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Actor Leonard Nimoy Passes Away At Age 83

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Leonard Nimoy at the Star Trek: Into Darkness premiere (Credit: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)

Leonard Nimoy, best known for playing Spock on the television show Star Trek and its movies, passed away in his home on Friday. He was 83.

The cause of his death was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which the actor confirmed he had last year.

Nimoy was born in 1931 in Boston. His parents were Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union in an area that is now part of Ukraine. He acted in several amateur productions as a child and then began his movie and TV acting career in 1951.

In 1952, he played the title role in the boxing movie Kid Monk Baroni. Although his acting was praised, the movie was a flop, and Nimoy spent over a decade playing largely bit parts in both TV and movies, including roles in Dragnet, Perry Mason and The Twilight Zone.

In 1965, Nimoy passed on a role in Peyton Place to take a part in Gene Roddenberrys TV show Star Trek and the rest was history. Unique among most TV shows, Star Trek actually had two pilots. NBC liked aspects of the first pilot, The Cage but had some issues and asked Roddenberry to shoot a second pilot. Mr. Nimoys Spock, half-human, half-Vulcan, was the only character to appear in both pilots. (Something that became a plot point for the two-parter The Menagerie which followed up on the original pilot.)

Nimoys Spock became a cultural phenomenon. Characterized by an emotionless devotion to the Vulcan ethos of logic, Spock was an inspiration to a generation of fans and became well known to the public at large. Nimoy had a large part in shaping the character into someone who was non-violent (Nimoy developed the Vulcan nerve pinch as an alternative to punching), ethical, intellectual, and compassionate.

Nimoy and the character came back in the Star Trek animated series, six Star Trek movies, the spinoff Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the two rebooted Star Trek movies directed by J.J. Abrams.

Nimoy continued acting after Star Trek with a starring role in Mission: Impossible and a number of smaller parts (including one of the best murderers on Peter Falks Columbo series). He also directed several movies, including two Star Trek films and Three Men And A Baby. He was also a prolific writer of poetry and a photographer, and published several works of each.

Mr. Nimoy is survived by his wife, Susan Bay Nimoy; his children, Adam and Julie Nimoy; his grandchildren; and legions of fans.

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Actor Leonard Nimoy Passes Away At Age 83

SpaceX Launch Of DSCOVR Spacecraft Postponed To Wednesday

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 is ready to launch NOAAs Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft on at 6:03 pm ET today. The launch, previously postponed from Sunday night, was postponed again Tuesday evening due to high upper-atmospheric winds. However, all conditions look green as of this writing.

You can watch the launch for yourself below:

The DSCOVR spacecraft will be traveling to the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point, which is about 930,000 miles away from Earth. From that vantage point, the spacecraft will be transmitting imagery from both the Sun and the Earth. It will also monitor solar weather to provide advance notice of any dangerous radiation coming from the Sun that could impact communications or power systems on Earth.

The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket was originally set to undergo a test whereby it would have landed on a robotic barge in the Atlantic Ocean. This test is part of SpaceXs bid to make the first stage of its rocket reusable, which if successful could shave tens of millions of dollars in cost from a typical SpaceX launch. Unfortunately, SpaceX stated today that the seas are too stormy for the barge.Instead, the company will attempt to make a soft landing of the first stage into the ocean. It does not expect to be able to recover the rocket.

This launch also comes in the middle of a pretty busy week for SpaceX. Yesterday, the companys Dragon capsule departed the International Space Station, loaded with cargo to return to Earth. The capsule splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean yesterday at 7:44 p.m.

The Dragon capsule departing from the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA)

Additionally, the Air Force announced yesterday that SpaceX has signed a deal to lease a landing pad at Cape Canaveral in anticipation that its Falcon 9 first stages will be able to land there. Last month, the company also signed a deal with the Air Force to build a landing pad at Vandenberg Air Force base.

This post was originally published on Tuesday, February 10 and updated with more information today, February 11.

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SpaceX Launch Of DSCOVR Spacecraft Postponed To Wednesday

SpaceX DSCOVR Launch Postponed To Tuesday

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SpaceX Falcon 9 ready for launch. (Credit: SpaceX)

SpaceXs Falcon 9 launch scheduled for this evening has been postponed. The reason stated for halting the launch is due to loss of the Air Forces Eastern Range radar, which is required for launch, said a company spokesperson.

The Falcon 9 was set to deliver NOAAs Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite. When launched, this spacecraft will stay between the Earth and the Sun and its mission is to provide early warning of potential dangerous solar winds, which can affect infrastructure like communications systems. It will also be used for scientific investigations of the Sun.

After the launch of the mission, SpaceX will once again attempt to successfully land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. In the companys first attempt in January, the rocket made it back to the drone barge but then suffered what CEO Elon Musk jokingly referred to as a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

This second attempt, however, poses some more difficulties.

Rocket reentry will be much tougher this time around due to deep space mission, Musk tweeted today. Almost 2X force and 4X heat. Plenty of hydraulic fluid tho.

The next opportunity for the SpaceX launch is Monday, February 9 at 6:07pm ET.

Update (2/9/2015): Weather conditions arent favorable for a Monday launch and so NASA, NOAA, the U.S. Air Force and SpaceX have made the decision to postpone the launch until Tuesday, February 10 at 6:05pm ET with a backup date of Wednesday, February 11.

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SpaceX DSCOVR Launch Postponed To Tuesday

Gig: London Electronic Arts Festival LEAF 2015 Mar 6-7

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This two-day celebration of electronic music is more than just a musos fantasy made real.

Combining electronic music, art, literature, records, technology and digital futurism, it is a cornucopia beyond even the wildest dreams of the most sonically-literate out there.

Day one will be when most of the talky stuff goes on, so to broaden your musical knowledge get down to this. Day two is when the tunes really kick into gear, with performances from some of the biggest and most progressive names in the electronic arts. It starts during the day and carries on all night with LEAF event taking place across the citys plethora of nightclubs. Tune-wise, we highly recommend catching Modeselektor, 808 State performing their 1989 LP Ninety as part of the classic album series and Kate Simko with the London Electronic Orchestra.

The whole thing is curated by Bestival mainman Rob Da Bank, which ensures amongst many things, its wildly diverse line up of persuasions. Fantastic.

When: Mar 6 & 7 / times vary Where: Tobacco Dock, 50 Porters Walk, E1W 2SF. And various venues across London. Check the website for full listings. Cost: 10+ Tube: Shadwell Web: leaflondon.net

Marina and the Diamonds - Mar 11 The first show in almost two years from the synth-pop superstar songstress who will be debuting new material from her Froot album, which is out next month. Shes already got a load of global fest shows lined up so you bet she will over here too, but for now, to whet your appetite, this is a sneaky little low key show. When: Mar 11 / 7pm Where: Oslo, 1a Amhurst Road, E8 1LL Cost: 16.50 Tube: Hackney Central Web: oslohackney.com

Underworld Mar 6 Underworld, who hit commercial paydirt when Born Slippy a-la-Trainspotting saw them go super global, started their career officially with this genre-bending debut. Celebrating its 20thbirthday, it is as ground-breaking and hip-shakingly super today as it was then. And after theyve rattled through this, if their show last year at the Royal Festival Hall is anything to go by, they'll be dipping into some other classics from their stupendous career that has seen them break all the rules. A techno act with a mumbly singer you say? Ooooh yes please.

When: Mar 6 / 7pm Where: Hammersmith Apollo, 45 Queen Caroline Street ,W6 9QH Cost: 20+ Tube: Hammersmith Web: eventimappollo.com

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Gig: London Electronic Arts Festival LEAF 2015 Mar 6-7

Futurism Wire: Mussolini's 'Square Colosseum' Could Soon be a Fendi HQ

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Monday, February 16, 2015, by Rachel B. Doyle

Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbra via Flickr

Far from the tourist center of Rome, near the southern end of the Metro B line, there lies a 420-acre complex of ten monumental concrete buildings known as the Esposizione Universale Roma (or EUR). Spearheaded by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1935, the campus was meant to showcase the glories of totalitarian architecture. The most famous of the buildings is the Palazzo della Civilt del Lavoro, dubbed the "Square Colosseum," a monolith with hundreds of identical arched loggias on its faade. Now, Italian papers are reporting that EUR's most imposing asset might be sold off to the fashion house Fendi, which already rents part of the fascist-era building.

The city of Rome is facing a cash crisis, and the state-owned firm that administers EUR was further weakened by revelations of a mafia-related corruption scandal in December. The public seems to be divided about the rumored sale of the Square Colosseum, which is an iconic piece of architecture in its own right but is hardly beloved in a city with so many impressive ancient sites. "The Italian state owns way too much heritage; with owning heritage comes vast responsibility," a former director of the British School in Rome told the Guardian. "It needs to concentrate on its priorities, like the real Colosseum."

Photo by Patrizio Boschi via Flickr

Rome may sell Square Colosseum to Fendi as city faces cash crisis [Guardian]

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Futurism Wire: Mussolini's 'Square Colosseum' Could Soon be a Fendi HQ

Things to Do

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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

By: Tammy Schuster

Posted: 4:00 AM | Comments:

Family fun with FIFA

Check out Women's Day with FIFA at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Today from noon to 4 p.m., you can join in the family activities, get your photo taken with FIFA mascot Shueme (a snowy owl) and take part in a panel discussion on the upcoming FIFA Women's World Cup. While you're there, have a look at some of the inspirational and powerful stories in the women's rights exhibits. Go to humanrights.ca for more information.

Late-season skate

Pile on seven layers of clothing and skate the Red River skating trail before winter is over. It's free, it's fun and it's freezing, but so what? Take an exhilarating evening skate along the trail -- lit for your enjoyment -- and explore the innovative and creative warming huts. Go to theforks.com/rivertrail for up-to-date conditions.

Koop works at the WAG

Canadian artist Wanda Koop's View from Here is at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. The exhibit consists of eight massive contemporary paintings that combine landscape, portraiture and futurism. The exhibit is on until May 31. Go to wag.ca for more info.

Tuesday tunes

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Things to Do

Will 2015 Be The Year Our Smartphones Link Up To Our Brains?

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Provided by Popular Science The Boston office of Thync, its interior walls covered in scribbles of dry-erase marker, exudes the youthful energy of any tech startup. But theres one noticeable departure from the typical startup visible just as I walk in the front door: a sign notifying study participants to please take a seat: someone will be with them shortly. Over the course of an hour, a handful of these participants, mostly college-aged, cycle through Thyncs offices, where they will fasten electrodes to their heads and become another data point in the companys growing body of neurological knowledge.

Thync bills itself first and foremost as a neuroscience company. Its sole productslated for release later this yearis a smartphone-controlled wearable device that will allow the user to actively alter his or her brains electrical state through transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The big idea: give users active influence over their brain chemistries, and therefore their moods, their anxiety, and even their mental productivityan app that can conjure feeling of calm and tranquility or dial up a users attention and focus on demand.

Its the kind of technology thats been long promised but never delivered, a melding of consumer electronics and human biology that smacks of fantasy futurism. But nearly 2,000 people have already logged thousands of hours with Thyncs device in scientific trials. Thats what Thyncs founders believe differentiates their company from the many brain-interfacing technologies that have fizzled before it, and why a rotating cast of test subjects--including me--are at Thyncs offices today with small electrodes stuck to our heads. Were part of the science that Thyncs researchers believe will deliver the first real brain-interfacing consumer product before the end of the year.

Were in uncharted territory, its a new frontier, and people are going to be skeptical, says Issy Goldwasser, Thyncs co-founder and CEO. We want to make sure we have something real. So the company has from its outset been about the science, and thats important.

Thyncs other co-founder and chief science officer, Jamie Tyler, puts it another way. This company started as a science experiment, he says, which is to say it started with a technological outcome rather than a specific product in mind. Goldwasser sought out Tyler, who at the time was doing some envelope-pushing research into ultrasounds effects on the brain. The duo launched Thync in late 2011 to explore how ultrasound could be used to stimulate certain regions of the brain to produce specific responses, with the ultimate aim of integrating ultrasound into a brain-interfacing device.

Ultimately the ultrasound efforts foundered, and they turned to tDCS, or transcranial direct current stimulation. The technology, which involves stimulating targeted brain regions with low-current pulses of electricity, was, they concluded, consumer-ready.

Since then, Thync has grown to 20 full-time staff, collected roughly $13 million in venture funding, and produced a closely-guarded prototype of a consumer device that, Tyler says, is easy to use and works for the vast majority of people. With just a couple of electrodes stuck on the temple and at the back of the neck, Thyncs tDCS device delivers specially-designed waveforms of electricityThync calls these waveforms vibesto specific regions of the cranium.

These customized vibes are Thyncs secret sauce; the resulting mild shift in the brains electric state can reduce stress and anxiety or call up a persons best stuff on demand, Tyler says. And thats really just the beginning. Thync plans to launch its app with two vibes, Calm and Energy, but as the technology (and the science) progresses, more vibes for more feelings could be on the way.

Tyler, Goldwasser, and the rest of the Thync team are adamant that the technology works, and are themselves daily users of the prototype Thync technology. To prove it, theyve done extensive in-house research (hence the collegiate-types rotating through the front office) as well as contracted a third-party chronic-use study with City College of New York.

Conducted in the lab of Biomedical Engineering Professor Marom Bikson at City College New York, subjects were given tDCS stimulation via Thyncs device, a conventional clinical tDCS device, or sham stimulationtDCS that wasnt targeted in any specific way but, in terms of the tactile feel, indistinguishable from real tDCS. One hundred test subjects underwent stimulation as many as five times a day, four times per week, for six weeks running.

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Will 2015 Be The Year Our Smartphones Link Up To Our Brains?

World Future Society Announces Keynotes for WorldFuture 2015

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Washington, DC (PRWEB) February 28, 2015

The World Future Society, known for five decades as the worlds premiere institution identifying and exploring issues critical to the long-term future of mankind, today announced the leading participants for its upcoming annual conference WorldFuture 2015: Making the Future.

Steve Jurvetson, renowned venture capitalist and Partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, will serve as the opening keynote, setting the stage for three days of interactive sessions designed to unite more than 1,000 attendees in identifying and addressing future-critical issues. Jurvetson is best known for his success in future-facing investments such as SpaceX, Synthetic Genomics, Tesla Motors, Hotmail, Interwoven, Kana, and NeoPhotonics.

To forge the future and create revolutionary changes, companies begin by building interdisciplinary teams of passionate, inspired, and determined people, said Jurvetson. The World Future Society provides an ideal forum to introduce our greatest shared challenges, and allow brilliant minds from across global society to coalesce around scenarios and concepts that can lead to breakthroughs across technology, healthcare, governance, education, and more.

Additional confirmed speakers include technologist Paul Saffo; President and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology Nuala OConnor; author Ramez Naam; futurists Peter Schwartz, Nancy Murphy and Ari Popper; media and Internet expert Janna Anderson; Verynice CEO and a Huffington Post Millennial to Watch Matt Manos; and many more.

Interactive sessions will focus on three key thematic tracks: The Business of Foresight, Technology and Innovation, and Global Issues.

WorldFuture 2015: Making the Future will be held at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square Hotel on July 24-26, 2015. Detailed information about the conference, including registration information, is available at http://www.WorldFuture2015.org. Advance registration for media is also now open.

In a departure from past conferences, the kickoff keynote address featuring Steve Jurvetson will take place at 4:00 p.m. on July 24, the opening day of the WorldFuture 2015.

Making the Future is all about the interaction between the intellectual and entrepreneurial community that thrives throughout the Bay Area and prominent representatives of the global foresight community who travel from around the world to attend the WFS annual conference, said Dr. Amy Zalman, President and CEO of the World Future Society.

For nearly five decades, WFS has served as the convener of crucial discussion about the future, continued Zalman. We unite leaders working to solve issues across the public, private and technology sectors with professional futurists who offer guidance for navigating these issues. Working at this nexus illuminates new possibilities for collaboration and unrestrained innovation. WorldFuture 2015 will welcome hundreds of emerging futurists, from all generations and sectors, to engage in ideation, debate, and discovery.

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World Future Society Announces Keynotes for WorldFuture 2015

Masculine appeal

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A new take on the urban male wardrobe this season

As seasons trends come and go, it might not be practical to do a complete wardrobe overhaul but its always refreshing to update with a few key pieces. Channel the stylish urban male with H&M menswear collection for spring/summer 2015. Blousons, biker jackets, parkas, denim jackets, and blazers are paired with tech zip-ups, heat-sealed shirts, and scuba-look sweatshirts for a modern-day take on city dressing.

H&M menswear spring/summer 2015 collection

The urban mens wardrobe is always evolving. For spring at H&M its a strong look that combines updates to modern essentials with sportswear-inspired pieces in innovative fabrics. The feel of the city comes across in a graphic palette in shades of black, gray and white, with pops of green for a contrasting statement, says Andreas Lwenstam, H&Ms head menswear designer.

Themes include fresh twists on urban classics, like a cotton denim jacket in black or white; a half-lined blazer in memory-effect fabric; a metallic or linen pilot jacket, and a lived-in leather biker jacket. Technical fabrics add futurism, such as an apple-green mesh zip-up pilot jacket or a sweatshirt in scuba-look fabric printed with sci-fi imagery.

Skinny jeans are patched at one knee, while tailored pants are cropped, and sweatpants are in jersey or imitation leather. Essentials have new energy, such as a crisp white poplin shirt with a heat-sealed pocket, an apple-green tech-knit sweater, and scoop-neck or leather T-shirts. Key accessories in the collection include the leather tote bag, classic black lace-ups, and sneakers.

The H&M menswear spring/summer 2015 collection will be sold in 150 stores worldwide as well as online from March. Go to hm.com

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Masculine appeal


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