Japanese researchers have developed a synthetic molecular transport system that could form the basis for the development of a method for transporting therapeutic genes into cell nuclei.
Klar wie ein Kristall – Bayreuther Physiker machen komplexe molekulare Strukturen sichtbar
Bei der Aufklaerung der Strukturen von transparenten Festkoerpern sind Physiker einen bedeutenden Schritt vorangekommen. Ein von ihnen entwickeltes, auf der Einzelmolekuelspektroskopie beruhendes Verfahren ist imstande, die Strukturen eines Festkoerpers, z.B. eines polykristallinen Materials, unter dem Mikroskop sichtbar zu machen.
World’s Stupidest Cellphone Thief Foiled By Victim’s Brilliant Plot [Crime]
Peter Gamblin, a 24 year old former billiard champion in the UK, was busted for stealing a cellphone after the victim called him up and asked for his name and address.
Uh...yeah sure. That's Peter Gamblin...G. A. M. B. L. I. N.
According to the court, Gamblin gave the victim his name and address as an "act of bravado." It took a jury only 25 minutes to convict him. Needless to say, this guy is either the world's biggest moron (next to this guy) or he has a serious asshole friend that set him up to take the fall. [Telegraph via Fark]
What Went Wrong With Duke Nukem Forever [Gaming]
Even though the antagonist of the story, George Broussard, co-owner of 3D realms, didn't consent to be interviewed for this story, Clive Thompson pieced enough together to get a good picture of what the hell went wrong. And it's obvious.
Here's the bottom line: bad management. Broussard kept stalling and stalling the release because he could, since he and the company were both bursting with enough cash to sustain things semi-indefinitely. Until they weren't.
Obsessed with moving the game into the latest engine, starting from Quake, to Unreal, to whatever-the-hell-else they were using between 1998 and now, Broussard basically condemned the game to development hell. If he had taken the boss's role of putting his foot down and making a decision to ship the game instead of constantly being in the engineer's role of always wanting the newest thing, we'd probably be playing the 3rd sequel for Duke Nukem by now.
Head over to Wired to see the whole story. [Wired]
This Tesla Coil Christmas Tree Could Kill You [Electricity]
I hope Santa's careful around Peter Terren's Christmas tree, because it's a Tesla coil with some color filters set up to make all the sparks, zaps, and electric arcs look oh-so-pretty. Yes, it's oh-so-pretty and oh-so-potentially-deadly.
This isn't the first time that Terren has made a Tesla coil Christmas tree, nor do I think it will be the last. He uses slow exposure photography to capture these incredible image, taking about two minutes for each of the shots. You can check out his site for some behind-the-scenes pictures of how he arranged the project and the safety measures he took while working with this coil.
In the meantime, I'll just be here ooh-ing and aaahh-ing for a while. [Tesla Down Under via Neatorama via Make]
Obama: If You Sit on the Tarmac for Three Hours, You Deserve Pretzels [Crime]
President Obama's new "Passenger's Bill of Rights" should come in handy now with the massive apocalyptic snowstorms ravaging the northeast and cheering children's hearts. If you sit on the tarmac in a plane for more than two hours and haven't been given food or water, or for more than three hours and haven't been given the option of getting off the goddamn plane, the airline is now subject to massive fines ($27,500 per passenger).
Previously, pilots would keep planes on the tarmac as long as possible out of fear of losing their place in the takeoff line, and an average of 1,500 flights (114,000 passengers) per year violate these new laws. Message to American, Delta, USAir et al: You want us to sit for longer than a movie, you better bring me some damn pretzels. [NYTimes]
Why Is This Hacker So Miserable Looking? [Image Cache]
I wonder what's going through Mitch "oorange3" Adair's head in this picture. Is he annoyed that someone made yet another joke about hacking the Gibson or did he just lose the US Cyber Challenge? Either way, that's one unhappy-looking hacker.
The US Cyber Challenge in which Adair participated is a huge competition with the goal of hacking your opponents' computers while defending your own from attacks. It's not just a silly game for the sake of showing off either: The competition is designed to find talented individuals and recruit them to defend our country, companies, and computers from evil-doers' cyberattacks.
Neat competition, but I still wonder if Adair's frustration was because he didn't win or because of a lame joke. [CNN]
Update: Adair has emailed me to set the record straight. He explains that this isn't frustration or annoyance we're seeing. It's the "21st century's version of Rodin's The Thinker."
DIY Bedbug Trap Tackles Infestations For $15 [DIY]
Bedbugs are more common than you might think, and the thought of these disgusting creatures biting into your flesh at night is enough to make anyone paranoid. This super cheap and easy DIY solution can bring you peace of mind.
The bedbugs are attracted to carbon dioxide, so you'll want to use something like dry ice to lure them out of your bed and into somewhere where you can confirm the infestation. All you need is an insulated 1/3 gallon jug, 2.5 pounds of dry ice pellets and a piece of paper. That's about $15 worth of equipment in total. And dry ice can be easily had at many supermarkets, ice cream stores, and the like. Wan-Tien Tsai of Rutgers University explains the setup, which uses the dry ice and a type of rigging to trap the bedbugs inside:
She stood the jug in a plastic cat food dish with a piece of paper taped on the outside of the dish as a ramp up to the rim. The bowl's steep, slippery inside, with an added dusting of talcum powder, kept bugs from crawling out again.
In tests in real apartments, the homemade setup detected bedbugs as well, or better, than did two brands of professional exterminating equipment
I'll tell you what, even if you don't suspect bedbugs at home, I wouldn't hesitate to use something like this at that seedy hotel you might find yourself staying at for the holidays. [Wired Image via WestchesterGov]
NZXT Hades Chassis Looks Like a Cylon Easter Island Head [Cases]
NZXT's new Hades case looks like a primitive stone carving, worshipped by Pacific Islanders sometime in the last millennia. It gazes upon you, solemn and silent, imposing and intimidating, powerful and peaceful.
The Hades has nine 5.25-inch bays (or five 5.25-inch and four 3.5-inch, if you prefer) and has the extra legroom for massive, insecurity-compensating cards like the ATI 5970 as well as some pretty substantial cooling mechanisms.
Airflow is optimized with 5 fans(dual 200mm intake, 200 mm front fan, dual top 140mm fans, side 200mm fan, and rear 120mm exhaust). NZXT includes all the fans with the exception of the top 140mm and also provides a dual fan 8W per channel controller giving enthusiasts freedom to manage intake and exhaust airflow. A three temperature display on the front panel allows the user to see the temperature inside the chassis even when the door is closed.
Hades is available now from NZXT for $90. [NZXT]
WSJ: Apple’s Plan to Kill Cable With iTunes (And the Tablet’s Coming in March) [Rumor]
The WSJ says that CBS and Disney are seriously considering Apple's plan to kill your cable box with iTunes TV show subscriptions. Oh, and that the Apple tablet thing is coming in March.
The WSJ says that Apple's plan for iTunes TV show subscriptions would have you pay a monthly fee for "access to some TV shows from a selection" of major networks, and that CBS and Disney are the two most seriously thinking about it. CBS would apparently offer up shows from both CBS and the CW, like Gossip Girl, while Disney would be offering up shows from ABC, ABC Family and the Disney Channel. What's interesting is that the networks could actually make more money per subscriber than they do from cable companies, with broadcast networks picking up $2-$4 per subscriber, and cable networks grabbing $1-$2. (Which has to piss cable companies off, no doubt why networks are treading carefully around this proposal.) Originally, Apple had floated something more like a traditional cable payment, like paying $30 a month for a big bundle of TV stuff.
All of this, of course, would fit into Apple's larger plan to remake the iTunes model with Lala, and Apple hopes to launch the service sometime next year. While the way Apple says songs and TV shows now would stick around according to the Journal, the combination of web-and-streaming-oriented music and TV subscriptions fundamentally changes the way iTunes would work.
Oh, and of course, this is all happening as Apple "finalizes its plans for a tablet device," Apple's trying to launch "by the end of March." Interesting, that's what an analyst heard not too long ago. Killing cable and up-ending the publishing industry in one fell swoop? That's a pretty busy 2010. [WSJ]
Vegas Gets Huge Ice Popsicles, Water Tornadoes and Laser Fountains [Attractions]
City Center, the newest megaresort in Las Vegas, boasts a few awesome-looking attractions, including gigantic ice popsicles, water tornadoes and laser-colored fountains.
All of these attractions were designed by WET, the design firm behind the famous Bellagio fountains. Fast Company got a tour of the new facilities and WET's offerings, and they look pretty impressive.
Sure, there's a recession on and Vegas has been one of the cities hit hardest by the disintegrated housing market. But god dammit, if I can't live in a world with gigantic ice sculptures that are automatically created just to melt ever day, I don't want to live at all. [Fast Company]
Constellation Year in Review Video
Marc's note: From NASA's Constellation program comes today's video: Constellation Year in Review 2009. It's the holidays and year end so why not a feel good video that showcases all of Constellations achievements with all the centers contributing.
After watching the video what do you think of Constellation's progress this past year? Video after the jump.
Marc's Update:
One of our readers was quick to point out that along with the video a new Constellation blog post was posted today stating that they have finalized the thrust oscillation issue fix.
Constellation Finalizes Thrust Oscillation Fix, NASA Constellation Blog
"When we discover an engineering risk, like thrust oscillation, we tackle it with full rigor," said Jeff Hanley, Constellation Program manager. "That's what this team has done with thrust oscillation. We assumed the worst when the problem was first discovered. The good news is there is no empirical evidence of problematic oscillations from our ground test of the first stage development motor or during the Ares I-X first test flight."
Teeth-Installed Hearing Aids Are Coming [Medical]
A company called Sonitus Medical is currently working on a new type of hearing aid for people with single-sided deafness, one that uses vibrations in your teeth to allow you to hear again.
The small device would connect around the teeth and use bone conductivity to take sounds from a microphone in the deaf ear and turn them into vibrations that could be heard by the working ear. Pretty crazy! It's currently being tested, with plans for it to hit the FDA next year for approval and then official release. [New Scientist via io9]
AT&T’s Warped View of the Internet [At&t]
Did you know? Unless you have a 3Mbps internet connection, you can't use Facebook. Without 12Mbps internet, you can't even email files! And just forget streaming video without at least 18Mbps internet. Welcome to the internet, according to AT&T.
This chart for AT&T U-Verse internet makes no sense whatsoever. For one, what's the difference between "watching TV/video clips" and "streaming video" and why does one need just 12 measly megabits, while the other needs 18? Also, the numbers just don't work. Even full HD 1080p streaming video through Zune on Xbox Live just requires 10Mbps-12Mbps of bandwidth.
If anything, it's the internet gaming that needs 12Mbps, as I was sadly reminded while trying to download the entirety Left 4 Dead 2 over the 6Mbps AT&T DSL I've got in GA—the fastest internet AT&T will give me. I'd console myself with Hulu, but you know, it might not work. [AT&T, Thanks Slacker!]
Please Send Us Steve Ballmer’s Podcasts [Microsoft]
Hello Microsofties, we hear via Neowin that Steve Ballmer is now broadcasting podcasts to the entire company. We bet they're really interesting, and we'd really like to listen to them. If you want to send them to us discreetly at tips@gizmodo.com, we (and your fellow readers) would really appreciate it. [NeoWin]
Obama sets a good example | Bad Astronomy
I love a President who gets it. In general, science, and in particular, vaccinations:
Yeah, he got his novel H1N1 vaccination, just like my daughter did a few hours ago, and just like I will as soon as they are available for adults in my area.
Is It the iPhone? Or the Network? [IPhone]
It's a funny thing. Right after AT&T's CEO admits their network has problems and the iPhone's shitty reception becomes a late-night punchline, AT&T crushes our nationwide 3G test. It makes you wonder, again, is it the network, or the iPhone?
AT&T's network is generally reviled. Users of the iPhone, in particular, loathe it the kind of deep hatred reserved for people who steal from charities or beat up grandmothers. More specifically still, are people in New York and San Francisco, locations where even AT&T Mobility's CEO admits the network is "performing at levels below our standards." AT&T fares the worst in JD Power's call quality ratings overall.
It's no secret that the iPhone isn't merely the embodiment of AT&T's network woes, but it's also, at least in part, the cause. The 3 percent of people responsible for 40 percent of the traffic on AT&T's network de la Vega is so fond of pointing the finger at are most assuredly iPhone users. AT&T notoriously didn't roll out MMS for the iPhone until this fall, not only months behind international carriers, but behind their own schedule, because they needed "to make sure our network is ready to handle what we expect will be a record volume of MMS traffic." And iPhone tethering still isn't offered by AT&T, even though international carriers do, because it "could exponentially increase traffic on the network." Congestion is a very real problem on AT&T's network, even AT&T admits that.
Yet AT&T crushed our 3G tests all over the place, not just in their backyard of Atlanta. The major consideration is that we didn't use phones to test, but 3G sticks, and we only tested data. While coverage is inherently a part of the test—if we hadn't have gotten a signal in the places we tested, or the signal was shitty, it would've affected their placement in the test, obviously (just look at T-Mobile's results in some spots)—we were mainly testing for speed. The iPhone's problem is that it drops calls, frequently, or simply doesn't connect. It has crappy reception. Other phones we've used on AT&T fare noticeably better. So it's easy, and obvious, to blame the iPhone, and its chipset as some have. (We explain why cell reception isn't perfect across the board here.)
But why isn't there an international outcry about the iPhone having garbage reception, then? It's possible, I suppose, that those networks have so much better coverage, even if the iPhone does have an inferior chipset with poor reception, it doesn't matter. It's just wrapped up in a blanket of coverage so comfy it still works fine. (And we have heard, though can't confirm, that the iPhone 3G at least used an inferior, cheaper Infineon chipset because AT&T wouldn't certify the one Apple actually wanted to use.)
So we have two contradictory piece of information. The iPhone does better internationally, and AT&T does better with other devices. So is it the network, or the phone? Probably a little of both. Help us out, engineers.
To Catch an Xbox Live Predator [Xbox Live]
Halo fanboys aren't the only creeps on Xbox Live: 27-year-old Edward Stout was convicted of seducing a 15-year-old girl over Xbox Live and then driving 30 hours nonstop to meet and have sex with her.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but it's a pretty sobering reminder of why parents should pay attention to how their kids play games. The usual concern is violence in the games themselves and dumb kids blithely screaming "fag!" at each other, but there are obviously way worse things out there.
I know MySpace purges known sex offenders and many states require them to register all online identities, including Live gamertags, but I've never heard of any particular campaigns where Xbox Live went after them, so I'd be curious what kind of safeguards they have in place, if any. [SF Gate via Max Console]
Michael Steele gets it… Dems flipping the American public off
Tea Party Patriots, Libertarians and other Free Marketeers have been clammoring for the Republican leadership to take a more hardline approach to opposing Democrat initiatives. RNC Chairman Michael Steele may be leading the way.
"They're willing to basically flip the bird to the American people on this issue..."
Happy Solstice
[an encore, from a long ago Solstice. but still true today]
If you had walked out into my backyard around 4:40 the last few afternoons you would have been greeted with the orange ball of the sun setting with a final low glare over the tops of the buildings that I can see low on the horizon out across the Los Angeles basin. At this time each late afternoon I like to get out the binoculars that I keep next to the back door, and I step outside to watch the last seconds of the sun setting and to find the spot where the last glimmer of light for the day appears. Every night that glimmer has moved a little further to the south. Just a few weeks ago the last glint vanished just behind the cupola of the Pasadena city hall. By just the next day, the cupola was clear, but the sun disappeared behind the building to the left of city hall. Last night it set 4 or 5 office buildings further to the left, still, behind an anonymous office tower that I can't recognize, but through the binoculars appears impressive with the sun directly framing it and the occasional stray bit of light going through a window on the far side, rattling around on the inside, and emerging as the last bit of bit of light before a long winter night. Tonight I watched again, and the sun set behind exactly the same anonymous tower. It hadn't moved at all. Today, therefore, must be the solstice. The solstice is many things: the first day of winter, the earliest sunset, the longest night of the year, the latest sunrise. Most people notice the sunset more than anything else. But solstice comes from the latin "solstitium": sol for sun, and stitium for a stoppage ("armistice" comes from the same root: a stoppage of arms). The stoppage of the southern progression of the sun -- the turnaround to come back to the north -- was considered a big enough phenomenon to give the event its name. The sun stoppage. As the darkness tries to ascend (quickly; these winter twilights don't last) the other part of the season becomes clear. While the nearby glare of Los Angeles means that we never truly have darkness in these parts, this time of year everyone is doing their best to cut the darkness even more. I can see Christmas lights on the houses throughout Pasadena, and, with the binoculars, I can see to downtown Los Angeles where the buildings have been strung with lights. And who can blame them? With the nights so long and the sun moving further and further south, who would not want to try to do their part to make up for the absence of the light and the heat? Who would not be at least a little afraid at this time every year that the sun would somehow not decide to stop and then come back?
At our house we celebrate the solstice with our best attempt to coax back the sun. When the night is as dark as it will get, we gather with friends around our Christmas tree, turn out all of the lights in the house, and slowly refill the house with the yellowy-orange glow as we one by one light the dozens of candles hanging in the branches of the tree. Lighting candles on Christmas trees is a well known Bad Thing to Do, but we find that with a tree cut down the day before (and a fire extinguisher on hand just in case), all goes smoothly. Like the sun, the candles slowly go out. Some catch a few warm drafts and burn more quickly, some get less air and burn more slowly, but one by one they all eventually go until, with just two or three left, the house is dark again and the shadows of branches shimmer sinisterly on the ceiling. Finally the last candle sputters and dies, sometimes with a long glow and sometimes with a sudden final pop, and the longest night of the year totally envelopes us.
The night sky gets in on the act this time of year, too. Many people who claim to know no constellations in the sky can look up and identify Orion in the winter sky. With the three bright stars making the belt, the scabbard of stars hanging below, and the quartet making the shoulders and knees, Orion is truly simple to identify. But Orion is also composed of some of the brighter of the stars in the sky. In fact, look outside, and look around Orion. Bright stars are all around. The constellation of Taurus, Sirius, the brightest star around. The seasons of the sky are not created equally. Winter is a spectacular display of stars and constellations unlike any other, as if the stars, too, are trying to help us out on the longest winter nights by saving the best show for the very end of the year. None of this is true, of course. The spectacular winter skies are caused by the fact that we are looking straight in to the Milky Way galaxy, instead of out of it as we do in the spring and fall. But still, it is hard not to see the similarity between the lights strung in the town below trying to dispel the night and call back the sun, and the lights above, also seemingly strung for the same reason.
Tomorrow, if the weather holds, I'm going to go outside with my binoculars and see exactly where the sun sets again. Because I do this every year, and because I can look up the precise date and time of the solstice, and because I know that the earth will continue to go around the sun with the same tilt for my entire lifetime, I know what will happen: the sun will have moved away from the anonymous office building and finally started moving right again. The day will get imperceptibly longer. Really, there is not much suspense in what will happen, just a certain reassuring inevitability. But if I didn't know these things and didn't have confidence in the inevitable, I can imagine myself holding my breath as the last rays of the sun were shooting out and I was trying to see just where it was setting. I stopped yesterday, but is it really turning around today? Will the days really get longer again? Will my crops (well, ok, my vegetable garden) come back to life? And I'll then see the spot and it will be clearly north and I'll know. And at that point, I will say to anyone within sight: happy new year. For while the calendar claims I have another week to go, the Christmas lights and the candles and Orion and Taurus and Sirius will have done their jobs, and the sun will have started its new year already today and we should all be glad for the solstice.
