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

[Fuzz]

Russia's Surprisingly Sane Plan To Build A Floating Nuclear Power Plant

That's actually quite an ingenious method of transporting electricity. A mobile nuclear reactor/desalinisation plant/emergency response vessel would be very useful for disaster relief.

[MIKA27]

Garmin's New HUD Projects Turn-By-Turn Directions Onto Any Windshield

When most of us think of heads-up displays, our brains almost immediately wander into science-fiction fantasies. And lord knows I’ve been fantasising about a relatively inexpensive unit that will put turn-by-turn navigation on my windshield. Goodbye, awkward smartphone mount, hello, Garmin HUD.

The new Garmin HUD sits on your dashboard, projecting navigation information at eye-level onto either a transparent film you stick to your windshield or onto an included reflector lens (so you can use it in rental, for example). The unit pairs wirelessly via Bluetooth with a smartphone running one of Garmin’s navigation apps (Street Pilot or NAVIGON) from which it pulls turn-by-turn directions.

Besides the obvious information the HUD projects useful details including what lane you should be in for your next move, and a constantly-updated estimated time of arrival.

OK, so this isn’t exactly Tony Stark-vision, but for $US130 the Garmin HUD does exactly what we need it to at a price most of us can afford. Garmin says the dashboard wart will be available in coming months.

[MIKA27]

Tile Is By Far The Coolest Way To Find Your Lost Stuff

What if you lost your keys in-between your couch cushions last night and now you’re late for work? What if you could pull out your phone and wander around your house to track where the keys were, or even better, how many times have you wished that your lost keys or wallet could call out to you when you lose them? Meet Tile: a nifty little gizmo to counter your stuff getting lost.

Tile sounds pretty simple: attach a Tile to your laptop, your keys, your wallet or even your bike and have it communicate via Bluetooth 4.0 with your iPhone to indicate distance and help you find stuff when it gets lost. Why didn’t we think of this, right?

It’s especially interesting when your Tile-tagged stuff gets stolen. Each Tile is marked with what it was attached to on the phone app, and if your bike gets stolen for example, you can mark the Tile as Lost. That then flags the Tile in the back-end, and if any Tile user goes near your lost Tile, it discreetly communicates with the back-end that it has been found. Then your app gets notified that some kind stranger has passed by your lost item, and marks it on a map for you. That’s seriously nifty, but it’s all going to depend on the range of Bluetooth 4.0, which Tile says is up to 150 feet.

Tile runs on Bluetooth 4.0, which means no Android support just yet. Sorry Googlers. Another weird pseudo-flaw with Tile is the battery situation. The Tile doesn’t need to be recharged. It’s a set and forget system, but it does only have a battery life of a year, which means you’ll need to keep buying new Tiles every year to keep using the system. That’s an interesting new take on a subscription model.

Right now Tile is available for pre-order, shipping in late 2013. You can still order a Tile for as little as $US18.95, or you can get multi-packs ranging up to 10 Tiles for $US170.55.

[MIKA27]

Moths Vibrate Genitals to avoid Bats:

In the air wars between bats and moths, the bugs are fighting back—by shaking their privates.

It’s no award-winning dance move, but a new study shows that hawkmoths in Borneo jiggle their junk to produce ultrasound. That jams Malaysian bats’ built-in sonar, rendering the hawkmoths temporarily “invisible.”

Found worldwide, hawkmoths get their name from their large sizes—some species have wingspans greater than 4 inches (10 centimeters)—and superb flying abilities. The insects fly up to 12 miles (19 kilometers) per hour and can quickly dart from side to side to avoid predators, especially bats.

Over the past 65 million years, bats and moths have squared off in an evolutionary arms race. For the bats’ part, they have built-in sonar that allows them to emit high-pitched cries, then listen as the sound waves bounce off any nearby insects.

Those millions of years of evolution have also given the moths some rather unusual abilities—which now includes genital vibrations.

Ultrasonic Moths

Jesse Barber, a behavioral ecologist at Boise State University, had been studying hawkmoths and bat-moth interactions since he was a Ph.D. student. He also found preliminary evidence that hawkmoths were capable of producing ultrasound.

“In tiger moths, the only other group of moths known to produce anti-bat sounds, ultrasonic signals warn of bad taste, mimic sounds made by other bad-tasting species, and even jam bat sonar,” Barber said. (Related: “Moths Jam Bat Sonar, Throw the Predators Off Course.”)

He reasoned that since hawkmoths are closely related to tiger moths, and that bats appear to find them just as tasty, hawkmoths might be creating similar anti-bat ultrasound.

So he and Akito Kawahara, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Florida, traveled to Borneo and set up experiments with three hawkmoth species: Cechenena lineosa, Theretra boisduvalli, and Theretra nessus.

To keep the moths from flying away, the researchers tethered the bugs to an experimental rig with fishing line and a drinking straw.

Once the insects were attached to the rig, the researchers recorded the moths’ speed and sounds with high-speed cameras and special microphones that can record sounds in the ultrasonic range. The team also used high-tech speakers that could play recordings of hunting bats’ ultrasound.

“We placed the moth in front of a ultrasonic speaker and microphone. We then played pre-recorded bat sounds to the moth and watched and recorded their behavior,” said Kawahara, whose study was published July 3 in the journal Biology Letters.

Good Vibrations

Sure enough, when the hawkmoths heard the recordings of the bat sonar, they produced ultrasonic sounds of their own.

This is where the high-speed camera came in handy: By slowing down the video of the hawkmoths in the rig, the scientists were able to see exactly how the moths produced these sounds.

“We had some suspicion that they might be making sounds with their genitals, based on some enlarged scales that we found on the outside of the claspers [a part of the genitalia] in museum specimens,” Kawahara noted.

Indeed, the moths were actually rapidly rubbing their genitals to create ultrasound—and further investigation showed that both males and females used this behavior. (Read about a bug with a singing penis.)

The scientists believe that the hawkmoths use these ultrasonic responses as a form of self-defense. ”We suspect that these sounds are used to jam bat echolocation and startle or warn bats,” Kawahara said.

The night sky may not be as quiet as we might think, Barber added.

“It seems likely that the night sky is filled with insects producing ultrasound in response to bat attack.”

[MIKA27]

The Airstream: Secrets of America’s Silver RV

The retro styling of the Airstream is as appealing today as it was back in the 1930s. In the book Airstream: The Silver RV, available Aug. 13, author and PopMech alum Tara Cox celebrates this iconic travel trailer with some curious and little-known facts.

The oldest Airstream prototype, recognized by Airstream Inc., is the DIY-made Torpedo Car Cruiser. Built in the 1930s, the teardrop-shaped trailer was composed of a wood frame and was Masonite-skinned. The blueprints for the design of this Airstream were found in the back pages of a little magazine called Popular Mechanics, in the June 1934 issue.

Airstream creator Wally Byam was inspired to build the trailer by his wife’s disdain of camping. She did not want to be without a kitchen and was not a fan of sleeping on the ground.

Airstream’s iconic silver design is a part of the Art Deco movement called Streamline Moderne. The trailer’s aerodynamic design and straight lines suggest a forward-movement design, a trend that was applied to everything from radios to appliances.

Airstream’s original Bowlus Road Chief Trailers were the very first riveted aluminum trailers. A rare find—only 80 were ever built. Today, a Canadian couple has revived the brand and sells new Road Chiefs with amenities such as Wi-Fi and solar paneling for $100,000.

Keeping with the trend of 1950s cars, Byam had a “gold” Airstream fashioned. The yellowish color was an experiment in anodizing. Dissatisfied with how the color looked, he abandoned the idea.

Unlike most motor homes of today, Airstreams didn’t come equipped with toilets, but rather with a “thunder mug”—basically a bedpan. Emptying out the campers’ latrine doesn’t seem so laborious now, does it?

To show just how easy it was to tow an Airstream, Wally Byam had famed French cyclist Alfred Letoureur pull an Airstream with his bicycle in 1947.

Inspired by Cadillac Ranch in Texas, there is a site in Dover, Fla., where eight Airstreams (okay, seven and a half to be exact) are buried nose-down in the ground. This art-exhibit-turned-inverted-parking-lot was built in 2008.

In 1969, after returning from their maiden voyage to the moon, Apollo 11 team members Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin were quarantined for three weeks in a specially built Airstream. They were kept there until it could be determined that they weren’t carrying any moon germs back to Earth.

[MIKA27]

Iceberg Forensics: Predicting the Planet's Future With Antarctic Ice

In the last million years, the North American ice sheet has formed and completely melted about 10 times. Ice is melting once again—simultaneously, across the globe—and the science research vessel and drilling ship JOIDES Resolution has been seeking out clues to how ice sheets may respond to a warming climate. Onboard in Antarctica, Trevor Williams reports on the role that ice has played throughout geologic history and what a new iceberg in the Southern Ocean can tell us about the future for the planet.

There is a new iceberg in the Southern Ocean, and it's big: 50 miles long by 20 miles wide. Until February, it had been the tongue of the Mertz Glacier, sticking out from the East Antarctic ice sheet into the Southern Ocean. Large cracks had been forming over the last few years, crossing the tongue almost from one side to the other, but it took a nudge from a similarly huge iceberg to finally set the chunk of ice free. The new Mertz iceberg will travel westwards on the currents around Antarctica for decades, sometimes running aground on shallow parts of the continental shelf, eventually breaking up into smaller bergs and slowly melting.

Here aboard the scientific drilling ship JOIDES Resolution, which just finished drilling not far from the Mertz glacier in the waters off Wilkes Land, Antarctica, we received daily images from the U.S. National Ice Center to better navigate the ice-infested waters. It was not just the larger icebergs the ship's crew had to keep an eye on, but also the smaller pieces of ice, called growlers (the size of a car) and bergy bits (the size of a house), which were often tricky to spot on radar. But our ship was able to reach most of the planned sites, where we drilled ocean-floor sediments to study, among other things, the glaciological history of icebergs breaking away from the Mertz glacier and this sector of Antarctica.

Today, the 20-mile-wide Mertz Glacier is one of Antarctica's great ice streams, draining the ice from this part of East Antarctica. Snowfall on the highlands upstream is gradually buried and compressed until it becomes ice, and the ice flows downhill into the glacier. The glacier is moving to the ocean at 3000 feet per year and has regularly calved icebergs. Because the snow falling in the hinterland is in balance with the icebergs calving from the glacier, the ice sheet remains stable, neither gaining nor losing mass. At least, this was the case until a few years ago.

A Shifting Balance

Something new is happening with the ice streams and glaciers. They are getting thinner, and they are getting thinner because they are speeding up. Without satellite observations, it would be very difficult to know if the glaciers are changing, as so few people come to this most remote part of the world. But since about 1993, satellites have been measuring the height of the ice and, since 2003, ice mass.

One such satellite, NASA's ICESat, carries a laser altimeter to measure the height of the ice surface. Between 2003 and 2007, the satellite's orbit passed over Antarctica's glaciers several times, and showed that most of the ice streams draining Antarctica are getting thinner. The Mertz glacier is thinning by a modest 1 foot per year, but some in West Antarctica, like the Pine Island glacier, are thinning by as much as 20 feet per year.

Another NASA satellite (actually a twin pair of satellites) named GRACE measures tiny changes in gravity that result from moving masses on the Earth. If ice streams speed up and drain the ice faster, ice mass will be lost from Antarctica, and gravity will go down a fraction. Before 2000, the ice on Antarctica is thought to have been roughly in balance overall, with new snowfall balancing ice lost through surface melt and icebergs. But from 2003 to 2006, the GRACE data shows ice loss was about 27 cubic miles per year, and from 2006 to 2009 the ice loss more than doubled to about 64 cubic miles of ice per year. The ice is lost into the ocean, and at the current rate it would cause sea level to rise by about 3 inches by the end of this century.

By itself and without faster ice loss, this would not be much of a problem. But Greenland is also losing a similar amount of ice, also at an increasing rate. If there were just a few surging glaciers, ice loss might slow down, but because the vast majority of glaciers are thinning at the same time, glaciologists conclude that the cause is warmer ocean and air temperatures in recent years. This poses some interesting questions for science. Will Antarctica and Greenland continue to lose ice at a faster rate? How much ice might be lost and how much would sea levels rise? The geological record holds clues to understand how the current ice loss will play out.

What History Tells Us

There is a lot of ice on Antarctica—enough to cover the United States to a depth of 1.5 miles. In fact, only 18,000 years ago (a blink of an eye in geologic time), twice this amount of ice covered the northwest of North America. The Great Lakes are puddles left over from when it melted, and Long Island and Cape Cod, which mark the southeastern limit of the ice's reach, are formed from debris carried by the ice. This ice sheet took 12,000 years to melt (short in geologic time, long in human time) and the meltwater caused sea level to rise almost 400 feet at an average rate of about 3 feet per century. This gives us an idea of how fast a large ice sheet can melt. Since then, the remaining ice on Greenland and Antarctica has been pretty stable.

In the last million years, the North American ice sheet has grown and completely melted about 10 times. During the last interglacial period, 125,000 years ago, some of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melted too, raising sea level by 24 feet compared to today. The world was only 1.5 C to 2 C (2.7 F to 3.6 F) warmer then, a temperature rise at the low end of the range predicted for the end of this century. In particular, glaciologists are watching the West Antarctica ice sheet closely because it is mostly grounded below sea level, which means that once it has started to retreat, it will be very difficult to stop until the ice edge reaches higher ground. There is 10 feet of sea level rise stored up in the unstable part of the West Antarctic ice sheet.

For the response of the ice sheets to a still warmer world, older periods in geologic time offer parallels. The JOIDES Resolution expedition to Wilkes Land is investigating some of these, such as the Pliocene, about 3 million years ago, when the world was on average 3 C (5.4 F) warmer than today. The state of the ice sheets during the Pliocene is not well known, but it is thought that sea level ranged up to 80 feet higher than today. With the sediments drilled by the Resolution over the last month, the expedition's marine geologists will be able to get a good idea of both the warmer Pliocene temperatures in the Southern Ocean and the response of the ice sheet to this warming here on East Antarctica.

By itself, the new Mertz iceberg is not a sign of global warming—icebergs are a normal part of the system. But satellite data shows that Antarctica is losing ice, and from the geological record we know that just a few degrees of warming makes parts of the ice sheets unstable. Glaciologists are racing to understand better how the great ice streams will flow in a warmer world, and the future rate of sea level rise is still uncertain. But from what we know already, 3 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century is a fair estimate. The 145 million people living within 3.3 feet of present sea level have time to move before 2100. But ports, coastal airports, cities like Venice and New Orleans and low-lying island states will have a more difficult time adapting—and so they have already begun to plan for rising seas and a changing coastline.

[MIKA27]

How a Hurricane Wavemaker Works

To engineer better buildings, researchers at Oregon State University's Wave Research Laboratory bust walls with waves generated by this artificial tsunami machine.

More than half of the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of the coast, where it is vulnerable to hurricanes, tsunamis and other severe weather. Researchers at Oregon State University’s O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory believe that engineering solutions could prevent the loss of life and property along America’s seaboards—and they’re using a giant wavemaker to prove it. A hydraulically driven piston at one end of a 342-foot-long tank filled with 300,000 gallons of water is used to replicate waves generated by nature. The waves roll down the length of the tank and crash into nearly life-size walls and levees. “You can’t scale down a telephone pole hitting an object and expect it to behave as it would in real life,” says Dan Cox, who directs the lab.

Ultimately, the data could be used to design new types of buildings, levees and other structures. “A research lab like this is trying to create an accurate wave that replicates what you’d see in nature,” says John Bushey of MTS Systems, which designed the wavemaker. “Those waves are a lot more complicated than what you see in a typical amusement park wave pool.”

Anatomy of an Artificial Tsunami

Scientists generate waves in a 342-foot-long, 15-foot-deep flume filled with 300,000 gallons of fresh water. The bottom of the tank is flat, then slopes up and ends in a plateau. The profile, varied by experiment, simulates the effect of a beach, making waves break when they hit shallower depths. The machine allows scientists to study regular waves, which consist of a series of troughs and crests, and tsunamis, which are generated as solitary waves; here’s how a tsunami is created.

A steel waveboard extends forward at 13 feet per second, generating a 4.5-foot-tall, bell-curve-shaped wave that moves down the flat-bottomed flume—meant to replicate the deep ocean—at 15 feet per second. When the mini-tsunami encounters a ramp on the flume floor, the wave leans forward and grows to a height of 5 feet. In water depth roughly equal to its height—at a plateau in the tank that acts like a sandbar—the wave breaks, generating a wall of water sometimes known as a hydraulic bore. The bore hits test structures with 8000 pounds of force and can generate a 20-foot-high splash. The wave’s journey down the flume lasts 10 seconds.

A. Servo Computers: Scientists control the wave machine with a servo computer, which they use to adjust the amplitude and frequency of the waveboard’s movement. This allows them to generate not just sine waves, but the nonlinear waves seen in nature. The computer is connected to two servo valves on the wave machine, which regulate how much hydraulic fluid flows into or out of the pistons that move the waveboard. For regular waves, the board is placed at its center of travel and moved back and forth. For a tsunami, the board is fully retracted, then fully extended. It peaks at a velocity of 4 meters per second and stops at 4 meters of stroke, creating a bell-curve-shaped solitary wave.

B. Hydraulics: Once researchers have indicated to the computer what type of waves they want, the machine’s two servo valves kick into action. To generate random waves, one servo valve regulates flow into and out of two piston-type cylinders—one that extends and one that retracts—which move the waveboard back and forth; a third cylinder acts as a counterbalance to the pressure on the board from the water in the flume. Researchers use both valves—with a total capacity of 750 gallons per minute—to create the energy needed to generate a tsunami.

C. Waveboard: OSU’s previous waveboard was hinged at the bottom, and pistons moved the top back and forth to replicate waves created by wind in the middle of the ocean. To move the massive amount of water required to simulate a 5-foot-high tsunami, researchers installed the current waveboard— a single piece of welded and bolted steel, 15 feet high and 12 feet wide.

[MIKA27]

Apple Wants To Redesign Your Car's Dashboard

While all the fanboys were freaking out over a font change in iOS 7 earlier this week, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple a patent that could dramatically reshape how the inside of your car looks (and works) in a few years.

Crediting Canadian Tim Pryor as inventor, the patent takes on the sweeping problem of a driver safely controlling onboard technology while also operating the vehicle, and draws on patents dating back to 1971. That doesn’t mean that Apple’s proposed onboard computer isn’t unbelievably futuristic though. The patent, called “Programmable tactile touch screen displays and man-machine interfaces for improved vehicle instrumentation and telematics” — or “Digital Dash” for short — incorporates everything from laser pointer inputs to cameras that track the driver’s head movements to provide innovative takes on one of the oldest problems of the automobile interface.

As the patent name suggests, the centrepiece of this potential Apple technology is a tactile display that can control many of the car’s features. This isn’t just a giant iPhone screen either. In order to help keep the driver’s eyes on the road, the display will have a “feel” that will send the driver signals about whatever she’s touching. This can include a screen with raised ridges as well as “real knobs, switches and sliders”. It also stands to redirect all of the controls from either side of the dash to a big display in the centre, while enabling the auto manufacturer to customise the interface for any given model. The patent schematics point out a number of places the new technology could be installed, but number 11 is the sweet spot:

This move isn’t particularly surprising — at least not on a practical level. Apple, like every company, applies for and wins patents for crazy things all the time, but that doesn’t mean that the company is actually going to build them. Apple’s started making moves towards the auto industry, and the Digital Dash patent is just the latest in a series of efforts to put Apple technology under the hood.

Earlier this year, the company patented an iPhone-powered remote that could locate, unlock, and start your car. This served as a handy follow up to a patent last year that described a wireless remote for controlling a car’s media centre from the steering wheel.

And let’s not forget the concrete product Apple announced just last month: “iOS in the Car” integrates Siri into the onboard computer, and makes it easier for drivers to send texts, find directions and play music.

It’s unclear how automakers will feel about Apple making a big push into their territory. To be objective about the dynamics, Apple’s expert knowledge ought to come in handy in an industry that tends to be a few years behind in terms of technology. As car companies failed to make their onboard computers more useful on their own, a number of companies thrived by building dash-mounted devices. It seems clear that Apple always wanted to go a stage further, which it theoretically has by redesigning the dashboard itself.

Again, patents are just patents, and could very well amount to nothing (or at least, nothing more than a lawsuit). And even if there is a finished product in some Cupertino bunker, you’re certainly not going to see it in a patent filing. Apple saves the pretty things for keynotes.

[MIKA27]

Throwable Camera Prototype Guarantees Pitch-Perfect Photography

It turns out that making a throwable camera isn’t that tricky. But making a throwable camera that doesn’t capture random obscure images, or spinning video that induces motion sickness, is kind of hard. In fact, it’s taken Steve Hollinger years to develop such a camera, but with the Squito — his latest prototype — it looks like he’s almost nailed it.

As demonstrated, the ball features a series of built-in cameras looking out in all directions that are able to take photos of people as it sails through the air using intelligent image recognition. It’s also able to capture sweeping panoramas, full 360 degree images by automatically stitching together multiple exposures, and even full stabilised video.

But besides serving as a novel way to take a selfie, Holinger’s designed the Squito with several practical applications in mind.

Thermal imaging and night vision capabilities coupled with the ability to wirelessly broadcast images makes it a useful tool for rescue personnel trying to assess a dangerous situation. Multiple Squitos can even be thrown at the same time to capture a wider field of view.

And most importantly, one day it’s going to totally revolutionise the baseball instant replay. The only thing standing between the Squito dream and reality is enough funding to perfect and commercialise this prototype.

[MIKA27]

This Aussie Guy Is The Best Beatboxer You Will Ever Hear

From original beats through to Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean: this guy is a one man beatboxing revolution, and this is the best video you’ll watch all day.

Meet Tom Thum, an Aussie beatbox from Brisbane who brought his brand of whimsey to TEDxSydney and dropped phat beats in the main hall of the Sydney Opera House. Wow.

Geared up with a microphone and a few mixers, he takes us on a world tour of sound using nothing but his mouth. He even plays his nose at one point.

This is a must-watch.

[MIKA27]

Old KGB Radio Intercept Stations Are Still Operational And Listening

It turns out our Soviet Big Brother could be spying on us too. Intelligence historian Matthew Aid discovered through declassified CIA documents that Russia still has a massive network of former KGB listening stations that are actively eavesdropping. And here’s where they are.

While some of the old spy outposts are rusting away in disrepair in former Soviet Union countries, many are still alive and well.

Foreign Policy has an interactive map that shows the fortresses scattered throughout the Eastern block and Russia, with a little background on each.

The stations were historically used during the Cold War to gather any and all intel they could on the US and its allies. Of course, they were also used to spy on the Soviet Union’s very own citizens. Aid explains that they “were a small but very important part of the massive [signals intelligence] intercept and processing complexes operated not only by the KGB but also by the Soviet military intelligence service, the GRU.” The Dymovka station, for example, is as far West as the Polish border of Ukraine. Satellite activity suggests it’s been taken over by Ukraine’s SIGINT organisation.

[MIKA27]

The Incredible Jaguar Project 7 Racer: One-Seat, Four Wheels, All Noise

The boffins at Jaguar have been doing some amazing work lately. No longer is it just a factory in the Midlands of Britain for boring wood-laden sedans: it’s an engineer’s wet dream. Meet the Project 7: a one-seat racer that makes a noise so good you’ll think about selling your house just to buy one.

The Jaguar Project 7 is based on the bite-the-back-of-your-hand-gorgeous Jaguar F-Type. It’s long, large and most definitely in charge.

Under the hood lurks the Jaguar 5.0-litre supercharged V8 engine which produces 680nm of torque. It will go from 0-60mph (96.56km/h) in 4.1 seconds, and will keep on going to a phenomenal 300km/h. Well, 186mph (299.338km/h), but near enough to make no difference whatsoever. All that power is wrapped in a beautiful azure blue aluminium body, complete with white racing stripe and matching helmet. Nice.

And when that 5.0-litre engine pounces, you feel like you’re watching the love-child of speed and science grow-up before your very eyes. A streak of blue lightning lost in a dizzying sea of thunderous engine noise and power.

To be fair, you can’t really buy the monstrous Project 7. It’s one of a kind and it comes without a price tag, and if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

The Jaguar Project 7 will make its first public debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on 12 July.

[MIKA27]

The Key To Never Forgetting Your iPhone's Charging Cable

Key-shaped USB flash drives have guaranteed we never forget to bring our important files ever again. Taking the same approach, Bluelounge’s Kii guarantees you always have an emergency iPhone or iPad charger on hand — as long as you remembered to lock your home and bring your keys.

A 30-pin dock connector version of the Kii, available in black only, is the cheaper of the two at just $20. But if you have the latest generation iPhone or iPad, you’ll need to cough up twice that amount — $40 — for the black or white Lightning version.

We’re assuming you’re helping to cover Apple licensing fees for the new connector, but even at $40 it’s still worth every cent if it means you’re not scrambling to borrow someone else’s Lightning cable or dimming your device’s display to near unusable levels just to max out its dwindling battery. Bluelounge

[MIKA27]

Sennheiser's Colourful Cans Value Style As Much As Sound

Sennheiser is usually known for high-end audio quality and rather clunky design. That changed a little with its Momentum headphones — but now the act is smartened up even further with these colourful cans.

These over-the-ear headphones are smaller, neater version of the first Momentums — in fact, they pack the same audio innards. But just of much as a draw as the audio quality here is the design.

Sennheiser has clearly done its research here, picking out some of the big colour trends of the moment for its new cans, which are available in pistachio, cream, blue and pink. Trimmed with Alcantara — the material that crops up in high-end sports cars and yachts — they are an absolute pleasure to look at.

They will be available later this month, at a lower price point than the originals. Based on the UK pricing, they look set to cost about $250.

[MIKA27]

Automatic NERF Sentry Gun Is Just About The Coolest Thing Ever Made

You’re about to see a working NERF sentry gun. A proper sentry gun, like one you’d see in a video game or movie, which can automatically track you then start shooting until you die (of amazement).

It was built by Instructables user BrittLiv, and comprises a NERF Vulcan gun, a stand, a motor and a laptop. Using recognition software, the laptop’s camera can track someone walking in front of it, the gun moving to follow the person’s movements.

While it can be fired manually, as you’ll see in the video below, it can also be programmed to shoot automatically at targets (and even programmed to not fire at certain people).

In summary, this is an autonomous motion-detecting, belt-fed NERF machine gun. Holy crap.

[MIKA27]

Lincoln's Pyramid: Failed Proposals For DC's Most Famous Monuments

Retronostalgia is the air. Last week, we looked at six New Yorks that could have been. This week, National Geographic takes a similar look at DC, for which there are veritable heaps of unbuilt memorials. Ever wondered what the Lincoln Memorial would look like, had it been built by ancient Egyptians?

As you might imagine, the competition to design a national monument was fierce, even in America’s infancy. And since the United States had not classical traditions to draw from, being a country without a creation myth, most architects borrowed from the grand pasts of other cultures, from the Greeks to the Egyptians. Martin Moeller, a senior curator at the National Building Museum, explains to NatGeo’s Luna Shyr:

Now it seems so bizarre. But if you think about it, how much more bizarre is it than using an ancient Egyptian obelisk as a symbol for the nation’s first president?

Of course, plenty of the monuments that were actually built borrow from both sources, but we’ve had several hundred years to get used to the obelisks and edifices we ended up with. By contrast, the failed schemes are shocking. Three of the best, but head over to National Geographic for the whole slideshow.

Washington Monument

If you’ve ever looked closely at the monument that was built, there’s a shift in colour — from darker to light — halfway up its face.

That’s because construction took nearly 40 years to complete, and was halted during the Civil War. During that time, other proposals were put forth, like the bust on the right, designed by Vinnie Ream Hoxi. When work finally resumed, the original design (by Robert Mills, seen on the right) was altered dramatically to fit the style of the day.

Kennedy Center

Edward Durell Stone — the midcentury architect who built the original MoMA and Radio City Music Hall — designed this sinuous cultural centre in 1959. According to NatGeo, it was scrapped because of its cost. Thirteen years later, Stone’s alternate design — the rectangular, gridded design we’re all familiar with — opened instead.

Lincoln Memorial

John Russell Pope is the author of a handful of Washington’s most well-known structures, like the National Archives and the Jefferson Memorial. Lesser known? His zany pyramid proposal for the Lincoln Memorial. According to Moeller and NatGeo, the craziness of this scheme is explained by the fact that Pope wanted the powers that be to change the site for the memorial — making this a well-executed architectural ploy.

[MIKA27]

A Magical Window That Blocks Noise But Lets Breezes Pass Through

It’s a warm summer night in the city, but instead of sleeping with the windows open to let a breeze in, you’ve got them all closed to keep your bedroom quiet. It’s a ‘lesser of two evils’ decision that people living in crowded urban centres might soon not have to make.

Researchers in South Korea have developed a remarkable new type of window that dampens sound while still allowing air to pass right on through.

Developed by Seong-Hyun Lee at the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials and Sang-Hoon Kima at the South Korea Mokpo National Maritime University, the nitty-gritty of how the window works is detailed here. But in layman’s terms the windows are made up of two plates of transparent acrylic sitting 40mm apart that work as a resonance chamber, diminishing the energy of sound waves passing through. And to maximise the window’s efficiency, it’s perforated with 50mm holes that allow more sound to enter and get trapped, without obstructing breezes.

The exact science of how the windows work is of course far more elaborate and worth a read if you’ve got a few moments, but in testing it’s been found to reduce sounds by an impressive 20 to 30 decibels — enough to turn a traffic-filled street into a sleep-friendly murmur — across various frequency ranges depending on the size of the perforations.

So in addition to soundproofing and cooling an office or a home, in theory, the materials could even be used to make ultra-quiet fans or other hardware.

[MIKA27]

Hyper-Precise New Clock Could Redefine The Length Of A Second

After the introduction of a new kind of atomic clock, the world’s most expert timekeepers are considering making an update to how we measure a simple second. It would be more accurate, sure. But it would also force us rethink theoretical physics as we know it.

Jérôme Lodewyck and his colleagues report that the two new optical lattice clocks they’ve been testing at the Paris Observatory are about as accurate as accurate gets, and the improved precision might justify a change in the global time standard. Developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, these optical lattice clocks are about 100 times more accurate than the atomic clocks currently used to sync the world’s watches. Even still, it would take you a few million years before you’d notice the difference.

But that’s not the point. Time can be used to measure more than Olympic swimming matches. The new optical lattice clocks are so precise they can measure red shift, the phenomenon of time slowing down around objects with a big gravitational pull, and gauge changes in the Earth’s surface of a single centimetre. While existing clocks can measure red shift, they can only do so accurately within meters or kilometers. From there, the improved accuracy has all sorts of implications for theoretical physics and will help scientists test some of the most outlandish hypotheses.

The current standard measurement for a second has been in place since 1967, when scientists measured the radiation emitted from a caesium atom jumping from one state to another. One second was defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations, which has remained the standard for the timekeepers at NIST, the Paris Observatory, and other atomic clocks around the world.The new method, however, triple checks its own work by collecting yterbium atoms in an optical lattice formed by a laser beam bounced off a mirror. Once the atoms are in place, scientists zap them with another laser to measure the electronic shifts on each atom. Together the result is the most accurate clock the world has ever seen.

It’s not time to throw all the old conventions out the window just yet. Just because we can establish a new standard measurement of a second doesn’t mean that we should. The old system is already in place and working well at research institutions all over the world. Outfitting all of those places with a new kind of atomic clock and getting them to adjust their measurements to a new standard sounds like a big headache, especially for those folks who aren’t doing intense theoretical physics.

On the same token, everybody wins when science becomes more accurate. Nature, who published a story about the new clocks this week, calls these new atomic clocks “a boon to basic science”. And if we can use amazing new tools to learn amazing new things about the origins of the universe, why wouldn’t we?

[MIKA27]

CAPTIVATING: THE UK’S HOMELESS IN BLACK & WHITE

Lee Jeffries is a 41 year old accountant from Manchester. Throughout most of his life, he never did anything remotely arts related, but a camera and a conversation changed all of that one day.

While he was walking around London he noticed a young girl that seemed homeless. As she lay in her sleeping bag curled up, he inconspicuously took a shot of her and began to walk away. It was then that something inside him was moved and he decided to go back to the sleeping girl and talk to her. After their conversation, Jeffries’ perception of the homeless had shifted significantly and he was inspired to engage in their lives.

Roaming with his Canon 5d and 24mm lens, Jeffries built friendships with those who lived on the streets in the U.K. After hearing their stories, he would ask for their consent to take some portrait shots of them. After some Photoshopping, the results that he has created are quite captivating.

For Jeffries, photographing the homeless was not intended to be photojournalism or something to acquire a shock reaction from viewers; it was much deeper and spiritual. In his work, one can see the soul and story of the street friends he captures. He honors them instead of pitying them and gives them a dignity and significance in this world. In most major religions, it is accepted that where the poor are, there God is. In these photos, the light seems to penetrate any of the darkness that exists and at times it seems as if one can see the eyes of God.

[MIKA27]

Watch The New Grand Theft Auto V Trailer Right Here

It’s Grand Theft Auto V trailer day! Here’s some new gameplay footage from Rockstar’s open world extravaganza, which will be out for PS3 and Xbox 360 on September 17.

[MIKA27]

July 7, 1937: The Marco Polo Bridge Incident begins.

The battle on the Marco Polo (or Luguo) Bridge, located kilometers outside Beijing, then called Beiping, marked the beginning of the full-scale invasion of China by the Japanese Empire and the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the largest war in Asia of the 20th century. It coincided with and eventually merged with World War II, becoming a part of the larger conflict in the Pacific and much of Asia.

In 1931, Japan seized the northeastern portion of China called Manchuria and installed there a puppet state under the name “Manchukuo"; under the governance of the former Chinese emperor Puyi and the direction of the Japanese Empire, Manchukuo was effectively detached from the rest of China. Over the next few years, Japan continued to industrialize the region and build its influence in the regions surrounding Manchukuo, expanding its territory and stationing troops along the railways leading to Beijing, until finally, a skirmish between Japanese and Chinese troops on the Marco Polo Bridge over a lost Japanese soldier (later determined to have wandered off to relieve himself) heightened tensions between the nations - and eventually, escalated into war. The incident has often been interpreted as both the result of a series of misunderstandings and accidents to the fault of both the Japanese and Chinese, and as an incident intentionally staged by the Japanese as a pretext for a full-blown invasion of China.

The Japanese forces outmatched the KMT National Revolutionary Army, then also entangled in civil war with Communist forces, in terms of industrial strength, technology, and training, and quickly overwhelmed them, occupying Beijing and taking Shanghai after a bloody bout of urban warfare in August to November 1937. A war marked by great loss of life (both military and civilian), unspeakable atrocities, and strategic stalemates began at Marco Polo Bridge on July 7, 1937, and it would not end for eight years.

[MIKA27]

Fugitive Taunts D.A. via Twitter & Promptly Gets Arrested

A former Amtrak clerk who fled after being convicted of disability and insurance fraud in January has been apprehended in Mexico, the San Diego County district attorney's office said Monday.

Wanda Lee Ann Podgurski, 60, had allegedly taunted law enforcement authorities after she disappeared, including a tweet thought to be directed at D.A. Bonnie Dumanis: "Catch me if you can."

Podgurski was arrested Thursday in Rosarito by the Fugitive Task Force. The case, and taunting tweet, had been turned over to the U.S. Marshal and the Computer and Technology Crime High-Tech Response Team, authorities said.

She was arraigned Monday in San Diego Superior Court on a charge of failing to appear while on bail.

“The defendant in this case was brazen in both the large-scale fraud she committed and the way she mocked the criminal justice system,” said Dumanis.

Podgurski, in absentia, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being convicted of receiving more than $650,000 in disability and insurance payments after faking injuries.

Podgurski had been free on $500,000 bail during the two-month trial. Her last known address was in Manhattan Beach.

Podgurski said that she slipped and fell at her home in 2006 and said she was so severely disabled that she needed an in-home caregiver.

But during a time when she was allegedly disabled, Podgurski traveled to the Dominican Republic, New York, Seattle, Boston, Fort Lauderdale and other destinations, prosecutors said. Among her trips was a 16-day tour to China in 2008 with a boyfriend, prosecutors said.

Podgurski collected payments from seven insurance companies and a government agency.

"This was an extreme case, but any level of disability fraud ultimately increases insurance costs for everyone," Dumanis said.

[MIKA27]

Mars Rover 2020: NASA Wants To Bring A Piece Of Big Red Back To Earth

NASA is making grand plans to bring a piece of Mars back to Earth. Today, the space agency announced the goals for the unnamed rover — pictured in an artist’s rendering above — that will be sent to the red planet in 2020. This is going to be incredible.

The broadly stated goals for the Mars 2020 mission include continuing our indefatigable search for signs of past life, as well as the newly stated objective of collecting samples to bring back to Earth.

The goals were outlined are outlined in a 154 page report prepared by the Mars 2020 Science Definition Team, composed of 19 engineers and scientists. The report basically lists the scientific instruments and payloads, which will be necessary on the next ground vehicle we send to Mars — the vehicle itself will apparently be quite similar to the Curiosity, which landed on the surface of Mars last year. Now it’s up to contractors to bid on the right to help NASA fulfil our red destiny.

[MIKA27]

A Terrifying Staircase To Nowhere Provides Dizzying Views Of The Alps

Apparently, stunning views of one of the most picturesque mountain ranges in the world aren’t enough for visitors of the Dachstein Glacier resort in Austria. So the facility has installed a 14-step ‘staircase to nothing’ leading to a glass-bottomed viewing platform that juts out from the side of the glacier, and a 100m suspension bridge that hangs 400m over the mountains.

Although awe-inspiring, neither attraction is designed for the faint of heart. However, if you’ve ever dreamed of scaling a mountain but barely have enough upper body strength to put on a warm jacket, this is the closest you’ll get to the stunning views enjoyed by mountaineers — unless they eventually install a staircase on Everest.

[MIKA27]

Microsoft Is Making Fun Of Apple Again

http://youtu.be/oG0yZLEPN_Y

I know it’s hard to believe, but Redmond has a beef with Cupertino!

In this video, two baseball scouts are looking at a player and comparing his stats, while teleconferencing with HQ. The Windows tablet shows off app snapping in the corners of the screen, while the Apple guy — who clearly doesn’t know how to multi-task — says he needs to “switch apps”.