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Sculptor explains how new show, featuring 600 cast-iron human skyscrapers, expresses his anger about London's testosterone-fuelled corporate expansion
Antony Gormley says his first White Cube exhibition in four years, which opens in September, is driven by “more of a sense of urgency” than any other show he has done. From the warming of our climate and the acidification of our seas to cities dominated by skyscrapers “nothing more than expressions of virile corporate power,” says Gormley the artist's despair at society's failure to take action has filtered unavoidably into his latest work.
Related: How we made The Angel of the North
I don't see London's towers expressing much more than the testosterone of a late capitalist society
Related: Are Shoreditch skyscrapers a London tower too far, even for Boris Johnson?
Continue reading...Sculptor explains how new show, featuring 600 cast-iron human skyscrapers, expresses his anger about London's testosterone-fuelled corporate expansion
Antony Gormley says his first White Cube exhibition in four years, which opens in September, is driven by “more of a sense of urgency” than any other show he has done. From the warming of our climate and the acidification of our seas to cities dominated by skyscrapers “nothing more than expressions of virile corporate power,” says Gormley the artist's despair at society's failure to take action has filtered unavoidably into his latest work.
Related: How we made The Angel of the North
I don't see London's towers expressing much more than the testosterone of a late capitalist society
Related: Are Shoreditch skyscrapers a London tower too far, even for Boris Johnson?
Continue reading...![]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2F66.media.tumblr.com%2Fb78a52af4d6f630b7931c4a6662ab60e%2Ftumblr_o9tacgPuVH1r9x13lo1_500.jpg&width=540&mix=0b54d-art")
Fruit of the Hala
Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. and destroyed the Roman cities below it, but the hot ash from the volcano also created a time capsule of the cities Pompeii and Herculaneum. Until recently, the ancient scrolls in the library at Herculaneum were considered too charred and fragile to open. This short documentary by MEL Films, Would Say Would Fall, explores the incredible science behind two men's work—a papyrologist and physicist—to decipher the documents after nearly two thousand years. To see more films from MEL, visit their website and Vimeo page.
rcthomas57 posted a photo:
!["London]("http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7397/28100979866_f081fd8652_m.jpg")
London iconic cityscape composing The WalkieTalkie(20 Fenchurch Street); Cheesegrater(122 Leadenhall Street, or the Leadenhall Building); and The Gerhkin(St Mary Axe); from the walk along the Thames.
Dajathwi posted a photo:
!["Tian"]("http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7412/27853359410_98a63a881a_m.jpg")
facebook.com/dajathwiphotography
instagram.com/dajathwi
More cosplay shots are under way, but in the meantime, here's another headshot from Canary Wharf, this time with Tian!
![]("https://drscdn.500px.org/photo/161852575/m%3D900/8286dcf6620a05b830c3ef5e34038a27")
The Week UK | Dyson opens Apple-style Oxford Street hub store The Week UK British consumer technology giant Dyson is launching its first ever UK shop, an Apple store-style hub that opens today on London's Oxford Street. "Visitors to the Dyson Demo can have their hair styled and dried with the company's Supersonic hairdryer ... Dyson 360 Eye: Which? review coming soonWhich? Dyson 360 EyeStuff Dyson opens first UK store as £800 robot vacuum goes on saleEngadget all 8 news articles » |
International Business Times UK | China: Human memory whizz Wang Yuheng beats Alipay's AI robot in facial recognition contest International Business Times UK Artificial intelligence may be incredibly powerful today, but sometimes a human brain is still best a Chinese celebrity famed for his superhuman photographic memory capabilities has beaten an AI robot in a live facial recognition context. More tech ... Man v Machine: A face recognition battleBBC News A man famous in China for his superhuman memory beat an AI in a facial recognition contestQuartz all 3 news articles » |
The American Bazaar | Automation will not just hit IT jobs but 10 other sectors as well. Are you working in any? Economic Times In the years to come, automated journalism may give reporters who cover routine topics a hard time. Associated Press uses a natural language reporting platform 'Wordsmith' to publish over 3,000 financial reports every quarter. Print media has been ... India to lose 640000 low-skilled IT jobs in next 5 years: US-based research firmThe American Bazaar Indians Will Lose 6.4 Lakh Jobs By 2021, Not To Depression Or Economy But To Robots!Indiatimes.com all 25 news articles » |
Aboutstark.com | Latest and greatest tech | National Aboutstark.com You could run a robot sweeper or lawn mower. This is Internet everywhere. Next up: Internet everywhere ... Your car will sense impending road rage and soften its interior lighting; your smartphone will pick up on your anger and disable texting; your ... |
CIO Forum Explores the Future with Robotic Process Automation Lanka Business Online The recently concluded CIO Forum held at the Kingsbury saw the country's top chief innovation officers gather to learn the latest advancements in the field of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and its applications. As discussed and debated at the forum, ... and more » |
Consultancy.uk | Artificial Intelligence and robotics high on financial services agenda Consultancy.uk As financial services organisations predict and plan for the way consumers will manage their money in the future, artificial intelligence (AI) is high on the business development strategy for 2016 and beyond, says Gideon Hyde from design consultancy ... |
Popular Science | The 'Michael Jordan' Of Machine Learning Wants To Put Smarter A.I. In Your Home Popular Science That's what the makers of Jibo are trying to create—a robot that can initiate conversation to complete tasks in the home—and they're tapping some of the world's foremost A.I. researchers to do it. Today, Jibo Inc. announces that its adding veteran ... Michael I. Jordan, Artificial Intelligence Pioneer, Joins Jibo Advisory BoardYahoo Finance all 2 news articles » |
Christiana Figueres term as the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) has just ended and we all owe her a huge thank you for the safer climate legacy she has left our children and grandchildren. I've had the pleasure of knowing her for the entire 16 years I've been working on climate change so when she took the job after Copenhagen I knew she was the best person for this difficult position. If anyone could help steer the global community to a stronger international climate agreement I knew Christiana could do it. But could the global community really get its act together and could she successfully navigate this difficult terrain? She helped eliminate any lingering doubts with the Paris Agreement.
While the Paris Agreement wouldn't have occurred without the perseverance of many NGOs, citizens, countries, cities, and companies, it would have failed miserably without Christiana's leadership. She helped rally the world to finalize an historic climate agreement that includes new climate commitments from all major countries and set in motion efforts to require deeper emissions reduction commitments from all countries over time.
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Looking back on her tenure there are a couple of traits that she embodied which I think proved critical in getting us to this point. Here are just a few of them.
Smiling. The night the Paris Agreement was agreed by over 190 countries she attended the NGO celebration and she had her trademark smile as she entered the room. I gave her a hug and congratulated her. But she wasn't only smiling after achieving historic agreements since you could often find her with a welcoming grin. I don't know if this was her intention, but I think her smile reminded the negotiators that even in the midst of difficult negotiations they were people trying to secure a better future for their citizens. A smile has a way of setting the tone for difficult negotiations much better than a straight face or a grimace.
Smart. I interacted with Christiana when we were working on similar ideas to help shift developing country action from the project-by-project nature of the Clean Development Mechanism (e.g., individual wind projects) to sector-wide actions that would help transform entire economies, not just little islands of positive climate action in a sea of climate inaction. She was a leading advocate for this changing dynamic when she represented Costa Rica and she helped shepherd through this shift as the Paris Agreement reflects national climate action plans from all major countries.
Persistent. I saw her in the halls of the UN after she had come out of a meeting with NRDC Trustee Robert Redford who called her a "force for nature" after their meeting. That is an appropriate description for Christiana since she kept at it even when the outcome looked in doubt. At that moment a lot of the key details were uncertain as the negotiating text was a mess and important elements around how countries would strengthen their targets over time were in doubt. She had a smile on her face and seemed confident that countries would resolve these difficult issues and move "us from good success in Paris to shining success in Paris". I knew she would do everything in her power to push countries towards that shining success.
Strategic. The UNFCCC Secretariat can't by herself get 194 countries to adopt a strong climate agreement. Reflecting this dynamic Elizabeth Kolbert described Christiana's job as having "the very highest ratio of responsibility (preventing global collapse) to authority (practically none)". In order to overcome this dynamic, Christiana had to be very strategic with how she helped all the key countries get to the strongest agreement possible. She used her giant megaphone to push where she thought public statements could help and she utilized quiet diplomacy where that was a better tactic.
Forward-looking. In order to address climate change, you often have to see at least two steps ahead of the current political dynamic. So you adopt the agreement that is possible today given the current politics, but include key provisions that create the conditions for even greater action in the coming years. Christiana recognized this aspect of international climate agreements as she was a strong champion of including cities, states/provinces, and companies into the global effort. This "action-agenda" can now play a key role in driving greater action so that when countries start to reassess their targets in 2018 they are prepared to outline even deeper targets than they committed to in 2015.
As Christiana leaves her role as Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC she will be missed. She helped shepherd through the historic Paris Agreement and we all owe her a huge debt of gratitude. I suspect that she won't disappear from the international climate radar as solving this issue is too important to her. This passion to address the gravest challenge of our generation runs too deep in her bones for her to go quietly.
Thank you Christiana and keep up the fight!
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-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
My Planet Experience posted a photo:
!["Arctic]("http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7463/28096260366_23b4290635_m.jpg")
The Arctic wolf is endangered because of its very fine pelt which is wanted by many hunters. It needs to be saved and put under hunters restriction before it becomes extinct forever.
Industrial development also poses a threat to the wolf, as an increasing number of mines, roads and pipelines encroach on the wolf's territory, and interrupt its food supply.
However, the greatest threat to the Arctic wolf is climate change. Extreme weather variations in recent years have reduced the traditional food supply of the Arctic wolf (populations of muskox and Arctic doesn't find food and decline in numbers).
The Arctic wolf is a sub-species of the grey wolf and lives in the Arctic regions of North America and Greenland.
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My Planet Experience posted a photo:
!["Griffon]("http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7322/27368316513_c9414ac8cb_m.jpg")
The Griffon Vulture is a large raptor, inhabitant of the steep cliffs and rocky areas offering numerous cavities where it will nest.
The main cause of the rapid decline in the griffon vulture population is the consumption of poisoned baits set out by people. Wildlife conservation efforts have attempted to increase awareness of the lethal consequences of using illegally poisoned baits through education about the issue. It is very highly vulnerable to the effects of potential wind energy development and electrocution has been identified as a threat.
The flight of the Griffon Vulture is a real show of virtuosity. It soars during long moments, moving scarcely the wings, in an almost unperceivable and measured way.
© www.myplanetexperience.com
My Planet Experience posted a photo:
!["White]("http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7573/27561606350_c3571d97d7_m.jpg")
Soha is the male White Tiger of La Flèche Zoo Park, La Flèche, France
The White Tiger, also known as the White Bengal Tiger, is a pigmentation variant and a subspecies of Tiger, found throughout the Indian subcontinent.
Over the past couple of centuries the White Tiger has become even rarer in the wild due to trophy hunting or capture for the exotic pet trade, with there having been no recorded sightings of these elusive predators for the past 50 years.
Today, the White Tiger can still be found in a handful of zoos and animal sanctuaries around the world with these large and beautiful felines often being the star attraction.
Mohan, the last recorded white tiger born in the wild, was the founding father of the white tigers. He was captured as a cub in 1951 by Maharaja of Rewa. In 1953, Mohan was bred to a normal-coloured wild tigress called Begum "royal consort", which produced orange cubs. Mohan was then bred to his daughter Radha (who carried the white gene inherited from her father) with success.
Mohan was featured in the National Geographic documentary "Great Zoos Of The World" in 1970. He died aged almost 20, and was laid to rest with Hindu rites as the palace staff observed official mourning.
© www.myplanetexperience.com
My Planet Experience posted a photo:
!["Giant]("http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7542/27077961584_283fd55e66_m.jpg")
Yuan Zi is the male Giant Panda of Beauval Zoo Park, Saint Aignan sur Cher, France
The giant panda is perhaps the most powerful symbol in the world when it comes to species conservation.
Adored around the world, the distinctive black and white animal is a national treasure in China and has been the symbol of WWF since its formation in 1961.
Giant pandas live in a few mountain ranges in central China, in Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces. They once lived in lowland areas, but farming, forest clearing, and other development now restrict giant pandas to the mountains.
While its numbers are slowly increasing, the giant panda remains one of the rarest and most endangered bears in the world. It is listed as endangered in the World Conservation Union's (IUCN's) Red List of Threatened Species. There are about 1,600 left in the wild. More than 300 pandas live in zoos and breeding centers around the world, mostly in China.
© www.myplanetexperience.com
My Planet Experience posted a photo:
!["White]("http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7437/27266755330_ce5fff9892_m.jpg")
Jabu is the White Lion of La Flèche Zoo Park, La Flèche, France
Up until 2009, when the first white lions was reintroduced to the wild, it was widely believed that the white lion could not survive in the wild. It is for this reason that a large part of the population of white lions now reside in zoos.
The white lions of the Global White Lion Protection Trust (GWLPT) have been reintroduced into their natural habitat and have been hunting and breeding successfully without human intervention for a significant amount of time.
The white lion is a rare color mutation of the Timbavati area. White lions are the same as the tawny African Lion (Panthera leo krugeri) found in some wildlife reserves in South Africa and in zoos around the world.
White lions are not albinos. Their white color is caused by a recessive trait derived from a less-severe mutation in the same gene that causes albinism, distinct from the gene responsible for white tigers. They vary from blonde to near-white. This coloration does not appear to disadvantage their survival.
© www.myplanetexperience.com
My Planet Experience posted a photo:
!["Red]("http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7382/27122155800_136cf9eb61_m.jpg")
Liao is the female red panda of Beauval Zoo Park, Saint Aignan sur Cher, France
Red pandas are listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Its population has plausibly declined by 50% over the last three generations (estimated at 18 years) and this decline is projected to continue, and probably intensify, in the next three generations.
The red panda shares the giant panda's rainy, high-altitude forest habitat, but has a wider range. Red pandas live in the cool temperate bamboo forests in Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces in China, in the Himalayas and in Myanmar.
These pandas typically grow to the size of a house cat, though their big, bushy tails add an additional 46 centimeters. The pandas use their ringed tails as wraparound blankets in the chilly mountain heights.
Red pandas are solitary except for breeding season, but in zoos most breeding pairs are housed together year-round for enrichment.
© www.myplanetexperience.com
syphrix photography posted a photo:
!["Play]("http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7429/27514904273_ed93ac597f_m.jpg")
A pair of white tigers play fighting in the water.
Taken at the Singapore Zoo.
[Facebook | 500px]
European commissions' opposition to a proposed global ban will spell the beginning of a mass extinction of African elephants, warn officials from 29 African states
Wildlife officials in nearly 30 African states say they are appalled by an EU decision to oppose a comprehensive global ban on the ivory trade.
In a position paper released on 1 July, the European commission said that rather than an all-encompassing ban it would be better to encourage countries with growing elephant numbers to “sustainably manage” their populations.
Continue reading...Read more: Energy, Sustainability, Smarter Ideas, Thought Leadership, Environment, Business News
Read more: Earthjustice, Congress, Environment, Green News
Conservationists are devastated after the first two chicks born in captivity to one of the world's rarest birds die at a wildfowl centre in Gloucestershire
An attempt to breed one of the world's rarest birds in captivity has failed after the only two chicks which hatched died, conservationists said.
Efforts to breed critically endangered spoon-billed sandpipers, named after their unusual beak, from the world's only captive population seemed to have yielded results, with seven eggs laid and two chicks hatching.
Continue reading...!["2016-07-06-1467817248-6864049-amberdinosaurfeatherwing.jpeg"]("http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-07-06-1467817248-6864049-amberdinosaurfeatherwing.jpeg")
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Rise of the machines: Spare a thought for the only Rectal Teaching Assistant in the UK who has lost his livelihood to a cold, metal bastard.…
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William Jackson Hooker Scientist of the Day
William Jackson Hooker, an English botanist, was born July 6, 1785.
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!["Hirudo]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Finsider.si.edu%2Fwordpress%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F06%2FMedicinal-leech-630x472.jpg&width=540&mix=42dfe-culture")
European Medicinal Leech “Hirudo medicinalis.” Sucker is on the right, blood-feeding mouth is on the left. (Encyclopedia of Life image by Pavla Tochorová)
Thanks to a recent reassessment of specimens preserved in jars of alcohol at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, New Hampshire is now on a short list of states that can claim the New England medicinal leech, Macrobdella sestertia, as a native species. Bright olive green with small reddish-orange spots, scientists discovered three M. sestertia specimens in the museum's collection. Collected in 1936 in Suncoop Pond near Epsom, N.H., they had been mistakenly identified and labeled M. decora (or the North American medicinal leech) some 78 years ago.
Researchers used microscopes to examine the gonads of the specimens, which revealed the leeches had been misidentified. Smithsonian Research Zoologist Anna J. Phillips and Ricardo Salas-Montiel, a master's student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, made the discovery. Their work was presented recently in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.
Known only from Maine, Massachusetts and now one New Hampshire pond, M. sestertia is one of the rarest and poorly known leeches in North America. It can grow up to five inches in length and is a Species of Special Concern in the state of Massachusetts.
!['"M.]("http://insider.si.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/M-sestertia.jpg")
These three specimens of “M. sestertia” in the collections of the National Museum of Natural History (dorsal, top, and ventral views shown here) were collected in 1936 in New Hampshire and incorrectly identified as a different species.
Medicinal use
Despite being called a medicinal leech, M. sestertia has never been used in medicine, leech expert Phillips points out. It gets the name from its blood-feeding behavior, similar to the European medicinal leech Hirudo medicinalis, which was widely used in medicine in the 1700s and 1800s. “Leeches that feed readily on humans have taken on the name ‘medicinal,' however there are members of these families that don't feed on humans,” Phillips says.
!["leech]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Finsider.si.edu%2Fwordpress%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2FLeech-jar-308x400.jpg&width=540&mix=42dfe-culture")
During the 19th century, when bloodletting represented America's premier medical theory, leeches were employed by physicians on a massive scale. This fancy 19th-century display jar from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History was used by a pharmacist to highlight his supply of medicinal leeches. Elaborate presentation indicates the high value leeches held as a commodity during this time.
Demand for live European medicinal leeches once skyrocketed in Europe and the United States as treatment to drain “bad blood” or to “balance the humors,” then the supposed cause of illness and infirmity. Leeches were attached to a patient's skin to gorge themselves. “Leeches were used as a cure-all for everything from headaches to the common cold,” Phillips says.
Hirudo medicinalis were put to work across Europe and transported in great numbers to the United States and elsewhere, sparing the native U.S. species. “Populations of the European medicinal leech were so overharvested that today it is considered a threatened species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature,” Phillips says. “Today, a different leech species, Hirudo verbana is commercially sold for medicine.” They use in modern medicine is for quite a different purpose.
In 2004, leeches (H. verbana) were approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a “medical device” to prevent post-surgical congestion of the veins. “If you have a skin graft, finger reattachment, or plastic surgery, leeches can be put on the affected area to suck out extra blood that may pool in the tissue causing swelling,” Phillips says. “Anticoagulants in leech saliva enter the bite, go into the wound and keep blood from clotting. In this way leeches increase blood circulation, reduce swelling and promote healing. Leeches have tiny mouths so it is easy to put them on the ends of fingers and noses and ears.”
Hospitals can order leeches sent overnight, starved and ready to feed from a companies like Leeches USA or Biopharm Leeches.
Fine teeth
In the water leeches attach to your skin first using a muscular sucker, similar to a suction cup located on their tail end. Next, they bite with their mouth at the other end using two or three jaws arranged like a Mercedes Benz logo, Phillips says. “The jaws are lined with very fine teeth—up to 150 per jaw—they press the jaws out and move them back and forth slicing the skin and creating the wound. Then they start sucking.”
!["Anna]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Finsider.si.edu%2Fwordpress%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2FPhillips1-266x400.jpg&width=540&mix=42dfe-culture")
Smithsonian leech expert Anna Phillips collecting leeches in a wetland in Maryland. (Photo by T.R. Kahn)
Only about one-third of leech species have jaws, Phillips adds. “Others have stylets or cutting plates, or have a proboscis for feeding. Almost all medicinal leeches have jaws.”
Blood-feeding Macrobdella can eat between six and 10 times their bodyweight in one meal and take a long time to digest a blood meal. “When I've kept leeches in a lab they only need to eat about 3 or 4 times a year. When they take in a blood meal they need to digest the bits of blood differently. They first eject all the plasma, then process more complex cells such as red and white blood cells,” Phillips says.
“There is little evidence to suggest that leeches transmit disease between humans,” Phillips continues. “It is possible to detect the presence of viruses in the leech gut for several months after they have fed on infected blood, but the viruses do not infect humans during subsequent feedings. Some leeches are vectors for turtle parasites, but these parasites do not pose a threat to humans.”
“The diet of leeches is still something we are exploring. Many leeches are free-living, and we do not know exactly what they feed on,” Phillips says. “Out of more than 680 described leech species, just a handful will feed on humans. Leeches are found in freshwater, terrestrial and marine habitats worldwide except for on Antarctica.”
Frogs, snails, fish
While the diet of the mysterious M. sestertia is unknown, Phillips thinks it could be similar to that of other Macrobdella species: primarily feeding on frogs, but also frog eggs, and perhaps even humans. “Some leeches only feed on insect larvae, some only on snails, still others only fish. Aside from the blood-feeders, there's a whole bunch of leeches that predominantly feed on earthworms,” Phillips says.
!["for]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Finsider.si.edu%2Fwordpress%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2Fleeches-for-sale-630x422.jpg&width=540&mix=42dfe-culture")
Leeches for sale in the pet markets beside the Egyptian Bazaar, Sultanahmet, Istanbul. (Flickr photo by RStacker)
No one knows how long Macrobdella species live in the wild, but Phillips estimates three to four years. “Leeches seem to continue to grow as long as they live. Big ones are a target for being eaten by birds, fish and other animals,” Phillips says.
Why does a poorly known leech species living in New England matter? “Because everything is connected,” Phillips explains. “In the wetlands in New England where this leech is found, there are many organisms that contribute to those ecosystems. These ecosystems have complex, interconnected food webs that rely on a diversity of organisms. All ecosystems are like a machine; to function correctly it must have all its parts in order to work.”
“For example,” Phillips continues, “leeches may be one of many invertebrates a bird eats. If there is a decline in aquatic insect larvae in a given year, the leeches may not be affected and the bird might not go hungry that year because it could eat more leeches. Having a diversity of organisms in an ecosystem helps it to maintain integrity and survive environmental disturbances, such as a flood, a drought or changing climates.”
Macrobdella sestertia has been found only a handful of times and has not been seen in the wild since 1997, Phillips adds. “The big question when you have a poorly-known species like M. sestertia is not necessarily that they have declined, it is more likely that no one is looking. This species may have a much broader distribution than what we know, but the right people have not seen the specimens. The danger right now for many animals including leeches is that if their habitat is being lost due to residential or commercial development of lands, then we may not even know that we are contributing to, if not the driver of, its decline.”
The post Discovery in Smithsonian collection broadens understanding of rare North American leech appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.
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US one sheet for UNDER THE SUN (Vitaly Mansky, Russia, 2015)
Designer: TBD
Poster source: IMDb
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US one sheet for TASTE OF CHERRY (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 1997)
Designer: Kevin Gaor
Poster source: Zeitgeist Films
R.I.P. Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016)
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Whether they are fans of Donald Trump, supporters of Brexit or Marine Le Pen voters in France, "angry voters" have one thing in common: They've been left in the dust by globalization. By SPIEGEL Staff ![]("http://www.spiegel.de/images/image-1019411-thumbsmall-oomx.jpg")
In the 1960s, Gloria Steinem became the icon of the women's movement and she hasn't slowed down since. Now, the US may elect a female president for the first time in its history. Has feminism finally reached its goal? Pilgrim Nuclear Reactor in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is scheduled to close down in 2019. It won't be alone—because of increased concerns over the safety of these plants and decreased gas prices, many will struggle to stay open in the United States. In this short film, locals who work in the plant reflect on the effects of the impending closure.
Van Alen Sessions is presented by Van Alen Institute with The Atlantic andCityLab. Season Two, “Power Lines,” is directed and produced by Kelly Loudenberg. The series is made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, and is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Connect with Van Alen Institute on vanalen.org.
Radio astronomers have used a radio telescope network the size of the Earth to zoom in on a unique phenomenon in a distant galaxy: a jet activated by a star being consumed by a supermassive black hole as seen in center of galaxy Messier 106 above. The record-sharp observations reveal a compact and surprisingly slowly moving source of radio waves, with details published in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The artist's impression below shows the remains of a star that came too close to a supermassive black hole. Extremely sharp observations of the event Swift J1644+57 with the radio telescope network EVN (European VLBI Network) have revealed a remarkably compact jet, shown here in yellow.
The international team, led by Jun Yang (Onsala Space Observatory, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden), studied the new-born jet in a source known as Swift J1644+57 with the European VLBI Network (EVN), an Earth-size radio telescope array.
When a star moves close to a supermassive black hole it can be disrupted violently. About half of the gas in the star is drawn towards the black hole and forms a disc around it. During this process, large amounts of gravitational energy are converted into electromagnetic radiation, creating a bright source visible at many different wavelengths.
One dramatic consequence is that some of the star's material, stripped from the star and collected around the black hole, can be ejected in extremely narrow beams of particles at speeds approaching the speed of light. These so-called relativistic jets produce strong emission at radio wavelengths.
The first known tidal disruption event that formed a relativistic jet was discovered in 2011 by the NASA satellite Swift. Initially identified by a bright flare in X-rays, the event was given the name Swift J1644+57. The source was traced to a distant galaxy, so far away that its light took around 3.9 billion years to reach Earth.
Jun Yang and his colleagues used the technique of very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), where a network of detectors separated by thousands of kilometres are combined into a single observatory, to make extremely high-precision measurements of the jet from Swift J1644+57.
Three years of extremely precise EVN measurements of the jet from Swift J1644+5734 show a very compact source with no signs of motion. Lower panel: false colour contour image of the jet (the ellipse in the lower left corner shows the size of an unresolved source). Upper panel: position measurement with dates. One microarcsecond is one 3 600 000 000th part of a degree. Image credit: EVN/JIVE/J. Yang. Click for a full size image
"Using the EVN telescope network we were able to measure the jet's position to a precision of 10 microarcseconds. That corresponds to the angular extent of a 2-Euro coin on the Moon as seen from Earth. These are some of the sharpest measurements ever made by radio telescopes", says Jun Yang.
Thanks to the amazing precision possible with the network of radio telescopes, the scientists were able to search for signs of motion in the jet, despite its huge distance.
"We looked for motion close to the light speed in the jet, so-called superluminal motion. Over our three years of observations such movement should have been clearly detectable. But our images reveal instead very compact and steady emission - there is no apparent motion", continues Jun Yang.
The results give important insights into what happens when a star is destroyed by a supermassive black hole, but also how newly launched jets behave in a pristine environment. Zsolt Paragi, Head of User Support at the Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE) in Dwingeloo, Netherlands, and member of the team, explains why the jet appears to be so compact and stationary.
"Newly formed relativistic ejecta decelerate quickly as they interact with the interstellar medium in the galaxy. Besides, earlier studies suggest we may be seeing the jet at a very small angle. That could contribute to the apparent compactness", he says.
The record-sharp and extremely sensitive observations would not have been possible without the full power of the many radio telescopes of different sizes which together make up the EVN, explains Tao An from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, P.R. China.
"While the largest radio telescopes in the network contribute to the great sensitivity, the larger field of view provided by telescopes like the 25-m radio telescopes in Sheshan and Nanshan (China), and in Onsala (Sweden) played a crucial role in the investigation, allowing us to simultaneously observe Swift J1644+57 and a faint reference source," he says.
Swift J1644+57 is one of the first tidal disruption events to be studied in detail, and it won't be the last.
"Observations with the next generation of radio telescopes will tell us more about what actually happens when a star is eaten by a black hole - and how powerful jets form and evolve right next to black holes", explains Stefanie Komossa, astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.
"In the future, new, giant radio telescopes like FAST (Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope) and SKA (Square Kilometre Array) will allow us to make even more detailed observations of these extreme and exciting events," concludes Jun Yang.
The Daily Galaxy via Chalmers University
Image credit: ESA/S. Komossa/Beabudai Design
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An open letter a "manifesto" of sorts, framed and singed by many of the great scientists and minds of our century --from Stephen Hawking to Frank Drake, Lord Martin Rees, to Caltech's Kip Thorne shown above-- was published this past April 2016 (and posted below), outlining the philosophical foundations that inspired the Breakthrough Starshot project and the search for the answer to the seminal question of the 21st Century: "Are we alone in the universe?"
As all the world knows by now, Yuri Milner, the Russian billionaire Internet investor, and Stephen Hawking, the famed astrophysicist, have revealed plans for an interstellar mission, $100 million Breakthrough Starshot, that would launch chip-sized robotic probes at more than 25 percent the speed of light for 20-year journeys on the 25-trillion mile trip our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri.
A huge ground-based laser will push the swarms of "laser sails" (up to tens of thousands of probes per year) propelled by light from the sun toward their exotic destination. Light exerts very little pressure, but prior projects have already successfully tested a number of solar sails — spacecraft propelled by light from the sun. As a prelude to the journey, Starshot could launch interplanetary missions to explore unsolved mysteries of our solar system — driving "space-chips" to Mars in roughly 30 minutes, or to the potential life bearing habitats of Enceladus, Titan, and Europa.
Scientists estimate the orange dwarf Alpha Centauri B system is slightly older than our 4.6-billion-year old solar system at anywhere from 4.8 billion to 6.5 billion years old. If life on a planet or moon in the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri B evolved similarly as it did on Earth, then primitive forms of life could already have flourished there when the young Earth collided with a Mars-sized object, forming our moon.
Jonathan McDowell from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said that Starshot is humanity's best chance of reaching Alpha Centauri, but has several hurdles to surmount. "The trick is accelerating with the pressure of light to accelerate a big, thin film of plastic that's shiny and catches the laser light so it goes faster," he said. "That's been demonstrated by the Japanese in interplanetary space a couple of years ago, but no one's got it really fast and we're talking about putting something a thousand times faster than any human artifact has ever done." McDowell said that it could take a decade to get a spacecraft to accelerate with a light sail, and longer to adapt the technology for the Starshot nanocraft. "I think 10 years to get to demonstrating something accelerated with a laser light sail, but a generation to be able to do it for real to Alpha Centauri."
Harvard physics professor Abraham Loeb said that the Starshot project is made possible by recent advances in the miniaturization of electronics: "This method we're talking about was conceived as soon as the laser was invented … The problem back then was that people thought that they needed to take humans along," he explained. "The big technological advance over the past decades has been the miniaturization of electronics, smart electronics. It was all driven by the cellphone industry. If you look at an iPhone and strip it from the case and the human interface, you're left with smart electronics that weigh roughly a gram, much lighter than anything else to use."
Loeb said that Starshot will be able to rapidly explore the Solar System. "Just to give you an example, to get to Pluto it would take three days instead of the 9½ years it took New Horizons to get there. If we launch at a fifth of the speed of light, it'll get there the same week," he said.
The seminal "Open Letter," the Alpha Centauri Manifesto, below, lays down the foundational thinking behind the Breakthrough project.
The story of humanity is a story of great leaps out of Africa, across oceans, to the skies and into space. Since Apollo 11's ‘moonshot', we have been sending our machines ahead of us to planets, comets, even interstellar space. A mature civilization, like a mature individual, must ask itself this question. Is humanity defined by its divisions, its problems, its passing needs and trends? Or do we have a shared face, turned outward to the Universe?
In 1990, Voyager 1 swiveled its camera and captured the ‘Pale Blue Dot' - an image of Earth from six billion kilometers away. It was a mirror held up to our planet - home of water, life, and minds. A reminder that we share something precious and rare. But how rare, exactly? The only life? The only minds?
For the last half-century, small groups of scientists have listened valiantly for signs of life in the vast silence. But for government, academia, and industry, cosmic questions are astronomically far down the list of priorities. And that lengthens the odds of finding answers. It is hard enough to comb the Universe from the edge of the Milky Way; harder still from the edge of the public consciousness.
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Yet millions are inspired by these ideas, whether they meet them in science or science fiction. Because the biggest questions of our existence are at stake. Are we the Universe's only child - our thoughts its only thoughts? Or do we have cosmic siblings - an interstellar family of intelligence? As Arthur C. Clarke said, “In either case the idea is quite staggering.”
That means the search for life is the ultimate ‘win-win' endeavor. All we have to do is take part. Today we have search tools far surpassing those of previous generations. Telescopes can pick out planets across thousands of light years. The magic of Moore's law lets our computers sift data orders of magnitude faster than older mainframes - and ever quicker each year.
These tools are now reaping a harvest of discoveries. In the last few years, astronomers and the Kepler Mission have discovered thousands of planets beyond our solar system. It now appears that most stars host a planetary system. Many of them have a planet similar in size to our own, basking in the ‘habitable zone' where the temperature permits liquid water. There are likely billions of earth-like worlds in our galaxy alone. And with instruments now or soon available, we have a chance of finding out if any of these planets are true Pale Blue Dots home to water, life, even minds.
There has never been a better moment for a large-scale international effort to find life in the Universe. As a civilization, we owe it to ourselves to commit time, resources, and passion to this quest.
But as well as a call to action, this is a call to thought. When we find the nearest exo-Earth, should we send a probe? Do we try to make contact with advanced civilizations? Who decides? Individuals, institutions, corporations, or states? Or can we as species - as a planet - think together?
Three years ago, Voyager 1 broke the sun's embrace and entered interstellar space. The 20th century will be remembered for our travels within the solar system. With cooperation and commitment, the present century will be the time when we graduate to the galactic scale, seek other forms of life, and so know more deeply who we are.
But with current rocket propulsion technology, it would take tens or hundreds of millennia to reach our neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri. The stars, it seems, have set strict bounds on human destiny. Until now. In the last decade and a half, rapid technological advances have opened up the possibility of light-powered space travel at a significant fraction of light speed. This involves a ground-based light beamer pushing ultra-light nanocrafts miniature space probes attached to lightsails to speeds of up to 100 million miles an hour. Such a system would allow a flyby mission to reach Alpha Centauri in just over 20 years from launch, and beam home images of possible planets, as well as other scientific data such as analysis of magnetic fields.
Breakthrough Starshot aims to demonstrate proof of concept for ultra-fast light-driven nanocrafts, and lay the foundations for a first launch to Alpha Centauri within the next generation. Along the way, the project could generate important supplementary benefits to astronomy, including solar system exploration and detection of Earth-crossing asteroids.
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January 2016 also saw ‘first light' for Breakthrough Listen, with observations marking the start of the 10-year effort announced in July 2015 at London's Royal Society by Yuri Milner, Stephen Hawking, Lord Martin Rees, Ann Druyan, and Frank Drake. Hundreds of hours of observations have taken place using the Green Bank Radio Telescope in West Virginia and Lick Observatory's Automated Planet Finder in Mt. Hamilton, California.
Breakthrough Listen is the largest ever scientific research program aimed at finding evidence of civilizations beyond Earth. The scope and power of the search are on an unprecedented scale: The program includes a survey of the 1,000,000 closest stars to Earth. It scans the center of our galaxy and the entire galactic plane. Beyond the Milky Way, it listens for messages from the 100 closest galaxies to ours.
The instruments used are among the world's most powerful. They are 50 times more sensitive than existing telescopes dedicated to the search for intelligence.
The radio surveys cover 10 times more of the sky than previous programs. They also cover at least 5 times more of the radio spectrum and do it 100 times faster. They are sensitive enough to hear a common aircraft radar transmitting to us from any of the 1000 nearest stars.
They are also carrying out the deepest and broadest ever search for optical laser transmissions. These spectroscopic searches are 1000 times more effective at finding laser signals than ordinary visible light surveys. They could detect a 100 watt laser (the energy of a normal household bulb) from 25 trillion miles away.
Breakthrough Listen is releasing the first batch of data for public access at the Breakthrough Initiatives website. Data from the Green Bank Telescope is also available to users of UC Berkeley's SETI@home software.
Observations made so far by Breakthrough Listen include most of the stars within 16 light years of Earth (including stars such as 51 Pegasi that are known to host extra-solar planets), and a sample of stars between 16 and 160 light years away. This included nearby sun-like and giant stars as well as numerous binary stars. The search also targeted around 40 of the nearest spiral galaxies, including members of the Maffei Group in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia. Stars within 16 light years accessible only from the Southern Hemisphere, such as Alpha Centauri, will be observed by the end of the year with the Parkes Telescope.
This year's Observation Plan for all three telescopes has been published and can be found at breakthroughinitiatives.org/OpenDataSearch
The Daily Galaxy via breakthroughinitiatives.org
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"This is just the tip of the iceberg," says Andrew Glikson from The Australian National University (ANU). "We've only found evidence for 17 impacts older than 2.5 billion years, but there could have been hundreds. Asteroid strikes this big result in major tectonic shifts and extensive magma flows. They could have significantly affected the way the Earth evolved."
This May, 2016, scientists have found evidence of a huge asteroid 20 to 30 kilometers across that struck the what is today Australia, creating a 400 kilometer-wide impact zone after breaking in two moments before it slammed into the Earth. The impact crater has long since disappeared. But a team of Aussie geophysicists has found the twin scars of the impacts the largest impact zone ever found on Earth hidden deep in the earth's crust.
Tiny glass beads called spherules, found in north-western Australia were formed from vaporized material from the asteroid impact, said Glikson. “Large impacts like these may have had a far more significant role in the Earth's evolution than previously thought,” Glikson said.
The exact date of the impacts remains unclear. The surrounding rocks are 300 to 600 million years old, but evidence of the type left by other meteorite strikes is lacking. “It's a mystery we can't find an extinction event that matches these collisions. I have a suspicion the impact could be older than 300 million years,” he added.
“There are two huge deep domes in the crust, formed by the Earth's crust rebounding after the huge impacts, and bringing up rock from the mantle below,” Glikson said. The two impact zones total more than 400 kilometres across, in the Warburton Basin in Central Australia. They extend through the Earth's crust, which is about 30 kilometres thick in this area.
"The impact would have triggered earthquakes orders of magnitude greater than terrestrial earthquakes, it would have caused huge tsunamis and would have made cliffs crumble," said Glikson, from the ANU Planetary Institute. "Material from the impact would have spread worldwide. These spherules were found in sea floor sediments that date from 3.46 billion years ago."
About 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago the moon was struck by numerous asteroids, which formed the craters, called mare, that are still visible from Earth "Exactly where this asteroid struck the earth remains a mystery," Glikson said. "Any craters from this time on Earth's surface have been obliterated by volcanic activity and tectonic movements."
Glikson and Arthur Hickman from Geological Survey of Western Australia found the glass beads in a drill core from Marble Bar, in north-western Australia, in some of the oldest known sediments on Earth. The sediment layer, which was originally on the ocean floor, was preserved between two volcanic layers, which enabled very precise dating of its origin.
Glikson has been searching for evidence of ancient impacts for more than 20 years and immediately suspected the glass beads originated from an asteroid strike. Subsequent testing found the levels of elements such as platinum, nickel and chromium matched those in asteroids. There may have been many more similar impacts, for which the evidence has not been found, said Glikson.
The Daily Galaxy via Australian National University
Image credit: Top of page with thanks to Shutterstock
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No matter how late it is in the evening or how tired you are, briefings are always needed before doing activities.
Astronauts from five space agencies around the world are taking part in ESA's CAVES training course Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising human behaviour and performance Skills.
The two-week course prepares astronauts to work safely and effectively in multicultural teams in an environment where safety is critical.
As they explore the caves of Sardinia they will encounter caverns, underground lakes and strange microscopic life. They are testing new technology and conducting science just as if they were living on the International Space Station. The six astronauts relying on their own skills, teamwork and ground control to achieve their mission goals the course is designed to foster effective communication, decision-making, problem-solving, leadership and team dynamics.
This year is the first international space cooperation to involve astronauts from China, Russia, Japan, ESA and America, with cosmonaut Sergei Vladimirovich, ESA astronaut Pedro Duque, taikonaut Ye Guangfu, Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide and NASA astronauts Ricky Arnold and Jessica Muir taking part.
Follow CAVES via twitter @ESA_CAVES or with #CAVES2016 or on the CAVES blog.
Credits: ESA-V.Crobu
Jupiter watchers have long known that the giant planet's ever-present polar auroras thousands of times brighter and many times bigger than Earth are powered by both electrically charged particles from the Sun colliding with Jupiter's magnetic field and a separate interaction between Jupiter and one of its many moons, called Io. But there are also auroral explosions on Jupiter, or periods of dazzling brightening, similar to auroral storms on Earth, that no one could definitively trace back to either of those known causes.
In the aurora-making interaction of Jupiter and Io, volcanoes on the small moon blast clouds of electrically charged atoms (ions) and electrons into a region surrounding Jupiter that's permeated by the planet's powerful magnetic field, thousands of times stronger than Earth's. Rotating along with its rapidly spinning planet, the magnetic field drags the material from Io around with it, causing strong electric fields at Jupiter's poles. The acceleration of the ions and electrons produce intense auroras that shine in almost all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum but most brightly in high-energy bands, like ultraviolet light and X-rays, that are invisible to unaided human eyes.
Io is the only known place in the Solar System with volcanoes erupting extremely hot lava like that seen on Earth. Because of Io's low gravity, large volcanic eruptions produce an umbrella of debris that rises high into space. Such outbursts can send material hundreds of miles above the surface.
The recent eruptions resemble past events that spewed tens of cubic miles of lava over hundreds of square miles in a short period of time. All three events, including the largest, most powerful eruption of the trio on 29 August, 2013, were likely characterized by “curtains of fire," as lava blasted out of fissures perhaps several miles long.
The 29 August, 2013, outburst on Io shown below was among the largest ever observed on the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Infrared image taken by Gemini North telescope. Image credit: Katherine de Kleer, UC Berkeley.
The brightest eruption at a caldera named Rarog Patera, was calculated to have produced a 50 square-mile, 30ft thick lava flow, while another close to a caldera called Heno Patera, produced flows covering 120 square miles. Both were located in Io's southern hemisphere, near its limb, and were nearly gone when imaged five days later.
Now, new observations of the planet's extreme ultraviolet emissions show that bright explosions of Jupiter's aurora likely also get kicked off by the planet-moon interaction, not by solar activity. A new scientific paper about these observations by Tomoki Kimura of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), in Sagamihara, Kanagawa, Japan, and his colleagues, was published online today in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
Io produces about 100 times more lava each year than all the volcanoes on Earth. While Earth's volcanoes occur in localized hotspots like the "Ring of Fire" around the Pacific Ocean, Io's volcanoes are distributed all over its surface. A global magma ocean about 30 to 50 kilometers (20 to 30 miles) beneath Io's crust helps explain the moon's activity.
"It has been suggested that both the Earth and its moon may have had similar magma oceans billions of years ago at the time of their formation, but they have long since cooled," said Torrence Johnson, a former Galileo project scientist based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. He was not directly involved in the study. "Io's volcanism informs us how volcanoes work and provides a window in time to styles of volcanic activity that may have occurred on the Earth and moon during their earliest history."
NASA's Voyager spacecraft discovered Io's volcanoes in 1979, making that moon the only body in the solar system other than Earth known to have active magma volcanoes. The energy for the volcanic activity comes from the squeezing and stretching of the moon by Jupiter's gravity as Io orbits the largest planet in the solar system.
Starting in January 2014, a telescope aboard the JAXA's Hisaki satellite, which focused on Jupiter for two months, recorded intermittent brightening of the giant planet's aurora. The telescope detected sudden flare-ups on days when the usual flow of charged particles from the Sun, known as the solar wind, was relatively weak.
Additional space and ground-based telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, also viewed Jupiter during these lulls in the solar wind. Both Hisaki and Hubble witnessed explosions of the planet's aurora despite the solar wind's calm, suggesting that it's the Jupiter-Io interaction driving these explosions, not charged particles from the Sun, according to the new study. The new research does not address exactly what is happening in the Jovian magnetosphere to cause the temporary brightening of auroral explosions.
The Daily Galaxy via NASA/JPL and AGU
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Potter wasp (Eumenes crucifera) collected in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia, Canada, and photographed at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (sample ID: BIOUG13335-D09; specimen record: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_RecordView?processid=SSBRC1473-14; BIN: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_BarcodeCluster?clusteruri=BOLD:AAE0431)
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Last night I was lucky enough to fly with @nyonair on a beautiful helicopter ride above New York City. The flight truly offered a new perspective of my hometown, including this shot I captured of 432 Park Avenue. At a height of 1,396 ft (426 m), the building will contain 104 condominium apartments and will be the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere. The building is so thin and so tall (1:15 width to height ratio) that in order to achieve structural stability, two levels are left completely exposed every 12 floors so that wind passes through and the building sways less. ? by @benjaminrgrant (at 432 Park Avenue)
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national-geographic-2016 Daily Mail | Super-intelligent predator robot is taught to hunt down prey in chilling experiment Daily Mail Scientists have taught a robot how to hunt and destroy prey in a chilling new experiment. The test comes as experts warm AI could wipe out a tenth of the global population in five years. The ability to identify and zone in on a specific target will be ... Now Scientists Are Teaching a Robot to Hunt PreyGizmodo Super-intelligent 'predator robot' taught to hunt down 'prey' with chilling efficiencyThe Sun Scientists are teaching robots how to hunt down preyEngadget Motherboard all 5 news articles » |
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Citizens of London in the UK, Düsseldorf in Germany, and Bern in Switzerland will soon be able to order packages, groceries and food and have it delivered by a self-driving robot.
Starting in July, it's a test program by robot maker Starship Technologies (co-founded by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis), an Estonian startup who has partnered with several food and package delivery companies to make the program a reality.
Currently the partners include London food delivery startup Pronto.co.uk, European food delivery company Just Eat, German package delivery firm Hermes and German retailer Metro Group. Read more...
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Now the largest exhibit in the Imperial War Museum's collection, HMS Belfast is permanently moored on the River Thames in the Pool of London. She is seen here from outside Old Billingsgate Market on the river's north bank as a bright autumnal day comes to a close.
The Town-class cruisers (Belfast and Edinburgh) were constrained to less than 10,000 tons by the Washington Naval Treaty of the early 1920s. The original design included quadruple 6-inch gun mountings, but due to problems with construction, improved versions of the triple mountings fitted to the earlier ships of the class were fitted instead. These were lighter than those planned, and the weight saved was used to improve the ship's armour and anti-aircraft defences.
Belfast was launched on St Patrick's Day in 1938 at Harland and Wolff Shipyard in Belfast and was commissioned in August 1939. At around 0100 on 21 November 1939 she was seriously damaged leaving the Firth of Forth by a magnetic mine laid on 4 November by the German submarine U-21. The mine broke the keel and wrecked the hull and machinery to such an extent that she only returned to service in the Home Fleet in November 1942. Improvements had been made to the ship during repairs, notably bulged amidships to improve her longitudinal strength and stability, and fitting the latest radar and fire control; her displacement had risen from 11,175 to 11,553 tons, making her Britain's heaviest cruiser.
On 26 December 1943, in what became the Battle of North Cape, Norfolk, Belfast and Sheffield encountered the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst, and, with the battleship HMS Duke of York, sank her. In June 1944, Belfast took part in the D-Day bombardment in support of landings on Gold and Juno beaches. Belfast was almost continuously in action for the next five weeks, firing thousands of rounds from her 6 and 4inch batteries in support of troops until the battlefront moved out of range inland. Her final salvo in the European war was fired on 8 July during Operation Charnwood, the battle to capture Caen, when she engaged German positions together with the battleship HMS Rodney and the monitor HMS Roberts.
Belfast served in the Korean War, supporting UN forces by naval bombardment. In July 1952 she was hit by a Communist battery, losing one man killed and four wounded. Belfast was modernised between January 1956 and May 1959. In December 1961 she provided the British guard of honour at Dar-es-Salaam during the Tanganyika independence ceremony. The ship was finally paid off on 24 August 1963.
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Nearly one quarter of all Americans reach for a bottle of Tylenol every week to take the edge off a headache, fever or toothache. Experiments suggest it might also have another effect on you.
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The recent trend of increasing Antarctic sea ice extent — seemingly at odds with climate model projections — can largely be explained by a natural climate fluctuation, according to a new study. The study offers evidence that the negative phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, which is characterized by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific, has created favorable conditions for additional Antarctic sea ice growth since 2000.
Image credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Cindy Starr
A sociology student has scored a first class degree in sociology, in large part because of her mighty 10,000-word thesis on American reality TV "star" family the Kardashians.…
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London Heathrow Sunset 28-May-2016
Taken through the hotel window
NTG's pictures posted a photo:
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London Heathrow Sunset 28-May-2016
Taken through the hotel window
NTG's pictures posted a photo:
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London Heathrow Sunset 28-May-2016
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Tech Times | Engineers Working On Cyborg Locusts That Can Sniff Out Explosives Tech Times Researchers from the Washington University in St. Louis are working on a project to create cyborg locusts. The bugs will be able to perform better in bomb detection compared with robots due to their powerful sense of smell. ( Baranidharan Raman ... Washington University to train locusts to 'sniff out explosives'Daily Mail Cyborg locusts trained to sniff out bombsTimes LIVE Locusts to 'sniff out explosives'BBC News ITV News -Telegraph.co.uk -Gizmodo -St. Louis Public Radio all 17 news articles » |
Computerworld | Deep learning wins the day in Amazon's warehouse robot challenge Computerworld Amazon is always on the lookout for new robotic technologies to improve efficiency in its warehouses, and this year deep learning appears to be leading the way. That's according to the results of the second annual Amazon Picking Challenge, which has ... and more » |
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Intelligent robots are all well and good until they start learning how to hunt prey. That's exactly what a team of scientists at the Institute of Neuroinformatics at the University of Zurich in Switzerland did. They taught a robot to behave like a pr... Cheating is an unforgivable offence for paper wasps and has a direct effect on their hormones, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.…
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Drosophila egg chambers stained with a DNA dye (red). Drosophila is a genus of small flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "fruit flies" or, less frequently, pomace flies, vinegar flies or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species to linger around overripe or rotting fruit. One species of Drosophila in particular, D. melanogaster, has been heavily used in research in genetics and is a common model organism in developmental biology.
Image credit: ©Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
Vid A new study suggests the early history of Mars was incredibly violent and the planet's two small moons are the sole surviving remnants of what was once a shimmering halo.…
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Some people take photos of designs they see out in the world that inspire them. Others create mood boards for tracking inspiration. But having a photo of something isn't the same as being able to it in your own work. Knowing this, Fiona O'Leary, a student at the Royal College of Art, developed a prototype called the Spector, so she could capture any font and color she sees in the world. If she loved the font London uses on its subway maps, for instance, she could use this device to capture that font and load it into Adobe InDesign. Spector takes a photo of the font and uses an algorithm to translate that image into information about the shape of letters and symbols. It then cross-references that information with a font database to...
Destructoid | The heartbreaking saga of Mighty No. 9 Destructoid So how about we see what resident decommissioned fighting robot Tony Ponce has to dig up about the story of Beck. ~Strider]. This is an article I was never sure I would write. I've gone back and forth over past last year and half, itching to put my ... |
Daily Mail | Watch the incredible 'suckbot' in Amazon's 'roboshopper olympics' Daily Mail This two event challenge aims to close the gap between the industrial and academic robotic communities and develop solutions to some of the biggest problems in unstructured automation. The challenge is divided into two separate finals: during the 'stow ... Robotic arms race for online retailersFort Wayne Journal Gazette New warehouse robots roll out after Amazon corners marketArkansas Online all 28 news articles » |
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Goeldi Marmoset Or Goeldi Monkey Sitting On A Tree Stump, Ecuador, South America
It's time for astroboffins and enthusiasts to start clearing space on their hard drives: the European Space Agency has scheduled its first Gaia mission data drop for September 14, 2016.…
Trump's "sheriff star" tweet marks another unforced error for the campaign, in what's become an almost constant stream of gaffes and blunders.
Enjoy Juno's trip to Jupiter — after that we'll see a little gap in planetary science missions from the U.S. That's because a NASA budget crunch several years ago left fewer missions in the pipeline.
London-based tech companies face the uncertainty of the upcoming exit from the European Union. Many worry about less investment and less access to the talent they need to grow. Some may just leave.
The Lumineers are among many artists frustrated by people on their mobile devices during performances. Their singer explains why they're asking fans to lock up their phones with a new technology.
Western Australia's government is seeking the power to approve activities that could ‘take or disturb' an endangered species
Western Australia's government could have the power to approve activities that could make a threatened species extinct, under biodiversity laws now before state parliament.
The provision has been dubbed “the God clause” by scientists and conservationists, who say giving the environment minister discretion to effectively authorise the extinction of a species contradicts the very purpose of biodiversity legislation.
Related: Numbats given reprieve as WA council scraps plans for rubbish dump
Related: Global biodiversity targets won't be met by 2020, scientists say
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Few things can ruin a good run like turning a corner and facing a towering hill. You were making good time! You were flying along and everything felt great and the robot lady on your running app was whispering excellent numbers into your ear. Now that all comes to an end. You must trudge.
Hills are as much a mental challenge as a physical one. If you fear hills, it's hard to get better at running them. Maybe you can't turn off gravity, but you can change the way you think.
This is an especially important point in races, and anytime you're running with other people. No matter how much you slow down, remember that everyone else is slowing down too. Even the people that have their heads high and look like they're breathing easy. Those people know how to run hills (and soon you will, too) but gravity applies to them just as it does to you. They are fighting to chug up the hill. They are much slower, now, than they were on the flat a few minutes ago. That's normal.
So don't be discouraged that you, too, slow down when you hit a hill. Just like the speedsters are faster than you on the flat, some people will be faster than you on a hill. When people start passing you, you can't wish yourself stronger. All you can do is use the strength that you have today, however much or how little that might be.
We've explained hill running techniques before, but one part is crucial: you can't let yourself work harder on the hill than on flat ground. Does that sound impossible? Remember, you're slower on the hills. You know this, so you're allowing yourself to go slow. Even embarassingly slow. (But now that you understand this, you won't be embarrassed.) You must go so slow that the hill no longer feels difficult.
http://vitals.lifehacker.com/how-to-run-hil...
The easiest way to do this is to listen to the rhythm of your footsteps. When the road starts to slope upwards, keep that rhythm the same, but make your strides smaller. It may feel like you're only moving by an inch with each step. That's okay. You're still moving.
It only takes about ten seconds to gauge whether your steps are small enough. If you're out of breath, try again: step even smaller. You need to find the place where you're not working any harder than you would be on flat ground.
What if you're stepping so small that it would be faster to just walk? There are two answers to this. If you're in a race, do whatever is faster for the same effort. On very steep hills, that might be walking. But if you're on a training run where pace isn't super important, practice running even if you're slow. That will build the right muscles so someday soon you will be able to run faster.
If you end up walking because you started up the hill too fast, that's okay. Walking does not mean giving up. Keep up the same effort level as when you were jogging on the flat. Stay strong. Keep climbing.
Now that you're locked in to the perfect pace, do not look up. Hold your head high, because that's good running form, but don't pay attention to the top of the hill. There are two reasons for this.
First, the top of the hill is an illusion. If you pick a spot that looks like the top, and decide your effort will be over when you reach that spot, you'll find when you arrive that you are not at the top after all.
Second, this isn't a sprint with a finish line. You chose a pace that feels easy, so you shouldn't be longing for the stretch to end. I once tried to explain this to my son in terms of the fable about the tortoise and the hare. You don't want to sprint like the hare, because you'll get tired, I said. But before I could blurt out some advice about going “slow,” he explained it better than I could. “OK, not rabbit fast,” he said. “I'll go turtle fast.”
You can go turtle fast forever. It doesn't matter how far away the top of the hill is. It could be ten paces, it could be ten miles. You're going, and that's all that counts. Don't look up.
When you tell yourself that you're good at hills, it becomes true. Skeptical? Go out and run a small hill this week. Use these techniques and try to make your climb feel easy and great. Now, stick that happy easy hill run into your mental highlight reel. The next time you hit a monster hill, smile. You know hills. You're good at hills. You've got this.
http://vitals.lifehacker.com/make-a-mental-...
Even with that minimal preparation, you have a real advantage over the hill-phobes: confidence. They fear the hill and stop, walk, feel defeated, feel that they failed. You hit the same hill and slow down, but you are in your element. You are not afraid to keep moving. You respect the hill, but you conquer it.
Illustration by Angelica Alzona.
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Harvesting the eggs, sperm and tissue of endangered animals for future cloning is a good plot for a horror film, but not reality (Report, 5 July). We need to spend time and resources on saving existing animals whose natural habitats are fast disappearing, rather than trying to resurrect them. Cloning animals after they've vanished from nature is fraught with problems, such as severe birth defects, premature degenerative diseases and poor immunity. If wild animals were cloned, they would likely end up in zoos, denied the opportunity to do almost anything natural and enjoyable, just like the polar bears, elephants and other animals currently kept captive. It is inarguably urgent to save threatened species' habitats, but inflicting pain and torture is not the answer. If Dolly has taught us one thing, it's that cloning animals belongs only in sci-fi stories.
Jennifer White
London
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ArtGordon1 posted a photo:
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Daily Mail | Washington University to train locusts to 'sniff out explosives' Daily Mail A team of engineers from Washington University in St. Louis hopes to breed 'cyberinsects' tuned to smell out explosives. Wing tattoos will allow researchers to steer the insects remotely. HOW IT WILL WORK. Researchers hope to develop and demonstrate a ... Cyborg locusts being developed to sniff out explosivesITV News Scientist Wants to Engineer Locusts Into Remote-Controlled Bomb DetectorsGizmodo Why is the Navy paying to engineer hordes of tattooed robot locusts?TrustedReviews BBC News -The Stack -Telegraph.co.uk -Engadget all 12 news articles » |
The Guardian | Amazon moves one step closer toward army of warehouse robots The Guardian Kiva robots transport goods at an Amazon Fulfillment Center, ahead of the Christmas rush, in Tracy, California in 2014. Photograph: Noah Berger/Reuters. Sam Thielman in New York. @samthielman. Tuesday 5 July 2016 15.15 EDT Last modified on Tuesday ... Amazon robot competition won by shelf stacking AI that could one day be used in warehousesThe Independent Team Delft Wins Amazon Picking ChallengeIEEE Spectrum Amazon robots close to replacing the rest of warehouse workersExtremeTech The Verge -BBC News -Engadget -Tech News Today all 23 news articles » |
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You don't need animal protein to bulk up: just look at the gorilla, hippo, rhino, and elephant -- all herbivores!
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Read more: Environment, National Monuments, Sierra Club, Public Lands, Stonewall, Green News
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The Islamic holy month of Ramadan is a time of reflection and prayer. Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking, and sex during the daylight hours in order to focus on spirituality, good deeds, and charity. When the sun sets, communities come together for Iftar, the breaking of the fast. Now that the month has come to a close, Eid al-Fitr, or the festival of the breaking of the fast, begins. We looked at Ramadan earlier this month, but there were just so many more great photographs, we're doing it again.
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Sunset over Tottenham
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Oystermouthcastle, castle / swansea / wales / united kingdom
The early castle[edit]
The first castle was founded by William de Londres of Ogmore Castle soon after 1106 following the capture of Gower by the Normans. In 1116 the Welsh of Deheubarth retook the Gower Peninsula and forced William to flee his castle which was put to the torch. The castle was rebuilt soon afterwards, but was probably destroyed again in 1137 when Gower was once more retaken by the princes of Deheubarth. The Londres or London family finally died out in 1215 when Gower was again taken by the Welsh under the leadership of Llywelyn the Great. In 1220 the Welsh were expelled from the peninsula and the government of Henry III of England returned the barony of Gower to John de Braose who rebuilt both Swansea Castle and Oystermouth.
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