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The Week In Numbers: The World's Largest Lego Model, Viagra For Women, And More

Rose Pastore — Fri, 24 May 2013 22:00:00 GMT

Lego's life-size X-wing fighter Dan Bracaglia

5.3 million: the number of Lego bricks used to build the world's largest Lego model, a life-size X-wing fighter complete with Lego Luke Skywalker

40,000: the planned population for Masdar City, a solar-powered eco-metropolis in the middle of the Arabian desert and the world's most ambitious eco-city

15 days: the time it took the journal Cell to accept and publish last week's study on the first cloned human embryo. An anonymous online commenter has now pointed out four potential errors in the paper.

20,000 feet: the height of the ash plume created by the recent eruption of Alaska's Pavlof volcano

2016: the year a "female Viagra," called Lybrido, could hit the market in the U.S.

$390: the price to book a room in Barcelona's futuristic space hotel, which sits atop an artificial island and features a zero-gravity spa, a vertical wind tunnel, and a marina for parking yachts

16: the number of tiger genomes that scientists sequenced in order to discover the single genetic mutation responsible for all white tigers

40 minutes: the time this week's deadly Moore, Okla., tornado was on the ground. See a reconstruction of the twister from start to finish, in videos, as well as satellite images of the disaster.

16 minutes: the warning time residents received before the deadly tornado touched down in Newcastle, Okla. Why are tornados so hard to predict?

-15 degrees Celsius: the coldest temperature at which bacteria have ever been discovered to thrive. Researchers recently found these cold-resistant microbes in the Canadian Arctic-which is great news for life on Mars.

$25: the cost of a newer, stronger 3-D printed pistol created by a Wisconsin engineer

1987: the year a German scientist showed that itching wasn't just a less intense form of pain. Now, researchers have at long last identified the molecule responsible for itchiness.

80 minutes: the length of the first test flight of the U.S. Navy's game-changing MQ-4C Triton spy drone, which can detect and identify a ship from 2,000 nautical miles away and 10 miles above sea level

$249: the price of a video game headset that will zap your brain to improve your gaming ability

30 years: the shelf-life of the "ink" cartridges for NASA's new 3-D printer that can print food from insects and plants

1/10,000 of a second: the speed at which the jaws of a trap-jaw ant can snap shut on prey (see a parasite-infected trap-jaw ant below)

25 percent: the reduction in Ireland's population after the mid-19th-century potato blight. Scientists have finally revealed the specific pathogen responsible for the famine.

2 months: the time it took to build this booze-infused game of Battleship (please sink responsibly)

$1.1 billion: the amount a giant carnivorous plant spent to acquire Tumblr this week

23: the number of infants involved in the small study that sparked the "crack baby" epidemic scare of the 1980s (which turned out to be totally bogus)

50 years: the length of time the U.S. Navy has employed dolphins to search for mines (the hard-working marine mammals recently discovered something really, really cool)

22.22 miles: the distance the Mars rover Opportunity has traveled on Mars, the longest distance a NASA vehicle has ever driven on another planet

$2.6 billion: the cost of a NASA initiative to lasso and asteroid and bring it back to Earth's orbit (NASA Administrator Charles Bolden this week inspected a prototype ion propulsion engine for the mission)

Your Complete Guide To White Wine [Infographic]

Colin Lecher — Fri, 24 May 2013 21:30:00 GMT

20 White Wines In 20 Flavors Sean Seidell

Or, how to get smashed with class

So you're about to order a bottle of tasty white wine! Do you want dry, very dry, or off-dry? And what ratio of melon-ness to butterscotch-ness do you want? What about saltiness? Stonefruit-ness? If you don't know, your waiter will look at you through eyes swollen with pity; your date will excuse him/herself and climb for freedom through a bathroom window; you will be left alone, with only a middling bottle by your side, a laughable semblance of comfort.

This infographic can help!

Graphic designer Sean Seidell, who previously made this equally delicious infographic overview of chocolate flavors, aggregated wine reviews from sites like Wine Spectator to organize 20 different types of wine. The wines are arranged by 20 different flavors, like "honey" and "herbal," then more generally by five categories: very dry, dry, off-dry, semi-sweet, and sweet. Dryness or sweetness, of course, is as much a result of the winemaker's technique as it is of the source grape varietal, but the chart shows the characteristics of each varietal's most popular style.

"One of the things I enjoyed most about this project was researching a wine and then going out to purchase a bottle of that wine," Seidell wrote in an email to Popular Science. "First I would try the wine without looking at my notes and try to sort out the flavors. I'd come up with maybe four flavors at most on my own. Then I would look at my research notes and keep those flavors in mind as I took another sip. Sauvignon Blanc, for example, had what appeared to be an impossible number of flavors, but as I drank it I found that it really did contain what my research said it did: Very Dry with lots of Citrus, Acid, Melon, and Stonefruit flavors alongside lighter Honey, Floral, Creamy, and Mineral flavors."

You'll know exactly what you want for a nice drink. (Or to get trashed on. Whichever.)

The World's Most Expensive Weapon Just Got A Little Cheaper

Clay Dillow — Fri, 24 May 2013 20:45:00 GMT

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter USAF

Cost projections for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program declined $4.5 billion last year.

File this under something you don't see every day. The total projected price for the Pentagon's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program--the most expensive weapons development program in history--has dropped. Though its program history is riddled with cost and schedule overruns alongside unforeseen engineering and design issues, the total price tag for the JSF fell $4.5 billion in 2012, the first time in the program's history that the projected cost has gone anywhere but up (and up and up).

The cost savings come from the Pentagon's annual selected acquisitions report (SAR), which reviewed 78 DoD programs and found that to absolutely no one's surprise the overall cost of Pentagon acquisition programs grew by nearly $40 billion (or 2.44 percent) on the whole last year. But it seems all the talk of federal belt-tightening might be having an impact on Pentagon culture. This was also the first time in a long time that no program in the SAR went 15 percent or more over its budget.

Pentagon officials credited the Better Buying Power initiative, an in-house effort to reform weapons procurement to better allocate resources and reduce redundant or wasteful spending, with helping to curb spending on several programs.

For a program with such a checkered past--it's been considered for the budgetary chopping block more than once--the drop in overall cost is huge for the JSF program and an indicator that it may finally be moving toward initial operating capability. Often a program finds a way to spend the money it already has in its projections, so the downward revision in total price may amount to something the JSF program really needed: a public relations boost at a point when pricey government programs are not popular with anyone.

So not only is the JSF the most expensive weapon ever developed, but it might now hold the title--at $4.5 billion--for the most expensive PR moment ever purchased.

[Defense News]

Will Google (And The US Government) Permit Google Glass To Recognize Faces On Sight?

Dan Nosowitz — Fri, 24 May 2013 20:01:14 GMT

Google Glass Sans Person Google

"Okay, Glass. Who's that?"

TechCrunch has a nice look at a new API from Lambda Labs, an "early-stage startup" (meaning, brand-new) from San Francisco, that's causing a bit of consternation. Lambda Labs makes a facial recognition API, which you can actually try out here in your browser. But now Lambda has released a version of that API specifically for Google Glass.

There are certain software restrictions that hold back what the hardware can do--in this case, you can't use the facial recognition API to get a real-time identification. Instead, you have to take a picture, send it to the app's developers for it to be analyzed, and then receive the ID. That doesn't take long, but it's not exactly a Robocop-level ID system.

But the Glass hardware is capable of that kind of real-time information flow, to a degree. Glass isn't an augmented reality system; it's more like a tiny notifications screen in the corner of your field of view. You won't see a face with a name under it, but you might see a face, then tilt your eyes up and to the left and see text with an ID on it.

The bigger and perhaps more interesting issue here is whether this will fly with Google and the US government. In a New York Times article, Steve Lee, director of project management for Google Glass, said: "We've consistently said that we won't add new face recognition features to our services unless we have strong privacy protections in place." And then there's the inquiry from eight members of Congress about Google Glass's potential privacy implications.

I've written about how Google Glass isn't a surveillance device, but this is something a little bit different: the debate here is all fine lines and shades of gray. The API already exists, the technology is common, and the hardware is out there. Does it really matter if you're performing this action with a smartphone or Google Glass? Can you ethically stop someone from accessing previously-accessible data just because it's in a slightly different form? It's a nuanced and complex question, one we don't have an answer to--but one that Google and lawmakers will have to address.

[via TechCrunch]

Big Pic: Hubble Space Telescope Captures The Ring Nebula In Astonishing Detail

Clay Dillow — Fri, 24 May 2013 19:00:00 GMT

The Ring Nebula

New images of the Ring Nebula captured by the Hubble Space Telescope are redefining the way astronomers understand its shape.

NASA, ESA, C.R. Robert O'Dell (Vanderbilt University), G.J. Ferland (University of Kentucky), W.J. Henney and M. Peimbert (National Autonomous University of Mexico)

Astronomers love to point their telescopes at the Ring Nebula. Located 2,000 light years away in the constellation Lyra, this ring of glowing gas has a distinctive elliptical shape when seen from Earth. But new images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope suggest that the nebula actually looks a lot more like a football or a misshapen doughnut.

Scientists now believe that the blue and green gaseous material at the center of the ring is a large football-shaped region sheathed by a ring of cooler gas (the yellow and orange ring) at its fattest point near the center. So the ends of the hotter football-shaped gas cloud protrude from either end of the ring, and we're looking directly at the end of the football, so we see the enveloping cooler gas as a ring encircling the hotter blue/green gas.

What does all that mean? If you're an astronomer it means you have a better understanding of the Ring Nebula. That in turn provides insight into the way our own sun's nebula will form in another six billion years or so when it runs out of fuel, sheds its outer gasses, and collapses in on itself (it won't look like this because our sun isn't as big, but nonetheless there will be similarities). For the rest of us, it means look at that amazing image of the Ring Nebula!

[NASA]

Disco-Ball People And Other Amazing Images From This Week

Colin Lecher — Fri, 24 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

Disco-Ball People

For an exhibition at Christian Larsen gallery in Stockholm, artist Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen covered mannequins in broken mirror shards, then projected light onto them, turning the mannequins into disco-ball people.

Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen via Colossal

Plus a Lamborghini from the future, a full-size Lego X-wing, and more

Robotic Kite Power Could Turn The Sky Into A Wind Farm

Kelsey D. Atherton — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:15:00 GMT

Turbines and Kites Makani Power

Google's acquisition of a kite power generator manufacturer suggests a strong future for the technology.

Google has acquired a Bay Area technology company that generates power through wind turbines attached to robotic kites. The news comes just a couple weeks after the company, Makani Power, completed the first fully autonomous flight of a kite power system.

How flying generators work: the kite flies in a circle, off nothing more than lift and wind, and uses that motion to push air over its propellers, which in turn generate electricity. The energy is then transmitted down a tether attached to a landing station, dubbed the "spar buoy." Makani claims that the system generates more energy than conventional turbines and costs less to build.

Why is Google interested? Google uses a tremendous amount of electricity, and has copped to being a little embarrased by how much fossil fuel it uses. Google actively seeks out renewable energy, and has invested in wind farms before. Efficient, futuristic renewable energy harvested by flying robots? Ideal.

Bridge Collapse in Washington State Sends Two Cars Plunging Into The Skagit River

Clay Dillow — Fri, 24 May 2013 16:29:15 GMT

The collapsed I-5 span over Washington's Skagit River

No one was killed, but it's just another example of how badly American infrastructure is crumbling.

It's been a rough week for bridges around the U.S. At about 7 p.m. local time in Washington state yesterday a bridge spanning the Skagit river north of Seattle (part of Interstate 5) collapsed after a truck carrying a tall load collided with one of the spans, sending two cars plunging into the river below. The three people in those cars all survived with non-life-threatening injuries, but it should probably come as a surprise to no one that the bridge--which services about 71,000 crossings of the Skagit river every day--is rated "functionally obsolete" by the Federal Highway administration.

As noted above, the collapse didn't happen purely due to the poor state of the bridge. A tractor-trailer carrying an overly tall load struck one of the overhead supports on the bridge as it crossed, precipitating the collapse. That doesn't sound like something that should happen, but the author acknowledges that he is not a civil engineer and does not understand all the nuances of bridge building.

Although to really understand this particular collapse one would need to be a civil engineer circa 1955, which is when this particular span of I-5 was constructed. The rating of "functionally obsolete" doesn't mean that this bridge was structurally deficient, but that its design is outdated, particularly in some specific ways. For instance, its shoulders were too narrow. And perhaps more importantly, its overhead clearance was too low.

In a November 2012 inspection it scored 47 out of 100 on a sufficiency rating. And it's not alone. A quarter of Washington state's 7,840 bridges are considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. And lest you be shaking your head wondering how the bureaucrats in Washington state ever let it come to this, be advised: If you're currently in the U.S., your state likely isn't doing much better. Collectively America holds a D+ rating on its infrastructure report card issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers (who actually are civil engineers). Those engineers estimate we need $3.6 trillion in investment by 2020 to shore up our crumbling infrastructure (there are a few ways to do this, like this and this). No big deal.

In other, more video-friendly infrastructure news, this 300-yard wooden railway bridge caught fire and collapsed in Lampasas County, Texas, (that's just northwest of Austin) earlier this week. Firefighters were on the scene for 15 hours trying to save it this rail link spanning the Colorado river before it succumbed to the fire damage. This bridge--which was built in 1910 and still handles regular railway freight--didn't collapse from infrastructure deficiencies (that we know of). But it did collapse spectacularly.

[Fox News]

These 11 Robot Bartenders Will Get You Drunk

Kelsey D. Atherton — Fri, 24 May 2013 16:00:00 GMT

The MakrShakr Shaking Arm MIT

These robotic bartenders can do everything from mix drinks to evaluate the quality of your wine

Click here to enter the gallery

In the future, we'll take self-driving cars to cookouts, raise a glass to the robots fighting wars abroad (or, okay, to their remote human operators), and drink cocktails made by robots.

Wait, what? Robot bartenders! They're everywhere! Here, I've assembled 11 of the most intriguing autonomous machines involved in serving alcohol. Some are test models, others are hobbyist creations, and at least one is a successful crowdfunded project (yes, people are willing to pay for a bartender who doesn't sneer when you order a Malibu bay breeze--so I like fruity drinks, so the hell what?). Check out the gallery for a peek at tomorrow's most talented bartenders.

NASA Inspects Ion Engine Prototype For Asteroid-Hauling Rocket

Francie Diep — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:32:57 GMT

Ion Propulsion Thruster

An ion propulsion thruster, developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, that's being considered for NASA's Asteroid Retrieval Initiative. This thruster uses xenon ions.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

A look at possible propulsion for NASA's plan to bring an asteroid home for study.

When NASA sends a rocket out to tow an asteroid into Earth orbit, it'll be ion propelled.

Ion propulsion engines harness magnetic fields to create thrust, instead of depending on chemical explosions the way chemically fueled engines do. NASA engineers are developing such an engine for the agency's plans to bring an asteroid into Earth's orbit and then send astronauts there to study it. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden went to see a prototype engine yesterday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the Associated Press reported.

Bolden also praised the bring-it-to-us asteroid study plan. Originally, the Obama Administration wanted to send people to the asteroid belt, but bringing an asteroid here instead will be cheaper. The technologies the Asteroid Retrieval Initiative develops will help NASA shuttle people to Mars in the future, Bolden told the Pasadena Sun.

Ion thrusters are more fuel efficient and last longer than chemical engines, characteristics the U.S.' asteroid-hauling rocket will need, John Brophy, an electric propulsion engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the Pasadena Sun. NASA began researching the technology in the 1950s and first used it in a spacecraft in 2001.

The Asteroid Retrieval Initiative will cost an estimated $2.6 billion. It should have people on an asteroid in six to 10 years. The project's leaders are looking to bring in an asteroid that's 20 to 25 feet in diameter-something that would burn up in the Earth's atmosphere in the event that it strays too close to home.

Decode Darwin's Handwriting To Help Science

Shaunacy Ferro — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:00:00 GMT

Darwin's Chicken Scratch

A beetle collected by Charles Darwin in Tierra del Fuego, Chile in 1833.

Courtesy UC Berkeley News Center

A citizen science project is transcribing handwritten field notes for more than a million insect specimens.

Do you have a special talent for reading scribbled handwriting and an interest in looking at dead bugs?

Rather than setting a handful of bleary-eyed undergrads with the task of transcribing hand-written field notes that correspond with its more than a million insect specimens, Calbug, a consortium of nine major entomological collections from across California, is opening the project up to the public, asking citizen scientists to help convert the records into an electronic form so they can be made available worldwide.

Led by the University of California, Berkeley's Essig Museum of Entomology, the crowd-sourced transcription project will digitize field notes and records that correspond to insect specimens in their collections, some of which are more than 100 years old.

The bug-enthused can catch an inside glimpse at huge sections of the museum collections, while helping make those records more accessible to people around the world. Calbug is part of Notes From Nature a larger natural history transcription project from Zooniverse that also includes Herbararium, a project to transcribe plant records from the southeast U.S.

Zooniverse already has already enlisted citizen scientists' to help identify objects on the sea floor, classify new planets and find gravitational lenses.

"Without the help of citizen scientists, processing the sheer volume of records held in natural history collections - estimated to be well over 2 billion worldwide - would take generations," Essig Museum director Rosemary Gillespie said in a press statement.

Calbug's first 20,000 images came online at the end of April as part of Notes From Nature's beta launch, and 38 percent have now been catalogued by a total of 2,144 people. Herbararium's collection is currently 26 percent transcribed.

"Along the way, you will be possibly be finding species that have never been observed anywhere else!" the Notes From Nature website adds.

Add your own efforts to the mix here.

[UC Berkeley News Center]

Brazilian Government Invests In Robocops To Prep For World Cup, Olympics

Dan Nosowitz — Fri, 24 May 2013 14:30:00 GMT

iRobot 510 PackBot iRobot

The same robots used by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan come to Brazil.

Brazil has a big couple of years coming up: the FIFA World Cup and the pope are both coming to Brazil in 2014, and the summer 2016 Olympic Games will be held in Rio. To ensure the safety of those attending those events, Brazil has brought in the big guns: robots.

The Brazilian government has contracted iRobot, makers of both circular vacuum-bots like the Roomba and military/rescue tools, to provide iRobot 510 PackBots for the preparation of these events. The 510 PackBot will be used during the construction of the Olympic stadia, to make sure no explosives are being planted during this messy phase, and also to clear routes. It's not a dissimilar job from what the 510 PackBot does in the military--and over 5,000 of them have been deployed worldwide, for military purposes. They're even used by the US military in Afghanistan.

Brazil contracted iRobot to provide $7.2 million worth of 510 PackBots. The PackBot uses a remote controller, not unlike a videogame controller, and its base model is weatherproof and capable of withstanding a six-foot drop (and righting itself, if it lands upside-down). But it can also be equipped with all kinds of sensors and gadgetry, from high-def cameras to bomb-defusing devices to explosive detection sensors to a hazardous materials sensor that can collect and identify samples from the air.

It's not totally clear what Brazil intends to do with the PackBots, though it's safe to assume reconnaissance. They should arrive this year, to prepare for next year's events. Read more over at CNET.

Will 'Libido In A Pill' Help Women Get It On?

Shaunacy Ferro — Fri, 24 May 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Desire G.dallorto via Wikimedia Commons

The "female Viagra" has to tackle more than just a physical malfunction.

Since Viagra came on the scene in the late '90s, men with sexual disfunction have been able to pop a pill and get busy to their hearts' content. For women, it's harder: There's not yet a cure for a lack of female arousal, though as many as 30 percent of women between 20 and 60 years old may suffer from some degree of hypoactive sexual-desire disorder (H.S.D.D.), a lack of lust so dire it creates emotional distress, according to a New York Times Magazine story.

In an adaptation from his forthcoming book, What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire, Daniel Bergner explores a new drug called Lybrido, a potential pharmaceutical answer to H.S.D.D. in women being heralded as the "female Viagra"--a drug that could save the sex lives of women whose desire has disappeared.

The scientific process of female desire isn't entirely understood, and we certainly haven't figured out how to bend it to our will. Women aren't as in tune to rises in genital blood flow, according to some research, and a possible reason why Viagra-like drugs haven't yet succeeded in increasing their desire.

Viagra's approach to impotence is a physical one: increase blood flow and let the magic happen. Lybrido and its sister medication, Lybridos, wouldn't be that, although the former does contain a Viagra-like component. "A female-desire drug would be something else," Bergner writes. "It would adjust the primal and executive regions of the brain. It would reach into the psyche."

The drug's inventor, Dutch psychopharmacologist Adriaan Tuiten, says he was inspired by his own heartbreak:

Tuiten was in his mid-20s when his girlfriend, a woman he'd been in love with since he was 13, abruptly decided to leave him. "I was - flabbergasted. You can say that?" he asked me, making sure, in his choppy English, that he was using the right word. "I was shocked. I was suffering." He was an older university student at the time; before that, he'd been a furniture maker. The breakup inspired a lifelong quest to comprehend female emotion through biochemistry and led to his career as a psychopharmacologist.

Tuiten's drugs come at arousal in two ways--a testosterone coating helps the body produce dopamine, creating a rush of lust. A delayed-release tablet left when the coating wears off works desire from another angle: Lybrido increases genital blood flow, much like Viagra, while Lybridos works by suppressing serotonin, a calming molecule that fosters self-control, and in the short term, pushing the body's balance of serotonin/dopamine in favor of the latter.

Lybrido has gone through a few smaller-stage trials, and early results for both drugs are looking positive. Tuiten hopes to get F.D.A. approval for larger trials, and pending success, the drug could hit the market by 2016.

Though Lybrido isn't the first drug to be developed with the hopes of helping women boost their sex drive, previous attempts have been largely unsuccessful. FDA trials of LibiGel, a testosterone gel that could be applied to the skin, failed to create any more sexual interest in women than a placebo. Another drug, Bremelanotide, had some success in putting passion back in the sex lives of women who were plagued by sexual disinterest, but also came with nasty side effects like vomiting and sudden blood pressure increases.

The existence of so many women who struggle to retain their sex drive in long-term relationships challenges widely held beliefs about female sexuality: namely, that women are hard-wired for commitment. The women Bergner interviews are, for the most part, in love with their partners and attracted, but for whatever reason, feel "sexually deadened." One wonders "Am I going to get my freak back?" Despite the evolutionary psychology theory that women have evolved to look for steady, monogamous partners to care for them and their offspring, studies on women's desire for casual sex have shown that women respond better to novel sexual stimuli--like pornography viewed for the first time, rather than repeatedly, or a photo of a handsome stranger.

Development of female arousal drugs also seems to be hampered by the fear that a pharmacological way to induce desire might create a society of raging nymphomaniacs, according to Bergner. Even as they work to ramp up female desire, researchers worry that they might create a brave new world of sexually aggressive women, he writes: "Companies worried about the prospect that their study results would be too strong, that the F.D.A. would reject an application out of concern that a chemical would lead to female excesses, crazed binges of infidelity, societal splintering."

In other words, a pill that works too well to create female arousal might create mass hysteria and THE END OF THE WORLD. Or perhaps it would just add an extra complication to the already complicated world of relationships.

As Bergner puts it:

What might it mean for conventional structures if women could control, with a prescription, the most primal urge? So many things, personal and cultural, might need to be recalibrated and renegotiated, explicitly or without acknowledgment. The cumulative effect of all those negotiations could be hugely transformative, in ways either thrilling or threatening, depending on your point of view.

Head over to The New York Times for the full story, and some great photo illustrations.

The BBC's New Radio Can Alter Broadcasts Based On Who's Listening

Shaunacy Ferro — Fri, 24 May 2013 13:00:39 GMT

Upgrade Radio AlfvanBeem via Wikimedia Commons

A responsive radio could add localized, real-time weather updates, adjust background noise levels and more.

BBC's Future Media North Lab has created a responsive radio that's capable of changing the broadcast you hear based on your location, your proximity to the device and other factors.

The Perceptive Radio premiered at the Thinking Digital conference yesterday in Gateshead, U.K.

The WiFi-streaming radio features a computer-generated voice that pulls data from external sources and can vary its references to the location of the listener and tailor weather-related references like "it's sunny" or "it's raining" accordingly. Its microphone monitors background noise and can adjust audio levels for specific sounds, amplifying speech and reducing background sounds, for example, if you're sitting farther away.

According to The Next Web, the BBC's Ian Forrester has suggested that it could be used in homes to create a kind of radio-drama karaoke that audiences could participate in.

BBC technologist Tony Churnside told BBC News it represents "the early stages of looking at what next-generation broadcasting is." He compared it to responsive web design, shaping the user's experience based on the different devices they might be on.

You can see a demonstration here of a short audio drama about a woman stuck in an elevator produced with Perceptive Media technology.

[BBC News]

This 3-D Printed Bioplastic Windpipe Saved A Baby's Life

Clay Dillow — Thu, 23 May 2013 22:00:00 GMT

The 3-D Printed Trachea Splint Image courtesy of University of Michigan Health System

The infant's 3-D printed trachea will fully absorb into his body in two to three years.

We've seen plenty of 3-D printed medical implants for patients that require replacement tissues, but this use of 3-D printed biopolymer to augment and correct an existing tissue highlights just how amazing the convergence of 3-D printing and medicine is (and will be). Kaiba Gionfriddo was born apparently a normal, healthy baby, but at six months of age he stopped breathing. Regularly. Due to a condition known as tracheobronchomalacia Kaiba's windpipe was collapsing during regular breathing, and he had to be hooked to a ventilator to be kept alive.

Short of conventional options, Kaiba's doctors contacted researchers at the University of Michigan who had been experimenting with 3-D printed bio-absorbable polymers. Using high resolution imaging to build a digital picture of Kaiba's trachea, they were able to print a customized biopolymer tracheal splint for the infant using a 3-D printer.

The splint was surgically sewn around Kaiba's airways in February of last year. Just 21 days later he was taken off the ventilator and hasn't been back on it since. His trachea is now growing normally around the splint, which will fully absorb into his body after two to three years. With a little ingenuity, a condition that could've plagued Kaiba for his entire life--and likely would have had he been born ten years ago--has been cured.

One of the doctors who worked on the 3-D printed tracheal splint called Kaiba's case "the highlight of my career so far." Given the vast potential for 3-D printing to work what used to be considered miracles in medicine, that may not remain the case for long.

[Science Daily via Gizmodo]

Bacteria Found Growing In Subzero Arctic Frost, Which Is Good News For Mars Life

Colin Lecher — Thu, 23 May 2013 21:29:11 GMT

Ellesmere Island Wikimedia Commons

Bacteria discovered at -15ºC, the coldest temperature bacteria have ever grown in, could indicate bacteria survive under similar conditions on Mars.

A team of researchers in the Canadian Arctic is reporting on an interesting find: bacteria that thrive at -15 degrees Celsius. That is the coldest environment bacteria have ever been found to grow in.

The McGill University researchers traveled to Ellesmere Island in (far, far) north Canada. There they collected and later cultured about 200 microbes, putting the organisms in a simulation of their native environment to find the one best-suited for living in extreme conditions. The winner ended up being a strain of Planococcus halocryophilus, which made its home in tiny veins of salty water in the Arctic permafrost. The researchers have reported that the bacteria can grow in those harsh conditions, and survive at temperatures down to -25 degrees Celsius.

The fact that the bacteria can survive at those temperatures is cool alone, but it also has implications for the search for bacteria (living or gone) on Mars and Saturn's moon Enceladus. Both Mars and Enceladus may have salty, super-cold places similar to the places where this bacteria made its home. (That, in general, is a big reason so many scientists are interested in digging for completely new, "alien" species in the Arctic.)

So what makes this bacterium so tough? The team examined its genome and cellular structure to find out, and determined it had an abnormal amount of cold-resistant proteins and especially well-adapted membranes.

What Salamanders Could Teach Scientists About Growing Human Limbs

Colin Lecher — Thu, 23 May 2013 21:00:00 GMT

Axolotl via Treehugger

Regeneration, salamander-style

In an attempt to recreate the plot of multiple recent superhero movies, a team of Australian scientists is looking into the regenerative properties of salamanders--and into how humans can pull off the same trick.

Salamanders, specifically the axolotl, are vertebrates that can regenerate limbs and organs, which sure would be a useful technique for humans to have, too. So researchers, led by James Godwin, of the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute at Monash University, figured out how salamanders pull it off. Godwin suspected that macrophages, cells that work in the immune system, played a part. When he and his colleagues removed the macrophages from the axolotls, the axolotls couldn't regenerate limbs: instead, they ended up with scarring and stumps. (A study on that was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.)

Some sort of chemical cocktail is being released by the macrophages, Godwin speculates, and if that's discovered, maybe the cocktail could be used to on humans to cause regeneration.

That... is pretty ambitious. Although others, like the Department of Defense, have been looking into similar processes, another researcher, speaking with ABC Science, said the technique might be more important for scarless healing, or treating burns. Still, it's cool to imagine a world where losing a limb doesn't mean it's gone forever.

[ABC Science]

Scientists Train People To Not Be Jerks

Colin Lecher — Thu, 23 May 2013 20:30:00 GMT

The Dalai Lama Friends of Tibet/Pankaj Mistry

To be excellent to one another, just try out some Buddhist meditation.

If you're kind of a jerk, but at least concerned about your jerk-ness, take heart: researchers say they've shown it's possible to increase compassion in adults.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison actually has a whole department dedicated to this kind of thing, the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center, and researchers there set up an experiment recently to see if they could get a group of people to be more excellent to each other.

First, the team had the group try the Buddhist technique of compassion meditation: thinking about a time someone was suffering, then chanting, "May you be free from suffering. May you have joy and ease." The people focused on a loved one, like a friend or family member, then themselves, then a stranger, and finally a "difficult person" in their lives. (If only they had an estranged family member they strongly disliked; they could knock out three at a time.) A control group, meanwhile, got cognitive reappraisal training, a technique for turning negative thoughts positive. Both the groups were trained for 30 minutes a day over the internet for two weeks.

So how do you measure compassion?

The researchers here used a game. Two anonymous players--one the "Dictator" and one the "Victim"--shared a pool of $10. The dictator decided how much money the victim got. As dictators are wont to do, the victim didn't get much: only $1 out of the $10. The person playing then had to decide how much of his or her $5 to give to the victim. The Buddhist-meditators were more likely to share more of the dough.

The researchers started the study with fMRI scans and performed them again on both groups after the training. The groups were shown images of suffering while in the machine, like a crying child or a burn victim. They found that the people with meditation training had increased activity in the inferior parietal cortex (that's not necessarily a perfect indicator of empathy, but it suggests something's going on, at least).

It's not entirely clear how long this effect lasted, but it's reassuring to think that there are ways of increasing niceness in the world. If only we could forcibly give it to the people who cut us off on our work commutes.

Social Media Replaces Police Missing Persons Searches In France

Kelsey D. Atherton — Thu, 23 May 2013 20:00:00 GMT

A postcard from 1899 imagining French Police in the year 2000

Instead, the police are on the ground and asking people to use social media for searches.

wikimedia commons

French police have abandoned in-progress searches for missing adults and will no longer accept new search requests. Instead, families should turn to social media, the government announced.

An almost century-old program in France is coming to an end. "Searches in the interest of the family" became a function of French police after World War I to reunite families disrupted by the conflict. Now, in a letter to police chiefs nationwide, the French Ministry of the Interior is telling police departments to end in-progress searches and refuse new requests to search for missing adults, unless there are signs the person may be in danger. Instead, police should direct people towards social networks.

In a way, this is a logical result of technology performing a task better than government can. In the early 20th century, police had one of the better networks for information, especially when they were organized on the national level, like in France. Combined with a governmental proclivity to collect information on citizens, be it for taxes or land registry or through other legal documents, the best place to find information on someone was in government records. It made sense, then, that a bureaucracy already tasked with finding and recording information on persons of interest would be a natural fit for reuniting families.

These days, social media networks allow private citizens to easily dig up information on just about anyone. A single individual with a internet access today may be more equipped to find a missing person than an entire police department was a century ago.

French police aren't abandoning all missing person searches-those in danger, like crime victims, missing children, or suicidal people, fall under a different procedure, one still very much in line with police operations. Instead, police are handing off the less urgent requests, like finding a deadbeat behind on child support payments, to citizens themselves.

It's a brilliant labor-saving move by the French police, but it has an uncomfortable footnote. What does it mean when social media companies possess far more information about us than governments a century ago had about our great-grandparents?

Hold on a second, let me tweet that.

New Water-Repellant Fabric Is Like A Second Skin

Colin Lecher — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:30:00 GMT

A tiny channel of canals directs water away from where it shouldn't be.

We've seem some neat ideas for water-repellant materials that suggest sweat stains will one day be as dead as dial-up. Here's one more: Researchers at the University of California, Davis, are developing a fabric that acts like human skin, channeling and releasing excess moisture.

Beads of sweat form and fall when there's excess water on the body, and the idea behind this project is similar: hydrophilic threads are stitched into a fabric made from a hydrophobic material. Put water in touch with the fabric, and the water will be pushed toward the hydrophilic material, then drawn through gaps and expelled on the other side. (Sweat itself actually doesn't smell; that smell's released by bacteria on skin breaking down proteins in the sweat. So hopefully a sweater made out of this stuff wouldn't be gross for everyone nearby.) All the other parts, meanwhile, stay "completely dry and breathable."

Going to the gym in the future is going to be the best.

U.S. Army Creates Shoebox-Size Universal Battery Charger

Kelsey D. Atherton — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:00:00 GMT

Army Battery Charger U.S. Army

It charges eight batteries and two USB devices at once.

Battery chargers are finally getting a military upgrade. This is big! Not in a literal sense-that honor goes to the previous battery charger used by the U.S. Army, which was the size of a suitcase and either vehicle-mounted or left to rest on a table. It was hardly something a soldier could carry into the battlefield or on patrol.

Now, the military has downsized to a charger smaller than a shoebox. Dubbed, creatively, the Universal Battery Charger, the new charger weighs only six pounds. It can charge eight batteries and two USB devices at once, which is useful for the GPS systems, radios, and smartphones soldiers keep with them. The charger itself can draw power from available electrical sources. According to Marc Geitter, an engineer on the project, this includes generators, fuel cells, solar panels, wind turbines, and vehicle cigarette lighters.

Soldiers aren't always near available power sources, so the Universal Battery Charger will come with a foldable solar panel. Additionally, the new charger is designed specifically to work with another (very awesome) army development in portable energy, the Re-using Existing Natural Energy Wind and Solar System, or RENEWS. Transported in two 70 pound cases, RENEWS is a portable wind turbine with solar panels that can power two or three laptops continuously. Combining it with the Universal Battery Charger adds versatility to the system, and gives soldiers access to power even when far beyond the grid.

Who Wouldn't Want To Stay In This Totally Insane Space Hotel!?

Colin Lecher — Thu, 23 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Space Hotel Mobilona

It's got a wind tunnel! Also: a zero-gravity spa!

Last week, the U.S.-based consortium Mobilona unveiled plans for this crazy building: a futuristic "space" hotel filled with stuff you associate with ideas about the future from, like, the 1930s. The 984-foot, 1.5 billion euro ($1.9 billion) building would include a vertical wind tunnel, a 24-hour shopping mall, a marina for parking yachts, and a zero-gravity spa (not even totally clear how that works). It would all be stationed on an artificial island.

So who wouldn't want this? Oh, maybe a major city in a country devastated by the economic downturn.

When Mobilona submitted plans for the project to planning officials in Barcelona, they got some icy responses. "We are a city of culture, knowledge, of creativity, and of innovation, and our project (for the city) will follow a different path," the city's mayor said in a TV interview.

Bummer! With prices like 300 to 1,500 euros per room (about $390 to $1,900), it could make for an affordable place to take the kids on a zero gravity spa/wind tunnel trip. Or you could splurge and get the six-story mansion penthouse full-time for 70 million euros, or about $90 million.

Oh, well. Maybe they'll have better luck in Los Angeles and Hong Kong, where they're also planning similar behemoths.

[Telegraph]

Discovered: Molecule That Triggers Itchiness

Lindsey Kratochwill — Thu, 23 May 2013 18:00:59 GMT

Scratching Wing-Chi Poon

At long last, researchers have identified what happens in the nervous system as an itch begins.

What really causes itching, and how it works, is surprisingly little understood. But researchers at the National Institutes of Health will publish a paper tomorrow in Science that details the discovery of a small molecule released in the spinal cord that triggers the sensation of itching in mice. The culprit molecule is called natriuretic polypeptide b, or Nppb.

Itching was long regarded as simply a less intense form of pain. In 1987, H.O. Handwerker, a German scientist, used histamine to induce itchiness in participants. Those participants itched until they couldn't take it, but did not feel an increase in pain, suggesting itching and pain were transmitted along different pathways. Then in 1997 a group of researchers from the University of Eerlangen-Nürnberg and the University of Uppsala discovered a nerve fiber that mediates itch sensations in particular.

In 2011, Washington University's Center for the Study of Itch was opened, touted as the first of its kind in the world to study itch specifically. The Center for the Study of Itch names 2007 as the year where neuroscientists began making more rapid progress in studying itching specifically, finding advances in the field that pain researchers had previously overlooked or ignored. The GRPR peptide receptor, the first itch-specific receptor to be identified, was announced in the June 2007 issue of Nature by researchers at Washington University.

In January 2008, Dr. Gil Yosipovitch, a dermatologist and researcher at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center talked to Newsweek about how much progress has been made in understanding itching and scratching.

"What we do know is that the itch doesn't stand alone. Rather the itch involves not only the skin, but also the spinal cord and the brain. We used to think that the itch shared the same neurological pathway as pain," Yosipovitch told Newsweek. "But now we know that the itch has its own neural road, if you will. There are actually some nerves in the spinal cord that are itch-specific."

The NIH study published in this week's Science further shows the distinctiveness of itch, showing that it's a "sensation that is uniquely hardwired into the nervous system with the biochemical equivalent of its own dedicated land line to the brain," according to Mark Hoon, scientist at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and senior author of the paper, in a statement. The molecule Nppb was found to be necessary to respond to itchy substances--an itch start switch of sorts-- something that previous research suggested was unlikely.

"The larger scientific point remains," Hoon said in a statement. "We have defined in the mouse the primary itch-initiating neurons and figured out the first three steps in the pruritic pathway. Now the challenge is to find similar biocircuitry in people, evaluate what's there, and identify unique molecules that can be targeted to turn off chronic itch without causing unwanted side effects. So, this is a start, not a finish."

8 Ridiculous Nutrition Myths Debunked

Kris Gunnars/ Authority Nutrition — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:30:00 GMT

Eggsellent Pier/Getty Images

From calorie counting to high-protein diets

There is a lot of incompetence in the area of nutrition and health. Even health professionals seem to constantly contradict each other. Here are 8 ridiculous nutrition myths, thoroughly debunked.

1. A Calorie is a Calorie

It is a common myth that all that matters for weight loss is calories in, calories out.

Of course, calories matter. But the types of foods we eat are also important.

Here are 3 examples of how "a calorie is NOT a calorie."

-Fructose vs. Glucose: Fructose is more likely to stimulate hunger, increase abdominal obesity and insulin resistance, compared to the same amount of calories from glucose (1, 2, 3).
-Protein: Eating protein can raise the metabolic rate and reduce hunger compared to fat and carbs (4).
-Medium vs. long-chain fatty acids: Fatty acids that are of medium length (such as from coconut oil) raise metabolism and reduce hunger compared to longer chain fatty acids (5, 6, 7).

Bottom Line: A calorie is not a calorie. Different foods affect our bodies, hunger and hormones in different ways.

2. Eating a Lot of Protein is Bad For You

Some people think that a high-protein diet will harm your kidneys and cause osteoporosis.

It is true that eating protein can make you excrete more calcium in the short term (8).

However, long-term studies show that protein intake is associated with improved bone health and a lower risk of fractures, not the other way around (9, 10, 11).

Studies don't find any association with kidney disease either (12, 13).

The two most important risk factors for kidney failure are diabetes and high blood pressure. Eating adequate protein helps with both, which should reduce your risk of kidney disease later in life (14, 15, 16, 17).

Unless you have a medical condition, there's no reason to be afraid of having more protein in your diet. It's a good thing.

Bottom Line: Eating a high protein diet may be protective against bone fractures and reduce the two most important risk factors for kidney failure.

3. The Healthiest Diet is a Balanced Low-Fat Diet

The low-fat guidelines first came out in the year 1977, at almost the exact same time the obesity epidemic started.

This diet was never actually proven to work. It was merely based on observations.

The National Institute of Health decided to test this diet and funded the Women's Health Initiative, which is the largest randomized controlled trial ever conducted on diet.

In this study, tens of thousands of women were placed on either a low-fat diet, or continued to eat the standard western diet like before.

The study went on for 7.5 years and the conclusions were very clear:

-The diet did NOT prevent weight gain. The low-fat group weighed only 0.4kg less than the control group after 7.5 years (18).
-The diet did NOT prevent heart disease either. There was no difference between groups after 7.5 years (19).
-The low-fat diet got tested. It didn't work, period.

Bottom Line: There is no evidence that low-fat diets lead to better outcomes. The largest randomized controlled trial ever conucted on diet proves that the low-fat diet is completely ineffective.

4. Everyone Should be Cutting Back on Sodium

Sodium is a crucial electrolyte in the body and our cells need to keep it within a very tight range, or we'll die.

For a long time, sodium has been thought to elevate blood pressure and therefore raise your risk of disease.

It is true that it can mildly elevate blood pressure in the short term (20, 21).

However, studies do not support the idea that lowering sodium helps improve actual hard outcomes like heart attacks.

Randomized controlled trials on sodium restriction show that there is no effect on cardiovascular disease or death. They also show that sodium restriction may increase triglycerides and cholesterol levels (22, 23).

Unless you have elevated blood pressure, there is no reason to avoid adding salt to your foods to make them more palatable.

Bottom Line: Sodium restriction has been thoroughly tested. None of these studies have found any evidence that it actually leads to better outcomes.

5. Saturated Fat Raises The Bad Cholesterol and Gives You Heart Disease

The myth that saturated fat raises cholesterol and causes heart disease is still alive today.

This ideas was based on some flawed observational studies conducted in the 60s and 70s.

Since then, many studies have re-examined this relationship and discovered that:

-There is literally no association between saturated fat consumption and cardiovascular disease (24, 25, 26).
-Saturated fat raises HDL (the good) cholesterol and changes the LDL from small, dense (bad) to Large LDL, which is benign (27, 28, 29).
-There is no reason to avoid natural foods that are rich in saturated fats. Meat, coconut oil and butter are perfectly healthy foods.

Bottom Line: Despite decades of anti-fat propaganda, saturated fat has never been proven to cause heart disease. New studies prove that there is literally no association.

6. Coffee is Bad For You

Coffee has gotten a bad reputation in the past.

It is true that caffeine, the active stimulant compound in coffee, can slightly raise blood pressure in the short term (30).

Despite these mild adverse effects, long term observational studies actually show that coffee lowers the risk of many diseases. Coffee can:

-Improve brain function (31).
-Help you burn more fat (32, 33, 34).
-Lower your risk of diabetes… in some studies as much as 67% (35, 36).
-Lower your risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's (37, 38).
-Protect your liver against cirrhosis and cancer (39, 40).

Coffee is also loaded with antioxidants. It is actually the biggest source of antioxidants in the western diet and outranks both fruits and vegetables, combined (41, 42, 43).

Bottom Line: Despite coffee being able to mildly elevate blood pressure, observational studies show a strong and consistent reduction in many serious diseases like Alzheimer's and type II diabetes.

7. Eggs Are Rich in Cholesterol And Can Give You Heart Disease

Eggs have been unfairly demonized because they contain large amounts of cholesterol.

However, dietary cholesterol doesn't necessarily raise blood cholesterol and eggs have never been proven to cause harm.

If anything, eggs are among the most nutritious and healthiest foods you can eat.

They're loaded with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.

Studies show that egg consumption actually improves the blood lipid profile. They raise the HDL (good) cholesterol and change the LDL from small, dense to Large, which is benign (44, 45).

Observational studies show no association between egg consumption and risk of heart disease (46, 47, 48).

Additionally, some studies show that eggs for breakfast can help you lose weight… at least compared to a breakfast of bagels (49, 50).

Bottom Line: Eggs are one of the healthiest and most nutritious foods you can eat and there is no association between egg consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease.

8. Low-Carb Diets Are Ineffective or Dangerous

Low-carb diets have been considered dangerous because of their high amount of saturated fat.

For this reason, they have been thought to raise your risk of heart disease and other chronic illness.

However, since the year 2002, more than 20 randomized controlled trials have been conducted and compared low-carb against the standard of care, the low-fat diet.

In almost every one of these studies, low-carb diets:

-Cause significantly more weight loss than low-fat diets (51, 52).
-Drastically lower triglycerides, an important risk factors for heart disease (53, 54).
-Raise HDL (the good) cholesterol (55, 56).
-Improve blood sugar and insulin levels, especially in diabetics (57, 58).
-Change the LDL cholesterol from small, dense (bad) to Large (benign) - which should lower the risk of heart disease (59).
-Lower blood pressure significantly (60, 61).

Low-carb diets are also easier to follow and have an outstanding safety profile. There is no evidence of any adverse effects, despite the scare tactics (62, 63, 64).

They are certainly a much better choice than a low-fat, calorie restricted diet… which many mainstream organizations still push despite zero evidence of effectiveness.

9. Anything else…?

If there are any other myths you want to add to the list, make sure to leave a comment below.

This article was republished with permission from Authority Nutrition.

Big Pic: Eruption Of Alaska's Pavlof Volcano, As Seen From The International Space Station

Clay Dillow — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:00:00 GMT

Pavlof Volcano Eruption, May 18, 2013 NASA

The crew aboard the International Space Station managed to snap these three striking images of Alaska's Pavlof Volcano a few days ago, which capture (via their oblique angles) just how far these plumes can stretch and how huge they can be (we usually see these images from directly above, so it's hard to tell just how big they really are).

Pavlof is in the Aleutian Island arc, some 625 miles southwest of Anchorage. It began erupting last week, spewing an ash plume 20,000 feet into the air. For orientation purposes: The plume is extending southeastward, back toward the mainland United States.

[NASA Earth Observatory]