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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.

The post Map designs baby monitor that can help control children's sleep appeared first on Design Week.

 
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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.

The post Peter Saville designs artwork for Tate's Switch House pale ale appeared first on Design Week.

 
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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.  
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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…

This story continues at The Next Web  
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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…

This story continues at The Next Web  
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‘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…

This story continues at The Next Web  
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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.  
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Sinkhole in Xuan'en  
Sinkhole in Xuan'en County, Hubei, China (© Xinhua News Agency/REX/Shutterstock) 2016-07-21 [www.bing.com/search]  
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Daily Dozen — Photos  
Daily Dozen — Photos -- National Geographic Your Shot  
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Daily Dozen — Photos  
Daily Dozen — Photos -- National Geographic Your Shot  
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light my wave. #surf  
light my wave. #surf #stoke Pic by Cory Scott  
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Frenn revels in Scandinavian simplicity  

Frenn revels in Scandinavian simplicity

 
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Richard Meier's Douglas House gains historic status  

Richard Meier's Douglas House gains historic status

 
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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)

 

The post Reflections on a changing Washington, D.C. appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

 
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Hiram Powers 1805-18  
Hiram Powers 1805-1873  
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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.  
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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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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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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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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.

Read more: Environment, Carbon Emissions, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Fuel Efficiency, Climate Change, Green News

 
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Photos of the Day: July 21, 2016  

Explore the news of the day with these images from around the world.  
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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.

 
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the peak  

fiddleoak posted a photo:

 
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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

Further reading:

Eklund et al. (2016).


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.

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