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

[MIKA27]

I remember when I was living in London in '96 there was a very similar IRA bus bomb went of on a bus the Aldwych. I could definitely see how this could disturb some people.

Absolutely, people are already worried out of their wits, this only amplifies it.

[MIKA27]

Chinese Fusion Test Hits 50 Million Celsius For 102 Seconds

Tests at a fusion reactor in China have hit a major milestone. The experiments have created plasma with a temperature of 50 million degrees Celsius — hotter than the core of our Sun — and sustained the state for over a minute and a half.

The experiments were carried out in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak — known as EAST. Its design uses a doughnut-shaped reactor in which incredibly hot plasma resides. Careful control of intense magnetic fields allows the plasma to be contained in a tight ring running through the centre of the doughnut’s circular cross section — which means that the walls of the structure are never directly exposed to the high temperatures of the plasma.

Ensuring those temperatures can be sustained for long enough is essential to creating energy — the long-term goal of such fusion reactors. We’d need the reactions to run for long periods of time because getting them started requires a huge input of energy: If they stall too soon, the reaction is net negative in energy terms. But controlling such intense heat is difficult, because such high energies causes great instabilities that are hard to confine. So running an experiment at such temperatures for 102 seconds is a positive step indeed.

The news comes on the back of successful tests at the Max Planck Institute in Greifswald just last week, where hydrogen fuel was used for the first time in its Wendelstein 7-X stellarator.

It’s not the hottest temperature ever created on Earth. That accolade goes to the scorching conditions created by the LHC, which managed to create a plasma “soup” of sub-atomic gluons and quarks with an estimated temperature of 5.5 trillion degrees Celsius.

That’s somewhere in the region of 250,000 times hotter than the centre of the Sun. But those conditions last for the merest flicker of time, which is useless for actually creating energy.

Indeed, most scientists suggest that the long-yet-intense burn required for fusion needs to be around 100 million degrees Celsius — so we still have some way to go. The consensus seems to suggest that it will be a decade or more before one of these rigs is capable of actually producing electricity for us.

But for now, we can celebrate a positive week for fusion science. Let’s hope there are many more.

[MIKA27]

Australian Birds Deliberately Spread Wildfires Because Birds Are Dicks

Crazy news from the outback, folks. Certain birds of prey are picking up burning sticks from brush fires and dropping them in dry grass. Why? Because then all the little critters will run away from the fire and out into the open, where the birds can ****** them up.

The birds of prey in question here — black kites and brown falcons — have apparently been doing this for ages. Both Aboriginal populations in northern Australia and local firefighters say they have seen them do it. Aboriginal advocate Bob Gosford, who’s interviewed over a dozen firefighters about the trend, described the behaviour, “Reptiles, frogs and insects rush out from the fire, and there are birds that wait in front, right at the foot of the fire, waiting to catch them.”

The phenomenon has never been caught on photo or video; however, it’s a relatively accepted belief that this happens. As of right now, Gosford’s research basically amounts to self study based on accumulated observations. According to IFL Science, he’s presented the research at boththe Raptor Research Foundation and the Association for Fire Ecology’s annual conferences.

What a bunch of jerks. This, after a blaze in London was started by a pigeon dropping a lit cigarette onto the roof of a house back in 2014. This, after realising that diabolical falcons trap their prey in stone prisons so they can eat them later while they’re still alive.

This, as crows are getting so smart they can solves complex puzzles with a basic understanding of the size, weight and density of stones.

It’s not so much that birds are dicks, they’re super smart. Hitchcock warned us. We have been warned.

[MIKA27]

Fairy Floss Inspires New Method For Tissue Engineering

We know our organs are supported by blood. We know that that blood is delivered to our various cells through a network of blood vessels. What we don’t know is how to create a fine three-dimensional network of vessels in the lab for bioengineered tissue. Researchers at Vanderbilt University found a clue in an unlikely source: fairy floss. They just published their results in Advanced Healthcare Materials.

Labs have for a long time grown cells in thin sheets on water-based gels called hydrogels. The gels did the job of delivering nutrients and taking away waste, but only at very close range. Scientists were having trouble creating the capillary networks that would be needed to support thicker tissues. Cells will begin to form capillaries, but those capillaries are slow-growing, and often too big.

Any tissue cut off from this support network would die. This fact frustrated any lab trying to grow bioengineered tissue. To make tissues of the thickness needed for organs, labs would have to create an incredibly complex network of fine channels — something with almost a fairy floss consistency.

This comparison to fairy floss inspired lead author Leon Bellan to go out and buy a fairy floss machine from Target, using it to spin out his own threads. He found they were about the same size as capillaries — under the size of a human hair — making this a promising method for building those all-important channel structures. Score one for sugar.

Sadly, sugar isn’t the answer to all of life’s problems. It does create a network of channels that could support cells, but it dissolves too easily. So the researchers set aside the fairy floss machine and designed something more specialised. They came up with a machine that worked in a similar way to fairy floss machines, except that instead of spinning out sugar, it spins out a polymer called Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide), or PNIPAM. PNIPAM gets spun into a cloud of fibres, and a solution of human cells in gelatine (not hydrogel) gets poured over it. Eventually the gelatine hardens.

All of this happens at 37C. Although that’s ideal body temperature, the heat isn’t for the benefit of the cells — it’s for the benefit of the PNIPAM. The polymer is insoluble in water when warm, but when it drops below 0C, suddenly it melts away. When it melts, it leaves behind a dense, extensive network of channels in the big blob of cells, through which oxygen and nutrient containing liquid can be pumped. This could make for tissues as thick as anyone ever needs them to be.

“Some people in the field think this approach is a little crazy,” said Bellan in a statement. “But now we’ve shown we can use this simple technique to make microfluidic networks that mimic the three-dimensional capillary system in the human body in a cell-friendly fashion. Generally, it’s not that difficult to make two-dimensional networks, but adding the third dimension is much harder; with this approach, we can make our system as three-dimensional as we like.”

[MIKA27]

Australian Scientists Found A Way To Control Machines With Your Mind, No Brain Surgery Required

The US military is looking for ways to insert microscopic devices into human brains to help folks communicate with machines, like prosthetic limbs, with their minds. And now, Australian scientists are saying they have found a way to do just that — without ripping open patients’ skulls.

In the DARPA-funded study, researchers at the University of Melbourne have developed a device that could help people use their brains to control machines. These machines might include technology that helps patients control physical disabilities or neurological disorders. The results were published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

In the study, the team inserted a paperclip-sized object into the motor cortexes of sheep. (That’s the part of the brain that oversees voluntary movement.) The device is a twist on traditional stents, those teeny tiny tubes that surgeons stick in vessels to improve blood flow.

This souped-up version, which the team calls a “stentrode”, is a stent covered in electrodes and also sounds like it belongs in a cyborg. The strentrode snakes its way into blood vessels through a catheter that’s stuck in the patient’s neck, rather than in the skull. Existing brain-machine interfaces (BIMs) require cracking the patients’ skull open in a procedure called a craniotomy. This involves removing part of the skull to access the brain.

The new development makes it easier to stick a computer chip or stentrode into a patient’s head. Instead of open-brain surgery, the method of inserting a BMI through blood vessels in the neck reduces the risk of inflaming tissue and other risks involved in such horrifying, invasive surgery.

The team plans on testing the stentrode in humans sometime next year.

[MIKA27]

Four People, A Small Cabin, A Month of Isolation: Only for NASA

Talk about “too close for comfort.” NASA is taking it to the extreme. Would you volunteer to be cooped up in a cramped three-story “house” for thirty days with three strangers?

Not only that, you would only be allowed to communicate with your crew mates and mission control. No Internet, cell phones or outside contact. Oh, and you can’t leave the building. Well, four volunteers have agreed to do just that.

HERA Volunteer Crew

This is NASA, after all, and if astronauts are to coexist in tight quarters for months at a time while exploring the universe, without outside contact, scientists need to prepare for the consequences. Better to have things go wrong and solve problems on earth rather than in deep space.

In this latest “trip” in the ongoing project, crew members will be wearing numerous tracking devices, and NASA will be collecting information about their health, mood, performance, team cohesion and well-being. The goal is to assess risks and to determine how to keep people healthy and happy in space.

They will be living in an isolation module at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas. This three-story living space is what NASA is calling the “Human Research Exploration Analog (HERA) or “science-making house.” It’s basically a simulation of a space station and will be operated as such. The day-to-day timeline is like that aboard the space station, involving 16-hour workdays. The time will be devoted to planning, meetings, exercise, meals, conducting experiments, and tending the plants and brine shrimp (sustainable food sources).

HERA Module

The experiment will be simulating parts of a 715-day journey to a near earth asteroid. Each day will replicate certain activities on the trip to the asteroid (where they will simulate a space walk and collect samples), on the surface of the asteroid and returning to earth from it.

NASA explains,

This simulation means that even when communicating with mission control there will be a delay in all communications ranging from 1-10 minutes each day. The crew will also perform virtual spacewalk missions once they reach their destination, where they will inspect the asteroid and collect samples from it.

This doesn’t seem like a job for the claustrophobic or the antisocial. It would make for an entertaining reality television show.

[MIKA27]

Zoom ARQ

Zoom ARQ will surely sweeten every DJ´s tooth…this is a new smart tool that will enable you to use some classic DJ skills in a new way. With ZOOM ARQ you get the normal sequencer, accelerator, synthesizer, looper and MIDI controller…but the thing that´s new is the way you use it. With built in pads, that you can use if they were keyboards, and a Bluetooth Ring controller, which you can detach from the main control station, it allows you to use the six axis motion sensors to control and manage key-features that you can program. So it´s somewhat a hybrid object, between a tool, a toy and an instrument. This small and portable device stores almost 500 pre-programmed sounds. So quit being the DJ and become a performer with this awesome device.

[MIKA27]

LITTLE HOUSE ON THE FERRY

Inspired by a series of sketches that showed the traditional summer house broken into multiple structures, the Little House on the Ferry is a modern multi-building seasonal hideout. The property on Vinalhaven Island in Maine sits next to a former quarry, creating an even more rocky landscape, and is home to three small buildings. The main space houses the living area, a bathroom, and the kitchen, and is connected to the other two buildings — which hold a single bathroom and bedroom each — by an exterior deck. All three were built in a factory using cross-laminated timber and hauled to the site, reducing both cost and impact, and use a system of sliding screens to provide privacy or alternately let in the views of Penobscot Bay.

[MIKA27]

MICHELANGELO'S TUSCAN VILLA - NEW FOH HEADQUARTERS?

Located just outside Florence, Michelangelo's Tuscan Villa gives you the rare chance to own the former home of a Renaissance master.

Originally built as a fort, the property was in the painter's family from the time he purchased it in 1549 until 1867, was recently restored with an eye on historical accuracy, and includes the original documents and deed. There are eight bedrooms and seven baths in the main house, two additional bedrooms in the separate guest house, and an outbuilding that could serve as additional storage or an office/getaway.

And while there's no original artwork on the property (that we know of), there is an oil mill and 200 olive trees, enough to supply your family and guests with olive oil without needing to visit the market.

[MIKA27]

Drone Racing Is Starting to Look More Exciting Than a Top Gun Dogfight

Racing drones still isn’t considered as challenging as other vehicular sports given the pilots aren’t actually inside the vehicles they’re controlling. But watching the first-person footage of this drone absolutely tearing through a packed warehouse, you can’t argue there isn’t a ton of skill required.

And remember, while you’re probably watching this footage on your computer screen, the pilot at the controls of this drone, YouTuber PROPSMAN, saw this through a pair of video goggles strapped to his head as it happened. There’s no way you wouldn’t get a rush of adrenaline from that.

[MIKA27]

New And Used Cars Will Get A Lot Cheaper In Australia From 2018, Thanks To Parallel Imports

A big government shake-up for local car importation laws could have massive implications for the way Aussies buy their vehicles. From 2018 onwards, you’ll be able to parallel import brand new cars and avoid tariffs on imported used cars, potentially saving yourself thousands of dollars over local dealers.

Business Insider reports that changes to the Motor Vehicles Act in Australia will open up the domestic markets of dozens of countries around the world to private Australian buyers. From 2018, private buyers will be able to purchase and import cars from countries with comparable standards to Australia — the full list hasn’t yet been decided, but preliminarily both Japan and the United Kingdom have been approved.

The cars must be no more than 12 months old, and must have no more than 500km on the odometer. The price difference won’t be enough to justify importing cheaper cars, but just below Australia’s circa-$64,000 Luxury Car Tax threshold (and beyond) there will be some bargains — with countries like the UK and Japan both selling identical cars at a significant discount to Aussie dealers. The same “Australia tax” that we’re used to with technology applies even more so with cars.

Used cars will also become far easier to import with the amendment of the Customs Tariff Act 1995, to remove a $12,000 special duty that applies to used imports. That tariff wasn’t applied consistently anyway, but its abolishment is a point of comfort for wary would-be importers. Cars that are imported will have a specific plate affixed and their details added to a new register, as well as the traditional blue-slip inspection and registration process.

There are some huge advantages to import at Australia’s luxury and niche car manufacturers’ current pricing. A Porsche 911 Carrera S will cost you $274,000 and change to buy in Australia, while an import including freight and government fees is a full $44,000 cheaper. Some, like Tesla’s Model S, have only a few thousand dollars’ disparity between local and imported prices.

These prices may change to make importing less attractive, or we may see more imported new and used cars on Australian roads in the near future.

[MIKA27]

Dallas Buyers Club Throws In The Towel On iiNet Piracy Case

It’s finally over. For a year and a half, lawyers for Dallas Buyers Club have been fighting iiNet to access the details of over 4,000 of its customers that had allegedly committed copyright infringement — pirating the 2013 Matthew McConaughey film. Now it has been confirmed that the case has finally come to an end, with DBC LLC throwing in the towel.

Late last year the Federal Court dismissed the case entirely, with the option of an appeal by 11 February this year if DBC LLLC were able to abide by agreed conditions in regards to how they would be communicating with iiNet customers.

DBC LLC was restricted from viewing the customer details of iiNet account holders, which it was granted access to, until it paid a substantial bond and could convince the court it wouldn’t start sending the alleged pirates high bills for damages.

Time is now up, and DBC LLC will not be making any further applications regarding the case, managing partner of DBC LLC law firm Marque Lawyers Michael Bradley has confirmed to iTnews.

“It’s certainly a disappointing outcome for them. It doesn’t do anything to mitigate the infringement that’s going on – it’s not a particularly satisfactory outcome from that point of view,” he said.

During the course of the case, the scope of what DBC sought to claim was gradually reduced.

Originally DBC wanted the cost of the film, plus a fee for each individual who had viewed, “punitive damages” based on the volume of copyrighted works that weren’t Dallas Buyers Club each individual had downloaded, and costs incurred to gain access to each individual’s details.

The claim was ultimately reduced to just the cost of the film, a single “reasonable” license fee, and court costs.

The license fee became the sticking point, though, with DBC LLC unable to confirm what it would consider “reasonable”.

MIKA: I say people should have been fined! Not for the pirating but for downloading that movie in the first place!!

[MIKA27]

Pentagon Wants a Plane Packed With Hundreds of Missiles to Beat Putin’s Air Force

The U.S. Air Force is short hundreds of fighter jets. To make up the gap, the Pentagon has come up with a wild concept: stuff hundreds of missiles into Cold War-era heavy bombers.

The next time America’s high-tech jet fighters fly into battle against a major foe, they might have some serious backup—heavy bombers, newly modified to haul potentially hundreds of missiles and fire them at the fighters’ command.

The upgraded bombers have picked up a cool new name: “arsenal planes.”

That’s right, the next global air war could involve the U.S. military newest, smallest warplanes—its “fifth-generation” stealth fighters—working in teams with the military’s Cold War-era heavy bombers, its oldest and largest warplanes.

It’s an unprecedented and seemingly unlikely combination born of budgetary and strategic desperation. But for all its counter-intuitiveness, the fighter-bomber pairing—which could bring to bear overwhelming firepower—might be just the thing that the U.S. Air Force needs to stay ahead of the rapidly-modernizing Russian and Chinese air arms.

You see, the Pentagon is short hundreds of fighter planes. And in the most likely air-war scenarios over Eastern Europe or the Western Pacific, Russian or Chinese fighters would outnumber American planes, placing the U.S. pilots with their lightly-armed aircraft at a major disadvantage.

Enter the arsenal planes. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter revealed the bomber-fighter teaming concept in a Feb. 2 speech in Washington, D.C., previewing the Pentagon’s budget proposal for 2017. The arsenal-plane concept, Carter said, “takes one of our oldest aircraft platform and turns it into a flying launchpad for all sorts of different conventional payloads.”

“In practice,” Carter continued, “the arsenal plane will function as a very large airborne magazine, networked to fifth-generation aircraft that act as forward sensor and targeting nodes, essentially combining different systems already in our inventory to create whole new capabilities.”

Carter left vague the identity of the arsenal-plane “platform,” but a Pentagon official confirmed to Aviation Week, a trade magazine, that it could be the eight-engine B-52 bomber, built in the 1960s, or the 1980s-vintage, swing-wing B-1 bomber—or both.

In the arsenal plane concept, fast stealth fighters including twin-engine F-22s and smaller, single-engine F-35s would fly into battle in their hardest-to-detect configuration, keeping their weapons tucked inside internal weapons bays in order to minimize reflectivity on radar. When they spot a target, they would dial up a munition from a much-slower bomber flying a safe distance from the aerial front line.

There’s a logic to this proposed teamwork. Loading weapons strictly internally limits how many the fighter can carry. The F-22’s standard loadout is four air-to-air missiles and two 1,000-pound bombs. The F-35 can haul just two air-to-air missiles and two 2,000-pound bombs internally. By contrast, many Russian and Chinese fighters, while not stealthy, routinely carry 10 or more missiles and bombs under their fuselages and wings.

And owing to the Pentagon’s budget-driven decision to end F-22 production in 2012 after Lockheed Martin had built just 195 copies—half what the Air Force said it needed—plus repeated delays and cost overruns on Lockheed’s F-35 development, the Pentagon doesn’t have nearly the number of dogfighters it originally counted on.

Carter’s arsenal plane is a Band-Aid on this wound. But as far as Band-Aids go, it could be a pretty effective one. Since the F-22s and F-35s would fly ahead, evading detection while spotting targets, the B-52s and B-1s wouldn’t need to be stealthy. All they would need to do is carry lots of weapons ... and launch them when the fighter pilots say so.

That scheme plays to the bombers’ strengths. A B-52 or B-1—the Air Force possesses more than 130 of the bombers—can carry no less than 35 tons of munitions, nearly 10 times the F-22 and F-35’s internal payloads.

But there’s a problem. The Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office, which Carter established while serving as deputy defense secretary in 2012 and which is developing the arsenal-plane concept, hasn’t said exactly how the fighters and bombers would combine their efforts.

Generally speaking, a warplane detects a target with its sensors and a router-like digital “bus” inside the plane codes the target’s location in the computer “brain” of the plane’s own munition. The pilot launches the weapon and it streaks toward the target it just memorized. The process requires a hard-wired connection.

But the arsenal plane wouldn’t have any such connection. Its communication with the stealth fighters would be strictly remote—a subtle, coded radio signal that the military calls a “datalink.” “The technology that is needed for one aircraft to feed another aircraft the type of information required for an accurate firing solution is difficult,” Brian Laslie, an Air Force historian and author of The Air Force Way of War, told The Daily Beast via email.

However, Dave Deptula—a retired Air Force general who oversaw bomber operations during the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan—praised the arsenal-plane idea in an email to The Daily Beast. “What we previously labeled as ‘bombers’ can play dramatically broader roles than they ever did in the past,” Deptula wrote. “To capture this potential, however, requires innovative thought, and shedding anachronistic concepts that aircraft can only perform singular functions and missions.”

And Deptula insisted the technical hurdles are surmountable. “Today we can incorporate sensors, processing capacity and avionics in a single aircraft at an affordable cost to an unprecedented degree.”

Laslie urged caution. “This is a little unusual and something (almost) entirely new,” he wrote about the arsenal plane. But with too few fighters carrying too few weapons—and rapidly-arming foes—the Pentagon seems willing to risk something unusual and new: slow, decidedly non-stealthy heavy bombers backing up speedy stealthy fighters a fraction their size.

[MIKA27]

FBI Surrounds Last Oregon Occupiers

The Federal Bureau of Investigation surrounded the national wildlife refuge in Oregon where four right-wing protesters remain on Wednesday evening. "Come out with your hands up," a law enforcement official said, according to The Oregonian. Armored vehicles have surrounded the buildings where the men are holed up. The three men and one woman say they are armed, according to a livestream of the confrontation. The FBI said the encirclement began when David Fry drove an all-terrain vehicle outside of the encampment. When an agent approached Fry, who is wanted on a federal conspiracy charge, he allegedly fled back to the encampment at a high rate of speed. The FBI said negotiations are on-going and no shots have been fired. "We're leaving tomorrow," Fry said to the FBI.

Read it at The Oregonian

[MIKA27]

2016 MCLAREN 650S GT3

Next month’s Geneva Auto Show is going to be great. First with news of a new Ferrari, and now this? McLaren has plans to unveil the track-ready GT3 version of their 650S at the show.

This version of the 650S will have a rigid carbon-fiber body for a much lighter weight (2,733 pounds), will have a widened wheelbase, new air-intakes, lighter wheels and new tires along with a big, beautiful fixed carbon rear wing. The modified body will come carrying a biturbo 3.8-liter V8 engine that can deliver 493 horsepower through its six-speed sequential gearbox. The vehicle will be extremely limited, with roughly 15 units being built worldwide. Seeing that the race-ready 650S GT3 was developed to compete in the likes of the Blancpain Endurance Series, the $560,000 price tag should come as no surprise. The brand will pulling the curtain back on March 1st.

[MIKA27]

JACK DANIEL’S SINGLE BARREL RYE WHISKEY

Just this month the iconic and storied Jack Daniel’s added its first new grain recipe in over 100 years. The release of this new Single Barrel Rye feels equal parts historic and common sense – with Americans spending more and more on rye ($106 million on rye in 2014 as opposed to $15 million in 2009).

Jack Daniel’s new rye whiskey is distilled from 70% rye, 18% corn, and 12% malted barley grain bill and uses the same cave spring water, yeast, and charcoal mellowing process as they do with their flagship Tennessee Whiskey. The whiskey opens up with a taste of vanilla and sugars balanced with the charred barrel, has middle notes of apple and stone-fruit, and finishes with baking spice flavors with an aftertaste that’s both bold and creamy. This whiskey is 94 proof, comes in a 750 ml bottle and retails for anywhere between $50 and $60 USD

[MIKA27]

Talisman Speakers

These curvy desktop speakers will dazzle any Audiophile. Serene Audio are a maker of unique audio products based in Vancouver, Canada, their elegant Talisman Speakers are hand crafted from bamboo, leather, and brass, and meticulously engineered, giving you the clearest and most transparent sound to come from your desktop. They are designed to sit on your desk, but have plenty of power to fill the whole room, and can easily be connected to your record player.

[MIKA27]

Computer Analysis Reveals The Stunning Complexity Of The Star Wars Expanded Universe

The Star Wars expanded universe is huge. Really huge. Like, you just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly huge it really is. To grasp the full extent of this hugeness, a team of data scientists used a new computer program to analyse it, revealing some unexpected things about the extended saga.

A research team from Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne used a new computer program to analyse hundreds of web pages devoted to the Expanded Star Wars Universe, primarily viaWookieepedia. Then, to make sense of all this data, the researchers applied a bit of graph theory and some maths; this allowed the researchers to get a handle on all the characters, communities and timelines involved in the story, and how everything fits together. The project was led by French data scientist and Star Wars enthusiast Kirell Benzi and assisted by Pierre Vandergheynst of EPFL’s Signal Processing Laboratory 2.

No doubt, one of the more remarkable things about Star Wars is the way it lends itself to universe building. In addition to the seven full-length feature films, the saga has grown in other ways, including through numerous books, television series, video games and other creative outlets. Here’s what the researchers learned when they put it all together.

Connections between the 7563 main characters. Via K. Benzi LTS2/EPFL.

The Expanded Star Wars Universe consists of a whopping 21,647 characters. That number drops to 19,612 if every character listed as “unidentified” is removed. Of these, an astounding 7563 play an important role. Among those drawn to the ways of the Force, 1367 are Jedi and 724 are Sith. These characters are dispersed among 640 distinct communities on 294 planets. Surprisingly, 78 per cent of the galaxy’s population is human.

That’s a lot of humans. Note: This graph does not include every species.

Not content to stop there, Benzi and Vandergheynst also placed each character within the timeline of the story. Star Wars takes place over the course of 36,000 years, which is broken down into six main periods: before the Republic, the Old Republic, the Empire, the Rebellion, the New Republic and the Jedi Order. Analysis shows that Star Wars characters aren’t evenly distributed throughout the length of the story.

Distribution of characters across Star Wars eras. Some of the characters have been discarded (no era info). The extra colours highlight characters living in different eras.

“We see that the most popular eras are from the films: Rise of the Empire and the Rebellion era,” Benzi explained on his blog. “The Old Republic era is also popular (despite having fewer people) thanks to the MMORPG (video game) Star Wars: The Old Republic.” The extra colours on the chart above highlight characters living in different eras. Darth Vader, for example, makes an appearance in both Rise of the Empire and in the Rebellion era.

This visualisation shows how communities of characters interact together.

“As you can see the whole Star Wars universe is coherent and fun details can be revealed using graph theory,” noted Benzi at his blog. “However let’s not forget that we need data to do data-science. In our case, wiki contributors are of paramount importance as they actually create the content we use to blog about. May the Force be with them, always.”

A section of the Star Wars character graph. The orange-red nodes are from Rise of the Empire Era (episodes 1-3), the blue nodes represent the Rebellion era (episodes 4-6), and the green ones represent both eras. Black nodes represent missing data. On the right, black nodes have been replaced by the best compromise using their neighbours.

Benzi’s team also mapped the most connected characters in the Star Wars Universe. Not surprisingly, Anakin Skywalker tops the list. Super interesting to see Boba Fett at number 10; that bounty hunter clearly gets around. And check out Revan, a character from the Old Republic Era, who makes an appearance in the 13th slot.

“To put some order into this massive forest of data, we based our approach on network analysis. In other words, all the connections that one character has with all the others,” noted LTS2 researcher Xavier Bresson in a press statement. “Using these cross-references, we are able to accurately determine the time period of the character almost without fail, when this information is not directly provided in the books or movies.”

This entire project may seem indulgent, but this data-parsing technique could be applied elsewhere. As Benzi explained, this “program maps out connections in the mass of unorganized data available on the net”. These algorithms can not just extract data according to precise criteria, they can also create links among data points, do sorting, quantification, interpretation and seek out missing information. In future, a program like this could be used to perform historical and sociological research, along with other scientific research interests.

[MIKA27]

Scientists Have Confirmed The Existence Of Gravitational Waves

Since Albert Einstein first predicted their existence a century ago, physicists have been on the hunt for gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime. That hunt is now over. Gravitational waves exist, and we’ve found them.

That’s according to researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), who have been holed up for weeks, working round-the-clock to confirm that the very first direct detection of gravitational waves is the real deal. False signals have been detected before, and even though the rumours have been flying around for a month, the LIGO team wanted to be absolutely certain before making an official announcement.

That announcement has just come. Gravitational waves were observed on 14 September 2015, at 5:51am ET by both of the LIGO detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington. The source? A supermassive black hole collision that took place 1.3 billion years ago. When it occurred, about three times the mass of the sun was converted to energy in a fraction of a second.

The discovery has been accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters.

Gravitational waves are ripples in the universe caused by some of the most energetic cosmic events, from exploding stars to supermassive black hole mergers. As they propagate through space and time, gravitational waves cause tiny tremors in atoms that make up matter. While Einstein predicted them in his general theory of relativity in 1916, and their existence was indirectly demonstrated in the 1980s, it wasn’t until the LIGO detector came online in 2002 that the hunt for elusive spacetime ripples started to get serious.

But the first generation LIGO experiment, which ran for eight years, wasn’t sensitive enough. Which is understandable. Gravitational waves are minuscule — the atomic jitters that pass through our world when two black holes bash together in a distant galaxy are on the order of a billionth of a billionth the diameter of an atom. LIGO detects them by proxy, using high powered lasers to measure tiny changes in the distance between two objects positioned thousands of kilometres apart. A million things can screw this up, including a rumbling freight train, a tremor in the Earth and the inconvenient reality that all objects with a temperature above absolute zero are vibrating all the time.

After a series of upgrades that lasted from 2010 to 2015, LIGO was back online this past spring. With more powerful lasers and improved system for isolating the experiment from vibrations in the ground, the prospects of detecting the first gravitational waves have never looked better. Some scientists even predicted that we’d have our first positive detection in 2016 — but few could have known how quickly it would come.

In fact, LIGO saw gravitational waves almost immediately. The team then spent the entire spring exhaustively investigating potential instrumental and environmental disturbances to confirm that the signal was real.

According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, when a pair of black holes orbit on another, they lose energy slowly, causing them to creep gradually closer. In the final minutes of their merger, they speed up considerably, until finally, moving at about half the speed of light, they bash together, forming a larger black hole. A tremendous burst of energy is released, propagating through space as gravitational waves.

The two black holes behind the all the hubbub are 29 and 36 times the mass of the Sun, respectively. During the peak of their cosmic collision, LIGO researchers estimate that their power output was 50 times that of the entire visible universe.

“The description of this observation is beautifully described in the Einstein theory of general relativity formulated 100 years ago and comprises the first test of the theory in strong gravitation,” said Rainer Weiss, who first proposed LIGO as a means of detecting gravitational waves in the 1980s. “It would have been wonderful to watch Einstein’s face had we been able to tell him.”

The discovery of gravitational waves has been an open secret for weeks now. The scientists’ own excitement got the better of them on several occasions, including last week, when theoretical physicist Clifford Burgess at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, sent an email to his entire department, telling them that LIGO had found a real, and “spectacular”, signal of two large black holes merging.

Now, the muzzle has been lifted and the physicists can geek out at the top of their lungs. Keep an eye on social media today, it should be a ruckus.

The discovery of gravitational waves confirms an important aspect of the theory of relativity, but it does much more than that. Quite literally, it opens up a new chapter in our exploration of the cosmos, one where electromagnetic radiation is no longer our only tool for “seeing” the universe. As MIT astrophysicist Scott Hughes told Gizmodo in a phone interview, we can use gravitational waves to probe mysterious celestial objects like black holes and neutron stars, which typically no light.

“There’s a lot of rich information encoded in gravitational waves,” he said, noting that the shape of a spacetime ripple can tell us about the size and motion of the object that produced it. “As an astronomer, I try to think about how to go from the ‘sound’ of the waveform that LIGO measures, to the parameters that produce that waveform.”

Hughes also notes that once our detectors are sensitive enough to catch gravitational waves regularly, we can start to build a census of the universe’s most energetic events. “Actually getting some demographic data is one of the key things we hope to do in an era of detection,” he said.

“Whenever first detection happens, there’s gonna be a party, no question,” he continued. “But after that, when detection becomes routine, is when things start getting really interesting.”

A century-long hunt is over. But a new cosmic exploration is just beginning.

[MIKA27]

The Final 'Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice' Trailer Is Here

Bats and Supes duke it out, Alfred shows some sass and Diana speaks — finally! Here’s the final official trailer for the upcoming Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice movie - I seriously can't wait for this!

[MIKA27]

New Biopesticides Can Wipe Out Lampreys En Masse

Lampreys are tough, hungry and invasive. Michigan and Canada have been fighting them for over half a century. Now, with the aide of pheromones, they may have found a new way to eradicate the lot of them.

Since the 1950s, some companies have been doing good business in “lampricide”. This specially-targeted poison is meant to kill the lampreys invading the Great Lakes, but not kill all the other fish around them. It’s met with some success, but scientists now hope that they will improve their kill rate of lampreys and cut down on the accidental deaths of other fish, with the first “biopesticide” approved for vertebrates.

Biopesticides are not exotic substances. According to the EPA, canola oil and bicarbonate of soda are both biopesticides. Regular pesticides are usually synthetic compounds. At their best, they poison specific animals and leave others alone. Biopesticides are derived from natural substances. Natural isn’t always better. But while biopesticides may result indirectly in an animal’s death, they don’t directly poison it. A biopesticide could keep an animal from mating, or keep the sperm of the male from penetrating the eggs of the female. In this case, the biopesticides will be used to drive lampreys to specific locations so they can be trapped and killed.

Lampreys communicate by chemical signals. Male lampreys seek out promising mating sites by following the scent of young lampreys — which stay in the silt for four years before they mature. This scent can be replicated. Female lampreys follow the pheromones of male lampreys to find their mates. These chemicals can also be replicated. Both male and female lampreys will flee from chemical signals put out by wounded lampreys. This, too, can be mimicked and used to drive lampreys out of an area.

Biopesticides have had success in controlling insect populations, and early tests show that they work well for in vertebrates. Traps baited with pheromones became between 10 and 30 per cent more effective. It’s possible that, with consistent and ever-more-effective pheromones, the lamprey population can keep shrinking, with little effect on other species.

[MIKA27]

Pentagon Kills Its Killer Drone Fleet

The U.S. military spent billions developing an armed drone that could take off from an aircraft carrier. But now, the Pentagon says it doesn’t want that kind of flying robot at all.

Cutting-edge killer drones will not be flying over the world’s oceans any time soon. The Defense Department’s budget proposal for 2017, released on Feb. 9, terminates an on-again, off-again program dating back to the late 1990s that aimed to develop a bomb-hauling robotic jet capable of launching from and landing on the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers.

The decision to cancel the so-called Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike is reflected in the Defense Department’s 2017 budget proposal, released on Feb. 9. The proposal shows a combined $818 million in funding for the UCLASS killer drone program in 2015 and 2016 and, abruptly, no money at all in 2017.

Instead, there’s a new budget line for 2017—a meager $89 million for a so-called “Carrier Based Aerial Refueling System.” In other words: Goodbye, drone death from above. Hello, flying robot gas stations.

Speaking anonymously to various trade publications, Navy officials have confirmed that this drone refueling tanker will harvest some of UCLASS’ most important technologies. In particular, the Navy wants to harness its radio- and satellite-based control system, which helps human controllers aboard an aircraft carrier launch and land the robot and guide it during missions lasting half a day and covering potentially thousands of miles.

“The Navy has already said it wants to develop the airframe iteratively and that the most expensive part of the [development] is creating a system for an aircraft to move on, off and around the carrier,” an official told the news Website of the U.S. Naval Institute.

But the drone tanker won’t primarily carry the weapons or sophisticated sensors that had been planned for the UCLASS robot, nor will the robo-tanker be very stealthy—that is, able to avoid detection by enemy forces owing to its shape and special coating.

It’s possible that, over time, the Navy could add back weapons and stealth, finally producing the killer drone that many analysts, senior military officers and lawmakers have long argued for… and which almost became reality nearly a decade ago. But there should be no mistaking it. The UCLASS cancellation could be a big setback for U.S. air power.

Back in 2006, the Pentagon had a choice. Option one: It could pour potentially hundreds of billions of dollars into a complex, decades-long effort to build thousands of stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to replace most of the Cold War-vintage warplanes then in service with the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.

At the time, the F-35 was already showing signs of becoming a deadline-missing, budget-busting disaster, but it was still the conservative option, because for all its new features it was still just another manned jet fighter.

Alternatively, option two: military leaders could bet big on a new kind of technology with the potential to totally transform the way the United States wages war from the air. A killer drone—a small, speedy, pilotless warplane that, its proponents claimed, could be more effective and cheaper than any traditional fighter such as the F-22 or the F-35 could ever be with a person in the cockpit.

Those killer drone prototypes—Boeing’s X-45 and Northrop’s X-47—both sported a single engine and a futuristic diamond-shaped wing around 40 feet in span. And they surprised their developers in early tests. Guided by a combination of human controllers and their own sensors and internal algorithms, the drones proved they could swiftly penetrate enemy defenses.

Small in size, they were hard for the enemy to detect at first. And flying in “swarms” of multiple drones, once detected they could absorb enemy fire, sacrificing a few individual machines as they fought their way to the target.

And since the drones didn’t rely on a human pilot with perishable cockpit skills, the military could mostly keep them in storage until a war broke out. The robots’ operators would maintain their own control skills using computer simulations and the occasional live flight. Eliminating the need for constant training sorties would save many billions of dollars a year, the logic went.

Effectiveness, efficiency—those were the killer drones’ selling points. But the robot warplanes apparently threatened the pilot-centric cultures of the Air Force and the Navy’s aviation arm. So it should have come as no surprise when, in 2006, the military canceled the killer drone effort.

Venting over the decision, one Boeing engineer—who asked to remain anonymous—blamed the military’s slavish devotion to manned warplanes. “The reason that was given was that we were expected to be too good in key areas and that we would have caused disruption to the efforts to ‘keep F-22 but moreover JSF sold,’” the engineer said. “If we had flown and things like survivability had been assessed and Congress had gotten a hold of the data, JSF would have been in trouble.”

Of course, it’s possible that skittishness on the part of the military’s pilots isn’t the only reason for drone program’s demise. The same conservatism that might cause an aviator to balk at the idea of a pilotless jet fighter could also lead senior officers and bureaucrats to choose a technology they’re familiar with over a new, less familiar one—however promising the new tech might be, in theory.

With tens or hundreds of billions of dollars on the line—and, indeed, the bulk of America’s air power at stake—it’s perhaps understandable that the military would prefer to develop yet another manned fighter than to invest heavily in the world’s first jet-propelled killer drone.

Either way, in a surprising twist in America’s drone history, the Navy swooped in and saved the pilotless plane, investing billions of dollars to continue its development under the guise of the aforementioned UCLASS program.

Northrop built a pair of enlarged X-47Bs for testing, culminating in a dramatic series of carrier launches and landings in 2013. Meanwhile, Lockheed, Boeing and General Atomics—the latter the manufacturer of the iconic Predator drone—prepped their own, improved killer drone prototypes, eyeing an eventual contest to produce a war-ready, final design.

In one at-sea trial in July 2013, an X-47B detected an anamoly in its own navigation computer while approaching a carrier and, all on its own, made the decision to divert to an airfield on land. The self-diagnosis was a startling reminder of the robot’s rapidly improving artificial intelligence.

The killer drone seemed all set to join the Navy’s air wings in just a few years. The sailing branch’s plan, until the current budget cycle, had been to pick a contractor in the next couple of years and begin deploying the new drone in the early 2020s, at first complementing then, perhaps eventually, replacing F-35s and other manned planes.

The timing seemed prescient, as the F-35 had run into serious technical and management problems and was years late and tens of billions of dollars over-budget. Of the F-35’s three variants, the Navy’s F-35C version lagged the farthest behind. The UCLASS killer drone seemed poised to finally achieve the air-power coup over manned planes that it came close to achieving back in 2006.

But that was not to be. “We don’t have enough money to do everything we want to do,” Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work, once a strong proponent of the UCLASS killer drone effort, told trade publication Breaking Defense. Unless Congress intervenes, the current budget proposal unceremoniously ends UCLASS and grounds Northrop’s X-47B and itsrival drones in their present forms.

It almost goes without saying that the five-year budget plan also adds more than a billion dollars for 13 extra F-35Cs, despite the plane’s longstanding problems.

Now the Navy will have to make do with a robotic tanker plane, while the F-35—once again victorious over its arguably more capable autonomous foe—dominates the military’s planning and spending. Drone revolution, deferred.

[MIKA27]

Mafia Orphan Rats Out His Gangster Godmothers

The Prickly Pear Lip ladies—the ‘three queens’ reportedly behind one of Italy’s most violent gangs—were given up by a protégé they nurtured since his dad was shot dead in front of him.

A fierce criminal gang run by three Italian Mafia women known as the “Mussi di ficurinia,” or Prickly Pear Lip gang, has been dismantled in Sicily after Giuseppe Laudani, the man they raised as their collective son, turned pentito.

The arrests of more than 100 people associated with the Prickly Pear Lip ladies came after hundreds of police in Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands carried out joint sting operations late Wednesday, according to AFP.

The women, Maria Scuderi, 52, Concetta Scalisi, 60, and Paola Torrisi, 52—dubbed the “three queens of Castagirone”—were tasked with raising Laudani after his father, Santo, was shot dead in front of him at the butcher shop the family owned in Castagirone in the 1990s. It was one of the bloodiest periods of Mafia violence in Sicily, when more than 100 homicides were logged each year and internationally condemned assassinations of judges symbolized Italy’s struggle to contain the Cosa Nostra.

After his father was murdered, Laudani was groomed as a protégé to the powerful clan, tapped to one day lead the group by his grandfather, Sebastiano Laudini, now 90 and on house arrest for ordering the execution of a police officer. But the younger Laudani, whose nickname was “The Prince” and who was apparently deemed “ready” for the job, chose to be a turncoat instead.

Italian media report Laudani exposed some of the darkest secrets of the Sicilian Mafia’s drug and arms trades, including how the women organized everything from the money to the delivery of illegal arms and drugs—and who ordered countless executions under a work ethic that he described as “violence and vendettas.”

After Wednesday’s arrests and the revelation that Laudani was the central informer, his grandfather called him a “cornuto bastardo” or horned bastard, which is one of the worst insults one can lay upon an Italian man in certain parts of Italy, as it relates to the implication that a man’s girlfriend or wife is having sex with other men behind your back.

The angry grandfather also said his grandson was the only true blood of the family, yet he had forever “stained the family’s reputation” by collaborating with the state, according to lead prosecutor Michelangelo Patanè when he announced the arrests to the press, saying the collaboration was a turning point in their fight against the Cosa Nostra.

“This is a heavy blow at the top, both for the historical leaders… and for the current rulers,” he said. “The Laudani clan is one of the most violent criminal organizations operating in our province.”

Those arrested were charged with extortion, drug trafficking, and illegal arms possession. Of the 109 arrests, 23 were people already serving time for other crimes, including Lip lady Torrisi, who was arrested last year on other charges. Six people remain at large.

Laudani allegedly also pointed police to a weapons cache on the flanks of Mount Etna that turned up scores of weapons, including two rocket launchers thought to be procured by the Godmothers for attacks on Sicilian magistrates.

Some of the hidden weapons were also feared to be part of a large order procured by mercenaries and those affiliated with European-based terrorist cells, according to Patanè, who also said a sort of ledger had been discovered of companies that were regularly forced to pay between €3,000 and €15,000 in protection money and which may have been forced to enter into criminal alliances.

The Cosa Nostra has been able to operate for so long unchallenged because business owners often fear repercussions for cooperating with the police. The companies that have been victims of extortion, especially, tend not to cooperate with police out of fear their businesses will be destroyed forever.

Among the other revelations Laudani reportedly exposed are a deadly alliance between the Cosa Nostra and the Calabrian-based ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate to bolster their drug trades. Such collaboration among the usually competitive gangs suggests Italian authorities still face an uphill battle as they work to defeat organized crime.

So while the Prickly Pear Lip ladies may be out of service, there is little doubt that there are plenty of others ready to take their place. “In Sicily, women are more dangerous than shotguns,” goes the famous Godfather line. Especially, it would seem, when you combine them.

MIKA: This is obviously not going to end well for Giuseppe Laudani

[MIKA27]

Fifty Years of Falling: Meeting the Most Prolific Stuntman of All Time

Vic Armstrong doubling for Harrison Ford in 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade' (All images courtesy of Vic Armstrong)

The film is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indy's dad (Sean Connery) has been taken by the Nazis and is imprisoned in the "belly of the steel beast" (a tank). Luckily, Indy (Harrison Ford) has a horse. Riding through a desert canyon, he chases the tank down, his ancient skills more than a match for the fascist machinery. He draws up alongside the tank, leaps from his horse, executes a perfect landing, beats some Germans up and saves the day (eventually).

"There's a lot more that goes into stunts than people generally imagine," says Vic Armstrong. "It's not just jumping off a horse."

Armstrong is a stunt co-ordinator, stunt double and director with five decades of experience in film. He's won a Technical Achievement Academy Award and is, according to Guinness World Records, the most prolific stuntman of all time. He's talking me through one of his most famous stunt sequences, which he both performed as Harrison Ford's stunt double and helped conceive as the film's stunt co-ordinator.

A stunt of this complexity begins with the storyboard. In Los Angeles, a month before the shoot, the director Steven Spielberg maps out the chase with his team. Then the task is flipped over to Armstrong and action unit director Micky Moore, who have to make the sketches a reality. They pick the locations. This one is "tricky, in that you had to have the tank going along at a fairly close proximity to a cliff face", says Armstrong. Shooting in Almeria, Spain, in a part of the desert now known as Indiana Jones Canyon, Armstrong knew that the sandy soil was good for the horse, because it wouldn't have been able to gallop on rocks, but that the crumbly soil could easily give way, meaning that Armstrong couldn't ride too close to the edge of the cliff.

They brought a bulldozer in to cut an eight to ten-foot vertical cliff face and installed a ramp for the horse to run down, above the tank. Mechanical rigs are buried in the ground, along with pads to land on. Then Armstrong works with the horse, Huracan, who he knows well. Rehearsals take place at Fort Bravo, the local film studios synonymous with the Western. The horse's speed needs to be consistent and matched to the tank so that when Armstrong stands up to make the jump, the horse doesn't duck out sideways or slow down. "In the studios, we have the manure heap, which is the softest place to land and the biggest area to allow for mistakes. So I'd do the jump from the horse onto the manure heap and measure any discrepancies between the rehearsal and the real situation."

Armstrong has to make sure he makes his jump on the horse's up-stride. He has to ride on a rhythm: on two, he's up on the horse with his feet on some concealed pegs that will help him spring off, on three he starts kicking off and, on four, he's in the air. When he does it for the first time on camera he's a split second out, and because all his energy has been absorbed he looks like "Tom and Jerry running through the air". But then he nails it, landing on a "half-inch little pad" on the tank, wearing some padding himself. "I was so ******* pleased to land I didn't care whether it hurt or not."

Vic shooting for the 1974 film 'Dead Cert'

Born in Buckinghamshire, Vic Armstrong grew up riding horses. "My dad was a racehorse trainer, and all I ever wanted to do was race steeplechasers," he tells me. "I rode my first racehorse on the Gallops [in Cheshire] when I was nine. When I was 14, I started to race, but I was quite big and had to starve myself to get to 11 stone 7, so I only ever stayed as an amateur jockey."

Richard Todd, a post-war star of stage and screen, owned some horses that Armstrong's father trained. "He used to come and watch his horses gallop on the weekend. I was eight or nine and I'd watch him with his open top Bentley and glamorous women," remembers Armstrong. "He'd tell me about the films he was in and I would watch them, then go home and pretend I was him. I'd be Rob Roy galloping up the glens, throwing myself off my pony – sad life, really, playing on my own! But I loved it."

That fantasy element is key to the stunt business, though. "It's basically playing cowboys and Indians," Armstrong says of his profession. "You know you can't do something for real, so you do it for the movies."

This play-acting is allied to physical strength and practical ability. "Growing up with horses made me very practical because you have to do the thinking for something," says Armstrong, "and at the same time you have to adapt your thinking for the animal and be totally responsible."

Arnie presenting Vic with his lifetime achievement award at the Taurus Awards, the stunt world equivalent of the Oscars

Armstrong's journey into the film business began when he met a guy called Jimmy Lodge, who was one of the top horse stuntmen of the day. Lodge came and rode horses at the racing stables Armstrong's father ran. He was working on a film called Arabesque, with Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren, and he needed a horse from the stables. Then he needed someone to ride that horse. Armstrong stepped up and, for his troubles, was paid "the princely sum of £20 a day, which was over a week's wages in those days".

Pretty soon, the young would-be jockey realised that rather than simply subsidising his horse racing, doing stunts could be a business. "There very few stunt people – certainly no young ones in those days, in 1965," he says.

Young, good with horses and able to learn skills like sword fighting, high work (doing stuff at great heights) and falling ("You're so focused that everything becomes very slow, it seems to take forever to get down... it burns a lot of adrenaline, which is exhausting"), Armstrong worked on a string of big films and doubled James Bond. On the first Indiana Jones film, Steven Spielberg confused him for Harrison Ford and a career-spanning relationship began, with Armstrong doubling Ford as Indy, Han Solo and many others.

Vic and Harrison Ford in Spain, on the set of Indiana Jones

"I've told Harrison a number of times that if he wasn't such a good actor he'd be a great stuntman," Armstrong says of the man he's so regularly stood in for. "He's a carpenter, he's got a logical brain on him and he's an absolute perfectionist – his scripts are always covered in notes at the beginning of shooting."

A picture sent from Ford to Armstrong is inscribed with the line: "If you learn to talk, I'm in deep trouble."

Today, the stunt community is much bigger than it was when Armstrong began.

"When I started there were probably 40 people doing it, and now there are 400, I should imagine," he says. It's still a "lovely business", but it's very competitive and you don't know everyone else in the way you used to. "I was very lucky that I met some of the people that formed the business. I came in at the cusp of the new wave, if you like," says Armstrong.

Vic and his wife Wendy on the set of 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'

One of those men was George Leech, part of a generation of men who used their military experience in the Second World War to carve out a career in the film industry, arranging and performing action sequences. Leech's daughter, Wendy, followed him into the business, and on the Superman films starring Christopher Reeve she doubled Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane. Armstrong was doubling Reeve and so, as Superman and Lois Lane, they met and went on to marry and appear in a series of films side-by-side.

CGI has changed things "incredibly for the better", says Armstrong, adding that he often likens it to morphine, in that it's an incredible drug when used in the right way for the right thing, but if you get hooked, well then hey, it's very damaging. Films can be ruined by CGI, but it means that all sorts of safety mechanisms can be used and then just taken out in the edit. When he was doing Indiana Jones "everything had to be in the camera frame" and thus had to be concealed, like the pegs he used to jump from the horse to the tank. Now, Armstrong can send Andrew Garfield hurtling across a street in Spiderman and the devices he uses to make this possible will never be seen by the audience.

The magic of the screen remains, though, and heading toward his 70th birthday, Vic Armstrong is back in the desert outside of Almeria, filming in Indiana Jones Canyon, still playing Cowboys and Indians.

[MIKA27]

SUZAK CHAIR BY QSTO

If a hammock graduated from college and got a job at a design firm, we’re pretty sure this is what it’d look like. The Suzak by QSTO manages to somehow look both comfortable and professional – cozy, yet sleek.

The Miami based chair company is all about simple, affordable, and easy to use designs. This three man operation loves pushing the envelope, and the Suzak is evidence of just that. This chair is made with a fine, elastic mesh net wrapped around the frame and supported by shock cords. When you’re ordering your chair, you can mix and match the colors of the mesh net, frame, and the shock cords. Available in your choice of medium or large, this futuristic chair starts at $200. [Purchase]