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

[MIKA27]

Whoever Shoots Apple's Ads Needs A Medal

http://youtu.be/jiyIcz7wUH0

Ads are designed to get people to buy a product, but Apple’s ads seemed to have transcended simple selling and instead started just showcasing cool stuff. Like this new ad which steals a Robin Williams monologue from Dead Poets Society, set against some incredible images of waterfalls, churches, reefs, windfarms in the middle of the ocean and a superstorm.

Whoever shoots these needs a pat on the back, whether you like the products or not.

[MIKA27]

Michael Arndt's scrapped Star Wars story was about Luke and Han's kids

When Michael Arndt was replaced as the writer of Star Wars: Episode VII last fall, we were told it had to do with timing concerns. But according to a new report in the Hollywood Reporter, the real reason was a disagreement over who the film should be about: Luke, Leia and Han, or the next generation.

Minor spoilers ahead...

The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision blog quotes unnamed sources as saying that Toy Story 3writer Arndt (and original Star Wars creator George Lucas) wanted Episode VII to be about the children of Luke, Leia and Han Solo, but director J.J. Abrams disagreed:

Arndt is said to have focused on the offspring of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), with the original trilogy heroes taking on supporting roles. Abrams, however, wanted Episode VII to focus on the classic trio of characters, so audiences could have one more chance to enjoy them before a fitting send-off. The new characters, the offspring, will now be in supporting roles, according to these sources, and take center stage in Episode VIII and IX. Some characters have disappeared from the Arndt script and new ones are being drafted.

Abrams and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan (who also co-wrote Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back) have been retooling the script so radically, a lot of the roles that people had been trying out for are no longer valid. For example, Tye Sheridan (Mud) had been a frontrunner for one role — but now there's no need for such young actors. Also, one role that had been envisioned as a 20-year-old male is now a 40-year-old.

But apparently it's true that Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bad) is meeting with J.J. Abrams about a major role. Also, he's met with Adam Driver (Girls) and Michael Fassbender (Prometheus) about roles. Hugo Weaving (The Matrix) is in line to play an Imperial Commander in the film, which seems like perfect casting.

And there's one more piece of casting rumor: Heat Vision says Abrams is rumored to be searching for a "20-something female actress" who is either mixed-race or black. "The rumor is that Obi-Wan Kenobi had a daughter or granddaughter."

In any case, it's way, way too early to make any judgments about a film that hasn't started shooting yet — but off-hand, a film focusing on a new generation of Star Wars heroes sounds like a somewhat better idea than Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher taking center stage one last time.

[MIKA27]

The Sea Froze So Fast That It Killed Thousands Of Fish Instantly

Norwegian public radio (Google-translated) reports on the instant dead of thousands of fish in a bay in the island of Lovund, Norway. An air temperature of -7.8C combined with a strong east wind froze the sea water instantly, trapping and killing the fish you can see in this fishapocalyptic image:

The dog owner says that he has never seen such a phenomenon. NRK claims that the herrings were chased by cormorants into the bay when the deadly freezing happened. Aril Slotte — the head of pelagic fish department at Norway’s Institute of Marine Research — says it is not uncommon for herring to get very near the shore when chased by predators, sometimes getting trapped by the low tide in areas like this bay.

I wish I were there. I love herring.

[MIKA27]

Two Espressos Enhance Your Long-Term Memory

Many of us would he hard-pressed to function without our morning coffee, but now there’s compelling evidence that it could actually help enhance your long-term memory.

A study led by Michael Yassa from the University of California, Irvine, sought to establish the effects of small quantities of caffeine on memory function in adults. His 160 participants were asked to study images of objects, and then randomly given either a pill containing either 200 milligrams of caffeine — the same as two espressos — or a placebo.

Then, when the volunteers came back after 24 hours, they took a memory test involving images that they’d seen before, unseen images, and images that were similar — but not identical. They were asked to classify each, as “old”, “new” or “similar”. There was no difference between participants in classifying old or new images, but those who had consumed caffeine were better at identifying “similar” images.

Yassa concluded that caffeine enhances long-term memory by improving the process of memory consolidation. The results are published in Nature Neuroscience. It doesn’t, however, help memory retrieval: a second experiment, where caffeine was consumed just one hours before the test, provided no positive effect. They also re-ran the test with lower and higher doses of caffeine, and the effect was less pronounced — so two espressos is the real sweet spot.

So, the take home is that a modest amount of coffee around the time your study could actually have a real impact on how well you retain information. Students everywhere, rejoice.

[MIKA27]

Scientists To Create A Dying Star's Atmosphere Here On Earth

A team of astronomers and engineers want to reproduce the atmosphere of a red giant like the one you are seeing in this Hubble image — right here on Earth. To make this happen, project Nanocosmos will build three 5m-long machines working with hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, titanium, iron and other metals at 1500C.

For the first time, Nanocosmos will design and build a machine capable of producing interstellar dust grains emulating the physical and chemical conditions of the outer layers of dying stars.

Talking to newspaper El Mundo (in Spanish), astronomer José Cernicharo — who designed the research along with astrophysicist Christine Joblin and material science professor José Ángel Martín — said that it is a complicated project, but completely doable:

In a manner of speaking, we want to bring a star to the laboratory. Obviously, it’s a very complicated object. We are not going to reproduce the star itself but only its atmosphere, the place where interstellar dust is formed. How can we do this? By building simulation chambers, two in Spain and one in France, to study the different physical and chemical processes that make these small particles of interstellar dust.

The dust grains that form around dying stars (red giants, planetary nebulas, and supernovas) are ejected to the interstellar medium where, after millions of years, they mix in new interstellar clouds that give birth to stars and planets, some rocky like Earth. We know their composition but not their structure or the fundamental process that form them.

The project will employ 40 engineers and astronomers throughout the world, as well as the ALMA telescope in Chile and various radio telescopes around the world.

[MIKA27]

This Is How The US Air Force Showers Its Giant Cargo Planes

Ever wondered how the US Air Force cleans its planes? Here’s one way: They use a giant shower on a runway — or a planewash if you must. Here you can see it cleaning the salt accumulated on a Lockheed Martin WC-130 Hercules after flying through storms over the Gulf of Mexico.

[MIKA27]

Michael Douglas is playing Hank Pym in Ant-Man!

Michael Douglas has officially signed on Edgar Wright's Ant-Man. And now Marvel is revealing that he's playing Hank Pym, which means Paul Rudd (the lead and younger Ant-Man of this story) is the other comic book iteration of this hero Scott Lang. But wait, there's a twist. Spoilers ahead.

Variety is reporting that Douglas is 100% in to star as the retired scientists Hank Pym who invented the serum that turned himself into a superhero (with the abilities to change his size). After Pym retired he then bestowed the Ant-Man title to Lang. However it seems that there is more to this story than meets the eye. Movie critic Devin Faraci spied this change in the Varietytitle.

Which makes even MORE sense when you really think about it. Why else would Douglas sign on, he was either going to be a very bit cameo part (which would most likely have been kept under wraps by Marvel as a surprise) or he's a very important character.

Villain makes a whole lotta sense. Also who doesn't love a bitter, retired superhero that goes from good to bad?

UPDATE: Director Edgar Wright addresses the villain rumors on his twitter account and said they were false.

[MIKA27]

Creepy Xbox One Ad Says It's So Real You'll Bleed

As a video game aficionado, I often find myself staring at my console and wondering, “Why isn’t this more real? Why isn’t this more immersive? Why am I not bleeding right now?”

Fortunately for Real Gamers, Microsoft’s latest Xbox One advertisement promises the features we really want, like sweat, blood, and terrifying hallucinations. Because if you’re not seeing things when you stand up, are you really even gaming?

[MIKA27]

Toyota Finally Learns How to Make an Incredible Concept Car

Toyota is world-renowned for making perfectly acceptable four-wheeled appliances, but Akio Toyoda, the automaker’s CEO, wants to shake things up. And the FT-1 concept is the first major step to banish the bland and eviscerate the vanilla.

Unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show, most gearheads see the FT-1 as the spiritual successor to the Toyota Supra — the over-endowed darling of the tuner scene that gave everything from Corvettes to Porsches a run for their money.

The FT-1 certainly looks like it could hang with the best from Motor City and Maranello, particularly with its F1-inspired nose, lens-free LED headlamps, and insanely intricate rear that blends blistered fenders with strakes and angles that look like they were pulled straight out of an anime.

The interior is just as elaborate, with a fighter jet-like head-up display and small screen ahead of the driver, and an integrated screen at the top of the button-festooned steering wheel that shows the driving mode (sport to comfort), a shift light and the current gear.

There are shades of Lexus’ star-crossed LFA throughout the interior and exterior, which could be a better indication of where the FT-1 might be headed. But a dealer near you isn’t it.

For now, the FT-1 is just a concept that’s set to inspire the next generation of rides from the automaker — hence its name FT, which stands for Future Toyota. But starting tomorrow, you’ll be able to download the FT-1 in Gran Turismo 6 and take it for a hot lap around the world’s greatest circuits. That includes the Fuji Speedway, where Akio Toyoda is rumored to have driven it, setting a lap record in the process, and green-lit the concept immediately afterwards.

[MIKA27]

Japan's Suntory buys Jim Beam drinks group in $16bn deal

Japanese family-owned drinks firm Suntory is to buy the US beverage group Beam Inc, the company behind the Jim Bean bourbon brand.

Under the deal, worth $16bn (£9.7bn) in all, Suntory will pay $13.6bn in cash and take on Beam's debt.

It will make Suntory the world's third largest maker of distilled drinks.

The two companies have a previous partnership whereby they distribute each other's brands in different markets.

Beam's brands also include Maker's Mark bourbon, Sauza tequila, and Courvoisier cognac.

Suntory is best-known for the Japanese whisky brands Yamazaki, Hakushu, and Midori liqueur and Bowmore Scotch whisky.

Following the announcement, Beam's share price rose 24%,

Soft

Beam's chief executive Matt Shattock is to continue in his role following the deal, and the company said that it will continue to operate the US brands from the current headquarters near Chicago.

In September 2013, the UK's GlaxoSmithKline sold its Lucozade and Ribena brands to Suntory for £1.35bn.

Suntory also owns Orangina Schweppes, and floated its soft drinks and food business in July of 2013 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

The flotation was one of Japan's largest share offerings last year.

[MIKA27]

The ballad of the Romanian shepherd

Shepherds have a special place in Romania's history and in its culture, and their lifestyle has not changed much in centuries - until now. Social media has turned at least one of them into a celebrity, writes Caroline Juler.

On a dank Monday evening some weeks ago, a Romanian shepherd called Ghita left home with his sheep. He wasn't in a lorry but on foot, accompanied by several angajati, or hired men, some shaggy dogs, and seven donkeys loaded with gear. Ghita was off on his autumn transhumance, heading north for his winter pastures. It would take him six weeks.

For a country whose defining myth revolves around shepherds, Romania isn't all that keen on its pastoralists. The Ballad of the Little Sheep (Miorita) tells of a herdsman who lets himself be murdered by two rival shepherds even though one of his lambs, who has miraculously acquired the power of speech, warns him in advance. Miorita is sometimes taken as a metaphor for Christianity, another way of showing Christ's courage in turning the other cheek. It's also said to mirror the experience of the Romanian people who have endured numerous invasions, occupations and humiliations without, it is claimed, ever losing their identity.

When Romanians were agitating for independence in the 19th Century, Transylvanian shepherds were seen as the rugged pioneers of the nationalist movement. Long before then, they had established shortcuts over the Carpathian Mountains to seasonal grazing in what is now Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, the Caucasus, southern Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Poland and the Czech Republic. Having crossed from Hungarian and Habsburg lands into Ottoman Turkey and Russia, they returned home to their more isolated communities with information, ideas and ambitions fired by the world outside.

A shepherd's CV has to offer some crucial USPs: caringness, self-reliance and dedication. He - and it's almost always a he, although in real life women did the same job - is synonymous with the kindly ideals of Christianity and for that matter Islam - but for all that, he is a humble, often solitary, sometimes rootless figure.

During Communism, certain Romanian sheep farmers did rather well. People still talk about Mr B from Poiana Sibiului who asked Ceausescu's permission to buy a helicopter. Mr B's flocks were hefted over several mountains, and he argued that being able to fly would let him keep track of them more easily. His request was refused, but Poiana is famous for other reasons - many of its shepherds built luxurious mansions at a time when most people had to stand in queues to buy food and lit their homes with 40 watt bulbs. Inaccessible to big machinery, many mountain farms escaped collectivisation, and the men and women who commuted there from the less exclusive plains, spoke of "going to America".

Like farmers worldwide, Romanian flock masters enjoy a good grumble. But things have got tough for them since 1989. Once guaranteed, prices for wool have plummeted. Although there is an international market for Romanian lamb, and sheep's cheese sells well, "slow food" has not made enough of a difference to the shepherds who find it healthier - and cheaper - to walk their sheep to far away winter pastures rather than keep their animals inside.

With its origins in the Bronze Age, if not earlier, transhumance is a form of semi-nomadism. It sounds romantic but in the past, Romanian shepherds occasionally resorted to transporting their animals by train, something they could never afford to do now.

Romanian shepherds still look archaic. They wear a long sheepskin cloak called a cojoc or sarica. With the shaggy fleece on the outside, it's also their bed, so when shepherds call the cloak their house, they aren't joking. When they sleep at all, it's outside, in all weathers. The hired men earn between 200 or 300 euros a month. They also receive daily meals, work clothing, and a cigarette allowance. It's not an easy life but if you join them on the road, you'll soon learn about their salty sense of humour.

Say "shepherd" to a Romanian and the chances are he or she will pull a wry face and ask if you've heard of the controversial politician, philanthropist and football club owner who has been caught making dodgy land deals. But things may be changing. In August this year, a well-known phone company began an advertising campaign that highlighted real people doing real jobs. One of them was Ghita.

Dressed in his cojoc and rimless pot hat (another must-have piece of shepherding rig), sitting by a campfire and dancing with sheep, Ghita Ciobanul, or Ghita the Shepherd, has taken Romania by storm. Ten days after the phone company put him on Facebook, his page had clocked more than 200,000 likes. A month later, they had doubled.

In the past, Ghita has had to move his sheep illegally, during the night. Given the hazards of crossing Romania's rapidly urbanising, motorised countryside, it's the only way. Accidents and shootings have cost him scores of sheep and many dogs. Maybe this year, thanks to his new-found celebrity, Ghita will be luckier.

[MIKA27]

Digging for their lives: Russia's volunteer body hunters

Of the estimated 70 million people killed in World War Two, 26 million died on the Eastern front - and up to four million of them are still officially considered missing in action. But volunteers are now searching the former battlefields for the soldiers' remains, determined to give them a proper burial - and a name.

Olga Ivshina walks slowly and carefully through the pine trees, the beeps of her metal detector punctuating the quiet of the forest. "They are not buried very deep," she says.

"Sometimes we find them just beneath the moss and a few layers of fallen leaves. They are still lying where they fell. The soldiers are waiting for us - waiting for the chance to finally go home."

Nearby, Marina Koutchinskaya is on her knees searching in the mud. For the past 12 years she has spent most of her holidays like this, far away from home, her maternity clothes business, and her young son.

"Every spring, summer and autumn I get this strange sort of yearning inside me to go and look for the soldiers," she says. "My heart pulls me to do this work."

They are part of a group called Exploration who have travelled for 24 hours in a cramped army truck to get to this forest near St Petersburg. Conditions are basic - they camp in the woods - and some days they have to wade waist-deep through mud to find the bodies of the fallen. The work can be dangerous, too. Soldiers are regularly discovered with their grenades still in their backpacks and artillery shells can be seen sticking out of the trees. Diggers from other groups elsewhere in Russia have lost their lives.

Marina holds up an object she has found, it looks like a bar of soap, but it is actually TNT. "Near a naked flame it's still dangerous, even though it has been lying in the ground for 70 years," she says.

Many countries were scarred by World War Two, but none suffered as many losses as the Soviet Union.

On 22 June 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the largest and bloodiest campaign in military history, aimed at annexing vast areas of the USSR to the Third Reich. St Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, was one of his main targets. In less than three months, the advancing German army had encircled the city and started pounding it from the air.

But attempts to take the city by storm fell through, so Hitler decided to starve it into surrender. For more than two years, the Red Army fought desperately to cut through German lines.

Olga and Marina are working near the town of Lyuban, 80km (50 miles) south of St Petersburg. Here, in an area of just 10 sq km, an estimated 19,000 Soviet soldiers were killed in just a few days in 1942. So far the diggers have found 2,000 bodies.

Ilya Prokoviev, the most experienced of the Exploration team, is carefully poking the ground with a long metal spike. A former army officer with a droopy blonde moustache, he found his first soldier 30 years ago while walking in the countryside.

"I was crossing a swamp when suddenly I saw some boots sticking out of the mud," he says.

"A bit further away, I found a Soviet helmet. Then I scraped away some moss and saw a soldier. I was shocked. It was 1983, I was 40km from Leningrad and there lay the remains of a soldier who hadn't been buried. After that there were more and more and more, and we realised these bodies were to be found everywhere - and on a massive scale."

There was little time in the heat of battle to bury the dead, says Valery Kudinsky, the defence ministry official responsible for war graves.

"In just three months the German death machine covered more than 2,000km (1,250 miles) of our land. So many Red Army units were killed, wiped out or surrounded - how could anyone think about burials, let alone records of burials, in such conditions?"

Immediately after the war, the priority was to rebuild a shattered country, he says. But that does not explain why later the battlefields weren't cleared and the fallen soldiers not identified and buried.

The diggers now believe that some were deliberately concealed. The governing council of the USSR issued decrees in 1963 about destroying any traces of war, says Ilya.

"If you take a map showing where battles took place, then see where all the new forest plantations and building projects were located, you'll find they coincide with the front line. Nobody will convince me they planted trees for ecological reasons."

If you crouch down in the woods near Lyuban, a series of grooves in the earth can be clearly made out.

"They actively planted new trees on the battlefield - they ploughed furrows and put the trees exactly in the places where the unburied soldiers were lying," Marina says.

She recently unearthed a helmet and in order to find its owner, the team had to uproot two nearby trees.

"When we cleaned away some clumps of earth from the roots we saw two hands tangled up in them. Then we found a pelvis and some ribs between the roots. So we think the whole soldier was underneath the roots and the trees were growing on top of him."

But how could anyone - farmers or workmen - get on a tractor and plough over land littered with human remains?

"If they refused to plough a field because there were corpses or bones in it, they'd just be sacked," says Ilya. "If you lost your job in those days you were a non-person - you didn't exist. That's what life was like in the Soviet Union." Plus, it was less than two decades after the war. The workers had endured far worse horrors, he says.

There are horrors for the diggers, too.

Nevskaya Dubrovka, on the banks of the River Neva, was the scene of one of the bloodiest campaigns of the Leningrad siege. The Red Army fought tooth and nail to secure a narrow stretch of river bank in an attempt to break the blockade. Hundreds of thousands of troops, used as little more than cannon fodder, were slaughtered.

Diggers discovered a mass grave in the area last summer. The soldiers may have been thrown into the pit by their comrades or local villagers as a hasty form of burial, or even by the German Army, anxious to prevent an epidemic among its troops.

"There must have been 30 or 40 soldiers in there. Four layers of people one on top of the other," says Olga, as she sits by the campfire. "But the skeletons were all mixed up and smashed. Here you have a head - there a leg…" She pauses and stares into the fire. "Once you've seen that, you'll never forget it. You are no longer the same person you were before."

Going back to city life and her job with the BBC Russian Service is sometimes hard after a few weeks in the forest. When her friends in Moscow complain about not being able to afford a good enough car or designer clothes, she feels alienated.

"Everything seems so pointless - even my job as a journalist - and sometimes I think, 'What am I doing?' But here, on the dig, I feel we are doing something which is needed."

For Olga - who sang hymns to Communism in her primary school, then learnt about profit and loss at secondary school - volunteering as a digger also provides a moral compass in confusing times.

"Sometimes you need to know that you are doing something which is important, that you are not just a piece of dust in this universe. This work connects us to our past. It's like an anchor which helps us to stay in place even during a storm."

Finding the dead is only one part of their mission. Rescuing them from anonymity is the other.

In Moscow an eternal flame burns at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the shadow of the Kremlin Wall, but for the diggers, the best way to honour those who lost their lives is to give them back their identities.

"The soldier had a family, he had children, he fell in love," says Ilya. "Being unknown is nothing to be proud of. We are the ones who made him unknown."

But discovering who they were is not always easy, especially after so much time has passed.

"The more data we can collect from the spot, the better the chance we have to identify a soldier," says Alexander Konoplov, the leader of the Exploration group. Sometimes they find old coins with the soldiers, given to them by their families. The belief was that if the family lent him a few coins, he would come home to repay the loan.

But while personal items can build up a picture of the person, they can't help find his name, or place of birth. Initials scratched into spoons and bowls are good. But the key is usually an ID tag.

During World War Two, Soviet soldiers' ID tags were not made of metal - they were small ebony capsules containing a small piece of paper for their personal details. Sadly, the papers are often illegible. Others were left blank because many soldiers were superstitious - they believed filling in the forms would lead to certain death.

Alexander, who ran his own business selling food products before becoming a full-time digger, is holding a bullet case plugged with a small piece of wood. He hopes that it is an improvised ID tag. But when he turns it upside down in his hand, what comes out of it is not a roll of paper, but a trickle of brown liquid.

"Sometimes we find messages with the soldier's name," says Alexander. "Some wrote, 'If I am killed, please pass this on to my girlfriend or my mum.' You can't help feeling touched by it."

Exploration is one of 600 groups of diggers from all over Russia who have found and reburied a total of 500,000 soldiers so far.

These teams are known as the "white diggers", but there are also those dubbed "black diggers" who search for medals, guns, coins or even gold teeth which they sell online or to specialist dealers. They are not interested in identifying the soldiers - they just leave the bones in the ground.

Alexander has a strict set of guidelines about how the remains should be excavated, labelled and stored. Each soldier is photographed and their location is recorded and entered into a digital database.

Ebony ID tags; a volunteer tries to decipher their contents; a grenade found in the forest

Diggers Marina, Ilya and Olga

If a decades-old ID tag cannot be deciphered by the team on the ground, it is carefully packed and sent to the team's headquarters in the Volga city of Kazan.

The team's technician, Rafik Salakhiev, uses ultraviolet light and digital imaging to reveal the faded pencil marks. "Let's try to enhance purple colours on this yellow paper," he says. "We can reduce the saturation and yes! We start to see some letters…"

Once a name emerges, the diggers use old army lists, classified documents and contacts in the military or police to identify the soldier precisely and to locate surviving members of his family.

"Every new search gets to me as if it was the first one," says Rafik. Many of the relatives are now elderly and may not be in good health. "When you call the relatives, before telling them the news, you try to prepare them. Even if they have been waiting for a long time."

But tracing a soldier's family can take years - on occasions more than a decade - especially if the family moved after the war.

When, in 1942, people in First Lt Kustov's home village heard he was missing, they suspected him of deserting and collaborating with the Germans. They branded his young son and daughter traitor's children and the family were forced to leave. It took Ilya Prokoviev months to track them down.

"When we told them that we had found their father's remains, for them the feeling was just indescribable. They knew that he hadn't just deserted, that he couldn't have behaved like that, but there was never any proof until 60 years later."

From the archives, the diggers worked out that Kustov had been the commander of one of Stalin's notorious shtrafbats, a battalion made up of prisoners and deserters. Only a trusted officer and staunch communist would have been appointed to such a post.

"They had managed to restore historical truth and honour their father's memory," says Ilya. "It was the main event of their lives, I think." Kustov's children took his remains and buried them next to their mother, who had waited her whole life for her husband to return.

Near the banks of the River Neva, close to the mass grave found by diggers, a Russian Orthodox priest chants prayers as he walks around the rows of bright red coffins laid out on the grass.

The children, grand-children and great-grand-children of the soldiers they unearthed look on, some quietly sobbing.

Valentina Aliyeva is here to bury the father she has not seen since she was four years old. For seven decades, the only link she had with him was a black and white photo of their former family home.

"My mother remarried some years later and everyone told me to call my stepfather Daddy. But I refused - I knew who my real dad was," she says, her eyes filling with tears. "What those diggers have achieved means so much to me. I can't tell you how grateful I am."

Tatiana Uzarevich and Lyudmila Marinkina, twin sisters in their early 50s, have travelled from the remote region of Kamchatka - nine hours away by plane. The diggers found their grandfather's ID tag in the mass grave. When they were unable to trace his family, the group put out an appeal on the evening news.

The twins' elderly mother was stunned when she heard his name - Alexander Golik - the family had searched in vain for years. His disappearance had left his wife and children destitute. "The fact that he was missing in action meant that my grandmother was not entitled to any of the financial support given to other relatives after the Great Patriotic War. She didn't get a penny and she had four children to raise," says Lyudmila.

"My mum was so hungry all the time, she begged the other kids for pieces of bread at school.

"She only remembers the shape of her fathers' hands - but she had memories of a kind, good man," says Tatiana. "We just had to come to this reburial service to visit the place where he died and accompany him to his final resting place."

The walls of the large, newly dug grave are draped with red cloth - an act of respect normally accorded only to army generals.

Young men dressed in Soviet-style army uniforms form a guard of honour. Visibly moved, as coffin after coffin is carried past to be buried, some of them look up to the sky. There is a belief that birds flying overhead transport the souls of the dead.

There are more than 100 coffins - each contains the bones of 12 to 15 men. The diggers would like each soldier to have his own, but they can't afford the extra 1,500 they would need for today's service.

This is the culmination of months of work by the volunteers. It's what it's all for - bringing a semblance of order to the moral chaos of the past, and paying tribute to those who gave their lives.

In the spring they will resume their searches in the forests and fields where so many were slaughtered. They are determined to continue until the last man is found. But it could be a life's work - or more.

"There are so many unburied soldiers, it will take decades to find them. There will definitely be work for our grandchildren," says Marina. "But nature is working against us. The remains are decomposing and it is getting harder to find the bones, ID tags and army kit." The more years that go by. The less information there is.

"We need to continue to do this for ourselves, so our souls can be at peace," says Ilya. "It has become the meaning of our lives."

[MIKA27]

TRACK N GO | WHEEL DRIVEN TRACK SYSTEM

With the "Track N Go" system you can now easily transform your beloved vehicle into a "tank”! The innovative design allows you to easily slip-on the track system without any modifications to your vehicle, simply drive onto the treads, lock them in place, and you´re ready to fearlessly barrel through snow. Track N Go can also function on bare road, but at $25,000, they don´t come cheap, still, less expensive than buying a tank though. Watch the video and check out the impressive system in action.

[MIKA27]

MILITARY DUFFLE BAG | BY WHIPPING POST

One of my favorite leather crafters Ryan Barr from Whipping Post has added a new bag to his beautiful collection. The Military Duffle Bag is inspired by Ryan´s dad old canvas military duffle bag, it features a top-load style and is made with Wipping Post´s trademark 100% vegetable tanned leather that ages beautifully. Great weekender.

[MIKA27]

PARROT MINIDRONE

Parrot's AR.Drone 2.0 has long been the go-to quadricopter for tech-loving enthusiasts, but now you can get into the flying game without taking up a huge amount of space in your home with the Parrot MiniDrone ($TBA).

This palm-sized flying to connects to your phone or tablet via Bluetooth Smart, and is packed to the gills with sensors that help make it easy to fly. And unlike it's big brother, it also includes two ultra-light indoor wheels that allow it to roll on the floor or ceiling before taking back off into mid-air. Coming soon to the airspace near you.

[MIKA27]

Defying Japan, Rancher Saves Fukushima’s Radioactive Cows

NAMIE, Japan — His may be one of the world’s more quixotic protests.

Angered by what he considers the Japanese government’s attempts to sweep away the inconvenient truths of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Masami Yoshizawa has moved back to his ranch in the radioactive no-man’s land surrounding the devastated plant. He has no neighbors, but plenty of company: hundreds of abandoned cows he has vowed to protect from the government’s kill order.

A large bulldozer — meant to keep out agricultural officials — stands at the entrance to the newly renamed Ranch of Hope like a silent sentinel, guarding a driveway lined with bleached cattle bones and handwritten protest signs.

“Let the Cows of Hope Live!” says one. Another, written on a yellow-painted cow skull, declares: “Nuclear Rebellion!” Inside the now overcrowded ranch, bellowing cows spill from the overflowing cattle sheds into the well-worn pasture, and even trample the yard of the warmly lit farmhouse.

“These cows are living testimony to the human folly here in Fukushima,” said Mr. Yoshizawa, 59, a gruff but eloquent man with a history of protest against his government.

“The government wants to kill them because it wants to erase what happened here, and lure Japan back to its pre-accident nuclear status quo. I am not going to let them.”

At Masami Yoshizawa’s newly renamed Ranch of Hope, which is in the evacuation zone created by the 2011 disaster at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Mr. Yoshizawa is no sentimentalist — before the disaster, he raised cows for slaughter. But he says there is a difference between killing cows for food and killing them because, in their contaminated state, they are no longer useful. He believes the cows on his ranch, abandoned by him and other fleeing farmers after the accident, are as much victims as the 83,000 humans forced to abandon their homes and live outside the evacuation zone for two and a half years.

He is worried about his health. A dosage meter near the ranch house reads the equivalent of about 1.5 times the government-set level for evacuation. But he is more fearful that the country will forget about the triple meltdown sat the plant as Japan’s economy shows signs of long-awaited recovery and Tokyo excitedly prepares for the 2020 Olympics — suggesting his protest is as least as much a political statement, as a humanitarian one.

“If authorities say kill the cows,” he said, “then I resolved to do the opposite by saving them.”

The cows at the Ranch of Hope are what is left of a once-thriving beef industry in the towns around the plant.

Entire herds died of starvation in the weeks after the residents left. The cows that survived escaped their ranches to forage for food among the empty homes and streets, where they became traffic hazards for trucks shuttling workers and supplies to and from the stricken plant. Proclaiming the animals “walking accident debris,” officials from the Ministry of Agriculture ordered them to be rounded up and slaughtered, their bodies buried or burned along with other radioactive waste.

Outraged, Mr. Yoshizawa began returning to his ranch soon after to feed the remnants of the herd he had been tending. He eventually decided to return full time to turn the ranch into a haven for all of the area’s abandoned cows. Of the approximately 360 cows at his 80-acre spread, more than half are ones that others left behind.

Although he describes his protest in mainly political terms, his explanation for returning despite the possible danger is tinged with a hint of emotion. He describes his horror on visiting abandoned farms where he found rows of dead cows, their heads fallen into food troughs where they had waited to be fed. In one barn, a newborn calf hoarsely bawled next to its dead mother. He said his spur-of-the-moment decision to save the calf, which he named Ichigo, or Strawberry, was his inspiration for trying to save the others left behind.

He still searches the evacuation zone for the often emaciated survivors, which he often has to pull by their ears to get them to follow him home. He tries to dodge police roadblocks; it is technically illegal for anyone to live inside the evacuation zone. Nonetheless, he has been caught a half-dozen times and forced to sign prewritten statements of apology for entering the zone. He has done so, but only after crossing out the promises not to do it again.

Mr. Yoshizawa is no stranger to challenging authority, having protested against nuclear power before. But he says he felt particularly bitter after the Fukushima accident, which he fears could permanently ruin the ranch that he inherited from his father.

It does not help that his town, Namie, felt especially deceived by its leaders. After he heard the explosions at the plant, whose smokestacks and cranes are visible from his kitchen, he and many other townspeople ended up fleeing into the radioactive plume because the government did not disclose crucial information about the accident.

Signs put up by Mr. Yoshizawa at the entrance of his ranch.

“I needed to find a new philosophy to keep on living,” said Mr. Yoshizawa, who is unmarried and lives alone on the ranch. “Then I realized, why is Japan being so meek in accepting what authorities are telling them? I decided to become the resistance.”

On a recent cold morning, Mr. Yoshizawa used a small bulldozer to carry bales of yellow rice stalks to feed the cows, about two to three times the number that he says his ranch can sustainably support. The cows, mostly a breed known as Japanese Black prized for its marbled wagyu-style beef, hungrily mooed as they jostled one another to get a mouthful.

Mr. Yoshizawa says one fear is running out of feed. With the oversized herd having already grazed his pastureland to stubble, he now relies on contributions of feed and money. Another worry is what living amid the contamination is doing to the cows, and to him.

A checkup soon after the accident showed high levels of radioactive cesium in his body, though he said the number had decreased over the last two years. He tries to keep his contamination as low as possible by using filtered water and buying food on trips out of the area.

The cows, however, are constantly ingesting radioactive materials that remain in the soil and grass; since most of the donated feed he receives is from the region, it, too, is contaminated.

Ten of the cows have developed small white spots on their heads and flanks that he thinks are a result of exposure to radiation.

Experts said they had never seen such spots before, but they said other causes were also possible, including a fungal infection from the overcrowding.

Mr. Yoshizawa has attracted a small following of supporters, but has his critics, too, who say he is keeping the animals alive in less than humane conditions in order to make a political point.

“Looking at the over-concentration of animals, I personally don’t think this is very humanitarian,” said Manabu Fukumoto, a pathologist at the Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer at Tohoku University who studied the white spots.

Mr. Yoshizawa notes wryly that the cows are living much longer than they would have if they had been led off to slaughter.

For now, the local authorities have come up with a very Japanese solution to Mr. Yoshizawa’s defiance: turning a blind eye. Town officials in Namie deny knowledge of him or anyone else living inside the evacuation zone — despite the fact that they have restored electricity and telephone service to the ranch.

Mr. Yoshizawa does not make himself easy to ignore. He continues to appear in Japanese news media, maintains a blog with a live webcam of the ranch and holds occasional one-man protests in front of the headquarters of the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co.

“Not all Japanese are passive,” Mr. Yoshizawa said. “My cows and I will show that there is still a chance for change.”

[MIKA27]

The Anatomy Of Toys And Characters Will Ruin Your Memories Forever

I love the work artist/designer/mad doctor Jason Freeny. His Moist Productions shop has been showing us the fascinating humanoid anatomy of toys, animated characters and other objects for years. His new creations have reached new awesomely gross heights.

Here’s a collection of some of his masterworks:

[MIKA27]

Watch This Terrifying Devil Baby Freak Out Good Samaritans

What would you do if you came upon an abandoned stroller with a crying baby inside? You’d probably check to see if the infant was OK, right? Not after watching this prank you won’t. The same team responsible for that wonderful telekinetic coffee shop freak out prank is back with an even more terrifying marketing stunt involving a possessed devil baby and a stroller with a mind of its own.

The baby is of course just an incredibly detailed robotic puppet, and the stroller was rigged to be driven by remote control so that it could creep up on unsuspecting good samaritans and scare the crap out of them. The stunt was cooked up to promote an upcoming movie called Devil’s Due, but since this prank will probably already leave us with nightmares, we’re not sure how anxious we are to check out the film.

[MIKA27]

The 2014 Winter Olympics Has An Intense Trailer

Sure, the UK might not win that many medals at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Russia, but they sure know how to build internet hype for it.

This trailer is a teaser for BBC One’s coverage of the big event, set to kick off in early-February. It’s narrated by resident creepy talker Charles Dance, who plays Tywin Lannister in Game Of Thrones. Winter is coming, indeed.

Network Ten is the official broadcaster of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in Australia.

[MIKA27]

US Defence Contractor Arrested For Shipping Military Secrets To Iran

Mozaffar Khazaee, a former defence contractor has been arrested by authorities on charges that he attempted to smuggle classified technical data on a variety of military projects — including the new F-35 Lightning II — out of the US and into Iran.

Khazaee is a naturalised US citizen from Iran and holds citizenship in both countries. He had worked for at least three different defence contractors over the past few years, including as recently as August of last year, according to customs and border authorities.

Sensitive information from all three of these companies were found in the 44 boxes of materials he recently shipped from Connecticut to a California holding company. They were then to be loaded onto an Iran-bound ship in November, had a Customs and Border Protection team not examined the shipment and discovered its contents.

Khazaee himself was nabbed last Thursday on a connecting flight in Newark from Indianapolis to, you guessed it, Tehran.

[MIKA27]

Doing Bike Tricks Off A Moving Truck Half Pipe Seems Brilliantly Nuts

Imagine yourself stuck in traffic. Imagine listening to some Top 40 radio station playing the same four songs over and over and wondering about the things you would do if you didn’t have to commute. Imagine your brain numb. And then imagine seeing some psycho bike rider pull off some bike tricks off of a half-pipe on top of a moving truck. In the middle of traffic. That would be fun for everyone.

Because Red Bull is crazy, they took BMX rider Daniel Dhers to Lima, Peru, and did exactly that. A truck with a half-pipe on its flat bed drove around the city while Dhers pulled off some nutty tricks. Sometimes they were parked (to keep it semi safe), sometimes there were two trucks but the entire time Dher is riding it looks like so much fun.

[MIKA27]

These Beautiful Solar Orbs Are So Efficient They Even Harvest Moonlight

Photovoltaic panels aren’t the most glamorous technology: They’re usually tucked away on a roof, and when you can see them, they’re ugly. And inefficient. But what if they made architecture more beautiful? And what if they were more efficient, working even at night? Say hi to Rawlemon, a solar ball lens that is quickly making its way to market.

This perfectly spherical glass ball is the work of a German architect named André Broessel, who began working on it three years ago with the aim of making solar power more efficient and less expensive, a technology available to everyone, everywhere.

“Our product is democratic,” he told me recently over email.

“Imagine, we are conceiving autonomous products able to concentrate the light even during a cloudy day, which are generating sun powered energy wherever you are in the world. Energy for free.”

Well, not quite for free. But Rawlemon, by sheer force of numbers, has the power to outperform traditional solar panels by many thousands of times. In simple terms, here’s how it works. Broessel’s Palantir-esque globe is filled with water that magnifies the sun’s rays by more than 10,000 times, making it possible to harvest energy from the moon, or the sun on a cloudy day. Where are the PVs? The tiny panels are situated directly below the ball, where the magnified ray hits them.

At the most basic level, Rawlemon is a ball lens — a perfect sphere that refracts light into a powerful concentrated ray — and a mechanism that’s been around for centuries. In fact, you can even make a crude version using a piece of saran wrap and water,

.

But the sun and moon, of course, are constantly moving. So to more efficiently capture their direct rays — unlike PV panels, which usually lay in a static position — Broessel designed a microtracker that follows the course of the sun as it arcs across the sky, tilting the panels along with it. The tracking system, paired with the ball lens, make Rawlemon up to 70 per cent more efficient than a typical solar panel.

“So why isn’t there a giant pivoting crystal ball on every rooftop yet?” I hear you whispering in awe.

For one thing, manufacturing — and certifying — solar collection systems is a serious undertaking, involving yards of bureaucratic red tape. But as Broessel tells me, solar tech is also hard to market to normal people.

http://youtu.be/YHldwuCnCxg

“People get very quickly confused [and] that makes it hard for us to get funded,” he says.

"That’s why our challenge right now is also to communicate to people that our project is the smartest innovation in solar energy since the invention of PV panels.” That involves the simple animated video above, and launching their first Indie GoGo campaign to fund the creation of a smaller Rawlemon ball for charging devices called the Beta.ey:

To me, the most exciting part of Broessel’s technology isn’t desktop-sized, it’s building-sized. The team at Rawlemon are testing windows that are embedded with multiple lenses, designed to be used instead of tradition glazing. In their vision of the future, skyscrapers bubble with ball lenses, powering themselves with super-concentrated rays of light from the outside in.

Let’s say you replaced the south facade of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. Just a quarter of the entire building skin could generate 16.4 Gigawatt-hours per year. If that number means nothing to you, think about it like this: That’s enough to power the tower, and still have 60 per cent of the energy left over. If that’s put back into Dubai’s power grid, it would turn more than $US1.2 million in profits a year, based on Broessel’s calculations. It could power a city like New York for several hours alone.

Their IndieGoGo campaign, which will net a small desktop version for funders, is really aimed at helping the team with the bigger financial challenges of large-scale solar manufacturing: Making that first component order, developing the right production tooling, and funding a cascade of global certification tests.

Though the vision of buildings bubbling with lenses is a powerful one, the Rawlemon team is starting small — with convincing people that efficient, ubiquitous solar power isn’t as far off as it seems. “We are even thinking in opening our own chain of solar cooking restaurants,” Broessel adds with a wink. Go check out the campaign.

[MIKA27]

Doctors Find Hundreds Of Gold Needles In A Woman's Knees

Doctors have found hundreds of gold needles nested in a 65-year-old South Korean woman’s knees. The woman suffers from osteoarthritis, so she visited an acupuncturist to relieve her pain. The acupuncturist thought it was a great idea to insert all these needles in her knees and leave them there, because that’s always a great idea, right?

Actually, it’s a stupid idea, according to Dr. Ali Guermazi professor of radiology at Boston University. He told Live Science, this will only cause problems:

The human body wants to get rid of the foreign object. It starts with some mechanism of defence, for example inflammation and forming [fibrous tissue] around the object.

And on top of that:

The patient can’t go into an MRI because needles left in the body may move, and damage an artery [and] the needles may obscure some of the anatomy.

Next time she should just use magnets or unicorn dust or some other traditional thing like that.

[MIKA27]

Spectacular Blue Lava Flows At This Indonesian Volcano

Photographer Olivier Grunewald first learned about the Kawah Ijen volcano in 2008. A sulphur mine by day, this infernal Indonesian mountain turns into a surreal alien landscape when the night comes.

His pictures — taken in very dangerous conditions — are stunning:

He and his friend Régis Etienne have gone back repeatedly to photograph and film this incredible unearthly patch of glowing blue lava.

But it’s the sulfur mine workers who are constant toiling among the flames. Here is the description Olivier sent to us:

For over 40 years, miners have been extracting sulphur from the crater of Kawah Ijen in Indonesia. To double their meagre income, the hardiest of these men work nights, by the electric blue light of the sulphuric acid exhaled by the volcano.

As the light of day recedes, an eerie incandescence appears to rise from the depths of the Kawah Ijen crater. The high-temperature liquid sulphur that flows from an active vent at the edge of the world’s largest hydrochloric acid lake flares in blue flames that can reach up to 5 metres.

At the foot of the glow, miners bustle amidst the toxic fumes. They are monitoring the flow of molten sulphur as it pours out of pipes at 115 °C, and its subsequent crystallisation. Breaking up, gathering up, loading up and transporting the coagulated blood of the earth earns them a living. By the blue light of the flare, they extract hunks of sulphur, then carry them up the flank of the crater to sell for 680 roupees per kilo (about €0.04). But the loads they carry, weighing between 80 and 100 kilos, cost them their health — and sometimes their life. By working nights, they manage to haul out two loads every 24 hours, doubling their salary, avoiding the daytime heat of the Kawah Ijen cauldron, and despite the condition remaining independant

The sulphur, among the purest in Indonesia, is destined for the food and chemical industry. Whitening sugar, at the price of their health and youth, such is the destiny of these serfs to sulphur.

Olivier is a four-time World Press Photo winner. After studying commercial photography in Paris, he first began shooting natural landscapes after a shoot with rock climbers. He’s been photographing volcanos since 1997.

[MIKA27]

This Gorgeous, Ferocious Sports Car Is a … Kia?

There’s not a Kia to be found that stokes the flames of enthusiasts’ hearts. The Korean brand is more known for econoboxes driven by hip-hop hamsters than driver’s cars. That could change with the GT4 Stinger, a proper sports car that hits all the right pleasure receptors.

First things first, just look at it. The Stinger screams speed. From the wrap-around windshield to the flared fenders and sloping hatch, this thing has presence. And stance. That oh-so-low ride height is accentuated by 20-inch wheels hiding oversized Brembo brakes, with gobs of sticky rubber pushed to the very outer edges of the bodywork. There’s a blending of show-car frippery with real-world functionality, with brake cooling ducts aft of the front door and honest-to-God mirrors joined by transparent A-pillars and those vertical headlamps that would never make it past the safety obsessives at the Department of Transportation.

If you’re curious about size, the Stinger comes in at just under 170 inches long, putting it closer to a Miata than a Mustang. Kia claims it tips the scales at just 2,874 pounds, and the fact Kia even mentions that is promising because automakers never mention weight if a car is purely a flight of fancy.

That could mean the Stinger is destined for production.

The engine, which sends 312 horsepower to the rear wheels through a six-speed manual gearbox, is the same turbocharged 2.0-liter under the hood of Kia’s Pirelli World Challenge Kia Optima GTS racer. But underneath that aggressive exterior is a custom chassis, and there’s no way Kia could justify the expense of putting that into production. What it could do, however, is tap its corporate parents at Hyundai for the rear-wheel-drive Genesis platform, cut a few inches from the middle, stuff it with a more emissions-friendly engine, and make the first serious competitor to the Scion FRS.

That would be a massive win for anyone looking for a wallet-friendly speed machine.