Dinosaur Colors: Now Officially Redonkulous | The Loom

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anchiornis illustrationI seem to have ended up as the Dinosaur Feather Color Bureau Chief at the New York Times. After discovering colors in fossil bird feathers, scientists found colors in dinosaurs last week. But this week another group of scientists has got the color pattern across a dinosaur’s entire body.

Imagine: Silver Spangled Hamburgs of the Jurassic!

Image courtesy of National Geographic. Check out their 3-D version.


Mile-High Wi-Fi Showdown: Which Airline’s the Fastest? [Inflight Wifi]

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Many airlines offer in-flight wi-fi and though you might not choose flights based on download speeds, it helps to know what to expect from each carrier. With your help, we conducted our first Mile-High Wi-Fi Test. Delta Airlines won.

The Idea

We've tested 3G data speeds in the past, so as in-flight wi-fi became more widely offered we decided that its performance needed to be rated as well.

Our staff can only rack up so many frequent flier miles before we get a stern talking to from our fearless leader, so we thought of asking Gizmodo readers for help. Over the holidays, many people joined Gizmodo's Mile-High Club, and the results came pouring in. (Of course it didn't hurt that we shared some coupon codes for free in-flight wi-fi.)

The Methodology

We asked readers to use Speedtest.net when they traveled—checking upload and download bandwidth along with ping latency, reporting the numbers back to us along with a goofy self-portrait, a la Brian Lam. We logged the speed test results along with the airline and the flight route. Our first round of testing accounts for December 2009 and January 2010.

The Results

Don, our resident number cruncher, processed all the data from the first round of testing. We did throw out a few data points which were deemed incomplete or inaccurate, and had to exclude one airline—United—for the time being because we did not have enough data for a meaningful average. All of these numbers are preliminary, but we were surprised that one airline in particular was able to rise up past the others. Here's how our tally looks right now:

American Airlines:
Download: .88 Mbps
Upload: .23 Mbps
Ping: 231.87 ms

Virgin America:
Download: .57 Mbps
Upload: .25 Mbps
Ping: 276.44 ms

Delta:
Download: .93 Mbps
Upload: .29 Mbps
Ping: 177.91 ms

AirTran:
Download: .86 Mbps
Upload: .30 Mbps
Ping: 192.24 ms

If you prefer graphs, today is your lucky day:

Now, based on these averages, things boil down to this:
Fastest Download: Delta (.93 Mbps)
Fastest Upload: AirTran (.3 Mbps) *
Lowest Latency: Delta (177.91ms)
*Note that Delta's average was very close, at .29 Mbps

So, overall Delta Airlines handily outperformed the rest, but again, this is just round 1. Besides, it seems worth noting that despite differences in broadband speeds, all four of those airlines use GoGo in-flight Internet to provide the wi-fi service.

This Is Just the Beginning

We call this the first round because we're far from done. We want to keep collecting data on in-flight wi-fi and keep getting better and better results. The more data points we have, the better reporting we can deliver on the state of in-air wi-fi.

To help us in this effort, you can simply head to SpeedTest.net the next time you fly and run the test. Send an email to me or to Gizmodo tips with "Mile-High Wi-Fi" in the subject line. Here's what to include:
• Speedtest.net results, including download and upload speed in Mbps, and ping latency in ms
• Name of Airline
• Departing and destination airports, and type of plane
• A (totally optional) goofy picture of yourself

Not only does additional data help us make more accurate subsequent reports, it'll help you because airlines will see clearly how the competition is doing. And if there are variables we don't see yet, such as variations in performance based on route or plane type, we'll be able to get a better sense of that as well, as we get more data points from you...

The Esteemed Members of Gizmodo's Mile-High Club

We encourage you to continue taking 2 minutes to check bandwidth, and fire us an email, whenever you connect up in the air. In the meantime, we want to thank each of the boys and gals who participated in this first round of Mile High Wi-Fi testing, the charter members of the Giz Mile-High Club. Here are some of the prettiest from the charter membership rolls:

Original Delta Airlines photo used under CC license from The Rocketeer/Flickr


Mobile Battery for Solar Panels

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Hi i need your help, I am building a project of charging a mobile battery with solar panels. For this i am using AT89S52 Micro controller. As i want the solar panels to turn around where there is most of the sunlight falling i am using photo resistors. I am using 2 photo resistors each at one end of

What iPad Apps Are Going to Feel Like [Ipad]

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Want to know what freshly developed apps for the iPad are going to feel like? Looking through Apple's iPad User Experience Guidelines is surprisingly revealing.

Some of the key points Apple's pushing on app developers for the iPad, and how Apple thinks their apps should behave:

• They want apps to work no matter how you hold the iPad: "Your application should encourage people to interact with iPad from any side by providing a great experience in all orientations."

• They don't want applications to just be bigger: "The best iPad applications give people innovative ways to interact with content while they perform a clearly defined, finite task. Resist the temptation to fill the large screen with features that are not directly related to the main task. In particular, you should not view the large iPad screen as an invitation to bring back all the functionality you pruned from your iPhone application." That's some straight talk.

• They're super into the sharing thing: "Think of ways people might want to use your application with others. Expand your thinking to include both the physical sharing of a single device and the virtual sharing of data."

• The oddly "realistic" bookshelf in iBooks isn't a fluke: "Consider a more real-world vision of your application. For example, on iPhone, Contacts is a streamlined list, but on iPad, Contacts is an address book with a beautifully tangible look and feel."

• Multi-finger gestures will abound: "The large iPad screen provides great scope for multifinger gestures, including gestures made by more than one person."

• It shouldn't feel like a computer, even if the iPad lets you do computer-y things with files now: "Although iPad applications can allow people to create and manipulate files and share them with a computer (when the device is docked), this does not mean that people should have a sense of the file system on iPad."

Starting to get a sense of things, and how apps are going to feel vs. their iPhone counterparts? There's more guidelines, like on how to use popovers, over at UX Mag. [Apple, UXMag]


Phishing for Carbon: Hackers Steal Millions in Emissions Certificates [Crime]

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Credit cards numbers? Please. Medical records? Booooring. The modern hacker knows that the real money's in carbon emission trade credits. No, seriously: a recent phishing expedition reaped over $4 million from carbon-emitting companies in Europe, Japan, and New Zealand.

The hackers sent emails to 2,000 companies in Germany alone, claiming to be from the German Emissions Trading Authority, which keeps track of carbon credits and transactions. The email requested that the companies re-register their accounts, and the information the duped employees provided was then used—you guessed it—to access the companies' GETA accounts and and clean them out.

It's unclear who the thieves sold the credits to, but the buyers are assumed to have thought they were making a legal transaction. And it's also possible to see how it would have taken some time to see that something was amiss: four million bucks is a lot of money, but it's a drop in the bucket of $130 billion of CO2 emissions that were traded in Europe last year.

So remember, kids: lock up your gasses. People will steal just about anything these days. [Der Spiegel via Wired]


Pluto – In Color

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Pluto's White, Dark-Orange, and Charcoal Black Terrain Captured by Hubble

"NASA has released the most detailed and dramatic images ever taken of the distant dwarf planet Pluto. The images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show an icy, mottled, dark molasses-colored world undergoing seasonal surface color and brightness changes. Pluto has become significantly redder, while its illuminated northern hemisphere is getting brighter. These changes are most likely consequences of surface ice melting on the sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other pole, as the dwarf planet heads into the next phase of its 248-year-long seasonal cycle. Analysis shows the dramatic change in color took place from 2000 to 2002."

Man Rescued From Ice by Lady Watching on Webcam [News]

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Going for a spectacular sunset shot, a man ventured onto the ice of the North Sea. But he quickly became lost on the monochromatic landscape. Ironically, two cameras would rescue him from the very danger a camera put him in.

The man started firing off the flash of his camera, hoping to grab someone's attention who could beckon him back to the coast. And someone spotted him—from hundreds of miles away at her computer—as she watched this webcam feed of St. Peter-Ording, the tourist spot where the man disappeared.

She contacted authorities who guided him back to shore safely. [Physorg and BBC]


Improved Lithium Ion Batteries Deliver 10,000 Charges, 20 Year Lifespans [Batteries]

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Eamex, a Japanese company, claims to have figured out how to greatly increase the lifespan of the high-capacity lithium-ion batteries that run hybrids and electric vehicles.

The new batteries can supposedly survive 10,000 charge cycles and 20 years, which is quite a bit better than what we've got now. How do they work?

The main idea is to stabilize the electrodes and prevent the deterioration of tin, making the batteries withstand repeated charges. The batteries have a negative electrode that incorporates a tin-coated resin and accumulates lithium ions coming from the positive electrode. The positive electrode is made of silicon and tin and swells while generating the ions.

As a result, the repeated charging and discharging causes the binding between particles in the tin to weaken, but Eamex's technology helps to effectively maintain the bonding among those particles.

Neat! If the tech lives up to the claims, we should see these guys in electric vehicles within a few years. [CrunchGear]


“Goth Kitties” With Piercings Earn Woman an Animal Cruelty Conviction | Discoblog

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goth-kittyYou might decorate your ears, eyebrows, nose, or other body parts with piercings to make an external statement about your personality, but would you do the same to your dog or cat or hamster?

Dog groomer Holly Crawford didn’t think there was anything wrong with piercing her kittens and then marketing them on e-Bay as “Goth Kitties” for hundreds of dollars. She had no qualms about piercing the kittens’ necks, ears, and tails with a 14-gauge needle, typically used to pierce the skin of cattle.

In a not-surprising development, Crawford was charged with animal cruelty after her Pennsylvania premises were raided last month. Crawford’s trial began earlier this week in a Pennsylvania court.

Crawford pleaded not guilty to the charges, saying she used sterile needles and surgical soap while she pierced her kittens. But a veterinarian who testified at the hearings said the kittens had been maimed, had their hearing altered, and could have died due to infections. The piercings at the back of the kittens’ necks and tails would also have hampered their balance and jumping, she said. On Wednesday, the court found Crawford guilty on one charge of animal cruelty.

The Sun reports on Crawford’s utter incomprehension over the furor about the pierced kittens:

Crawford said: “When I did it, it wasn’t with any cruel intentions. They were definitely loved, well-fed, no fleas, clipped nails. And they were happy.”

Daphna Nachminovitch, vice president for PETA, called the piercings “barbaric”.

“There’s no excuse for inflicting such pain on an animal that’s the size of your palm,” she said.

The defense argued that parents take their kids to have their ears pierced, so we shouldn’t make a fuss about pierced kittens; Crawford’s legal team said we shouldn’t have higher standards for cats. But last time we checked, little girls and boys don’t use a tail to balance when they jump off walls and trees. (Of course, the lives of animals in the average factory farm are probably far worse, but in that case, the cruelty is so widespread that it’s accepted by society—and it’s so easy to punish the one woman selling Goth Kitties.)

Crawford also lamented to the press that her dog grooming business, Pawside Parlor, had lost business since the “Goth Kitty” trial.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Oscar The Death Cat: I Haz Sniffed Many Deaths
Discoblog: Is Pollution in China Causing Cats to Grow “Wings?”
Discoblog: Animal Heroics: Parrot Honored for Saving Choking Baby

Image: The Daily Mail


Point of Inquiry: Your Requests | The Intersection

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As I’ll now be hosting two episodes of Point of Inquiry per month, there will be much to cover. My central area of focus will be the intersection of science and public policy–the issues where we need better literacy and citizen awareness, and less politics, to get the right answers.

I may as well make clear I am not going into this with the goal of having big arguments with leading New Atheists about science and religion. My position on this topic is well known, but as a host, my goal is not to advance it, but to create interesting, informative content. I am not ruling out covering evolution and religion, but the show also has another host, Robert Price, who, as D.J. Grothe points out, specializes in religious skepticism.

In any case, I want to make a public call for topics that Point of Inquiry, with me as host, ought to cover. What do you want to hear about?


Lunar Echoes on STS-130

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Mementos from canceled NASA moon plan flying on space shuttle, Collectspace

"Together with a piece of Everest's summit, also retrieved by Parazynski, the plaque-mounted moon rocks will be displayed inside Tranquility's new seven-windowed Cupola to inspire the astronauts working there. "Imagine being in the Cupola and looking out this huge series of windows and looking at the Moon and having a piece of the Moon right next to you. What's that going to be like? I have no idea. I'll come back and tell you," said STS-130 mission specialist Stephen Robinson. Robinson had a role in including aboard the flight another, albeit subtle, nod to NASA's lunar exploration history in the form of his and his crewmates' mission patch. The six-sided emblem, which was shaped to resemble the Cupola viewing port attached to Tranquility's side, depicts the Earth as it was first seen in a photograph taken from the Moon by Lunar Orbiter I."

Keith's note: Not only is STS-130 carrying the Moon rock that I carried to Nepal and slept with for a month and Scott then carried to the summit of Mt. Everest, but I just learned that the STS-130 patch was inspired by the "earthrise" photo that Dennis Wingo and our team at the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project released in Nov. 2008. It usually takes quite a lot to leave me speechless - this comes very close to doing so. How do we expand on such resonant opportunities so as to allow not just a few - but rather millions of people to have a similar, personal connection to what we do in space?

In a First, Ground-Based Telescope Measures Alien Planet’s Atmosphere | 80beats

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ExoplanetInfraredEarthAs the count of known planets in distant star systems continues to grow (the number now exceeds 400), so too does the number of ways we have to learn about them. Reporting in Nature this week, a team of astronomers say they have measured the makeup of an exoplanet’s atmosphere using an Earth-based telescope for the first time.

Mark Swain’s team directed NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility toward HD 189733 b, a planet 63 light years away, discovered back in 2005. HD 189733 b was already known from space-borne observations to harbor several specific molecules in its atmosphere: water, methane, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide [Scientific American]. Swain’s analysis confirmed those previous findings using spectrography, in which the light from an object is broken down into its component wavelengths, allowing the identification of atoms or molecules by their unique emission or absorption properties [Scientific American]. Swain’s team also turned up something else—a spike in emissions at a very particular wavelength of light, 3.3 microns, that the earlier observations didn’t detect and that Swain’s team can’t explain–at least not yet.

While these and other researchers will likely hurry to investigate the mystery spike, the really important part of Swain’s study is that it shows it is indeed possible to analyze extremely distant planets from telescopes right here on Earth. To do it, they looked for what’s called a secondary eclipse. At its heart, the approach takes the light received on Earth when HD 189733b is behind its parent star and subtracts it from the light received when it is between its star and the Earth. What results is the light due solely to the planet [BBC News]. However, our own atmosphere obscures this information, so Swain team had to study at the exoplanet in infrared and correct for the errors our own planet introduces.

Despite showing signs of the molecules we associate with life, HD 189733 b isn’t a good candidate for life as we know it. It’s among the group called “hot Jupiters”: gas giants orbiting scaldingly close to their stars. However, refining Swain’s method could give astronomers another tool beyond space telescopes like the Kepler mission to search for a world that not only possesses the ingredients for life but also resides at an appropriate orbital distance. This approach vastly increases the number of instruments – far larger than the 3m telescope used in the Nature work – that could be trained on exoplanet atmospheres [BBC News].

Related Content:
80beats: Kepler Telescope Spies Its First 5 Exoplanets, Including “Styrofoam” World
80beats: New Super-Earth: Hot, Watery, and Nearby
80beats: Meet the New Neighbors: Earth-Like Worlds Orbiting Nearby Stars
80beats: Don’t Pack Your Bags Yet—New Planet-Finder Hobbled By Electronic Glitch
80beats: Kepler Sends Postcards Home: It’s Beautiful Out Here
DISCOVER: How Long Until We Find a Second Earth?
Bad Astronomy: Kepler Works!

Image: ESA, NASA, G. Tinetti (University College London, UK & ESA) and M. Kornmesser (ESA/Hubble)


Apple Paying Out 15% On Broken 27-Inch iMacs [Broken]

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Still think that widespread iMac problems don't exist? After we reported Apple giving UK customers 15% refund bonuses with 27-inch iMac returns, we've heard from quite a few readers that Apple is doing the same thing in the US. UPDATE

15%. Cash. So on a $2000 machine, we're talking about a $300 apology straight from Apple customer support. From the handful of reader anecdotes we've received thus far, it sounds like you need to be a repeat iMac returner who's dealt with multiple 27-inch iMacs that have been busted in some way (but they may accommodate first time buyers as well, we don't know). One reader had multiple yellow screens, then received another new model with broken Bluetooth. He took the 15% and just returned it.

Even though Apple has failed to admit the iMac's failings in a public light, there's no doubt, the company is putting their money where their mouth isn't.

UPDATE: According to an Apple customer support discussion with one of our readers, the 15% bonus refund is officially for "tax and shipping"—it's a flat base rate to cover your return no matter the area you are in. So if you have an 8% sales tax, you may only be pocketing 7% (and even less after shipping if you don't have an Apple Store near). Obviously this offer ranges from small bonus to adequate refund, depending on your circumstance, but returning an iMac is far from a money making venture.