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

[MIKA27]

Battlefield 4 Multiplayer Maps Look Off The Chain

First it was giant multiplayer deathmatches. Then EA and DICE announced destroyable skyscrapers inBattlefield 4. Now it’s maps that change dramatically as the match progresses. Watch out you don’t get run over by a huge battleship in this map.

In this Paracel Storm map, players storm a Pacific island for control of the territory whatever way they can. Boats, helicopters and good ol’ fashioned swimming skills are used to get you into the fight, while the opposing force attempts to repel the invaders.

What’s really interesting is when a map-wide event happens that changes the landscape into a giant hurricane, tossing boats around and challenging players before a huge battleship is washed up onto the shore, forcing you all to flee for your tiny, digital lives.

Battlefield 4 lands in late-October.

[MIKA27]

What Happens When You Stick Your Head Into A Particle Accelerator

Today I found out what happens when you stick your head into a particle accelerator. Exhibit A: Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski, a Russian scientist who has the distinction of being the only person to ever stick his head in a running particle accelerator.

Shockingly, he also managed to survive the ordeal and, all things considered, came out without too much damage.

Bugorski was a researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, working with the Soviet particle accelerator: The Synchrotron U-70.

On July 13, 1978, Bugorski was checking a malfunctioning piece of equipment. As he was leaning over the piece of equipment, he stuck his head through the part of the accelerator that the proton beam was running through. He reported seeing a flash that was “brighter than a thousand suns”, but did not feel any pain when this happened.

The beam itself measured 2000 grey as it entered Bugorski’s skull and about 3000 grey when it exited on the other side. A “grey” is an SI unit of energy absorbed from ionizing radiation. One grey is equal to the absorption of one joule of radiation energy by one kilogram of matter. An example where this is commonly used is in X-rays. For reference, absorption of over 5 grays at any time usually leads to death within 14 days. However, no one before had ever experienced radiation in the form of a proton beam moving at about the speed of light.

As you can see from the picture, the beam entered the back of Bugorski’s head and came out around his nose. Shortly after this happened, Bugorski’s left half of his face swelled up beyond recognition. He was taken to the hospital and studied as this was something that had never been seen before and so they closely monitored him thereafter, fully expecting him to die within a few days at most.

Although the skin on the part of his face and back of his head where the beam hit peeled off over the next few days and the beam had burned through his skull and brain tissue, Bugorski did not die and actually came through it all surprisingly well.

Despite the beam going through his brain, his intellectual capacity remained the same as before. The few negative health drawbacks he did experience were not life threatening either. He lost the hearing in his left ear and experienced a constant unpleasant noise in that ear from then on. The left half of his face slowly became paralysed over the course of the next two years.

He also gets significantly more fatigued with mental work, though he did go on to get his PhD after this incident. The remaining side effects were occasional absence seizures and later tonic-clonic seizures, though these didn’t show up right away.

The most bizarre side effect that occurred because of this has to do with his face. Looking at Bugorski now, you’d see the right half of his face looks like a normal wrinkled old man, but the left half of his face looks as if it was frozen in time 19 years ago. Apparently Botox’s got nothing on a particle accelerator’s proton beam for stopping wrinkles.

Bonus Facts:

• During absence seizures, the person will often appear to be just staring off into space. There is no typical jerking or twitching as is associated with many other types of seizures. Absence seizure victims will often move from one location to another without purpose or thought behind it. What is happening here is, under normal circumstances, thalamacortical oscillations maintain normal consciousness of an individual; during absence seizures these are disrupted.
  
• A synchrotron is a cyclic particle accelerator where a magnetic field and an electric field are carefully synchronised with a travelling particle beam. The magnetic field turns the particles so they circulate; the electric field accelerates the particles.
  
• Tonic-Clonic seizures are more typically what most people think of when we think of seizures. During the “tonic” phase the person will lose consciousness and their muscles will suddenly tense. This typically only lasts a few seconds. During the “clonic” phase the muscles will start to contract and relax rapidly, causing the person to convulse sometimes severely.
  
• Bugorski went on to get his PhD after this incident and worked as a scientist for many years. In 1996, he applied for disabled status to receive his epilepsy medication free, but was turned down. He also tried to make himself available to Western researchers but was unable to afford to leave Protvino.
  
• Bugorski is married to Vera Nikolaevna and they together have one son named Peter.
  

[MIKA27]

Infographic: Here’s 8 Of The Biggest Design Fails In History

It’s hard to believe that some of the most ambitious architectural designs of the modern era, also proved to be significantly flawed when it came to their final execution. Despite all the funding, approvals, meetings, planning, scoping, documentation and individuals involved in constructing these impressive feats of human ingenuity, somewhere, somehow it all went wrong.

The New School of Architecture and Design have created an infographic titled ‘Failure by Design‘ whichhighlights some of the most notable failures of architectural design from eight famous buildings from around the world. The errors range from significantly under estimating the weight of structures, to failing to accommodate the surrounding geological hazards to even erecting a building on unstable marshland.

You’ll be amazed and confounded as to how any of these structures past the planning stage let alone ended up being built!

[MIKA27]

Two of America’s Most Haunted Caves

Though cemeteries and historic properties are the traditional settings for ghost stories, spirits don’t limit themselves to old inns and graveyards. Frightening tales come from all sorts of unexpected places, including deep within the earth. Here are two well-known caves in the United States and the ghosts that call them home.

The Ghosts of Mammoth Cave

With nearly 400 miles of interconnected passages, Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave is the longest known cave system in the world. Each year, hundreds of tourists flock to Mammoth to marvel at the cave’s stunning formations and massive size. However, legend has it the tourists and guides aren’t alone. A number of ghostly tales surround Mammoth Cave, including one about Floyd Collins, a celebrated explorer who died trying to discover a new entrance to the vast cave system.

The Tragic Tale of Floyd Collins

On January 30, 1925, a rock in what is now Sand Cave fell on Collin’s left leg, pinning him in a small passageway. Collins’ friends discovered his predicament the next day, and rescuers spent two weeks trying to reach him. The attempt became a media sensation, but Floyd died three days before rescuers arrived. Unable to remove the rock, rescuers left Floyd’s body in the cave and sealed off the shaft leading to his body.

Homer Collins eventually recovered his brother’s corpse and buried it on the family property. Unfortunately, Floyd’s father sold the property two years later, and the new owner exhumed Floyd’s body and displayed it in a glass coffin for several years. In 1929, someone stole Collins’ body, though officials managed to recover the corpse, minus the injured leg. Floyd now rests in Jackson’s Flint Ridge Cemetery where he’ll hopefully remain undisturbed.

Floyd’s Ghost

Given Floyd’s terrifying death and the indecent handling of his remains, it’s hardly surprising that his spirit reportedly haunts Sand Cave. One story tells of screams and pleas coming from the now-sealed cavern. Another claims an unknown entity hurls decades-old whiskey bottles at people who come too close. A third tale, however, suggests Floyd is more helpful than harmful.

“There’s one story that a caver told me that she was caving near part of the cave where Floyd, when he was alive, would go caving, and she tripped and she started to fall,” Mammoth Cave tour guide Colleen Olson told Kentucky’s Wave 3 news. “And then she felt somebody grab her and pull her back, and of course she thought it was her caving partner. So she was about to say, ‘Thanks, Richard,’ thanking her pal, but he was way on the other side. So then, when she realized it wasn’t Richard, she said, ‘Thanks, Floyd.’”

The Bell Witch Cave Haunting

The Bell Witch haunting of Adams, TN is one of America’s most famous ghost stories. What many people don’t realize is that the Bell Witch spirit, or something like that, lingers in a small cave once owned by the infamous Bell family.

The Legend of the Bell Witch

Legend has it that between 1817 and 1821 a malevolent spirit terrorized the prosperous Bells. First, the family noticed strange animals on their property. They then started to hear chocking, gasping, and gnawing sounds in the cabin. The sounds quickly escalated to physical violence with John Bell Sr. and daughter Betsy suffering most of the abuse. Some blamed the activity on a neighbor named Kate Batts who reportedly sent the spirit to kill John and prevent Betsy from getting married. Evil spirit or not, this is exactly what happened.

Betsy and her suitor broke off their engagement, and John Bell died of mysterious circumstances in 1820. As for a possible motive, notes from the Red River Baptist Church reveal that John Bell and Benjamin Batts had a lengthy feud over the purchase of a slave.

The Modern Bell Witch Haunting

Sightseers today can view a replica of the family’s cabin and visit Bell Witch Cave, a small cavern on what was once Bell property.

Visitors who attempt to snap a photo of the cave’s entrance often have trouble getting a clear image, if their cameras work at all.

Other visitors report hearing whispered names and disembodied voices ordering them to leave. Tourists who take a rock from the cave will reportedly have a string of bad luck. One Marine was so unnerved after discovering a rock his daughter had stolen that he begged his wife to return it before he left for Iraq.

Some believe Native American spirits also dwell in Bell Witch Cave. One property owner claimed that the Trail of Tears ran through the property and that Indians once lived, and died, within the cave. One visitor believes an Indian spirit followed her to her car.

“The most unnerving thing happened,” writes Debbie Dunn, author of The Bell Witch Unveiled at Last: The True Story of a Poltergeist. “Have you ever seen toddlers sit down on their parent’s foot, wrapping their arms and legs around them like a monkey, and then wait for the grown-up to try to walk with the little one weighing them down? That is exactly what I felt. As I was driving, I felt an invisible child sit down on my driving foot, wrapping her arms and legs around my calf. I told my friend what was happening.

Suddenly, I heard a giggle and a little girl announce her name was Summer Moon. Pila was her mother. They both resided in the Bell Witch Cave. Then she released my foot and disappeared.”

Are the caves in Kentucky and Tennessee truly haunted? Or is it legend and the power of suggestion that are behind the odd tales? Skeptics and believers may never agree, but the thrilling combination of caves and ghosts is sure to capture people’s imaginations for years to come.

[MIKA27]

Peru's isolated Mashco-Piro tribe 'asks for food'

Members of one of the most isolated tribes on Earth have briefly emerged from the Peruvian jungle to ask for food, according to local activists.

A group from the Mashco-Piro tribe made contact with villagers, apparently sparking a tense stand-off.

The tribe, which numbers in the hundreds, has had virtually no contact with the wider world.

Campaigners say logging and urban development have diminished the area in which the tribe can live.

The Mashco-Piro are one of several tribes designated by the government as "uncontacted people".

The government forbids direct contact because the tribes' immune systems are not thought able to cope with the type of germs carried by other Peruvians.

Anthropologist Beatriz Huertas told the Associated Press news agency that the tribe could sometimes be seen migrating through the jungle during the dry season.

But it was strange to see them so close to the village across the river, she said.

"It could be they are upset by problems of others taking advantage of resources in their territories and for that reason were demanding objects and food of the population," she said.

Footage filmed late in June and released by local rainforest campaign group AIDESEP and the Fenamad federation for indigenous rights showed the tribe members crossing the river.

Saul Puerta Pena, director of AIDESEP, said the footage showed the tribe asking for bananas.

"There is a canoe sent by another remote indigenous community, which does not live in isolation, to send them food," he said.

"But the tribe cannot come into contact with the remote community still because any illness could kill them."

There are thought to be between 12,000 and 15,000 people from "uncontacted" tribes living in the jungles east of the Andes.

[MIKA27]

Sars: The people who risked their lives to stop the virus

Ten years ago, the world was in the grip of a panic over an outbreak of a mysterious illness - Sars. The virus killed hundreds - and infected thousands more - but its impact would have been far more devastating had it not been for the bravery of a handful of doctors and nurses.

"It was like a nightmare - each morning you arrived and more people were sick."

In 2003, Dr Olivier Cattin was working at the French hospital in Hanoi, in the north of Vietnam.

"We got to the Friday and there was only one nurse left on our ward who was able to treat the other nurses, and this nurse was also sick."

One day at the end of February that year, a Chinese-American man, Johnny Chen, had arrived with what appeared to be a bad case of flu.

Within days, nearly 40 people at the hospital had fallen ill, including a number of the staff. Seven would go on to die. This was the site where the deadly disease - later named severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) - would come to the attention of the world.

It was highly contagious, and often deadly. More than 8,000 people around the world were infected, and more than 770 died.

But this is a story about people not statistics. The closer you get to the story of Sars, the more overwhelmed you become by the experience, and the heroism, of those who stood on the frontline.

War is a metaphor that we often use in relation to the fight against disease. But it is rarely more apt than in the case of Sars.

At the French hospital in Hanoi, panic set in as the doctors reviewed the X-rays of all those who had fallen ill. They knew they were facing something very serious and highly unusual.

"All the chest X-rays were abnormal and... were similar to Johnny Chen. We had a panic attack. We were all thinking that they were are all going to die," says Cattin.

"One by one, we saw the X-rays and there was a big silence because we could not talk… We didn't know what was going on. It was very, very scary."

The virus had a highly unusual pattern of transmission. Its peak of infectivity occurred late in the course of the disease when its victims were at their most unwell and usually in hospital care.

Because of this, the worst cases clustered in a few hospital wards and intensive care units in a handful of major cities. And within these, the virus spread like wildfire.

When Johnny Chen and some of the first medical staff to care for him all died, they began to understand what they were facing and the risk it posed to the world outside.

The 2003 Sars outbreak

Selected countries

China: Deaths: 349

Hong Kong: Deaths: 299

Canada: Deaths: 43

Taiwan: Deaths: 37

Singapore: Deaths: 33

Vietnam: Deaths: 5

Malaysia: Deaths: 2

Philippines: Deaths: 2

Thailand: Deaths: 2

France: Deaths: 1

South Africa: Deaths: 1

Total Deaths all countries: 774

Total cases accross all above countries: 8,096

Full in this knowledge, they took the incredible step of locking themselves in, quarantining themselves away from the city to protect it and their country.

"I've never met such amazing doctors and nurses as I did in North Vietnam," says Cattin. "I lost five colleagues, they were friends. We're the survivors of this outbreak."

Another survivor is Dr Le Thi Quyen Mai, head of virology at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi.

"I am very, very lucky," she says. As news of the deadly virus spread through her institute, most of her colleagues fled, fearing for their lives. She stayed, despite having a three-year-old daughter at home.

In those early days, when events threatened to spiral out of control, perhaps their most important single asset in the fight against this outbreak was Carlo Urbani, an Italian expert on infectious diseases who was working for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Hanoi.

Urbani felt he could not stay in the office as a paper-pushing bureaucrat. As a doctor, he had to help.

It was Urbani who took samples from the patients for analysis - at great personal risk - and who first alerted the world to the crisis.

After working tirelessly in the French hospital for several weeks, he was urged to take a break. And it was then that he discovered he too had contracted Sars.

"I knew he was getting sicker and sicker," says his eldest son Tommaso Urbani, who was 15 at the time.

"But I hoped from deep down in my heart that he could make it because he was my father. And I saw him as a strong person, a strong doctor and thought he was invincible or something like that. So I never thought that he could die."

But Carlo Urbani did die, two weeks after developing the illness. Ten years on, Tommaso says he's proud of the sacrifice his father made.

"I am sure that if he could go back in time, my father would do exactly the same things. I'm happy for what he did because he saved a lot of lives."

But although the story of Sars started in Hanoi, it didn't end there.

Lock-down in Hanoi

As the news spread of the outbreak at the French hospital in Hanoi, there was uniform panic among the city's residents.

No-one would so much as approach the medical facility. The street opposite was empty - its shopkeepers pulled their shutters down and stayed closed. The catering firm that supplied the hospital refused to deliver.

In the end the French hospital had to get food and drink from a local hotel - and even then only on the strict condition that they didn't tell anyone else about the arrangement.

The nurses who remained during the Sars outbreak described the hospital as having become like a "desert island" - suddenly isolated and alone in the centre of an otherwise thronging city.

Johnny Chen, the first patient to arrive in Vietnam suffering with the virus, was an international businessman who had arrived from abroad. And so the trail of Sars lead away from Vietnam back to its original point of explosion - Hong Kong - where Chen had stayed shortly before.

"There were two dozen of my colleagues sitting in the same room, everybody was shaking and running a high fever, many were coughing," says Prof Joseph Sung who was head of the Prince of Wales' medical faculty at the time, and was effectively the man in charge of this unfolding disaster.

"That was the beginning of the nightmare, because from that day on, every day we saw more and more people developing the same illness."

Sung divided his team into two groups. One would care for the other patients in the hospital, and the second team - the "dirty team" as they called it - would undertake the dangerous job of treating these patients, and risking infection themselves.

Anyone with young children was given an exemption from the "dirty team". But those who were single, and those whose children were grown up, were encouraged to step forward.

Not only did volunteers step forward - they kept on coming during the weeks that followed.

"I needed a continuous supply of manpower to go in. And I was very touched by the fact that after we exhausted everybody in the medical department, surgeons, orthopaedics people, gynaecologists, even ophthalmologists came to help us."

Sung himself ended up spending three months inside the hospital.

In Toronto, half a world away from the East Asian locations where Sars first arose, the virus took them completely by surprise.

At the Scarborough Grace hospital, a single patient, arriving unwell with what initially looked like a severe pneumonia, went on to infect dozens of staff.

Many were transferred to an old tuberculosis hospital on the outskirts of Toronto for quarantine and treatment.

And as in Hanoi and Hong Kong, there were those who chose to flee and those who turned up for work one day and stayed - without returning home - for weeks.

"I wrote a note to my children," says Monica Avendano, a physician and specialist in respiratory diseases at Toronto's West Park Healthcare Centre, who was one of those who decided to stay.

"I said: 'I've been exposed, I might get infected, this might kill me and if it does, don't cry too much. I did it because I'm a physician and I'm a doctor and my duty is to look after sick people.'"

Dr Avendano did survive, but the experience of Sars in Toronto was nothing if not terrifying for those involved.

Bruce England was a paramedic on duty in Toronto during the early days of the Sars outbreak and, having attended a patient with a chest infection, found himself falling ill.

For him, and many others affected by the Sars outbreak in Toronto, the effects of that experience are still being felt today. Ten years on Bruce still experiences weakness and difficulty with his breathing.

"I had Sars. It's left a lasting impact on me and my life. So did I survive it? Maybe not, it's still there for me," he says.

By the summer of 2003 the chain of human-to-human transmission had been broken. Doctors had come to understand when the most contagious times were for anyone infected and what precautions to take to avoid passing it on.

But what happened in Hong Kong, Vietnam and Toronto could so easily have happened in London, New York or any destination reachable by plane.

The vectors of this virus were not rats on ships but aircraft travelling at hundreds of miles an hour across the globe. The reason that this is an important story to tell and to continue to retell is because of how narrowly disaster was averted.

And I now think that the margins were much narrower than we ever realised.

[MIKA27]

Why are some prison sentences so long?

Kidnapper and rapist Ariel Castro (Above) has been sentenced to life without parole plus 1,000 years. What's the point in extending a prison term beyond a person's lifetime, asks Tom Geoghegan.

Sentencing is not just about determining how long someone should be behind bars, it also has a symbolic, theatrical function, says Franklin Zimring, a professor of law at the University of California, who has written extensively about deterrents.

"In sentencing Bernie Madoff [to 150 years for fraud], what the judge wants to be telling him is 'you are really a bad person.' And for this purpose, the number of years can be endlessly elastic."

How much symbolic denunciation plays a part can depend on many things, such as media coverage or the nature of an offence, but the tension between these two radically different functions - the symbolic and practical - is a feature of modern criminal justice systems, he says, and not just in the US. There was a famous case in Spain where a fraudster received a 2,000-year sentence.

Parole means the sentence can be adjusted at a later date. But it has been eliminated for life sentences in many parts of the country.

Most criminal prosecutions in the US are brought by the state, so there can be huge variations in sentencing. Judges are constrained by a statutory range but, depending on the crime, that could be very broad or have no maximum sentence at all.

Fraud against one person can involve multiple crimes like false statements, wire fraud and theft, so consecutive sentences for each charge can fast add up. The same goes for crimes involving a computer, like child pornography, because each image could be a separate count. Minor misdemeanours are more likely to result in concurrent sentences.

For victims of crime and their loved ones there is nothing problematic about a very long sentence. Indeed, a sentence that increases with each guilty charge is a way of telling each victim that they matter.

Some long sentences are an alternative to the death penalty. Dudley Wayne Kyzer is serving two life terms plus 10,000 years for a triple murder he committed in the 1970s. After four years on death row, he was given a second trial because the death penalty in Alabama was at the time deemed unconstitutional.

Tommy Smith was Tuscaloosa County Assistant District Attorney when he persuaded the trial judge to impose the long sentence as an alternative. "The jury sent a message. They don't want him released," he said. Kyzer has been denied parole nine times.

Some long US sentences

• 150 years: Bernie Madoff (pic), fraud, 2009
  
• 835 years: Shalom Weiss, fraud, 2000
  
• 957 years: Jeffrey Dahmer, serial killer, 1992
  
• 1,000 years: Peter Mallory, child sexual exploitation, 2013
  
• Life plus 1,000 years: Ariel Castro, rape and kidnap, 2013
  

[MIKA27]

This Soldier-Dangling-Above-A-Shark Photo Is Actually Real

Some images need little in the way of introduction. This one shows a soldier climbing a rope ladder attached to a helicopter above infested waters. Soldier. Rope ladder. Helicopter. Sharks. Wow.

Originally captured way back in 1996, this images was recently picked from the US National Archives in honour of Shark Week. The original caption read: “A soldier grips the rope ladder extended from the rear of a helicopter as a shark fin passes in the water close below.” Kudos to that soldier.

It might not be quite as dramatic as that ol’ shark-attacks-a-helicopter viral image — but, y’know, it is real.

[MIKA27]

2015 MERCEDES-BENZ GLA

I had given you a preview on what could be the new Mercedes GLA, but this time it´s official!, here you have it, the new 2015 Mercedes-Benz GLA-Class. The beautiful compact crossover will be available in the US from fall of next year. The first model available will be the GLA250 4Matic, equipped with a 2.0L four-cylinder engine capable of delivering 208 hp and 258 pound-feet of torque. Just imagine when AMG gets hold of this…

http://youtu.be/inBUGbF8CqA

[MIKA27]

DRONE | MOBILE BLUETOOTH GAMING CONTROLLER

Tired of using touch screen controls on a tiny screen whilst playing games? Drone Controller is the answer.

The sleek universal controller connects to your tablet, laptop, or smart phone via Bluetooth and enables you to play your favorite game with dual analog joysticks, a digital G-pad, six face buttons and two shoulder buttons. No more struggling with the Angry birds slingshot!

Works with Android, iOS or WinMo. Check the "evolution controllers" website for the full list of game compatibility.

[MIKA27]

Japan nuclear agency seeks Fukushima alert level upgrade

Japan's nuclear agency wants to raise the severity level of a radioactive water leak at the Fukushima plant from one to three on an international scale.

Highly radioactive water was found to be leaking from a storage tank into the ground at the plant on Monday.

It was first classified as a level one incident on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (Ines).

But Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority proposes elevating it to level three on the seven-point scale.

This week is the first time that Japan has declared an event on the Ines scale since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The move was announced in a document on the agency's website and was subsequently approved at a weekly meeting of the regulatory body.

Japanese reports said it was a provisional move that had to be confirmed with the IAEA, the UN's nuclear agency.

Shares of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) fell as much as 13% to 537 yen as investors worried about the impact of the development.

'Five-year dose'

The March 2011 tsunami knocked out cooling systems to the reactors at the plant, three of which melted down.

Water is now being pumped in to cool the reactors but this means that a large amount of contaminated water has to be stored on site.

There have been leaks of water in the past but this one is being seen as the most serious to date, because of the volume - 300 tonnes of radioactive water, according to Tepco - and high levels of radioactivity in the water.

A puddle of the contaminated water was emitting 100 millisieverts an hour of radiation, Kyodo news agency said earlier this week.

Masayuki Ono, general manager of Tepco, told Reuters news agency: "One hundred millisieverts per hour is equivalent to the limit for accumulated exposure over five years for nuclear workers; so it can be said that we found a radiation level strong enough to give someone a five-year dose of radiation within one hour."

Teams of workers at the plant have surrounded the leaking tank with sandbags and have been attempting to suck up large puddles of radioactive water.

But, reports the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Tokyo, it is a difficult and dangerous job. The water is so radioactive that teams must be constantly rotated and it is clear that most of the toxic water has already disappeared into the ground.

Under the Ines, events have seven categories starting with Level 0 ("without safety significance") and Levels 1-3 denoting "incidents" while Levels 4-7 denote "accidents".

The triple meltdown at Fukushima two years ago was classed as a level 7 incident.

[MIKA27]

The Most Expensive Hotel Rooms In The World's Most Expensive Cities

In July, Mercer published its current list of the most expensive cities in the world. Curious about the cost of living for expats, we created a collection of the priciest apartments and rentals in these cities. But what about hotels? How much will one night in the world’s most expensive towns set you back?

Based on the cost of housing, transportation, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment, the most expensive place to station an employee is Luanda, the capital of Angola. Moscow and Tokyo follow Luanda on the list, then N’Djamena (Chad, Africa) and Singapore come next. Hong Kong is the sixth, then three Swiss cities — Geneva, Zurich and Bern — and Sydney, Australia, close out the top 10.

Most of us normals will never see the inside of a hotel room that costs roughly a year’s worth of college tuition, but it’s certainly fun to look. So have a peek into the unknown realms of the unlimited opulence below — and thank your lucky stars for online discount sites.

10. Sydney, Australia. Hotel Park Hyatt. The Sydney suite costs $15,000 per night.

9. Bern, Switzerland. The Hotel Schweizerhof. The Presidential Suite costs about $US4200 per night.

8. Zurich, Switzerland. The Dolder Grand. The Maestro Suite costs around $18,800 per night.

7. Geneva, Switzerland. President Wilson Hotel. The Royal Penthouse Suite costs $65,000 per night. Allegedly.

6. Hong Kong, China. The Intercontinental Hong Kong. The Presidential Suite costs $13,000 per night.

5. Singapore, Singapore. Marina Bay Sands Hotel. The Chairman Suite costs $17,000 per night.

4. N’Djamena, Chad. The Presidential Suite in Hotel Kempinski costs about $6000 per night.

3. Tokyo, Japan. Presidential Suite, Ritz-Carlton Hotel. How much? $25,000 per night.

2. Moscow, Russia. The Ritz-Carlton Moscow. Rooms and suites run up to $16,400 per night.

1. Luanda, Angola. The Epic Sana Luanda Hotel. The Presidential Suite costs about $3000 per night.

[MIKA27]

SwiftKey Cloud Syncing Makes The Best Android Keyboard Even Better

SwiftKey is fantastic. It has great prediction, great personalisation, swipe-based entry options, and pretty much anything else you could want in a keyboard. Now, it’s getting even better with SwiftKey Cloud, which syncs your data between all your devices.

Part of SwiftKey’s secret sauce is how it can learn about your written voice from your Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and other services if you let it. But you used to have to painstakingly do that on every device. What a drag. With syncing though, you’ll never be without all your weird textual mannerisms and idiosyncratic swears ever again!

In addition to the syncing, SwiftKey’s Cloud update will also add more sources the keyboard’s predictive brain can learn from, and a feature called “Trending Phrases”, which will attempt to predict particularly topical word-strings. Cool beans, but that syncing is still the killer feature.

SwiftKey’s Cloud update is rolling out (for free) today to anyone who has the keyboard. And for anyone who doesn’t, SwiftKey is on sale in the Google Play Store for 50 per cent off. You should check it out because it’s fantastic, and at $1.99 it’s a steal. The only question is why didn’t this happen earlier? But I’m too happy to care too much about the answer.

Now if only they’d get rid of the stupid .com button, it’d be perfect.

UPDATE: OH MY GOD, THE .COM BUTTON IS GONE!

MIKA: Great app this one, I use it on my S3 and its brilliant.

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: The Russian Night Hunter Is The Flying Tank Of Your Nightmares

Russia has been working tirelessly to modernise its military might and has already revealed some seriously intimidating firepower over the past few years. Now they’re working to replace the devastating Mi-24 HIND with something even more terrifying armament — Russia’s version of the AH-64 Apache, the Mi-28 Night Hunter.

The Mi-28 is purpose-built for search-and-destroy missions against tanks, troops, and enemy positions. Development of the Mi-28 began in the early 1970s, just after the USSR debuted the HIND. But unlike its 8-passenger predecessor, the three-person Mi-28 was built for speed and attack power (and occasionally picking up downed flight crews) rather than occasional troop transport. And while it completed flight trials by 1984, Soviet top brass opted to use the Karmov Ka-50 chopper as the USSR’s primary tank hunter-killer. The Mi-28 languished in R&D purgatory until the mid-1990s. After a few more years of on-again-off-again development, given the reduced importance of anti-tank helicopters in the post-Cold War era, the Russian Federation declared that the Mi-28 and Ka-50 its attack helicopter platforms for the foreseeable future.

The latest iteration of the Mi-28, designated the Mi-28N “Night Hunter”, measures 17m long with an equivalent rotor diameter. A pair of 2200hp Isotov TV-3-117VM turboshaft engines drive the five-blade prop and hurtle the two-man crew (a pilot in the rear cockpit and a the navigator/weapons operator up front) to speeds topping 172 knots (319km/h) over a distance of 108nmi (200km).

The Night Hunter isn’t just fast. It’s smart. The chopper’s integrated avionics allow it to perform automated Nape-of-the-Earth manoeuvres to avoid radar detection, even in inclement weather.

The Mi-28N also features a helmet-mounted target acquisition and tracking system similar to that found aboard the new Eurofighter as well as millimetre wave radar capable of detecting ground targets over 10km away, FLIR and optical cameras.

And once the Night Hunter finds you, it’s curtains. It carries more than 2300kg of ammo including a combination of 16 anti-tank missiles (i.e. the AT-6 Spiral and AT-9 Spiral 2), two pods packed with 80mm and 122mm rockets, and a 900-round-a-minute 2A42 30mm cannon. Slugs exit this gun barrel at over 1000m/s, making 2A42 the most powerful ever installed on a helicopter.

As of 2011, Russia has deployed 16 units though that figure is expected to rise to more than 130 units by 2020. Combined with the expected 150 or so Ka-50s already on order, Russia’s fleet sure seems to be ready for some sort of confrontation. One that you don’t want to be on the other side of.

[MIKA27]

Canada Is Developing a $620K Stealth Snowmobile

Its code name is “Loki,” and this silent, stealthy snowmobile is being developed by the Canadian military to transport troops on secret operations in the terrorist hotbed known as the Arctic. No, seriously.

According to a report from the CBC, Canada’s Department of National Defence has hired Waterloo, Ontario-based CrossChasm Technologies to develop and build the stealth snowmobile at a cost of $620,000 — or $70,000 more than the original 2011 tendering document allowed.

Details on this secret snowmobile are — as you’d expect — sparse. But above all else, its main goal is to be silent. The original federal tender mentioned a gas-electric hybrid system that could switch from the internal combustion engine to a silent mode using an electric motor, similar to many of the hybrid vehicles on sale today.

The CBC obtained a “heavily redacted” report through the Access to Information Act (think FOIA), that details some of the testing procedures Canadian Forces conducted at a base in Petawawa. The tests included, “a wide variety of the snowmobile’s characteristics, including speed, towing capacity, endurance, mobility, usability, and of course, noise emissions,” with military personnel using everything from radar guns to acoustic meters to gauge the snowmobile’s abilities.

Both a government spokesperson and a representative from CrossChasm refused to comment on the development of the stealth snowmobile. But Michael Byers, a former New Democratic Party candidate and current professor at the University of British Columbia, told the CBC, “I don’t see a whole lot of evidence that criminals and terrorists are scooting around Canada’s North on snowmobiles and that we have to sneak up on them … I can’t help but wonder whether they’ve been watching too many [James] Bond movies.”

[MIKA27]

Hermann Goering's cigars auctioned for £1,300 in Lincoln

Goering lived a lavish lifestyle, throwing grand parties at his Brandenburg home

Cigars removed from the home of Hermann Goering at the end of World War II have been sold at auction.

Specially made for Goering, the cigars were taken from the cellars of the Reichsmarschall's home in Brandenburg and went for £1,300.

A private vendor, who inherited the cigars from a relative, put them up for sale in Lincoln.

Goering killed himself in 1946 the night before he was due to be hanged as a war criminal.

John Leatt, auctioneer from Golding Young and Mawer, said they were "unusual items" in an "untouched condition".

They were bought by an overseas online bidder and went for more than the expected price of £800-£1,200.

Hitler's right-hand man

The cigar boxes bear the words "Sondernfertigung Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering", which means "Specially made for Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering".

His initials, personal coat of arms and the supplier's name, Gildemann Ltd, are also printed on the box.

Until the final days of the war, Goering had been named as Hitler's successor in the event of the Nazi leader's death.

Goering lived a lavish lifestyle, often entertaining guests at his grand manor house in Schorfheide Forest in Brandenburg, near Berlin.

As commander-in-chief of the German Luftwaffe, he was humiliated by the RAF's destruction of cities such as Cologne and Hamburg.

Goering was tried at the Nuremberg Trials and found guilty of war crimes.

Sentenced to death, he managed to cheat the hangman by taking cyanide on 15 October 1946.

[MIKA27]

Shenzhen public urinal users face fine for poor aim

Officials in Shenzhen, China, will fine public toilet users 100 yuan (£10;$16) if they are deemed to have failed to urinate accurately in city facilities.

New laws that come into force next month in the southern city do not specify what amount of spilled urine would be classed as a violation.

The move has provoked derision and debate in local newspapers and on China's version of Twitter, Weibo.

Critics suggested toilet inspectors would be needed to enforce the rules.

The regulations were designed to curb the "uncouth use of a public toilet", a city government official told the AFP news agency.

The Beijing Times carried a commentary calling into question the necessity of making a law on something that could "be simply guided by social consensus".

[MIKA27]

New Exoplanet circles star in less than 9 hours & is covered in molten lava:

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has helped discover a new Earth-sized planet that has a year that lasts less time than an average work day or a good night’s sleep.

Kepler 78b zips around its host star in a mere 8.5 hours — making this one of the shortest orbital periods ever detected.

Researchers at MIT are reporting that Kepler 78b sits about 700 light years away from Earth, and orbits about 40 times closer to its parent star than Mercury does. This scorched planet orbits so close that it sports temperatures reaching up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

While this would seem to be the destination to celebrate a lot of birthdays it’s probably not the best place for a vacation since scientists predict the surface is covered with molten lava.

“We’ve gotten used to planets having orbits of a few days,” said Josh Winn, co-author of both studies in a press statement.

“But we wondered, what about a few hours? Is that even possible? And sure enough, there are some out there.”

Winn and his team were able to detect the light given off by Kepler 78b by measuring the dips in starlight each time the planet periodically passed in front of its star.

Looking forward, Winn will be working towards getting a handle on how much this planet may actually tug on its star, which will hopefully allow the team to measure the planet’s mass, making it the first Earth-sized planet outside our own solar system whose mass is known.

But the discovery of this hellish planet doesn’t rule out the possibility that there may be other short-period alien worlds out there that are indeed habitable. Winn’s team is on the hunt now for just these kind of planets circling small brown dwarf stars.

“If you’re around one of those brown dwarfs, then you can get as close in as just a few days,” explained Winn. “It would still be habitable, at the right temperature.”

The discovery of Kepler 78b appears in The Astrophysical Journal.

[MIKA27]

Hundreds of Panther sightings in Florida:

Hundreds of sightings of panthers roaming wild in Florida have been reported by the public to the state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) website launched a year ago, the agency said in a news statement.

As of August 2013, the public had submitted 790 sightings to MyFWC.com/PantherSightings, where people can record when and where they saw a panther or its tracks, FWC said.

“Only 12 percent of the reports included a photograph and could be evaluated by Commission biologists. Of those with photos, the majority were confirmed as panthers. Other animals identified by FWC biologists were bobcats, foxes, coyotes, dogs, house cats and even a monkey. Most often the reported animal or tracks belonged to a bobcat, when it was not a panther.”

Verified reports were largely confined to southwest Florida, a well-documented breeding range for panthers in the state. There also were several verified sightings in south central Florida.

“The public’s willingness to share what they have seen or collected on game cameras is incredibly helpful and shows us where panthers presumably are roaming in Florida,” said Darrell Land, the FWC’s panther team manager.

“As the population of this endangered species grows, the FWC expects more Florida panthers to be seen in areas of the state where they have not lived for decades,” Land added. “To properly plan and manage for the expansion of the panther’s range in Florida, information about where the panthers are is vital.”

The FWC has a new “E-Z guide to identify panther tracks” available at www.FloridaPantherNet.org.

The agency estimates the Florida panther population to be 100 to 160 adults and yearlings, a figure that does not include panther kittens. As recently as the 1970s, the Florida panther was close to disappearing, with as few as 20 animals in the wild.

This post was based on press materials sent by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Learn more about Florida panthers at www.FloridaPantherNet.org.

[MIKA27]

Giant Russian Military Hovercraft Lands On Crowded Beach:

In the most recent bit of Russian bizarreness, a 500-tonne military hovercraft carrying sophisticated weaponry casually pulled up onto a crowded, seemingly public beach. Because, apparently, Russia wants to become Europe’s own personal prison planet.

These giant Zubr vessels are purportedly the largest in their class (which consists of the world’s largest hovercrafts) and — when fully loaded — can carry tanks as well as up to 400 troops. So what was it doing landing on a beach full of people? Well, uh, no one entirely seems to know. According to a Russian defence minister spokesman:

Docking at the beach… is a normal event. What people were doing at the beach on the territory of a military [base] is unclear.

So if this beach in Mechnikovo is, in fact, off-limits, it seems a lot of people have somehow been grossly misinformed for at least long enough to allow hundreds if not thousands of citizens to flock to its giant-hovercraft-lined shores. While we may never know what actually happened, we can at least take solace in knowing that our big, cold Florida-to-the-East is someone else’s problem.

[Habana Mike]

DRONE | MOBILE BLUETOOTH GAMING CONTROLLER

Tired of using touch screen controls on a tiny screen whilst playing games? Drone Controller is the answer.

The sleek universal controller connects to your tablet, laptop, or smart phone via Bluetooth and enables you to play your favorite game with dual analog joysticks, a digital G-pad, six face buttons and two shoulder buttons. No more struggling with the Angry birds slingshot!

Works with Android, iOS or WinMo. Check the "evolution controllers" website for the full list of game compatibility.

Can we hunt terrorists with this?

[MIKA27]

Watch A Prankster 'Accidentally' Break His iMac In Front Of People

You know that soul-dropping feeling you get when you see someone drop their phone? It’s the sound that’s the most horrifying thing. A crisp crack that’s not unlike adding ice to your drink. Painful. There goes hundreds of dollars! Now imagine that same feeling multiplied as you watch in horror as some stranger drops his iMac box and you hear the shrieking shatter. That would be awful. That would also make for a HILARIOUS prank.

Joulethief pranked random mall shoppers again by dropping his iMac box in both completely believable and ridiculous ways: slipping and falling, balancing two boxes, celebrating and dropping it off a balcony, playing catch with the box and so on. Each time the iMac box falls, you hear the sound effect of shattering glass and electronics. Each time everyone around him is shocked beyond belief.

Each time I crack up like a little kid. What a fantastic prank.

MIKA: OZ... is this what you and Dicko get up to in Perth?

[MIKA27]

Is This The Best Quadcopter Pilot In The World?

And he’s Australian!

Quadcopters, quadrotors, drones, remote-control helicopters, appcessories. No matter what you call them, they fly and they’re awesome. It takes a certain level of skill to pilot one of these bad-boys, and that’s what this pilot has: skill, grit and nerves of steel.

One of the Lumenier test pilots took a four-rotored drone out in a Victorian national park and put it through its paces. The camera footage shows that his skills are second-to-none.

Tricky manœuvres through the trees, speedy ground skimming exercises and even a few tight squeezes through safety gates are executed in this awesome video, and we’re happy to call this guy the best quadcopter pilot in the world. Anyone want to challenge his skills?

[Fuzz]

Is This The Best Quadcopter Pilot In The World?

Nope, it's this guy...

[MIKA27]

34 Misleading Vintage Ads Promoting The Benefits Of Smoking

Quaint though they may be, we’ve come a long way from this hellishly misleading smoking advertisements from yesteryear.

Actor Edmund Lowe once proudly declared:

“It’s that delightful taste after a cup of coffee that makes Luckies a hit with me. And naturally I protect my voice with Luckies. No harsh irritants for me…..I reach for Lucky instead. Congratulations on your improved Cellophane wrapped. I can open it.”

Even US President Ronald Reagan, paid off by big tobacco, willingly promoting the fact he loved to send cigarettes to all his friends at Christmas. Put it down to clever marketing or being genuine naive, thiscollection of vintage adverts promoting the health benefits of inhaling over 4,000 chemicals were all the rage 40 years ago. Of those 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, around 69 of those same chemicals are known to cause cancer.

Today, we’re better informed and more aware of the dangers and hazards associated with smoking. And whilst your local doctor might still have a crafty cigarette during his lunch break, you’d be hard pressed to find them willingly endorsing an expensive & addictive product, that ultimately kills you.

Progress it seems, has been made.