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Climate Change This Week: A Hot New High, Kids Show the Way, and More!  
Today, the Earth got a little hotter, and a little more crowded.




Saving BUB, Beautiful Unique Biodiversity, as in these Amazonian red eyed tree frogs, is another reason to save our carbon storing forests. Source michaelturco.com

Forests: the cheapest way to store carbon






Red Reads Dry - increasingly so for the Amazon, just over the past decade. Source NASA

OO Climate Change Scourge:
Dry Amazon Likely To Burn Bigtime This Year - NASA images now show. Takeaways:

• NASA says wildfire risk (July-Oct) greater than 2005 and 2010, when wildfires burned large swaths;
• 
  
• Amazon has burned more thru June 2016 than previously;
• 
  
• Satellite data show most of Amazon soil is dryer than normal.

Worlds Of Life Goes Up In Flames - as the Amazon and forests worldwide burn. Source The Atlantic

Through fossil fuel burning we have created giant outdoor ovens;
because we know why, we are no longer innocent.

In drought, trees evaporate less water, and burn easier.

"This puts millions of trees under stress and lowers humidity across the region, allowing fires to grow bigger than they normally would."


When we harm forests, we harm ourselves.


OO Tanzania: Growing Mushrooms Helps Save Forests - Takeaways:

• Crops are failing from climate change;
• 
  
• For income, some turned forests into charcoal/wood fuel;
• 
  
• Tanzania has one of sub-Saharan's highest deforestation rates.

A Mushroom House surrounded by moist forest. Source mapprinter.wordpress.com

• Growing mushrooms is an alternative income, not reliant on crops/livestock.
• 
  
• Forests supply the local moist conditions to grow them.
• 
  
• NGO Farm Africa is showing farmers how.

"When the forest is logged or burned, not only does carbon absorption stop but the carbon stored in trees and other vegetation is released into the atmosphere, increasing the amount of climate-changing gases," said a field officer.



OO US, Others: Global Climate Spending Focusing On Forest Protection


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HOTTER CLOUDY FUTURE




Clouds High N Low - wispy high cirrus clouds, "mare's tails", differ greatly from low "puffy" cumulus clouds. Source earthdata.nasa.gov

OO Climate Change Models Predicted Change In Clouds;
Altered Patterns Will Worsen Warming says a new study that analyzed satellite data over 2 decades, starting in the1980s. Takeaways:

• Clouds are shifting towards the poles;
• 
  
• Clouds are shifting higher in the atmosphere;
• 
  
• Findings confirm fast pace of warming predicted by climate models.

Northward, Ho! 2011 Atlantic hurricanes show how they typically track northward. Source geo-mexico.com

These changes are consistent with 3 main atmospheric changes:

• Expansion of the subtropical dry zones, the desert belt, on either side of the equator;
• 
  
• Shift of mid-latitude storm tracks towards the poles:
• 
  
• Clouds are rising higher as a warmer atmosphere makes them more buoyant.

Related Headline:

OO 'The Most Singular Of All The Things That We Have Found':
Clouds Study Alarms Top Scientist


OO Climate Change May Already Be Shifting Clouds Toward The Poles


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WE'RE HARMING NATURE -- AND OUR FUTURE




Source Wikimedia Commons

OO Expanding Farms Plunge Biodiversity, Nature
Below Safe Limits
Over Nearly 60% Of World's Land reveals a new study, as well as expanding roads and cities, leading to a dangerous decline of natural services, including:

• The ability of forests to absorb carbon dioxide;
• 
  
• The biodiversity that humanity needs for food, medicine, and more;
• 
  
• The moderation of climate;
• 
  
• The filtration needed for clean air and water.

"If we keep degrading biodiversity there will be a point where it's very difficult to support agriculture," said the lead study author.


Related Headline:

OO Biodiversity Is Below Safe Levels
Across More Than Half Of World's Land

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HOT NEWS




And So The Egg Fries...

OO Eastern Hemisphere's All-Time Temperature Record:
Kuwait Fries in 54°C (129.2°F) Heat under continued global warming, it will get hotter...




Hot Stuff! The heat alerts issued on July 23, 2016. Source National Weather Service

OO Dangerously Hot Temperatures Cover Much of the U.S. Now Takeaways:

• High temperature and humidity is widespread;
• 
  
• Creating 100+ F Heat indices*, sometimes up to 115 F;
• 
  
• Scorching central and eastern US, pushing into the Southwest.

• Several heat stroke deaths already, both young and old;
• 
  
• CNN warns that overnight heat can be more deadly than daytime;

• National Weather Service issued heat alerts for 25 states.
• 
  
• A massive upper atmospheric dome of high pressure is keeping it hot - and may persist through the week!

*Heat Index combines temperature and humidity levels to estimate "feels like" temperatures on the human skin.





As Alaska Bakes, It Sinks into melting permafrost, perma no more. Source walkersplanet.com, ccr 339

OO Alaska Bakes In Heat Wave While Arctic Sea Ice Continues To Melt - with highs in the 80s across much of the region.This year Alaska has witnessed a freakishly warm first six months with the state's temperature averaging 30.4°F, 9°F higher than normal.
As a result, the state's fire season had an early start this year.


OO D.C.'S Summer Heat Is Rapidly Becoming More Oppressive analysis finds, but so many clueless frogs in that pot refuse to notice what's driving it.


OO US Faces Dramatic Rise in Extreme Heat, Humidity shows a new analysis. Takeaways:

• Florida, Texas, and the Southwest have already seen dramatic rises in heat, humidity;
• 
  
• Further dramatic rises will be widespread by 2050, if climate changing emissions are unchanged;
• 
  
• By 2100, yearly US heat related deaths will range in 1,000s to 10,000s.

OO California Drought, Marine Heat More Likely With Global Warming and is already starting to affect the weather and water, even though the coastal warm waters, which blocked drought-quenching storms from reaching California last year, were caused by the coincidental interplay of natural ocean cycles, a recent study shows.


OO In Warming Oceans,
Stronger Currents Releasing Heat In Bigger Storms a new study says. The currents are releasing 20% more heat than 50 years ago. Japan, China and Korea will warm faster and can expect more storminess.


*
*



@@ Climate Change 101: Why Care?
What You Need to Know - Bill Nye tells it all in five minutes amid graphic, dynamic, engaging, compelling imagery. Check it Out!

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NATURAL REPERCUSSIONS




Now, Imagine Them All In Category 5... 4 hurricanes forming off the US in 2011. Source NASA

OO Tropical Cyclones On Track To Grow More Intense As Temperatures Rise


OO UK: Unpredictable Weather Disrupts The Lives Of Wildlife - prolonged wet and cold summer spells force insects to hold off feeding, courting, or laying eggs, for example.


@@ From Floods To Forest Fires: A Warming Planet - In Pictures


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*

SOCIAL REPERCUSSIONS

OO California: Drought Hits Low-Income Bay Area Communities Hard


OO Wildfires Rage Across Southwest, Forcing Home Evacuations






Fishy Future in Play - studies show that the environment for inland fish is heating up.

OO Climate Change Harming America's $73 Billion Angling Industry - Takeaways:

• Inland fish play critical roles in US ecosystems and economics;
• 
  
• Fish keep nature in balance, feeding,
• 
  
• and in turn, feed iconic species like eagles, bears.

Source mel-nik at iStockphoto.com

• Warming waters are changing ranges,
• 
  
• Life cycles, fish abundance,
• 
  
• and is especially affecting trout.

OO Montana's Rivers Are Warmer Than They Should Be,
Which Is Bad News For Trout What worries many experts is that, for the past 15 years, some of America's finest fishing rivers keep breaking records for early snowmelts, too-warm water and low flows.





Too Hot to Handle? The health effects of climate change on workers are diverse.

OO Climate Change Is Making Farm Work More Dangerous Than It Already Is resulting in heat-related deaths, and disease, such as kidney disease.


OO Earth's 5th Costliest Non-U.S. Weather Disaster On Record:
China's $22 Billion Flood - continues, where torrential monsoon rains along the Yangtze River Valley in central and eastern China since early summer have killed 237 people.


OO Britain Must Urgently Prepare For Flooding, Heatwaves And Food Shortages, due to continuing climate change, says a government report.


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MELTDOWN




Pole to Pole, Glaciers Are Crumbling like this one in Antarctica. Source www.komar.org

OO Warmer Oceans Driving Antarctic Peninsula Glacier Melt - and not warmer air, as was previously suspected, a new analysis of data shows. Of the 670+ glaciers on the Peninsula's western side, almost 90% are retreating.


OO Retreating Glaciers A Sign Of Alaska's Major Meltdown - this summer's record-breaking temperatures hasten glacier, permafrost melt.




Greenland Mosaic of melt ponds and streams net the melting icescape. Source earthobservatory.nasa.gov

OO Deep-Blue Ponds And Streams Highlight Melting on Greenland Ice Sheet which is melting at a near-record pace.


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GOOD CLEAN NEWS



OO Developing Nations' Energy Intensity Down 40% Since 1990:
Energy Use Is Decoupling From Economic Productivity Worldwide

Related Headline:

OO Efficiency, Clean Energy Put Dent In CO2 Emissions Takeaways:

• More zero-carbon energy is being produced from wind and solar;
• 
  
• low natural gas prices and mercury pollution regulations prompt coal plant closings,
• 
  
• and opening natural gas plants, which emit less carbon dioxide.

OO EU To Introduce Limits On Truck CO2 Emissions





As Waters Rise Nations Move to Act on a treaty to stop climate changing emissions. Credit Dave Fleetham

OO Pacific Islands Nations Consider World's First Treaty To Ban Fossil Fuels - The 14 countries would ban new coalmines and embraces 1.5C target set at Paris climate talks.






OO Distributed Wind Has Floundered for Years -
Now Oil Companies Are Investing in It


OO South Australia Reaps 83% Of Electricity In One Day From 'Wild' Wind


OO Money Flows Into Batteries for Buildings, Power Grid





OO California: Renewable Energy Creates Good Jobs
In Distressed Areas of California


OO Canada to Introduce National Carbon Price This Year


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*

SPEAKING OUT




They Have The Right To Know Credit Jared Flesher

OO Nation's Largest Teachers Union Endorses Teaching "Climate Justice" - teaching the truth about the severity of the climate change crisis facing our children.


OO Number Of Americans 'Alarmed' By Climate Change Rises In Latest Poll





OO UN Human Rights Council Declares Climate A Priority


OO UN Criticises UK And Germany For Betraying Paris Climate Deal by financing the fossil fuel industry through subsidies..


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*

FOSSIL FUEL FOLLIES

OO Europe's Oil Imports 'Dependent On Unstable Countries'


OO Power From "The New Coal", Natural Gas, Expected
To Reach A Record High,
Despite Climate Concerns - bad news, because besides the bad methane emissions from its production and distribution, burning it adds further emissions.





OO US Coal Ash Crisis Builds - Coal production and use has plummeted, but the wastes left behind after burning it keep on coming, and they have been stored in lightly regulated, water-filled basins since at least the 1950s.





OO China Pledged To Curb Coal Plants.
Greenpeace Says It's Still Adding Them. The construction boom would result in about 400 gigawatts of excess capacity and waste more than $150 billion on building unneeded plants, said the new a report.


But ...

OO Record Growth In Chinese Renewable Energy Markets


OO Coal India Accused Of Bulldozing Human Rights Amid Production Boom says Amnesty International report.





OO Fossil Fuel Industry Risks Losing $33 Trillion in revenue in the next 25 years due to global efforts to curb greenhouse gases, says a new economic analysis.


OO BP Fined Further $2.5 Billion Over Deeepwater Horizon Spill


OO China Energy Giant's Big Bet On Canadian Oil Sands Backfires





Source news.yahoo.com

OO Nigeria Oil Addiction Destroying Its Future - Takeaways:

• 70% of Nigerian revenues come from oil sales;
• 
  
• Big Oil has been allowed to environmentally wreck much of its south;

• Low oil prices have dramatically cut revenues;
• 
  
• Southern militants are blowing up pipelines, to free the oppressed south.
• 
  
• Civil war is brewing.

*
*

GOOD IDEAS




OO Engage TV Weathermen to Talk Climate - the climate journalism organization, Climate Central, among others, is helping them do so.


OO Stop US Food Waste:
Half Of All US Food Produce Is Thrown Away new research suggests.




OO Carbon-Free Banking: Where To Save, Invest And Borrow


OO Expansion Of California's Electric Grid Would Save Consumers $1.5 Billion a new study says.


OO French Carbon Pricing Committee Proposes Tax On Coal-Fired Power





OO Your Kids' Energy-Saving Habits Are Having An Impact On You shows a new study.


OO California: Going Net-Zero With Help from Geothermal Power


@@ Not Too Windy, Not Too Calm: Capturing Iceland's Winds - the startup Icewind is building a new type of funky wind turbine designed to perform well in low-wind conditions but also to slow itself down in high-winds, preventing it from catching on fire or ripping apart.






Soccer Energy Lights the Field with the help of underground tiles that converts all the energy of those pounding feet into electricity. Courtesy of Pavegen and Shell

OO From Favelas To The White House, Tiles Turn Footsteps Into Electricity


OO A Possible Model For Australia Going 100% Renewable: Kangaroo Island


OO International Space Station Crew Is Testing 3-D Solar Cells







Acid Reducers - kelp, eelgrass, and other vegetation can effectively absorb CO2 and reduce acidity in the ocean, so growing them could help mitigate the damaging impacts of acidification on marine life.

OO How Growing Sea Plants Can Help Slow Ocean Acidification


OO Why Drones Are 'Game-Changing' for Renewable Energy but they've had their wings clipped by regulations.


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FIXING CLIMATE CHANGE



@@ A Simple And Smart Way To Fix Climate Change given by Dan Miller in 2014 at a Ted talk suggests a way to profit as we tackle climate change, by finally charging those who sell and use fossil fuels - and distributing the revenues back to all of us.

The strategy is sure to speed transition to clean renewable energy. What's not to like? Check it out!

*
*

A SWEET SPOT IN CREATING SUSTAINABLE POPULATIONS




Triple Win: Using Profits to Provide Needed US Family Planning - Medicines360.org is key to creating a sustainable US population and bright futures for women - AND saving taxpayers many billions yearly in community costs by preventing unintended pregnancies. Source medicines360.org

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*

CLIMATE LEADERSHIP




OO Bernie Sanders Endorsed Hillary Clinton,
Citing Climate Change As A Top Issue

"Hillary Clinton is listening to the scientists who tell us that if we do not act boldly in the very near future there will be more drought, more floods, more acidification of the oceans, more rising sea levels," Sanders said.


OO DEM Senators Target The 'Many-Headed Dragon' Of Climate Change Denial


OO Democrats Embrace Price On Carbon
While Clinton Steers Clear Of Carbon Tax





One of Many Ad-Hoc Methane Factories - as long as we let landfills belch it.

OO EPA Updates Methane Requirements For Landfills


*
*

CLUELESS LEADERSHIP




modified, Credit Nate Beeler at the Columbus Dispatch

OO Donald Trump Would Be the World's Only National Leader to Reject Climate Science


OO Trump Ends VP SusPence, Picks Koch Darling Pence a GOP insider with ties to Big Industry.






Credit Donar at politicalgraffiti.wordpress.com

OO The Republican Party's Platform Says Coal Is 'Clean' Energy - Yeah, right - and Donald Trump is a Mormon.



OO House Republicans Target Subsidies for Utility-Scale CSP preferring dirty to clean energy.







OO TTIP Proposal Casts Doubt On G20 Climate Pledge a leaked EU draft shows.


OO UK: Government Axes Climate Department -Ed Miliband, the former energy and climate secretary under Labour, called the move "plain stupid." It comes at a time when the government is being urged to ratify the Paris climate change deal.


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ELECTION YEAR:




If You Don't Vote For Climate Action, You Can Forget The Rest - in a climate-changing world of famine, drought, rising seas, giant storms and heat waves, there will be no security in jobs, health, wealth, or national safety. There will be chaos ensuing from increasing crises and disasters. Vote.

OO Global Warming Policies We Set Today Will Determine The Next 10,000 Years - of global warming, a new study shows -- and whether our civilization survives or not: history shows that harmful climate change has destroyed civilizations before.

This time, it could be worldwide. Let's keep "The Hunger Games" in the realm of fiction.

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*



If we do not grow sustainably,
Our children will die inhumanely.




@@ How Parents Can Help Prevent Teen Pregnancy

Teen childbearing cost US taxpayers $9+ Billion in 2010
And the costs of raising a child usually ensures decades, if not a life, of poverty for its mother.
- US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Help prevent unintended pregnancies in your community:
publicize where women can access affordable contraception.



They can go here to find locations:




And there are many more actions you can do, right here.

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SOLAR KEEPS flying



OO Historic Round-The-World Solar Flight Showcases Clean Energy
As It Concludes


OO California's Biggest Utilities Break Own Record for Solar Power - the California Independent System Operator, or ISO, on Tuesday managed enough solar energy to power 2 million homes.


OO Germany Sets A New Solar Storage Record - 40+ % of its solar installations have backup batteries, a world record.





Check it out here, right now!

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WHY WE SHOULD ACT NOW: RISING RISKS




Daily Climate Change: Global Map of Unusual Temperatures, July 26, 2016

How unusual has the weather been? No one event is "caused" by climate change, but global warming, which is predicted to increase unusual, extreme weather, is having a daily effect on weather, worldwide.

Looking above at recent temperature anomalies, much of the US and the waters surrounding it are experiencing warmer than normal temperatures: the eastern Pacific warm spot continues and so does the drought in California.

Much of the areas surrounding the North Pole are experiencing much warmer than normal temperatures - not good news for our Arctic thermal shield of ice. Hotter than usual temperatures continue to dominate human habitats.

*
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*



There is, of course, much more news on the consequences and solutions to climate change. To get it, check out this annotated resource list I've compiled, "Climate Change News Resources," at Wordpress.com here. For more information on the science of climate change, its consequences and solutions you can view my annotated list of online information resources here.

To help you understand just what science does and does NOT do, check this out!

Every day is Earth Day, folks, as I was reminded by this wild flower I photographed one spring. Making the U.S. a global clean energy leader will ensure a heck of a lot more jobs, and a clean, safe future. If you'd like to join the increasing numbers of people who want to TELL Congress that they will vote for clean energy candidates you can do so here. It's our way of letting Congress know there's a strong clean energy voting bloc out there. For more detailed summaries of the above and other climate change items, audio podcasts and texts are freely available.

-- 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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Ken White: If Bugs Can't Do It, Birds Won't Do It  
Is that why I see fewer robins and towhees in my backyard than in recent years but more and more House finches and crows? Again, a simple 1 + 1 does not always lead to 2 and so I can't reasonably draw such a conclusion.

Read more: Wildlife, Birds, Song Birds, Environment, Birding, Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA, PHS/SPCA, Green News

 
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KnowMore TV: Why I Choose To Be Vegan  
All I can say is don't worry. Take baby steps and never get down on yourself for not being perfect. Quitting cold turkey can be rough so the experience is made a little easier by slowly incorporating more and more vegan meals to your weekly schedule. If you're still not convinced, here are a few more reasons to make the change.

Read more: Vegan, Benefits of Vegan Diet, Environment, Animal Rights, Healthy Living News

 
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Mary Ellen Harte: Climate Change This Week: A Hot New High, Kids Show the Way, and More!  
Today, the Earth got a little hotter, and a little more crowded.




Saving BUB, Beautiful Unique Biodiversity, as in these Amazonian red eyed tree fr...

Read more: Climate Change, Environment, Drought, Extreme Weather, Global Warming, Sustainability, Energy, Energy Efficiency, Nature, Science, Technology, Technologie, Green Technology, Technology News, Climate Change Denial, Climate, Climate Science, Climate-Change, Obama, Green Energy, Clean Energy, Renewable Energy, Natural Gas, Wind Power, Solar Power, Fossil Fuels, Heat Waves, Congress, Voting, Weather, Business, Business News, Corporations, Economy, Climate Change Solutions, Greenhouse Gases, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Carbon Emissions, Food, Water, Coal, Fracking, Oil, Agriculture, Crops, Rising Sea Levels, Insurance, Pollution, Wildlife, Transportation, Transports, Transport, Cities, Deforestation, Jobs, Natural Disasters, Population, Population Growth, Overpopulation, Oceans, President Obama, Barack Obama, Epa, Nasa, Noaa, Department of Energy, Republicans, Gop, Democrats, Animals, Cute Animals, Fish, Birds, Activism, Political Activism, Humor, Alaska, California, Michigan, Washington, United Nations, United Kingdom, England, Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Europe, European Union, France, India, Asia, Africa, Tanzania, Germany, Children, Babies, Children'S Health, Kids, Human Health, Health, Education, Air Pollution, Seafood, Exxon Mobil, Bp, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Mike Pince, Cartoons, Extreme, Green News

 
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Each day that @FedEx continues to ship #shark fin it breaks the law. @FedEx breaks @CITES (international law) and US Endangered Species Act. 
http://ifttt.com/missing_link?1469570780 

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Beams  

ArtGordon1 posted a photo:

 
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'Green News Report' - July 26, 2016  
The Green News Report is also available via...





IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: At the RNC in Cleveland, Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump (and his Veep nominee Mike Pence) promise to roll back environmental standards and bring back dirty coal; PLUS: U.S. walloped by deadly heat wave, as June 2016 breaks yet another new temperature record... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link:
Embed:

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Link Between Armed Conflict And Climate Change Just Got A Bit Stronger; EPA Clears Path To Regulate Carbon Emissions From U.S. Aircraft; Obama Admin. Announces $4.5 Billion In DOE Loan Guarantees For EV Charging; Donald Trump Loses His War Against a Scottish Wind Farm; Out-of-control wildfire grows to more than 33,000 acres in Santa Clarita Valley; New Zealand Announces Plan to Wipe Out Invasive Predators; Tesla Wants To Help You Become Your Own Solar Utility. And Sell Lots Of Self-Driving Cars... PLUS: Vancouver plans to go 100% renewable. I asked the city's manager about the challenges it faces... and much, MUCH more! ...

'Green News Report' is heard on many fine radio stations around the country. For additional info on stories we covered today, plus today's 'Green News Extra', please click right here to listen!

-- 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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The Top 10 Solar States & How Utilities Are Fighting Them  


With three solar panels installed for every two Nevadans, Nevada now has more solar capacity per person than any other state. But, at the behest of NV Energy, the state also eliminated its net metering program last December, causing a whopping 93 percent decline in rooftop solar applications the following month.

The Silver State's solar schizophrenia, detailed in the latest ranking of state solar capacity by Environment America and Frontier Group, exemplifies a growing trend: the states where solar is booming the most are those where utility interests are attacking it the hardest.

That's why Bret Fanshaw of Environment America, co-author of the study, has said: "The more solar grows, the more big utilities try to stop it. Even in the face of strong public support for pollution-free energy, these special interests are working across the country to undermine the policies that have helped states become solar leaders."



The study's top states for solar capacity per capita -- Nevada, Hawaii, California, Arizona, North Carolina, New Jersey, Vermont, New Mexico, Massachusetts and Colorado - have for years held in common pro-clean energy policies, such as strong net metering programs and interconnection standards.

But the inducements for growing numbers of homes, businesses and schools to go solar are increasingly under assault from utilities, who view distributed clean energy generation as a direct threat to their business model.

Last year utilities convinced officials in Hawaii as well as Nevada to eliminate their net metering programs, while earlier this year California's program narrowly withstood a high-profile utility assault.

"As we've seen in many states, California's big utilities proposed to cut net metering credit and add major new fees for customers who want to go solar," Susannah Churchill, West Coast Regional Director for Vote Solar, told reporters on a conference call to release the study. "After careful consideration of both the facts and input from diverse stakeholders, California regulators voted to preserve solar - standing strong for progress, for innovation, and for the public interest."

Other states fared less well. In Arizona, one major utility charged a new fee on new solar customers, depressing rooftop solar power growth in its 1 million-person service area; two other utilities in the state are now pressing to institute similar charges and eliminate their retail net metering programs.

Anti-solar salvos like these come as embattled utilities witness the growing popularity and adoption of the renewable energy resource nationwide. In February solar cleared the milestone of 1 million installations across the country, and is expected to add another million in just two years' time as prices continue to plummet.

Across the country, poll after poll shows overwhelming support for solar energy, while a Gallup poll from this year shows that as concern about global warming rises, Americans want increasing emphasis on alternative energy sources such as solar and wind rather than fossil fuels.

And so, despite utility attacks, many pro-solar policies remain in the 10 leading-edge states, who make up 88 percent of the nation's solar capacity but less than a third of its population. All have renewable energy requirements, for example, and nine have strong laws to allow solar customers to connect to the electricity grid.

But utilities aren't letting up on their quest to erode such policies, nor are they confining them to top solar states. For instance, so far they've succeeded in blocking substantial clean energy progress in Florida, where the potential is vast.

Ultimately, however, in Florida, Nevada, and across the country, we're confident public support will win out.

As Chandler Sherman, Deputy Campaign Manager of Bring Back Solar, the group organized to undo the damage inflicted by big utilities late last year, said, "the people of Nevada overwhelmingly support restoring net metering, so Nevadans once again have the freedom to power our communities with affordable, clean energy."

-- 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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World Bank's Updated Safeguards a Missed Opportunity to Raise the Bar for Development Policy  
Despite an unprecedented consultative process involving thousands of stakeholders from government, civil society, and the private sector, the review and update of the World Bank safeguard policies has proven to be a missed opportunity for the Bank to reclaim its place as a global leader in development. While the new Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) includes promising new areas of policy coverage, it lacks the strength and clarity that people negatively impacted by development so profoundly depend upon. It is therefore critical that the Bank utilize the upcoming implementation period to address the weaknesses of the new Framework and build on its strengths to ensure that it ultimately leads to a more equitable and sustainable approach to development.

For decades World Bank safeguards have been viewed as the gold standard in development finance. The Bank was the first development finance institution to adopt mandatory safeguard policies to prevent and mitigate environmental and social harms. These policies have served as a model for other institutions and set the bar for development policy generally. With the development landscape undergoing rapid change over the last several years, the safeguards review represented a historic opportunity for the World Bank to once again take the lead among its peer institutions. The outcome of the review, however, is clearly a result of political compromise rather than an effort to set a new paradigm for development policy.

As a whole, the ESF represents a fundamental shift in the way the Bank has approached safeguards for over thirty years. Most concerning, it moves the Bank away from a system of rules-based compliance and toward a system of unprecedented flexibility that favors using a borrower's own laws and policies in lieu of Bank safeguards--despite the widely varying capacity of borrowers to deal with social and environmental impacts of risky development projects. Similarly, the ESF allows for third party financial intermediaries (FIs) to take responsibility for managing social and environmental risk, leading to concerns around the processes through which communities will be able to seek redress for harm. Existing mechanisms for transparency and oversight are also undermined by the pervasive vague language and loopholes in the ESF, which will not even be applied to over one third of the Bank's total portfolio. In some of the most problematic areas of change, the ESF represents a profound weakening of existing protections, putting it at odds with U.S. Congressional mandates as well as President Kim's commitment not to dilute the safeguards.

On certain issues, however, the final ESF represents an improvement over earlier drafts and current policies. A key disclosure requirement that provides communities with crucial information before a project is approved has been added in this draft, bringing the ESF closer to current safeguard standards. The ESF also expands the reach of safeguards into new areas that were previously ignored or underrepresented--including labor, discrimination, stakeholder engagement, and disadvantaged and vulnerable groups. These new requirements will help prevent negative impacts of projects on the most marginalized, including children, persons with disabilities, women, ethnic and religious minorities, and those that identify as LGBT, and to enable those groups traditionally excluded from development to share in its benefits.

These improvements in the ESF are not without their caveats. With regard to labor, for example, the ESF includes provisions related to child labor and forced labor, but lacks reference to core ILO conventions. Language defining disadvantaged and vulnerable groups in earlier drafts has also been removed from the main policy in the latest draft. Bank's clear commitment to prevent negative impacts on disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, including children, early in the project cycle is a step in the right direction. However, it is disappointing that the Bank chose at this late stage to move key language defining those groups from the policy to a management-level directive without providing stakeholders a chance to review and comment on such a significant change.

The updated ESF also represents progress toward inclusion of disability in World Bank policy, yet improvements are still necessary to ensure persons with disabilities will share in project benefits. The new ESF shows that the Bank is making progress in considering persons with disabilities in its operations. However, this latest draft does not go far enough to ensure persons with disabilities are fully able to benefit from Bank projects. The term 'inclusion' in the updated ESF should be clearly defined and include persons with disabilities as this is essential to ensuring that barriers to participation in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of Bank projects are removed.

Another positive development in the updated ESF is a new policy on Stakeholder Engagement and Information Disclosure, which would require borrowers for the first time to engage with project stakeholders in a much more systematic way than current policies demand. However, many borrowing countries do not have the national systems in place to conduct meaningful, accessible, and safe consultations with impacted communities and project stakeholders. In order for the new policy to allow for effective engagement, the Bank will have to increase its supervisory role, particularly for high and substantial risk projects and for those taking place in countries where communities and civil society may have limited capacity and space to operate.


Photo caption: Protesters in front of the World Bank office in Brussels (Belgium), September 2014 (Photo credits: Arnaud Ghys)

Other areas in which the ESF clearly does not go far enough include climate change. The updated ESF pales in comparison to the Bank's powerful rhetoric on the immediate need to address this global crisis, and there is a concerning lack of emphasis on potential impacts to the climate resilience of communities and ecosystems. The ESF only requires estimates of greenhouse gas emissions for some projects to the extent 'technically and financially feasible. Combined with the Bank's commitment to increase its climate-focused spending from 21% to 28%, it remains unclear how it plans to mitigate the negative climate impacts caused by the vast remaining portion of its lending.

As it relates to forests and natural habitats, the updated ESF can be characterized as a serious dilution of current policy. The World Bank's existing safeguards on forests and natural habitats have been collapsed into one standard that fails to consider or protect environmental values other than biodiversity, and introduces the possibility of offsets in critical habitats. For the first time in the history of its safeguards, the Bank has given a green light to industrial logging and other projects in protected forests. At the same time, it has stripped away protections and rights from forest communities, leaving them and the forests they depend upon highly vulnerable.

The characterization of the ESF as a missed opportunity is perhaps most emblematic in its treatment of human rights. By referencing human rights only in the "Vision Statement" of the ESF, which includes no operational requirements on either the Bank or borrowers, the Bank is setting itself apart from other development institutions that have already committed to respect human rights in their activities. The Bank's failure to recognize the right of indigenous communities to give their consent to development projects also threatens to increase their vulnerability at a time when their resources and their very lives are increasingly at risk. The ESF does little to strengthen the land rights of people affected by its investments, and despite disastrous failures in its record of displacing people, does not extend adequate protections to those evicted as a result of Bank projects.

While serious concerns remain about the text of this document, the World Bank has the ability to improve the ESF through the development of detailed guidance notes, proper tools, and well-resourced support during the critical implementation process. The disappointingly low bar for the safeguards--"no dilution"--should not be the Bank's benchmark moving forward. Instead, the original ambitious objectives of the review process should guide the implementation period, including enhancing protections for people and the environment, providing inclusive access to development benefits and seeking the participation of communities that stand to be impacted.

Co-authored with Jolie Schwarz, Legislative Affairs Fellow at Bank Information Center

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DON'T LOOK BACK  

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Photos of the Day: July 26, 2016  

Explore the news of the day with these images from around the world.  
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A Plastic Smog Is Smothering Our Oceans  

Photo credit: Zak Noyle

Every single time I go for a surf or a swim in the ocean in Southern California, I find plastic floating in the sea. I usually grab the plastic bag, wrapper or fragment and stuff it in my wetsuit or swim trunks to remove it from the water. My experience is indicative of the global plastic pollution epidemic. We are simply using too much wasteful plastic and a significant amount is getting into the ocean, where it is harming marine life.

Every year, an estimated 5-13 million tons of plastic enter our oceans. Here in the U.S., about 100 billion plastic bags are used annually. That's around 360 bags a year for each person in this country. Every day, more than 500 million plastic straws are discarded.

For every 167 disposable water bottles the average American uses, only 38 are recycled. Less than 5% of plastic bags are recycled. Recent studies predict that unless action is taken, by 2050, there will be more plastic by weight than fish in our oceans.

Plastic poses a major threat to our marine environment, ecosystems and marine life. It's now being found in seafood that can eventually land on our plates. A major problem with plastic is that it doesn't biodegrade. It photodegrades and breaks into smaller pieces, meaning that virtually every piece of plastic ever produced still exists today in some form. It's estimated that there are over 5.25 trillion particles of plastic spread throughout the oceans, resulting in a plastic smog.

Beach cleanup volunteers frequently cite plastic as one of the main forms of pollution picked up on beaches across coastlines. Unless removed, the plastic debris often ends up in the ocean. Cleaning beaches reduces ocean-bound plastic, raises awareness and provides important data about some of the most commonly littered items. However, beach cleanups alone will not solve the problem.

What can we do to turn the tide of plastic pollution? Over the last decade, many major cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New York, San Diego and local communities across the country have implemented plastic bag bans or fees to help reduce our plastic footprint. Plastic bag bans are an effective way to decrease plastic bag use by addressing the problem where it starts, with the creation and consumption of plastic. As consumers, if we decline to use plastic bags and instead opt for reusable options, then decreased market demand can change the quantity of plastic generated and ultimately reduce a major source of pollution affecting our oceans and marine ecosystems.

Big plastic companies are aware of this and have poured millions of dollars into fighting against bag bans. For example, in California, while the first state-wide bag ban was signed into law by Governor Brown in 2014, the plastic industry is pushing hard to reverse this sensible law. It's now up to California citizens to vote 'Yes on Prop 67' to support the bag ban in November and reduce plastic pollution, clean up our oceans and beaches and protect marine wildlife.

Reducing our plastic footprint is not just for coastal communities. Since all of our waterways are connected, everyone has a stake in reducing the plastic smog that is choking our ocean. Here are three simple ways to reduce your footprint:

• Bring reusable bags and refuse plastic.
• Carry reusable water bottles. This not only benefits the environment, but also saves money.
• Skip the straw!

The good news is that we can change the current trajectory of marine plastic pollution by supporting sensible policies like Proposition 67 and simply choosing reusable items to reduce our plastic consumption. It's up to us to change the tide and make a positive difference in the health of our ocean, waves and beaches for future generations.

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Major Media Get Climate Change Wrong (Again)  
In an editorial in Saturday's paper, the Chicago Tribune editorial board said that we still need coal, oil and gas because solving climate change is too complex. Such handwaving doesn't pass the smell test: they haven't done their homework. To be fair, for a paper that once regularly featured a climate denier (Dennis Byrne), the Trib has come around somewhat, especially in their praise for the Paris climate agreement. But they're still miles away from reality.

So too, it appears, are the Atlantic and the Washington Post, which feted climate change deniers in events sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute last week in Cleveland. You know what these types of events are like, lots of mixed drinks and bromides. The Intercept gives the full scoop on such shameless and unethical actions by publications that should be pressing the powerful on climate change, not coddling them.

Last year was the hottest on record and this year looks to top it. Luckily, the Democratic Party platform calls for galvanizing a World War II-like effort to stop climate change. But there are obstacles, beyond even the presidential contest, that could prevent more thoroughgoing action to prevent climate change. One such obstacle, for instance, is the growth of gas infrastructure which would put us on a path toward certain temperature rise and obviate everything else we are trying to do. And this is where journalists should be challenging conventional wisdom about climate change and urging massive deployment of the functional renewable energy we already have, not offering milquetoast paeans to the wonders of technology or the lie that climate science isn't settled.

Joe Romm of Climate Progress has been one of the most insistent scientists arguing this point. He says that we'd be able to nip climate change in the bud if we deployed all the resources we already have. Unlike Bill Gates, he doesn't think that we need an energy miracle that won't even be functional for decades. We need to act now.

So I urge you, for the good of the planet, not to buy the corrupt and lazy work of outlets like the Tribune, Atlantic and Washington Post when it comes to climate change. It is one of the most urgent issues we face today and needs to be addressed as fossil fuels need to be quickly phased out. The time to do so is now.

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Scaling Positive Impact - 'ApHRICA' to Revolutionize Understanding of Ocean Acidification  

By Matthew Mulrennan

The Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOAON) with approximate locations for 'ApHRICA', a pilot project to deploy ocean pH sensors in South Africa, Mozambique, the Seychelles, and Mauritius for the first time. This project is a public-private partnership to fill in gaps for ocean acidification research in East Africa involving the U.S. Department of State, the Ocean Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, and the XPRIZE Foundation and various research institutions.

This week kicks off a groundbreaking workshop and pilot project to install cutting-edge ocean sensors in Mauritius, Mozambique, the Seychelles and South Africa to study ocean acidification in East Africa for the first time. The project is actually called "OceAn pH Research Integration and Collaboration in Africa - ApHRICA". Workshop speakers include the White House Science Envoy for Ocean, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Dr. Roshan Ramessur at the University of Mauritius, and ocean sensor trainers and scientists Dr. Andrew Dickson of UCSD, Dr. Sam Dupont of University of Gothenburg, and James Beck, CEO of Sunburst Sensors.

ApHRICA has been years in the making, starting with developing ocean pH sensor tools, engaging leading experts, and raising the funds to bring passionate people and new technologies together to take action, and fill much-needed ocean data gaps. Last July, XPRIZE awarded the $2 million Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE, a prize competition for developing breakthrough ocean pH sensors to improve understanding of ocean acidification. One year later, the winning team Sunburst Sensors, a small company in Missoula, Montana, is providing their 'iSAMI' ocean pH sensor for this project. The iSAMI was chosen due to its unprecedented affordability, accuracy and ease of use.

James Beck, CEO of Sunburst Sensors states, "Sunburst Sensors is both proud and excited to be working in this effort to expand the monitoring of ocean acidification to nations of Africa and eventually, we hope, around the globe."

James Beck, CEO of Sunburst Sensors with the iSAMI (right) and tSAMI (left), the two winning ocean pH sensors of the $2 million Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE. The iSAMI is an easy-to-use, accurate and affordable ocean pH sensor, which will be deployed in ApHRICA.

The Indian Ocean is an ideal location for this pilot project not only because it has long been a notorious mystery for oceanographers, but long-term monitoring of ocean conditions is also lacking in many regions of East Africa. ApHRICA will strengthen the resiliency of coastal communities, improve oceanographic collaboration in the region, and the data will contribute significantly to the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOAON) to improve understanding and response to ocean acidification.

Mark J. Spalding, President of The Ocean Foundation, is a crucial partner on the project. Spalding says, "community food resources are being threatened by ocean acidification. This workshop is a critical step in increasing coverage for our network to forecast ocean acidification, especially in a place like East Africa that has a strong reliance on marine resources, but currently lacks the capacity to measure the status and progress of ocean acidification in the open ocean, coastal ocean and estuarine areas."

Each day, emissions from cars, planes and power plants add millions of tons of carbon into the ocean. As a result, the ocean's acidity has increased 30% since the Industrial Revolution. The rate of this ocean acidification event is likely unparalleled in Earth's history. The rapid changes in ocean acidity are causing an 'osteoporosis of the sea', increasingly harming marine life like plankton, oysters, and corals that make shells or skeletons from calcium carbonate.

Dr. Roshan Ramessur, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Mauritius, who is coordinating the training workshop believes, "this is an exciting project for us because it will allow us to build capacity in our countries for monitoring and understanding ocean acidification. The new sensors will allow us to contribute to a global network; something we haven't been able to do before. This is groundbreaking because regional capacity to study this problem is foundational for ensuring our food security futures."

We know ocean acidification is a threat to marine biodiversity, coastal communities and the global economy, but we still need vital information about these changes in ocean chemistry including where it's happening, to what extent and its impacts. We need to urgently scale ocean acidification research to more countries and regions around the world from the Coral Triangle to Latin America to the Arctic. The time to act on ocean acidification is now, and ApHRICA will light a spark that makes this invaluable research grow exponentially.

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Matthew Mulrennan is the lead of the Ocean Initiative at XPRIZE - a commitment to conduct five ocean XPRIZE competitions, and put us on a path to making the ocean healthy, valued and understood.

Visit XPRIZE at xprize.org; follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+; and get our newsletter to stay informed.

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r0B0t: Philae to be switched off and die after hopeful little Rosetta lander goes quiet - The Independent  

The Independent

Philae to be switched off and die after hopeful little Rosetta lander goes quiet The Independent The little spacecraft that became a symbol for humanity's hopefulness and ingenuity is going to be given up on because it has gone silent. The Philae lander dropped onto a comet as part of the Rosetta mission, landing there at the end of 2014. It was a ... Let's all say goodbye to the Philae comet lander, which we'll never hear from againThe Verge This Space-Exploring Robot Tweeted a Heartbreaking GoodbyeTIME Say Goodbye to the Philae Comet LanderPopular Mechanics Astronomy Magazine -New Scientist -Motherboard -ScienceBlog.com (blog) all 10 news articles »

 
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r0B0t: Google wants to improve artificial intelligence to prevent robot screw-ups - Recode  

Digital Trends

Google wants to improve artificial intelligence to prevent robot screw-ups Recode More and more artificial intelligence will soon enter our lives. And Google would very much like its AI systems to be front and center. That's why the company is putting resources into making sure AI systems don't go off the rails. Last month, Google ... Google wants to improve AI today to prevent robot screw-ups tomorrowDigital Trends all 2 news articles »

 
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r0B0t: Tesla's Master Plan 2.0: AI experts, auto insiders, and Tesla customers weigh in - TechRepublic  

TechRepublic

Tesla's Master Plan 2.0: AI experts, auto insiders, and Tesla customers weigh in TechRepublic Smith also wonders if Tesla will "explore micro-trucks, delivery robots, and other forms of more localized (and necessarily automated) shipping," not to mention drones. He also said he "wonder[s] how Tesla will play in the digital world. For example ... and more »

 
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Flying Around the World in a Solar Powered Plane (28 photos)  

The journey took a very long time—505 days to fly 26,000 miles (42,000 km) at an average speed of about 45 mph (70 kph)—but pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg successfully landed the Solar Impulse 2 aircraft in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, after flying around the world using only the power of the Sun. Solar Impulse 2 is a solar-powered aircraft equipped with more than 17,000 solar cells that weighs only 2.4 tons with a wingspan of 235 ft (72 m). Technical challenges, poor flying conditions, and a delicate aircraft all contributed to the slow pace. Gathered here are images from the record-setting circumnavigation, undertaken to help focus the world's efforts to develop renewable energy sources.

 
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Skyline up the River Thames, London  

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Twisty Thames...  

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London from The Shard at sunset.


Hi-Res: 500px.com/photo/164954015/


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New species of beaked whale confirmed by DNA  
Biologists have identified a rare new species of beaked whale that ranges from northern Japan across the Pacific Ocean to Alaska's Aleutian Islands.  
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Newly discovered virus a prime suspect in often-fatal beak disorder spreading among birds  
Scientists have identified a novel virus -- 'Poecivirus' -- that has been linked to avian keratin disorder (AKD), a disease responsible for debilitating beak overgrowth and whose cause has remained elusive despite more than a decade of research. This new virus is being investigated as a potential cause of AKD and represents a critical step in understanding the emergence of this disease in wild bird populations around the world.  
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Sexual rivalry may drive frog reproductive behaviors  
Biologists have long thought that some frogs evolved to mate on land instead of in water to better guard eggs and tadpoles from predation. New research now suggests that mating on land in many species might be a strategy male frogs use to ensure that their own DNA gets passed on, instead of their rivals'. Sexual selection may trump natural selection in the evolution of these reproductive behaviors.  
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Deepest-ever reef survey by divers discovers new fish species  
Two marine biologists beat the record for the deepest underwater survey carried out by human divers, investigating a little-studied ecosystem full of new species  
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Towards smarter crop plants to feed the world  
Plant scientists have made an important advance in understanding the natural diversity of a key plant enzyme which could help us address the looming threat of global food security.  
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NASA Cuts Feed!  



I have spent much time in postings discussing the anomalous objects seen on the International Space Station feeds and I think its time to put it into an article so I can stop repeating myself. I have been asked to analyze many such images and video so I want to clarify some information about these feeds before addressing the objects seen on the feeds.

It seems that any article on the feeds from the ISS inevitably start with "NASA Cuts Feed! ..." or something similar. This points out how little people who write such garbage actually know. The feeds are not "CUT" as if they are hiding something. If you are reading this article because the title grabbed you then congratulations. You were the victim of needless sensationalism. Sensationalism with a point for once.

The feeds are transmitted to the ground from the ISS of course. The ISS is moving at over 17000 mph in orbit and the orbit changes slightly with each pass such that the station doesnt go over the same spot with each successive orbit. The ground stations and satellites that relay the signal are occasionally out of range. The coverage network has all kinds of Swiss cheese holes in it where the coverage momentarily drops out or is lost.

Having watched these feeds for two years now almost daily I have come to be able to predict when they will go down based on the known holes in the feeds' groundstation network. I can usually tell where the ISS is roughly located by simply seeing if the feed is UP. Then consulting a sat mapper I can confirm that no it wasnt over Iran but over the Southern Indian Ocean for example. Both locations among others are known 'holes' in the feed.

Here is the point: If NASA were cutting feeds at "critical times" as many articles dramatically claim, then WHY would we EVER see feeds from space that are live? Why would "NASA" ever take that chance? This is a simple "Oh yea...." moment you should be feeling right now. If UFOs were always seen in orbit as a matter of course, then "NASA", if intent on keeping it from us, would NEVER have allowed a live feed that could catch such an activity in the act of happening.

Speaking of NASA, the other very important point that the conspiracy folks like to ignore is that the ISS crew is an INTERNATIONAL crew consisting of Japanese, Russian, and American astronauts. the ESA (European Space Agency), JAXA (Japan Space Agency) and Roscosmos (Russian Federal space agency) would all have to fully agree to such a coverup. And lets not leave out all the folks in DLR (German Space Agency) and the University of Bonn who are using the High Definition Earth Viewing Experiment (HDEV) data for their purposes. What is perplexing to those of us who remain logical about this is that the Russians are the ones from whom we have always traditionally wished to hide our technology from and a visit from a wayward alien in an UFO would certainly be one of those hidden items.

Further, the feeds are not all managed by NASA. The downlinked feeds are picked up by hundreds of locations around the world and processed or passed on by many people who would ALSO have to be in on the big secret. Jet Propulsion laboratory, JAXA, Roscosmos, and a large international team of monitoring staff watch the feeds all day and all night when they are up. Saying "NASA Cuts the Feed!" is embarrassingly ignorant and short sighted of those who report such. It shows all at once the incredible LACK of knowledge on the part of the reporting organization. I guess we can call it sheer ignorance right?

You can routinely hear Russian controllers talking to Russian crew members on the station The more you look at it the more sinister of a coverup it has to become for the conspiracy for to work. It approaches absolute nonsense at some point. Why hide a secret UFO visiting the ISS? Well if it was a strictly NASA station it would make more sense unlikely as it would be. In such a case the USA would remain in control and in communication with an alien species that no other nation has access to.

But that is NOT the case on the ISS considering its INTERNATIONAL nature... (The "I" in ISS remember) So NOW what is the reason that several countries would hide the technology? If you try to argue that they want it for themselves, it falls completely flat. By default the Russians, Japanese, and Americans would have it... There IS NO OTHER space faring people of substance right now. The Chinese Tiangong station is the equivalent of our 1970s vintage Skylab, and here is no other contender at the moment. We are the only ones with the Russians and Japanese. So what benefit would hiding a UFO visit to the ISS generate? NONE.

I would caution against the urge to play the "world panic" card too because an alien presence on Earth would probably generate peace between warring nations not war or panic. It would be a comfort to most people on Earth to know there was a race that has been visiting us for a long time and now making contact.

It would be CELEBRATED not FEARED.

On the tech side we can easily figure out what we are seeing on the feeds. This includes a number of astronomical objects that are visible in the live video from the ISS. One such object is of course the Moon. The Moon as on Earth shows up day or night. Now night on the ISS is simply being on the backside of the Earth from the Sun. Astronauts are treated to 15 sunrises and sunsets per 24 hour period. An easy test to determine if an object is astronomical in nature or otherwise is to calculate how long it takes to move from place to place and determine which direction it is heading.

One recent sensationalist article that went around the world claimed that an object appeared to be entering the Earth's atmosphere as seen from an ISS feed... And oh yes, "NASA Cuts Feed!" of course. The object was none other than the Moon setting as seen from the ISS and a simple calculation showed the object just happened to be setting at the same rate that the station was moving around the Earth. A remarkable coincidence wouldnt you say?

But it is not just the Moon that can be seen on the feeds. Bright stars and Venus show up plenty of times. On Earth during daylight the Moon is a familiar visible object to most people besides the Sun of course. Keen eyes can spot Venus if you know where to look. On the ISS however, Sun or no Sun, astronomical objects can be seen. There are no Nitrogen and Oxygen molecules in a sky to scatter the blue light from the Sun in a phenomenon called Rayleigh Scattering. This molecular content is the reason we have a blue sky on Earth and the corresponding lack of molecular content on orbit is the reason that the "sky" that the astronauts see is always black.

Lets look at an example that is related to one that I analyzed for this upcoming season of NASA's Unexplained Files. It was called out as an anomaly near the station in the sky seen around the ISS and of course the notion that the "feed was cut" was trotted out because that adds drama. But here is that image:



Looks interesting doesnt it? But, to borrow their own conspiratorial language, what you DIDNT get to see and what the authors of the many articles didnt want you to know was that moments later the image looked like THIS:



Here we can clearly see that it is just an artifact from the bright rising Sun hitting the clear camera cover on the UStream Live ISS feed. You can see many other artifacts as well and this is due to particles that are floating around in space that adhere to the window or due to micrometeorite strikes that pit the glass covering the cameras. So read the articles if you must, provide click income to the purveyors if you want, but see these artifacts for yourself and watch them come and go like clockwork with every rise and set of the Sun as seen from the ISS.

You can follow the ISS via http://www.isstracker.com/ or UStream's live ISS view or looking up the live feeds for the High Definition Experiment (HDEV) ... Be informed!

See you next time!

-- 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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Five Ways to Optimize Your Workspace for Productivity  

Few things affect our productivity as much as what we surround ourselves with. Yet most of us rarely take the time to step back and really analyze our working environment. Instead, we take a ‘set it and forget it' approach to where we work.

This post originally appeared on the Crew blog.

We go to the same office, the same coffee shop, the same co-working space and try to force ourselves into a productive flow. Because we spend so much of our lives working, why not try to make the place we work the best it possibly can be?

Whether you're at home, in a shared space, or hanging out a coffee shop there are quick and easy fixes to help make your work space work for you.

Why Our Environment Matters (Even When We Don't Notice)

You may think that you've got a good set up, but read into the ways that our surroundings affect us on a subconscious level and you'll start to feel pretty uneasy about your environment.

Studies have shown how our working habits, both good and bad, are often related to some sort of external trigger or cue, which researchers are increasingly tying to our surroundings. We visit the same places, work at the same desk, and are constantly surrounded by the same influencing factors.

Which is great, right? Find a good working environment and you'll be forced into a state of flow. But unfortunately, like most things to do with how our brains work, there's so much more beneath the surface.

As we evolved, our subconscious brain has been trained to keep us safe, even when we don't realize it. When we're under threat we need to make decisions quickly, which our brain does through something called ‘thin slicing'. This means it takes one small element of reality and generalizes it, and from that it will determine what behavior to adopt.

So those triggers and cues in your workspace aren't just affecting you in a way you can consciously comprehend, they're changing the way your subconscious brain thinks and acts.

Don't believe me? Here are some studies that show just how ridiculously powerful our environment is in changing the way we think and act:

• Students holding a hot cup of coffee for a few seconds before being asked to judge a hypothetical person, were more likely to describe them as warm and friendly than those holding an iced coffee
• People will behave more competitively if there's a briefcase in sight—or even if there's a picture of a briefcase on the wall. And this happens even when people have no conscious memory of having seen the briefcase afterwards.
• If you talk to someone who consistently uses words like down, depressed, low, pointless, and disappointed you're likely to feel the same way
• Even the subtle aroma of cleaning liquid in the air causes people to be perceptibly cleaner and tidier than usual

So how do we create an environment that's optimal for making us feel the way we want to during the working day: motivated, productive, and creative?

Kill the Clutter Before It Kills You

There is a long history of creatives and thinkers with cluttered desks. As Albert Einstein once so eloquently put it:

“If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

However, whether it's your closet or office desk, excess things in your surroundings can have a negative impact on your ability to focus and process information.

That's exactly what neuroscientists at Princeton University found when they looked at people's task performance in an organized versus disorganized environment. The results of the study showed that physical clutter in your surroundings competes for your attention, resulting in decreased performance and increased stress.

A team of UCLA researchers recently observed 32 Los Angeles families and found that all of the mothers' stress hormones spiked during the time they spent dealing with their belongings.

Similar to what multitasking does to your brain, physical clutter overloads your senses, making you feel stressed, and impairs your ability to think creatively.

However, it's not as easy as just getting rid of the excess things in your life. We don't create clutter simply through laziness or being unorganized, it literally hurts your brain to give them up. Researchers at Yale recently identified that two areas in your brain associated with pain, the anterior cingulate cortex and insula, light up with activity in response to letting go of items you own and feel a connection towards. This is the same area of the brain that lights up when you feel physical pain from a paper cut or drinking coffee that's too hot.

Your brain views the loss of one of your valued possessions the same as something that causes you physical pain.

So what do we do to reduce the stress of clutter?

• Apply constraints: Whether it's Twitter followers, tabs open in your browser, notebooks, or magazines, setting hard limitations and sticking to them is the best way to stop accumulating more.
• Use small storage spaces: Parkinson's Law says we fill the time we have available to us, and the same could be said about clutter. Less room means less room for clutter.
• Conduct a monthly review of your space: Set time aside to clean, sort, and discard every single month.
• Set up a daily cleanse routine: Crew CEO Mikael suggests cleaning your desktop at the end of every workday so to-do items don't linger and you've got a clean slate to start with the next day

Find Places That Inspire You

There's a reason we feel inspired by large spaces or refreshed from sitting by the window. Apart from a heavy dose of Vitamin D, architecture can have a huge impact on our productivity.

Author James Clear gives the example of researcher Jonas Salk, who, after spending years trying to discover the cure for the polio epidemic ravaging the US in the 50s, travelled to the quiet hills of central Italy where he stayed at a 13th-century Franciscan monastery known as the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi.

The space changed the way he thought:

“The spirituality of the architecture there was so inspiring that I was able to do intuitive thinking far beyond any I had done in the past. Under the influence of that historic place I intuitively designed the research that I felt would result in a vaccine for polio. I returned to my laboratory in Pittsburgh to validate my concepts and found that they were correct.”

Jonas' example is just one of many.

It's been long known that schools with more natural light provide a better learning environment for students and test scores often go up as a result. And natural light and fresh air are known to stimulate productivity in the workplace as well.

You might not be in a position to choose your workspace, but there are quick fixes: look for a spot with natural light from a window or skylight, take a walk outside when you feel stuck, or simply explore a new location.

A new environment can quite literally lead to new ideas. And what's even more exciting is that studies have shown it's actually easier to build new habits in new places.

Use Different Places for Different Places of Mind

We know that different locations will affect us, so why not use that to our advantage? Our brains love habits, and if we can associate certain qualities with different places, it can help us get into a better working flow. This is called ‘task association', where your brain knows that when you're in a certain place, you're taking a certain action.

Writer Gregory Ciotti gives one great example of how he forces himself into a better working flow just by changing the device he's using. In his example, he's trained his brain to know that when he's at his desktop it's time for deep writing like articles. The laptop is for more shallow work like emails or informal posts. And lastly, the tablet is for reading only.

This technique is so powerful it's even been used to help treat people with insomnia by telling them to only go into their bedroom if they're actually tired. If sleep isn't achieved in a reasonable amount of time, they were instructed to leave and move onto another task until they were tired again.

If you can set up multiple workspaces for different tasks you'll also be able to force your mind into a certain flow, just by physically being somewhere.

A great example of this is writer and artist Austin Kleon who keeps two desks setup in his space: an ‘analog' desk filled with paper, pens, and markers; and a ‘digital' desk with laptop and tablet. Idea creation and ‘playing' takes place on only the analog desk, while shaping, editing, and publishing is in the digital domain.

Set Yourself Up for Success

We may think we have the willpower and control to push through harder tasks, but deep down we're all lazy. But it's not entirely our fault. Our brains have been taught to conserve energy at all costs and make subconscious decisions for us based entirely on how hard or easy it is. So if you want to create a workspace that's productive, focus on making it easier to do the things you want to do, and harder to do the tasks you don't.

Stanford professor and psychologist BJ Fogg calls this ‘designing for laziness'.

Sometimes it's as easy as turning your phone off and putting it in a drawer so every time you're tempted to check it you have to go through a lengthy process, while other times it might mean unplugging your TV and putting it in the closet.

One technique I've used lately is to close all of my tabs in my browser at the end of the day (a hellish chore for any writer), leaving only my most important task open. The next day, the easiest choice is just to keep working on whatever was left from the day before.

I'm certainly not the first person to use this technique. Even Hemingway used to stop writing mid-sentence so that he always knew where to pick up the next day.

Curate Your Senses

Beyond the physical layout and mental associations of your space, there are some auxiliary things you can also control. The sounds around you and the music you listen to can have a huge impact on your productivity.

We've written about the power of music and how to find the right track for the right task before, but it's important to note that certain sounds can be incredibly harmful to how you work. Studies show that of all things, intermittent speech—hearing small snippets of conversation—can have an incredibly negative impact on your ability to concentrate.

One meta-analysis examined 242 studies of the ways noise affects performance, and found that when it came to performing cognitive tasks—like staying attentive, reading and processing text, and working with numbers—performance was more affected by intermittent speech than by either continuous speech (which would have little variation in volume and rhythm) or non-speech noise. Bad news for those of us in shared spaces or offices.

There are options though. If you can't find a spot that's silent, noise cancelling headphones or music that drowns out speech can help regain that focus.

When it comes to nature versus nurture in how we work, nurture almost always come out on top. The habits we've formed and the triggers we surround ourselves with can have a huge impact on the quality of work we do and how much we get done in a day.

But with a bit of mindfulness and tweaking we can create the kind of space that helps us get into flow quickly and more often.

5 Ways to Hack Your Workspace for Productivity | Crew

Jory MacKay is the editor of the Crew blog. Crew is a creative marketplace connecting mobile & web projects with vetted, handpicked developers and designers. Creativity is the lifeblood of your business. Want to learn to become the best version of you? Click here to join the thousands of makers and entrepreneurs who get our weekly email on boosting your creativity and productivity.

Top image by Anna de la Cruz (Shutterstock).

 
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Arrival into Heathrow.

 
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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2F2098824-whooping-crane-recovery-puts-human-chick-parents-out-of-a-job%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Whooping crane recovery puts human chick ‘parents' out of a job  
Humans in costume reared captive chicks and flew in light aircraft to guide the cranes' migration, but now the population has grown it's back to nature's way  
gaia  

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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2F2098806-new-zealand-to-wipe-out-all-rats-as-part-of-alien-eradication%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
New Zealand to wipe out all rats as part of alien eradication  
The country's prime minister calls the NZ$28 million venture to wipe out rats, stoats and possums by 2050 the most ambitious conservation project ever attempted  
gaia  

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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2Fsections%2Fhealth-shots%2F2016%2F07%2F26%2F487047575%2Fclone-sisters-of-dolly-the-sheep-are-healthy-alive-and-kicking%3Futm_medium%3DRSS%26utm_campaign%3Dresearchnews&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
'Clone Sisters' Of Dolly The Sheep Are Alive And Kicking  

Dolly, the first cloned mammal, had early arthritis and died young, raising concerns that clones age prematurely. But a study confirms the sheep's four sister clones are healthy and aging well.

 
science  

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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgo.theregister.com%2Ffeed%2Fwww.theregister.co.uk%2F2016%2F07%2F26%2Fdolly_sheep_clones_science_age%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Dolly the sheep clones have aged well, say scientists  

Nottingham's cloning success not usual, though

Scientists working on a long-term study of the world's first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep, have reported that cloned sheep age normally in a paper published today in Nature Communications.…

 
science  

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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fjan-millsapps-phd%2Fwhy-we-are-not-ready-for-_b_11115338.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dscience%26ir%3DScience&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Why We Are Not Ready For Mars  
After weeks of witnessing disturbing events that exemplify how angry, vindictive and dangerous humanity can be when it turns on itself, Mars -- as an escapist adventure situated enticingly in our near futures -- looks great in comparison.

Human exploration and eventual habitation of Mars is often described as the ultimate do-over, the proverbial slate wiped clean, a place where we can make a fresh start. When we get there, we will experience the unblemished purism of a new world and will have unprecedented opportunities to pursue science, increase our knowledge of the universe, extend our species beyond our native planet, perhaps even to preserve the human race if something untoward happens to our home planet Earth.

Yes, we may die trying (Musk seems pretty certain of this). It may take the next few decades to do it successfully (NASA's road to Mars is a long meandering one). We may adopt altruistic values and a commitment to off-planet diversity and get near-laughed off the playing field for spending too much time selecting the humans and not enough raising the money or acquiring the tech (Mars One).

The drive to get humans to Mars is real. Plans are afoot. Odds of success are being calculated. Money is being spent. Gobs of it. The primary emphasis is on the hardware needed to get there: sturdy conveyances, unfailing life support systems, radiation shielding and robust boosters to get the whole thing off the ground. We calculate our readiness factor on advancements in technology, while paying much less attention to the minds and spirits of the fragile humans who will be on board.

After a successful journey, safe landing, and initial check that pre-constructed habs and life support are operational, the forced unity and self-discipline required by a pressure-packed mission will begin to dissipate. Eventually, as more humans arrive, more infrastructure is put in place, and day-to-day survival becomes less stressful, some sort of social fabric will emerge. Will humans on Mars mirror and eventually become as divided and destructive as their Earthly counterparts?


Will Mars become another Earth? (photo collage by author)

Susan Ip Jewell is an L.A.-based physician whose organization "Mars Without Borders" seeks to prepare humans for off-world exploration, primarily via "analog experiences" in Mars-like environments that are not so difficult to find on Earth. She's done numerous stints at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah and is preparing for an even longer stay at the Flashline Arctic Research Station.


Susan Ip Jewell, M.D. with robot companion

Jewell insists we look at future space exploration -- and eventual human habitation of Mars -- as an opportunity to address the issues that divide humans on Earth. "We are so fractured, we are so disconnected from each other as a human race right now... How do you expect us to succeed on another planet?"

In an interview for the documentary Madame Mars: Women and the Quest for Worlds Beyond, Jewell describes the borders humans have constructed on Earth: geographical, political, cultural, belief-driven, racial and gender divides. "Earth normal" is distrusting those who are different from us. Our social values are built on divisiveness, not unity.

Clearly this won't work on Mars. Jewell argues that a successful human mission to Mars and other deep space destinations will depend on a "space without borders."

"If we have borders when we go out beyond space," Jewell said, "we would just replicate the disastrous systems that we have here on Earth."

Those who seek opportunities in distant lands are often trying to escape the difficulties or challenges disrupting their present-day lives, in favor of finding a better life elsewhere. If Mars represents a better life -- even one with intense radiation, blood-boiling atmospheric pressure, frigid temperatures and global sandstorms -- we need to ask ourselves, will those who settle on Mars still be better off than if they'd stayed on Earth?

Most debates to date over governance on Mars suggests the settlers will build their own society from within, develop and institute their own rules of behavior, and set up a way to settle the inevitable disputes. As much as all of humanity will be pulling for these first off-Earth settlers to succeed, many retain a nagging doubt over whether this will be possible. Humans may not be ready for Mars.

Before we climb on the expertly constructed spaceships, before we breathe the artificially generated air or reconstitute the dried packets of astronaut food, we need to repair the mental constructs that create Earth-based boundaries that have led to hatred of others, warfare, terrorism, subjugation of entire races or genders.

Before we go to Mars, certainly before we soil another planet, let's reframe the human associations we live with daily, with an eye toward how we will represent our species when we travel to other worlds. Let's do anything we can on Earth to boost our own confidence that humans will succeed when they put their off-Earth lives together and build communities on a whole new planet.

The early Mars settlers will be us, but they do not need to be like us.

-- 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.

 
science  

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/F5lgJyhSNJQ/our-solar-systems-orbit-through-milky-ways-mysterious-dark-matter-disk-could-dislodge-objects-from-t-1.html  
Our Solar System's Orbit Through Milky Way's Mysterious Disk "Could Dislodge Objects from the Oort Belt and Send Them Hurtling Toward Earth"  
 
astronomy  

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/aV0BF1f2fik/new-insights-about-the-milky-ways-massive-spinning-halo.html  
New Insights About the Milky Way's Massive Spinning Halo  
 
astronomy  

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/28543855025/  
Astronomers Discover Dizzying Spin of the Milky Way Galaxy's “Halo”  

NASA Goddard Photo and Video posted a photo:

Our Milky Way galaxy and its small companions are surrounded by a giant halo of million-degree gas (seen in blue in this artists' rendition) that is only visible to X-ray telescopes in space. University of Michigan astronomers discovered that this massive hot halo spins in the same direction as the Milky Way disk and at a comparable speed.

Read more: go.nasa.gov/29VgLdK

Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss/Ohio State/A Gupta et al

NASA image use policy.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA's mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA's accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency's mission.

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astronomy  

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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/354095589435601797/  
Western furcula moth  

Western furcula moth (Furcula occidentalis) collected in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, and photographed at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (sample ID: 04HBL003217; specimen record: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_RecordView?processid=LCH217-04; BIN: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_BarcodeCluster?clusteruri=BOLD:AAA8926)

 
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160726094113.htm  
Historical love-affair with indulgent foods  
Our desire for indulgent meals may be over 500 years old. A new analysis of European and American paintings across five centuries shows that salt, bread, sausage, and shellfish were among the most commonly depicted foods in paintings of meals from 1500 to 2000 AD.  
technology  

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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/217650594471316341/  
Digital art selected  
Digital art selected for the Daily Inspiration #2447  
pin-images  

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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/25-31-july-2016/5-things-design-firms-post-brexit/  
5 things design firms should be doing after Brexit  

With all the excitement about the referendum results and for half the country, disappointment, anger and frustration one thing is sure: we now live in interesting times, politically and economically. Nobody knows exactly what the eventual impact of the UK's decision to leave the EU will be but I can safely predict that there will be change, good and bad.

In the longer term UK design firms, like all UK businesses, will be affected by issues such as different trading arrangements and employment laws. But what about the shorter term? Some of you will benefit from increased international work if exchange rates continue to be preferential to overseas companies; others will suffer as clients hold fire on projects until the smoke clears and the UK economy has settled; all of you will face a much more competitive market as everyone fights harder for available projects. The well-run design businesses will survive; the poorly-run will go under.

Uncertainty always presents a challenge for business, so here are five things that we're advising design firms right now:

1. Focus immediately on your existing client relationships. They are the quickest, easiest, cheapest and best source of future business. Take a long, hard look at your firm's client relationship management policies and practices; every member of your firm, whatever their role, should now have “impeccable client service” in their job description and be equipped with the tools to deliver it. Increase the heat to maximum on satisfying, retaining and actively developing your current clients, and contact recent-but-dormant clients in person: a database-driven, auto-send newsletter or blog won't be enough.

2. Stop talking about your marketing and sales programme and do it. How's your strategy? Have you got a robust positioning, target market and proposition? If so, you need to articulate them clearly on every touchpoint, from your website's landing page to your email signatures. You need a rolling 12-month campaign plan with activities, dates and budgets, with the right people in place, in-house or outsourced. Are your activities as integrated, consistent, meaningful and powerful as they need to be, and how are your credentials meetings? Random tweets, online posts and digi-conversations are useful and fun but they're just the sprinkles on top of the icing on the cake.

3. Continue to invest in your team members at all levels of seniority. You hired the best: now give them the expert internal and external coaching and training they need. Without the right knowledge, skills and capabilities how can they support you in your business? If they aren't performing to their full potential, you've got a problem.

4. If you have periods of downtime, don't just sulk. Or panic. Or do nothing. Instead, use the opportunity to work on your business. Think. Then think again. As Einstein said: “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Work with your senior team members on your vision, values, goals and business strategy, and then develop forward plans based on different “what if” scenarios. And be honest about your product is it good enough in terms of the three essential pillars of strategy, creativity and implementation? Are you not only keeping up with trends in clients' needs but staying ahead of them? Look at when you last reviewed and tightened up the operational side of your business, including finance, HR, IT, etc? They need to be running smoothly, bringing in results and providing value.

5. Don't give away your work for nothing. Yes, I'm talking about free pitches. More than ever, now's the time for UK design firms to stop providing unpaid strategic and creative thinking to prospects who can afford to pay for it. The sole exception is work done for charities or other not-for-profit causes that you support, in which case you're donating skills instead of money. Oh, and did I hear you thinking in point two that you can't afford a marketing programme? Try adding up how much time, effort and money you spent on free pitching in the last year. You could have used it on some proper marketing instead.

Finally, in case you're suffering from post-brexit anxiety, it's worth remembering that the UK has an extremely robust design sector. The Design Council's 2015 report The Design Economy shows that within the creative industries sector, itself growing at almost twice the rate of the UK economy, design is growing fastest. We generate over £70 billion gross value added a year, equivalent to more than 7% of the national total. And our trade body, the DBA, recently issued an uplifting post-referendum statement. Chief executive officer Deborah Dawton reminds us that design's proven ability to drive growth and the quality and effectiveness of our work remain unchanged she concludes: “The arguments for design are resounding.”

---

Shan Preddy is a design-sector trainer, business adviser and writer. Her firm, Preddy&Co, works with design firms and in-house design teams.

The post 5 things design firms should be doing after Brexit appeared first on Design Week.

 
design  

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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/281543706285399/  
Detail of the inside  
Detail of the inside of a sunflower (© Peter Dennen/Aurora Photos) 2016-07-25 [www.bing.com/search]  
pin-images  

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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/25-31-july-2016/product-design-exhibition-made-sheffield-will-showcase-regions-talent/  
Product design exhibition Made in Sheffield will showcase region's talent  

Exhibition Made in Sheffield has opened at the city's Millennium Gallery to showcase Sheffield's design talent.

Curated by Museums Sheffield, the exhibition celebrates over 150 Sheffield-born companies through a range of inventive and visually striking displays.

The main aim of the exhibition, according to Kirstie Hamilton, head of exhibitions and displays at Museums Sheffield, is to “showcase the region's most creative design talent, working at the forefront of manufacturing, engineering and technological industries.

“The displays cover a range of specialisms from global aeronautical engineering and world-class advanced manufacturing to ground-breaking digital industries and artisan makers who are masters of their craft.”

Some of the must-see exhibits on show are the world's fastest sled used by English motorcycle racer Guy Martin to break the world speed record for the fastest gravity powered sled, a GEM engine made by Rolls Royce used in Boeing aircrafts, 3D printed medical prosthetics and a skeletal hand made from ReproBone; an implantable synthetic bone graft which acts as a scaffold to support and promote bone repair before it eventually dissolves in the body.

“Over the next six months, we're turning the Millennium Gallery into a 21st century ‘Crystal Palace' to celebrate the incredible achievements of makers and manufacturers in the region,” says Kim Streets, chief executive at Museums Sheffield.

“Made in Sheffield will shine a spotlight on the diverse ideas, developments, products and progress that see makers and businesses in the city at the top of their field.”

The Made in Sheffield exhibition forms part of The Year of Making a city-wide initiative celebrating Sheffield's international reputation and is running between 6 July 2016 and 8 January 2017. Entry is free.

All photos © Museums Sheffield

The post Product design exhibition Made in Sheffield will showcase region's talent appeared first on Design Week.

 
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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/25-31-july-2016/aaardman-national-museums-scotland-launch-animated-educational-game/  
Aardman and National Museums Scotland launch animated educational game  

National Museums Scotland has teamed up with animation studio Aardman to create an educational animated game that draws on its existing biomedical collection.

GEN, which can be played online using a computer, smartphone or tablet, involves players diagnosing what is wrong with GEN Aaardman's digital creature character and nursing it back to full health.

The strategy game allows players to choose from various medical-related objects, ranging from wooden stethoscopes to early X-Ray machines, all of which can actually be found at the museum's science and technology galleries.

“Enhance museums' biomedical displays”

Laura Chilcott, senior digital producer at Aardman, says the partnership with National Museums Scotland “has been a great opportunity for us to use our skills both to educate a new audience, and also to enhance the museum's biomedical displays.”

One of the design features includes GEN itself. “It's a simplistic amorphous blob which has realistic physics applied to its body, so can be pulled and prodded around,” says Gav Strange, senior designer at Aardman.

“As the illness takes effect on it, we wanted the player to feel empathy towards our gelatinous friend, so they would care for GEN and work hard to diagnose its ailments and use the right treatment to bring it back to life.”

Balance between “clean and clinical”

Meanwhile, the interface has been designed to strike a balance between “clean and clinical”, according to Strange.

“We didn't want the interface and the design to feel cold, but at the same time we didn't want to add anything superfluous,” he says.

The design of the character acted as a balancing aid, Strange adds. While GEN has texture and an organic shape, the interface has been kept clean.

GEN's launch comes after the museum recently opened 10 new galleries dedicated to applied art, design, fashion, science and technology, as part of a £14.1 million renovation.

Introduce medical science to a wider audience

The app runs alongside 250 interactive displays at the museums, including a CT scan of a person that can be viewed from all angles showing different layers of muscle, gas and bone, and a game that allows users to design a clinical drug trial.

“[GEN] is one of a number of fun ways we're introducing some fairly complex ideas of medical science to a wider audience,” says Sarah Goggins, assistant curator for biomedicine at National Museums Scotland.

“We hope lots of people will get online to play…as well as getting an insight into some of the amazing objects now on show”.

National Museums Scotland looks after museums including the National Museum of Scotland, National Museum of Flight, National Museum of Rural Life and National War Museum.

The post Aardman and National Museums Scotland launch animated educational game appeared first on Design Week.

 
design  

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https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jul/25/campaign-launches-to-reopen-alexandra-palace-theatre-shut-for-80-years  
Campaign aims to reopen Alexandra Palace theatre shut for 80 years  

The historic space opened in 1875 and although built to hold 3,000 will reopen as a multifunctional space for up to 1,300

An abandoned Victorian theatre hidden inside Alexandra Palace that has been closed to audiences for more than 80 years could soon reopen after a campaign was launched to restore it.

The existence of the “frozen in time” theatre is not widely known but it is considered one of the most architecturally significant and historic parts of the entertainment complex in north London, built in the 1870s as “the People's Palace”.

Continue reading...  
design  

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nybooks/~3/asuUfPW-H4I/  
Which Europe Now?  
Political drama on television is finished. No fictional version could match the vicious infighting in both main political parties in Britain that followed the vote on June 23 by the British people to leave the European Union. What the vote revealed is a growing and dangerous divide between the political class, often a metropolitan elite, and a large number of people who feel left out of the economic prosperity centered on London and disenfranchised by “political correctness.”  
culture  

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nybooks/~3/E21W3gocFVw/  
Austria: The Lesson of the Far Right  
On one side of the new conflict are those who advocate more openness: toward minorities at home and toward engagement with the world on the outside. On the other side we find the Le Pens, Farages, and Trumps: close the nation-state off by shutting borders and thereby, or so they promise, take back control; but also, preserve the traditional hierarchies that have come under threat on the inside.  
culture  

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http://www.designboom.com/art/bruit-du-frigo-kinotour-wagon-cinema-07-26-2016/  
bruit du frigo's kinotour wagon is a mobile cinema which captures everyday scenarios  

the portable cinema allows one to see everyday situations as a succession of intertwined moments.

The post bruit du frigo's kinotour wagon is a mobile cinema which captures everyday scenarios appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

 
art  

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http://heptagram.co/post/147972472067  
90377: by Lifan Zhang  

90377:

by Lifan Zhang

 
art  

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http://www.designboom.com/art/rebecca-louise-law-chandran-gallery-the-beauty-of-decay-07-25-2016/  
rebecca louise law suspends 8,000 flowers from san francisco gallery to show the beauty of decay  

the installation presents an artistic study of the decline and succession of natural materials, as the stems overhead gradually shift through the natural stages of life and decay.

The post rebecca louise law suspends 8,000 flowers from san francisco gallery to show the beauty of decay appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

 
art  

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http://heptagram.co/post/147967634356  
La Petite Mort #6  
La Petite Mort #6:

HEY EVERYBODY! I'm excited to unveil a new publication I got to design called La Petite Mort. Please check out the link and hit the “Thumbs Up” button at the bottom if you like it!!!

They're available for FREE at Calliope NYC

 
art  

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/jul/25/renaissance-art-nudity-cover-up-sistine-chapel-leonardo-censorship  
The great art cover-up: Renaissance nudity still has power to shock  

Sistine Chapel buttocks are veiled, while Leonardo's Leda was so saucy she was destroyed. But prudish censorship only confirms the pulling power of art

You never know what will offend people. Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered that a skirt was crudely painted over the naked Eve in a Renaissance manuscript soon to go on view at the city's Fitzwilliam Museum. Some time between the 16th and 18th centuries a particularly prudish owner had this image bowdlerised, even though the nudity of Adam and Eve is a venerable and respectable religious theme.

Related: Unveiled: Adam and Eve naked again after centuries-old cover-up

Related: The top 10 male nudes in art

Related: The top 10 female nudes in art

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art  

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/25/wonder-materials-graphene-and-beyond-review-museum-of-science-and-industry  
Wonder Materials: Graphene and Beyond review carbon foreplay with no climax  

Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester
Faced with an invisible material and no whizzy inventions to show, this exhibition pays underwhelming homage to a Nobel prize-winning discovery

It's been hailed as the wonder material that will revolutionise everything from smartphones and car tyres to aeroplanes and condoms. But the problem with graphene, for the curators of a new exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry, is that you can't actually see it. And none of these potentially miraculous applications for the atom-thick material have actually been invented yet.

“There's never been so much expectation invested in a new material,” says Danielle Olsen, co-curator of Wonder Materials: Graphene and Beyond, which opened this week in the city where this mercurial form of super-thin carbon was first isolated in 2004. “It's under a lot of pressure to perform.”

Related: Graphene - the new wonder material

Membership Event: Private view of Wonder Materials: Graphene and Beyond

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art  

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160726094226.htm  
Ancient eye in the sky  
Light from a distant galaxy can be strongly bent by the gravitational influence of a foreground galaxy. That effect is called strong gravitational lensing. Normally a single galaxy is lensed at a time. The same foreground galaxy can in theory simultaneously lens multiple background galaxies. Although extremely rare, such a lens system offers a unique opportunity to probe the fundamental physics of galaxies and add to our understanding of cosmology. One such lens system has recently been discovered and the discovery was made not in an astronomer's office, but in a classroom. It has been dubbed the Eye of Horus, and this ancient eye in the sky may help us understand the history of the universe.  
astronomy  

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https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2016/jul/26/largest-ever-map-of-the-universe-points-to-mysterious-dark-energy  
Largest ever map of the universe points to mysterious ‘dark energy'  

The largest ever 3D map of the universe strengthens astronomers' belief that three quarters of the cosmos is made of an unknown substance: ‘dark energy'

It is hard to know whether it's a success or a failure but modern astronomy tells us that almost three quarters of the universe is in the form of an unknown substance called “dark energy”.

Add to this the “dark matter” that astronomers are still searching for without success, and we think we live in a Universe where only two percent of it is the familiar atoms that make up you and I, stars and planets.

Continue reading...  
astronomy  

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160725151144.htm  
Astronomers discover dizzying spin of the Milky Way galaxy's 'halo'  
Astronomers have discovered for the first time that the hot gas in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy is spinning in the same direction and at comparable speed as the galaxy's disk, which contains our stars, planets, gas, and dust. This new knowledge sheds light on how individual atoms have assembled into stars, planets, and galaxies like our own, and what the future holds for these galaxies.  
astronomy  

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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgo.theregister.com%2Ffeed%2Fwww.theregister.co.uk%2F2016%2F07%2F26%2Fsmithsonian_beer_boffins%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Calling all hipster... *hic* hip-hip-storians! Craft beer job spotted  

Smithsonian on lookout for boozy history buff

Had enough of tech? Sporting a big or any kind of unlikely looking beard or interestingly dyed hair? El Reg has found the perfect new job where you'll get paid handsomely to espouse the wonders of trendy beer.…

 
general  

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http://thenextweb.com/uk/2016/07/26/amazon-begins-testing-delivery-drone-fleets-in-the-uk/  
Amazon begins testing delivery drone fleets in the UK  

Amazon is inching closer to a reality of delivering products using airborne drones. It's now partnering with the UK government to expand trials of its drones to cover various delivery scenarios. In collaboration with the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), Amazon will test drones that fly beyond the operator's line of sight in rural and suburban areas, their ability to identify and avoid obstacles, and even trips involving fleets of automated drones handled by a single person. The outcomes of these trials will help inform the development of future policy and regulation for the use of unmanned drones for commercial…

This story continues at The Next Web  
technology  

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http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/07/26/the-sun-powered-solar-impulse-2-plane-just-completed-a-journey-around-the-world/  
The sun-powered Solar Impulse 2 plane just completed a journey around the world  

I can't believe I'm typing this: two pilots just completed a 24,584 mile-long trip around the world in a plane over the course of more than a year, without a single drop of fuel. Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg flew the Solar Impulse 2 across Europe, North America and Asia over the past year; the final leg of their trip took them from Cairo to Abu Dhabi in two days and 37 minutes, signaling the end of an incredible journey that the Swiss duo undertook to prove that clean technologies can power our future energy needs on earth. The Solar…

This story continues at The Next Web  
technology  

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http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/07/25/norway-is-building-the-worlds-first-floating-underwater-tunnels/  
Norway is building the world's first ‘floating' underwater tunnels  

Norway has an ambitious plan to ease the congestion of local ferries by building a series of underwater tunnels that allow travelers to cross the nations bodies of water. The “submerged floating bridges” would consist of large tubes suspended by pontoon-like support structures 100 feet below water. Each will be wide enough for two lanes of traffic, and the floating structures should ease the congestion on numerous ferries currently required to get commuters from Point A to Point B. Each support pontoon would then be secured to a truss or bolted to the bedrock below to keep things stable. Currently, a trip from Kristiansand to…

This story continues at The Next Web  
technology  

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http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/07/25/florida-court-proves-if-youre-a-criminal-that-isnt-using-bitcoin-youre-doing-it-wrong/  
Florida court proves if you're a criminal that isn't using bitcoin, you're doing it wrong  

Bitcoin has made millionaires nearly overnight, lost some their life savings, and fluctuates more than a politician during election season, but make no mistake: it's not currency, at least to this Florida court. A Miami-Dade judge ruled in favor of a man, Michell Espinoza, charged with illegally selling and laundering $1,500 worth of bitcoin to undercover detectives. Before the transaction, Espinoza was informed by the detectives that they intended to use the bitcoin to purchase stolen credit cards, a move that could constitute money laundering — by Florida's definition of the law. Under Florida law, someone can be charged with the crime…

This story continues at The Next Web  
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http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/07/25/playstation-vue-will-be-more-attractive-to-cord-cutters-with-addition-of-nfl-redzone/  
PlayStation Vue will be more attractive to cord cutters with addition of NFL RedZone  

One of the most-voiced concerns about cord-cutting being a viable alternative to cable/satellite is the lack of live sports. After today's announcement from Sony that it's bringing NFL Network and its subscription service, RedZone, to PlayStation Vue, it's clear this is becoming less of an issue. The popular streaming option for PS4 owners is set to kick off the new channels this fall, at the start of the NFL season. It'll join MLB TV, NHL TV and NBA League Pass as streaming options, covering each of the “big four” sports in the US. For fight fans, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) also has a PS4 streaming…

This story continues at The Next Web  
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The Wallpaper* pick of astounding staircases  

The Wallpaper* pick of astounding staircases

 
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The Millennium Bridge and St Paul's Cathedral  

Nigel Blake, 13 MILLION...Yay! Many thanks! posted a photo:

The Millennium Bridge and St Paul's Cathedral at night about 40 minutes after sunset _22A9019

 
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Southwark Bridge and the city  

Nigel Blake, 13 MILLION...Yay! Many thanks! posted a photo:

Southwark Bridge and the City buildings, London UK _22A9016

 
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Southwark Bridge and the city  

Nigel Blake, 13 MILLION...Yay! Many thanks! posted a photo:

Southwark Bridge and the City buildings, London UK _22A9014

 
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Roads Are Modern Hunting Fields  
I drove to a national park with my husband for a nature-filled retreat this summer. The drive was long and the hour twilight. The roads were gray and shadowed, trees forming triangular apparitions on either side. I was driving fast -- well over the speed limit -- but others overtook me one after another.

Embarrassed at my slowness, I stepped on the accelerator. Just then, a pair of dark round eyes appeared in the middle of the lane before me. They blinked at the blinding glare of my high-beam headlights. Black button nose, soft ears, white whiskers, all in the face of a tiny bandit, his body crouched. I stepped on the brake but it was too late. A thud sounded as my car hit the baby raccoon.

Raccoons are reviled by many, but their reputation is undeserved. They are intelligent, intrepid, and adventurous. This little raccoon was no more than a couple of months old and must have been out exploring in search for a bite to eat (raccoons are nocturnal). Given that he was alone, he was probably an orphan, his mother likely killed on the road as well -- the most common cause of death for the species.

Dismayed at the incident, I turned where I often turn -- to the internet -- to see how others cope with the grief of killing an animal. What I found was disturbing. "If you happen to meet Bambi one night while driving on a dark road," one article advised, "here's a suggestion: Hit him." There is also a sub-culture of consuming roadkill. The Original Road Kill Cookbook, purported to have sold more than 200,000 copies, depicts the precise method of striking a deer in order to easily load him onto a truck.

Whether animals are killed inadvertently or intentionally, roads are the modern-day hunting fields. Just as there is a sense of power in holding a gun, there is a sense of power in sitting behind the wheel, enclosed in a protective shield of glass and steel. More wild animals in America are hit by a car than shot by a gun. In fact, hunting and roadkill are correlated. Deer, by far the most common target of hunts, chased by four-fifths of the nation's fourteen million hunters, run out onto the road to escape their stalkers -- only to get run over.

Like the orphan raccoon I killed, roadkill is an orphan issue. No agency or organization takes responsibility for it. Roadkill is also a marginalized subject societally, despite the fact that a typical driver runs over one or two animals a year, summing up to dozens over the course of a lifetime. One million animals die on America's streets and highways every day, including squirrels, rabbits, caribou, ducks, frogs, possums, geese, foxes, bears, coyotes, turtles, snakes, elk, raccoons, moose, mountain lions, skunks, deer, and chipmunks. Twenty-one species of animals in the United States have become endangered in part as a result of roadkill.



We tell ourselves that animals are to blame, that they shouldn't be out on the road in the first place. A common recommendation to reduce roadkill is hunting, with the logic that if animals are killed in the woods, they won't be killed on the roads. Some articles, such as this recent piece in The New York Times, recommend the introduction of predators. But such solutions are bound to fail or worsen the problem because they're ignoring the crux of the issue.

The problem is not that animals are on the road, but that the road is in their home. Over four million miles of streets and highways slice through their habitats like swords, partitioning them into fragments that are convenient for us but indifferent to them. Many animals have no choice except to cross the road regularly, for their source of food may lie to one side and their source of water or shelter (or their nesting site or mating site) may lie to the other. A road is equivalent to a string arbitrarily dividing a house into jigsaw pieces. You have no option except to step over the string repeatedly for different functions over the course of a single day.

From my examination of the evidence, one solution stands above all others in its potential to save lives. Numerous studies from around the world demonstrate that wildlife fences and crossings reduce mortality by 75 to 100 percent. Fences keep animals off the roads and funnel them toward wildlife underpasses and overpasses, which serve as corridors for safe crossing. A recent case study in Wyoming showcases the effectiveness of the strategy.

The Wyoming Department of Transportation installed twelve miles of fencing, six underpasses, and two overpasses to provide safe migration routes for mule deer and pronghorn (a striking creature that resembles the antelope and is the fastest land animal on the continent). Animal highway crossings were monitored over a period of close to three years from 2012 to 2015. It was found that four-fifths of 60,000 mule deer used underpasses to cross the highway and nine-tenths of 25,000 pronghorn used overpasses. As a result of the safe pathways, pronghorn collisions with cars were eliminated entirely while mule deer collisions plummeted 79 percent. (Pronghorn faced an unexpected danger in the form of hunters, though, who positioned themselves at overpasses for easy access, until the state made it illegal to hunt close to an overpass.) Other animals used the crossings as well, including moose, elk, coyotes, and badgers.

Wyoming's collision reduction is impactful also because pronghorn and mule deer are species in crisis. Once numbering 35 million, the population of pronghorn today stands at under one million. Because of Wyoming's protective measures, both populations are likely to increase.

Financial considerations are often offered as a reason to do nothing. But when it comes to roadkill, it's more expensive to do nothing than to take action, for animal collisions are exorbitantly costly. Seventy people are injured every day and one person dies every other day in the United States as a result of a collision with an animal. The average accident with a large animal costs more than eight thousand dollars in vehicle damage, medical bills, and other costs, and the total expense incurred as a result of animal accidents in the United States is upwards of eight billion dollars a year. In Wyoming, wildlife crossings will pay for themselves in a matter of just four to five years. Reducing roadkill everywhere is beneficial for drivers, auto insurers, and medical insurers.

Upon hitting the baby raccoon, I asked myself several tough questions. Should I have been driving in the day-time, with visibility on my side? Yes. Should I have been driving slower? Yes. Should I have been more alert and attentive, and less tired and distracted? Yes, no doubt. But even if all conditions were optimal, there is a chance I would still have hit the raccoon -- or someone else would have. There is also a chance that I would have hit a large animal and gotten injured myself.

As long as there are roads and there are animals on roads, roadkill will be a common sight. We can't remove roads, but we can make them safer for both animals and ourselves. Let's save lives by constructing fences and wildlife crossings, and let's watch as animal populations flourish rather than perish.

Sonia Faruqi is the author of Project Animal Farm: An Accidental Journey into the Secret World of Farming and the Truth About Our Food.

-- 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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Dedrick Muhammad: Race, Wealth and Disability in America  
By Michael Morris, Executive Director, National Disability Institute and Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Director of the Racial Wealth Divide Initiative of C...

Read more: Disability, Disabilities, Civil Rights, Race, Economics, Education, Environment, Disability Rights, HuffPost Home News

 
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Henry Christy Scientist of the Day Henry Christy, an English...  

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Henry Christy Scientist of the Day

Henry Christy, an English banker and archaeologist, was born July 26, 1810.

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The sting 4 by Adrian Donoghue  

The sting 4 by Adrian Donoghue

To purchase one of my Photoshop tutorials, see my Facebook page Follow me on:Instagram

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CITY by SANDRA SACHSENHAUSER  

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"CITY"Multi exposure | ABSTRACT Follow me on Facebook and Instagram https://www.facebook.com/sandra.sachsenhauser.page/

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Fishing Boy in the river, Thailand

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Together

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transformer by Anuchit นายบันทึก  

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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fpaul-dickinson%2Fthe-uncomfortable-truth-a_b_11193898.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
The uncomfortable truth about leadership  
Thirty-five years ago I recall a teacher explaining to me at school that jet airplane travel had, for the purposes of travel and trade, shrunk the world from the size of a huge beach ball to the size of a golf ball. Since then it has shrunk again and again. The world population is now well over seven billion, and our highly integrated existence therefore requires an evolution of our imagination to successfully manage global problems.

These challenges, chief of which I believe is climate change, are layered in force fields of complexity so strong that they repel easy answers or conventional problem-solving approaches. No wonder then that experts often describe climate change as a "wicked problem".

If we are to successfully navigate such complex challenges, we must first recognize some hard truths about what it means to lead in our age. As Tzeporah Berman, an environmental activist, noted at the Business Climate Summit at the end of last month, "leadership is uncomfortable, because it is about going to an edge."

The uncomfortable truth about leadership is exactly that - it requires embracing some degree of discomfort. Solutions to our complex challenges will be forged only when individuals, governments and companies put themselves out there.

Few people embody this leadership better than Christiana Figueres, the former head of the UNFCCC. She assumed the responsibility of the global climate change negotiations after the notable failure of the Copenhagen talks in 2009. Being tasked with saving the planet when we had just reached a nadir in our faith in global cooperation was an impossible challenge. But as she so eloquently explained in her TED talk this year, impossible is not a fact, it is an attitude.

Figueres' ability to successfully weave together the interests of global investors, corporations and cities with the ambitions of national governments provides an inspiring example of what can be achieved when optimism and pragmatism combine to deliver shared objectives.

As a result of her, and many other individual's, efforts, we now have a historic and ambitious global climate change agreement. That is only the first step. The hard part is how we go about achieving these ambitions.

So what can business learn from this form of leadership? It may not be the immediate instinct of corporates to embrace different new strategies, but an increasing number are recognizing the need to do so. Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, more corporations are committing to tackle climate change. Two companies a week are signing up to set emissions reduction targets that are in line with limiting temperature rises to below two degrees through the Science Based Targets initiative, set up by CDP, the UN Global Compact, WRI and WWF.

This is no CSR exercise. Companies who participate will, with the support and guidance of the initiative, review their business strategy to see how to bring their emissions in line with the global carbon budget. It is no easy feat. But it brings many opportunities - one of these according to Sally Fisk from Pfizer is an opportunity "to continue to challenge" themselves.

Reading the quotes from the companies who are setting science-based targets reveals an implicit understanding that while it may not be simple, the payoffs for their business could be huge. Those who have signed up, such as Kellogg Company and Mars, are also calling on their peers to join them in setting targets grounded in climate science, because the payoffs for our planet will then be even bigger.

Companies setting these targets have ultimately put themselves in a stronger position to succeed, because they have understood the need to push themselves. Testing out new approaches and ideas will require some level of discomfort, but the complexities of climate change demand that we do and the resulting opportunities are boundless. There is now a rapidly building vanguard of leaders willing to go down the road less travelled. It is up to all of us to follow.

-- 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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Do we really need female viagra?  
Flibanserin has become the first FDA-approved drug for female sexual dysfunction. But does lack of sexual desire require treatment?  
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Ollie Youle takes a physical approach to this biblical tale  
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http://twitter.com/PoachingPrevent/status/757888952363847680 
#CITES Vietnam hsn't approved #pangolin farming - licensing violates laws on protecting #endangered & rare #species https://t.co/4iZ59tyjaQ 
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Empty London  

The Narratographer posted a photo:

Day two down in London started off dismally. I am not sure how many other people feel this way, but some days I feel that all of my photography is not worthy of showcasing and that I may as well give it up. I have no idea why I get like this sometimes, but it becomes a vicious circle as when I feel uninspired, uninterested in photography, I cannot take a good image to save my life. So the feeling of uselessness gets compounded. At times like this, I crave inspiration. I crave something to come along to help me turn the corner and begin once more to believe in art. Today, it came in the form of one of the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen.

London is rarely a clear city, with the smog dominating the sky and turning everything a mottled grey. That was exactly how it started out when I left my hotel at 6am. It was drizzling and the sky was featureless and bland. My feet were hurting and my well of creativity was dry. I stumbled forwards along the cobbled streets towards Tower Bridge with a feeling of emptiness. But all of a sudden, as I was just approaching the bridge, the sun erupted from over the top of the Docklands and the sky above me began to turn a salmon colour. All of a sudden my spirits were lifted and I decided on the shot I wanted to take. I knew this colour in the sky would not last forever and the shot I wanted to take would take a good few minutes. I wanted a panorama of the entire city taken right in the centre of tower bridge. The Shard and the city skyline would act as bookends for the scene and this would be balanced out by London Bridge in the distance. There would be a symmetry to the image and a lot of detail, 50mp simply wasn't going to cut it. So, instead of settling for a single 16mm shot of the city, I decided on a gigantic 400mp image, spanning the entire city. 8 individual shots, stitched together to make a single piece. This would take a while, as I would shoot it with both a polariser and Pro Glass filter on, slowing my shutter down by 4-stops. I had to get into position.

By the time the images were taken, the sky was turning more orange. So I decided to walk back towards the city along the South Bank. From there, I took photographs as the sky turned from red to orange, to yellow and then to a soft purple. Using my 6-stop ND filter, which mixes colour in an image like pigment on a paint palette, some of the colours I managed to capture are incredible. Each image looks like it must have been taken on a different day, such is the difference in colour. Yet the images were taken only minutes apart. I am very happy with the results, and my spirits are lifted once more. Tomorrow, it is the turn of Westminster and the London Eye.

 
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City Sunset ?  

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Dirty water muddies future for Madagascar's children  

Contaminated drinking water has led to the country having one of the highest rates of stunting for under-fives, causing lasting physical and cognitive damage

“Do you think giving my daughter this to drink makes me happy?” asks Perline as she holds out a cup of putrid brown water for Felasoa*, eight, one of her four children. “I know this water makes us all sick. But if a human being doesn't drink, we die. So we have no choice.”

The dirty water was collected from one of the small streams that run by the paddy fields near Bekalalao village in Madagascar. The streams irrigate the fields and provide drinking and bathing water for humans and animals.

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r0B0t: Hackaday Prize Entry: An AI Robot - Hackaday  

Hackaday

Hackaday Prize Entry: An AI Robot Hackaday For her Hackaday Prize entry, [ThunderSqueak] is building an artificial intelligence. P.A.L., the Self-Programming AI Robot, is building on the intelligence displayed by Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, and whatever the Google thing is called, to build a ...

 
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r0B0t: New trials for delivering goods by drones - BBC News  

BBC News

New trials for delivering goods by drones BBC News The government's getting together with the retail giant Amazon to start testing flying drones that can deliver parcels to your door. Amazon's paying for the programme, which will look at the best way to allow hundreds of robotic aircraft to buzz around ... Amazon to test drone delivery in UK suburb and rural areasInternational Business Times UK Amazon begins testing delivery drone fleets in the UKThe Next Web Amazon to step up UK tests of delivery dronesTelegraph.co.uk Alphr -Gizmag -T3 -Financial Times all 44 news articles »

 
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http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/7/25/12270938/samsung-font-samsungone-android-roboto  
Samsung developed its own font called SamsungOne  

Bespoke typefaces have become all the rage in Silicon Valley. Google has its Roboto font family that's become a cornerstone of the identity of many of their Material Design applications. Apple has its custom-made San Francisco, which recently became the default typeface across the entire Apple family of devices. And while Microsoft can't take credit for developing Segoe, the company has made the font its own, using it as a core part of the Microsoft, Windows, and Office branding.

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Sunset over London

 
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How to catch a poacher: Breaking Bad and fake eggs  

Conservationists and law enforcement have struggled to catch the Walter Whites behind wildlife trafficking. But could some plastic eggs and GPS trackers change the game?

Sometimes life really does imitate art. In the fourth season of the hit TV show, Breaking Bad, police put GPS devices on barrels of methylamine to try and track the show's protagonists to their meth lab. Inspired by the episode, Kim Williams-Guillen, a conservationist with Paso Pacifico, decided to take the concept one step further: what if you could catch wildlife poachers by slipping GPS devices into convincingly faked wildlife parts? In this case: Hollywood-inspired, high-tech sea turtle eggs; fake eggs so convincingly crafted that poachers would have a hard time distinguishing them from the real thing.

“Every year millions of sea turtle eggs are taken by poachers for sale on the black market. Paso Pacifico's solution has the potential to reveal the trade routes and destination markets for trafficked sea turtle eggs,” the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) said.

We're trying to find Stringer Bell, not Wallace.

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New lithium-oxygen battery greatly improves energy efficiency, longevity  

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Lithium-air batteries are considered highly promising technologies for electric cars and portable electronic devices because of their potential for delivering a high energy output in proportion to their weight. But such batteries have some pretty serious drawbacks: They waste much of the injected energy as heat and degrade relatively quickly. They also require expensive extra components to pump oxygen gas in and out, in an open-cell configuration that is very different from conventional sealed batteries. In a new concept for battery cathodes, nanometer-scale particles made of lithium and oxygen compounds (depicted in red and white) are embedded in a sponge-like lattice (yellow) of cobalt oxide, which keeps them stable. Researchers propose that this material could be packaged in batteries that are very similar to conventional sealed batteries yet provide much more energy for their weight.

Image credit: Courtesy of the researchers

 
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Hydrodynamic propulsion of water striders  

Full Text:

A freshwater spider (Dolomedes) runs along the water's surface, leaving vortices behind its four pairs of stroking legs. In this National Science Foundation-supported project, dye studies were performed in order to determine what the propulsion mechanism is of the water strider (Gerris remigis), a common water-walking insect, approximately 1 centimeter long that resides on the surface of ponds, rivers and the open ocean.

Image credit: Courtesy John Bush, MIT

 
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Follow Your Dreams  

Kieran Williams Photography posted a photo:

 
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r0B0t: REVEALED: Scientists find the BEST BISCUIT for tea dunking... but do you agree? - Express.co.uk  

Express.co.uk

REVEALED: Scientists find the BEST BISCUIT for tea dunking... but do you agree? Express.co.uk A ROBOT has managed to settle an age-old debate which has had Britons arguing over their steaming mug of PG Tips for years - what's the best biscuit for dunking? By Rebecca Perring Rebecca Perring. PUBLISHED: 14:33, Mon, Jul 25, 2016 | UPDATED: ... Revealed: the best biscuit for dunking into your teaTelegraph.co.uk all 10 news articles »

 
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The Remarkable Photograph of the First Solvay Conference  
The first of the celebrated Solvay Conferences was an invitation-only conference, held at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels, Belgium, in the fall of 1911.

These conferences were named after Ernest Solvay, a successful Belgian industrialist and philanthropist, who founded an international school for physics and chemistry (as well as other important institutions).

While the most frequently described is the fifth conference (on Electrons and Photons), that took place in 1927, the photograph (Figure 1) of the participants in the first conference, on Radiation and the Quanta, is remarkable in its own right. Here are a few notable facts (clearly, some more important than others):

First, even though Ernest Solvay himself was not present when the photo was taken, his head (third from the left among the seated) was later pasted onto the photograph!

Second, of the 23 participants (other than Solvay), no fewer than nine won the Nobel Prize (one of them, Marie Curie, won it twice). Most of the others won other prestigious prizes, such as the Matteucci Medal, the RAS Gold Medal, the Smith's Prize, and more. The number of Nobel Laureates would have been even higher could four other original invitees (J. D. van der Waals, Lord Rayleigh, Joseph Larmor, Arthur Scuster) have attended. The first two of those won the Nobel Prize.

Third, there was only one woman in the group, Marie Skłodowska Curie. She was not only the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, but also the only woman to win it twice, the only person to win it in two different fields (physics and chemistry), and the first woman to be entombed in the Pantheon in Paris because of her own personal accomplishments.

Fourth, Albert Einstein was the second youngest participant in the conference. The youngest was British physicist Frederick Lindemann, who went on to become scientific adviser to Winston Churchill.

Finally, to end on an amusing note, you'll notice that with the exception of the British astrophysicist James Jeans, all the other men in the photograph wear mustaches!



Figure 1. Photograph of the participants in the First Solvay Conference.
Seated (L-R): W. Nernst, M. Brillouin, E. Solvay, H. Lorentz, E. Warburg, J. Perrin, W. Wien, M. Skłodowska-Curie, and H. Poincaré. Standing (L-R): R. Goldschmidt, M. Planck, H. Rubens, A. Sommerfeld, F. Lindemann, M. de Broglie, M. Knudsen, F. Hasenöhrl, G. Hostelet, E. Herzen, J. H. Jeans, E. Rutherford, H. Kamerlingh Onnes, A. Einstein and P. Langevin. Photograph is in the Public Domain.

-- 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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r0B0t: PhD student uses a robot to make VR feel more real  
Between the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift, we've come a long way towards being able to step in to virtual worlds -- but touching those false realities is a different matter. Solving this means finding a haptic technology that can adapt to needs of a c...  
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r0B0t: REVEALED: Scientists find the BEST BISCUIT for tea dunking... but do you agree? - Express.co.uk  

Express.co.uk

REVEALED: Scientists find the BEST BISCUIT for tea dunking... but do you agree? Express.co.uk A ROBOT has managed to settle an age-old debate which has had Britons arguing over their steaming mug of PG Tips for years - what's the best biscuit for dunking? By Rebecca Perring Rebecca Perring. PUBLISHED: 14:33, Mon, Jul 25, 2016 | UPDATED: ... and more »

 
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Londres (London)  

DeFonk posted a photo:

www.facebook.com/yanndefonk/
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Delensing of cosmic microwave background could reveal ancient gravitational waves  
New technique uses infrared observations to clean up microwave images  
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r0B0t: Here's how a post-coal Appalachia could thrive  

original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQXuHdTZ2Ak

Last year, a pair of anthropologists traveled to central Appalachia to talk to locals about the so-called “War on Coal.” They trekked across nine counties in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, recorded hundreds of conversations, and published the results in a report for the Topos Partnership, a public interest communications firm.

Appalachians told the researchers they want independence, and they believe independence comes from work. Work used to come from coal, but mining jobs are fleeing the region. In the last five years, Kentucky and West Virginia shed 15,000 coal jobs.

“When we have coal, then we have money put into our communities, but when you don't have coal, your coal miners leave. They go places,” said a woman from Logan County, West Virginia. Coal miners could make upwards of $80,000 a year, and they spent their hard-earned dollars at the grocery down the block and the bar around the corner.

As coal departs, Appalachia is being forced to reinvent itself. Amid reports of economic decline are stories of rebirth, of communities reclaiming their independence.

Computer programming

Kentucky tech startup Bit Source is hiring out-of-work coal miners and teaching them to write code.

“The realization I had was that the coal miner, although we think of him as a person who gets dirty and works with his hands, really coal mines today are very sophisticated, and they use a lot of technology, a lot of robotics,” Rusty Justice, the firm's cofounder, told NPR. State officials are working to extend high-speed internet access to the Eastern Kentucky to support more ventures like Bit Source that provide well-paid jobs to coal veterans.

Clean energy and energy efficiency

Analysts say the shift to clean power will create more jobs than it eliminates. Enterprising coal workers are trying to bring a few of those jobs to Appalachia.

Retired Kentucky coal miner Carl Shoupe and his colleagues on the Benham Power Board are spearheading a citywide energy efficiency program. Contractors will make homes more power-thrifty  —  installing insulation, sealing windows, etc. — and homeowners will pay for the upgrades through a charge on their monthly electric bill. The charge will be less than what customers save on energy.

Shoupe believes communities that once ran on coal can add jobs and save money by investing in energy efficiency. According to a report from Synapse, an energy consulting firm, Kentucky could create more than 28,000 jobs by embracing energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Wine growing

In a region wounded by strip mining and mountaintop removal, some families are trying to heal the earth, transforming depleted mining sites into vineyards.

Virginia's David Lawson built Mountainrose Vineyard on fields that had been strip mined by his grandfathers, according to YES! Magazine. He named wines Jawbone and Pardee after coal seams.

Kentucky's Jack Looney, the son of a coal worker, built Highland Winery on a strip mine. Looney told the Associated Press that grapes grow well on land cleared by mountaintop removal. His wines pay tribute to the region's history with names like Blood, Sweat, and Tears and Coal Miner's Blood.

A culture of pragmatism

Appalachia's future remains tenuous. Coal is dying. Jobs are vanishing. Skilled workers are fleeing the region. But as the Topos report noted, Appalachians are pragmatic. Said a woman from Pike County, Kentucky, “Try something new  —  if it doesn't work, do something else, you know? Just try till you find what works.”

The biggest challenge may be the loss of identity. Difficult, backbreaking, and dangerous though it was, mining gave Appalachians a sense of purpose. It defined a region as gritty and determined. How do you go from wresting energy from the bowels of the earth to writing code or growing wine?

“I wanted to be a coal miner so bad I could taste it … I wanted to have that pride,” said former Virginia coal miner Nick Mullins in an interview. Mullins came to change with his surroundings. When he was 18, a mining company blew the top off the mountain behind the house where he grew up. He never wanted to mine again.

“What is life unless you can live it?” asked Mullins. “What is a community if it's not there anymore?”

This story was written and produced by Nexus Media.

Filed under: Business & Technology, Climate & Energy, Living  
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r0B0t: Why Cats Love Boxes, Great Morning Podcasts, and a Sausage-Grilling Robot  

In this week's Brain Buffet, we get to the bottom of why cats love to curl up in boxes or other small spaces, show off a vending machine that dispenses books, look at some podcasts to start your day, and much more.

Welcome to Lifehacker's Monday Brain Buffet, a series where we round up interesting, informative, and thought-provoking podcasts, interviews, articles, and other media that will teach you something new, inspire you, and hopefully start your week off on the right foot.

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The Biblio-Mat, a Random Book Vending Machine

When bookstores put those shelves out front or around the side of their stores that advertise books for a dollar or two, people walk right past them and don't even think about it. When you put those same books in a vending machine that you can pop a couple of coins into and get a random book with the luck of the draw, well, suddenly that game aspect of the whole thing makes people flock to it and turns it into an interesting game of chance that's fun to play—and fun to watch. [via YouTube]

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How to Make the Most of Your Convention Experience

Summer is here, Comic-Con started this weekend, and other huge conventions aren't far behind! If you're heading out to one, or heading to another major convention of some stripe, you'll need some tips to help you make the most of the experience. Of course, we have some great tips to help you survive, and to stay healthy while you're there, but this piece from Forces of Geek is also full of tips to make the most of your experience, not just survive while you're there. For example, they highlight the “5-2-1 Rule,” which mandates five hours of sleep per night, two full meals a day, and one shower a day—and all of those sound pretty damned important to me.

They also include some tips to avoid the dreaded Concrud, but also some great pointers to surviving the Dealer's Room:

The hard part of a dealers room is not breaking your convention budget. Believe it or not, most dealers are also fans and they know what you're going through. It's rare to see a dealer get pushy about making sales. Most are just happy to see you come by. Speaking as a dealer, even at conventions where my sales are low, I always see a bump in online sales after the event and that's because I know not everyone can buy something that weekend, but because I have good product and am not pushy, people appreciate that, and remember after the event to see what I have available when they do have the bucks to spend.

...

Best day to buy? That depends. If price is your number one concern, then do your shopping on Sunday (or whatever the last day is). The closer it is to the final hour for the dealers room at that event, the more likely you're going to find special clearance sales and offers. Dealers don't want to lug all that stuff back home (or worse… ship it), so many are going to slash some prices. Now, that said… it's a bit of a game. If you see something you want on Saturday, there's no guarantee it will still be there on Sunday—so you take your chances. And if you bought something at full price on Friday, and see it for nearly half price on Sunday, it may seem unfair, but there was always the chance there would not have been any left by Sunday. It's a bit of a gamble.

All in all, if you're headed a big convention—whether it's a comic, sci-fi, anime, or other gathering this summer or fall, it's worth a read to help you prepare. [via Forces of Geek]

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The Most Bizarre Exports Around the Globe

Normally I don't include infographics in these roundups, but I love this one—mostly because some of the exports are just truly unique, and others make perfect sense. For example, the UK exports lemon curd to Kenya (which makes sense because Kenya isn't really known for its lemons and lemon curd is delicious) which is really interesting, but also China exports pandas to Canada, which is also really interesting. Almost as interesting as the fact that the US exports beer (specifically Brooklyn Brewery) to Sweden and wolf urine to Japan. [via Mental Floss]

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What Are Some of Your Favorite Podcasts to Listen to in the Morning?

We've talked a lot about great podcasts and which ones you should listen to, but this thread at Quora is full of recomendations if you're looking for something to spice up your morning commute, or you're interested in trying something a little different.

http://lifehacker.com/the-best-infor…

There are well over a hundred answers, tons of links, and some great podcasts on topics all over the map. Here's one good answer with an mix of podcasts on various topics:

• BBC's From Our Own Correspondent (an in-depth look at the stories behind the top news headlines around the world, told by BBC correspondents, journalists and writers in a captivating storytelling format; hosted by Kate Adie)
  
• Optimize with Brian Johnson (condensed big ideas from the best books on optimal living and micro classes on how to apply these ideas; here's where I get a lot of book recommendations, including most recently Seneca's On the Shortness of Life)
  
• Invisibilia (a show about invisible forces that affect and control human behavior: our ideas, beliefs, and emotions)
  
• Intelligence Squared (the world's leading forum for debate and intelligent discussion; I like the diversity of topics that are covered and that include Brexit, democracy, foreign intervention, capitalism, the art market, contemporary literature, feminism, events in the Middle East)
  
• The Memory Palace (storytelling podcast about events from the past)
  
• Middle East Analysis (podcast on events happening in the Middle East and North Africa regions; the main contributor is international lawyer and political advisor Dr. Harry Hagopian)
  
• This Is Your Life with Michael Hyatt (a podcast dedicated to living a life with more passion, working with greater focus, and pursuing goals that give purpose and meaning to our lives)
  

Of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg, and just a few worth checking out. Seriously, scroll through the full thread—you might find some duds, but all in all there are at least a few you'll either be able to vouch for because you listen to them, or a few you'll want to subscribe to. [via Quora]

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Why Cats Love Boxes So Much

Another Mental Floss piece, but I couldn't resist given the subject matter. After all, we all know that cats love boxes, but why? They also love small spaces like sinks and other small containers, but the reasons behind why are all poorly understood—however, you may have predicted the reason why:

Cats, Wilbourn reasons, take comfort in cramped spaces because it makes them feel more secure and dominant. “I think part of it goes back to when they were kittens and inside the womb, feeling safe and comforted. There's a feeling of coziness, being able to do what they want to do, and just feeling untouchable.”

Science has been able to support this theory. Animal behaviorists have studied stress levels in newly arrived shelter cats and found that felines with access to boxes had lower stress levels and faster adjustment periods than those without [PDF]. Even if they're not quite as protected as they think they are—you can pretty much do anything to a cat who is in a box as you could a cat who is outside of one—their perception may be that they're insulating themselves from harm.

Another good theory is that small spaces help cats retain body heat, which explains things like sinks in the summer time and cardboard boxes well, any other time. [via Mental Floss]

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The Bratwurst Bot

You might not think a robot could do something that requires finesse like saute up the perfect bratwurst, but you'd be wrong. Not only does it handle the meat like a pro, it turns the sausages to make sure they get that delicious char on all sides, avoids overcooking them entirely (which is more than some people can say), and even serves them up and tells you to enjoy your meal.

I, for one, welcome our new sausage grilling robot masters. [via YouTube]

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That's all for this week! If you have thought-provoking stories, interesting podcasts, eye-opening videos, or anything else you think would be perfect for Brain Buffet, share it with us! Email me, leave it as a comment below, or send it over any way you know how.

Title GIF by Nick Criscuolo. Additional photos by Mental Floss and yoppy.

 
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r0B0t: Today's Best Deals: Timbuk2 Flash Sale, Timex, Solar Lights, Hoover, and More  

A great way to exercise at work, Timbuk2 flash sale, Timex watches, a $75 Hoover WindTunnel, and more lead Monday's best deals.

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.

Top Deals

If you're looking for a powerful vacuum that'll suck up all that pet hair, but don't want to spend a fortune, look no further than Amazon's deal on the Hoover WindTunnel 3 Pro Pet. On sale for $75, you not only get a great bagless vacuum, it comes with the Pet Tool Pack, which includes a pet turbo tool, a pet upholstery tool, and a telescopic extension wand.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IT2ISZ0/…

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Indochino is your favorite custom clothing company, and this week they're offering Kinja Deals readers their best shirt pricing ever. $279 gets you five shirts with promo code KINJA5. Read more about the deal here.

http://deals.kinja.com/indochinos-bes…

Some of our peers have Melania'd the discount we launched with Indochino back in May, so we can't call it an exclusive anymore. However, it's still the best pricing they've ever offered, so if you missed out last time or want more suits, here's your chance. Read more here.

http://deals.kinja.com/heres-the-best…

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If you can't find the time to get to the gym every day, this under-desk elliptical lets you squeeze in some light exercise while you fill out your TPS reports. This typically sells for $170 on Amazon, and today's $100 Gold Box deal is the best price we've ever seen.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SIBYETQ/…

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The complete Firefly DVD is still available for an all-time low $13, but if you're ready to chuck physical media out into the black, you can buy the full series (season) for $10 on Amazon and iTunes right now.

https://www.amazon.com/Firefly-Season…

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If you want a Big Green Egg charcoal grill, but don't want to cash in your 401(k) to buy one, this Char-Griller alternative is down to an all-time low $288 today, and a great investment for meat lovers everywhere.

The Char-Griller Akorn Kamado Kooker features a 306 square inch cast iron cooking surface (which is most similar to the $829 large Big Green Egg), and traps heat inside a heavily-insulated stainless steel body. Our deal researcher, Corey, owns a BGE, and I asked him about it on Slack:

And I use my BGE for about 70% of meat meals.

Probably 90% during the warm months.

Best Father's Day gift I'll ever get.

Lana jokes that she's the one who benefits most because I cook on it all the time.

Worth the price just for its ability to cook pizza, IMO.

But pork chops, lions, tenderloin are beyond incredible on it.

Obviously, this isn't the “real thing,” but the consensus among Amazon reviewers is that it's at least nearly as good, which sounds like a decent compromise considering it's only about 1/3 of the price, and comes with a stable cart and folding shelves, both of which you'd need to buy separately with the Egg.

http://www.amazon.com/Char-Griller-K…

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We see $10 off deals on PlayStation Plus just about every week, but today...are you sitting down? Today, you can save $11.

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Running low on digital storage space, or just want to start keeping better backups? Amazon's marked the 2TB WD Elements external drive to $70, which is about as low at that capacity ever gets.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00…

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Fried foods are delicious. Fried foods will kill you. These are the laws of our cruel existence, and generally-speaking, there's no avoiding them. I'm not going to tell you that cooking foods with this $60 air fryer is healthy, but Chefman claims that it uses 80% less oil than conventional deep frying, resulting in less trans fat in your favorite meals.

https://www.amazon.com/Chefman-RJ38-E…

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If you enjoy eating at Chili's, Macaroni Grill, Maggiano's, or On The Border, this discounted Brinker gift card is basically a free entree.

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Another huge sale from Timbuk2 brings a ton of their excellent bags down to hard-to-resist levels. Be sure to let us know what you pick up in the comments.

The “midway” colorway of one of your five favorite carry-ons is down to $159.

http://co-op.kinja.com/these-are-your…

A few colors of your favorite messenger bag, the Commute/Command lines, are also discounted.

http://lifehacker.com/five-best-lapt…

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Sporting a lower price and a built-in touchscreen, the GoPro Hero4 Silver might actually a better choice than the Hero4 Black for most consumers. Today on GoPro's eBay storefront, you can get a refurb for just $244, the best price we've seen. And since you're purchasing it direct from GoPro, it'll still be backed by a one year warranty.

http://gizmodo.com/gopro-hero4-bl…

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The extremely versatile and reliable Timex Ironman watches are under $25 today only on Amazon. Water resistant of up to around 300 feet, take these on a few laps around the pool and cool off during this Heat Dome without worrying about how much time you're spending in the water.

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The Logitech G502 was your choice for best gaming mouse (though you don't need to be a gamer to appreciate its benefits), and the upgraded Proteus Spectrum model (which includes fully adjustable backlighting) is on sale for an all-time low $60 today.

http://co-op.kinja.com/most-popular-g…

http://lifehacker.com/improve-your-v…

The marquee spec here is the DPI range of 200-12,000, adjustable on the fly. There are also five easily movable and removable weights, and 11 customizable buttons, along with the classic Logitech dual-mode scroll wheel. Mechanical microswitches and a braided cable are also nice touches.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B019OB663A/…

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Update: Sold out.

These cheap LED lights can stick directly into your grass to light a path to your front door, and since they include built-in solar panels, you won't have to run any wires or replace any batteries. $18 for a 2-pack is one of the best deals we've seen on a product like this.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01…

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People keep saying that ethernet is dead, but every time we post a good deal on an ethernet switch, they fly off the virtual shelves. This one's so good that it's already somewhat backordered, so log onto Amazon and lock in your order before it's totally unplugged.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00…

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If you've never checked out Nordstrom's Anniversary Sale, you're missing out on some pretty awesome savings. The retailer puts a bunch of Fall and Winter styles on sale way before they go into the stores. Once the sale is over, you'll only be able to get them for full price, so you'd better get on it.

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The MTA is a dumpster fire. Anything short of Stockholm syndrome and you'll be having a bad time riding the MTA, and that's before taking the heat dome into account. Save on already-discounted uberPOOL rides during commuting hours with the Uber Commute Card.

Here's a stack of terms:

What to know

• Redeem by: Wednesday, August 31, 2016
  
• This offer is subject to Terms and Conditions
  
• Your two-week Commute Card period will begin on the day you take your first ride; your first ride must be completed between August 1 and August 31, 2016
  
• Valid Monday through Friday between the hours of 710 AM and 58 PM only. Trips must begin and end in Manhattan below 125th Street. Valid on $5 POOL service only
  
• The total voucher cost includes New York sales tax ($3.91), New York Black Car Fund Fee ($1.07) and the uberPOOL Commute Card ($44.02)
  
• $100 is a comparable retail price; MSRP is based off of two $5 uberPOOL rides per weekday
  
• Offer is final sale; offer cannot be combined with other offers or promotions
  
• Valid for new and existing Uber riders; limit one per person
  
• May be used to obtain the discount stated on the Voucher until the “redeem by” date stated above; after that time, the customer may obtain a full refund of the purchase price of the Voucher by contacting Gilt City's customer service team

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Restaurant Week is back with 3-course lunches and dinners for $29 and $42 respectively. It's a great excuse to try some new restaurants, but you can save even more (always) by maximizing your credit card rewards.

Amex is offering up to four $5 credits when you spend $35 or more on restaurant week meals, while Chase Freedom happens to be in the middle of their 5% back on dining rotating quarter. You have to manually activate both these offers.

So where's the threshold? If you value your 5% back on Chase at face value (Ultimate Rewards points are actually worth more or or less depending on how you redeem them), your check needs to exceed $100 to get more from your Chase Freedom, which isn't much of a stretch!

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2200mAh is about as small as USB battery packs get, but this one includes a built-in Lightning connector so you can plug it directly into the bottom of your iPhone.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LNI5KN0/…

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The Shark Navigator Lift-Away is one of your favorite affordable vacuums, and you can get a refurb from Amazon today for $90, or $46 less than buying a new one.

http://gear.kinja.com/your-favorite-…

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01…

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If your home or apartment doesn't have screen doors installed, this easy-to-install magnetic curtain will achieve the same effect, meaning you can let in some fresh air, while keeping out the bugs.

https://www.amazon.com/Magnetic-Scree…

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Everyone needs a kitchen scale, and this $10 model from Etekcity is notable for its detachable bowl design.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F3J9EGO/…

http://lifehacker.com/5840209/why-yo…

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Tool collection seen better days? Everything you see above, plus a carrying case, is on sale for $99 today.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JN3FGA4/…

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It's a scientific fact that every outdoor space looks better with copper string lights, and while $30 isn't a particularly low price for a 66' strand with 200 bulbs, this set does include a remote that can power them on and off, and even make them dim, pulse, and strobe on demand.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HB72UYS?…

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You never want to be in a situation where you need a solar and hand crank-powered weather radio with a flashlight and USB port for charging your phone, but you probably should buy it just in case. This one also includes a 130 lumen flashlight, and even an ultrasonic dog whistle.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015QIC1PW/…

http://thevane.gawker.com/you-need-to-bu…

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If you're still wrestling with a terrible inkjet printer at home, do yourself a solid and pick up the reliable Brother HL-2380DW monochrome laser printer today for just $80 (refurbished) today.

While it doesn't print in color, it more than makes up for that with the ability to spit out 32 pages per minute, duplex printing, and inexpensive toner cartridges that can last for years without being replaced. We've posted a lot of Brother deals in the past, and we've heard nothing but good things from readers about them. Plus, this particular model has a sterling 4.4 star review average on Amazon, a built-in scanner, and AirPrint and Google Cloud Print support, so it should serve you well for years.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BHSL7VY/…

http://gear.kinja.com/bestsellers-br…

http://gear.kinja.com/brother-makes-…

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Hopefully you never need a dash cam, but owning one can really save your bacon in the result of an accident. This affordable TaoTronics model has all of the features most people need, and you can score one today for just $63.

That price gets you 1080p recording, night vision, auto on/off, and a g-force sensor to automatically lock your footage in the event of an accident. Now go film some meteors.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FLPZNB4/…

http://jalopnik.com/russian-dashca…

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If you still haven't watched Firefly, or just want to own a physical copy for posterity, the complete Blu-ray is down to $13 on Amazon, the best price ever listed. Shiny!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001EN71CW/…

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You've heard of Automatic's smart driving assistant, but if $80-$100 is too rich for your blood, this cheap OBD2 dongle connects to any iPhone or Android device over Wi-Fi, and can fulfill many of the same functions using various third party apps.

https://www.amazon.com/Goliath-Indust…

Tech

Storage

• Transcend 64GB MicroSDXC Class 10 UHS-1 Memory Card with Adapter | $14 | Amazon
• PNY Elite 32GB microSDHC Card with Adapter | $10 | Amazon
• PNY Elite 64GB MicroSDXC Card with Adapter | $18 | Amazon
• PNY Elite 128GB MicroSDXC Card with Adapter | $35 | Amazon
• SanDisk Ultra 32GB Class 10 SDHC Memory Card | $11 | Amazon
• G-Technology G-DRIVE with Thunderbolt 3TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive | $200 | Best Buy
• WD Elements 4TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive | $120 | Newegg
• Western Digital Elements 2TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive | $70 | Amazon

Power

• APC Back-UPS 700VA UPS | $60 | Best Buy

Audio

• Jawbone MINI JAMBOX Portable Bluetooth Speaker | $50 | Best Buy
• Bose SoundTrue Around-Ear Headphones II | $100 | Best Buy

Home Theater

• Samsung UN55KU6600 Curved 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV | $948 | Amazon
• Samsung 60-Inch 4K UHD HDR Smart LED TV | $979 | eBay
• Vizio E55-Inch 4K Ultra HD SmartCast E-Series LED TV | $599 | eBay
• Samsung 40-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV | $448 | Amazon
• Sceptre 43-Inch 4K Ultra HD 2160p 60Hz LED HDTV | $250 | Walmart
• Samsung 60-Inch LED 1080p Smart HDTV | $680 | Best Buy
• Westinghouse 55-Inch LED 1080p HDTV | $300 | Best Buy
• Samsung 40-Inch LED 1080p HDTV | $250 | Best Buy
• Samsung HW-K470 4.1 Channel 460 Watt Wireless Audio Soundbar (2016 Model) | $300 | Amazon

Computers & Accessories

• HP 15.6" Touch-Screen Laptop, AMD A10, 6GB, 1TB HDD | $280 | eBay
• Apple MacBook Air 13.3" - Intel Core i5 - 8GB Memory - 128GB Flash Storage Silver MMGF2LL/A | $800 | Best Buy
• Apple MacBook Air 13.3" - Intel Core i5 - 8GB Memory - 256GB Flash Storage Silver MMGG2LL/A | $1000 | Best Buy
• Samsung CF391 Series 32" LED Curved Monitor | $300 | Best Buy
• LG 29" IPS LCD HD 21:9 UltraWide Monitor | $190 | Best Buy
• Asus 27" 1ms LED LCD Monitor | $190 | eBay
• BenQ 21.5" LED HD Monitor | $120 | Best Buy
• Dell S2316M 23" IPS LED HD Monitor | $100 | Best Buy
• Acer 23" 5ms Widescreen LED Monitor | $90 | Newegg
• Microsoft Wireless Desktop 850 Keyboard and Mouse | $23 | Best Buy
• Epson WorkForce Inkjet All-in-One Color Printer | $100 | Staples

PC Parts

• EVGA 80 PLUS 600W ATX 12V/EPS 12V Power Supply | $30 | Best Buy

Mobile Devices

• $100 iTunes Gift Card | $85 | Staples
• $50 iTunes Gift Card | $43 | Staples
• Samsung Galaxy Tab E Lite 7-Inch Tablet (8 GB, White) | $99 | Amazon

Photography

• Pinnacle Studio 19 Ultimate - Windows | $50 | Best Buy

Home

• Metal Loft Bed, Full | $199 | Amazon
• Hoover WindTunnel 3 Pro Pet Bagless Upright Vacuum, Corded | $75 | Amazon
• Samsung POWERbot Essential Robot Vacuum | $500 | Best Buy
• SYLVANIA Lightify Smartphone Controlled LED Outdoor Lighting Kit | $31 | Amazon
• Get up to 55% Off Home Surveillance | Home Depot
• Three Level Cat Pet Toy | $25 | eBay

Kitchen

• Ninja Nutri Ninja Auto-iQ Compact System 6-Speed Blender | $110 | Best Buy
• Sunbeam 5-Speed Hand/Stand Mixer | $25 | Best Buy

Tools & Auto

• Craftsman 3/8 In. Flex Head Teardrop Ratchet | $10 | Sears
• Craftsman Micro-Clicker Torque Wrench, 3/8" Drive | $30 | Sears
• Craftsman 4pc Wobble Extension Bar Set 3/8 Inch Drive | $7 | Sears
• Craftsman 2-1/2 Ton Floor Jack | $31 | Sears
• Craftsman 6-in-1 Screwdriver | $5 | Sears
• Craftsman 42 Piece Drive and Torx Set | $25 | Sears

Lifestyle

Apparel

• Amazon is Offering Timex Watches for Under $25
• Jockey Mens Low-rise Boxer Brief - 4 Pack | $10 | eBay
• ASICS Women's GEL-Excite 3 Running Shoes | $30 | eBay
• Crocs Unisex Classic Flip Flop | $15 | eBay
• Chaco Z/2 Yampa Sandals - Women's | $52 | REI
• Columbia Granite Mountain Fleece Jacket - Men's | $24 | REI

Beauty & Grooming

• Philips Norelco Beard & Head trimmer Series 5100 | $40 | Amazon

Camping & Outdoors

• Ozark Trail Convertible Camp Bench, 225 lb Capacity | $29 | Walmart
• Happy Camper Two Person Tent | $15 | Amazon

Fitness

• FitDesk Under Desk Elliptical | $100 | Amazon

Media

Movies & TV

• Preorder Warcraft 4K Ultra HD | $13 | Target
• Firefly Season 1 Digital HD | $10 | Amazon
• Kill Bill Vol. 1/ Kill Bill Vol. 2 | $8 | Amazon
• Mad Max: Fury Road | $10 | Amazon
• Kingsman: The Secret Service | $8 | Amazon
• The Squid and the Whale & Running with Scissors | $4 | Amazon
• Constantine | $5 | Amazon
• American Pie: Unrated 4-Movie Collection | $15 | Amazon
• The Bourne Trilogy | $20 | Amazon
• Crank | $5 | Amazon
• The X-Files: The Complete Season 1 | $10 | Best Buy
• The X-Files: The Complete Season 2 | $10 | Best Buy
• Sharknado | $6 | Amazon
• Sharknado 2: The Second One | $7 | Amazon
• Arrow: Seasons 1-3 | $52 | Amazon
• The Flash: Season 1 | $35 | Amazon
• DC Comics Starter Pack: Season 1s (The Flash / Gotham / Arrow) | $46 | Amazon
• Justice League: Gods and Monsters (Deluxe Edition) (BD/DVD/UV Combo) | $16 | Amazon

Books

• Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?: True Stories and Confessions Audiobook | $4 | Amazon

Gaming

• Buy One Gaming Currency Gift Card, Get a Second 10% Off | Best Buy
• Buy a $90 Gamestop Gift Card get a $10 Bonus Code | $90 | eBay

Peripherals

• Azio Backlit Mechanical Gaming Keyboard | $60 | Amazon
• Corsair Gaming K65 LUX RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard | $110 | eBay
• Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum RGB Tunable Gaming Mouse, FPS Mouse | $60 | Amazon

PC

• Far Cry Primal | $30 | Amazon
• Rochard | $1 | Amazon
• Rochard DLC Hard Times | $0 | Amazon
• Invisible, Inc. | $10 | Humble

PlayStation 4

• Preorder Horizon Zero Dawn w/ $25 Gift Card | $60 | Dell
• Tearaway Unfolded | $15 | Amazon
• Far Cry Primal Standard Edition | $30 | Amazon

Xbox One

• Xbox One 500GB Console - Name Your Game Bundle + Amazon.com $50 Gift Card + Forza Horizon 2 | $299 | Amazon
• Far Cry Primal Standard Edition | $30 | Amazon

Wii U

• Skylanders SuperChargers Starter Pack | $20 | Amazon

3DS

• Buy One, Get One 50% Off Select 3DS Games | Best Buy

Toys

• Ride-On Toys Deal of The Day | Amazon
• LEGO City Great Vehicles Van & Caravan | $15 | Walmart

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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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r0B0t: The Latest Episode of Mr. Robot Was an Extended Homage to Stanley Kubrick  

After every episode of Mr. Robot before this past Wednesday night's, I ended up asking myself the same question: Is this TV show ripping off all its cinematic influences in order to combine them into something new, or is it just ripping them off?

But after Wednesday's episode, the series' most referential yet, I'm starting to think that the show is up to more than just nodding toward the giants on whose shoulders it stands. This time, if you connect the dots between the allusions, they begin to form a bigger picture.

A few recappers noted one or two individual Kubrick references in “eps2.1_k3rnel-pan1c.ksd,” but no one seems to have put them all together, revealing how each of the episode's three principal storylines echoes a different Kubrick movie.

Eyes Wide Shut

Let's start with the first Kubrick reference I noticed in the episode:

Angela's storyline begins when E Corp CEO Phillip Price propositions her with a mysterious, vaguely sexual invitation: “Have you ever had dinner at Fidelio's?” Fidelio is the name of Beethoven's only opera, and it derives from the Latin for faithful, but any Kubrick diehard will recognize it first and foremost as the passcode used to get into the secret gatherings in Eyes Wide Shut. Given the nod, it seems like no coincidence that Angela's entrance into the restaurant is soundtracked by a song called “Just Say the Word.”

Angela's plotline also echoes the journey of Tom Cruise's character in Eyes Wide Shut, Dr. Bill Harford, in other ways. Like Harford, Angela finds herself for the first time infiltrating the luxe lives of shadowy men of power. And as with him, what might have seemed like an erotic encounter becomes nothing but creepy. In each case, the protagonist eventually discovers that the powerful men have conspired together to cover up some nefarious deaths.

Dr. Strangelove

While the Angela plotline echoes Eyes Wide Shut, the Dominique DiPierro (Grace Gummer) plotline echoes Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. This is most obvious when we she unearths the poster for F Society's “End of the World Party,” which completely rips off a poster design for Dr. Strangelove, and if you look closely, even bears the subtitle “Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love F Society.”

In fact, her whole plotline in this episode finds her obsessed—and perhaps vaguely attracted to—the end of the world. She attempts to have cybersex with “happyhardonhenry806,” a man whose priapic moniker is reminiscent of Strangelove's own “Buck Turgidson.” When she stops, she asks her Amazon Echo, “Alexa, when is the end of the world?”

The Shining

Elliot's plotline is about being cooped up and going mad, so it's appropriate that it's packed with references to The Shining. The most obvious one is one of Elliot's hallucinations, which shows two twins wearing blue dresses with white ribbons. Interestingly, creator Sam Esmail (who also wrote and directed the episode) also tosses in a third girl wearing Kubrick's favorite color. In fact, there are splashes of the same shade of bright red throughout the episode, which add in a more subliminal way to the Kubrickian feel.

And then there's Elliot's attempt to stay sane and avoid relapse by writing in his notebook, which echoes Jack Torrance's attempts to keep his head and try not to fall off the wagon by working on his manuscript. We were introduced to this coping mechanism in the season premiere, but in this episode it falls apart in rather Shining-esque fashion:

* * *

This is not the first time that Mr. Robot has tipped its cap to Kubrick, of course (nor is Mr. Robot the first TV drama to salute the cinematic master). Esmail has spoken about how he “was doing Kubrick film festivals at my house when I was in high school,” and in an interview with Vulture last year, he spoke about how “one of the biggest influences on the show is Stanley Kubrick in general”:

In terms of Clockwork, the title cards are an inspiration. There are these glasses that I make Darlene [Carly Chaikin] wear that are a little bit of a nod to Lolita. And, actually, it's not a huge spoiler, but there'll be a little bit of a nod to Dr. Strangelove in the season finale that people can look out for.

What does this all add up to? I think it has something to do with another recurring theme in the episode: the F-word.

As Slate TV critic Willa Paskin noted in her smart review of the premiere, the second season of Mr. Robot spends a lot of time critiquing itself. With its repeated idle banter about Seinfeld, its disses directed at NCIS (which, as Paskin points out, airs in reruns on USA), and its harrowing depiction of the sheer sadness of watching Vanderpump Rules, Mr. Robot has more and more become a TV show that doesn't just push the boundaries of television but also draws attention to its limits.

And while regular Slate contributor Sam Adams sees all this episode's bleeped-out F-words as a symptom of the show's juvenile attempts to be subversive, I see them differently: as Mr. Robot's way of highlighting the limits of what you can and can't say on TV.

After all, “eps2.1_k3rnel-pan1c.ksd” doesn't just bleep the F-word, it's largely about censored F-words. Why else would it not only repeat the word so many times but open and close the episode with the origin of the name “F Society”? And soundtrack its main montage with a song by a band called Holy F---? And go out of its way to black out the word on screen, in a manner that makes it look not so much bleeped as redacted?

The episode even includes a (censored) F-word in both its final shot and its final line, with DiPierro looking at the sign on F Society headquarters and exclaiming, “You've gotta be f---ing kidding me.” You can imagine Esmail wanting to write the word into his screenplay and thinking the same thing.

This surprisingly jokey ending also reminds me of another movie that uses the F-word as its final punchline: Eyes Wide Shut. In the movie's closing exchange of dialogue, Nicole Kidman's character tells her husband, “You know, there is something very important we need to do as soon as possible.” When her husband asks, “What's that?” she responds, “Fuck.”

After pulling off the unlikely feat of putting must-watch prestige television on the USA Network, Esmail has been given more creative control than just about anyone else on television. But while he's now free to make the show about as cinematic as he wants, he's still running up against restrictions. After pulling off the nifty trick of changing “Fun Society” to “F Society,” he wants to point out that there's still at least one thing he can't say: “Fuck Society.”

 
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r0B0t: Parking the car? There's an app for that. And it'll drive you mad  

The days of coins and tickets are over, making way for ‘seamless, stress-free mobile parking' that will send you away blubbing

I try to keep up with the modern world. I have all the mandatory equipment: computer, cash card, mobile phone. I can do things online, I can tweet, and I have learned to obey robot voices without screaming but, sometimes, even with all my equipment, a little everyday task can defeat me. Such as trying to park the car. Because, of course, things have changed again. Last week, I found that the days of coins and tickets are over for no particular reason that I can find, other than to drive me raving mad.

Related: It's marvellous that summer's here, but am I too old to sunbathe?

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Golden Rays  

ArtGordon1 posted a photo:

 
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Urban Sunset  

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LuxEco Living: Lion World Travel is LuxEcoLiving's Best Choice for Hotels and Safari Destinations in South Africa  
By Nancy and James Chuda Founders of LuxEcoLiving and Healthy Child Healthy World


TRAVELSMITH PRESENTS: THE CHUDA'S OUT IN AFRICA

Preserving Afric...

Read more: Travel, South Africa, Taste, World News, The Red Carnation Hotel Group, LuxEcoLiving.Com, Nancy Chuda, Nelson Mandela, Environment, Kenya, Laurie David, Kate Brooks, Animals in the News, Animal Rights, Animal Welfare, TravelSmith, Fashion, Safari, Cape Town, Travel News

 
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