%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.slate.com%252Farticles%252Fpodcasts%252Fgabfest%252F2016%252F07%252Fthe_republicans_unconventional_convention_in_cleveland_and_the_departure.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: The “Your Word is Your Bond” Edition
To listen to the discussion, use the player below:
Become a fan of the Political Gabfest on Facebook. We post to the Facebook page throughout the week, so keep the conversation going by joining us there. Or follow us @SlateGabfest. The email address for the Political Gabfest is gabfest@slate.com. (Email may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
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On this week's Slate Political Gabfest, David Plotz, Emily Bazelon, and John Dickerson discuss the Republicans' unconventional convention in Cleveland and the departure of Fox News head Roger Ailes amid a sexual harassment suit filed by former host Gretchen Carlson.
Here are some of the links and references from this week's show:
Gretchen Carlson's suit against Roger Ailes is an uphill battle against the secrecy and arbitration provisions in her Fox News employment contract
Emily chatters about voter ID decisions, in particular the federal appeals court ruling against a Texas law.
John chatters about Elektro the Motoman, a 7-foot-tall robot built by Westinghouse for the 1939 World's Fair that could move under its own power and smoke. He had a cameo in “Sex Kittens Go to College”—a 1960 exploitation film that Trailers From Hellbreaks down.
David chatters about Atlas Obscura's new podcast “Escape Plan” that he's hosting with Reyhan Harmanci and John's live shows in New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., for his new book Whistlestop.
Topic ideas for next week? You can tweet suggestions, links, and questions to @SlateGabfest (#heygabfest). (Tweets may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Podcast production by Jocelyn Frank. Links compiled by Kevin Townsend.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.engadget.com%252F2016%252F07%252F21%252Fcuriosity-rover-can-shoot-lasers-at-any-rock-it-wants%252F%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Curiosity rover can shoot lasers at any rock it wants Is there anything cooler than sending a robot to Mars to shoot rocks with lasers? Probably not -- which is why NASA is giving the Curiosity rover the ability to shoot even more rocks with lasers. Okay, technically NASA is giving the Martian rover the... robots
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.slate.com%252Fblogs%252Ffuture_tense%252F2016%252F07%252F21%252Fhacking_mr_robot_week_2_elliot_descends_further_into_madness.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: The Trauma of Digital Warfare, on Hacking Mr. Robot: Week 2
Slate and Future Tense are discussing Mr. Robot and the technological world it portrays throughout the show's second season. You can follow this conversation on Future Tense, and Slate Plus members can also listen to Hacking Mr. Robot, a members-only podcast series featuring Lily Hay Newman and Fred Kaplan.
The third episode of Mr. Robot (don't forget that the premiere was two parts) dropped on Wednesday night, bringing hacker protagonist Elliot Alderson deeper into his madness and despair. It's unclear how long the show will keep Elliot isolated and too confused about reality to actually, you know, do things, but it seems like this episode was the complication before some resolution.
Knowing the show, that resolution will almost certainly be complicating and strange. But Elliot is a talented hacker—he can't live a remote, analog life forever. Meanwhile, the fallout from Fsociety's massive hack of ECorp continues. People close to Fsociety keep getting murdered, an FBI agent is poking around, and ECorp CEO Phillip Price takes an interest in Elliot's childhood friend Angela Moss, who now works in communications for ECorp.
This week's episode didn't have technology driving the plot the way Mr. Robot episodes often do. It was more about exploring the parallels between our digital selves and our interior selves—parts of us that are very real, but don't have a physical manifestation. Season 2 also seems to be meditating on the impacts of digital warfare. Though there's no violent combat, Elliot still seems traumatized by the display of Fsociety's power and his own. Or is it Mr. Robot's power?
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.scientificamerican.com%252Farticle%252Frobot-with-sea-slug-parts-makes-cyborg-debut%252F%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Robot with Sea Slug Parts Makes Cyborg Debut Mollusk mouth contractions propel a 3-Dprinted plastic frame
-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.theguardian.com%252Fsport%252F2016%252Fjul%252F21%252Fjoe-root-interview-england-cricket-pakistan%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Joe Root: ‘This year whenever I've made a mistake I've paid the price'
England's No3 recalls his ugly shot in the first Test against Pakistan that had dire consequences and forging his steely character aged 12 in the Yorkshire leagues
“Unfortunately I am a human being and not a robot,” Joe Root says with a dry little smile as he looks down at the beautifully sunlit expanse of Old Trafford while remembering the ugly shot that cost him his wicket in the first innings of England's Test defeat against Pakistan at Lord's. As Pakistan carry out fielding drills in preparation for the second Test, starting on Friday, Root shakes off his lingering disappointment from a dismissal that changed the course of last week's fascinating match.
England's best batsman came to the crease on the second morning at Lord's. Pakistan had been bowled out for a decent if hardly imperious 339. Yet, after Alex Hales was caught in the second over, England were eight for one and Root was tested again. Batting in a new position, in the vital role of No3, he needed to build a foundation with Alastair Cook while shifting pressure back on to Pakistan.
Bookmark Kinja Deals and follow us on Twitter to never miss a deal. Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more, and don't forget to sign up for our email newsletter.
Just because you're outdoors and/or floating on a body of water doesn't mean you can't have something comfortable to sit on. This $38 CloudLounger inflates in seconds, folds down to fit in a small bag, and even comes with a water-resistant Bluetooth speaker. Just note that this is a Gold Box deal, so be sure to pick one up before it floats away. Multiple colors available.
As part of its Black Friday in July sale, Best Buy is offering up $5 gift cards when you purchase $50 in select gift cards to other retailers, or $10 when you buy $100.
Best Buy's Black Friday in July sale offers up deals on TVs, computers, and more, but the most exciting discounts are probably on an array of video games and gaming accessories.
Scroll down to the gaming section to find deals on dozens of games, both major consoles, hardcover game guides, amiibo, headsets, and more. Just note that you'll need a free My Best Buy account to get the discounts.
If you're in the market for a home theater audio upgrade, you can pick up a pair of Harman Kardon HKTS 30 satellite speakers for $89 today on Amazon. That's the cheapest they've ever been, and they typically sell for around $200 per pair.
Note: Unfortunately, the regular .edu discount doesn't seem to stack with this promotion. You'll also need a free My Best Buy account to see the discounts.
You can adjust the color temperature of this LED desk lamp by sliding your finger along its arm, or change the brightness by doing the same on its base. Plus, its brushed aluminum design looks way nicer than most LED desk lamp deals we've seen.
Jackery's newest battery packs include Quick Charge 3.0, and they're offering $8 launch discounts on both the 10,050mAh and 20,100mAh varieties today. Just use promo code THUNDERJ at checkout.
I know we're all sweating under the heat dome right now, but winter will be back soon enough, and if you plan ahead, you can save big on coats, jackets, vests, and more in Patagonia's 30% off summer sale.
These $6 deals from Andake can support your neck, your back, and your senses while sleeping on a plane. If you have any long trips on the horizon, these are no-brainers.
Whether you're enticed by the idea of a Bluetooth-connected toothbrush, or just want it to get off your lawn, $85 is a great deal for an Oral-B toothbrush with a pressure sensor, five modes, and compatibility with several different brush heads.
If you want to pair it with your phone to track your brushing habits and learn which parts of your mouth aren't getting enough attention, great! If not, it's still worth buying at this price. Just be sure to clip the $15 coupon.
With an extra 20% off sale items, PUMA's Semi-Annual Sale could score you two pairs of sneakers for the price of one. Apparel, bags and accessories, and workout gear are also included in this extra discount. Just add your choices to your cart, and you should see the discount at checkout automatically.
We see lots of deals on SSD enclosures, but this $5 USB to SATA IIII cable achieves the same ends while showing off the SSD itself, rather than hiding it behind plastic. Obviously, you wouldn't want to go this route if you're throwing the SSD in a bag, but if it's just going to be sitting on your desk, it looks pretty damn cool.
We're no strangers to portable car jump starter/USB battery pack combos around these parts, but this new model from Aukey is unique in its ultra-compact, flashlight-like design. In addition to its 12,000mAh USB power bank, it can put out 400 peak amps through a set of included jumper cables, which should be sufficient to start most standard car engines.
Running shoes for a reasonable price are usually one of two things. They're either terribly quality or a ridiculous colorway. These Asics GEL-Flux 2 Running Shoes are neither, and they're only $38 on Asics' eBay storefront firght now right now, compared to $50-$70 elsewhere.
We know you guys like Velcro cable ties, but if you're interested in a different option for keeping your wires organized, these neoprene zip-up sleeves are cheaper than we've ever seen before.
Mpow's extra large motion-sensing solar outdoor lights can illuminate your entire front or back yard, and you can get one for $17, or two for $31 today on Amazon.
Today only, Amazon's slashing prices on CRKT and Kershaw blades, ranging from tiny folding knives to freakin' machetes. This is a Gold Box deal though, so hurry (but don't run, because knives) over to Amazon to lock in your order.
Unlike smartphone lens add-ons that require a special case or a specific phone model, Mpow's 3-in-1 kit uses a clamp to attach to your device, which means it should work with virtually any smartphone. Once that clip's in place, you get to choose from three different lenses: Fisheye, wide angle, and macro. Several Amazon reviewers have uploaded sample photos and videos, and they look pretty great to my eyes, particularly the close-up macros.
You can seemingly build just about anything with a Raspberry Pi, including your own miniature NES, and here's a great deal on the newest Raspberry Pi 3. The kit comes with everything you need to get started, and will only set you back $57 with promo code D9UXNAIL.
We see a lot of deals on Eneloop AA batteries, but your collection isn't complete without those pesky AAAs. While supplies last, Amazon will sell you a 12-pack for $20, or about $6 less than usual.
Roombas have been bopping around our houses for about a decade now, but the Roomba 980 is the first model that might actually be considered “smart.” It's certainly not cheap at $760 (via Adorama's eBay store), but that's still $140 less than elsewhere, and the best price we've seen.
We've seen our fair share of cheap Bluetooth ear buds, but how about on-ears? Mpow's Muze Touch headphones are wireless, foldable, and can run for 12 hours on a charge. That's a heck of a package for $36. Remember, your next phone might not have a headphone jack, so this is as good a time as any to get accustomed to wireless.
This compact RAVPower battery pack can fit in just about any pocket, but still has enough juice to charge your phone about two full times, making it perfect for your next Pokémon Go outing. Plus, it's 2A input allows you to recharge it twice as fast as most comparable battery packs.
Just when you thought you knew everything there was to know about cable management, the depths of Amazon toss you a surprise. This magnetic cable clip system includes one magnetic base that you can stick anywhere via its included adhesive, and three magnetic clips that you attach to your most-used cables, allowing them to stick to the base effortlessly.
There are surely less expensive cable holders out there—we post deals on them frequently—but the allure of just dropping your cable onto a magnetic base and knowing that it'll stay put is awfully tempting.
When it comes to having a corner on the market, nothing really compares to Nike. Use the code KICKS20 to score an extra 20% off already reduced men's and women's clearance items and hop on that sportswear bandwagon.
Away Travel, $20 off with code KINJA, free shipping, expires 7/25 at 11:59pm.
Away Travel arrived with a perfect set of reasonably-priced luggage for everyone, and they're offering Kinja Deals readers the company's first ever discount. Use promo code KINJA to take $20 off your order, and head over to this post to learn more.
If the SD card currently in your camera takes too long to write images, or if it just doesn't offer enough space for your upcoming vacation, this 64GB Sony is a fantastic value at $15.
Since iOS devices don't let you use microSD cards for extra storage, this could come in handy for offloading your phone's vacation photos if you're running low on space, or storing extra movies and TV shows for long flights. We've seen deals on a few similar products in the past, but $30 for 32GB is the best price we've seen.
If you want to dip your toes into the world of electric toothbrushes, Philips' entry level Sonicare Essence line is an amazing value at $20. I've been using this brush for years, and I still love it.
You'll have a wait out a short backorder, but just clip the $5 coupon on the page to get the deal. This is easily the best price we've ever seen on any Sonicare brush.
While we do see 20% discounts from time to time, a $100 iTunes gift card for $85 is still a solid deal if you pay for Apple Music, iCloud storage, or PokéCoins.
Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more, and don't forget to sign up for our email newsletter. We want your feedback.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.slate.com%252Fblogs%252Fbrowbeat%252F2016%252F07%252F21%252Fcreamy_frozen_yogurt_recipe.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Make Genius, Creamy, Scoopable Frozen Yogurt in Three Ingredients (and 20 Minutes) Flat
Remember when frozen yogurt was just a sweet, low-fat ice cream substitute that we all resented? (The carob chips probably weren't helping.)
To be fair, we didn't know what we wanted our frozen yogurt to be—yet. In digging deeper into our national relationship with froyo, one of the earliest mentions I found was from 1978, when The Country Gentleman advised, “In desserts, the tartness (lactic acid) [of yogurt] can be overcome with honey or fruit.”
It took Pinkberry's world takeover* in 2005** to help us realize how much we love—really, really love—frozen yogurt that actually tastes like yogurt.
That bright, undeniably yogurt-y flavor should have been our first clue. Because, as it turns out, making tart, sweet, creamy, soul-rebirthing-on-a-hot-day frozen yogurt at home is literally as simple as sticking yogurt in an ice cream maker, along with a little salt and a little more sugar.
You can eat it like soft-serve (like Pinkberry) straightaway, but even if you pack it up in the freezer, it will stay creamy and scoopable, not icy or grainy—particularly if you use this formula, developed and stress-tested by Max Falkowitz, and co-author of the forthcoming Dumpling Galaxy Cookbook.***
For one thing, think of frozen yogurt more like a sorbet than an ice cream, as Falkowitz and pastry chefs do: “It illustrates one of the most elegant heuristics about sorbet (and frozen yogurt, despite the dairy, behaves basically like sorbet): You want about 4 parts liquid to 1 part sugar by volume for something scoopable,” he wrote to me. After looking up heuristics, I agreed.
That said, frozen yogurt still holds onto a lot of richness in the form of dairy fat, so it's creamier than sorbet, too. I might even say it has a balance between sparkly-crisp and milky-comforting similar to my my signature ice cream float from second grade—lemon-lime soda over scoops of cookies & cream—but I don't expect you to agree with me.
To pre-empt your questions: Don't substitute nonfat yogurt. (Or don't say I didn't warn you.) Yes, you can use Greek yogurt, but you might want to cut it with a little liquid to keep it from being too creamy, like in the white wine version linked above. Yes, you can play around with different sweeteners and mix-ins and infusions. (Max's tips are here.) If you don't have an ice cream maker, do the things that people tell you to do. But also, did you know they cost approximately $50 and will do the stirring for you?
And yes, once you can get going, you can call yourself a frozen yogurt machine. Just not world's first frozen yogurt robot—I'm afraid that's taken.
***Falkowitz would want you to know that credit should be shared with Ethan Frisch, his former co-writer of the ice cream column onSerious Eats. “Ethan's a legitimate 100% genius, in the kitchen and out of it, and when he's not doing NGO work in Afghanistan and Syria he's cooking beautiful elaborate meals in tiny kitchens,” Falkowitz says.
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FScience360NewsServicePictureOfTheDay%2F%7E3%2FWnH8tUigH3s%2Flagoon-nebula&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 The Lagoon Nebula
Full Text:
The Lagoon Nebula is a popular stop in the constellation Sagittarius. It is estimated to be between 4,000-6,000 light-years from the Earth, in the direction of the center of the Milky Way.
Image credit: Kitt Peak Observatory
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FScience360NewsServiceBreakingStory%2F%7E3%2FQyl_JbgiMTI%2Fbuilding-lab-instruments-1-block-time&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Building lab instruments 1 block at a time
Full Text:
A team of researchers and students at the University of California, Riverside has created a Lego-like system of blocks that enables users to custom make chemical and biological research instruments quickly, easily and affordably. The system of 3D-printed blocks can be used in university labs, schools, hospitals and anywhere there is a need to create scientific tools. The blocks are called Multifluidic Evolutionary Components (MECs) because of their flexibility and adaptability. Each block in the system performs a basic task found in a lab instrument, like pumping fluids, making measurements or interfacing with a user. Since the blocks are designed to work together, users can build apparatus -- like bioreactors for making alternative fuels or acid-base titration tools for high school chemistry classes -- rapidly and efficiently. The blocks are especially well suited for resource-limited settings, where a library of blocks could be used to create a variety of different research and diagnostic tools.
Image credit: UC Riverside
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbooks%2F2016%2Fjul%2F22%2Frethink-steven-poole-review-surprising-history-new-ideas&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Rethink by Steven Poole review zombie ideas and the return of the old From smartphones to maggots to CBT, a dazzling book uncovers the unexpected heritage of cutting-edge thought. Set off on a magic carpet ride
If only the world had listened to Ignaz Semmelweis. In the late 1840s, he helped run a large hospital in Vienna with two maternity wards. In one, the rate of deadly infection after childbirth was around 10%. In the other, it was more than double that. After puzzling over the discrepancy, he remembered that the second clinic was staffed by medical students who often arrived fresh from anatomy class to deliver children their hands clammy from human dissection. Semmelweis realised “cadaverous particles” could be responsible for the fate of the women and instituted a rigorous new hand-washing regime. Mortality in the ward dropped by 90%.
This was years before Louis Pasteur developed a scientific theory that microscopic germs were the cause of infections that would have explained Semmelweis's success. But being unable to account for why better hygiene worked made his protocol a hard sell. It was rejected by medical authorities and more than two decades passed before germs were identified and antisepsis practised. In the meantime, millions of women died avoidable deaths.
Leeches were dismissed as tokens of medieval quackery. But then it was discovered that they actually worked
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.google.com%252Fnews%252Furl%253Fsa%253Dt%2526fd%253DR%2526ct2%253Dus%2526usg%253DAFQjCNEJeRiNHjZC1W4B6nZZ6NYki0OeHQ%2526clid%253Dc3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331%2526cid%253D52779159705301%2526ei%253Dg7KRV-jTOsyp1Qb21JXgAw%2526url%253Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.dallasnews.com%252Fnews%252Fcrime%252Fheadlines%252F20160715-el-centro-college-moves-on-after-dallas-police-shooting-we-will-not-be-defined-by-this-at-all.ece%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: El Centro College moves on after Dallas police shooting: 'We will not be defined by this at all' - Dallas Morning News
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ozy.com%2Ftrue-story%2Fhow-was-your-day-black-stuntman-in-japanese-action-films%2F70100&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 How Was Your Day … Black Stuntman in Japanese Action Films? "I was a gentle kid growing up in Detroit. I used to be really short, and I got bullied." general
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ozy.com%2Frising-stars%2Fmeet-chinas-latest-media-celebrity-he-doesnt-speak-chinese%2F70058&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Meet China's Latest Media Celebrity. He Doesn't Speak Chinese. Robert Kuhn has created a Christiane Amanpour appeal in a country known better for censorship. general
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%feed http://www.npr.org/2016/07/21/486966882/i-am-proud-to-be-gay-tech-investor-peter-thiel-tells-gop-convention?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=technology 'I Am Proud To Be Gay,' Tech Investor Peter Thiel Tells GOP Convention
Peter Thiel is an openly gay libertarian billionaire financier, co-founder of PayPal and early Facebook investor. "Fake culture wars only distract us from our economic decline," he says.
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%feed http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/07/21/486933602/managing-your-news-intake-in-the-age-of-endless-phone-notifications?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=technology Managing Your News Intake In The Age Of Endless Phone Notifications
This summer, it has felt like the terrible news just won't stop. A digital journalism expert at Columbia University offers advice for dealing with the barrage of news updates flowing to our screens.
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%feed http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/07/21/486889433/so-long-vcr-we-hardly-knew-you-were-still-around?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=technology So Long, VCR. We Hardly Knew You (Were Still Around)
It's been a long time coming for the VCR. After beating out Betamax and LaserDisc for home viewing dominance in the 1980s, VHS players are going away for good.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Ffeeds.mashable.com%252F%7Er%252FMashable%252F%7E3%252Fcu8aR3r3Qd8%252F%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: 'Mr. Robot' Comic-Con panel raises more questions than answers, just as they like it
The answer to the first question of a Q&A during Mr. Robot's highly anticipated Comic-Con panel Thursday evening summed up the entire event. Asking the pressing question of Summer 2016, a fan wondered who among the cast plays Pokémon Go.
After audience laughter and cheers, Carly Chaikin replied, "From a Mr. Robot perspective, do you guys know what kind of access you're handing over when you play that game?"
It was a lighthearted remark with a serious undertone, and that set the tone for the whole panel.
While there were unfortunately precious few details given out about the rest of the forthcoming season (although Rami Malek did note that there is a "mesmerizing" hack coming that was filmed as one long take), cast members Malek, Christian Slater, Portia Doubleday, Chaikin and new Season 2 addition Grace Gummer all shared their opinions on why Mr. Robot has become a breakout — and Emmy-nominated — hit for USA Network. Read more...
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.metafilter.com%252F161117%252FRa-Ra-Robotnik-Lover-of-the-Russian-Queen%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Ra-Ra-Robotnik! Lover of the Russian Queen! A man achieves his dream of becoming Dr. Robotnik, the God of Dance. This is actually a hijacked video, the original had the sin of an inadequate soundtrack.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fl0nglost%2F28358235582%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Delivery run - Tarmac, North Woolwich
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fgay-browne%2Fif-we-each-have-the-power_b_11125718.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 If We Each Have The Power To Change The World - Why Is There Such Chaos?
My spiritual journey has taught me that each of us has the power to change the world. Celebrating Nelson Mandela Day on July 18, I was reminded how deeply I believe in his words, "It is in your hands to create a better world for all who live in it." Yet as much as this has been ingrained in me, as much as I have seen the evidence that it is truth, even I am having difficulty amidst all the violence, hatred and uncertainty in the world and have been in search of something to uplift my spirit and my soul. I decided to seek the answers in a good book.
Having grown up devouring Nancy Drew mysteries I have long found reading among the most enjoyable things I do in life. While I generally lean to fiction, one might say it was divine intervention that found me with my head buried in Tosha Silver's Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead this week.
Outrageous Openness is a book about how to align oneself with the Divine (or God), independent of life's fluctuations. The stories in her book are short vignettes about things that have happened to her or her friends that exemplify what happens when we give up muscling our way through life and open up to go with flow, thus providing ourselves with better outcomes.
Tosha believes that "a force of love exists that can guide, help and interact with each of us in the most intimate and practical way no matter what the conditions." The human condition, she challenges the reader, is "if only we knew how to invite it in."
Her words have helped to lift me out of the chaos and remember how to do just that.
Every morning, after I sit in meditation, I ask the Divine to guide me through my day and show me the perfect partners. Whether I'm asking for purposes of sorting out a love relationship, my kids or business, when I'm paying attention, I find myself in the flow that day, and my miracle appears. It might be something as subtle as a big bowl of red apples in my path as happened a few days when I was longing for one or a new business partner for my company Greenopia. Whatever I need is always provided, as long as I remember to stay open and stay positive to receive it.
I realize that might sound far too simple for such challenging times when it seems as if chaos and fear are trying to swallow us up. But it is our challenge right now - to stay present, think clearly, calmly, keep an open heart, whether it's living a life of health and wellness or negotiating world peace. And I do believe if we make that commitment, each of us does have the power as Nelson Mandela suggests, to make the world a better place.
I'm keeping Tosha's book within arms reach for the foreseeable future. It lifts me up and carries me forward, even on days that I don't think I can be carried. She has it organized so that you can open it and find the vignette you were meant to read that day. If I take Tosha's lesson about opening up to the Divine to find the perfect answer and merge it with Mandela's mantra that one person has the power to change the world then I can do my part, despite the daily anxiety the media is ingraining into our brains.
Tosha says in her book: "Use me, whatever I have to give, for the highest good. Just let me be helpful and contribute my all." I'm in. Are you with me?
-- 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.
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3 Comics That Are Sticking It To The Man Big Shiny Robot! Comic books have a long history of taking shots at the establishment. Superhero comics are pretty much predicated on the little guy standing up to the big corrupt guy; but if we're being honest, they're pretty tame in their dissent. They are published ...
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fdigg.com%252Fvideo%252Fhomeless-robot%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Dirk, The Homeless Robot That Roams The Streets Of The Netherlands Initially presented at the Maker Faire Nantes, Dirk is a project by inventor Fred Ables. But more importantly, it is also a very interesting social experiment. robots
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.google.com%252Fnews%252Furl%253Fsa%253Dt%2526fd%253DR%2526ct2%253Dus%2526usg%253DAFQjCNE18suxq0GgU5b9mbGk8a-uzNJDcw%2526clid%253Dc3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331%2526ei%253DrnqRV4DqMMbP1Qbanbv4Ag%2526url%253Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.irishtimes.com%252Fbusiness%252Fsilicon-valley-shifts-focus-to-robots-and-artificial-intelligence-1.2727450%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Silicon Valley shifts focus to robots and artificial intelligence - Irish Times
Silicon Valley shifts focus to robots and artificial intelligence Irish Times The new era in Silicon Valley centres on artificial intelligence (AI) and robots, a transformation many believe will have a payoff on the scale of the personal computing industry or the commercial internet. Computers have begun to speak, listen and see ...
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Melania Trump backlash Castanet.net In the future, a tiny robot made from pig gut could capture it and expel it. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are designing an ingestible robot that could be used to patch wounds, deliver medicine or dislodge a foreign object ...
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.bbc.co.uk%252Fnews%252Fuk-scotland-36837735%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Behind-the-scenes of new Robot Wars Robot Wars is preparing for a TV comeback from a warehouse in Glasgow. robots
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.google.com%252Fnews%252Furl%253Fsa%253Dt%2526fd%253DR%2526ct2%253Dus%2526usg%253DAFQjCNFU6M5F4N1Zqlkkxml9KI7RqXK-Ug%2526clid%253Dc3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331%2526cid%253D52779161510756%2526ei%253DrnqRV4DqMMbP1Qbanbv4Ag%2526url%253Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2016%252F07%252F18%252Ftechnology%252Fon-wheels-and-wings-artificial-intelligence-swarms-silicon-valley.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Artificial Intelligence Swarms Silicon Valley on Wings and Wheels - New York Times
Artificial Intelligence Swarms Silicon Valley on Wings and Wheels New York Times The new era in Silicon Valley centers on artificial intelligence and robots, a transformation that many believe will have a payoff on the scale of the personal computing industry or the commercial internet, two previous generations that spread ...
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El Centro moves on after shooting: 'We will not be defined by this at all' Dallas Morning News In the end, Johnson was holed up in an El Centro hallway when police used a robot armed with explosives to kill him and end the standoff. Adames was able to tour his campus ... “People could envision the future of that space rather than the past,” said ...
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.google.com%252Fnews%252Furl%253Fsa%253Dt%2526fd%253DR%2526ct2%253Dus%2526usg%253DAFQjCNEP9IX0XcAU_e0AGrcJTdObrzkFCw%2526clid%253Dc3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331%2526cid%253D52779159072893%2526ei%253DrnqRV7DaMMPR1Qas7YnYCA%2526url%253Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.slate.com%252Fblogs%252Fbrowbeat%252F2016%252F07%252F14%252Fthe_2016_emmy_award_nominations_illustrate_the_emmys_impressive_knack_for.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: The Emmys Have a Knack for Being Both Stodgy and Trailblazing at Once - Slate Magazine (blog)
The Emmys Have a Knack for Being Both Stodgy and Trailblazing at Once Slate Magazine (blog) Joining The Americans as a first time Best Drama contender is the incisive Mr. Robot, whose star Rami Malek adds some fizz to the Best Actor in a Drama category. ... I'm sure these groups have overlapping taste, but this dynamic would explain both the ...
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedaily.com%2Freleases%2F2016%2F07%2F160721210916.htm&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Collective hum: Buzzing midges inspire new swarm theory A team of researchers based in Israel and the US has found a mathematical resemblance between swarm dynamics and gravitational interactions. The study could provide a big leap forward in understanding the mass movement of flying insects. gaia
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2F134732941%40N02%2F28429603366%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 The old lady
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.huffingtonpost.co.uk%252F2016%252F07%252F17%252Fdidcot-power-station-missing-search-for-three-mens-bodies-to-resume-at-demolition_n_11039290.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Didcot Power Station Missing: Search For Three Men's Bodies To Resume After Demolition
Search efforts for the three men killed in the Didcot power station collapse resumed today when the remainder of the building was demolished.
Demolition workers Ken Cresswell, 57, and John Shaw, 61, both from Rotherham, South Yorkshire and Chris Huxtable, 34, from Swansea, were trapped under 20,000 tonnes of rubble when the structure unexpectedly crumbled on February 23.
Four people died in the disaster, but only one body, that of Mick Collings, 53, has been recovered so far. It is still unknown what the causes of the tragedy were.
A remote demolition brought down the remainder of the decommissioned site shortly before 6am, in a unique operation that will make use of 10 remote-controlled robots.
The building - which was due for demolition when it partially collapsed - was too unstable to be approached and a 50-metre exclusion zone was set up around what is left of the building.
The 11 plastic explosives attached to the structure were detonated and, once, the site is considered safe, teams will be deployed to resume searching the remnants of the plant for the first time since May.
Roland Alford, who is the explosives contractor at the power station, said the four-month delay in completing the demolition was necessary on safety grounds.
He told the Press Association on Saturday: “There has been quite a lot of criticism about delays, questioning why it has taken so long to get to this point, but the fact is nothing like this has ever been attempted before and this is not a simple demolition.
“We have been working on it night and day since March and built up quite a sizeable team of very expert people to work on this, to come up with the charges, the methods of doing it and training.”
He added: “It was almost unthinkable to send people to work underneath there and place charges, given the fact the building could come down at any moment - you legally can't justify that.”
Robots of a variety of sizes will carry out some of the work deemed to be too unsafe for humans, a number of which can be controlled remotely using a sophisticated camera set up.
Roads and trains will be halted in the surrounding area while the demolition takes place.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Ftim-profeta%2Fthe-climate-post-survey-p_b_11121006.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 The Climate Post: Survey, Party Platforms Reveal Deep Divide on Climate Change In March, the Guardian issued an election-related call-out to online readers in the United States, asking them to identify the "one issue that affects your life you wish the presidential candidates were discussing more." The results are in. Of the 1,385 respondents from all 50 states, one in five expressed discontent about lack of discussion of climate change, an issue described in vivid terms, such as "cataclysmic" and "slow-motion apocalypse." Respondents expressed greatest concern about sea-level rise and decreasing food and water security.
"Climate change is the common denominator for us all regardless of gender, creed or political affiliation," said Sarah Owen in a video response to the survey.
Just how ambitious the Democratic Party will be in attempting to reduce carbon emissions--particularly, its stance on a carbon tax--remains to be seen. The full platform committee will hammer out details in Orlando on Friday and Saturday.
In an interview with ClimateWire, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing suggested that the U.S. presidential election will have less impact on American efforts to combat climate change than a host of other factors ranging from new technologies and appliance standards to political support for renewable energy tax credits.
Pershing indicted that many U.S. steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, including the Paris climate change deal negotiated under President Obama, will survive no matter who wins the White House.
"To me, there's more likely to be continuity no matter who's in office," Pershing said.
Projecting Clean Power Plan Costs, Impacts
The Clean Power Plan aims to reduce carbon emissions from existing power plants. Assuming the rule survives judicial review and is implemented, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects a reduction of power sector emissions of about 35 percent by 2030.
Assuming the Clean Power plan is upheld, EIA projects emissions outcome and electricity generation mix for multiple state implementation strategies--that is, pursuit of mass-based emissions targets or rate-based emissions targets. EIA projects higher prices if emissions allocations under a mass-based regime are given to generators rather than load-serving entities, but "price effects are similar in the [mass] and CPP rate cases where the average electricity price from 2022 through 2030 in both cases is 2 percent higher than in the No CPP case, and 3 percent higher on average from 2030 through 2040," analysts wrote.
As the EIA data suggests, utilities and other power producers are likely to be in different positions if the rule moves forward--some will benefit from the rule, and others will face costs to comply, which can lead to monetary transfers among different producers and consumers of electricity. A new policy brief by Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions builds on this understanding by exploring the distributional impacts of choosing rate-based and mass-based approaches to comply with the Clean Power Plan. It finds that states adopting a mass-based compliance approach can use allowance allocation to largely control monetary transfers within a state. States adopting a rate-based compliance approach lack this direct control mechanism.
Each state's system of electricity regulation and any changes in wholesale prices for electricity due to the policy in regional electricity markets will play a major role in determining how cost distribution and potential transfers play out, the authors said.
Study: Warm Water, Not Air, Accelerating Glacier Retreat on Western Antarctic Peninsula
A study published in the journal Science found that ocean warming, rather than atmospheric warming, is the primary cause of retreat of 90 percent of the 674 glaciers on the western Antarctic Peninsula. Because the peninsula's glaciers are among the main contributors to sea-level rise, the study suggests that better understanding of how and why they're changing will increase the accuracy of ice-loss predictions.
"Scientists know that ocean warming is affecting large glaciers elsewhere on the continent, but thought that atmospheric temperatures were the primary cause of all glacier changes on the Peninsula," said lead author Alison Cook of Swansea University. "We now know that's not the case."
The scientists came to that conclusion after linking a distinct pattern of melt from north to south on the peninsula with a pattern of temperatures at mid-ocean depths that mirrored the melt. At the southern end of the western side of the peninsula, they found that a welling up of warm Circumpolar Deep Water wears away the fronts of glaciers. At the northern end of the peninsula, the fronts of glaciers are more stable because they terminate at colder waters that come from a different source.
"Our results are key for making predictions of ice loss in response to ocean warming in this region," Cook said. "The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the largest current contributors to sea-level rise, and the glaciers here are highly sensitive, so [they] are key indicators of how the ice will respond to future changes."
-- 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.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Ftim-profeta%2Fthe-climate-post-survey-p_b_11121006.html&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Tim Profeta: The Climate Post: Survey, Party Platforms Reveal Deep Divide on Climate Change In March, the Guardian issued an election-related call-out to online readers in the United States, asking them to identify the "one issue that affects...
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fmary-anne-hitt%2Fworking-families-shouldnt-have-to-pay-for-coal-mine_b_11120494.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Working Families Shouldn't Have To Pay For Coal Mine Clean-Up
Over the past 30 years, coal companies have been playing fast and loose with our land, water, and pocketbooks by using a loophole in our federal laws that allows them to issue non-binding IOUs, instead of purchasing reliable insurance, to clean up dangerous coal mines if they go out of business. This reckless practice is known as self bonding.
Since there is nothing backing up these IOUs except the companies' own impermanent balance sheets and the legal equivalent of a pinky swear, when self-bonded coal companies go out of business, working families and honest taxpayers are left to foot the bill for cleaning up (also known as reclaiming) dangerous coal mines, while coal companies get off scot-free.
This horribly irresponsible practice has been so prevalent that, over the years, coal companies have racked up billions of dollars worth of mining liabilities without providing any assurance that the money will be there to finish the job of reclaiming their mining sites.
Fortunately, the federal Department of Interior is reviewing self bonding and considering making changes to the process. That's why this week, on the last week of the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation, and Enforcement's (OSMRE) comment period on self bonding, we are standing up and demanding the federal government put a stop to it.
While this was going on, Sierra Club and our partners also made an aggressive media push that included holding a teleconference outlining the significant risks to letting this practice continue, and alsoplacing adssaying as much in a popular Washington, D.C. newspaper frequented by policy experts. This week, we wanted to make clear that it's not OK to just walk away from land you've destroyed, polluted, and then profited from, while leaving your neighbors to foot the bill for billions of dollars worth of mining liabilities.
The need to end self-bonding is especially urgent given the ongoing wave of coal company bankruptcies ― which has claimed some of the world's biggest coal companies like Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources ― and the real danger these coal companies' finances pose to taxpayers. After all, $2.4 billion of the $3.86 billion in outstanding coal mining liabilities across the country is held by bankrupt coal companies.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop with the costs of reclaiming coal mines. On top of the billions of dollars Americans must pay for these unreclaimed mines, the sites themselves can also be highly polluting and dangerous, and leaving them unreclaimed poses serious health risks to surrounding communities. They also pose an economic threat, because leaving them bare, open, and unreclaimed makes it very hard for communities to attract and support other forms of economic development and opportunity, which is urgently needed in coal country, including here in my home state of West Virginia.
We're calling on OSMRE to immediately issue a new guidance that no new self-bonds should be issued to any coal company and make clear that bankrupt mine operators must not self-bond as they emerge from bankruptcy.
We're committed to making sure local families are protected from irresponsible coal executives who are threatening to leave behind dangerous, polluting mine sites that will plague communities for generations to come.
Self-bonding is about simple fairness, after all: if you destroy the land, you clean it up ― especially if you've made big profits in the process. You don't walk away and leave it to your neighbor. It's time for self bonding to stop, once and for all.
-- 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.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fmary-anne-hitt%2Fworking-families-shouldnt-have-to-pay-for-coal-mine_b_11120494.html&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Mary Anne Hitt: Working Families Shouldn't Have to Pay for Coal Mine Clean-Up Over the past 30 years, coal companies have been playing fast and loose with our land, water, and pocketbooks by using a loophole in our federal laws...
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fmelissa-heller-hoagland%2Fcoral-reefs-in-trouble-the-canaries-in-the-coal-mine_b_11120998.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Coral Reefs In Trouble - The Canaries In The Coal Mine
It felt like we had stepped into a scene from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea as we glided along the Great Barrier Reef in a ten person submersible. Outside the window, gigantic clumps of taupe brain coral, Elkhorn and Stag coral slipped past. Lavender and lettuce-green sea fans waved gently in the current. Plump pink and purple anemones raised their tentacles to trap their next meal. And all around and through the coral forms, a rainbow of tropical fish wandered blue and yellow Tang fish, yellow grunts, orange and white striped clownfish, and so many others I couldn't identify.
It was February 2002 and we were on the adventure of a lifetime with our four kids, then ranging in age from twelve to five. “Wow!” a collective intake of breath swept through our little pod as a sea turtle big enough for one of them to ride floated silently by on the other side of the glass. And as we moved past a shadowed opening in the reef, high-pitched shrieks erupted when an enormous olive-green moray eel whose mouth was all teeth emerged, on the hunt for its next meal. Our scheduled dive of the reef had fallen on a day with chop that made the sea too rough for snorkeling with small children, but in the submersible we were able to motor to the best viewing spots of the incredible variety of plants and creatures.
As longtime residents of Florida, we'd enjoyed snorkeling in the Keys and the Bahamas, but the scale of what we were seeing here was completely different. The Great Barrier Reef appears to be a rocky structure upon which things grow and swim, but the reef itself is actually made up of the accumulated exoskeletons of innumerable individual living organisms stacked upon each other, the marine equivalent of a high-rise apartment building. It is the largest living structure on earth, visible from the moon. We felt blessed to have the opportunity to visit it, and the thousands of plant and animal species that call it home.
Coral reefs are critically important to the planet's health. More than 90% of all marine species are directly or indirectly dependent on the coral reefs, even though they make up less than 5% of the ocean floor. These places are the rain forests of the sea; according to NOAA, they provide habitat to more species of fish, hard corals and other organisms per unit area than any other marine environment. And NOAA estimates there may be as many as eight million species within the coral reef ecosystem that have not yet been discovered. Who knows how many medically useful substances might be waiting for discovery there, as in the tropical rainforests on land?
Fast forward a decade and a half from that submersible ride to May 2015, when CNN reported that as much as 93% of the Great Barrier Reef had recently suffered bleach damage.
We're now in the third straight year of elevated ocean temperatures causing the worst worldwide reef destruction in history. Analyzing cumulative data, scientists at the Carnegie Institution of Science project the demise of all the reefs by 2100 if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue.
When I read these reports I want to weep. I think of our experience there just fourteen years ago the submersible ride through an underwater wonderland of strange and beautiful fish, mammals and plant life and it's hard to imagine that in this short time parts of that place, then teeming with life, are now a white skeletal structure devoid of color, animals or plants.
Coral bleaching occurs when ocean temperatures rise so high that the corals become stressed and expel the algae that live in symbiosis inside them. Without its algae the coral turns white and starves, and if temperatures remain elevated for too long they die. But the elevated water temperatures create other problems as well.
Warmer water is more acidic and makes reef regeneration after damage more difficult. It also holds less dissolved oxygen, which affects not just the reefs but other fish and animals in the ocean. Marlin and sailfish have already been curtailing deep water diving in search of prey. As deoxygenation becomes more severe, affected waters will no longer support life at all for some fish and crustaceans; populations of large fish such as tuna, cod, swordfish and marlin have already declined; some scientists report by as much as 90% over the last century. And areas of warming are increasing in size. An April 2016 study showed a devastating decline in oxygen levels in many areas of the Pacific Ocean, which by 2030 to 2040 will wipe out populations of marine life dependent on oxygenated water.
The fate of the Great Barrier Reef, and coral reefs worldwide, should be an urgent wake up call for all of humanity. Our planet surface is 70% water, and the health of its water is critical to the survival of life on the planet. The reefs are a barometer of that health, and they are failing. Human-driven climate change might steer us off the cliff of existence if we don't change direction, and change it immediately.
What will the world look like if we don't? In areas where colorful and vital coral reefs exist today, stark white boulders and skeletal branched antler-like forms will be all that remain to remind us of what we've lost. The stench of rotting animals will saturate the waters around these graveyards. Those periodic algal blooms and red tides along coastal waters? They will become commonplace, the sulfurous smell of rotting vegetation, the sickly sweet odor of dead and decaying fish and mammals, and the respiratory difficulties in susceptible people in beach towns all will define a new normal. As many as five hundred million people will starve or become climate refugees.
The sad truth is that we aren't taking very good care of what we've been entrusted with. My Christian faith forms my own views on this; we are called to be stewards of God's creation. But even if you feel no particular religious or philosophical urge to care for this most vulnerable piece of earth, you would do well to be motivated by survival instincts. The reefs are the canaries in the planetary coal mine; their death presages conditions hostile to life in the ocean, and by extension, the planet.
There are some recent glimmers of hope. Efforts like Sweden's pledge to become one of the first countries to end its dependence on fossil fuel entirely, and the sharp uptick in renewable energy production in countries like Denmark, the United Kingdom, Germany, Scotland and Ireland, are encouraging signals that humanity might yet recognize the crucial role the oceans play in the health of the planet, and the devastating effects the last hundred and fifty years' explosion of carbon emissions have had on them. The business world, too, is beginning to see that there is money, and lots of it, to be had in developing renewable energy and non-petroleum based products.
As individuals, there are many actions we can take to spur the corporate world to move in more planet-healthy directions. Some of these actions are ridiculously simple. Turn out lights when you leave a room, use canvas bags for shopping instead of plastic ones made from petrochemicals, recycle paper, plastics, clothing. So many easy changes can be steps to free us from our addiction to petrochemicals and fossil fuels.
We will not stop global warming by switching out incandescent light bulbs for LED ones. But changed habits change people's paradigms, and changed paradigms are what changes the world. The most influential player in the capitalist system is the consumer who drives it you and me. If we don't buy it, they won't make it. Of course I recognize that I am less than a drop of water in the grand scheme of things. I am one molecule, maybe less. But imagine what we might do if each of us took simple and easy steps like these. Collectively we would unleash a tsunami of change.
Perhaps the current plight of the reefs will force us to wake up to the danger of unchecked planetary abuse. By all means, let us hope and pray that it is so. But let us also act.
-- 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.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fvideo%2Findex%2F492473%2Fanger-in-cleveland%2F%3Futm_source%3Dfeed&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Anger in Cleveland
If there's one thing everyone can agree on at the Republican National Convention, it's how they feel about Hillary Clinton. The Atlantic's Alex Wagner is on the ground, asking attendees about their opinions—and the vitriol towards Clinton feels especially high. “Donald Trump is going to win,” shouts one protester. “And Hillary Clinton is going to jail!”
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FPhysicsWorld%2F%7E3%2F8b0GB0il-Io%2Fsnells-law-for-spin-waves-measured-at-long-last&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Snell's law for spin waves measured at long last Law deviates from that governing light and could lead to "magnonic" devices of the future science
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedaily.com%2Freleases%2F2016%2F07%2F160721144132.htm&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 New research gleans climate change insight from lizard genome Using genomic data from three lizard species, researchers gleaned insights not available before on the impact of climate change on the distribution of animal populations in South American forests. The findings improve ways of modeling the distribution of biodiversity in the past and future. gaia
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fsculptorlil%2F27842616733%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Sunrise 21 July 2016
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2Ftheatlantic%2Finfocus%2F%7E3%2FR07_Gy5tutE%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Bathing in Budapest (18 photos)
The hot springs at the Lukacs Bathhouse have been in use, in one way or another, since the 12th century. According to Reuters, locals and visitors alike attribute the mineral-rich waters with a special healing power. Bathers flock to the Hungarian spa for its steam rooms, saunas, pools, and special treatments.
A man gets hydrotherapy at the Lukacs Bath in Budapest, Hungary June 23, 2016. (Bernadett Szabo / Reuters) images
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2F500px.com%2Fphoto%2F163978891%2Funtitled-by-johnny-theophilus&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Untitled by johnny theophilus
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2Fsections%2Fthesalt%2F2016%2F07%2F21%2F486471339%2Fhow-wild-birds-team-up-with-humans-to-guide-them-to-honey%3Futm_medium%3DRSS%26utm_campaign%3Dresearchnews&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 How Wild Birds Team Up With Humans To Guide Them To Honey
It sounds like a fairy tale but it's real. A study shows how wild birds and people communicate to find bees' nests and share the sweet honeycomb. The teamwork may date back thousands of years or more.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedaily.com%2Freleases%2F2016%2F07%2F160721143913.htm&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Researchers find first direct evidence that A. aegypti mosquito transmits Zika virus Researchers have now directly connected the Aedes aegypti mosquito with Zika transmission in the Americas, during an outbreak in southern Mexico. The findings will help scientists to better target efforts for controlling the population of mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus. gaia
%feed http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/nasas-hubble-looks-to-the-final-frontier NASA's Hubble Looks to the Final Frontier This view of a massive cluster of galaxies unveils a very cluttered-looking universe filled with galaxies near and far. Some are distorted like a funhouse mirror through a "space warp" phenomenon first predicted by Einstein a century ago. astronomy
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdotearth.blogs.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F07%2F21%2Fas-a-heat-wave-builds-obama-wisely-presses-for-community-cohesion%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 As a Heat Wave Builds, Obama Wisely Presses for Community Cohesion With a heat wave building, President Obama uses Twitter to press communities to check for vulnerable neighbors. gaia
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fdanielcoyle%2F27840320954%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Sunset Reflected in the Shard
The sunset reflected in the Shard, looking out over South London. Halfway to the horizon you can see Strata SE1, the Oval cricket ground, and to the right One St George's Wharf. What else can you spot?
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2F123637302%40N05%2F28377915161%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Sunset Sky & London Eye ...
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgo.theregister.com%2Ffeed%2Fwww.theregister.co.uk%2F2016%2F07%2F21%2Fpart_2_of_elon_musk_master_plan%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Fear not, humanity Saint Elon has finished part two of his world-saving 'master plan'
Sustainability and sharing isn't just some 'silly, hippy thing,' says Musk
Solar-panel roofs on cars, compact SUVs, and high-passenger-density urban transport are all part of Elon Musk's self-titled "master plan, part deux" for the world.…
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%feed http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/07/21/facebook-completes-first-test-flight-of-its-massive-aquila-internet-delivery-drone/ Facebook completes first test flight of its massive ‘Aquila' internet delivery drone After several months testing smaller scale models, Facebook has successfully completed its first full-scale test flight of the massive Aquila drone. With a wingspan rivaling that of a Boeing 737, only weighing much less due to a carbon fiber composite design, the team reached a major milestone by launching, and flying, the drone for more than 90 minutes — more than three times the planned test run. Intending to provide internet to the 1.6 billion people worldwide that don't have access to it, Facebook plans to use the solar-powered drone to beam coverage to 60-mile-wide areas on the ground while staying…
%feed http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/MxvpNakIOB4/40-light-years-from-earth-hubble-reveals-three-new-potentially-habitable-earthlike-planets.html "40 Light Years from Earth" --Hubble Reveals Three New Potentially Habitable Earthlike Planets
On May 2, scientists from MIT, the University of Liège, and elsewhere announced they had discovered a planetary system, a mere 40 light years from Earth, that hosts three potentially habitable, Earth-sized worlds. Judging from the size and temperature of the planets, the researchers determined that regions of each planet may be suitable for life.
Now, in a paper published today in Nature, that same group reports that the two innermost planets in the system are primarily rocky, unlike gas giants such as Jupiter. The findings further strengthen the case that these planets may indeed be habitable. The researchers also determined that the atmospheres of both planets are likely not large and diffuse, like that of the Jupiter, but instead compact, similar to the atmospheres of Earth, Venus, and Mars.
The scientists, led by first author Julien de Wit, a postdoc in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, came to their conclusion after making a preliminary screening of the planets' atmospheres, just days after announcing the discovery of the planetary system.
On May 4, the team commandeered NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and pointed it at the system's star, TRAPPIST-1, to catch a rare event: a double transit, the moment when two planets almost simultaneously pass in front of their star. The researchers realized the planets would transit just two weeks before the event, thanks to refined estimates of the planets' orbital configuration, made by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which had already started to observe the TRAPPIST-1 system.
"We thought, maybe we could see if people at Hubble would give us time to do this observation, so we wrote the proposal in less than 24 hours, sent it out, and it was reviewed immediately," de Wit recalls. "Now for the first time we have spectroscopic observations of a double transit, which allows us to get insight on the atmosphere of both planets at the same time."
Using Hubble, the team recorded a combined transmission spectrum of TRAPPIST-1b and c, meaning that as first one planet then the other crossed in front of the star, they were able to measure the changes in wavelength as the amount of starlight dipped with each transit.
"The data turned out to be pristine, absolutely perfect, and the observations were the best that we could have expected," de Wit says. "The force was certainly with us."
The dips in starlight were observed over a narrow range of wavelengths that turned out not to vary much over that range. If the dips had varied significantly, de Wit says, such a signal would have demonstrated the planets have light, large, and puffy atmospheres, similar to that of the gas giant Jupiter.
But that's not the case. Instead, the data suggest that both transiting planets have more compact atmospheres, similar to those of rocky planets such as Earth, Venus, and Mars.
"Now we can say that these planets are rocky. Now the question is, what kind of atmosphere do they have?" de Wit says. "The plausible scenarios include something like Venus, where the atmosphere is dominated by carbon dioxide, or an Earth-like atmosphere with heavy clouds, or even something like Mars with a depleted atmosphere. The next step is to try to disentangle all these possible scenarios that exist for these terrestrial planets."
The scientists are now working to establish more telescopes on the ground to probe this planetary system further, as well as to discover other similar systems. The planetary system's star, TRAPPIST-1, is known as an ultracool dwarf star, a type of star that is typically much cooler than the sun, emitting radiation in the infrared rather than the visible spectrum.
De Wit's colleagues from the University of Liège came up with the idea to look for planets around such stars, as they are much fainter than typical stars and their starlight would not overpower the signal from planets themselves.
The researchers discovered the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system using TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope), a new kind of ground telescope designed to survey the sky in infrared. TRAPPIST was built as a 60-centimeter prototype to monitor the 70 brightest dwarf stars in the southern sky. Now, the researchers have formed a consortium, called SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets Eclipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars), and are building four larger versions of the telescope in Chile, to focus on the brightest ultracool dwarf stars in the skies over the southern hemisphere. The researchers are also trying to raise money to build telescopes in the northern sky.
"Each telescope is about $400,000 -- about the price of an apartment in Cambridge," de Wit says.
If the scientists can train more TRAPPIST-like telescopes on the skies, de Wit says, the telescopes may serve as relatively affordable "prescreening tools." That is, scientists may use them to identify candidate planets that just might be habitable, then follow up with more detailed observations using powerful telescopes such as Hubble and NASA's James Webb Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in October 2018.
"With more observations using Hubble, and further down the road with James Webb, we can know not only what kind of atmosphere planets like TRAPPIST-1 have, but also what is within these atmospheres," de Wit says. "And that's very exciting."
The Daily Galaxy via MIT
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%feed http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/zBnmzGFw_UQ/hiroshima-will-look-like-childs-play-series-of-ancient-catastrophic-eruptions-of-the-yellowstone-sup.html "Hiroshima Will Look Like Child's Play" --Ancient Series of Eruptions of the Yellowstone Supervolcano Discovered
"While it is well-know that Yellowstone has erupted catastrophically in recent times, perhaps less widely appreciated is that these were just the latest in a protracted history of numerous catastrophic super-eruptions that have burned a track along the Snake River eastwards from Oregon to Yellowstone from eight million years ago to present," said Tom Knott with the University of Leicester's Volcanology Group.
"The size and magnitude of this newly defined eruption is as large, if not larger, than better known eruptions at Yellowstone, and it is just the first in an emerging record of newly discovered super-eruptions during a period of intense magmatic activity between 8 and 12 million years ago."
Six hundred thousand years ago there was a colossal explosion from a cauldron of magma, the most massive known supervolcano, the 2.2 million acre Yellowstone caldera that forms the world's highest plateau capping a seething magma chamber forty-five miles across-the size of Rhode Island- and eight miles thick of hot molten rock that rises up from 125 miles from the Earth's core. When Yellowstone explodes, and it will again, someday, Hiroshima will look like child's play. What no one knows for sure is, when.
The ancient Yellowstone caldera exploded with such violence that it left an ash layer almost ten feet deep a thousand miles away in eastern Nebraska killing all plant life and covering almost all of the United States west of the Mississippi. Modern geological surveys have shown that this supervolcano erupts approximately every 600,000 years. The Blackfoot Indians called it the land of evil spirits -what we call today, Yellowstone National Park.
Researchers, led by a team from the University of Leicester, reorted this March, 2016 that they discovered that a number of giant super-eruptions between 8 and 12 million years ago could be larger than the colossal eruptions known to have taken place at Yellowstone have been identified through research
The international research team suggests that while the number of volcanic eruptions thought to have originated from the central Snake River Plain in Idaho, USA is less than previously believed, the 12 recorded giant eruptions were likely 'significantly larger' than research has previously suggested.
Tom Knott, along with Mike Branney and Dr Marc Reichow, from the University of Leicester's Department of Geology's Volcanology Group, conducted the research with a team of international collaborators from the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Idaho State University.
Using a multi-technique approach, including whole-rock and mineral chemistries, palaeomagnetic data, and radio-isotopic dates, the team has been able to 'fingerprint' individual eruption deposits and correlate these over vast regions (e.g., 1000's km2).
In establishing widespread correlations, the team drastically reduced the number of eruptions previously thought to have originated from the central Snake River Plain by more than half.
The researchers have reported that one of the super-eruptions from the Yellowstone hotspot-track, defined as the Castleford Crossing eruption, occurred about 8.1 million years ago and estimate the eruption volume to have exceeded 1,900 km3. The single volcanic sheet covers an area over 14,000 km2 in southern Idaho, and is more than 1.3 km thick in the caldera of the super-volcano.
This is just one of 12 giant eruptions reported from the area by the Leicester team, who show that intense hotspot magmatism caused major crustal subsidence, forming the 100 kilometer-wide Snake River Basin. The team also demonstrates that these eruptions were in fact significantly larger than previously thought and may rival those better known at Yellowstone.
In order to precisely deliver the Schiaparelli landing demonstrator module to the martian surface and then insert ExoMars/TGO into orbit around the Red Planet, it's necessary to pin down the spacecraft's location to within just a few hundred metres at a distance of more than 150 million km.
To achieve this amazing level of accuracy, ESA experts are making use of ‘quasars' the most luminous objects in the Universe as ‘calibrators' in a technique known as Delta-Differential One-Way Ranging, or delta-DOR.
Until recently, quasars were only poorly understood. These objects can emit 1000 times the energy of our entire Milky Way galaxy from a volume that it not much bigger than our Solar System, making them fearfully powerful.
They are fuelled by supermassive black holes which are many, many times more massive than our Sun feeding on matter at the centre of their host galaxies. In addition to their extreme luminosity, their extreme distance means that, seen from Earth, they appear to be fixed in the sky and their positions can be mapped with high precision, making them very useful as reference points for spacecraft navigation.
In the delta-DOR technique, radio signals from ExoMars/TGO are being received by two widely separated deep-space ground stations, one, say, at New Norcia, Western Australia, and one at Cebreros, Spain, and the difference in the times of signal arrival is precisely measured.
Next, errors due to current conditions in Earth's atmosphere (which affect all radio signals passing through) are derived by simultaneously tracking radio signals from a quasar. Engineers can apply these as corrections to the signal received from ExoMars/TGO, delivering a significantly more accurate fix on its position.
On Wednesday this week, ESA ground stations began the first of many delta-DOR observations that will be used to precisely locate ExoMars/TGO, using quasar P1514-24, seen inset in an image of ESA's deep-space tracking station at Malargüe, Argentina, above.
Delta-DOR observations will be increasingly performed as the journey to Mars enters the crucial phases, enabling flight dynamics teams to generate precise instructions for thruster burns and separation timing and to assess manoeuvre performance.
“In October, in the final critical week before Mars arrival, teams will be conducting two delta-DOR observations daily,” says Mattia Mercolino, responsible for delta-DOR activities at ESOC, ESA's operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
“It's an excellent example of critical, real-time teamwork between the flight dynamics experts, the ground station operators, the ExoMars mission controllers and our delta-DOR team, and it would be much more difficult to get to Mars without this expertise.”
How precisely will we know ExoMars/TGO's location?
“The current set of delta-DOR observations will enable us to locate the spacecraft to less than 1000 m when it's near Mars, a distance of slightly more than 150 million km from Earth,” says Mattia.
“This is comparable to detecting from the location of an object in Singapore from Darmstadt, to about 5 cm precision.”
“In future, with currently planned technology improvements, we should be able to get the accuracy down to just 150 m at 150 million km.”
%feed http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/rSC3sY4qSe8/planet-9-enigma-astronomers-determine-why-it-has-yet-to-be-detected-by-telescopes-a-galaxy-insight.html "Planet 9 Enigma" --Astronomers Determine Why It Has Yet to Be Detected by Telescopes (A 'Galaxy' Insight)
Swiss astronomers have determined why planet 9 hasn't been detected by telescopes so far. They calculated the brightness of smaller and bigger planets on various orbits. They conclude that the sky surveys performed in the past had only a small chance to detect an object with a mass of 20 Earth masses or less, especially if it is near the farthest point of its orbit around the Sun.
But NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer may have spotted a planet with a mass equal to 50 Earth masses or more. "This puts an interesting upper mass limit for the planet," syas Esther Linder at the University of Bern. According to the scientists, future telescopes like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope under construction near Cerro Tololo in Chile or dedicated surveys should be able to find or rule out candidate Planet 9. "That is an exciting perspective," says Christoph Mordasini currently at Bern and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.
How big and how bright is Planet 9 if it really exists? What is its temperature and which telescope could find it? These were the questions that Mordasini and colleague Esther Linder wanted to answer when they heard about the possible additional planet in the solar system suggested by Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology.
This artistic rendering above shows the distant view from Planet Nine back towards the sun. The planet is thought to be gaseous, similar to Uranus and Neptune. Hypothetical lightning lights up the night side.
The Swiss scientists are experts in modelling the evolution of planets. They usually study the formation of young exoplanets in disks around other stars light years away and the possible direct imaging of these objects with future instruments such as the James Webb Space Telescope. They estimate that the object has a present-day radius equal to 3.7 Earth radii and a temperature of minus 226 degrees Celsius.
The six most distant known objects in the solar system shown below with orbits exclusively beyond Neptune (magenta) all mysteriously line up in a single direction. Also, when viewed in three dimensions, they tilt nearly identically away from the plane of the solar system. Batygin and Brown show that a planet with 10 times the mass of the earth in a distant eccentric orbit anti-aligned with the other six objects (orange) is required to maintain this configuration [Diagram created using WorldWide Telescope].
"For me candidate Planet 9 is a close object, although it is about 700 times further away as the distance between the Earth and the Sun," says Esther Linder. The astrophysicists assume that Planet 9 is a smaller version of Uranus and Neptune -- a small ice giant with an envelope of hydrogen and helium. With their planet evolution model they calculated how parameters like the planetary radius or the brightness evolved over time since the solar system has formed 4.6 billion of years ago.
In their paper accepted by the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics the scientists conclude that a planet with the projected mass equal to 10 Earth masses has a present-day radius of 3.7 Earth radii. Its temperature is minus 226 degrees Celsius or 47 Kelvin.
"This means that the planet's emission is dominated by the cooling of its core, otherwise the temperature would only be 10 Kelvin," explains Esther Linder: "Its intrinsic power is about 1000 times bigger than its absorbed power." Therefore, the reflected sunlight contributes only a minor part to the total radiation that could be detected. This also means that the planet is much brighter in the infrared than in the visual. "With our study candidate Planet 9 is now more than a simple point mass, it takes shape having physical properties," says Christoph Mordasini.
The study was financed by the research project of the Swiss National Science Foundation PlanetsInTime and the National Center for Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS.
The Daily Galaxy via University of Bern
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%feed http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/28409201526/ One Year on Earth Seen From 1 Million Miles
On July 20, 2015, NASA released to the world the first image of the sunlit side of Earth captured by the space agency's EPIC camera on NOAA's DSCOVR satellite. The camera has now recorded a full year of life on Earth from its orbit at Lagrange point 1, approximately 1 million miles from Earth, where it is balanced between the gravity of our home planet and the sun.
EPIC takes a new picture every two hours, revealing how the planet would look to human eyes, capturing the ever-changing motion of clouds and weather systems and the fixed features of Earth such as deserts, forests and the distinct blues of different seas. EPIC will allow scientists to monitor ozone and aerosol levels in Earth's atmosphere, cloud height, vegetation properties and the ultraviolet reflectivity of Earth.
The primary objective of DSCOVR, a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force, is to maintain the nation's real-time solar wind monitoring capabilities, which are critical to the accuracy and lead time of space weather alerts and forecasts from NOAA.
%feed https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/18-24-july-2016/map-designs-baby-monitor-can-help-control-childrens-sleep/ Map designs baby monitor that can help control children's sleep
Map has collaborated with a start-up tech company to design a connected home baby monitor that doubles up as a night light and sleeping aid.
SuzySnooze has been designed by Map, which has worked with company BleepBleeps and has already hit its crowdfunding target after a short campaign.
The device has been engineered so that children can learn sleep routines from an early age. After a child is put to bed, SuzySnooze's hat (the top part) is pushed down so that it covers its face and activates a night light. The brightness of the light can be changed by twisting the hat.
Soft light and sound emitted
A sleep sequence function means that patterns of light and sound can be introduced to aid sleep by creating a consistent and calm environment.
The idea is that while this is still active it is time to sleep and when the hat is raised and the night light is off, only then is it time to get up.
An accompanying app allows parents to monitor their child's sleep remotely, schedule and record sleep routines as well as ask advice about sleep patterns based on the age of the child.
Physical interaction
Map and BleepBleeps found that most internet of things products are controlled entirely through a smartphone meaning the intuitiveness of the accompanying hardware product can be lost.
In light of this Suzy Snooze has been designed with just enough physical interaction to control its key features, while the smartphone app controls the more complicated features.
The base of the physical product has been designed covered with felt to give it a softer look and feel. The hat has been made from 1mm thick ABS plastic which is thin enough to emit light through and thick enough so that inner working components cannot be seen.
Crowdfunding backers will get their SuzySnooze from December before the product is introduced to the mass market next year.
%feed https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/18-24-july-2016/peter-saville-designs-artwork-tates-switch-house-pale-ale/ Peter Saville designs artwork for Tate's Switch House pale ale
Peter Saville has teamed up with Tate to create the artwork for its new beer, Switch House, celebrating the opening of the new Tate Modern Switch House extension.
The 4.8% pale has been brewed and canned by Fourpure Brewing Co based two miles from the Tate Modern in Bermondsey in collaboration with the gallery.
Tate wanted to create a modern style pale ale to fit with the aesthetic of the newly opened Tate Modern Bar, according to Fourpure Brewing Co.
Switch House comes in a limited run silver can, featuring a brightly coloured geometric design by Saville. It is designed to represent the shape of the extension, helping visitors to understand the gallery's new layout and how the spaces are used.
The beer will be available at all Tate Galleries including Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives, Tate Modern and Tate Britain. It can also be bought off trade through We Brought Beer.
%feed https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160721073012.htm Light-bulb moment for stock market behavior Physicists have discovered that the timing of electronic orders on the stock market can be mathematically described in the same way as the lifetime of a light bulb. technology
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%feed http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/07/21/tesla-designing-heavy-duty-trucks-public-transport-vehicles-complete-elon-musks-master-plan/ Musk's master plan will see Tesla build public transport, solar roofs, and cars that earn you money Roughly a decade ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk outlined a master plan for the electric car company: build a sports car that could outpace high-performance gasoline-powered vehicles, use the proceeds to develop an affordable car and repeat for even better results. 10 years on, the company has followed through with that agenda: after launching the pricey Tesla Roadster, it released the Model S sedan and the Model X SUV, and unveiled its relatively reasonable Model 3 in April with a sticker price of $35,000. Now, Musk has unveiled the second phase of the ambitious automaker's secret plan, and it sounds pretty…
%feed http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/07/21/hollywood-is-trying-to-cash-in-on-pokemon-fever-with-live-action-pikachu-movie/ Hollywood is trying to cash in on Pokémon fever with live-action Detective Pikachu movie Pokémon Go is officially a phenomenon. Like most things that climb to the top of pop culture's collective awareness seemingly overnight, Hollywood was quick to swoop in and buy the rights to make a movie about it. Legendary Pictures plans to do just that with an upcoming Pokémon movie centered around Detective Pikachu, the sometimes cuddly character from a spin-off game for the Nintendo 3DS earlier this year. Legendary is fast-tracking the feature film in hopes of catching some of the hype wave of the Pokémon franchise before it disappears entirely — if that's even possible. The Pokémon franchise already has…
%feed http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2016/07/20/chill-netflix-recommendation-bot-didnt-know-needed/ ‘And Chill' is the Netflix recommendation bot you didn't know you needed Bots these days are all the rage, but the sad truth is: most of them kind of suck. ‘And Chill' is different, it may actually be the first bot to provide a bit of value by making that ever-so-difficult “what should I watch on Netflix?” decision just a tad bit easier. To use And Chill, you just message the bot on Facebook and ask for a Netflix recommendation. After answering a few questions to describe what you're looking for the bot returns pretty solid recommendations based on your responses. Here's a good example: And Chill can be a bit slow to produce…
%feed https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160720125514.htm Reading Harry Potter lowers Americans' opinions of Donald Trump, study finds Can Harry Potter defeat Donald Trump? A new study has found that Americans who read Harry Potter books hold a lower opinion of Donald Trump, even after controlling for many factors like party, gender, education, and age. technology
%feed http://insider.si.edu/2016/07/reflections-changing-washington-d-c/ Reflections on a changing Washington, D.C.
Peter Sefton, D.C. Preservation League trustee, reflects on how Washington, D.C. has changed in recent years. (Anacostia Community Museum video series)
%feed https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160721105518.htm Atmospheric chemistry on paper Normally computers speed up calculations. But with his new pen-and-paper formula, a researcher gets his results thousands of times faster than using conventional computer codes. The astrophysicist calculates the abundances of molecules (known as atmospheric chemistry) in exoplanetary atmospheres. Ultimately, deciphering the abundances of molecules allows us to interpret if features in a spectrum are due to physics, geology or biology. astronomy
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Flauren-modery%2Fshits-bad-right-now-so-rescued-cat_b_11115404.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Sh*t's Bad Right Now, So Here's A Short Story About A Rescued Cat
Shit's kind of heavy for all of us right now, and we have a long road ahead, but I thought maybe, just maybe, you'd like five minutes of light reading about how I saved a cat and she saved me.
Her name is FatFace.
She's been feral for at least five years and she has three teeth and she weighs under five pounds.
FatFace was part of a feral colony my neighbor took care of, and which I've subsequently taken over after my neighbor moved across town.
I enjoy our cat colony, which totals between 10-12 mostly black or Russian blue cats, but let me tell you something about taking care of cat colonies: Don't publicly share that info at parties. One time I was at a networking event and met a handful of interesting people and had to stop this sentence from coming out of my mouth: "Oh, man. I have to get going! My cat colony is going to be piiiiissed if I don't get home soon for feed time."
(Side note: Our colony is fixed and if any genitalia-sporting cats come into the colony, my former neighbor traps them and gets them fixed through the Austin Humane Society's trap-neuter-release program.)
FatFace was one of the oldest cats in the colony, and like most of the other ferals, she was terrified of us. Most of her time was spent hiding under the neighbor's house or keeping herself at a distance, squinting, watching our every move. However, we took a shine to the little goober because of her tiny stature and her expressive face. When I acquired the colony and discovered she only had three teeth, I began feeding her soft food.
Over the course of nine months, FatFace went from eating soft food we left out, to letting us get very close to her, to letting us touch her, to letting us brush her, to letting us pet her. Now I'm happy to say she lives in our house and enjoys sleeping on my butt and sniffing my armpits. She also enjoys curling up like a tiny donut.
Here are some other fun fact about FatFace:
She's between 5-10 years old.
We called her "he" for five years until I asked my vet to check out her netherparts.
She also likes to sleep on my chest and stare at me from about two-to-three inches from my face.
She does not like to be picked up; she makes this pathetic "muu-annn" sound when you do it.
She doesn't like fancy-ass soft food; she likes good-ol' mystery meat from Friskies.
We've managed to put one pound on her; she now weighs over five pounds.
My bf thinks she is part dwarf cat.
She has mouth herpes.
She loves when you push on her nose really hard. She gets so into it that she might bite your face.
She doesn't mind if you scratch her stomach -- but not the feet.
She's a very affectionate, chill cat. Even when she's ready to party at 3AM or eat at 7AM, she just stares at us or head bunts us.
She's kind of a slob. Because she has mouth herpes and few teeth, she can't eat or groom well. Most of the time we get salmon sneezes all over our faces.
During the day, I'll lay on the bed next to her and instantly fall asleep.
At night time I can no longer get work done because she sleeps on my neck.
She's very much loved by us.
I've never owned a cat before, and I never thought I could love a cat as much as I do. She has brought great joy to my life, and I hope I bring joy to hers.
If you'd like to follow the #LifeofFatFace, let's hook up on Instagram!
A version of this post originally appeared on Medium.
-- 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.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fmargo-t-oge%2Fobamas-landmark-greenhouse_b_11041224.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Obama's Landmark Greenhouse Gas And Fuel Economy Standards Are Working - Now Let's Look to the Future
(Tom Toles, Washington Post, Sept 2, 2012)
This week the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) released a very positive report regarding the historic federal greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards. In a nutshell, car manufacturers can meet the current 2025 goals to improve efficiency and slash greenhouse gas emissions at a cost similar or less than expected four years ago.
But despite these clear and comprehensive findings, some elements in the auto industry will inevitably push back, arguing that the rules will be too expensive or that gasoline prices are so low that customers don't want fuel-efficient vehicles.
These arguments against long-term standards are myopic. Remember that when these rules were first adopted in 2009, the auto industry was in collapse. The fate of iconic car companies, for decades the pride of the United States, was a huge question mark. Eventually, the federal government decided to throw GM, Chrysler and Ford a multi-billion dollar lifeline. It was in the midst of these economic conditions, with fragile domestic manufacturers and gasoline prices around $2.00 a gallon--actually lower than today--that EPA, NHTSA and CARB first began developing today's greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards.
To its credit, domestic and foreign manufacturers agreed to the groundbreaking standards. American manufacturers realized they had become overly dependent on heavy, gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs. In 2009, they began to chart a new course that would ensure their long-term competitiveness, both domestically and globally. They bet on building a next generation of vehicles for a cleaner and more efficient future. The environmental upside to this innovation was staggering. Six billion metric tons of CO2 emissions would be avoided and consumers would save $1.7 trillion at the pump.
So how does the auto industry stand seven years later? Have manufacturers crashed and burned? No. From a bankrupt shambles in 2009, US auto industry sales have expanded dramatically. In 2015, they grew by 4.5 million vehicles, numbers on par with historic highs. Profits are also back on solid footing. GM, the largest of the Big Three, has swung from a $30.9 billion loss in 2008 to nearly $10 billion in profits in 2015. In fact, according to one analysis, the "Big Three" stand to fully recover compliance costs and be even more profitable per a range of future scenarios.
What about the variety of vehicles available? It's the largest and most diverse ever. The vast majority of vehicles are still internal combustion, but there are more than 76 alternative powertrain models available. Drivers can choose a large Chevy Suburban with a conventional engine, a hybrid Ford Focus or an all-electric Nissan Leaf. And every single model is more efficient than its 2009 counterpart, making it less polluting and cheaper to operate.
Does the industry have problems meeting the standards? Not at all. In fact, according to the EPA, over a quarter of the 2015 models met the 2018 standards. Fuel economy is at the highest level ever by 5 miles per gallon since 2004.Currently, the 2016 Honda Civic and the Scion iA already meet the 2023 standards. Several Ford-150 models already meet the 2021 standards, as do the Toyota Rav4, Chevy Malibu hybrid and Chevy Cruze.
Just seven years after the auto industry's 2009 nadir, it is in the midst of an innovation renaissance. The costs and the performance of current powertrain technologies are advancing faster than was anticipated. New technologies, such as Li-Ion batteries - the primary driver of cost in an electric vehicle - have come down nearly 70% in the last 6-7 years. So, even with national gasoline prices averaging $2.34 a gallon in early June, an electric vehicle is still about 50 percent cheaper to fuel than a gasoline vehicle.
The drop in battery costs is also translating into greater range. The mid-priced Chevy Bolt EV, which boasts a 200-mile range before being recharged, will be available at the end of the year. Tesla's mid-priced all-electric Model 3, expected in 2018, got over 400,000 advance orders in a matter of weeks. After federal incentives, both are expected to cost around $30,000 - cheaper than the average transaction price of a vehicle last December. What's more, that pricing is based on an electric vehicle market that is less than 1% of all car sales. Over the next decade, increased market penetration combined with technology advances will reduce those prices even further.
Meanwhile, what seemed like science fiction just decades ago is quickly becoming reality. A tech company, Google, continues to make rapid advances in self-driving. Cars with fuel cell powertrains produce only water from the exhaust. The first generation fuel cell production car, the Toyota Mirai is already available for sale in California.
The innovation that has been unleashed over the past seven years is exactly what is needed to take on the biggest threat to our future: climate change. But while it is merely a good start, these rules are not nearly enough for the world to avert the worst impacts of climate change. This past December, nations from around the world agreed that we have to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 2º Celsius from 2005 levels by 2050. In order to meet that goal, the International Energy Agency projects that we will need 100 million electric cars on the road by 2030--up from the 1.26 million in 2015. This is a huge task--but it is still doable with companies continuing to invest and the right government policies.
This year, as the regulatory agencies review the 2025 standards, industry voices should not be calling for the standards to be rolled back. This is not the time to again look in the rearview mirror. Instead, industry and government must set ambitious future targets for 2030 and beyond. We need to provide long-term certainty for the innovative companies that have set us on our current trajectory. We must enhance the Nation's energy security. We have to deal head-on with climate change.
To do so, EPA, NHTSA and CARB should consider setting greenhouse gas standards for cars in 2030 that would lead to a significant number of plugged-in electric vehicles to be on the road. Once again, the auto industry should bring its expertise to be an integral part of the process.
Government policies should also consider incorporating electric vehicles that are shared and autonomous into the standards. Shared and autonomous cars have the potential to use much less fuel or electricity. Under the right government policies and incentives, these vehicles could contribute to lower greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants, while reducing congestion and accidents.
These type of commitments will help us avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Setting our standards higher is the only way to shift the balance from an intensely polluting fossil fuel economy to a cleaner and more sustainable future. They will also help the nation's automakers be global leaders in environmental innovation and, as already demonstrated, to profitably secure their futures.
-- 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.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fwilliam-s-becker%2Fa-pv-panel-on-every-roof_b_11114732.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 A PV Panel On Every Roof In the home stretch of his presidency, Barack Obama still has some ideas up his sleeve. The latest is his crusade to make sure that every American household and business can become a solar power plant.
There has been plenty of good news about solar energy in recent years. It is becoming much more affordable and it's sprouting up on rooftops nearly everywhere in the United States. Yet we have barely begun to capture its potential. Sunlight is free, ubiquitous, domestic, inexhaustible and clean, but it still provides less than 1 percent of the nation's electricity.
Its potential is much greater. The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado calculates that if every suitable roof was equipped with solar panels, we could get 40 percent of our electricity from sunlight.
That's a theoretical number, not a plan. But reality will get much closer to theory if solar energy's virtuous cycle continues. The cycle goes like this: Because of state and federal incentives, improvements in technology and state renewable energy mandates, the price of rooftop solar systems has dropped so that more people can afford them. As more people buy solar panels, more must be manufactured. The more that are manufactured, the less expensive they become because of economies of manufacturing scale. As they get even less expensive, more people buy them, more are manufactured, there are more economies of scale, and so on.
However, the virtuous cycle has not yet brought the price of rooftop solar systems down to the point where low-income families or people with low credit scores can afford them. In a study it issued in January 2015, the George Washington University Solar Institute reported that the 40 percent of American households that earn less than $40,000 each year account for less than 5 percent of the nation's solar installations. In other words, we still have a solar income gap in the United States. The study noted that solar energy has the ability to "alleviate the financial burdens of lower income communities, but targeted policies will be necessary for solar to expand into this underserved market."
President Obama responded six months later with some of those targeted policies. In July 2015, the White House announced a National Community Solar Partnership designed to make solar accessible to all income levels. The objective is 300 megawatts of solar power on federally subsidized housing. In addition, because half of the nation's homes and businesses are not suitable for producing solar power, the Administration budgeted $520 million for the development of community solar systems that serve multiple buildings. Several of these arrangements are in place today around the United States so that several buildings can share the capital costs and the savings of a photovoltaic array, including buildings where rooftop solar would not work because of ownership issues, poor solar access and so on.
Many moderate- and low-income families face two other barriers. They may not have the money to pay the up-front costs of a system, and they may have trouble finding affordable financing. The marketplace has spawned some innovative solutions. Today, a homeowner can lease a solar system rather than buy one. The lessor pays all the up-front costs to install the system, plus the cost of maintaining it. The homeowner uses part of the savings on his energy bills and the income from selling solar power to his utility to make lease payments.
Some utilities offer on-bill financing for homeowners to make energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements. The utility loans the homeowner the money for energy upgrades; the homeowner repays the loan with a special charge on his or her monthly utility bills. When on-bill financing is done correctly, the homeowner's energy savings are more than his or her loan payments.
Yet another low-interest option is Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing. Similar to utility financing, the municipality puts up the money for energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements. The building owner repays the assessment with a fee on his or her property tax bill. This option has worked well for commercial buildings, but PACE loans for residences have been in limbo for several years because of objections from the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) over who gets paid first when the house is sold -- the municipality or the mortgage holder.
The Obama Administration has worked out a solution. Earlier this week, the White House unveiled another initiative called Clean Energy Savings for All. It clears up the FHA's objections to residential PACE programs so that municipalities can create them by designating energy financing districts and issuing bonds so homeowners can add PACE assessments to their HUD and Veterans Administration mortgages.
In addition, the Administration will make it easier for the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance program at HUD to fund renewable energy systems.
The goal for this new package of initiatives is 1 gigawatt of solar for low- and moderate-income families by 2020.
The old rap against rooftop solar was that it is a boutique technology that only upper-income homeowners could afford. But because of falling prices for solar panels and innovative financing options, and because of the Obama Administration's ongoing work to make solar power accessible to everyone, distributed solar systems are rapidly becoming an egalitarian technology that gives all of us some choice in where our energy comes from. It also gives us the opportunity to do our patriotic duty and join America's clean energy revolution.
It's time to make America's energy system great again.
-- 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.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fmargo-t-oge%2Fobamas-landmark-greenhouse_b_11041224.html&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Margo T. Oge: Obama's Landmark Greenhouse Gas And Fuel Economy Standards Are Working - Now Let's Look to the Future This year, as the regulatory agencies review the 2025 standards, industry voices should not be calling for the standards to be rolled back. This is not the time to again look in the rearview mirror.
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.seattletimes.com%2Fnation-world%2Fphotos-of-the-day-july-21-2016%2F%3Futm_source%3DRSS%26utm_medium%3DReferral%26utm_campaign%3DRSS_photos-of-the-day&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Photos of the Day: July 21, 2016 Explore the news of the day with these images from around the world. images
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2Ftheatlantic%2Finfocus%2F%7E3%2FodcwrIkTCz0%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Scenes From the Republican National Convention (31 photos)
Thousands descended on Cleveland this week to attend the four-day Republican National Convention at Ohio's Quicken Loans Arena. The crowd was composed of delegates, politicians, protesters, journalists, and even some celebrities like boxing promoter Don King. The GOP event comes to a close this evening with a speech by Donald Trump, the party's official nominee for president. Below are a selection of some of the more interesting images to come out of Cleveland.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives to introduce his wife Melania during the Republican National Convention, Monday, July 18, 2016, in Cleveland. (Evan Vucci / AP) images
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Ffiddleoak%2F27839807693%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 the peak
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fkevin-s-weiner%2Fbrain-mapping-getting-it_b_11076366.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dscience%26ir%3DScience&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Brain mapping: Getting it right This post was written in collaboration with Randy Gollub, Jeanette Mumford, Panthea Heydari, Leonardo Fernandino, and Cyril Pernet, as well as was approved by the entire Communications Committee and the Council of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping.
Scientific publications generate a written conversation that evolves over time. Each new publication expands on the conversational foundation established by its predecessors. Despite our positive view that a recent study by Eklund and colleagues makes a valuable contribution to the conversation in our field of brain mapping, many reports have interpreted that findings from this paper cast doubt on all studies conducted with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) over the last two decades. We hope to dispel some of the misconceptions.
You may have read some of these reports, which often repeated convincing figures like "false positive rates up to 70 percent" or "Tens of Thousands of FMRI Brain Studies May Be Flawed" to create doubt and undermine confidence in fMRI. Where did these numbers come from? Well, a major issue that all brain imagers must deal with is determining the reliability of the detected brain activation. Since the detection is made via statistical techniques, there is always a chance that what is determined to be an activation, may in fact be a "false positive". Researchers use methods that control the chance of a false positive within their measurements, capped at a predetermined level (usually 5 percent). Controlling false positives, however, can be a tricky business since it often requires certain assumptions to be made. For those of you interested in a more detailed technical explanation, see the blog we wrote for our community. Assessing the risk of false positives is not a new issue and is central in most scientific fields. Since the field of fMRI research is relatively new - barely above the legal drinking age in the U.S. - we are still determining the best way to control false positives. The work by Eklund and colleagues showed that the false positive rate using some analysis techniques can be as high as 70 percent, which is the origin of that figure in the headlines. 40,000 is an estimate of the total number of studies that have used fMRI, or the size of the pool of studies that this work could possibly impact.
Three example headlines reporting that the findings by Eklund and colleagues may invalidate all fMRI studies. Images sources: Forbes, Wired, and Science Alert.
Now that we know what those figures represent, what do they mean and how do they affect the field of neuroimaging? The elegant study by Eklund and colleagues showed that only a certain subset of analysis decisions can give rise to the highest false positive rate of up to 70 percent (instead of the conventional 5 percent). However, not every brain mapper analyzes their data in the same way or uses the approaches examined by the authors. As pointed out by Dr. Nichols, one of the co-authors, on his blog, only ~3500 studies (or less than 10 percent of the ~40,000 existing fMRI studies) used the statistical methods that Eklund and colleagues called into question. So, over ~90 percent of previously published fMRI studies implemented other analysis methods that were not questioned. Further, the findings from all of these 3500 studies are not necessarily false either. Likely only a fraction of the 3500 studies - for example, those with marginally significant results or those not subsequently reproduced - might be called into question.
So, while some sensationalists seem to think differently, there is no need to question every result ever published with fMRI. The new paper by Eklund and colleagues simply demonstrates that particular variants of methods for statistical inference that are sometimes used are not valid. It does not invalidate either (a) the method of fMRI or (b) the majority of the field's findings. Finding meaningful patterns in fMRI data is an on-going effort. As a reflection of the importance of this process, the journal in which the Eklund study was published has agreed to release an erratum clarifying the interpretation of these data - consistent with what is highlighted in the present post. What we are witnessing is a healthy process of science self-correcting. Over time, scientists will learn to identify and fix techniques, and eventually converge upon those that prove to be the most reliable.
By chance, as one of us was editing this article, a group of junior colleagues from a cognitive neuroscience lab were discussing the paper by Eklund and colleagues in the next room. They were considering if and how these findings have implications for their own data analysis methods. And that is the true value of this work: To openly question and continually improve our methods because after all, fMRI remains one of the best tools available to reveal the inner workings of the living human brain.
Kevin S. Weiner is a neuroscientist, as well as member of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) and writes for the Communications/Media Team. The OHBM Media Team brings cutting edge information and research on the human brain to your laptops, desktops and mobile devices in a way that is neurobiologically pleasing. For more information about brain mapping, follow www.humanbrainmapping.org/blog or @OHBMSci_News
A technical comment on the Eklund at al. paper from our OHBM blog.
A technical comment on the Eklund et al. paper by Guillaume Flandin and Karl Friston.
A white paper on best practices in analyzing neuroimaging data.
-- 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.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fkotaku.com%2Fpokemon-go-helped-me-cope-with-my-social-anxiety-1783988220&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 'Pokemon Go' Helped Me Cope With My Social Anxiety The first time I tried to catch a Zubat in "Pokémon Go" sucked. I was out on a crowded San Francisco street on a Friday night, and the tiny blue asshole with a smaller asshole for a mouth moved like friggin' Muhammad Ali. general
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fquora%2Fwhy-wasting-water-is-even_b_11114690.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Why Wasting Water Is Even Worse for the Environment Than You Think Is wasting water actually bad for the environment? originally appeared on Quora:the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.
Yes, wasting water is actually bad for the environment. There are anthropocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric reasons why wasting water is bad.
Anthropocentrically, fresh water is a vital resource for the survival of our population. Seeing as less than 1% of the world's water is freshwater and available for us to consume (not trapped in glaciers), there are limitations that factor into our carrying capacity as a population on Earth including the availability and distribution of freshwater. Different countries are endowed with different stocks of freshwater, and depending on their replenishment rate and usage rate, each has varying degrees of water scarcity that needs to be addressed. Below is a map by World Resources Institute that outlines the water stress by country, with 36 countries displaying an "Extremely High Stress (>80%)," which means that "more than 80 percent of the water available to agricultural, domestic and industrial users is withdrawn annually--leaving businesses, farms and communities vulnerable to scarcity" (World's 36 Most Water-Stressed Countries).
Therefore, wasting water in a country where it may appear water just magically comes out of the tap (i.e. Canada, the U.S., most developed countries), is wasting a precious, vital resource that millions (663 million, according to Water Facts: Facts About the Global Water Shortage) don't even have clean, safe access to.
Furthermore, in places where clean water is scarce, overusing or wasting household water limits the availability of it for other communities to use for drinking, cleaning, cooking or growing--and thus contributes to disease, illness, or agricultural scarcity/starvation.
You could tack on the economic incentive to save water, as it means lower household water utility bills, one of the largest incentives for water-wise individuals or households to conserve water.
Biocentrically, other species rely on freshwater besides humans as a vital component to their survival! Overuse of freshwater in household settings means there is less fresh water for agricultural use (which affects humans on an food scarcity level), but many livestock species rely on freshwater. Also, as we divert more freshwater from aquatic environments to supplement agriculturally, many plant and animal species are threatened or can become endangered. Despite our attempts to separate man from nature, we are indeed part of one ecosystem (the biosphere), and reliant on plants and animals; therefore sharing and properly managing our most precious resource is crucial.
Ecocentrically, wasting water while our demand for water increases (as population and standards of living increase globally), means that we need to supplement for this lack of freshwater by pulling it out of aquifers or groundwater supplies in which their regeneration rate is lower than the extraction rate. This unsustainable practice decreases long term water security and availability.
Furthermore, and almost most importantly, water takes a lot of energy, time, and money to filter and clean so that it's drinkable. Wasting water or overusing household water means you're wasting the energy-intensive process of filtration. The many steps of this process--extraction, transportation, filtration, etc.--require non-renewable fossil fuels and as these resources become depleted, their dangerous by-products such as carbon dioxide build up in the Earth's atmosphere, contributing to your carbon footprint and the Earth's rising temperatures.
This question originally appeared on Quora. Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and access insider knowledge. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions:
-- 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.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fllewellyn-king%2Fthe-cruel-market-nuclear-_b_11062024.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 The Cruel Market: Nuclear Pain And Environmental Loss Just when it needs it most, the United States is losing its most potent weapon in the fight against climate change, which might better be called global pollution. One nuclear plant is closed in Vermont, two are under threat of closure in Illinois, and the only plant in climate-conscious California is to close.
These four plants represent a substantial withdrawal of clean, carbon-free electricity from the market, mostly to be replaced by natural gas, and some wind and solar. Gas will do the bulk of the generating, and it is a carbon-emitter -- less than coal, but a carbon source nonetheless.
What is more, these plants are up and running, which means none of the pollution associated with construction, steel-making or quarrying will have to be repeated. Some, including Marvin Fertel, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, have expressed fears that 20 more nuclear plants may yet close.
Diablo Canyon: No fault of its own
The ostensible reason for these closures is that market forces dictate them. That bald statement implies that electricity is bought and sold as freely as any multi-sourced commodity.
But electricity is not traded in any conventional way. And it is weighted in favor of the short term and political goals.
The trouble started when it was decided to deregulate electricity markets in the 1990s. The goal had nobility: Consumers would have choice. At least that is how it was sold by advocates, such as Enron.
Well, choice did not really work for consumers, but it has worked for some large industrial customers, who have been able to shop for price.
Mostly, deregulation has created two kinds of utilities: those that swallowed the deregulation pill, and those who did not, mostly in the South. The northern tier of utilities, under pressure from their state governments, deregulated, some even selling off their generating assets.
The result has been other than anticipated: Consumers have had little or no choice, and the market has set about exterminating long-lived plant, like nuclear, in favor of today's cheapest fuel -- at this moment, natural gas.
The utilities which have remained strictly regulated by their state utility commissions have been more secure financially and able to raise money more cheaply. The leader in this pack, the giant Southern Company, headquartered in Atlanta, has become a technological innovator as well as a builder of new nuclear plant.
Deregulation of the telephone monopoly -- often cited during the passion to deregulate electricity -- created a profusion of innovations. By contrast, deregulating electricity has just brought about a rush to the cheapest fuel of the day.
Electric utilities operate what are known as natural monopolies. Competing entities cannot install a new set of transmission wires, so the deregulated electric market had to be contrived. It was also subject to political and cultural manipulation, as the solar and wind lobbies insisted that their product get preference. Coal was edged out financially, before environmental concerns.
Deregulated utilities have formed transmission organizations to rationalize the system. These are the independent system operators, such as the Midwest ISO or PJM in the Mid-Atlantic. They auction power and the auction system favors the cheapest kilowatt on offer.
That sounds fair, right? Not quite. Some of the power comes from wind and solar, which has been subsidized by an array of tax preferences and other government supports.
Many states have renewable energy portfolios which decree that a percentage of the power has to come from these renewable resources. This is fine because they produce no carbon. But they do not produce that much reliable electricity either. It takes a lot of solar arrays or wind turbines -- and then only when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing -- to produce the same electricity as a nuclear power plant or an old-fashioned, coal-fired power plant. They need reliable backup -- and that is natural gas, a fossil fuel.
Also to replace a nuclear plant with renewables chews up a lot of land, whether solar arrays or wind farms. Imperfect markets produce imperfect results. -- For InsideSources
-- 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.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2F2098296-city-slicker-monkeys-are-overweight-and-have-high-cholesterol%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 City slicker monkeys are overweight and have high cholesterol Urban living means plentiful fruit trees and many sugary snacks for Colombia's tamarin monkeys but they pay the price for this unhealthy diet gaia
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fedward-flattau%2Funfit-to-govern_b_11114460.html&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Edward Flattau: Unfit To Govern According to the overwhelming majority of the world's climatologists, global warming is the most pressing challenge of our time, posing an existential...
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The WIMPs theory is still strong though
An international team of researchers working on the Large Underground Xenon dark matter experiment announced today that they have failed to detect any dark matter particles.…
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fvoices.nationalgeographic.com%2F2016%2F07%2F21%2Fwater-wildlife-and-hope-rejuvenating-a-kogi-sacred-site%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Water, Wildlife and Hope: Rejuvenating a Kogi Sacred Site
After years of planning, designing, acquiring materials, developing infrastructure, laying and burying 1,200 meters of pipe, and testing water quality and functionality, the seemingly impossible was achieved: for Colombia's Kogi people, and their related tribes who rely on Jaba Tañiwashkaka, a historically sacred site, an aqueduct that provides access to water for crop irrigation and potable water for consumption is now in place. And thanks to a determined site restoration effort, alligators, nutria, and capybara are only a few of the animals now seen in a wetland previously largely devoid of wildlife.
The Kogi people live on roughly 14.5 million acres in Colombia's northern Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region. Around the margins of the Sierra Nevada is the Línea Negra, the “Black Line,” a chain of 54 pilgrimage sites sacred to the Kogi and once part of their ancestral territories. Most of the associated sites are not currently under Kogi ownership or control—the Kogi were forced to abandon them due to decades of colonization and violent civil conflict—and many are endangered by poorly planned development schemes, megaprojects, mining activity, and/or illicit crop cultivation.
To address this, in 2012, the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) partnered with the Colombian Ministry of Culture and the Organización Gonawindúa Tayrona of the Kogi people to purchase the essential section of a coastal sacred site that the region's indigenous communities call Jaba Tañiwashkaka—an area of great environmental and cultural importance.
With the legal consolidation and traditional management of Jaba Tañiwashkaka well underway, thanks in part to additional land purchases, a pressing task has been the construction of a water supply system that allows for the continuous residence of Kogi families in their reclaimed territory and the establishment of small-scale subsistence agriculture on three hectares to sustain the families and authorities who live at or visit the site. Today, an aqueduct provides access to water for crop irrigation and potable water for consumption. Previously, any water supplied at the site of the Kogi's temples had to be carried in buckets from the Jerez River at a distance of about one kilometer, and this water was not suitable for human consumption.
Now, solar panel energy powers the pump, three 2,000-liter reservoir tanks provide storage, and a filter supplies potable water, with the remainder used for agriculture. The system was designed as a low-maintenance and ecologically responsible project, and a fourth tank has now been sited at the nearby orchard. With assistance from the national government, this land was returned to the ownership and stewardship of the Kogi.
Under the Kogi's care, and through joint efforts with ACT, their sacred territory is being restored through community monitoring, trash collection, and border enforcement. Local waters are decontaminating, as indicated by studies of the health and size of populations of crayfish, a good indicator of water quality. Littoral vegetation is rebounding, and bodies of water previously scattered with refuse are being restored to beautiful freshwater lagoons.
The local population of crabs is increasing, and previously unseen semiaquatic animals such as nutrias and young alligators have been spotted. The alligators further indicate that that a recent prohibition from capturing their eggs has helped their reproduction and repopulation. Moreover, with around-the-clock control of fires, local flora is recovering across the local wetland, including propagation of marsh vegetation and young mangrove.
In addition to the return of its original state and beauty, the temple site can now fulfill its role as a gathering site for the Kogi's traditional practices—ritual offerings, internal meetings, and exchange gatherings—that strengthen their culture and advance the conservation and restoration of the local ecology.
ACT and the Kogi are grateful to a set of funders including the White Feather Foundation, March to the Top, LUSH Cosmetics, Dora Arts Janssen, and anonymous donors whose generosity made the aqueduct a reality andhelpedbreathe new life into this ancient wetland.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Felizabeth-mcculley-gore%2Ftechnology-that-could-tur_b_11110382.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Technology that Could Turn the Tide on Climate Change: Energy Storage New technology is required to make meaningful progress on climate change. This column will focus on one of those options: energy storage. A breakthrough in this area could alter the energy landscape and help the effort to combat climate change.
Improvements in utility scale energy storage could help decrease emissions and increase efficiency. The usual variability of demand for electricity causes inefficiency in energy production. This is true for any feedstock but it is especially true for renewables. Renewables are intermittent; peak production times for wind and solar don't match peak load times.
The next generation of energy storage can solve this problem. Improved energy storage would allow utilities to store the extra power generated by renewable sources and use it during peak load periods. This would also smooth out the peaks and valleys in fossil fuel-generated electricity, improving efficiency and decreasing the need for expensive energy from peaking plants.
Improved storage increases the flexibility of the utilities. It would allow them to quickly respond to increases in demand and take advantage of bursts of increased supply from renewable sources.
There are a series of demonstration projects underway that will explore ways of expanding energy storage including high tech batteries, thermal energy storage, and pumped hydro.
-- 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.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2F2098232-eating-each-others-faeces-helps-earwig-young-survive-famine%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Eating each other's faeces helps earwig young survive famine The odd feeding behaviour may even help keep the young insects together in a primitive form of social living gaia
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedaily.com%2Freleases%2F2016%2F07%2F160720215145.htm&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 To protect yourself from malaria sleep with a chicken next to your bed For the first time, scientists have shown that malaria-transmitting mosquitoes actively avoid feeding on certain animal species such as chickens, using their sense of smell. Odors emitted by species such as chickens could provide protection for humans at risk of mosquito-transmitted diseases, according to a study. gaia
TIME OUT LONDON, VISIT LONDON, LONDONIST & "I KNOW THIS GREAT..." if you use my photo can you please put the credit link to my Facebook Page rather than my Flickr Account. Thank you.
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---------------------------------------- Thank You For Visiting My Photography. Please Don't Use Without Permission. Facebook: www.facebook.com/saimon.hossain Webpage: http://saimonhossain.wix.com/saimonhossain ----------------------------------------
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-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2F500px.com%2Fphoto%2F163913639%2Fcrumble-with-a-plum-and-berry-style-vintage-by-%25D0%2597%25D0%25BE%25D1%2580%25D1%258F%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B0-%25D0%2598%25D0%25B2%25D1%2587%25D0%25B5%25D0%25BD%25D0%25BA%25D0%25BE&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Crumble with a plum and berry. style vintage by Зоряна Ивченко
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Much of the current research on the development of a quantum computer involves work at very low temperatures. The challenge to make them more practical for everyday use is to make them work at room temperature.…
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Is there anything cooler than sending a robot to Mars to shoot rocks with lasers? Probably not -- which is why NASA is giving the Curiosity rover the ability to shoot even more rocks with lasers. Okay, technically NASA is giving the Martian rover the... !["Today's]("http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--bRjW3nV6--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/m1g9k6kxiowwrowfmxmn.jpg")
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