Alright, so maybe Nessie isn't lighting up my living room just yet, but you can bet that if this concept lamp design ever gets produced, she will. The big question though: Shall I put her on a wall or ceiling?
Nessie the Lamp was designed by 2-B-2 Architecture and is everything I want in a lamp. It's silly, curvy, and can be split into pieces if I ever get bored of it. Somebody please produce this thing already. [Yanko Design]
Campaign for NY Gov. not a Publicity Stunt
Manhattan Madam Kristin Davis has still not decided whether she will be running as an Independent or on the Libertarian Party line for Governor of New York. For the time being she's listing herself under "Personal Freedom Party." She made her announcement of her candidacy in January at the monthly meeting of the Manhattan Libertarian Party.
But Davis is promising not to run a fly-by-night publicity stunt campaign. She's got top political professionals behind her, including one powerhouse Republican pro.
From Mediaite, "Eliot Spitzer's Madam of 5 years to place Governors race" March 2:
She is confident in her fundraising ability, and even more in her campaign team. She counts libertarian Republican and famous Spitzer enemy Roger Stone among her consultants, and her communications director Andrew Miller brings some political weight to the team with his experience in the Tea Party movement.
While Davis plans to campaign on the prostitution decriminalization issue, she's also talking taxes and budgetary matters, as well. She's even being described in some news accounts as "a right-leaning independent."
Davis supports lowering both income and property taxes, and promises:
"I am the only candidate that offers new ideas and new revenues for New York instead of tax increases..."
“Previous studies have found that women with larger breasts than the average were considered to be more physically attractive. In these studies attractiveness was measured with the help of silhouette figures or photographs and the effect of breast size on men’s behaviour was not considered. In this study two experiments were carried out in order to test the effect of a woman’s breast size on approaches made by males. We hypothesized that an increase in breast size would be associated with an increase in approaches by men. A young female confederate was instructed to wear a bra that permitted her to artificially vary her breast size. In the first experiment the female confederate was instructed to sit in a nightclub for one hour whereas in the second experiment she was instructed to take a seat in a pavement area of a bar. It was found that increasing the breast size of the female confederate was associated with an increasing number of approaches by men.”
Photo: flickr/Cane Rosso
Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Bust size and hitchhiking: a field study
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Eye Tracking of Men’s Preferences for Female Breast Size and Areola Pigmentation.
Theatre, Performance and the Historical Avant-Garde
By Günter Berghaus
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006
ISBN (hardcover): 1-4039-6955-8 / (paperback) 0-230-61752-2
400 pages
35 b/w illus
This comprehensive study traces the origins of European modernism in nineteenth-century Paris, then branches out to examine four major movements of the theatrical avant-garde that sprung from this epicenter in the early twentieth-century: Expressionism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Constructivism.
Hey, Topeka, Kansas! Duluth, Minnesota is calling you out for changing your name to Google in an attempt to get Google's Gigabit fiber Internet. They're announcing that all firstborn children shall be named Google Fiber.
Ah, thank goodness for that lengthy disclaimer at the beginning of the video or I'd have thought they were serious. [Thanks, Draven301!]
Hi all,
I'm looking for a simple and compact means of attaching square tube to the underside of a plywood deck for storage.
We have an inventory of platforms for temporary staging which use 2-5/16" (58.74mm) aluminum square tube for legs (we have three lengths we use: 8", 16" and 2
At the beginning there were Ibuka and Morita, the founders of Sony. At the end, a clusterfuckassery of blah models. And in the middle, a Big Bang of brilliant electronic gadgets, full of firsts and smallests. Here's the whole timeline.
Click on the image to see it full res
Behind the ongoing back-and-forth fights over climate change that usually focus on carbon, there has lingered the threat of the powerful greenhouse gas methane being released into the atmosphere and causing even worse trouble. In August we reported on a study that noted methane bubbling up from the seafloor near islands north of Norway, giving scientists a scare. This week in Science, another team reports seeing the same thing during thousands of observations of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf on Russia’s north coast, which is even more worrisome because it’s a huge methane deposit.
The shelf, which covers about 800,00 square miles, was exposed during the last ice age. When the region was above sea level, tundra vegetation pulled carbon dioxide from the air as plants grew. That organic material, much of which didn’t decompose in the frigid Arctic, accumulated in the soil and is the source of modern methane [Science News]. Now underwater, it’s covered by a layer of permafrost. But that permafrost seems to be becoming unstable, thanks to the fact that the water on top of it is warmer than the air it was exposed to back when it was on dry land.
The study said about 8 million tonnes of methane a year, equivalent to the annual total previously estimated from all of the world’s oceans, were seeping from vast stores long trapped under permafrost [Reuters]. Study leader Natalia Shakhova says methane levels in the Arctic haven’t been this high in 400,000 years. While we’re not about to teeter off a cliff—that 8 million tons is a small portion of the global emissions of 440 million tons—we should be concerned, the scientists say. Methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, absorbing at least 25 times more heat, NOAA says.
It is possible that climate change could be contributing to the release, with warmer seas causing more methane to come out, creating a feedback loop. But methane has long been leaking, and there’s no record of the previous levels with which to verify how much methane emissions are increasing, or whether people are playing a part. While Shakhova says the warmer runoff into the Arctic ocean is probably contributing, the team can’t say that for sure.
What they can say for sure is that the methane levels there are extremely high. Most undersea methane oxidizes into CO2 as it enters the atmosphere, but Shakhova says the East Siberian Ice Shelf methane is too close to the surface for that to happen. As a result, she said, atmospheric levels of methane over the Arctic are 1.85 parts per million, almost three times as high as the global average of 0.6 or 0.7 parts per million. Concentrations over the shelf are 2 parts per million or higher [The New York Times].
Related Content:
80beats: Methane Seeps from the Arctic Seabed, Spooking Climate Scientists
80beats: 2 Trillion Tons of Polar Ice Lost in 5 Years, and Melting Is Accelerating
80beats: Arctic Tundra Surprises Scientists With Autumnal Methane Burps
80beats: Methane Bubbles in the Arctic Ocean Give Climate Scientists the Willies
DISCOVER: 10 Ways Methane Could Brake Global Warming–Or Break the Planet
DISCOVER: If Life Gives You Methane, Make Methane Energy
Image: University of Alaska Fairbanks
Anybody can help me to understanding what the meaning of "cycles" at breaker or switchgear?
I used to meet some statement about "3 cycles breaker" or "5 cycles breaker" within speed contact time correlated. what exactly the meaning of ?
Your immediately reply, Obviously appreciated.
Tq
Florida legislators blast new NASA plan, Orlando Sentinel
"Aides to U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, the Rockledge Republican who organized the letter campaign, said every Florida lawmaker now has agreed to sign it."
Florida Congressional Delegation Letter to President Obama Regarding NASA FY 2011 Budget
"Dear Mr. President: As members of the Florida congressional delegation, we write to express deep concerns with the Administration's FY 2011 budget request as it relates to the future of America's space program. While the budget request was presented to Members of Congress and staff as a game-changing strategy to move America's human space program beyond activities in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) serious questions remain regarding its goals, milestones, inherent cost and schedule risks, and severe disruptions to the workforce at our nation's premier spaceport."
In today's Remainders: the many. A new multitouch test app shows that multiple fingers confuse the Nexus One; Windows 7 has sold multiple copies (roughly 90 million); Chrome and its numerous extensions are catching up to Firefox, and more
MultiSlouch
Nexus One users have been reporting some multitouch wonkery for a while now, and to get to the bottom of things Robert Green put together the Multitouch Visible Test. The application, available now in the Android Market, basically does what its name suggests, visualizing input by placing colored dots on the screen where it registers your fingers. The first test, on the Droid, runs fine—the dots stick close to the fingers the whole time. On the Nexus One, however, the dots flip around and track to the inverse when the fingers get too close. Google engineer Diana Hackborn responded to the video in a post on the Android developers group:
this is how the touch screen hardware on the Nexus One works (which is essentially the same screen as on the G1 and myTouch). The Droid has a sensor from a different manufacturer, with different behavior. Other phones will likewise have different sensors.
Sorry, Nexus One users, it looks like you might be stuck with the wonkery. [YouTube via AndroidandMe]
Windows 90 Million
According to Peter Klein, Microsoft's Chief Financial Officer, Microsoft has sold 90 million Windows 7 licenses since it launched last October. That's a lot! Klein notes that many of Microsoft's business customers are readying to make the upgrade, so you can plan on that number growing a whole lot more in the upcoming months. [All Things D]
Are We Human, Or Are We Surfing?
Everyone can agree on the BBC's uniformly high level of programming. This new spot for their upcoming "Superpower" series, a look at the internet and its capacity for transforming society, shows us that their advertisements are no less impressive. The spot uses aliens as a metaphor for internet users, showing how a worldwide network of disembodied individuals can summon the compassion and intelligence required to help humankind through its "infancy" period. Yeah, humankind, that's great. But superpowers? And aliens?! That's how they're really gonna hook the geek community. [Buzz Feed]
Shiny
In just the few short months that they have been available for Google Chrome, developers have put together over 3000 extensions for the growing browser. Depending on how you count—Mozilla hasn't released an official number—Chrome has somewhere between one quarter and one half of the extensions as Firefox, which has been racking them up for a considerably longer period. How to account for Chrome's extension explosion? It could be its approval process, er, lack thereof. Whereas Firefox's add-ons spend some time in a review period, Chrome's zoom into availability as soon as they're submitted. Chrome's extension windfall will be bolstered by a recent announcement from Jolicloud, makers of
[TechCrunch
how to identify the winding starting and ending leads in a motor which is having 6 leads in the terminal box
In pipe line design which better ????
To put high grade and small thickness or to put low grade and larg thickness.
for water pipe line project dia 900 mm and 90 bar pressure,
X56 with small thick or
X52 with larg thick
thanks,
The Iraq war and its aftermath have left physical and psychic wounds on both local residents who lived through the American invasion and many U.S. soldiers. But anecdotal reports suggest that another demographic may have suffered as well: unborn babies. Doctors in Fallujah, Iraq have reported a high number of children born with birth deformities ever since the massive battle between Iraqi insurgents and U.S. forces that raged there in 2004.
While no medical studies have been done or official reports have been issued, many Fallujah locals suspect that U.S. weaponry used in the assault has left a lingering effect.
A debate is expected to come up in the British parliament sometime next week on the subject. The call for debate came up after the latest report by BBC’s John Simpson, in which an Iraqi pediatrician said she was seeing two to three deformed babies each day; most of the children had cardiac complications. The doctor clarified that while she didn’t have any official figures, she had noted an increase in the number of cases since the American invasion. The current level of cardiac birth defects in Fallujah, said the BBC, is 13 times higher than that in Europe.
In his report, Simpson also encountered children who were missing limbs, who had extra fingers and toes, with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each limb and an other child with spinal cord deformities so severe, he couldn’t bear to have it filmed. Many Iraqis, says Simpson, blame American weapons for increasing birth defects in the area. At a clinic he visited, he was told the worst problems were to be found in the neighborhood of al-Julan, near the river. This was the heart of the resistance to the Americans during the two major offensives of April and September 2004, and was hit constantly by bombs and shells [BBC].
Local people told the BBC they suspect US forces used white phosphorus and depleted uranium (DU) [in the battle of Fallujah], although this has not been proved [New Scientist]. White phosphorous can be found in incendiary weapons but is more often used as a smokescreen, while depleted uranium, which is toxic and weakly radioactive, can be found in some armor-piercing shells.
The allegations aren’t new. In a 2009 investigation, The Guardian asked pediatrician Samira Abdul Ghani to keep precise records over a three-week period. Her records reveal that 37 babies with anomalies, many of them neural tube defects, were born during that period at Fallujah general hospital alone [The Guardian]. That report observed that Fallujah’s doctors were hesitant to link the deformities with the war, and suggested that they might be wary of embarrassing the government. Instead, Fallujah general hospital’s director and senior specialist, Dr Ayman Qais, listed other possible causes of the birth defects: “These include air pollution, radiation, chemicals, drug use during pregnancy, malnutrition, or the psychological status of the mother,” said Dr Qais. “We simply don’t have the answers yet” [The Guardian].
Related Content:
80beats: Gulf War Syndrome Is a Real Illness, Federal Study Finds
80beats: Solving a 50-Year Mystery: How Thalidomide Causes Birth Defects
Discoblog: New Video Game Teaches Soldiers How to Make Nice With the Locals
DISCOVER: Has Science Found a Way to End All Wars?
Image:Wikimedia
If you're in the military, here's a tip: don't put upcoming missions in your Facebook status. You wouldn't think someone would need to tell you that, but here we are.
A raid on suspected militants in the West Bank was cancelled yesterday after an Israeli soldier updated his Facebook status to read "On Wednesday we clean up Qatanah, and on Thursday, god willing, we come home." The solider has since, unsurprisingly, been relieved of combat duty for being a moron. He'll also spend 10 days in prison for his update.
Trying to educate soldiers on the importance of not leaking classified info to Facebook, the Israel Defense Forces have started putting up new posters in bases:
In posters placed on military bases, a mock Facebook page shows the images of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. Below their pictures - and Facebook "friend requests" - reads the slogan: "You think that everyone is your friend?"
I really want to see one of those posters. Anyone in the IDF want to send us a picture? My email address is below. I won't post it on Facebook, promise. [NY Times]
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: when I was a kid, Mars was a dead planet. Dry, frozen, with hardly any atmosphere, I always figured it wasn’t very interesting.
Heh.
Mars may or may not be alive in the biological sense, but it’s certainly active geologically! And images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera verify it. It’s spotted migrating ripples across Martian sand dunes:
These before and after images (part of a trio of them) show the motion. The image on the left was taken June 30, 2007, and the one on the right in October of that year. During that time, just a few months, the ripples can clearly be seen to have moved by a few meters (the inset diagram shows the ridges on the dunes schematically). This means that the wind blowing in this part of the planet is not only actively pushing around the sand, but also doing it on a timescale we can measure.
And on a spatial scale, too. Note the scalebar in the images: it’s 20 meters long, about the size of a house! This strongly suggests that these dunes are loose piles of sand, and not heavily crusted over or cemented (the grains stuck together). That, plus the time and size of the migration, yields yet more clues about the way the surface of Mars is put together.
Amazingly, this comes at the same time as other news showing that dunes in another region of Mars haven’t moved for at least 100,000 years, and possibly as long as three times that age! So while some regions of Mars are dynamic, active, and changing on a timescale of weeks, other regions are static, unchanging, and rigid for hundreds of millennia.
I used to think Mars was uninteresting. I was dead wrong. Mars is weird, and in astronomy and space exploration, weird is always interesting.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/International Research School of Planetary Sciences
Seriously, nothing shows better the power of the 1000fps Phantom camera than a scary masked man cracking a watermelon open with a baseball bat. But it freaks me out. Now I need some dogs catching treats.
These Phantoms are amazing. What would you film if you had one of them? [Barzart]
NASA JSC Memo: Commercial-Crew Vehicle Transition Concepts 1 March 2010
"The President's 201 1 Budget Proposal which was unveiled on February 8, 2010, places an emphasis on commercial vehicles "to provide astronaut transportation to the International Space Station (ISS), reducing the sole reliance on foreign crew transports and catalyzing new businesses and significant new jobs." The following paper provides recommendations for the transition to a commercial-crew vehicle to the ISS which leverages the experience gained in the operation of the Space Shuttle, the ISS, and in the design of Constellation."
There's no way to verify this except to test it, but Solar Components claims their Joos Orange charger has somewhere between six to twenty times as much "3G cell phone talk time per hours of sun" than their competitors.
This is where we're confused though. Their chart shows that they have 120 minutes of talk time per hour of sun, but rate competitors at just 20 minutes of talk time per hour of sun. However, on their tech specs sheet, they say that they can "make more powe than any other personal solar charger on the market. Up to 20 times more." Or, if you use their reflector kit, which brings in more sun, you can get 30 times more.
So, assuming it's just six times more powerful than anyone else, the question remains: Are these guys just so much better and found a secret to solar power generation, or is everyone else just horrible engineers? Either way, Solar Components supposedly will ship this 5400mAh solar-powered battery in June at just $100. Sounds fishy for now, but we'd love to test it out ourselves to see. [Solar Joos via iPod NN]
AppleInsider found four cooling-related patents by Apple that might be used in future MacBooks in order to better keep temperatures from getting absurd as performance increases. The most interesting is the one that uses USB/Firewire ports as vents.
These ports would theoretically (while they're not being used, of course) help increase airflow to vital hot parts, so that you wouldn't have to create more vents on the other parts of the laptop. The downside is that if you're the kind of person who likes to plug everything in and fill up all the holes of your laptop all the time, you're cutting off potential ventilation.
Two of the other patents, one for sensing airflow and making adjustments automatically, and the other using heat-conductive hinge assemblies, seem more obvious and less innovative. The last, though, uses the Peltier effect which...
defines when an electrical current runs through the junction of two different metals. When electrons flow from a region of high density to a lower one, it allows them to cool. The application describes a "solid-state cooling mechanism" that would employ two sides to transfer heat away from the machine and help dissipate it.
So it allows additional cooling, but without having to employ more fans. Another way for the device to keep small and sturdy without cutting more holes and adding more air-pushing components. [Apple Insider]
