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[MIKA27]

How The Humble Paperclip Became A Secret World War II Symbol

Today I found out that the paperclip was used as a symbol of resistance during World War II. In April of 1940, just a few months into World War II, Adolf Hitler knew that he needed a way to break past the Allied blockade of Germany if he had a hope of winning the war.

He set his sights on Norway — a risky endeavour, but control of Norwegian waters would make transporting goods into Germany a little bit easier. Norway had declared itself neutral in the conflict, but Hitler wasn’t about to let a little thing like neutrality stop him from getting what he wanted.

After a few months of struggle, the Germans successfully began their occupation of Norway, driving Allied troops out. The Norwegian royal family and government were also driven away, forced to conduct business from exile in England. Meanwhile, the people of Norway lived under German rule.

With the real Norwegian government out of the way, the Germans attempted to strip away Norway’s culture and replace it with Nazi ideals. Norwegian teachers were told to join the Nazi Party and teach Nazism in classrooms, and the church was told to teach “obedience to the leader and the state.”

Anti-Jewish legislation was passed, culminating in the deportment of 700 Norwegian Jews to Auschwitz. Mass executions were not unheard of, though most were done on a smaller scale in comparison to the horrific events taking place in certain other areas of Europe. The people of Norway also had to deal with German soldiers day in and day out for five years. By 1945, some 400,000 German troops were operating in Norway, controlling the population of about four million people.

It was in the autumn of 1940 when students at Oslo University started wearing paperclips on their lapels as a non-violent symbol of resistance, unity and national pride.

Symbols related to the royal family and state had already been banned, and they wanted a clever way of displaying their rejection of the Nazi ideology. In addition to wearing a single paperclip, paperclip bracelets and other types of jewellery were fashioned as well, symbolically binding Norwegians together in the face of such adversity.

Why the paperclip? Besides the idea of binding things together, it’s thought the paperclip was chosen as a symbol of resistance in part because many people incorrectly believed that the inventor of the paperclip was Johan Vaaler, a Norwegian man. Vaaler was granted a patent for his paperclip in Germany as well as the United States in 1901, though didn’t apply for a patent in his native Norway.

The problem was, he didn’t really invent the thing we call a paperclip, and that paperclip (the Gem paperclip) was around and very popular throughout Europe before Vaaler came up with his design.

Vaaler’s paperclip had the papers inserted by lifting the outer wire slightly and pushing the papers into the clip such that the rest of the clip stood out from the paper at around a 90 degree angle, which was necessary because of the lack of the critical second loop to allow the papers to be more or less embedded in the clip flatly.

Vaaler’s design also made it so the papers wouldn’t be held together very well as they relied only on how bendable the wire used was to hold the papers. The double looped Gem style paperclip, on the other hand, exploits the torsion principle to help bind papers together.

Vaaler’s design was never manufactured nor sold and his patents eventually expired. Nevertheless, many an encyclopedia falsely credits him as the inventor of the paperclip and the 23 foot tall statue (pictured above) was made in his honour in 1989, even though it shows the Gem paperclip, instead of the one Vaaler came up with. Further, a commemorative stamp was created honouring Vaaler that also depicted the Gem style paperclip, not Vaaler’s design.

Nevertheless, the idea that the paperclip was invented by a Norwegian man was prevalent and the fact that paperclips bound things together and were cheap, readily available, and not out of place made it seemingly the perfect symbol for non-violent, subtle resistance in Norway.

In time, the Germans caught on to the fact that the paperclip was being used as a symbol of resistance and wearing a paperclip promptly became a criminal offence.

Bonus Facts:

• So who actually invented the paperclip? Nobody knows for sure, not even for the Gem paperclip. The Gem paperclip was never patented, though is thought to have first been manufactured by the Gem Manufacturing Company in Britain around the 1870s and later introduced to the United States around the 1890s. This is also why the Swedish word for paperclip is “gem”.
  
• The Norwegians found other ways to resist the Nazis, too. 12,000 of the teachers who were told to teach Nazism went on strike. 1000 of them were deported and sent to prison camps immediately, but after six months the remaining educators hadn’t relented, and the Nazis gave it up as a lost cause — having teachers out of the classroom was more detrimental to the war effort than having them in classrooms, but not teaching Nazi party ideals.
  
• Similarly, the churches that were told to teach “obedience to the leader and the state” found themselves in desperate need of people to lead church services. Every bishop in Norway resigned, along with 90% of the clergy. The humiliated German soldiers were forced to rescind the doctrine — another win for Norway.
  
• Meanwhile, the general public of Norway were waging a silent war of their own. In addition to donning paperclips, they made life difficult for the German soldiers in various subtle ways. Many of them refused to speak German, even though it was a widely known language at the time, and would point the soldiers in the wrong direction when telling them how to get from point A to point B. They refused to sit beside German soldiers when they rode on public transportation — an act of defiance that enraged the Germans so much that they made it illegal to stand on the bus if there were seats open.
  
• An illegal press was established in order to keep everyone informed after the Nazis attempted to cut Norway off from the BBC. When the German military began to conscript young men into the army, thousands fled to neighbouring Sweden to escape service. The Germans promptly withheld ration cards from those who didn’t sign up — at which point the resistance stole some 150,000 ration cards, and the military was forced to stop their efforts on that front.
  
• As for the Norwegian Jews, although 700 were shipped to Auschwitz, the remainder — 1000 or more — were smuggled into Sweden by the resistance, which was no small accomplishment.
  
• Germany occupied Norway until the end of the war. Around 40,000 Norwegians were imprisoned during the interim, and over 10,000 lost their lives. Another 40,000 or so had escaped to Sweden and slowly began returning home when the Germans began to leave.
  

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: This Colossal Dam Keeps Russia's Capital City Above Water

When Tsar Peter the Great founded the former Russian capital city of Saint Petersburg more than 300 years ago, he intended it to provide a “window on the Baltic”. Turns out that window was more of a screen door. To protect itself, the city built a dam that took almost 300 years and $US3.85 billion to complete.

You see, Saint Petersburg is constructed on drained marshland, isles and lowlands along the Neva River, situating no less that 33 per cent of this 4.6 million-citizen city smack dab in the middle of flood country. In fact, since 1703, the Neva river has backed up and flooded the city almost every autumn — some 308 separate events — and sometimes twice annually. The worst of these floods occurred in 1824 when a 4m storm surge inundated low-lying neighborhoods, destroying 450 homes and killing hundreds. And it’s not just lives and private property that are at stake; many of Saint Petersburg’s (nay, Russia’s) most prized national cultural icons and monuments are located on flood-prone streets.

The flooding became an issue almost immediately after the city was built, and in 1727, Count Zakhar Chernyshov put forth an initial plan to tame the Neva using a series of dams and locks. Chernyshov didn’t live to see his design built, but in 1979 — nearly 252 years later — the Soviets finally resurrected the plan. The resulting Saint Petersburg Flood Prevention Facility Complex would become the longest running public works project in USSR history.

Even when the iron curtain fell in the early 1990s, the dam was only about 65 per cent complete — again, thanks to the Soviets.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, there wasn’t much capital floating around so the entire project was once again shelved indefinitely. It wasn’t until Prime Minister Vladimir Putin came to power and personally ordered its completion in 2005 that construction resumed. The complex was finally finished in 2011, some 32 years and 109 billion rubles ($3.85 billion) later.

Informally known as the Saint Petersburg Dam, the Saint Petersburg Flood Prevention Facility Complex (or SPFPFC — aka the worst acronym ever) spans nearly 26km, separating the Neva from the rest of the Gulf of Finland. A series of 11 dams and locks run northward from the coast at Lomonosov up to Kotlin Island before bearing East towards Sestroretsk.

The steel and concrete structure (2,600,000 cubic yards of concrete and 100,000 tonnes of steel, specifically) stands 8m above the waves and can withstand storm surges up to 5m in height. Each dam is nearly 30m wide — enough to fit a six lane highway on top as well as a 1200m underwater tunnel at the South lock, the longest such tunnel in Russia. The six locks consist of 24m wide sluices designed to swing open and flush the outflow of the river — but close when flooding is imminent to prevent the river’s back-flow from entering the city. The structure also contains two locks for boat passage and 30 purification centres for cleaning up the outgoing fluids before they hit the gulf.

This massive structure has already begun paying for itself. In November of 2011, less than four months after it was commissioned, the dam held storm surges at just 1.2m above sea level, well below the 1.5m mark that denotes an official flood. That’s right — it halted the city’s 309th flood outright and prevented an estimated 1.3 billion rubles ($38 million) in damages. And given that a twelve foot surge causes, on average, 176 billion rubles ($5.29 billion) in damage, the cost of the dam is between 50 and 70 times less expensive the the Russian people over the course of its service than cleaning up after doing nothing.

[MIKA27]

Are we close to making human ‘mind control’ a reality?

With one tap on his space bar, Andrea Stocco fires the cannon on his computer game and blows a rocket out of the sky.

The game itself is unremarkable - in fact it looks like a relic of the 1980s.

What is remarkable is the way it is being played because the University of Washington researcher can't actually see it.

The person who can, fellow scientist Rajesh Rao, is sitting across campus looking at the screen.

He is wearing a cap with wires coming out of it (which looks like something you might have seen in a 1950s sci-fi programme that was imagining this moment).

Without moving a muscle, or using a communication device, Mr Rao told his colleague to fire the cannon at just the right moment.

The only thing Mr Rao had was the power of his mind, so, at the right moment, he imagined firing the cannon.

This sent a signal via the internet to Mr Stocco, who, wearing noise-cancelling earphones (and a purple swimming cap) involuntarily moved his right index finger to push the space bar.

Imperius curse

What has just happened seems to be the first documented case of human-to-human "mind control".

The researchers gave it the rather less alluring title of human-to-human brain interface, but that's scientists for you.

University of Washington researcher Rajesh Rao, left, plays a computer game with his mind. Across campus, researcher Andrea Stocco, right, carries out the command

Until now this concept remained in the realms of theory, or more likely science fiction and fantasy.

Those of a wizarding persuasion will see parallels with the evil Voldemort's Imperius curse, used to manipulate people in the Harry Potter stories.

Mr Stocco jokingly refers to the experiment as a "Vulcan mind meld", after a technique employed by Mr Spock in Star Trek to share thoughts.

"The internet was a way to connect computers, and now it can be a way to connect brains," Mr Stocco says.

He compares the feeling of his hand moving to that of a nervous tic.

Mr Rao says it was "both exciting and eerie" to watch an imagined action from his brain get translated into actual action by another brain.

"The next step is having a more equitable two-way conversation directly between the two brains," he adds.

Brain activity

There are already numerous examples of the human brain being used to control technology.

For example, Samsung is experimenting with a mind-control tablet.

Technology firm Interaxon is marketing a "brain sensing headband" that it hopes will allow people to control devices with their minds.

It is already widely used to help those with physical disabilities.

Indeed the technology for recording and stimulating the two researchers' brains in this experiment are both well-known.

Brain signals from the "Sender" are recorded. When the computer detects imagined hand movements, a "fire" command is transmitted over the internet, causing an upward movement of the hand of the "Receiver"

Electroencephalography - the technique used to send the message from Mr Rao - is routinely used by the medical profession to record brain activity from the scalp.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation - which made Mr Stocco's finger move - is a way of delivering stimulation to the brain to prompt a response.

But putting the two together, effectively allowing one person to direct the responses of another, is new.

'Trivial'

The researchers are quick to point out that this experiment is very basic in terms of the concept.

But Daniel Wilson, who has a PhD in robotics and is the author of Robopocalypse, says it remains important as a "proof of concept" experiment.

"It has sparked a discussion of how brain-to-brain interfaces might impact society in the future," he says.

"Although the experimental set-up is too narrow to have practical value, it certainly makes us think."

However, others are unimpressed.

Dr Ian Pearson, a futurologist with a background in science and engineering, compares it to experiments by Australian performance artist Stelarc 15 years ago.

He enabled people to remote control his limbs via the internet.

"Adding a simple thought recognition control system is pretty trivial," Dr Pearson says.

"If they were taking a thought from one person and directly creating a thought in another then I'd be impressed."

Collaboration

There is more general agreement on the impact that future developments in this field could have on the way humans collaborate and communicate.

Mr Stocco says that one day it could be used to enable someone on the ground to help a passenger land an aeroplane if the pilot becomes incapacitated.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Star Trek character Mr Spock used the "mind meld" to share thoughts

Dr Pearson cites the example of a complex project where numerous different types of professionals are involved.

"Say you're trying to design a building and you have engineers, designers and artists," he says.

"Even if they are far apart, the artist could conjure up an idea and perhaps the engineer thinks that won't work for some reason, so they refine it.

"Working together they could come up with something complex, very quickly."

Dr Pearson, who gazes in to the future for a living, is pretty sure this scenario will one day be real, based on nano-technology placed directly onto the brain.

But we'll have to wait another 30 to 40 years for that, he says.

No zombies

Of course, the whole concept of mind control is often overshadowed by the disturbing implications of its misuse.

Although he has written a book about a dystopian, robot-controlled future, Mr Wilson is sanguine about the implications of the experiment.

"I see nothing inherently dangerous about increasing the communication bandwidth between human beings," he says.

"If anything, it could lead to better-linked teams of people - who may speak different languages - working together to solve hard problems faster.

"The intricate technical requirements of transcranial magnetic stimulation make covert mind control unfeasible."

Chantal Prat is assistant professor in psychology at the University of Washington and helped conduct the experiment.

Dr Pearson believes these techniques will be used in the future by teams carrying out complex tasks

She agrees with Mr Wilson's analysis.

"I think some people will be unnerved by this because they will overestimate the technology," she says.

"There's no possible way the technology that we have could be used on a person unknowingly or without their willing participation."

Just beware of someone coming at you holding a swimming cap with wires poking out of it.

But these are early days; what will come as the technology develops is anyone's guess.

"We are not in the realms of creating zombies," Dr Pearson says.

"When we have full links into the brain directly and you can control someone like a robot then we might have problems.

"Whether it turns to slavery or state control - who knows; you could write any number of sci-fi books about that."

[MIKA27]

PORSCHE 918 SPYDER | OFFICIALLY UNVEILED

After much speculation and teasers going viral on the web, Porsche has finally released all of the details on the stunning 918 Spyder. The much-anticipated hybrid sports car will be presented at the Frankfurt Motor Show and is seen as a challenger to the McLaren P1 and Ferrari LaFerrari.

The hybrid 918 Spyder features a 4.6-liter V8 engine that generates 608 hp, plus three electric motors capable of producing 286hp, totaling an impressive 887hp. It reaches 62mph in 2.8 seconds and 186mph in 22 seconds. Very impressive...

[MIKA27]

HEXBRIGHT FLEX

After an uber successful kickstarter campaign, HexBright Flex is now available. The flashlight is capable of 500 lumens of dazzling power! it is also the world´s first open-source flashlight, meaning you can program the light however you desire. Made from aircraft grade aluminum, it features an ergonomic grip designed to comfortably fit your hand. Plus it doesn´t require batteries, the included rechargeable battery is charged via a USB port.

A wall charger and a micro-USB cable are also included.

[MIKA27]

Zaya Gran Reserva Rum:

Usually, when you think of rum you probably wonder what you should mix it with.

Well with Zaya Gran Reserva Rum ($30), you can wonder no more. Zaya is a product of Trinidad and Tobago, distilled from sugar cane juice, and aged a minimum of 12 years in small, oak barrels. By the time it fills your glass the vanilla aromas and the taste bring a remarkable balance of sweetness with a small spicy kick. We set aside our preconceived notions about rum and after tasting this, and are glad we did.

[MIKA27]

Now Nokia And Mercedes Are Trying To Build Self-Driving Cars

Self-driving cars stand to be the next piece of technology that shakes the foundations of modern life. It’s not hard to see why — it’s basically science fiction come to life. Since it seems like everybody wants to be involved, news that Mercedes and Nokia were teaming up didn’t come as a huge surprise.

The German automaker and Finnish technology company announced plans to work together on building a 3D smart maps for autonomous cars. The system will connect to Nokia’s cloud-based location services unit, HERE, which enables personalised features for different drivers and will eventually serve as the foundation for autonomous driving. This is no easy upgrade for HERE, which will soon have to understand “the very exact precision of lane width, road sign locations and other road network” to make the cars autonomous.

It’s worth noting that Mercedes has already added smart technology like proximity sensors that can respond the these kinds of cues. It’s worth noting that Nokia’s maps division is one of only three left after the company sold its mobile phone division to Microsoft last week. So it seems fair to assume that the company is betting heavily on this new partnership to work.

Again, Mercedes and Nokia aren’t the only companies trying to build self-driving cars. Obviously, Google has been leading the pack with its self-driving product, though it’s unclear if they’ll ever bring the technology to market. Nissan, on the other had, say it will sell an affordable self-driving car by 2020, likely in the form of a $US1000 upgrade. And in recent years Ford, Toyota and General Motors have all developed their own self-driving car divisions, but they haven’t come out of the prototype stage.

With the exception of Nissan, the inevitable questions about all of these companies self-driving cars projects has yet to be answered: When will the self-driving cars be available to the public? How much will they cost? And are we sure they’re going to be safe. Announcing plans to build this oh-so-futuristic technology is all well and good. But it’s time to start seeing results.

[MIKA27]

Hankook's Shock-Absorbing Airless Tyre Will Never Go Flat

Inspired by Bridgestone’s puncture-proof tyres, and Michelin’s Tweel, Hankook has decided that it wants to get into the next-generation tyre market with its own i-Flex. Like the previous creations from its competitors, Hankook’s tyre trades an air-filled bladder that’s prone to leaks and punctures for an engineered rubber framework that provides support and shock absorption.

With the i-Flex, a complex array of rubber cells lines the inside of the tyre. And since every bump is evenly distributed across this network of tiny shock absorbers, in theory the i-Flex tyres should provide an even comfier ride. The tyres are lighter too, improving a vehicle’s fuel efficiency, and they’re actually quieter than traditional designs. And if that wasn’t enough reason to hope these reach consumers, the unique design is also 95 per cent recyclable, so they’re better for the planet too.

Bridgestones puncture proof tyres above:

[MIKA27]

Take A Street View Tour Of An Underground Chapel Built Out Of Salt

If opulent isn’t an adjective you’d immediately associate with the mining profession, then you’ve clearly never had a peek inside Poland’s Wieliczka Salt Mine. The subterranean marvel (and UNESCO World Heritage Site) has been operational since the first shafts were dug way back in the 13th century, but the decor has come a long, long way in the subsequent years. And now, thanks to Google, we can explore it from afar.

In addition to the more traditionally rugged excavation routes, Wieliczka’s underground landmark is home to elaborate chapels, crystallised chandeliers and art galleries, all carved out of common sodium chloride. The reverent treatment nods to a not-so-distant past where salt was a hot commodity, valued in a way that went way beyond a few casual sprinkles over dinner.

Visitors can take a hard-hat tour of the mine, but in lieu of an IRL visit (or for those who prefer to travel pants-less from the comfort of their own home), Wieliczka recently became the latest World Wonder to get the Google Street View treatment. It joins a veritable greatest hits of amazing spots around the globe being preserved in this incredibly accessible way.

Explore the Wieliczka Salt Mine here (and a few less polished pics below, via the official site), but please don’t lick your screen.

[MIKA27]

Could Future Astronauts 3D-Print Habitats Using Mars And Moon Soil?

Right now, there are dozens of theoretical proposals for how humans could eventually populate Mars (or the moon), each as crazy as the next: space elevators, inflatables, giant 3D printers. But there’s something wonderful about watching these zany concepts emerge, each with its own unique logic. The latest? A plan to create cave-like dwellings for the one-way astronauts aboard Mars One.

Mars One, if you’ll remember, is the Dutch non-profit that made news this year when it put out a 5s interested in embarking on a long, one-way journey to the Red Planet. Back in January, Mars One’s pitch involved a series of nondescript “pods” that seemed to perch on the surface of the planet. One of the problems with building dwellings on the surface of Mars, though, is that it’s wanting for a magnetosphere — and thus, an atmosphere. Part of the challenge of “terraforming” the planet will be building up a new atmosphere.

Or, we could just go underground. That’s the concept behind this plan by Russian architects ZA. Here’s the bare bones version: a series of robots — equipped with the ability to dig — would identify weak areas in the Martian soil and carve them out. Then, using a process similar to that of structural 3D printing, these robots would “print” interior structures using the leftover basalt — the most common soil on Mars. “This material is already in use in the aerospace and automotive industries,” architect Arina Ageeva told Dezeen. “It is stronger and lighter than steel, easier to operate, fireproof and it does not corrode.”

As our buds at io9 pointed out this weekend, it’s more than a little far-fetched. At the same time, it does build on technology that’s developing on Earth. For example, there’s Enrico Dini’s decade-old effort to develop the first structural 3D printer, the 5s. Dini’s printer uses a mixture of cement and liquids, superheated to seal the concoction in place. Likewise, the Mars One robot would use solar power to super-heat basalt — volcanic rock — until it became lava-like liquid. When cool, its form would be permanent.

This spring, the European Space Agency — an organisation that’s far more likely to actually reach the Red Planet — revealed a conceptual study that’s not dissimilar from this proposal. Developed in partnership with the architects Norman Foster and Partners, the project studied the feasibility of lugging an army of 3D printers to the moon, where they could be used to print shelters for the first semi-permanent inhabitants.

Of course, we’re a long ways off from either of these ideas being plausible. For one thing, the weight of these printers would be prohibitive. But what does make sense? Taking the weight of conventional materials out of the equation. The precious tons saved from not shuttling steel habitats from Earth to space is the crucial insight here. Barring our ability to seek out natural saves on the surface of Mars, structural 3D printing might just be our best bet.

[MIKA27]

Wacom Bamboo Pad: A Touchpad Enhanced For Sketching And Writing

Wacom is covering all grounds lately with new products. Its latest is the Bamboo Pad, a touch surface with the gesture control the likes of an Apple Magic Trackpad, with some added functionality for drawing and jotting down notes.

The Bamboo Pad touts the ability to recognise when you are using the included stylus versus when you are using your fingers, thus allowing a more natural drawing/writing experience without the interference of your palm. If the gestures we know and love remain intact, the stylus option could be a nice way of adding handwritten notes to documents, or doing simple sketching. The stylus has 512 levels of pressure sensitivity. While that doesn’t reach the 2000+ levels of Wacom’s higher-end devices, it should be more than enough for casual use.

The Bamboo Pad will work across Mac and Windows platforms, although you will need to install a driver if you have a Mac, whereas the Pad will work out of the box with Windows 7 and 8. The wireless version will be $US80, and the wired USB version will be $US50, both available in September from the Wacom eStore.

[MIKA27]

What If Spike Jonze's Movie Her Was Actually Voiced By Siri?

So though the premise of a man falling in love with the voice of his phone’s operating system is a little ridiculous, Spike Jonze’s movie Her actually looks wonderful and maybe even believable. But duh! Who wouldn’t fall in love with Scarlett Johansson’s voice?

Just hearing the huskiness makes you imagine the bombshell that is Scarlett Jo. So what if we replaced Johansson’s voice with something more robotically realistic… like Siri’s. Yeah, it would be pretty funny.

KickerDixon poked fun of Her by creating a parody trailer iHer that re-tools the scenes in the original trailer with quips from Siri. That Siri sure acts up every now and then.

Here’s the original trailer for Her if you’ve forgotten.

http://youtu.be/rS8zOLOcPMQ

[MIKA27]

Guinness record bid: Bulgarian man in bag swims Lake Ohrid

A Bulgarian man has swum more than 2km (1.25 miles) tied up in a bag hoping to set a Guinness World record, the organisers of the event have said.

It took Jane Petkov some two and three-quarter hours to cross the distance in Lake Ohrid in Macedonia, reports say.

With his arms and legs tied to his body, the 59-year-old swam on his back "like a dolphin", organiser Saso Tockov told the AFP news agency.

The "amphibian man's" average speed was 0.7km/h, Macedonian media said.

"I was very cold for the first kilometre but after that it was all fine - no problem whatsoever," Mr Petkov was quoted as saying after completing the swim on Tuesday.

"Had the water been warmer, I could have 10km or more."

The event organisers said they had properly documented the swim in order for it to be officially recognised as a Guinness World record.

However, there was some discrepancy in local reports over the distance that Mr Petkov had swum while the exact time he spent in the water varied from 2 hours 47 minutes to 2 hours 55 minutes.

Guinness World Records - which registers unusual feats - has so far made no public comment on the issue.

[MIKA27]

Robo-mate exoskeleton under development in Europe

Efforts to develop an exoskeleton for the workplace are under way, backed by EU funds.

Twelve research institutions from seven European countries are involved in the Robo-mate project, which hopes to test a robotic suit that can be worn by factory employees within three years.

They say the machine could reduce the number of work-related injuries.

One expert warned employers would need to be convinced the equipment would not pose safety issues of its own.

Manufacturers including Italian carmaker Fiat and the French vehicle recycler Indra are working with the teams.

The companies will suggest situations in which the tech could prove useful and have also said they would help test it.

The EU has committed 4.5m euros (£6m; £3.8m) to the scheme.

Heavy weights

The project aims to address the fact that many manufacturing tasks are difficult to automate.

For example Indra has to deconstruct many different types of car, and at present humans, rather than robots, are the only ones capable of handling the complexity of the choices involved.

Because of the weights involved, this can put staff at risk of developing medical problems.

"People have to manipulate parts or components that weigh more than 10kg [22lb]," said Dr Carmen Constantinescu, from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute, one of the organisations involved.

"These activities are not carried out just once per day, but are repetitive.

"An exoskeleton with a human inside represents a new type of research for the manufacturing industry.

"It offers a hybrid approach in which the robotic parts support the human who can provide the decisions and cognition needed."

The partners have highlighted a study by the UK's Work Foundation think tank that suggested as many as 44 million people in the EU have suffered work-related musculoskeletal disorders.

Not all would be preventable by such an exoskeleton, and one of the other researchers involved said part of the challenge would be indentifying where the tech could prove useful.

"One area would be, is it useful to lift heavy loads?" Prof Darwin Caldwell, from King's College London, told the BBC.

"The other is situations when people are working above their head.

"If you hold a paint brush or a screwdriver above your head for more than two to three minutes your arms become very fatigued and it can be very bad for your heart."

However, he said the engineering teams were mindful of the risks involved.

"At the minute the motors or hydraulic systems required tend to be rather large and clumsy," Prof Caldwell said. "What we have to do is find ways to miniaturise those.

"What we also have to remember is that an exoskeleton is essentially a robot in physical contact with a human.

"That raises safety issues so we will be looking at making the interaction between the two softer and more organic - it won't be like having a large industrial robot which is dangerous."

The researchers have already suggested some of the technologies they plan to include

One roboticist who is not involved in the project said he expected such technology to become commonplace within the next two to three decades.

"A number of exoskeletons have been developed for military use in the US, and for helping the disabled and frail older people to walk again in Japan - industrial use is an obvious next step," said Prof Noel Sharkey, from the University of Sheffield.

"But one hard problem is how the human user interfaces with the device. It is vital that the operator can perform dextrously with natural movements without having to think about it.

"Another problem is how to work in environments with other humans without hurting them. This will require new natural collision avoidance methods."

[MIKA27]

Beheaded Maya Massacre Victims Found

Scholars report the discovery of dismembered war captives from seventh century.

Two dozen Maya war captives were beheaded, dismembered, and buried unceremoniously some 1,400 years ago at the site of Uxul, an international team reported on Tuesday.

The victims were likely rulers of nearby towns at war with Uxul, located in southern Mexico, or the dethroned rulers of the town itself, according to the researchers. The discovery of the mass burial in an artificial cave adds to the evidence that the brutal warfare, torture, and sacrifice of captives widely depicted in ancient Maya artwork were real practices, says discovery team archaeologist Nicolaus Seefeld of Germany's University of Bonn.

Of the two dozen skeletons discovered at the site earlier this year, the team was able to determine that at least 13 were men and 2 were women. Their ages at death ranged from 18 to 42. "Some of them had jade inserts in their teeth, which we think means they were high-status members of the ruling class," says Seefeld.

"All of them were decapitated, and the bones were scattered," Seefeld adds. The neck bones of the victims exhibit hatchet cuts, and several of the skulls bear unhealed marks from hatchet and cudgel blows. The skulls were piled some distance away from the skeletons in the burial chamber, a 344-square-foot (32-square-meter) rectangular cave once used to store water.

Bare Bones Burial

The victims were buried without any of the offerings or jewelry typically seen in royal burials, aside from a few potsherds that allowed the researchers to roughly date the time of their massacre. At the time, Uxul was apparently ruled by a local dynasty, though it later came under the control of Calakmul. The latter city was the superpower of the classic Maya era, which ended after A.D. 800 with the widespread abandonment, or collapse, of the pyramid-filled cities of Central America.

"Most likely these were soldiers dispatched after being captured in warfare, or else [were] the local rulers themselves after being usurped," says archaeologist Arthur Demarest of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, who was not part of the discovery team.

Seefeld originally investigated the burial site looking to unearth the water system of the town, which was abandoned before A.D.

800, early in the era of Maya collapse. Instead of a cistern, he found the buried skeletons under 6.6 feet (2 meters) of sand and a layer of clay. "The cave once provided water to nearby elite residences, but we don't know if there is any connection to the people who lived there," he says.

For now, the team hopes that chemical isotope analysis of the bones will reveal whether the beheading victims were local nobles or invaders captured during a war between Maya cities. The results should be known in November, Seefeld says, offering more insight into who won and who lost this one particularly fierce fight.

[MIKA27]

ALL TERRAIN TRAILER | BY CAMPA USA

Campa USA manufactures great expedition solutions.

The All Terrain Trailers are truly engineered products, with every component receiving critical consideration. They feature a fully outfitted and organized kitchen designed to serve up to 6 people, equipped with cooking stove, sink, cook pots and utensils. The versatile, durable trailers are built entirely of medical grade Stainless Steel and are fully customizable, you can choose your tent size, and add several features to the base trailer including fridges, awnings, water purifiers, generators, solar power and much more.

[MIKA27]

HAMMOCK SLEEPING BAG | BY GRAND TRUNK

Hammocks aren’t designed for camping in cold weather, they are helpless against the slightest chill.

Grand Trunk’s hammock sleeping bag solves this by turning your hammock into a toasty insulated cocoon. Unlike other sleeping bags when placed on a hammock, it won’t thin out on the bottom, this means the insulation stays lofty, leaving you hanging inside a warm cocoon, even when it’s freezing outside.

[Habana Mike]

ALL TERRAIN TRAILER | BY CAMPA USA

Campa USA manufactures great expedition solutions.

The All Terrain Trailers are truly engineered products, with every component receiving critical consideration. They feature a fully outfitted and organized kitchen designed to serve up to 6 people, equipped with cooking stove, sink, cook pots and utensils. The versatile, durable trailers are built entirely of medical grade Stainless Steel and are fully customizable, you can choose your tent size, and add several features to the base trailer including fridges, awnings, water purifiers, generators, solar power and much more.

Prepper's dream, it's an awesome bugout device!

[MIKA27]

Distant Ruins: How Scientists Hunt Space For Dead Alien Civilisations

‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ says Ozymandias’s ruined statue in the desert of Shelley’s imagination. Shelley’s sonnet is often interpreted as a sober warning that human works are fleeting, but when I read it as a young boy it kindled a sense of adventure; it suggested a wonderfully mysterious past beneath my familiar suburban surroundings.

We use the word ‘archaeology’ to describe this effort, because looking into deep space takes us deep into the past. Interstellar archaeologists are looking for evidence of engineering on scales that dwarf our own. They assume that civilisations eventually build technologies capable of exploiting the energy resources of entire stars. They are building on the early work of the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, who, in 1964, set about categorising these futuristic civilisations. His scheme, called the Kardashev Scale, has three types, and so far humanity does not even rate as a Type I — a civilisation that can master the energy resources of its entire planet. A Type II culture can tap all the resources of its local star, and a Type III can harness the energy of an entire galaxy. We do not, of course, know if any civilisation other than our own exists, but Kardashev’s scale offers us a way of approaching the problem of detection: it gets us thinking about what kind of traces these advanced civilisations might leave behind.

Imagining the engineering of ancient extraterrestrials is difficult work, foolhardy even. The earliest attempts to do it tended to focus on the largest conceivable structures. The former Fermilab scientist Richard Carrigan, one of interstellar archaeology’s pioneers, has long been a vocal proponent of the hunt for Dyson spheres, a technology proposed by Freeman Dyson in 1960. Dyson predicted that energy-seeking civilisations would surround their home stars in a technological shell, or a swarm of spacecraft, in order to capture its energy. A sphere with the radius of Earth’s orbit would have an interior surface area 100 million times as large as the surface area of our planet. In 1966, Carl Sagan suggested that such spheres might be detectable, but he cautioned that they would be hard to distinguish from natural objects that gave off a similar infrared signature. Decades later, Carrigan would tell New Scientist that he wanted to try anyway, that he ‘wanted to get into the mode of the British Museum, to go and look for artefacts’.

True to his word, Carrigan has conducted a series of searches for Dyson spheres, following earlier work by the Russian astronomers Vyacheslav Ivanovich Slysh and MY Timofeev. Carrigan combed IRAS, the infrared sky survey that dates back to the 1980s, looking for the distinct infrared signatures calculated for this purely theoretical technology. More recently, Berkeley’s well known exoplanet hunter Geoff Marcy began studying 1,000 Milky Way star systems for evidence of large structures, looking for visible disturbances in light levels around the parent star as the techno-structures transit between their star and the Earth.

The field’s deeper thinkers are starting to wonder if there might be other ways to search. Milan Ćirković, from the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade, has suggested we go after large artificial objects in transiting orbits. He says we ought to look for something like the huge space colonies once championed by Gerard O’Neill, structures that could be involved in large-scale industrial operations, which might be furnaces for antimatter. If so, their existence could be confirmed by the detection of unusual gamma ray signatures. Alien engineers might even manipulate their own central star. In 1957, Fritz Zwicky suggested that civilisations could fire fuel pellets into their local stars, to move their solar systems to new locations, especially when interstellar dangers loomed. 40 years later, the physicist Leonid Shkadov suggested that huge spherical mirrors could be built to accomplish the same thing, by creating a feedback effect from the star’s radiation, that would let its creators control the star’s trajectory through the galaxy.

And what of stars that are anomalous such as the ‘blue straggler’ stars that seem much younger than the stars around them?

Astronomers are puzzled by them because globular clusters — ancient cities of stars that sit in a spherical halo around the Milky Way — are where blue stragglers were first identified, and these are thought to contain stars that formed at the same time. Now we’re finding blue stragglers in the galactic bulge itself, another unusual place for younger stars since most star formation there has stopped. The giant blue stars we see shining there should have exploded into supernovae billions of years ago.

All of these searches ask us to put ourselves in the minds of beings about whom we know absolutely nothing. The physicist David Deutsch has flagged this as a problem for prediction of all kinds, not just those involving SETI. According to Deutsch, we can distinguish between ‘prophecy’ and ‘prediction’, with prophecy being the discussion of things that are not knowable, while prediction deals with conclusions that are based on good explanations of the universe. As prognosticators from Thomas Malthus to the Club of Rome have demonstrated, we may be able to identify problematic trends in the present that can be extended into the future, but we cannot know what knowledge we will acquire in the future to manage those problems. This is why no scientific era has succeeded in imagining its successor. The scientists of the late 19th century discovered this firsthand, when confronted with the emergence of quantum theory and relativity early in the early 20th. Both theories raised questions earlier theorists couldn’t have even formulated.

n the context of interstellar archaeology, the problem is that we have no analogues in our experience for what advanced cultures might create. Interstellar archaeologists are tasked with sifting through gigabytes of data, not layers of soil, but the principle is the same. In a recent paper with Robert Bradbury and George Dvorsky, Milan Ćirković offered a paradigm for a new SETI, one that would include not only searches like these but a wide range of ‘future studies’ that would encompass how a post-biological intelligence might emerge and make itself known — intentionally or unintentionally.

Finding the monuments of civilisations more advanced than our own would challenge us to place ourselves in a totally unfamiliar context, as cosmic newcomers who can suddenly aspire to long lifetimes. If we found a lost city in the sky, it might fire our imaginations. It might give us reason to think we’ll outlast existential threats like nuclear weapons and biological terrorism. An interstellar Hisarlik would tell us that some civilisations do survive these dangers and learn to harness immense energies to grow.

Rather than despair, we may see their mighty works and rejoice at what we can become.

This article has been excerpted with permission from Aeon Magazine. To read in its entirety, head here.

[CanuckSARTech]

Amazing posts as always. Thanks for doing this MIKA.

Meh. It's a'ight.

[MIKA27]

Meh. It's a'ight.

Hmmm... Do you like it now Keith?

NASCAR's Chase controversy: Is there more drama to come?

The cloud of controversy hanging over the start of NASCAR's Chase for the Cup title playoff continues to linger.

Three days after NASCAR slammed Michael Waltrip Racing with massive penalties for allegedly cheating at Saturday's race at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway to help an MWRdriver get in the Chase, another issue surfaced from that race involving Chase contender Joey Logano.

Associated Press and some other media outlets suggested that the teams of Logano and David Gilliland might have conspired to let Logano pass Gilliland near the end of the race to ensure Logano would make the Chase.

The Richmond race was the last race to determine which 12 drivers qualified for the 10-race Chase that starts Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway.

Logano drives for Penske Racing, and Gilliland, who did not make the Chase, drives for the small team of Front Row Motorsports. But both drive Fords.

NASCAR issued a statement Wednesday saying it was aware of the reports "and is looking into it, but has yet to see anything in full context that requires any action."

Seemingly that was the end of the story. Except it wasn't.

NASCAR issued another statement Thursday morning saying it "is continuing to gather all the facts" from the Richmond race and would not comment further "until all the facts have been examined."

That doesn't mean more penalties are coming. But the statement clearly indicated that NASCAR was not done investigating whether there was additional wrongdoing.

Penske Racing President Tim Cindric said there wasn't. Cindric told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that "there's no conspiracy, there's no bribe" in the Logano situation and that team owner "Roger Penske is not involved in trying to manipulate the outcome of a race."

The penalties against Waltrip's team resulted in the unprecedented step of removing MWR driver Martin Truex Jr. from the Chase field and replacing him with Ryan Newman, who drives for Stewart-Haas Racing.

All of this was happening as the Chase contenders arrived in Chicago for media day to kick off the championship playoff. Stay tuned.

[MIKA27]

A Brief History Of Animals And Rocket Launches Not Getting Along

By now you’ve no doubt already shed a tear for Spacetoad, who met his fiery, glorious end during a NASA rocket launch earlier this week. But did you know that he’s just the latest in a long line of animals who have run afoul of our nation’s space program?

What follows is a look at the unfortunate fauna who have found themselves a little too close to a launchpad. It’s the most fitting tribute to a noble Spacetoad we could think of.

The frog that got too close to a NASA launch

The herd of cows terrified by the SpaceX Grasshopper.

Spacebat, who clung nobly to Space Shuttle Discovery’s external fuel tank during the countdown to launch the STS-119 mission in 2009.

Not strictly speaking an animal, but bird poop made it to space in 2006.

A turkey vulture flew right into Space Shuttle Discovery’s flight path on July 26, 2005.

AP photo of the turkey vulture incident, just before impact.

A pair of Northern Flicker woodpeckers tried to burrow a nesting hole in the spray-on foam insulation (SOFI) of the shuttle External Tank (ET) in 1995.

A turkey vulture flew right into Space Shuttle Discovery’s flight path on July 26, 2005.

AP photo of the turkey vulture incident, just before impact.

It’s not always tragic. Since the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge coexists inside Kennedy Space Center, a huge number of animals — mostly birds and alligators — live near the launch pads. The NASA has a number of measures available, including warning sirens, to deter birds and other creatures from getting too close to spacecrafts. The launch team also uses radar to watch for birds before a liftoff. Which means that sometimes, instead of collisions, you get majestic imagery like the following.

A flock of (probably) cormorants seem to surround the Shuttle Atlantis against a clear blue sky in 2002.

A lonesome bird — that black spot in the plume on the right side of the photo — gets impressively close to the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1994.

[MIKA27]

Meet The Man Attempting To Cross The Atlantic Using Only Balloons

Jonathan Trappe loves balloons. In fact, the 39-year-old IT manager loves them so much that he’s trusting them with his life as he attempts to become the first person to cross the Atlantic using only a life raft and 370 helium-filled balloons. If that sounds crazy, that’s because it is.

Trappe took off from Caribou, Maine, on Thursday morning and will fly as high as 7.62 kilometres above the Earth’s surface.

Though the colourful setup looks like a real life version of Up, the attempt will be incredibly dangerous: Five people have already died trying to cross the Atlantic in hot air balloons.

But Trappe is uniquely experienced. He’s already successfully crossed the English Channel, as well as the Alps, with a cluster of balloons. He’s broken the record for the longest-ever cluster balloon voyage after spending 16 hours in the air. If anyone is going to accomplish this feat, he’s the most likely candidate.

Trappe launched his helium-powered craft early this morning from Caribou, Maine, and the trip is expected to last three to five more days. Which is exactly three to five days longer than I’d ever want to sit in this contraption.

[MIKA27]

You Can Now Explore The Galapagos Islands With Google Street View

The Galapagos is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, and it was key in Charles Darwin’s findings in forming the the scientific argument of evolution. You may never get to travel to the volcanic archipelago in person, but now thanks to Google, you can explore it through 360-degree imagery on Street View.

In partnership with Galapagos National Park and the Darwin Foundation, Google spent 10 days down in the Galapagos in May mapping the island using the endearingly goofy Trekker imaging backpacks.

The video above documents that trek, in which Googlers were able to catch such sites as recently hatched baby tortoises and blue-footed boobies doing their mating dance.

Using an SVII underwater camera from another partner — the Catlin Seaview Survey — Google also nabbed some underwater imagery. That means you can scope out playful baby sea lions swimming around on your computer screen. Hey, if you can’t see the islands first-hand, exploring the place on your computer is the next best thing.

[MIKA27]

Ray Dolby, Innovator Of Cinema Sound, Has Died

Dolby Laboratories founder Ray Dolby died today in San Francisco at the age of 80. He’ll be remembered as the man who made the movies sound as spectacular as they look. Today, his technology is used in movie theatres around the world.

Dolby was born in Portland, Oregon 1944. He earned a BA in engineering at Stanford in 1957, and moved to England where he earned a PhD in Physics from Cambridge in 1961. In 1964, he founded Dolby Labs. The company’s early work focused on a professional noise reduction system for magnetic tape audio recordings. This tech made a huge impact on sounds that people heard all the time, but soon, his name would be written all over the movies they were watching in an unforgettable way.

In the 1970s, Dolby Labs developed an analogue system for multi-channel sound playback for film, which was eventually dubbed Dolby Stereo. The key innovation was the addition of center and surround tracks to film sound tapes, which could be played back in addition to the traditional stereo mix, if the theatre was properly equipped. These days, he’s probably best known for the consumer version of the technology, Dolby Surround, which was first introduced in 1982.

In recent years, Dolby Labs’ innovations have extended into the world of ones and zeros. Dolby Digital encompasses a series of codecs for digital audio that are used by everything from Blu-rays to Netflix. You basically can’t make a consumer product larger than a smartphone without a Dolby Digital decoder.

Last year, Dolby debuted Atmos, an unbelievably immersive cinema sound technology, which allows sound mixers to pin-point audio “elements” to individual speakers in a theatre. The system is being rapidly adopted in movie houses across the world, and basically every major blockbuster has a Dolby Atmos sound mix.

Dolby’s name isn’t just one of the most recognisable in the world of movies — it’s also amongst the most important in its history. Our condolences go out to his family and friends.