Bookyards editor: This is cool .... The 25 Best Movie Stunts of All Time (Popular Mechanics).
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
These Covert Geologists Helped The Allies Win The Second World War
Troops and equipment land on the shores of Sicily during the first day of the Allied invasion on July 10, 1943. Imperial War Museums
Robin Andrews, Forbes: Meet The Covert Geologists That Helped The Allies Win The Second World War
Scientists are often recruited during times of conflict to serve the national cause. Generally, when we think of those stolen academics, we think of physicists, chemists, engineers and mathematicians – the type that can either build better weapons or crack the enemies’ codes. That’s fair enough: they certainly made up a disproportionate number of researchers recruited by the military in the 20th Century.
What you may not know, however, is that geologists have played a role in warfare too: the US, UK, Germany and the Soviet Union had their very own secret geological intelligence units that played key roles in the bloodiest conflict in human history. For this particular article, we’ll focus on the role that American geologists played during the Second World War, and in the Cold War, but believe you me – the story of geology and conflict is richer and more bizarre than you could possibly imagine.
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CSN Editor: Considering how important this work was, I am surprised that they only had a few hundred geologists on staff.
Why Swirling Your Wine Is A Good Thing
Ars Technica: Swirling your wine is not pretentious; it’s just good physics
Swirling a glass of wine produces a rotating wave; swirling beer foam reverses rotation.
Wine aficionados are known for gently swirling their wine in the glass before tasting, and it isn't as pretentious as it seems. (Well, maybe a little.) They claim the rotation mixes in oxygen and enhances the flavor. Physics backs them up, specifically a mini-subfield dubbed "oenodynamics." The swirling action—technically called "orbital shaking"—creates a rotating gravity wave in the direction of the swirling force being applied, churning up the liquid in the process.
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CSN Editor: I do it all the time.
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
Russian Space Agency Says Hole In International Space Station Was Drilled Deliberately
A Russian official has said the International Space Station leak (pictured) could have been caused by deliberate sabotage. A leading theory from an unnamed source at Russia's Energia space manufacturing company has said that the hole was made on the ground
ISS Leak summary:— Chris B - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) September 3, 2018
First thought was MMOD strike.
Then NASA released pics. Lots of people: "Hmmm, doesn't look like MMOD". NASA deleted the photos.
Top Russian news site RIA NOVOSTI reported - via sources but apparently confirmed by Mr. Rogozin - it was a drill hole. pic.twitter.com/520kHK0TMc
Phys.org: Russia says space station leak could be deliberate sabotage
Russia launched checks Tuesday after its space chief said an air leak on the International Space Station last week could have been deliberate sabotage.
Space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin said the hole detected Thursday in a Russian space craft docked at the orbiting station was caused by a drill and could have been done deliberately, either back on Earth or by astronauts in space.
Astronauts used tape to seal the leak after it caused a small loss of pressure that was not life-threatening.
"There were several attempts at drilling," Rogozin said late Monday in televised comments.
He added that the drill appeared to have been held by a "wavering hand."
"What is this: a production defect or some premeditated actions?" he asked.
"We are checking the Earth version. But there is another version that we do not rule out: deliberate interference in space."
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More News On Reports That The Hole In The International Space Station May Have Been Drilled Deliberately
Russia suggests International Space Station 'leak' was DELIBERATE sabotage: Officials claim hull may have been damaged before lift-off by someone using a drill with a 'wavering hand' -- Daily Mail
Hole in International Space Station was drilled deliberately, says Russian space agency -- Telegraph
Russia says space station leak may be sabotage -- AFP
Russia Claims Hole In ISS Was ‘Deliberately Drilled,’ Says It's 'Matter of Honor' to Find Culprit -- Newsweek
Mystery surrounds space station leak after reports hole in outside could have been made by a person -- The Independent
That hole in the International Space Station was caused by a drill, not a meteorite, and the search is on for the culprit -- BGR
So no meteorite? Reports say Russian Soyuz spacecraft depressurization caused by drilled hole -- RT
A Look At How Birkenstocks Are Made
Cathy Horyn, The CUT: The Dwarf, the Prince, and the Diamond in the Mountain
An unlikely fable, in which Birkenstocks become cool and double sales overnight.
The city of Görlitz in eastern Germany is three hours from Berlin and two minutes from Poland. Miraculously, Görlitz was not bombed during the Second World War, and even more miraculously, its architectural treasures — Gothic, Baroque, rococo — were merely allowed to rot during the Communist era. Nothing was torn down. As a result, whole streets resemble a movie set, ideal for a colorful Saxon fairy tale (like Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, which was shot here) or a bleak Cold War thriller.
In June, I traveled to this corner of Germany with the photographer Juergen Teller to cover a company whose long history has been similarly marked by accident and fortune. For Görlitz is where a high percentage of Birkenstock’s cork-and-leather sandals are made; the company is headquartered near Bonn, and the family that has owned the business since 1774 lives mostly outside Germany.
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CSN Editor: I had a pair about 25 years ago. It is good to see that they are still in business.
What Is It Like To Be An Astronaut Before You Launch Into Space?
How do astronauts sleep the night before they have to go to space?
Most of us lie down on a bed, put our head on a pillow, close our eyes and go to sleep! But I’m guessing that is not what your question seeks. I’m thinking you want to know whether we sleep well the night before launch, i.e., do we get a good night’s sleep before our big day. Am I right?
Assuming I now understand your query, I can only give you my personal experience. My first pre-launch sleep attempt was June 7th, 2007 when I lay down on my bed in the very hotel-like astronaut crew quarters facility at the Kennedy Space Center. It was there that I tried desperately to “catch a few zzz’s” before our June 8 late afternoon liftoff.
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CSN Editor: I would not be able to sleep.
Tuesday, March 6, 2018
China's Tiangong-1 Space Station Is Expected To Come Crashing To Earth Within Weeks
The Tiangong-1 space station, which is expected to come crashing to earth within weeks.
The Guardian: China's Tiangong-1 space station will crash to Earth within weeks
Experts say it is impossible to plot where module will re-enter the atmosphere, but the chance is higher in parts of Europe, US, Australia and New Zealand.
China’s first space station is expected to come crashing down to Earth within weeks, but scientists have not been able to predict where the 8.5-tonne module will hit.
The US-funded Aerospace Corporation estimates Tiangong-1 will re-enter the atmosphere during the first week of April, give or take a week. The European Space Agency says the module will come down between 24 March and 19 April.
In 2016 China admitted it had lost control of Tiangong-1 and would be unable to perform a controlled re-entry.
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CSN Editor: It's going to create an impressive streak across the sky when it enters the atmosphere.
Google Employees Are Outraged That The Company Is Working With The Pentagon To Equip Military Drones With AI
Daily Mail: Google is working with the Pentagon to equip military drones with people-tracking AI in secretive 'Project Maven' deal, report claims
* Google is working with the Department of Defense on secretive 'Project Maven'
* Project Maven is tasked with equipping drones with artificial intelligence.
* This would allow unmanned vehicles to detect and identify objects in war zones
* Some Google employees are 'outraged' that the firm is working with the military to develop surveillance technologies, others say it raises ethical questions
The Pentagon may have gained a new, high-profile partner for its sophisticated AI system used to hunt for militants in Iraq and Syria.
Silicon Valley giant Google is working with the Department of Defense to develop advanced artificial intelligence for analyzing drone footage, Gizmodo reported, citing sources close to the situation.
The partnership centers around Project Maven, which is the codename for a system that analyzes aerial surveillance video to look for patterns that can military intelligence analysts.
And it seems some Google employees aren't happy with the move.
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More News On Working With The Pentagon To Equip Military Drones With AI
Google Is Helping the Pentagon Build AI for Drones -- Gizmodo
Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage—employees “outraged” -- Ars Technica
The Defense Department is taking on ISIS with Google's open-source AI software -- MIT Technology Review
Pentagon Drone Program Is Using Google AI -- Bloomberg
Google Is Quietly Providing AI Technology for Drone Strike Targeting Project -- The Intercept
Google is using its AI skills to help the Pentagon learn to analyze drone footage -- The Verge
Monday, March 5, 2018
Tweets For Today
Combining art and science has led to some amazing creations 😱 pic.twitter.com/3KMMiCck9M
— INSIDER (@thisisinsider) March 4, 2018
Neanderthals were the world's first artists, predating modern humans by at least 20,000 years. @ReutersBenHir reports: https://t.co/GC1FOBvg8U @ReutersTV pic.twitter.com/7HT22ToBSt— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) March 4, 2018
Pack your bags. Here is how your brain benefits by going to the beach. https://t.co/Rk5ug9EpGN
— Inc. (@Inc) March 4, 2018
WATCH: Thousands of baby red crabs march inland over Christmas Island beaches. More video: https://t.co/Wtdsos70tJ pic.twitter.com/jipyJdpOny— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) March 4, 2018
Sunday, March 4, 2018
The TESS Space Telescope Will Soon Begin The Search For More Exoplanets
Next Big Future: TESS space telescope will find many Earth and Super-Earth like Exoplanets starting this year
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky. In a two-year survey of the solar neighborhood, TESS will monitor more than 200,000 stars for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits. This first-ever spaceborne all-sky transit survey will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants, around a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances. No ground-based survey can achieve this feat.
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CSN Editor: The TESS telescope will be monitoring 200,000 stars. I will not be surprised if it finds a planet or two .... or maybe thousands.
How Europeans Colonised The World
Daily Mail: How Europeans colonised the world: Visualisation shows migration and marriage of millions of people over 500 years (and reveals when they stopped marrying their cousins)
* Scientists trawled 86 million profiles from a genealogy website, Geni
* They pieced together migrations, marriages and how long people lived for
* Culture change rather than improvements in transport stopped inbreeding
* Study found that women have migrated more than men over the last 300 years
* Scientists found good genes extend someone's life by an average of five years
* Team created a time-lapse showing these movements into just 30 seconds
The largest ever 'family tree' spanning 11 generations has revealed how Westerners colonised the world over the past 500 years.
Scientists trawled 86 million profiles from a genealogy website to uncover a 'family' of 13 million people predominantly from Europe and North America.
By looking at their genetic data, they were able to create a visualisation of their migrations and lifespans - and reveal exactly when they stopped marrying their cousins.
It was long thought that people in the west stopped marrying close relatives in the 19th century when better transportation allowed them to travel larger distances.
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CSN Editor: Another example that illustrates how migration is part of the human condition.
Super Wood
Wikimedia
Scientific American: Stronger Than Steel, Able to Stop a Speeding Bullet—It’s Super Wood!
Simple processes can make wood tough, impact-resistant—or even transparent.
Some varieties of wood, such as oak and maple, are renowned for their strength. But scientists say a simple and inexpensive new process can transform any type of wood into a material stronger than steel, and even some high-tech titanium alloys. Besides taking a star turn in buildings and vehicles, the substance could even be used to make bullet-resistant armor plates.
Wood is abundant and relatively low-cost—it literally grows on trees. And although it has been used for millennia to build everything from furniture to homes and larger structures, untreated wood is rarely as strong as metals used in construction. Researchers have long tried to enhance its strength, especially by compressing and “densifying” it, says Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park. But densified wood tends to weaken and spring back toward its original size and shape, especially in humid conditions.
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WNU Editor: Impressive. The applications are too numerous to list.
Chinese Police Are Now Using Facial-Recognition Eyewear To Screen Faces
This is not Google Glass, but facial recognition glass connected to Chinese police database. Deployed to a Zhengzhou railway station 5 days ago, it has detected at least 7 fugitives and 26 fake ID holders. #surveillance pic.twitter.com/eXrzRgORam— FAN Wenxin (@xinwenfan) February 6, 2018
Quartz: Chinese police are wearing sunglasses that can recognize faces
In the Matrix series, Keanu Reeves wears futuristic sunglasses to look cool when fighting against machines. But in China, police are now wearing sunglasses equipped with facial-recognition technology to catch criminal suspects.
Railway police in Zhengzhou, a central Chinese city, are the first in the country to use facial-recognition eyewear to screen passengers during the Lunar New Year travel rush, Chinese state media reported (link in Chinese) this week. The devices have already helped nab seven fugitives related to major criminal cases such as human trafficking and hit-and-runs, and 26 others who were traveling with fake identities.
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CSN Editor: I can see the day when this is not only being used by police forces around the world .... but also by the military in war zones or within their bases..
Amazon Has No Idea On How to Stop Someone Who Is Sending Sex Toys To Strangers
Getting unsolicited packages from unknown strangers is creepy. Being unable to stop it only makes them creepier.
The first time Nikki unexpectedly received a sex toy in an Amazon box, she thought there must have been a mix-up at the factory. She’d bought some mascara that hadn’t arrived yet.
“At first I believed it to be a mistake,” she said.
But then the other packages came, one by one. A cord to a Bluetooth device was next. No gift receipt, no footprints and, as she’d discover over the next week, no help. The last package had headphones.
“The weird part about it is if this were a prank or a hacker sending things to women on the internet, it’d be expensive. I looked [the sex toy] up, and it’s $25, which is sort of substantial,” she said.
“It seems so personal.”
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CSN Editor: The weird thing is that they cannot stop it.
Do You Want A Beehive In Your Home?
Bored Panda: Genius Company Installs Beehives In Your Living Room, And Here’s How It Works
As you probably know already, the bee population is in a consistent decline and has been for some time, with modern industrial farming methods and loss of habitat being identified causes.
This is bad news for all of us, as bees do the crucial job of pollinating so many of the plants that we rely on for food. In order to counter this, we have to come up with innovative solutions, as we all know how difficult it is to make huge, moneymaking corporations change their damaging practices.
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WNU Editor: This is not for me. :)
The U.S. Government Can Now Unlock Your iPhone
Apple Inc.
Forbes: The Feds Can Now (Probably) Unlock Every iPhone Model In Existence -- UPDATED
In what appears to be a major breakthrough for law enforcement, and a possible privacy problem for Apple customers, a major U.S. government contractor claims to have found a way to unlock pretty much every iPhone on the market.
Cellebrite, a Petah Tikva, Israel-based vendor that's become the U.S. government's company of choice when it comes to unlocking mobile devices, is this month telling customers its engineers currently have the ability to get around the security of devices running iOS 11 (right up to 11.2.6). That includes the iPhone X, a model that Forbes has learned was successfully raided for data by the Department for Homeland Security back in November 2017, most likely with Cellebrite technology.
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CSN Editor: We all knew that it was just a matter of time.
This Human-Controlled Robot Is 13 Feet Tall
CNBC: This 13-foot robot cost over $100 million to develop and looks like it's straight out of a sci-fi movie
Giant human-controlled robots aren't just for Hollywood anymore.
CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin tried out the Method-2, a 1.6-ton, 13-foot tall robot made by Hankook Mirae Technology in South Korea. It's the same robot that made an impression on Jeff Bezos at Amazon's MARS conference last year.
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CSN Editor: This is one hell of a big robot (and expensive).
Websites Designed by Artificial Intelligence
From YouTube: Henri Bergius, VP engineering at The Grid, an AI that builds your website based on its content, hacker and occasional adventurer, is the creator of Create.js and NoFlo.
In this second talk of the session Artificial Intelligence, Technology without Alternative? at Lift16, Henri Bergius reveals for the first time how he and his team are automating design processes and how the use of such an AI could radically change the way websites such as the amazon catalog or no-budget blogs look like.
How do you teach a machine to understand beauty, color matching, smart use of blank space? Enter the world of AI-designed websites with Henri Bergius!
CSN Editor: They still have a lot of work ahead of them.
World's 5 Largest Gold Nuggets
The world’s second largest nugget in existence, the Great Triangle, was excavated in 1842 in the Miass area of the Russian Urals. The triangular-shaped nugget, owned by the Russian state, weighs of 36.2 kg, including a fine gold content of 32.94 kg, or 1,059 troy ounces. The Great Triangle is on display in the Russia’s ‘Diamond Fund’ collection in the Moscow Kremlin. © Yu. Levyant / Reuters
RT: World's 5 largest gold nuggets that haven't been melted down
Gold has been an attractive asset throughout much of human history. Today's investors use it as a safe haven against market volatility. But where did gold mining start and what does the precious metal look like on extraction?
Humanity learned to extract gold centuries ago. The oldest known gold artifacts were reportedly found in the Varna Necropolis on the territory of modern Bulgaria. The graves allegedly date back to 4200 BC, which shows that gold mining might be at least 7,000 years old.
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CSN Editor: The bigger story is mankind's fascination with gold since the beginning of time.
3000 Years Of Art In Just 3 Minutes
Kotte: 3000 years of art in just three minutes
This short film from 1968, set to Classical Gas, shows 3000 years of fine art in just three minutes. As the final frame of the film says:
You have just had all of the Great Art of the World indelibly etched in your brain. You are now cultured.
As mesmerizing as the film is, especially for 1968, the backstory is perhaps even more interesting. Mason Williams, who wrote and recorded Classical Gas, saw this film by UCLA film student Dan McLaughlin and arranged, with McLaughlin’s permission, to have the original soundtrack replaced with his song and to have it aired on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on CBS, then the number one show on TV in America.
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CSN Editor: Love the music. What is amazing is that this video/movie was done in 1968.
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