frying your brain.

Still, it’s app enabled, so you can control it with your iPhone, and it could work, so maybe it’s worth a $250 punt? Rather you than me, though. [Foc.us]