Android’s Budget Future, Now: Droid Eris Free On Contract [Dealzmodo]

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Super-spec'd premium phones like the Droid and Nexus One are only part of Google's long term plan for Android. What we have here is a glimpse of Android's other future: Free. Android handsets are the new flip-phones! Sort of!

Today's Motorola Devour launch at Best Buy Mobile brought some extra goodies, including an awkwardly priced Droid, which seems to render its new stablemate kind of unbuyable, and this little surprise: A Droid Eris, which is Verizon's version of the Sprint Hero, priced for free on contract. Not a single dollar! (Except for the 60 of them you'll have to pay out for two years, but who's counting that money, right? Right.)

Point is, budget Android phones are a verifiable thing right now, and even if they're sometimes loaded with out of date version of Google's OS or terrible custom interfaces, they are categorically better than virtually any feature phone. And as data plans become more ubiquitous and (dear god please) cheaper, always-connected, internet savvy smartphones will graduate from the massive trend to the status quo.* And Android, without any licensing fees for carriers or handset manufacturers, will play a huge part in this.

*Welcome, everyone, to the least glamorous kind of futurism!


Study: Bacteria Can Make Avatar-Like Electrical Connections in Mud | 80beats

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ElectricMudOnce again, laziness pays off. When microbiologist Lars Peter Nielsen and his team were studying marine sediments, they got a little sloppy about cleaning their beakers. But after letting samples sit around in the lab for a few weeks, they began to see weird chemical patterns in them that you just wouldn’t expect. As they saw changes in the surface of the mud quickly trigger other changes down below, the scientists came upon a startling idea: that the bacteria in the top layer and those deep down were somehow electrically linked. Their paper appears this week in Nature.

Specifically, Nielsen saw that hydrogen sulfide buried below the sediment’s surface (the stuff that makes it smell bad) was oxidizing and changing color. One problem, though: That shouldn’t be happening. Below the sediment surface there is plenty of hydrogen sulfide and carbon for bacteria to consume via oxidation, or removing electrons [Scientific American]. But the reaction can’t be sustained without access to dissolved oxygen, which carries away electrons produced by the reaction, and in these samples the oxygen was all up at the sediment’s surface. So the researchers hypothesize that the buried bacteria form a conductive chain to ferry the electrons up to the surface.

At first the team tried alternative explanations, but none seemed to fit. The distance was so great, and the response time so quick, that usual methods of chemical transport — molecular diffusion, or a slow drift from high to low concentration — couldn’t explain it [Wired.com]. For him, only the electrical linkage could explain a connection between bacteria separated by as much as a half inch (if you compare distance to body size, that half inch for a bacterium feels like what 12 miles would feel like to us humans).

How is this even possible? Researchers recently discovered that some bacteria have so-called nanowires, hair-like extensions on the cells’ surface that can conduct electricity. Nielsen and his colleagues speculate that these nanowires are responsible for conducting the electrons [The Scientist]. However, those tiny wires don’t explain how the connection bridges such great distances (in bacterial terms). Researchers outside the study told The Scientist that pyrite grains embedded in the mud could aid conductivity, or that some yet to be discovered mechanism is responsible.

The discovery has raised comparisons to the biological networks that wire the forest in the 3D blockbuster Avatar, and Nielsen admits it’s pretty cool. “One of my colleagues saw this, and immediately sent me a message: ‘You’ve discovered the secret of Avatar! Go see it!’ The similarities are quite striking” [Wired.com].

Related Content:
80beats: Could a Deep Sea Snail’s Shell Inspire Next-Gen Body Armor?
80beats: Fiber-Optic Link Brings Undersea Science Data Onto the Web
DISCOVER: Their Game Is Mud

Image: Nils Risgaard-Petersen


Best Buy Leaks the Next TiVos: TiVo Premiere HD and TiVo Premiere XL HD [Unconfirmed]

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Ahead of a March 2 event and TiVo HDs suddenly going extinct, two listings for a TiVo Premiere HD and Premiere XL HD have popped up in Best Buy's system.

The Premiere XL is THX certified and records up to 150 hours of HD content. It's $500. The regular Premiere records a third as much, 45 hours of HD content, and it's $300. They're expected to land at Best Buy on March 27. Of course, prices and dates and recording capacities we expect we'll be by far the least interesting aspect of these things. We hope. [Engadget]


Final Fantasy I & II Now Available for the iPhone/iPod Touch [IPhone Apps]

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Attention, classic JRPG fans! You can now grab both Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II from the iTunes App Store for $9 apiece, complete with touch-friendly controls and bonus dungeons.

The original Final Fantasy includes the five bonus dungeons, The Soul of Chaos pack and The Labyrinth of Time, added to later editions of the game. While Final Fantasy II contains the five bonus dungeons added with the Soul of Rebirth and Arcane Labyrinth pack.

[Kotaku]


Underfull Table Cloth Makes Wonderful Spills [Concepts]

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I'm a klutz. I admit it. But if I had an Underfull table cloth, I'd never accidentally knock over a glass of wine again. No sir. With Underfull I'd purposefully knock over a glass of wine, to make ART.

Underfull comes from designer Kristine Bjaadal, who's presumably as uncoordinated as I am. It looks like a plain white table cloth with a simple damask pattern until someone (me) spills a colored liquid on it. That's when the magic happens:

See? I didn't upend my Merlot because of my naturally aggressive gesticulations and/or drunken wobblings. I did it because this dining table needed more butterflies.

It's still in concept mode for now, but it sounds as though Bjaadal is serious about getting it into production. If and when she does, expect to see more patterns than just butterflies, and me in the checkout line with ten or twelve Underfulls in my cart. [Kristine Bjaadal via Design Milk]


Camera-Equipped Headphones Let You Webcast Your Boring Life [Concepts]

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These concept headphones feature a build-in camera, projector and wireless device so you can live-stream your life to the internet. But I'm more interested in the sheepskin on the cans. Comfy!

On the one hand, it's cool to see a POV camera stuck onto something other than glasses. These actually look wearable! But I don't know why the hell there's a projector on there. I guess when you don't have to worry about actually making a device, just a concept, it doesn't hurt to throw the kitchen sink at it, no matter how impractical it may be. [Yanko Design]


Sen. Vitter Has Been Drinking the Koolaid

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Keith's note: There was one bizarre series of events today in the Senate hearing on NASA's budget that I found to be very odd - and a little troubling. I am referring to the series of questions that Sen. Vitter (R-LA) asked of Charlie Bolden with regard to Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver. The questions focused on who made the decision to cancel Constellation and whether Lori Garver was at the heart of this. He also seemed to suggest that Lori was pushing to oust Bolden and usurp his job - something he said that he "would not support".

Within a few moments it was clear that Vitter had been programmed by his staff with some sort of magic fairy dust and that he was going to pursue a line of questioning that focused on Garver and repeated use of the word "radical" and not on anything of substance related to the budget. Clearly, Vitter's staff were using him as a proxy in a search for a cabal, smoking gun, or a scheming mastermind behind the Obama space policy. Typical Washington blood sport.

This is not new: there is a small subculture of space policy wannabes out there who seem to be convinced that Lori Garver has sold her soul in the pursuit of some sort of plan to destroy human space flight and replace it with ... well, they do not agree on that part. The silly thing about all of this is the illogic of someone like Lori ever being inclined to want to "kill" human spaceflight. Quite the contrary.

Let me say this. I have known Lori for more than 20 years. If you have read NASA Watch you will know that in the past I have not hesitated to criticize her when I saw fit. But let me tell you, for anyone with a shred of knowledge about Lori and her background to suggest that she is against human space travel - of any kind is ludicrous. Not only did she head the National Space Society, an organization devoted to human space flight, but she spent 6 months of her life training to get a seat on a Soyuz flight as "AstroMom" and even had surgery to meet the medical qualifications. It just doesn't compute.

If you want to throw rocks and dabble in second rate Da Vinci code cabal mongering, then go look into the inner workings of OSTP and OMB. That is where these policies were developed and delivered to NASA - not the other way around.

As such, I have to wonder what those staffers sitting silently behind Vitter were thinking when they poured this nonsense into his head. Clearly they know how things work here in Washington. But instead of trying to have a serious discussion about the programmatic merits or detriments of the policy, Vitter went off on a wild goose chase - and hit a brick wall.

Funny thing: Sen. Vitter never uttered the word "Michoud" as far as I could tell.

Senator's attack on NASA deputy chief Lori Garver backfires , Orlando Sentinel

"Several sources on the Hill, in industry and inside the Obama administration blame rocket maker ATK, the developer of the Ares I rocket first stage, for putting Vitter up to the attack. Sources say that complaints have been sent to ATK and so far there has been no response. In the meantime, members of the Senate and the House said they were going to refrain from any further personal attacks as they move against the White House's proposed 2011 budget for the space agency."

Growing a mustache so others can read | Bad Astronomy

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lindsey826My niece, Lindsey, is weird.

Shocker, I know, given her DNA. But there you go. And to prove my point, here’s what she’s doing: she’s growing a mustache, kinda, for charity. She works for a group called 826, which promotes reading and writing for local kids. Lindsey’s in Boston, and for the month of February she’s somehow going to increase her lip warmer to help get money for the program. You can read more about this program on the 826 main site, at Boston.com, and the Boston Phoenix.

So yes, I’m using my great and terrible powers of blogging to help a family member. But y’see, I already have a mustache. This is all I can do. My logic is infallible. And, of course, I’m all about promoting the hirsute of happiness.


Android’s Dude Problem [Android]

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73% of Android users are men, compared to the rest of smartphone platforms, which skew only slightly manward. But really, we should have expected this. (And not in a sexist way!)

The statistic comes from AdMob's January Mobile Metrics report, which is littered with fascinating little nuggets. Like, did you have any idea 65% of iPod Touch users are younger than 17? (For the iPhone, that's 13%, and for webOS, just 2%.) Or that free app downloads across all platforms outnumber paid downloads by nearly 10 to 1? Or that Android users are the stingiest, with only 21% of users purchasing apps on a monthly basis, as compared to the iPhone's 50%? Well now you do! So let's get back to the lady business.

The first impulse for a lot of people will be to make a dig against Android for being too nerdy to appeal to women—an implicit dig against women for not being nerdy or technical enough to appreciate Android, or something. Though there's something to be said for Android's geek-centric rep, that's not the main issue here.

The Droid, as far as Android phones go, is hugely popular—it's far and away the platform's breakaway hit, and represents a large proportion of its mobile web traffic. As such, it could skew any survey like this to the point that Android users stats are almost fully inline with Droid user stats. And the Doird was marketed like this: The iPhone is a toy, and this is lame. Also: The iPhone is a chick, and this is lame.

It's been obvious for a while that the DROID DUDE HELL YEAH DROID marketing strategy worked. Now we just know who it worked on. [ReadWriteWeb]


Bacteria Colonies May Be Linked By Nanowires [Science]

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A bacterium on its own can't reach very far. And when stacked on the sea floor in a large colony, it may have access to either oxygen (top of the pile) or food (bottom of the pile).

So for the entire colony to thrive, the bottom and top layers must be choreographed in chemical reactions occurring across great expanses, allowing electrons from food consumption in the basement to react to oxygen from the rooftop.

A new study just published in Nature set to isolate the way bacteria pull of this stunt. The first guess, molecular diffusion, was found to be too slow for as dynamically as these colonies reacted in various testing. Now? It's believed the bacteria use interconnected nanowires, sharing electrons across expanses 20,000 times their individual size—though to be fair, there's no direct evidence proving the existence of said wires.

The implications for you, gadget lover? The possibility of one day using a really gross battery. [Nature via PopSci][Nanowire Image]


Episode 36 CardiArc

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Episode 36 CardioArc
This podcast an interview with Lisa Hasen from Cardiarc. Discussing a new type of cardiac gamma camera.
Cardiarc website

Direct link to itunes ??
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Also I have updated our links and you can get the podcast page at both http://nuccast.com
And http://www.nuccast.com with the feed to put into iTunes or juice or your favorite podcast software can be found at http://molcast.com or http://www.molcast.com. The cardiac subset of the podcast can be found at http://cardiac.nuccast.com and the feed at http://cardiac.molcast.com.

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Another Potential Casualty In the Google-China Wars: Science [Blockquote]

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With all the intrigue around China hacking Google and Google hacking back, it's easy to overlook the real-world consequences of what further escalation might lead to. Specifically: Chinese researchers and scientists could see the plug pulled on their work process.

A full 84% of Chinese scientists said that blocked access to Google would "somewhat or significantly" hamper their research, in a recent survey by Nature News. While there are alternative search engines like Baidu, none are nearly as effective at searching English-language sites or research papers as Google. Google Scholar, in particular, is an invaluable resource for tracking down academic papers.

It's an apt analogy from the unnamed scientist quoted above: research without Google really is like life without electricity. You can go on without it, but you can't thrive. You can't even compete. [Wired]


Dimmable Fluorescent Ballasts

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I searched CR4 and only found a couple of older links for "Fluorescent Dimmer" and "Custom Fluorescent Ballasts".

What is the current state of technology for dimmable fluorescent ballasts for 4' and 8' T8 lamps?

How much is the lamp life shortened by the use of a dimmable ballast? In my ap

Bear Fight! Grizzlies Are Creeping Into Polar Bears’ Canadian Turf | 80beats

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GrizzlyUp north in the Canadian province of Manitoba, polar bears are receiving some unwelcome guests. Researchers have seen grizzly bears moving into the area for the first time, and that might not be good news for the already-troubled polar bears.

Linda Gormezano and her team, who are publishing the study (pdf) in Canadian Field-Naturalist, weren’t even looking for grizzlies when they started to spot the huge mammals; they were flying around counting fox dens. Before 1996, there was no evidence that grizzly bears encroached on polar bear territory. From that year on, however, there have been at least 12 sightings, negating the prior theory that the barren landscape north of the Hudson Bay was impassable, in terms of resources, for migrating grizzly bears [Discovery News]. If grizzlies can survive there, Gormezano says, they’ll probably want to stay, because there’s a bevy of caribou, fish, and other good things to eat.

This worries Gormezano. She says, “Grizzlies would likely hibernate in polar bear maternity denning habitat. They would come out of hibernation at the same time and can kill polar cubs” [BBC News]. In addition, the geographical proximity would make it more likely that polar and grizzly bears would produce hybrid offspring, labeled “pizzly,” “prizzly,” or “grolar” bears.

Of course, a story about competing grizzlies and polar bears can lead to only one place: nerd-tastic arguments over which would win in a fight. While debating this at length, Canada’s The Globe and Mail asks the experts. Manitoba Wildlands director Gaile Whelan Enns sees the grizzlies with the advantage: “The grizzly is more accustomed to the predator-prey relationship, whereas the polar bears are not quite as aggressive” [The Globe and Mail]. However, she notes, polar bears have the size advantage, outweighing their competitors by hundreds of pounds.

Study author Robert Rockwell says that the two bear species would most likely meet when the polar bears take to their dens to give birth, which could give the grizzlies an easy target. “If it’s a fight between a 1,200-pound male polar bear and a 600-pound grizzly, I think we know who would win,” Dr. Rockwell said. “But in this likeliest of cases, it’s debatable. There are actually reports in the literature where grizzlies have killed denning polar bear females” [The Globe and Mail].

Both kinds of bear receive protection from the province of Manitoba, and Canada lists both as species of special concern. Whether they have special concern for each other should their territories collide remains to be seen.

Related Content:
80beats: Obama Agrees With Bush: Polar Bears Won’t Drive Global Warming Policy
80beats: 2 Trillion Tons of Polar Ice Lost in 5 Years, and Melting Is Accelerating
DISCOVER: Polar Bears (Finally) Make the Endangered Species List
DISCOVER: The Electronic Grizzly, mapping the majestic creatures

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Shellie


Fuse block/Fuse wire sizing

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I'm sorry if I cross posted this but I cannot find the original posting.

I am looking for a US standard that dictates the wire sizing leaving a fuse block (ie NEC, NFPA, IEEE, UL). The question is; is the wire sized for the maximum capacity of the fuse block or the fuses installed.

For ex