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

[MIKA27]

Samsung 'Gear' Smartwatch To Debut In September?

Samsung’s hotly-anticipated wearable computing device will be making an official appearance at this year’s IFA show, if the latest online rumours are to be believed. **** Tracey fans, this is your cue to get tentatively excited.

According to a report from Patently Apple, the South Korean juggernaut is fast-tracking the release of the “Samsung Gear” smartwatch, which will make its debut at IFA 2013 on September 6th.

“The latest trend to beat Apple to the punch on any single technology relating to smartphones or tablets prior to Apple’s classic iPhone Event held every September is gaining another entrant,” the report claims.

“Samsung [is] planning to release their new smart watch which is noted as a being a “Samsung Gear” smartphone accessory. While it’s likely to be another cheesy product, the goal of course is to simply beat Apple to market with a smart watch so that Apple will look like a follower rather than a leader when and if they release such a product in the future.”

It’s worth noting that the report doesn’t mention where it got its sources from — or even if it had any. It could all just be fanboy speculation for all we know. For what it’s worth, the report also claims that Samsung will show off its next Galaxy Note device at the same event. For the time-being, we’d advice taking all this with a huge grain of salt.

At present, the product remains something of a mystery.

[MIKA27]

The 120mph Spanish train crash mystery: Why was the driver travelling at twice the recommended speed?

Francisco Jose Garzon last year posted a picture on his Facebook page of train's speedometer registering 200kph

Investigations into Spain’s worst rail disaster in more than 40 years – which has left at least 80 people dead and more than 160 injured, many of them seriously – are zeroing in on the driver after officials confirmed that excessive speed caused the train to career off the rails.

The eight-carriage service broke up and slammed into a wall as it rounded a bend near Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain at around 8.40pm on Wednesday. The train from Madrid to Ferrol was thought to be travelling at 190kph (120mph), more than double the 80kph limit on that section of the track. The impact was so great that one of the carriages went up an embankment and came to rest several metres above the rails.

A makeshift morgue was set up at a sports centre close to the crash site today, while hospitals in the city were overwhelmed by residents arriving to donate blood. The British embassy in Madrid confirmed that one Briton was among those injured.

The driver has been identified as Francisco Jose Garzon, 52, who was trapped briefly in the cabin and suffered minor injuries. He has been placed under formal investigation, although he had not been arrested this evening. A second driver, who is not thought to have been in the cabin at the time of the crash, was being treated in hospital.

According to Renfe, the state-owned company that operates the train, Mr Garzon said over his radio before the accident that he was going too fast, shouting as he went into the bend: “I’m on 190kph!” After the derailment – which caused explosions that set parts of the wreckage on fire – he asked the nearby station: “I’ve derailed – what do I do?” He then added: “I hope there are no dead, because this will fall on my conscience.”

Julio Gómez-Pomar, the president of Renfe, told Cadena Cope, a Spanish radio network, that Mr Garzon had been working for the company for 30 years and had been driving trains along the track where the accident occurred since 2010.

The investigation is likely to examine Mr Garzon’s Facebook page, which was taken down this morning but not before Spanish news outlets had seen photographs he had shared of his train’s speedometer registering more than 200kph.

In reply to the picture, posted in March last year, a friend had written: “If you get caught by the Guardia Civil [spanish police], you’ll be left without your [licence] points.”

Mr Garzon replied: “It would be fun to speed parallel to the Guardia Civil and pass by them making their speed radar jump, he-he, what a fine the Renfe would get!”

While human error may have played a part in the disaster, the train’s computerised safety systems are also being examined. The curve where the accident happened is controlled by an automatic speed-monitoring system that is standard across Spain’s railway network, and is designed to stop trains or slow them down if the driver ignores the signals or speed limits. The train contains a black-box style recorder that is now in the hands of investigators.

Today Santiago de Compostela should have been celebrating the annual Festival of St James, one of Europe’s biggest Christian events that draws pilgrims from across the continent to celebrate the apostle whose remains are said to be held in the city’s cathedral. Instead locals were dragging victims from the wreckage, some alive, some not.

At the side of the tracks bodies were lined up and covered, with the sound of mobile phones ringing from the wrecked carriages and from under the sheets covering the dead. The Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy – who was born in the city – visited the crash site and declared three days of national mourning. He said the thoughts of all Spaniards were with those affected by the accident, and King Juan Carlos II also cancelled his official duties.

The Minister for Transport, Ana Pastor, gave her condolences to the families of the victims and expressed her hopes for a quick recovery for all those injured. “It is very important that families, victims and citizens learn the cause of what happened,” she said. “We are focused on attending the families and victims, so everything is done as quickly as possible.”

A Renfe spokesman said speed control systems on its services are usually determined by the type of train, but the company has refused to disclose the set-up on the service that derailed. The Alvia class 730 was only put into service last year and had passed routine safety inspections on the morning of the crash. It has a top speed of 250kph on high-speed tracks and 220kph on normal rails. Spanish trains are among the newest in the world and the country’s safety record is significantly better than the European average.

FATAL TRAIN CRASHES: SAFETY FAILURES

5.10.1999 Ladbroke Grove, London

31 people died and more than 500 were injured when two trains collided in west London. The crash was the second fatal incident on the line in two years after the Southall crash of 1997, which killed seven and injured 139. Although the driver failed to read warning signals correctly, Automated Train Protection systems, which were not in use across the whole network, could have prevented the accident.

31.03.2003 Waterfall, NSW, Australia

Train derailment left seven people dead, including the driver. The driver suffered a heart attack and the train sped out of control, hitting a curve with a 60kph limit at 117kph. The so-called “dead man’s brake”, a fail-safe that is meant to cut power in the event of a driver becoming incapacitated, did not work because, in this instance, he was too overweight.

25.4.2005 Amagasaki, Japan

Seven-carriage train derails near Osaka, with the front two carriages smashing into a block of flats. 106 passengers were killed and more than 560 injured. The driver is thought to have been trying to make up time after overshooting at a station and reversing. The train was going at 116kph around a bend with a 70kph limit when it derailed. The train was fitted with an ATP system, but only one that activated when a train broke a red light.

[paulF]

Just want to say thank you for the efforts you put on this thread MIKA27, seriously awesome stuff

[MIKA27]

Just want to say thank you for the efforts you put on this thread MIKA27, seriously awesome stuff

Thanks Paul - You're welcome mate.

[MIKA27]

US Navy Goes Fishing After Great Barrier Reef Bombs

The United States Navy has announced it will retrieve the bombs that were accidentally dropped on the Great Barrier Reef during a botched training exercise. No harm, no foul right? …Right?

Last week, US officials confirmed that four inert bombs had been dropped on the Great Barrier Reef from two US AV-8B Harrier aircraft. The bombs were originally meant to be dropped onto Townshed Island as part of a training exercise, but an unclear drop zone prompted the pilots to jettison their deadly cargo after running low on fuel. The bombs were unarmed and did not explode but still contain around 1000kg of high explosives between them.

According to a Herald Sun report, a mine detector ship will be brought in to assist with the search alongside specialist navy divers. It is likely that the retrieval operation will be turned into a makeshift training exercise for both navies.

“As partners with our Australian counterparts, and particularly in the context of the US military conscientiously conforms to the proper rules and protocols set forth by Australian military and civilian authorities,” the US Navy said in a statement.

“The US military is aware of its professional responsibility to mitigate the environmental impact of its exercises/operations.”

Is it just us, or does this official statement come across as a bit mealy-mouthed? I highly doubt the US would be stoked if a military ally accidentally bombed one of their national treasures. The fact that the bombs are unlikely to explode doesn’t make it kosher. Nemo would be pissed.

[MIKA27]

This Is The Creepiest Family Photo Album You Will Ever See

Joshua Hoffine is a professional photographer who specialises in horror. What sets his work apart is that he often features his own family members — including his infant daughters — in grisly and terrifying situations. But is it art? Peruse the gallery and judge for yourself…

“Over the past 10 years, I have been creating photographs that explore the complex nature of fear,” Hoffine explains on his blog.

“We are all born with certain inherent and instinctual fears, such fear of the dark, the fear of lurking danger, and the fear of being eaten. As we grow older these fears lose their intensity and are slowly shuffled away into our Unconscious.”

Hoffine stages his photo shoots like movies, with sets, costumes, props, fog machines and make-up all playing their part. Each scene is acted out live in front of the camera by friends and family members, including his own daughters.

“I try to present the images within the visual grammar of a child. I want the viewer to share their point of view, to feel their sense of vulnerability. The images stress danger, and depict a world where innocence and safety are under constant threat…Horror tells us that our belief in security is delusional, and that the monsters are all around us.”

Below is a selection of Hoffine’s creepiest snaps. You can see more examples of his work and get an insight into his craft over at the Joshua Hoffine website. And now, without further ado, prepare to be seriously disturbed…

[MIKA27]

Scientists Discover New Force Stronger Than Gravity

Scientists have long known that blackbodies produce radiation and that radiation creates a repulsive effect. However, according to a new study there’s another force at play, one that acts a bit like gravity and attracts objects to the blackbody. They’re calling it “blackbody force”.

Blackbodies, celestial objects that are perfectly non-reflective, shift the atomic energy of molecules around them in what’s known as the Stark effect. This occurs when the electric field created by the blackbody radiation sends photons into surrounding molecules and atoms that often create the repulsive energy we’re used to seeing around blackbodies. However, if the energy level of the photon is just right and the radiating blackbody is less than about 6000K, it creates an attractive force that’s greater than the radiation pressure and, in some cases, greater than the force of gravity.

This new blackbody force only affects the smallest particles in the universe, though it has an effect on basic astrophysical scenarios. The Austrian team of scientists that discovered the force are particularly interested in how it affects cosmic dust. “These sub-micron-sized grains play an important role in the formation of planets and stars or in astro-chemistry,” M. Sonnleitner at the University of Innsbruck told PhysOrg. “Apparently there are some open questions on how they interact with surrounding hydrogen gas or with each other. Right now we are exploring how this additional attractive force affects the dynamics of atoms and dust.”

Scientists have so far had a hard time replicating the effect in a laboratory, but when they do, they hope it will shed light on some fundamental questions of astrophysics. At the very least, it will be pretty cool to see a new force at work, even if it only works on tiny things.

[BehikeLover2]

The North Pole Is Now A Lake

Zero **** were given by the media.

Edited July 27, 2013 by Fuzz
Language violation

[mazolaman]

US Navy Goes Fishing After Great Barrier Reef Bombs

The United States Navy has announced it will retrieve the bombs that were accidentally dropped on the Great Barrier Reef during a botched training exercise. No harm, no foul right? …Right?

Last week, US officials confirmed that four inert bombs had been dropped on the Great Barrier Reef from two US AV-8B Harrier aircraft. The bombs were originally meant to be dropped onto Townshed Island as part of a training exercise, but an unclear drop zone prompted the pilots to jettison their deadly cargo after running low on fuel. The bombs were unarmed and did not explode but still contain around 1000kg of high explosives between them.

According to a Herald Sun report, a mine detector ship will be brought in to assist with the search alongside specialist navy divers. It is likely that the retrieval operation will be turned into a makeshift training exercise for both navies.

“As partners with our Australian counterparts, and particularly in the context of the US military conscientiously conforms to the proper rules and protocols set forth by Australian military and civilian authorities,” the US Navy said in a statement.

“The US military is aware of its professional responsibility to mitigate the environmental impact of its exercises/operations.”

Is it just us, or does this official statement come across as a bit mealy-mouthed? I highly doubt the US would be stoked if a military ally accidentally bombed one of their national treasures. The fact that the bombs are unlikely to explode doesn’t make it kosher. Nemo would be pissed.

I can't quite believe they managed to do this.

Incredible stupidity.

[Fuzz]

I can't quite believe they managed to do this.

Incredible stupidity.

It's not in their backyard, so what do they care? You'd think they'd know where the heck they were before deciding to drop their bombs. You can't tell me that they were so low on fuel that they had to immediately drop their bombs in the area. The carrier or AWACS plane would have known exactly where the planes were and could have re-directed them to another area.

[MIKA27]

India Thought Jupiter And Venus Were Actually Chinese Spy Drones

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a Chinese spy drone! Oh, and there’s another one! That’s what the Indian Army must’ve thought when they saw two specks of something “spying on them” in the sky. Instead, what India thought were Chinese spy drones turned out to be… Jupiter and Venus.

Even more embarrassing, the Indian army had spent six months watching and keeping track of the “spy drones”. The Telegraph Calcutta says that the Indian army had documented 329 sightings of the unidentified object from August 2012 to February 2013, with 155 of those times being in violation of the Line of Actual Control that separates India from China.

The Indian army eventually approached astronomers from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore to figure out what exactly the mysterious flying objects were. The Telegraph Calcutta writes:

The astronomers were told that the first object, viewed from a location about 4,715 metres above sea level near Thakung, appeared in the horizon at about 6pm and remained visible until about 5am. The second object appeared at 4am and faded away at 11am.

After studying “the planet’s diurnal motion and the apparent motion of the object due to the rotation of the Earth”, the first object was Jupiter and the second object was Venus (an early morning object as its moving behind the Sun).

[MIKA27]

A Century-Old Roman Palazzo Grows A Faceted Glass-And-Steel Parasite

We’ve talked about top-down demolition, where buildings are deconstructed one floor at a time, ending at the ground. But a newly completed building in Rome, by Italian studio Fuksas, puts a twist on the concept: the old building’s facade was perfectly preserved.

The Palazzo ex Unione Militare was built in 1901 and once housed the Italian military headquarters. Eventually, the building was sold for retail space — and in 2008 a massive renovation project got underway. Because of its historical importance, Fuksas couldn’t touch the Palazzo’s facade; Instead, the firm gutted the interior completely, from roof to basement (check out the great demolition video below). After clearing out nearly 1000 tonnes of debris, they built an entirely new steel building inside, wrapped with a gauzy steel-and-glass facade that wraps around the new building and sprouts from the roof.

The project ended up taking five years and $US220 million to complete — and sadly it seems destined to contain an H&M or Benetton. In fact, that’s usually the case with projects like this, since the only clients who can afford such a painstaking construction process are doing it for a very good financial reasons — for reference, see the Hearst Tower,in New York.

[MIKA27]

US Homeland Security Is Moving Into An Abandoned Insane Asylum

Did you know that the US government’s third-largest agency is ramping up a 20-year, $US4.5 billion construction project that will turn the grounds of a former mental hospital into an “elaborate” headquarters for its sprawling network of agencies? It’s already a decade behind schedule and $US1 billion over budget.

In Bloomberg Businessweek, Devin Leonard describes his tour of the grounds of St Elizabeths Hospital, in Anacostia, Maryland (in the 1850s, it was known as “the Government Hospital for the Insane”). The 176-acre campus is scattered with abandoned buildings, some of which are completely rotted out, since someone forgot to turn the heat off when the last St Elizabeths patients were relocated in the 1960s.

It’s here that DHS — a rambling network of 22 different agencies, created in the aftermath of 9/11 — is building what it terms “its own Pentagon”. Indeed, the project is the largest federal construction project in D.C. since the Pentagon was completed. But critics question whether St Elizabeths’ will unify DHS the same way a single, Pentagon-esque building could have. Then there’s the sheer cost of gut-renovating dozens of turn-of-the-century buildings. According to Leonard:

[Project manager] Mills says that instead of seeking large sums of money for the headquarters, DHS has decided to ask Congress for smaller amounts so the project can slowly but steadily move forward. It has adjusted its schedule accordingly. The entire project, DHS now says, won’t be completed until 2026, a decade behind schedule… There’s no guarantee that the next stage of the project will be fully funded.

St. Elizabeths’ first new tenants — the Coast Guard — will move in this August. But the future of the rest of the project remains uncertain. It’s easy to imagine the site turning into a half-complete, Grey Gardens-esque metaphor for DHS itself.

Leonard, for his part, can’t resist making a few jokes about the similarities between St. Elizabeth’s old and new inhabitants. “[it's] increasingly apparent that DHS’s scheme to build its headquarters on the grounds of a former mental hospital is inherently flawed,” says Leonard. “Some would say it’s crazy.”

[MIKA27]

A Rare Glimpse Inside The Research Stations At The End Of The World

What does it take to build a habitable structure at the bottom of the world? Quite a bit of technology, for starters. The climate of the extreme south and north poles is unlike any other. Unstable ice, immense snowfall and incredibly low temperatures can — literally, in at least one case — chew up and spit out entire buildings. Not these though.

Right now, there are at least 30 stations on the icy continent, but for a long time, permanent structures were impossible to keep up.

It was common for buildings to disappear under the snow and ice up until the late 1980s, in fact. But a new breed of antarctic architecture is popping up along its edges, and a new exhibition called Ice Lab: New Architecture and Science in Antarctica gives us a look at the best. What’s changed since the continent was first sighted in 1820? Well, for one thing, buildings now have skis.

Halley VI

Halley VI Research Station floats on an ice shelf on the edge of Antarctica, where UK scientists first observed the hole in the ozone layer. The station has been around since the 1950s, and its six unique architectural incarnations perfectly illustrate the travails of building in the extreme south.

Halley I was a humble wooden shack that almost immediately fell apart. Halley II was a collection of wood huts that were also abandoned. Halley III was a steel tube that — in theory — would delay the build up of snow on its roof. Only a few years into its tenure, it was totally buried — causing the mechanical systems to fail and leading to its abandonment (the structure was eventually spit out into the ocean). IV was a system of plywood tubes designed to prevent a similar disaster — 10 years after it was built, though, it too had been engulfed by the ice shelf. 1989′s Halley VI got a bit closer to a solution: It was built on stilts that were raised every year to keep the station above the surface.

Halley’s current iteration, VI, goes one step further: Not only do its seven interconnected capsules sit on stilts that are raised to accommodate snowfall, those stilts are attached to gigantic metal skis. The building, which was designed by AECOM and opened in February, can be hauled to new locations as the ice shelf changes. It’s a remarkable pice of engineering — though we’ll have to see whether it can outlast its forefathers.

Princess Elisabeth Antarctic

Belgium’s Princess Elisabeth station is way greener than 99 per cent of buildings in normal climates. It’s the first zero-emissions building on the continent, which means it generates all of its own power, using a combination of photovoltaics and wind turbines. The stainless steel structure isn’t under quite as much danger of moving ice, since it’s located 200km from the coast, but that also means it’s far more remote — which explains why self-sufficiency was so critical. Perhaps the craziest engineering feat is the fact that it needs no heating. That’s thanks to its thick layers of insulation, inspired by German Passivhaus principles that encourage the use of extreme insulation to keep buildings cool in summer and warm in winter.

Bharati Research Station

India’s presence on Antarctica was built by bof Architekten, a German firm that works largely with prefabrication. The year-old station is build from 134 shipping containers, all wrapped in a metal shell that protects the structure from extreme wind loads.

Jang Bogo

Korea’s 60-person station is still under construction, but it will be one of Antarctica’s largest stations when it opens next year in Terra Nova Bay (near Italy’s station). Like Halley, Jang Boog sits on stilts that can be raised as the snow and ice accumulate. Meanwhile, its prefab structural guts are wrapped in a wind-buffering aerodynamic shell.

For more detail, check out Ice Lab: New Architecture and Science in Antarctica, which is on view until October.

[MIKA27]

Archaeologists Discover World's Oldest Calendar In Scotland

The discovery of a nearly 10,000-year-old lunar calendar in Scotland has archaeologists scrambling to rethink the beginnings of history. The implications are huge; it turns out that the men of the Stone Age weren’t as primitive as we’d previously thought.

The calendar itself is primitive to be sure. However, it’s also the oldest calendar ever discovered, pre-dating the bronze calendar in Mesopotamia that had held that title until now by several millennia. The array is made up of 12 pits, one for each month of the year, arranged in a 50m long arc and topped with a series of stones thought to represent the phases of the moon. The full moon stone, a round 2m wide boulder, is prominently displayed in the middle, and on the far side is a notch to show where the sun would rise on the midwinter solstice 10,000 years ago.

While the basic astronomy at work is impressive, the mere existence of the calendar is arguably its most important trait. At this time the land around the Dee River in Aberdeenshire — where the calendar was found — would have been populated by hunter-gatherers who would’ve used the calendar to keep track of the migratory patterns of the big game that would pass through the area.

But the arrangement of pits and stones also shows mankind contemplating bigger questions. As Vincent Gaffney, a professor of landscape archaeology at Birmingham University who led the excavation team, put it: “It represents a time when people became concerned with anticipating and measuring and time and in some ways represents the start of history.”

More than anything, however, this calendar’s existence is just proof that we still know shockingly little about life at this point in history. Or as Richard Bates, a geophysicist from University of St Andrews who also helped with the dig, told National Geographic, “It shows that Stone Age society was far more sophisticated than we have previously believed, particularly up north, which until lately has been kind of a blank page for us.”

From here it will be interesting to step back and compare the methods in Scotland with those found in the Fertile Crescent and begin to see how these ideas might have spread. Until then, book your tickets now to go see Stone Henge’s ancient, less epic but much older big brother.

[MIKA27]

Some 2014 Olympic Gold Medals Will Contain Russian Meteorite

Winning a Gold Medal is one of the highest achievements in sports, the beautiful round medallion rewards years of hard work and confirms an athlete’s status as the very best. Russia is going to sweeten the deal a bit in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics (no, they’re not wrapping chocolate inside), extra medals that have pieces of the meteorite that crashed in Russia earlier this year will be given to the gold medal winners.

A medal containing a piece of something that came from SPACE. How cool is that? The lucky space gold (or space rock chain) will be given to athletes who win an event on February 15, 2014 (the one-year anniversary of the meteor that hit Chelyabinsk). According to R-Sport, The events that qualify will be the men’s 1500m speedskating, the women’s 1000m and men’s 1500m short track, the women’s cross-country skiing relay, the men’s K-125 ski jump, the women’s super giant slalom and men’s skeleton events.

Chelyabinsk Region Culture Minister Alexei Betekhtin said:

“We will hand out our medals to all the athletes who will win gold on that day, because both the meteorite strike and the Olympic Games are the global events”

[Habana Mike]

US Homeland Security Is Moving Into An Abandoned Insane Asylum

Did you know that the US government’s third-largest agency is ramping up a 20-year, $US4.5 billion construction project that will turn the grounds of a former mental hospital into an “elaborate” headquarters for its sprawling network of agencies? It’s already a decade behind schedule and $US1 billion over budget.

In Bloomberg Businessweek, Devin Leonard describes his tour of the grounds of St Elizabeths Hospital, in Anacostia, Maryland (in the 1850s, it was known as “the Government Hospital for the Insane”). The 176-acre campus is scattered with abandoned buildings, some of which are completely rotted out, since someone forgot to turn the heat off when the last St Elizabeths patients were relocated in the 1960s.

It’s here that DHS — a rambling network of 22 different agencies, created in the aftermath of 9/11 — is building what it terms “its own Pentagon”. Indeed, the project is the largest federal construction project in D.C. since the Pentagon was completed. But critics question whether St Elizabeths’ will unify DHS the same way a single, Pentagon-esque building could have. Then there’s the sheer cost of gut-renovating dozens of turn-of-the-century buildings. According to Leonard:

[Project manager] Mills says that instead of seeking large sums of money for the headquarters, DHS has decided to ask Congress for smaller amounts so the project can slowly but steadily move forward. It has adjusted its schedule accordingly. The entire project, DHS now says, won’t be completed until 2026, a decade behind schedule… There’s no guarantee that the next stage of the project will be fully funded.

St. Elizabeths’ first new tenants — the Coast Guard — will move in this August. But the future of the rest of the project remains uncertain. It’s easy to imagine the site turning into a half-complete, Grey Gardens-esque metaphor for DHS itself.

Leonard, for his part, can’t resist making a few jokes about the similarities between St. Elizabeth’s old and new inhabitants. “[it's] increasingly apparent that DHS’s scheme to build its headquarters on the grounds of a former mental hospital is inherently flawed,” says Leonard. “Some would say it’s crazy.”

Couldn't be a more apt location given the insane policies, expense, reach and control the agency represents....

[MIKA27]

Watch A Real-Life Rocketeer Fly In Formation With A B-17 Bomber

Yves Rossy has been scorching the sky as Jetman for years now; he’s traversed everything from the Grand Canyon to (most of) the Mediterranean Sea. But I’m not sure anything he’s done to date is as wonderful as his recent stint as a B-17 bomber’s literal wingman.

Rossy, who’s well over 50 years old, can reach speeds of 305km/h and an altitude of 3.6km in his four-engine, carbon-Kevlar jetwing. This particular display was to generate hype for this summer’s US air show circuit, in which Jetman will be participating for the first time. While it’s doubtful he’ll be bringing a B-17 with him, there’s no doubt he’ll look even better by comparison alongside your standard crop duster.

[MIKA27]

New Blood Test Could Definitively Diagnose Alzheimer's Disease

We’re all painfully aware that there isn’t a cure for Alzheimer’s. There isn’t even a reliable way to diagnose it. But a new blood test, the first of its kind, indicates that we can hold out hope for a surefire diagnosis, one that might catch the disease earlier than the current battery of brain scans and cognitive tests.

A recent trial conducted by scientists at Saarland University and Siemens Healthcare compared and contrasted 140 microRNAs (non-coding genetic molecules) of a sample group of 202 people, made up of Alzheimer’s patients and a healthy control group. The researchers found that 12 of the mRNA differed significantly between the Alzheimer’s patients and the healthy group. By using those 12 as biomarkers, the technique accurately identified the presence of the Alzheimer’s 93 per cent of the time. It also distinguished Alzheimer’s from similar neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s and early onset dementia.

This is important work. We still don’t have a test that accurately detects Alzheimer’s before symptoms hit. Brain scans look for the presence of beta-amyloid, a protein that has long been argued to be an indicator of Alzheimer’s. (That, coupled with defective tau protein, yields an accurate post-mortem diagnosis.) But it’s a hotly contested theory, and treatments that target beta-amyloid haven’t been shown to be effective. This, of course, raises questions about its efficacy as a diagnostic tool — -doubts that a definitive biomarker test could easily put to rest.

Of course, using biomarkers as a way to diagnose neurodegenerative disease isn’t nearly as mature a field as traditional brain scans. There’s still a lot to learn. To move forward here, researchers need to further ensure the accuracy of the biomarkers and get it approved for clinical use. If it’s successful, this same technique could be used to detect cancers and other brain disorders. And being able to pinpoint cases and causes can only help nudge the search for cures along. But that’s all well on down the line. For now, let’s just hope this turns out to be the real deal for diagnosis.

[MIKA27]

Kim Jong-Un Confirms Design For $200 Million International Airport

First Instagram, now this: An architecture and planning firm in Hong Kong has reportedly been chosen to turn a military airstrip in North Korea into a $200 million international airport. The plans show two doughnut-shaped terminals that — if built — could contribute to what some are describing as a tiny-but-not-imperceptible North Korean economic boom.

The plans show the transformation of a former military airport in Kangwon Province — near Mount Kumgang Tourism Zone, a region of Kangwon where South Korean tourists have been allowed to visit intermittently since 2002 — into a large commercial hub called Wonsan International Airport. According to the South China Morning Post, the design by Hong Kong

architects PLT was confirmed by Kim Jong-un himself — who was apparently so psyched about them that he ordered Pyongyang’s airport be revamped, so as not to look shabby next to Wonsan.

The renderings for the hub are surprisingly restrained for a country where architecture is wielded as a tool of state propaganda. They show two 3345sqm oval terminals (one for international, one for domestic) that can each accommodate six planes. Exactly how each terminal is laid out isn’t clear, but each seems to consist of a subterranean floor where departures happen, topped off by a larger arrival and commercial core (the hollow areas offer outdoor green space). According to PLT, the doughnuts were inspired by traditional Korean drums — although they look distinctly reminiscent of Virgin Galactic’s spaceport too.

Otto Cheng Ping-lun, the lead planner at PLT, had the following to say about the decision:

My partner was invited [to fly to North Korea] on a private jet provided by the investor. Of course, they had to leave their mobile phones in the airport before entering the country… We were told that Kim was happy with our design. However, Kim said the airport in the capital should not look worse than the one in the economic zone. That’s why we were also asked to upgrade the airport in Pyongyang.

So now PLT is taking on two major construction projects in a country whose GDP barely tops $US30 billion. As far as the plans go, these designs aren’t all that ostentatious. Wonsan is designed to host roughly a million passengers every year. That’s a lot for the most isolated country on the planet, but it’s still less than 10 per cent of the traffic JFK sees every year.

Still, with current tourism levels where they are (read: nearly nil), this plan could be read as a sign that North Korea is set to relax their strict rules about foreign visitors. Or, you know, it could be read as a wildly speculative piece of spin. At the very least, the floor plan sends an encouraging message.

[MIKA27]

BMW's Electric i3: All Vroom, No Gas

BMW’s all-electric i3 is here. And boy is it a sight to behold. It looks nothing like any other BMW we’ve seen before, but it’s real and goes on sale early next year.

Under the hood is a 22kWh lithium-ion battery with a supposed range of 130km to 160km that also puts down 170 horsepower and 250Nm of torque. And 0 to 100 only takes seven seconds. Unfortunately, the i3 is governed at 150km/h.

BMW says charging takes roughly three hours using a 220-volt line or 30 minutes with the optional DC Combo Fast Charging setup. The i3 tips the scales at 1225kg, the lightest on the market.

The i3 starts at $US41,350.

[MIKA27]

Fordlandia: Inside Henry Ford's Unrealised Dream

The murky legacy of Henry Ford — who would’ve been 150 today — centres around a few familiar ideas like the assembly line and the $US5 workday. Less familiar is Ford’s biggest failure: Fordlandia, a city in the rainforest that was abandoned as quickly as it was built.

Ford was a farm boy who went on to establish 20th century consumerism as we know it, but he had plenty of missteps, too, ranging from his anti-semitic remarks to his attempts to engineer whole communities around his ideas about labour practices — including the one he built on the edge of the Brazilian rainforest.

So, whence Fordlandia? The community was spurred by a problem caused by the incredible success of Ford’s empire. By the early 1900s, America was gobbling up more than 70 per cent of the world’s rubber, most of it going to Detroit. These were the days when rubber still came from plants — meaning that most of it had to be shipped from Southeast Asia. Ford, a dude who was pretty into efficiency, was hesitant to keep buying his company’s supply from Malaysia, where British rubber plantations were churning out most of the global supply, so he set out to establish his own rubber farm. In a fit of creativity, he named it Fordlandia.

In 1928, Ford sent a boat loaded full of machines and supplies to a 6,000-square-mile plot of land on the Amazon. Filled with Ford company managers, the charter’s mission was to embed American suburbia in the heart of the rainforest. Within a few short months, they’d set up homes, running water, electricity, and all kinds of other extras (like swimming pools) that played to Ford’s belief that leisure was an essential part of the economy.

Local workers were expected to adopt a suburban Michigan lifestyle, too — with a healthy dose of Ford’s own morals, which meant that both booze and ladies were outlawed within the town. According to a terrific podcast from How Things Work, the transplant town even hosted mandatory square dancing. Burgers and other American fare featured in the cafeteria. A Harper’s reporter writing about the town had the following to say about the fare, in 1941:

A workman’s mess hall was set up, but native workers did not like the wholesome Detroit style cooking and complained bitterly of indigestion. North American fare in the jungle no more pleases the customers than a quick change to Amazon fare would please you or me.

This kind of blatant cultural whitewashing might’ve flown, had the work itself taken off. But it turned out that rubber plants were being cultivated in Southeast Asia instead for a very good reason: There were no natural floral predators there, as there were in Brazil. Production was sluggish, and the Michigan managers had zero botany know-how.

What’s more, native workers began to rebel (surprise!) against the strict rules about lifestyle. Soon, a so-called “Island of Innocence” was established in the middle of the river, where workers could go to kick back with a drink and a female companion. Riots broke out a few years later. In 1933, Ford hired a professional to find out why his plants weren’t growing (poor soil quality). He tried again and again, relocating Fordlandia to a better patch of land downstream. Fordlandia was still underperforming.

Fordlandia’s final death knell rang a few years later, when the invention of synthetic rubber made the town irrelevant. Soon, Ford had sold the land back to Brazil at a loss of around $US20 million (or $US200 million today if you account for inflation), leaving Fordlandia’s little suburbia to decay. Today, the town is a decaying hobble of ruined buildings.

It’s a fascinating story of arrogant cultural transplantation gone awry, but there’s also something strangely sad about photos of Fordlandia today, especially in light of the ongoing demise of towns Ford built in America. In his book about the failed community, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, author Greg Gandin writes:

There is in fact an uncanny resemblance between Fordlandia’s rusting water tower, broken-glasses sawmill, and empty power plant, and the husks of the same structures in Iron Mountain, a depressed industrial city in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that also used to be a Ford town.

They didn’t fail for the same reasons — but in a way, Ford’s ideas about consumer spending contributed to the decay of both. Check out Gandin’s excellent history for more, if you’re interested.

[tmac77]

Halley VI

Halley VI Research Station floats on an ice shelf on the edge of Antarctica, where UK scientists first observed the hole in the ozone layer. The station has been around since the 1950s, and its six unique architectural incarnations perfectly illustrate the travails of building in the extreme south.

Halley I was a humble wooden shack that almost immediately fell apart. Halley II was a collection of wood huts that were also abandoned. Halley III was a steel tube that — in theory — would delay the build up of snow on its roof. Only a few years into its tenure, it was totally buried — causing the mechanical systems to fail and leading to its abandonment (the structure was eventually spit out into the ocean). IV was a system of plywood tubes designed to prevent a similar disaster — 10 years after it was built, though, it too had been engulfed by the ice shelf. 1989′s Halley VI got a bit closer to a solution: It was built on stilts that were raised every year to keep the station above the surface.

Halley’s current iteration, VI, goes one step further: Not only do its seven interconnected capsules sit on stilts that are raised to accommodate snowfall, those stilts are attached to gigantic metal skis. The building, which was designed by AECOM and opened in February, can be hauled to new locations as the ice shelf changes. It’s a remarkable pice of engineering — though we’ll have to see whether it can outlast its forefathers.

For more detail, check out Ice Lab: New Architecture and Science in Antarctica, which is on view until October.

My dad led the British expedition of UK scientists that set up an outpost on Halley's bay in 1957 and discovered the ozone layer anomalies. They were down there for two year's so their little shack did last a bit longer than indicated here.

For a complete read on this you can read his book. "On Floating Ice"

http://www.amazon.com/On-Floating-Ice-Joseph-MacDowall/dp/1858217202

[MIKA27]

My dad led the British expedition of UK scientists that set up an outpost on Halley's bay in 1957 and discovered the ozone layer anomalies. They were down there for two year's so their little shack did last a bit longer than indicated here.

For a complete read on this you can read his book. "On Floating Ice"

http://www.amazon.co...l/dp/1858217202

Nice, thanks for the added information, much appreciated.

[MIKA27]

Why Your Phone Should Be Turned Off During Flight

It’s a fact of life for anyone boarding a plane: all electronic devices need to be turned off during take-off and landing. Most airlines have had this rule in place for more than a decade now, even though there has been no definitive documented instance in which passengers leaving their devices on caused a plane crash.

So why are we forced to stop listening to music or reading a Kindle during take-off and landing?

Many passengers simply ignore instructions, as shown by a recent US study, which found a third of passengers admit to not always turning off their devices during take-off and landing.

The US Federal Administration Authority (FAA) has responded to growing public scepticism to its “everything must be switched off” blanket rule by setting up a body to look into the issue and has started to slowly relax some rules.

Some US airline staff are now using iPads to replace paper flight manuals and get more information about their passengers.

Last month, British Airways became the first European airline to allow passengers to switch on their mobile phones just after landing.

What’s the point of airplane mode?

Airplane mode or flight mode is a setting available on most electronic devices, such as ereaders and smartphones, which suspends many of the device’s signal transmitting functions.

So why are we still asking passengers to completely power down all electronic devices before take-off and landing, especially when staff are allowed to use tablets?

The argument that electronic devices on a flight (commonly referred to in the industry as “portable electronic devices” or PEDs) have never resulted in a plane crash is beside the point.

As aviation expert and New York Times columnist Christine Negroni wrote recently, there actually have been reported cases of pilots reporting electronic devices interfering with flight systems on commercial flights – issues that subsequently disappeared when the flight crew spotted the offender(s).

In 2001, NASA put out a report compiling data on PEDs attributed to having anomalies with aircraft systems. The report concludes that:

the data clearly indicates that not only were some events judged as having a critical effect on a system, but they also happened during critical states of flight specifically landings and take-offs.

In 2003, it was found that a charter pilot had called home during a flight and the call remained connected. The plane crashed at Christchurch Airport when the plane flew into the ground short of the runway. Eight people died, including the pilot.

The investigation that ensued from the New Zealand Transport Accident Investigation Commission stated that the pilot’s mobile phone may have interfered with the plane’s navigation system.

In 2011, the ABC in the US reported on a confidential report from the International Air Transport Association STEADS program which uses data provided by the world’s airlines. The database showed 75 events over the past seven years in which interferences occurred that pilots and engineers think are linked to cellphones or other electronic devices.

And even in airplane mode, a smartphone still emits some electromagnetic radiation, as do devices that can’t connect to the internet, such as MP3 players.

A systems approach to aviation safety

Safety in commercial aviation is not to be viewed as an isolated aspect but as being part of a larger system made up of many interlinked avionics components.

For example, do you think those in-flight safety demonstrations and airplane seatbelts are useless?

They’re not.

New generation aircraft are more robust and better shielded to electromagnetic interference – disturbance affecting an electrical circuit due to either electromagnetic induction or radiation emitted by an external source – but how many passengers know how old the aircraft they’re boarding actually is?

Another argument that usually comes up involves the use of in-flight Wi-Fi that is offered by certain airlines. If there’s in-flight internet, why can’t I use my phone on the plane? But those systems are tested and verified according to the aircraft model and the overall system they’re part of – and some don’t make the cut.

There have been reports of electromagnetic interference testing for particular in-flight Wi-Fi systems that showed interference with aircraft avionics display units.

International inconsistencies

It is also worth pointing out that there are no set international rules on precisely when passengers are allowed to turn on their devices. Most US airlines only allow their use above 10,000 feet (about 3km in altitude).

When landing, some airlines prefer to wait until the plane reaches the gates (as most Australian airlines do) while in China passengers typically pull out their phones as soon as the wheels hit the runway.

In recent years, there have been several moves, as previously discussed, to allow more extensive use of electronics devices in-flight, and the discussion on the matter is still going.

Is your mobile phone going to take an entire aircraft down just because you texted your better half? Probably not.

But what you can potentially create is a distraction to the pilots and aircraft crew and if that happens at the wrong time (say during critical flight phases like take-off or landing) then it may have an impact on safety.

Is it really worth that risk?