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

[MIKA27]

Taking voyeurism to a new level!

You've ordered one haven't ya!

[MIKA27]

Terry Gilliam’s New Movie Is Set In A Disturbing Dystopian Future

Visionary filmmaker Terry Gilliam (or rather Terenace Vance Gilliam to be more exact) is best known for not only being a member of Monty Python but the director of such cult classics as Brazil, 12 Monkeys and more recently The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

His latest movie, The Zero Theorem, is set in a disturbing dystopia future and stars Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds, The Green Hornet, Django Unchained) as ‘Qohen Leth’ the central character who is a bald, reclusive and eccentric computer wizard.

He’s tasked with unraveling a mathematical equation that is designed to prove if life truly has any meaning. Whilst no worldwide release date has yet been set, a new trailer has recently surfaced online which gives a glimpse into what you can expect from the inventive mind of Gilliam and the movie itself.

[MIKA27]

The Mysterious Book That Nobody Can Read Or Decipher

It’s a book that contains 360 pages, is based on an imaginary world and comes complete with pages upon pages of hand-drawn illustrations that are both surreal and abstract in nature. For example, there’s drawing of a couple in love that shape shift into an alligator and ripe fruits that dripping with blood.

The novel is called Codex Seraphinianus, an illustrated encyclopaedia of a mystical and as yet undiscovered world. To this day it remains a complete enigma to linguists, all of whom have been unable to identify or make sense of the alphabet used to construct it’s otherworldly tale.

But who is the creative mind behind such literature?

It’s actually the work of Luigi Serafini a noted Italian artist and industrial designer and it was first published in 1981. It took him around 30 months to start and complete the Codex during 1976 and 1978. When asked about the syntax used in the book, he replied by saying that much of it was the result of ‘automatic writing’, that he wanted to recreate that same feeling children experience when they see books they cannot yet read, but have a vague understanding of what the words might allude to.

Copies are certainly hard to come by, but thankfully you can download the entire work in PDF format here. In the meantime here’s a sneak peak inside one of the most mysterious and peculiar books in a generation.

[MIKA27]

This Iranian Man Hasn’t Bathed For 60 Years

This is 80 year old Amou Haji, he lives in a remote part of southern Iran. But it’s not his isolated existence that’s the most worrying thing about him, for the past 60 years he’s forgone having a single bath.

This is because he deems being clean to being sick and as a result stopped bathing and washing himself in his 20′s. It doesn’t end there, over the course of those long and lonely years he’s picked up several unusual habits and quirks that would make most people reeling in horror.

Your favourite meal might be a nice juicy steak, but for Amou his favourite meal is rotten porcupine. And instead of smoking tobacco, he smokes animal droppings instead. And his home varies between an open stack of rubble and a dirty hole in the ground.

Yet as confronting and as alien as this existence might appear to you and I, Amou is happy, free and at ease with his place in the world. Despite his shocking appearance and aversion to hygiene, how many of us can truly claim the same?

[Jeremy Festa]

So awesome!

[MIKA27]

Scientists Turned Fruit Flies Into Glowing Cancer Detectors

One of the most exciting findings in cancer research is the ability to identify cancerous cells by the volatile odour molecules they give off. Diagnostic machines, scalpels, and even specially trained dogs have been used to identify cancer this way. We can add fruit flies to that list now: scientists have bred a strain whose antennae glow when they smell cancer.

Researchers at Germany’s University of Konstanz discovered that the fruit fly’s extremely sensitive odor receptors can distinguish cancerous cells from healthy cells based on the metabolic gases the cells emit. Unfortunately, unlike dogs, a tiny fruit fly can’t be trained to signal when it’s smelling a cancerous cell. So the research team genetically engineered a strain of fly with scent receptors on their antennae that glow when they’ve detected the odor of cancer.

The resulting flies don’t just indicate “cancer” or “no cancer” — in testing, the researchers discovered the bugs’ antennae give off different patterns depending on the type of cancer cell they’re exposed to. “As not only cancer cells can be distinguished from healthy cells, but also subgroups were discernible within the cancer cells, it seems that even different types of breast cancer cells can be differentiated via the antenna,”said University of Konstanz researcher Alja Lüdke.

This is no bizarre pet trick either: in a recently published paper in Scientific Reports, the research team states that the fruit fly’s nose is actually more sensitive than current gas sensors. And while you might not expect to see a fruit-fly-powered diagnostic machine in hospitals any time soon, the researchers say these findings could lead to fast, affordable screening techniques that blow away current imaging-based methods.

So next time you see a fruit fly, don’t squash it — its cousins might be helping in the fight to end cancer

[MIKA27]

Archaeologists May Have Uncovered The Oldest Roman Temple Ever Found

Archaeologists from the University of Michigan believe they have found what is perhaps the oldest Roman temple still in existence. Built around the 7th century BC — probably for the goddess Fortuna — the temple tells us a lot about how the Romans built their city, thousands of years ago.

The site is located in central Rome near the Sant’Omobono Church. Digging — which began in 2009 — has been particularly challenging because the temple was built below the water table, which has brought a high-tech angle into the equation, as NPR reports:

The team used heavy machinery to drill a rectangular hole 15 feet deep. A crane lowered large sheets of metal to keep back the soggy soil… The foundations of the temple of Fortuna were visible for only three days — for security reasons, the team could not leave the trench open and it had to be filled up again.

But digging through the city’s many layers, archaeologists have learned a lot: Early Rome — a city of high hills and deep valleys prone to flooding — soon became one large landfill as the founders chopped off hilltops, and dumped them into lowlands to try to make the city flatter and drier. And as the city grew layer by layer and more temples were built, Ammerman, the archaeologist says, the Romans encroached on their river, diverting the original waterway.

When it was built, the temple would have been located right on the edge of the the Tiber River. Today, the river runs about 100 metres from the site. But this means that Roma engineers, even in the 7th century BC, were doing things like manipulating rivers to flow in ways that benefitted them. In this case, they did so to build a harbour temple — which also served as a symbol of trust and a center of free trade.

This discovery is an important one. It debunks the myth that ancient Rome never changed — when in reality, it was a dynamic, transformative city very, very early on.

[MIKA27]

Giant Boulder Destroys Building In Italy

Capricious Mother Nature destroyed a building with a giant boulder in northern Italy, with an even bigger boulder missing a three-storey farm house by a just centimetres, stopping right at its main entrance.

According to Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, the landslide happened in the village of Ronci Termeno, in South Tyrol. The rock that stopped right in front of the house is 160 cubic metres. Geologists and emergency crews are still evaluating the risk while clearing the ground.

Judging by the giant boulder which was already resting on the field, this hasn’t been the first time this has happened.

Here’s a look at the video of the aftermath, taken with a quadrotor drone:

There’s a page in Facebook where you can learn how to help the people who live in this farm.

[MIKA27]

Witness The Comical ‘Farting Scrolls’ Of Ancient Japan

Now lets not kid ourselves, we all know that certain subsets of Japanese culture are some of most bizarre and ridiculous on the planet. Like their passion for licking doorknobs, wearing underwear on their faces or willingly taking part in mind-boggling ridiculous game shows. But just how long has this fascination and obsession with the unusual and unconventional been going on for?

Thanks to a recent discovery, it probably started somewhere around the Edo period in Japan which dates from 1603 to 1868. It was during that era that the he-gassen was established, which translates to ‘The Fart Battle’. Now to prove that this isn’t some kind of elaborate joke, there’s a number of ancient scrolls that depict various bouts of flatulent frivolity created during that era.

The scrolls show locals merrily farting on each other (obviously) and in some cases, trumpeting so hard they’ve even caused horses, walls and doors to be blown away by the sheer force! There’s even some scrolls which illustrate Japanese farts being expertly directed at various untrustworthy Westerners.

Artistic license we’re sure, but nevertheless one of the oldest glimpses into the Japanese psyche. You can see the full-blown collection via the Japanese and Chinese classics at Waseda University Library

[MIKA27]

BAD ELF GPS

Decide the extra 130 bones for the LTE iPad wasn't worth it? We can't blame you — but that also means you're out of luck when you need some GPS action. Unless, of course, you've got Bad Elf GPS.

This tiny accessory provides high performance 66-channel WAAS to give you GPS latitude, longitude, altitude, speed, and tracking, all without built-in hardware. It draws power from your Lightning connector, so there's no extra battery to charge — and if you do need to charge your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch while in-use, it features a pass-through Micro-USB port.

[MIKA27]

Gunung Padang and The Lost City of Atlantis

There are megalithic sites and then there are megalithic sites. Our ancestors, it seems, were particularly fond of building things. Look at the skyline of any major city and you can see we haven’t strayed too far from that ideal ourselves. From stone circles to pyramids, the builders of the ancient world knew well how to create a structure that will last through the ages, and our landscapes the world over show many examples of their expertise.

We know quite a bit about these ancient structures too. We know how the pyramids were built, we know who build the ruins in Greece and why, we know (or we think we know) how the massive walls and terraces were built in Mesoamerica, and for the most part, we know when all these structures were built. For a long time, it was thought that the oldest structures built in the ancient world were somewhere around 9000 years old.

That all changed with the discovery of a temple structure in modern day Turkey called Göbekli Tepe. This discovery flipped the conventional wisdom of archaeology upside down, because following careful excavation and analysis, the site was dated at 10,000 BCE. That’s at least 4000 years earlier than any other known structure. Considering its age, Göbekli Tepe is fairly sophisticated in terms of its construction and the artwork that’s associated with it. The site now carries the title of Oldest Known Megalithic Site, or at least it did.

There’s a new kid on the block though, or an old kid, or…whatever. Gunung Padang is that kid, so to speak.

First described in the Dutch naturalist manual Rapporten van de Oudheidkundige Dienst in 1914, Gunung Padang had been known to locals for millennia. It sits on a hill in the Indonesian village of Karyamukti, which is in the Cianjur regency, in West Java province.

It is described as the largest megalithic site in south-east Asia, and at first glance appears to be a series of terraces with bordering walls and successive steps between each. The terraces are covered in large volcanic rocks organised into lines and shapes, and the local Sudanese people declare the site to be sacred.

Early attempts to analyse the site resulted in dating of around 5000 BCE, which would put it in line with other sites in Asia and Europe. Radiometric dating and geoelectric testing done in 2012 seemed to confirm that date, though they found, quite surprisingly, that the site doesn’t actually sit on a hill. It is the hill.

Gunung Padang is a pyramid; one of the few pyramids found in south-east Asia. The site was found to have chambers and shafts hidden under the overgrown terraces with walled areas and other structures buried under centuries of natural reclamation. The next step in the excavation was to drill core samples in various locations to try to nail down a more accurate age for the site. This proved to be a dangerous endeavour for three tomography researchers who were beaten and kicked by locals who objected to the work, citing the sacred nature of the site.

Nonetheless, the work continued and the results were astounding.

Analysis of core samples of the hill and structure began to reveal greater and greater age the deeper they looked. From 5000 years, to 8000 years, to 10,000 years and all the way up to a reported 23,000 years old. These numbers are incredible! The implication is that this site is the oldest known structure of any kind on Earth.

“The results of radiometric analysis of the content of the carbon element in some samples of cement in drill core from the depth of 5-15 meters which was conducted in 2012 at the prestigious Laboratory, BETALAB, Miami, USA in the mid-2012 shows its age with a range between 13,000 and 23,000 years ago.”

Those results are contested, of course. Whenever data takes a drastic detour, one not expected by experimental guidelines, the first conclusion has to be that some mistake has been made. Experts on either side of the debate, however, are thus far unable to identify any problems in the coring procedures or in the radiometric dating that could account for such a drastic deviation from expected results. Currently the official age of the site is listed as “older than 5000 years”, which is maddeningly unhelpful, but research is continuing.

One of the most interesting things about Gunung Padang, aside from its age, is that during coring it was found that much of the buried structure was reinforced with a type of cement. This bonding agent, which has been used as a mortar and sort of glue in certain parts of the site, consists of 45% iron ore, 41% silica and 14% clay. It’s said that this mixture provides for a very strong and durable mortar base, and is surprising evidence of the level of sophistication of the building technique.

It should come as no surprise that some have claimed this discovery in the name of ancient aliens, but the more interesting claim in that regard is in support of the One World Origin Theory.

Artist’s impression of Gunung Padang as it would have looked in antiquity

Famed Fortean author Graham Hancock has proffered a hypothesis featuring Gunung Padang, wherein he suggests that this site may hold evidence of the lost city of Atlantis.

In a piece on Signs of the Times, Hancock tells of experiences he had with Danny Natawidjaja PhD., senior geologist of the Research Center for Geotechnology at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. The two visited Gunung Padang and discussed the implications of these discoveries.

According to Natawidjaja, the site is indeed more than 22,000 years old.

“The geophysical evidence is unambiguous,” Natawidjaja says.

“Gunung Padang is not a natural hill but a man-made pyramid and the origins of construction here go back long before the end of the last Ice Age. Since the work is massive even at the deepest levels, and bears witness to the kinds of sophisticated construction skills that were deployed to build the pyramids of Egypt or the largest megalithic sites of Europe, I can only conclude that we’re looking at the work of a lost civilization and a fairly advanced one."

It’s difficult to argue with him, and his research had led him to believe that the lost civilization in question is indeed Plato’s high civilization at the height of the last ice age, as documented in the Greek philosopher’s dialogues Timias and Critias (these dialogues are the only source of information on Atlantis, and all speculation is based on Plato’s description).

There are obvious parallels, not the least of which is the coincidental time frame. If the dating is correct, then much of the Gunung Padang site was constructed and in use during the peak of the last ice age. This is a time when the area of Indonesia and south-east Asia was very different. Ocean water levels were drastically lower, by as much as 400 feet, making what are now islands part of the mainland and drying up rivers. Natawidjaja believes that this made possible the advancement of a sophisticated culture which flourished in the region, and Hancock believes these unconfirmed facts are evidence that modern archaeology, as an entity, is covering up the existence of a previously unknown advanced civilization.

Critics, of course, point to the uncertainty in the dating results and cry foul over their use as evidence that the site originates from the 22nd millennium BCE or earlier, and claim that there is no cause to connect the site or the region with the lost city of Atlantis.

There is much still to learn about Gunung Padang, and of Göbekli Tepe and many more ancient megalithic sites, but the answers seem tantalizingly close.

[CaptainQuintero]

20 Early Warning Signs That We Are Approaching A Global Economic Meltdown

Have you been paying attention to what has been happening in Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, Ukraine, Turkey and China?

#1 The looting, violence and economic chaos that is happening in Argentina right now is a perfect example of what can happen when you print too much money…

#2 The value of the Argentine Peso is absolutely collapsing.

#3 Widespread shortages, looting and accelerating inflation are also causing huge problems in Venezuela…

#4 In a stunning decision, the Venezuelan government has just announced that it has devalued the Bolivar by more than 40 percent.

#5 Brazilian stocks declined sharply on Thursday. There is a tremendous amount of concern that the economic meltdown that is happening in Argentina is going to spill over into Brazil.

#6 Ukraine is rapidly coming apart at the seams…

#7 It appears that a bank run has begun in China…

#8 Art Cashin of UBS is warning that credit markets in China “may be broken“. For much more on this, please see my recent article entitled “The $23 Trillion Credit Bubble In China Is Starting To Collapse – Global Financial Crisis Next?”

#9 News that China’s manufacturing sector is contracting shook up financial markets on Thursday…

#10 Japanese stocks experienced their biggest drop in 7 months on Thursday.

#11 The value of the Turkish Lira is absolutely collapsing.

#12 The unemployment rate in France has risen for 9 quarters in a row and recently soared to a new 16 year high.

#13 In Italy, the unemployment rate has soared to a brand new all-time record high of 12.7 percent.

#14 The unemployment rate in Spain is sitting at an all-time record high of 26.7 percent.

#15 This year, the Baltic Dry Index experienced the largest two week post-holiday decline that we have ever seen.

#16 Chipmaker Intel recently announced that it plans to eliminate 5,000 jobs over the coming year.

#17 CNBC is reporting that U.S. retailers just experienced “the worst holiday season since 2008“.

#18 A recent CNBC article stated that U.S. consumers should expect a “tsunami” of store closings in the retail industry…

#19 The U.S. Congress is facing another deadline to raise the debt ceiling in February.

#20 The Dow fell by more than 170 points on Thursday. It is becoming increasingly likely that “the peak of the market” is now in the rear view mirror.

And I have not even mentioned the extreme drought that has caused the U.S. cattle herd to drop to a 61 year low or the nuclear radiation from Fukushima that is washing up on the west coast.

[MIKA27]

Scientists Discover New Species In Australia That Looks Like A Giant Snot

When Dr Lisa-Ann Gershwin saw this photo of two kids next to what looked like a giant snot she says she said “Phwoar!” out loud. After all, she was looking at a completely new species, one that she had been chasing for a decade.

The thing that I first said when I saw it [the photograph] was ‘Phwoar’. It’s a very scientific term. I’m just rapt by it, honestly. It’s such an amazing find.

Gershwin — a marine biologist who specialises in jellyfish — had been hearing stories about this beast for 20 years. She was able to identify two other new jellyfish, but she was never able to see or capture a specimen of this 5-foot monster, the legendary huge lion’s mane jellyfish that everyone talked about but nobody actually had proof of.

Probably about five years ago I finally put together in my head that there were really three different species of lion’s mane jellyfish in Tasmania, or ‘snotties’ as they’re also called. Yes snotties, they’re a bit slimy.

So, when she saw the photo taken on the southern coast of Tasmania, she was really shocked by its size. She couldn’t imagine they could be this big, she said to the Sydney Morning Herald. “It’s really an enormous animal. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

I have. It looks like the vomit-coated streets on St Patrick’s Day or a special effect for the Ghostbusters. Life — sometimes it just looks like one giant snot.

[MIKA27]

New Cool Car Carries A Drone For Terrain Reconnoissance

This is the Renault KWID, a car that carries a quadcopter drone for terrain reconnoissance tucked inside a little hangar on its rooftop. It may seem like a silly James Bondigh invention, but it actually makes a lot of sense in certain situations.

The three-seat prototype – presented in New Delhi Motor Show, in India – can deploy the smart drone at the touch of a button. Called Flying Companion, it has an onboard GPS and a camera for terrain, traffic, and obstacle reconnoissance. It has two modes: automatic and manual.

In automatic mode the drone follows a path using GPS waypoints, as designated by the driver — like an aeroplane autopilot. The manual mode allows the driver or the co-pilot to control the quadcopter using a built-in tablet panel.

It could be really convenient, especially when going off-road, when you don’t really know what lies ahead of you. On a road or in the city it doesn’t make sense — imagine every car with a companion drone going around (it would be interesting to have public drones along roads and streets, broadcasting images to every car that connects to them, however.)

But for off-road driving this could be really cool and useful. The only problem: While the KWID looks like an all-terrain, full drive car, it is not. But then again, it’s not a real car, so who cares. The concept is cool anyway.

[MIKA27]

This Football-Sized Device Could Replace Your Huge Water Heater

That tank of hot water in your backyard eats up a lot of energy. But tankless on-demand water heaters leave you running water down the drain while you wait for warmth. This tiny Kickstarter water heater promises to change all that, and save you money, thanks to some fascinating technology.

The team behind the Heatworks Model 1 says the 30cm-long device can deliver instantaneous hot water on demand, saving 40 per cent on energy costs and 10 per cent on wasted water compared to an electric tank-style heater. One unit supplies enough endless hot water for one shower at a time, while larger households could install a unit at every bathroom, saving money on hot water piping and cutting out minutes spent waiting for hot water to arrive.

The key is how the Model 1 heats the water. Unlike current tankless electric heaters, which use a corrosion- and failure-prone metal coil, Heatworks relies on submerged graphite electrodes that use the water around them as a resistor. This, they say, gives you instant heat, rather than the 30-second wait associated with other tankless systems.

Sure, this all sounds great, and with the Kickstarter already past goal, it looks like Heatworks will have the money they’re seeking to start production. But being funded on Kickstarter is entirely different from producing a reliable product in quantity. Even if they make it, are you willing to trade the familiar water heater any plumber can fix in the middle of the night for a high-tech energy saver that runs on the future? It’s a gamble, and a cold shower is the loser’s lot.

[MIKA27]

One Of The Most Stunning Space Images Ever Captured

This is one of the most dramatic, unique and beautiful astronomy images ever captured by the Hubble Space Telescope: The protostar Herbig-Haro 24, located in the L1630 cloud within the Orion B group, 1500 light years from Earth. That beam is made by particle jets emanating from the primitive star:

Frequently when a star forms, a disk of dust and gas circles the YSO causing a powerful central jets to appear. In this case, the energetic jets are creating, at each end, Herbig-Haro object 24 (HH 24), as they slam into the surrounding interstellar gas. [...] Due to their rarity, jets like that forming HH 24 are estimated to last only a few thousand years.

Spanning for trillions of miles, it reminds me a bit of a very angry Dark Phoenix about to devour a star.

[MIKA27]

This Incredible Star Wars-Style Bionic Hand Let An Amputee Feel Again

We geeks all have the same platonic prosthesis ideal: Luke Skywalker’s awesome Star Wars mech-hand. We’re getting there, bit by bit. Dennis Aabo Sørensen’s new hand is almost there; it let him feel again.

The hand is the subject of an in-depth paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine today, and has been tested on Sørensen and Sørensen alone. The mecha-gripper works by tapping right into Sørensen’s nerves via electrodes in his arm that are stimulated by sensitive pressor sensors on the hand’s fingertips. The result? Touch. Touch that Sørensen says feels an awful lot like what he can get out of his good hand.

Silvestro Micera, a neural engineer at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in Switzerland, lead the team of researchers responsible for the touchy-feely mitt and considers it “certainly a major step in the right direction.”

The catch? Since the study focused on a single person, it’s hard to really draw any conclusions about how mechanical hands like these could work on a larger scale. Not to mention there’s the issue of using it for long periods of time; Sørensen only used this one off and on.

There’s still a lot of work to be done, so you probably won’t want to go losing any hands any time soon. Or ever. But for folks who already have, it looks like touchy-feely solutions are just around the corner.

[MIKA27]

This Simple Invention Seals Gunshot Wounds In 15 Seconds Flat

To stop bleeding, apply pressure — with tiny sponges. A group of veterans, scientists, and engineers in Oregon have a developed a device that uses small medical sponges to stop bleeding from gunshot wounds in just 15 seconds.

Haemorrhaging is the leading cause of death on the battlefield. When a soldier is shot, medics use gauze to stop the bleeding, but it’s hard to apply direct pressure to a gunshot wound several inches deep. Tourniquets that stop blood from gushing out of arm or leg wounds are no help for pelvis or shoulder injuries either. But the small sponges of XStat, developed by Oregon company RevMedX, expand to seal a gunshot wound anywhere on the body. Popular Science explains how it works:

The team settled on a sponge made from wood pulp and coated with chitosan, a blood-clotting, antimicrobial substance that comes from shrimp shells. To ensure that no sponges would be left inside the body accidentally, they added X-shaped markers that make each sponge visible on an x-ray image.

The sponges work fast: In just 15 seconds, they expand to fill the entire wound cavity, creating enough pressure to stop heavy bleeding. And because the sponges cling to moist surfaces, they aren’t pushed back out of the body by gushing blood.

The sponges are injected into the wound with a syringe, allowing them to reach as close to the ruptured artery as possible. The developers were inspired by Fix-a-Flat foam for tires — but c’mon, it kind of reminds you of a tampon, doesn’t it?

RevMedx has received $US5 million from the US Army to develop the XStat, and they’re currently seeking FDA approval. The US Army has expressed interest, but the technology could just as likely make it out into civilian life. For example, the Oregon Health and Science University won a grant last year to study how XStat might be used to stop postpartum bleeding.

Life and death — all from the humble sponge.

[MIKA27]

Weird Facts About Coca-Cola, The Favourite Drink Of Nazi Pilots

Here’s a fascinating article about the history of Coca-Cola. It goes through its entire story including some really weird facts, like their promotional brass watch fobs in the form of swastikas made in 1925, before the Nazi’s rise to power.

And talking about the goddamn Nazis:

According to Emperors of Coca-Cola by Murray J. Eldred, German troops discovered a case of Coke left by retreating Allied forces while fighting in North Africa. With great value as contraband, some bottles were acquired by Luftwaffe BF109 fighter pilots who devised an ingenious means of chilling the drink in the hot African sun. Bottles would be wrapped in wet towels before being affixed to the underwings of their planes. Upon returning from flying, where the pilots had sweated profusely under the perspex canopy of their cockpits, they would remove the bottles of coke which had chilled at high altitudes and retained temperature due to the moist towels evaporating in the drag of the wings. — a rudimentary refrigeration technique.

Read more here.

[MIKA27]

I Signed Up To Live Forever As An AI, And You Can Too

Achievement Unlocked: Immortality, thanks to a new project out of MIT that will let you live forever inside of a computer.

It’s called Eterni.me. Weird names aside, this project aims to use all the data collected on you over your lifetime, as well as a scan of your digital image, to recreate your personality.

It’s being sold as a video chat with your virtual self for relatives and friends, and even just thinking about that is giving me chills. Imagine speaking to an exact replica of your dead friend from beyond the grave…

Eterni.me collects almost everything that you create during your lifetime, and processes this huge amount of information using complex Artificial Intelligence algorithms.

Then it generates a virtual YOU, an avatar that emulates your personality and can interact with, and offer information and advice to your family and friends after you pass away.

Terrifyingly futuristic.

Thousands are signing up for the early-access beta, including a tentative yours-truly, hoping to get access to their own digital selves before they shuffle off this mortal coil.

It almost exactly resembles an episode of Black Mirror, or that new Johnny Depp movie where he gets downloaded into a computer. Except without all the destroying the world stuff.

Would you sign up to live forever?

[MIKA27]

Will Smallpox Reemerge In Siberia As Corpses Thaw From Climate Change?

In an article primarily about the potential folly of holding onto stockpiles of smallpox virus for research purposes — a now-eradicated plague that humans no longer have natural immunity to and that would very likely cause a worldwide catastrophe should it escape from the lab — the BBC includes one awesomely horrible detail. Could the frozen bodies of smallpox victims in Siberia, now thawing because of climate change, re-release the virus into the environment and thus start a global pandemic?

There has apparently been speculation about this for more than a decade. “In the past,” the BBC explains, “some researchers and news outlets speculated that smallpox in the frozen graves of former victims might remain in suspended animation, ready to begin a new cycle of infection should those bodies ever be dug up and unthawed [sic]. Scientists have attempted to excavate corpses in frozen graves in Alaska and Siberia that contain the remains of smallpox victims, however none of the bodies contained viable viruses.”

Writing for Science back in March 2002, for example, in an article straight-forwardly entitled “Is Live Smallpox Lurking in the Arctic?,” author Richard Stone describes a scene that he likens to the Blair Witch Project. It’s both stomach-turning and awesomely macabre:

Worried that spring flooding might wash the remains into inhab- ited areas — and possibly resurrect the smallpox virus — authorities in Yakutsk had summoned the team to this nightmarish place near the Kolyma River. The camera zooms in as the researchers huddle around a mummified child half-submerged in thawing mud. They gently peel away a few layers of deerskin clothing to reveal blackened skin pocked with blemishes characteristic of smallpox pustules. As they cut into a wizened leg, liquid oozes from the spongy flesh. Some minutes later they finish their work and douse the tomb with disinfectant to try to prevent anyone else from carrying smallpox out with them — accidentally or otherwise.

This terrifying possibility — a plot straight out of a future horror film — is all but immediately quashed, however, by Michael Lane of the CDC. Lane previously worked on smallpox eradication programs from 1970 to 1981 and he, for one, is not worried. “No one feels there’s a serious chance that global warming will melt the permafrost and unleash an epidemic,” he quips.

BUT: what an amazing plot possibility for a future biomedical thriller, as thawing corpses in the global north unleash waves of weird infectious terror on the people of the present day. Perhaps an oil exploration crew or a small group of archaeologists — or a few urban explorers, best friends taking a quick summer vacation to some ruined villages in the forest — find rotten body parts emerging from the mud and, unbeknownst to them, bring this virus back home to the city. It could be the plot of 28 Years Later.

Like something out of Jeff Long’s airport thriller Year Zero — in which an ancient virus is accidentally released from a vial of Jesus Christ’s own holy blood, leading to a global catastrophe — viruses once thought conquered emerge from the ice once again, virulent, unstoppable, and coming soon to a film screen near you.

Briefly, though, the BBC post coincides with an article in Smithsonian that seemed worth mentioning in this context.

The idea of long-frozen things coming back to life — or, at least, emerging once again into fresh air — was also raised last week by Smithsonian‘s look at one of my favourite stories of recent times: the blood-red “waterfall” that has emerged in Antarctica as the glacier above it melts.

As the magazine explains, “in addition to being cut off from the rest of the continent, the water that feeds Blood Falls is completely cut off from the atmosphere — it has never seen sunlight and is completely devoid of oxygen. It’s also extremely rich in iron, which was churned into the water by glaciers scraping the bedrock below the lake.”

I mention this because, as Smithsonian puts it, “the colour of Blood Falls isn’t the only weird thing about it, however — it’s what lives inside the subglacial lake that interests scientists more than the waterfall’s creepy colour.”

Millions of years ago, when those glaciers covered the salt lakes, there were microbes living in the water, and those microbes haven’t gone anywhere, even though the water is now an extremely salty, oxygen-free bowl of complete darkness buried 400 meters under a glacier. Much like bacteria found living near

deep sea thermal vents

, the microbes of Blood Falls get their energy from breaking apart sulfates, which contain oxygen. After that, something eerily magical happens with the by-products — the iron in the water interacts with them to restore the sulfates, basically recycling the sulfates for the microbes to break down into oxygen over and over again.

The idea that million-year old organisms might be able to re-enter our world after a long thaw, seen in the context of the — yes — entirely speculative possibility of a global smallpox epidemic caused by melting corpses in the Arctic, only adds to the awesome fictional possibilities here, dreaming up strange tales of long-dormant organisms and the frozen landscapes that hold them suddenly exhibiting malicious influence on human history.

[MIKA27]

Watch How The RIP Bullet Makes Your Vital Organs Explode In Slow Motion

Rated RR tested the Radically Invasive Projectile (yes, RIP) ammo against ballistic gel, filming it in super-slow motion to show you what a bullet like this would do as it penetrates the flesh of a human body. It’s pretty terrifying stuff.

The manufacturer calls these “the last round you will ever need,” designed to “take out all your vital organs,” opening “nine separate wound channels” and making your guts explode beyond repair. This is how they claim they work:

The invention of the G2R’s projectile R.I.P.™ is related to the ability to control the way the projectile reacts as it passes through different mediums by control of the mfg process, geometry and the rate of failure at different zones along its axial length. More particularly but not limited to the ability to take the projectile and predictably have it stay solid in one medium but yet have the exact same projectile predictably react as a fragmenting bullet through a different medium without alteration of the projectile. The geometry at the tip of the projectile has much to do with the way the projectile travels through tissue. It has been long known in the medical industry that a trocar point penetrates the dermis layer more efficiently. Patents for trocars appeared early in the 19th century, although their use dated back possibly thousands of years. It is the use of this geometry at the front end of the projectile that does specific work at the point of entry from one system to the next. Dependent on the medium the projectiles geometry is designed to react differently.

In their marketing materials, they say these are the ultimate “self-defence” tool. You know, perfect to use against any menacing teen walking at night with a hoodie, carrying Skittles and ice tea. Here’s an image of the bullets:

Like with hollow-point bullets, the Hague Convention prohibits the use of these bullets in war. NATO member countries don’t use these type of bullets. In the US, hollow-points are legal — and popular — among the civilian population and police forces.

[MIKA27]

New Captain America The Winter Soldier Trailer: Metal Arm Solid

If you had even the faintest doubts that Marvel’s followup to Captain America would be anything but a series of kickass fights and flying ships going boom, well, be at ease. The new trailer is here, and it looks incredible.

It’s exciting to get a better look at Falcon, whose equipment looks badass however implausible, and to see that the franchise is maintaining its sense of humour. And those who have read the storyline this is based on should, I think, be plenty encouraged by how the Winter Soldier is being handled here. At the very least, he’s clearly a match for Cap.

The only thing it could use a little more of is Robert Redford, but that’s true of all things in life. Captain America The Winter Soldier is out March 26th; that’s plenty of time to memorize every single detail here, and take wild guesses about what fills in the blanks. Can’t wait.

[MIKA27]

Why The Hell Are These F-18 Pilots Taking Off From Public Roads?

Watch these F-18 pilots training to take off and land on public roads, a skill they used to practice more often back in the Cold War days, when they had to be ready in case the Soviet Union decided to bomb their airfields during an invasion.

http://youtu.be/bNuVCvIGKxE

Taking off and landing on public roads used to be a common thing back in the early days of aviation. The most extreme case is probably the German autobahns. Their highways were built by the Nazis specifically with aeroplane operations in mind, to use them as auxiliary airfields for their fighters. After the war ended — and the Cold War begun — NATO air forces kept training to use these highways.

[MIKA27]

Mission To Mars: How Scientists Are Living On A Simulated Red Planet To Prep For Real Missions

According to Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, establishing a permanent presence beyond Earth is the first step humans will take towards the “divergence into a new species”.

Plans to visit and even colonise Mars are no longer the subject of science fiction novels. But before we can do that, we need to understand how humans can survive and thrive on Mars. Some of that we can do right here on Earth by simulating Mars-like conditions. In the most recent such experiment, I was the crew commander of such an expedition in the high-altitude desert of Utah, the most Mars-like place on Earth. The crew were comprised of seven – two scientists, two engineers, a medical doctor, a journalist and a humanoid robot.

Ashley Dale is a PhD candidate in Aerospace Engineering at University of Bristol. This post originally appeared on The Conversation.

Keeping fit. Exercises led by a humanoid robot.

We were based at the Mars Desert Research Station, a facility replicating a planned NASA surface base on Mars. The Habitat Module was our home for 14 days. A two storey silo-shaped building with lab areas and living spaces, eight metres in diameter, it is built to fit atop a heavy-lift launch vehicle. Attached are a greenhouse and observatory.

With only 50m2 of living space in the Habitat Module, the idea of personal space was completely left behind as soon as we entered the simulation. If you were not within eye-shot of someone, you were certainly within ear-shot. If there were any disagreements within the crew, there really was nowhere to escape to. You simply could not just step outside for a breath of fresh air. Just to leave the Habitat Module required agreements with Mission Support the day before. Then you had to don a spacesuit that would act as a barrier between you and the harsh outside world. In such a tight and intense environment, it was easy for the smallest conflict to get amplified.

Within the crew, there were nearly two dozen research projects to conduct over the two-week expedition. One study was on extreme weather-testing of particular micro-organisms shortlisted for terraforming Mars – that is, for transforming the Martian atmosphere and surface into something more hospitable for humans. These extremophiles, already weather-tested in the arctic conditions of Svalbard and Greenland, were placed in the harsh and nutrient-poor desert soils, analogous to those on Mars, to see how they survived.

Another experiment involved improving protocols in tele-surgery and tele-anaesthesia with the Concordia Base in Antarctica and several other groups around the world. Those that go to Mars are not going to be experts in every medical or surgical field. There may sometimes be the need to carry out procedures they are not familiar with. This study involved looking at the difficulties faced when experts direct non-experts through procedures via restricted telecommunications. Members of our team carried out a simulated surgery to mend a broken leg with instructions delivered via video conference.

Conducting leg surgery via teleconference. Kai Staats

We also had a range of hardware to test in the field. The Martian terrain and atmosphere requires specially developed technology to make work and travel possible. On this trip we trialled prototype spacesuit glove technologies that fed information about texture through the fingertips. We ran operations with a stereo camera and 3D mapping system on a rover, similar to what will be on the ExoMars rover, to capture what field operations look like across a range of Mars-like terrain. We also tested out equipment that has been developed to extract hydrogen and oxygen from the soil for producing water, breathable air, and rocket fuel.

With most of the crew members being older than me, I found myself in an interesting position as crew commander. More than anything, my main role was to maintain the fine balance of keeping everyone as equally unhappy as possible. We are not just talking about a balance within the crew itself, but also between the crew and Mission Support. Everyone wanted their pet-projects, protocols, and perfect shots, but we had limited person-hours as a unit. I had to keep a calm head and remind myself of the expedition’s priorities.

Human ingenuity has been perfecting the technology we will need on Mars, but what we can’t do is eliminate human follies. Beyond all the technical experiments performed, these simulated expeditions help prepare us to best deal with those.