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This Week in the Future, May 21-25, 2012

Baarbarian — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:00:36 GMT

This Week in the Future, May 21-25, 2012 Baarbarian

No, angler fish! That's a robot, not whatever you usually eat! But maybe the oil slick on the surface of the angler's home is more dangerous than ingesting some gadgetry.

Want to win this ghostly Baarbarian illustration on a T-shirt? It's easy! The rules: Follow us on Twitter (we're @PopSci) and retweet our This Week in the Future tweet. One of those lucky retweeters will be chosen to receive a custom T-shirt with this week's Baarbarian illustration on it, thus making the winner the envy of their friends, coworkers and everyone else with eyes. (Those who would rather not leave things to chance and just pony up some cash for the t-shirt can do that here.) The stories pictured herein:

And don't forget to check out our other favorite stories of the week:

The Most Amazing Science Images of the Week, May 21-25, 2012

Dan Nosowitz — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:00:03 GMT

SkyDive Stuntman Gary Connery makes the highest non-protected--like, without a parachute--skydive ever, crashing 2,400 feet into a pile of boxes. Read more here. Getty Images

Just like a great dish, this week's Images of the Week roundup includes a delicate balance of all things we love: amazing space pics, adorable animals, beautiful design concepts, and a dude free-falling into a giant pile of boxes. Enjoy!

Click to see the greatest images we've seen this week.

Simple Project of the Month: Make Your Photos Into Comic Strips With Speech Bubbles

Jordan Ferney — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:00:38 GMT

Speech Bubbles Jordan Ferney

The closer we can make life to a comic strip, the better off everyone will be. Here's an easy way to make homemade speech bubbles.

STEP ONE

Affix a piece of chalkboard contact paper to black foam board.

STEP TWO

Draw speechbubble shapes on the board with chalk.

STEP THREE

Cut out the shapes with an X-Acto knife.

STEP FOUR

Write a message on the speech bubble, position it near the subject's head, and take a picture.

NASA Says: Please Don't Touch Our Stuff When You Go to the Moon

Colin Lecher — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:02:29 GMT

NASA Rover Diagram A chart detailing what not to touch up there. NASA

Dear intrepid lunar explorers: NASA politely asks that, when you travel to the moon, you refrain from messing with the American flag.

Google's Lunar X Prize promises $20 million to whoever's first to get a privately funded robot to the moon. But the folks at NASA don't want any of the stuff they left up there getting messed up in the process, so they've offered a few handy guidelines for what to stay away from while you're up there. (We're looking at you, non-autonomous moon robots.)

The 93-page document, originally released in July but reasserted yesterday, reads like a user's manual for private space shuttles, and contains a spectacular amount of both tech-talk and legalese.

But it boils down to: "Don't land in our craters and we won't land in yours; mostly don't land in ours."

"Please." Because there's a big disclaimer about how explorers aren't bound by interplanetary moon law to listen to their requests. It's a big, crater-filled Wild West out there, but the document still covers everything from guidelines for landing to low-altitude fly-bys of Apollo sites.

How necessary is this request? Probably at least a little necessary.

It's safe to predict that more and more non-government entities are going to be making their way to the moon, as private travel becomes easier. And those are unique, historic golf balls up there.

[via Layer 8]

There Will Be Enough Giant Phones Sold in 2015 to Pave Monaco

Dan Nosowitz — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:12:03 GMT

Samsung Galaxy Note at Window Dan Nosowitz

A firm of analysts has just issued a report predicting that shipments of giant smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy Note, will reach a completely bonkers 208 million in 2015, which, if our math is correct, is only a few years away. That's actually not that crazy of a guess; they are defining "phablet" (an awful, influenzal word portmanteaued from "phone tablet") as any phone with a screen size between 4.6 and 5.5 inches. These are certainly gaining in popularity, what with Samsung, the world's biggest phonemaker, basically releasing nothing else. But let's just think about the physicality of that much phone for a second.

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus, a 4.65-inch phone measured diagonally, has a 14.25775-square-inch face. That's about as small as you can get and still be considered a "phablet," so we'll go with that as a conservative baseline. Thanks to the magic of Wolfram Alpha, we know that 208 million of those would have a square footage of 2.059 x 10⁷. That means:

You could pave 98 percent of Monaco...

...More than three entire Pentagons...

...or more than four Vatican Cities.

You could wallpaper the Empire State Building 236 times.

Or you could stack them end to end vertically and get more than 1/14th of the way to the moon.

SpaceX Dragon Successfully Captured by International Space Station

Dan Nosowitz — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:15:59 GMT

SpaceX Docks NASA

Just minutes ago, via the NASA TV stream, we learned that the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft has successfully been attached to the International Space Station--the very first private spacecraft to do so. (Read more about its launch earlier this week here.) NASA is still broadcasting footage of the attachment, but everything looks smooth so far. Watch it live here.

Backpack Radar Can Detect Ambushers Within 150 Acres

Colin Lecher — Thu, 24 May 2012 21:33:53 GMT

SpotterRF M600C Offering a motion-sensitive look from a long way away. SpotterRF

If you're a soldier suspecting an ambush, you probably don't have much time to spare, and you definitely can't afford to be carrying any unnecessary weight. That's why so much military tech involves shrinking whatever's portable, and why, now, a company has thrown its radar-in-a-backpack into the ring.

The SpotterRF M600C weighs four pounds, uses just 10 watts of energy, and looks like the headrest on the driver's seat of a jalopy (which is a good thing). If ambusher or otherwise comes within 150 acres, the system tracks it, no matter what the weather conditions are.

Besides the weight advantage, it's also simple. There are no moving parts on the M600C, and manufacturer SpotterRF claims a soldier can learn to use it in 30 to 60 minutes.

If you ever end up in a "Most Dangerous Game"-type situation, the radar backpack kit would be a worthy investment. It comes with two of the M600Cs--important, since each mini-radar unit only tracks within a 90-degree angle. It can connect to Google Earth, FalconView, or RaptorX via an Android tablet to follow the radar feed, and the kit comes with the tablet, a battery, network hub, cables, backpack (of course), and a tripod for setting it all up.

Total weight? Less than 20 pounds.

Still, unless you're going to be in an overly serious hide-and-go-seek competition, it's tough to say what non-military purpose this might have, other than being a neat toy.

[via Fox News]

This Summer, Take a Class on How to Design a Space Hotel

Dan Nosowitz — Thu, 24 May 2012 21:01:37 GMT

Astro-Design Class Earth 2 Orbit

If you're wondering what new skills you should learn this summer, and you live in or are comfortable moving to Milan, maybe you should check out Susmita Mohanty's class at Domas Academy entitled "Products and Microenvironments for Orbiting Hotels." Mohanty is an "aerospace entrepreneur" and has worked on the International Space Station and the Shuttle-Mir missions, so she seems like a good choice to teach a class on designing products to allow for a comfortable stay for orbiting tourists.

Here's an excerpt from the course description:

This course will introduce designers and architects, both students and practicing professionals to the world of zero-gravity (zero-g) design. On Earth, we often take a lot of things for granted, for example - gravity, atmospheric pressure, natural illumination and the entire gamut of colors that it brings to us. Living in Earth Orbit is a whole new world where designers and architects have to account for not just weightlessness and vacuum, but also come up with creative antidotes for isolation, confinement, boredom, sensory deprivation, bone-muscle atrophy, as well as social-psychological-and-cultural stressors characteristic of living in cramped spaces where privacy is limited and so are resources. This course will groom designers and architects to work for space tourism companies.

Honestly it sounds pretty much like living in New York City, but that just means the stuff these students design can be of use to more people than just super-rich tourist astronauts, which will now be referred to as touristronauts, which is also the name of a defunct ska band, probably.

[via Boing Boing]

2011's Top 10 New Species: Spongebob Squarepants 'Shroom, Sneezing Monkey and a Worm From Hell

Rebecca Boyle — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:24:44 GMT

Sneezing Monkey Found by scientists conducting a gibbon survey in the mountains of Myanmar, Rhinopithecus strykeri, a snubnosed primate, is critically endangered. It sneezes when rain gets inside its snout, and can be found by waiting until the weather turns and listening for sneezes in the trees. Thomas Geissmann/Fauna & Flora International

It's time once again to celebrate all the weird and wonderful creatures scientists have found on Earth in the past year. Arizona State University compiles an annual list of the top 10 new species found in the last 12 months, and shares the list on May 23, Carl Linnaeus' birthday. The father of classification would no doubt be pleased with some of the names on this list - they include a mushroom named for a cartoon character, a worm named for the Devil and a jellyfish named "Oh Boy," because that's what people should exclaim when they behold it.

The list also includes a terrifyingly skull-looking sneezing monkey; a blue tarantula; a sausage-sized millipede; a night-blooming orchid; and much more.

Click to launch the photo gallery.

Some of the species are just plain odd, and others demonstrate how little we still know about this planet. Take the new nematode species Halicephalobus mephisto. It's named for Faust's demon Mephistopheles, because it lives in hellish, hot conditions in the bowels of the Earth. It was discovered in a mine in South Africa, and carbon dating suggests the worms have been living there between 3,000 and 12,000 years. The worm was a brilliant find for exobiology, because it proved that multi-celled organisms can subsist completely isolated from other complex ecosystems.

Then there are beauties like Pterinopelma sazimai, an iridescent blue hairy spider from Brazil. It's so pretty you almost forget that it is a gigantic hairy spider.

I am particularly fond of Tamoya ohboya, a poisonous but pretty jellyfish that looks sort of like a kite with flowing, colorful tails. Citizen scientists were invited to submit names for the species and a teacher won with "ohboya," assuming that people who see it or are stung would shout "Oh boy!"

Some strange flowers, a very large and a very small insect, and others round out the list. Check out our photo gallery for the full collection.

Organic Carbon Found on Mars Rocks Is Not Life, New Study Says

Rebecca Boyle — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:30:15 GMT

Mars Phoenix Lander and Rocks The Phoenix lander prepares to grate some Martian rocks. NASA

Since the Viking landers' footpads touched down on Mars, scientists have been searching for complex carbon molecules there, which on this planet are the building blocks of all life. They've found some examples in meteorites purported to come from the Red Planet, but debate persists about the origin of those rocks, let alone the carbon signatures inside them, which some have (controversially) argued could indicate life. Now a new study says the rocks in question are from Mars, but the carbon molecules are not relics of extraterrestrial life.

This new study sheds more light on Mars' carbon cycle, suggesting that abiotic (not-life) sources of reduced carbon are actually pretty common. This will help set baselines for future life-hunting experiments.

Scientists led by Andrew Steele at the Carnegie Institution studied 11 meteorites from Mars, whose ages span 4.2 billion years. They even looked at the very recent Tissint meteorite, which fell in Morocco last summer and chunks of which were up for sale recently.

Steele and colleagues from four other countries examined the rocks with a suite of methods, including Raman spectroscopy, to determine the molecular structures. Ten of the rocks contained large carbon molecules, and at least some of those are indigenous to the rocks, meaning they didn't come from Earth or other possible sources of contamination. It turns out the compounds originated in volcanic processes on our neighbor planet, not ancient microbes or other forms of life.

As silicate lava flows crystallized, carbon compounds interacted with oxide compounds and solidified. These compounds, which in one case included polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are distributed throughout the rocks, Steele and colleagues report. This indicates that Mars has been completing organic chemistry on its own, probably for most of its existence.

There's some indication that abiogenic hydrocarbons could form on Earth, too, although it would be very deep within and very uncommon. Most of our hydrocarbons come from long-dead life forms. "These findings show that the storage of reduced carbon molecules on Mars occurred throughout the planet's history and might have been similar to processes that occurred on the ancient Earth," Steele said in a statement.

In a separate but related paper, Steele also reports on the Allan Hills meteorite, which was once thought to contain fossil evidence of Martian microbial life. The meteorite, named for the site where it was found in Antarctica, is thought to be 4.1 billion years old. Back in 1996, a team of scientists at NASA and other institutions claimed it contained evidence of ancient microbial life, because it contains a unique pattern of organic carbon compounds. But Steele's studies say that this, too, is not biologically based - rather, the chemical reactions involve the graphite form of carbon. That paper appears in American Mineralogist.

While it may seem disappointing to confirm that Mars is a native organic chemistry lab, this is useful information for future Martian life hunters. Scientists will be able to use these studies to compare and contrast carbon-bearing formations and determine whether they're of abiotic or biological origin. The meteorite paper appears today in Science Express.

Watch: Neil Armstrong Narrates His Moon Landing In a Rare TV Interview

Rebecca Boyle — Thu, 24 May 2012 17:10:37 GMT

Neil Armstrong During Apollo 11 Buzz Aldrin took this photo after Armstrong completed his lunar EVA during Apollo 11. NASA/via Wikimedia

The immortal first words on the moon, uttered so shakily by a man who has done his best to avoid the spotlight ever since, are even more impressive in hindsight. The Eagle lander nearly plunked Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong in a boulder field, and Armstrong had to take over from autopilot to set the spacecraft down. This is according to very rare new commentary from Armstrong himself.

This is pretty amazing: Armstrong, notoriously camera-shy and tight-lipped, did an hour-long interview about Apollo 11, sitting down with an Australian accountant (really) to relive his 1969 moon landing. He narrates a Google Moon view of the Eagle's descent, describing his harrowing landing, almost out of fuel. He talks about plenty of other tidbits, chortling at a question about moon-landing conspiracy theories.

Armstrong is almost as famous for his reluctance to talk about his experience as he is for making that "one small step." His nervousness speaking publicly is well known, and when he does take the time to talk - about Apollo 11, the future of NASA or anything else - it's usually a fairly muted, shaky performance, as you can see in this Congressional testimony.

Not so in this new interview. Now nearing his 82nd birthday, the famous astronaut is clearly relaxed and at ease. Apparently it took some accountants to calm the man down.

The interview is with Alex Malley, CEO of an organization called CPA Australia, and it appeared on a program sponsored by CPA Australia called The Bottom Line. Apparently, Neil has a soft spot for accountants: "His dad was an auditor," Malley says, according to Australia's News.com.au. Malley has been angling for this interview for some time.

It's broken into four parts, which you can watch here.

[via News.com.au]

Today in Good Reads: A Q&A With a Military Bioethicist

Dan Nosowitz — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:14:09 GMT

Jonathan Moreno Wikimedia Commons

Vice's Motherboard has a great Q&A up with Jonathan Moreno, author of Mind Wars and an expert on the topic of neuroscience in the military. And seeing as how the military is at the forefront of all kinds of crazy neuroscience--drones, implants, the relationships between machines and our own brains--studying the military's efforts gives a kind of sneak peak at what we'll be seeing in the future in the civilian world. We're especially interested in his thoughts on the singularity, which is extra scary as it relates to the military. Check it out here.

Magnetic Jet Injection Device Can Shoot Any Drug Through the Skin, No Needle Required

Rebecca Boyle — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:21:54 GMT

Whether you're at the doctor's office or taking medicine at home, future injections could be a lot less painful with this new gadget developed at MIT. Instead of a sterile metal point penetrating your skin, it fires a jet of medicine through your skin at the speed of sound.

It's similar to a normal syringe, except instead of a needle plunger, it uses a Lorentz force actuator, made from a magnet surrounded by a conductive coil. When a current is turned on, the magnetic field interacts with the current to produce a force. That force kicks a piston, which ejects a drug that has been embedded inside the capsule. The speed of the ejection and the depth it will reach can be controlled by altering the current.

To penetrate the skin, the ejection happens at ultra high speeds, almost equivalent to the speed of sound through air. The drug flows through an opening that's about as wide as a mosquito proboscis, according to MIT News.

Researchers led by Ian Hunter and Catherine Hogan tested a prototype device with two different velocities: One can breach the skin and reach deep into tissue, and another can deliver drugs more slowly, so they can be absorbed by the skin. Different people would need different piston velocities - "If I'm breaching a baby's skin to deliver vaccine, I won't need as much pressure as I would need to breach my skin," Hogan said.

That's key for this device, because other existing types of jet injectors are limited by their design. They may use a spring-loaded injector, which can only work at one velocity, for instance.

While the supersonic variable-speed delivery is new, it's hardly the first device to seek elimination of the hated hypodermic needle. Several other alternatives exist, like super-thin microneedles, as wide as a human hair, and a microneedle patch, which deliver drugs with no pain and simply dissolve on the skin. But again, those would require a drug-specific design.

For the average trypanophobe, the prospect of sticking oneself with a needle is anathema, so a more universal system like this could improve patient compliance with the doctor's orders. Plus, the researchers also point out, it could prevent needle-stick injuries by health care workers and others. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospital workers accidentally prick themselves 385,000 times per year. Not so with a jet injector.

Watch Hogan and Hunter explain further in the video.

[MIT News]

A New Way to Keep Deep-Sea Creatures Alive at the Surface

Stephanie Warren — Thu, 24 May 2012 14:08:49 GMT

Short Shelf Life Animals that thrive deep below the sea's surface [such as, at 6,000 feet, Mirocaris fortunata shrimp, shown here] can withstand surface pressure for only a few weeks. Oceanopolis

The problem: Although scientists have been studying deep-sea animals since the 1860s, they still don't know much about them. That's in large part because the fish, octopuses and other creatures that thrive at the bottom of the ocean die quickly at the surface. In some cases, the lower pressure and higher temperature melt the lipids in their cell membranes. Even hardier animals, such as crabs, can survive at sea level for no more than a few weeks.

The solution: The AbyssBox can keep deep-sea fauna alive above sea level for months, and possibly much longer. Biologists from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris and the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea spent three years developing the 1,300-pound, four-gallon tank, which mimics the conditions found near deep-sea hydrothermal vents. (The actual vents on the ocean floor shoot hot water that attracts marine life.)

The team set the tank's water to about 60°F and added a hot jet. A water pump raises the pressure to 3,000 pounds per square inch. Three-inch-thick steel walls withstand the pressure. The researchers feed the tank's residents using an exchange tube with a pressure lock and watch them through a strong plastic porthole. Deep-sea-vent crabs and shrimp originally from the Lucky Strike hydrothermal field on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge are now living in two separate AbyssBoxes on display at the Océanopolis aquarium in Brest, France. They have survived since August.

Video: In Record-Breaking Parachuteless Skydive, Man Jumps 2,400 Feet Into a Pile of Boxes

Colin Lecher — Wed, 23 May 2012 22:18:28 GMT

Gary Connery Before breaking a record from 2,400 feet up. The Independent

Gary Connery broke the record today for skydiving sans parachute and also, presumably, took home a gold medal in being a badass. But that wasn't all: The 42-year-old father-stuntman-crazy-person gave Newton's First Law one more slap in the face by diving from 2,400 feet above Buckinghamshire, England, and straight into 18,600 cardboard boxes.

Connery did it with help from a wingsuit, a la 'Jetman' Yves Rossy, but he still made it to speeds of 80 mph three seconds after his leap. He fell for about 30 seconds, flared his wings to slow down to the relatively bearable gliding speed of 50 mph and falling speed of 15 mph, then landed on the 12-foot-high makeshift landing strip almost a mile away.

Before the leap, Connery, a veteran of 880 sky dives and 450 base jumps, told reporters he was "a bit scared."

And then he jumped from 2,400 feet without a parachute.

Even without breaking records, Connery already had a pretty solid resume before the jump, both professionally and recreationally. He's jumped from the Eiffel Tower and London's Tower Bridge, and as a stuntman he's been in dozens of TV and movie roles, including "Batman Begins," but also "The Beach," which might make other people want to jump out of a plane with no parachute.

[via The Telegraph]

Pumping Well Water Out of the Ground May Be a Culprit in Rising Sea Levels

Clay Dillow — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:33:50 GMT

Pumping Water From the Ground Eventually, it ends up in the ocean. USDA

When we think of rising sea levels, we think of global climate change and melting ice caps. Yet there's a disparity in the raw data. During the second half of the last century, global sea levels rose 1.8 millimeters per year, according to tide gauges. But it's been determined that melting ice caps and glaciers have only contributed to 1.1 millimeters per year of that. So where did the other 0.7 millimeters come from? A new study has a remarkably simple answer: from you.

The extra rise in sea level not accounted for by melting ice caps can be explained by taking into account all the water we are pumping out of the ground and dumping into the ocean, says a team of researchers reporting in Nature Geoscience. Which actually makes a lot of sense.

When humans pump water out of the ground for irrigation, industrial processes, or even simple residential use, some of it is returned to aquifers straight through the ground. Some of it goes into tributaries and rivers and ends up trapped in reservoirs both natural and man-made. But a lot of it wends its way back to the ocean via rivers and streams or is evaporated into the water cycle, eventually reaching the oceans that way. Regardless, the study shows we've been largely underestimating the impact on sea levels caused by pumping water out of the ground and dumping it into the oceans.

That impact, according to the study, is roughly 0.77 millimeters per year between 1961 and 2003--a remarkably tidy number keeping in mind the gap between ice-melt-derived sea level rise and real sea level rise is roughly 0.7 millimeters, and one that far surpasses previous estimates of groundwater's impact on sea levels. The researchers themselves admit that their simulations, while scientific and backed with plenty of data, could always benefit from more and better measurement of groundwater extraction. But the explanation--that pulling water from the ground and putting it into the oceans might contribute to rising sea levels--is just simple enough seem credible, no?

[Nature]

Video: Paratrooping Roomba-Style Drone Concept Could Help Clean Oil Spills

Colin Lecher — Wed, 23 May 2012 20:08:00 GMT

Roomba Sea Drones A new design concept that's a little familiar. Hsu Sean

Clearing the muck from an oil spill is tough enough without having to worry about collateral damage, but designer Hsu Sean is looking to create a Roomba-like Bio-Cleaner drone that degrades oil while keeping animals out of harm's way.

An overview on Yanko Design shows how, after a spill, several of the drones could be dropped from helicopters above the ocean and into the water, where they could maneuver into a formation around the spill and use stored oil-hungry bacteria to clean house. An acoustic wave device installed in each drone would keep fish and other wildlife away from the danger/cleanup zone. If completed, the drones would also act autonomously while on a mission, staying powered by using ocean waves and hopefully not coordinating an autonomous paratrooping pseudo-Roomba uprising.

It may be just a wish-upon-a-star dream that we'll ever see one of these in action, but it's at least good to see oil spills given a creative solution (read: probably impossible robot-based solution; incidentally, it's not the first time we've seen one of those). The drones are still in the concept phase right now, and there's no telling exactly when Hsu Sean's design will be manufactured, if ever. A lot of it - like the specifics of the bacteria and the water-based engine - seems destined to wind up mired in concept limbo.

The closest thing you'll ever get might be throwing your Roomba into the ocean from a helicopter, which probably isn't going to do all that much for the environment but could at least keep a few dolphins from needing to sweep the house this week.

[via TreeHugger]

Snazzy All-in-One "Vancouver Poles" to Replace Ugly Urban Forest of Cell Towers and Cables

Rebecca Boyle — Wed, 23 May 2012 19:18:06 GMT

V-Pole Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson with an illustration of a V-Pole (V for Vancouver). Martin Tessler & Mathew Bulford/V-Pole.com

Streetlamps, cell phone towers and parking meters lend a certain urban charm, but these unnatural forms can also get a little clunky, especially as they grow in number. To get rid of the clutter, the city of Vancouver is planning new all-purpose utility towers that will provide WiFi, cell phone service, parking, car charging and more - all wrapped up in a Candy Land-like stripey pole.

They're called V-Poles, for Vancouver, and they're the brainchild of Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland. He conceived the idea after he stumbled upon something called the lightRadio, developed by Bell Labs and Alcatel-Lucent, which compresses a cell phone tower's circuit boards and cables into a tiny cube. The devices can be stacked up inside a tower like Legos, according to Coupland. It can serve multiple frequencies and standards, i.e. 2G, 3G or LTE, and it can work anywhere there's a power supply and a broadband connection. Just add other services, and you've got a complete information and energy ecosystem on one tree.

From bottom to top, it would include an inductive coil charging pad for electric vehicles; stacked telecom boxes for various providers; a WiFi transmitter; and an LED streetlamp The poles could even power a neighborhood bulletin board. Coupland's idea also includes a wide array of color schemes from which neighborhoods could choose, representing anything from a pileated woodpecker to the Vancouver Canucks.

"Data transmission is no longer something scary you don't want in your backyard. Now you want it directly in front of your house," Coupland says. It might as well look neat, too, he adds.

The National Post says there's no firm price tag, but the poles could cost thousands of dollars, not tens of thousands - that's far cheaper than existing Vancouver plans for things like electric car charging stations and LED streetlamps.

Coupland unveiled the design at the New Cities Summit in Paris last week.

[National Post]

Would You Ride This Pencil-Shaped Capsule To Space?

Rebecca Boyle — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:03:23 GMT

Tycho Brahe That's a dummy head in there at the top. Copenhagen Suborbitals

The amateur rocketeers at Copenhagen Suborbitals are getting closer and closer to orbit, testing a new bi-liquid fuel combination for a hand-built, donation-funded, non-profit rocket. The group tested its alcohol- and liquid oxygen-powered TM65 rocket over the weekend, the largest amateur bi-liquid rocket in the world.

The test fire lasted about 30 seconds, turning 700 liters of propellant into raging power. Watch in the video below (careful if you're wearing headphones!)

Eventually, rockets like the TM65 will launch the Tycho Brahe capsule, seen at the top of the page, sending a single passenger to the boundary of space. Flying in a capsule no larger than an MRI machine sounds just a bit terrifying, but at least it will contain a very comfy-looking custom leather seat. The goal is to build a privately financed, amateur-designed space transport system, to prove you don't need huge government funds to reach space.

Copenhagen Suborbitals launched its first rocket this time last year and has been making tweaks to its designs. The company has been looking at hybrid propellant rockets, including epoxy resin and nitrous oxide, but it turns out the bi-liquid fuel type solves some of the rocket's oscillation problems, which were an issue during its first launch. Kristian von Bengtson, one of the company's founders, said in a blog post that further tests are planned for this summer. Meanwhile, watch the new rocket roar here (around the 5:35 mark).

[Wired, Gizmag]

Russian Space Chief: 'We're Talking About Establishing Permanent Bases' On the Moon

Clay Dillow — Wed, 23 May 2012 17:07:31 GMT

Destination: the Moon Bob Familiar via Wikimedia

Yesterday, the heads of the space agencies for Europe, Canada, Russia, India, and Japan met in Washington D.C. (without NASA, which had all hands on deck for the SpaceX launch in Florida). The most interesting topic of conversation? The moon, which seems to be the destination on everyone's agenda except for NASA. And for Russia, it's less a destination and more a frontier for colonization.

"We're not talking about repeating what mankind achieved 40 years ago," Roscosmos (that's Russia's space agency) head Vladimir Popovkin said through a translator. "We're talking about establishing permanent bases." Japanese space agency JAXA openly stated that it a manned moon mission is its next human spaceflight priority as well.

Rumblings of permanent moon bases and manned missions to Earth's orbiting neighbor have been present for some time now in the international space community, but to hear the heads of agencies state so boldly their intentions marks something of a significant shift in the timbre of the dialogue. NASA is setting a course for a manned asteroid landing sometime in the next decade, followed by a manned Mars mission in the decade following that. But it seems that in the meantime more than one spacefaring nation aims to establish a presence on the lunar surface.

Also absent was China, which also has designs on a manned lunar mission as well as its own orbiting space station in the works. The agencies involved spoke of increasing collaboration with China. Less so with NASA, which has proven an unreliable partner as of late.

[Nature Blogs]

Oxford Launches New Hunt for Yeti DNA Samples

Rebecca Boyle — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:13:25 GMT

Yeti Footprint A mysterious footprint found in the Himalayas in March 1976. Wikimedia Commons

In the bizarre world of cryptozoology, the yeti looms large, its potential existence the stuff of legend since the days of the first Mt. Everest expeditions. Now a new effort could settle it for good, by studying DNA from hair samples stored at various institutions around the world. Maybe the samples do belong to a yeti or some type of beast unknown to science, or maybe it's as boring as a bear - a team of researchers at the University of Oxford and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology aim to find out.

The new collaboration is called the Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project and its members are asking for institutions to submit cryptozoological samples. Cryptozoology is the study of animals whose existence is not proven. First the Oxford group wants to compile a list of known organic matter, and then they'll ask for the samples at some point later so they can perform DNA analysis.

The yeti - a.k.a. bigfoot or sasquatch in this country, and various other names elsewhere in the world - could be any number of unknown primate species or even subspecies of bears, according to Bryan Sykes, a Fellow of Wolfson College at Oxford who will co- lead the project. No shortage of explorers and adventurers have searched for the mysterious creature, some of which have appeared in these pages at times. If private collections and museums around the world lend suspicious samples, DNA will tell the truth, Sykes said in a statement.

"Mainstream science remains unconvinced by these reports both through lack of testable evidence and the scope for fraudulent claims. However, recent advances in the techniques of genetic analysis of organic remains provide a mechanism for genus and species identification that is unbiased, unambiguous and impervious to falsification," he said.

Oxford's news release says the results will be published in peer-reviewed journals. One can safely assume they'll be submitted, but whether a team of referees will recommend their publication is another question. Regardless, we hope they find something.

[PhysOrg ]

DARPA and Craig Venter Fire Up Bio-Factories For Quick, Streamlined Genetic Engineering

Rebecca Boyle — Wed, 23 May 2012 14:11:00 GMT

Recombinant E. Coli The blue-dyed bacteria contain a special protein that is disrupted when the DNA is spliced and recombined. When the enzyme is interrupted, the bacteria turns white instead of blue. Wellcome Images

Not content to let scientists figure out how to engineer animals and plants depending on the situation, DARPA wants to generalize the process, creating a manufacturing framework for all living things. The "Living Foundries" program sets up an assembly line paradigm for life and its constituent parts, and the DOD's crazy-science arm just handed out its first research grants.

Among the recipients are Caltech, MIT and the J. Craig Venter Institute, a fitting result given the latter group's prior success in creating the first-ever synthetic organism. The full suite of awards was announced May 22, comprising $15.5 million spread among six companies and institutions.

DARPA announced Living Foundries last summer, with a goal toward an engineering framework that could apply to any living thing. Under this program, genetic engineering would no longer be limited to modification of existing organisms - instead, scientists would be able to concoct anything they wanted from scratch, using a suite of ingredients and processes that could apply in any situation. Such a system is better, DARPA argues, than already promising examples of synthetic biology, which are too laborious, lab-specific and expensive to be universally applicable.

In the beginning, Living Foundries creates a basic library of modularized parts that can be assembled in infinite variations. Like computers borne of circuits and wires, endless forms of life could arise from a brew of proteins and DNA - perhaps bacteria that could eat cancer, maybe renewable fuels, and so on. The ultimate goal is a genetic starter set that could be snapped together like so many Legos, forming any system the military might require.

The contract winners will have to come up with this library of parts, as well as a way to test the new bio-products, Danger Room reports. DARPA also wants the teams to compress the biological build, test and design cycle by 10-fold, in both time and cost.

It may not be far-fetched - synthetic biology is already trending toward greater efficiency, both in the engineered organisms themselves and in the tools scientists are using to develop and evaluate them. As one example, consider the cost of genome sequencing now to the Human Genome Project's gargantuan price tag. If the charter members of Living Foundries are successful, bio-engineering will become as efficient as factory production.

[DARPA via Danger Room]

New 'Mechanical Metamaterial' Expands When You Compress It, Shrinks When You Stretch It

Clay Dillow — Wed, 23 May 2012 04:07:27 GMT

Mechanical Metamaterials Could Create Cushions That Push Back Johan via Wikimedia

It's 'opposite day' for metamaterials

Metamaterials research has generally focused on media with strange or unique electromagnetic properties, like the ability to bend light or sound in an unnatural way, but materials scientists at Northwestern University are experimenting with an entirely new kind of material with unique mechanical properties. A team there has designed materials with "negative compressibility" that in theory will compress when they are pulled and expand when they are compressed.

In other words, sit on a cushion and it pushes back against the force of your weight. This sounds counterintuitive, of course, but their design makes some kind of sense. One would expect that any material that behaves this way would be, by definition, unstable--and therefore would collapse into a stable state on its own, thus nullifying whatever characteristics the unstable state possessed. But the Northwestern team designed around this by creating an internal structure that does indeed fall into a stable state. The stable state is just more compressed or expanded than the original state.

That's confusing, so we're going to borrow from New Scientist's explanation (click through for some more thorough visuals). Think of a row of four horizontal particles making up a material that inherently wants to expand. Each is made up of molecules that attract one another to certain and unequal degrees, and that attraction keeps the material from expanding.

The inner two particles share a weak attraction that can be broken when the material is stretched. But when the bond between the inner particles is broken, the outer particles respond by attracting each other even more, creating compression that counters the stretching. But compressing the material brings the two inner particles back together again, re-establishing the weak bond and allowing the material to resume expanding.

It's confusing, but in theory it could work. Someday such materials could be used to coat the outside of military vehicles or shelters to push back against an incoming blast.

[New Scientist]

Video: Amazing Coating For Bottles' Interiors Lets Ketchup Flow Like Water

Paul Adams — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:09:57 GMT

LiquiGlide, developed by a team at MIT's Varanasi Research Group, is a surface coating that liberates the notoriously non-Newtonian fluid ketchup from its glass- or plastic-walled prison. The research came in second in MIT's $100K Entrepreneurship Challenge, and is almost certainly destined for a bottle near you. Watch its graceful performance below in a video from Fast Co.Exist.

We have seen slippery materials before, but never in so useful an application. Creator Dave Smith tells Fast Co. that the heavily patented coating on the inside of the bottle is "kind of a structured liquid--it's rigid like a solid, but it's lubricated like a liquid."

Here it is with mayo:

[Fast Co.Exist]

Celebrate Robert Moog's Birthday With a Google Synth

Paul Adams — Tue, 22 May 2012 20:01:49 GMT

Moog Doodle Google

Robert Moog, the inventor of the seminal analog audio synthesizer that bears his name, is celebrated by Google today, in one of the search giant's classic time-sucking doodles. Actually tomorrow, May 23, is his birthday, but it's already tomorrow in Australia, Japan, and certain other Google-enabled nations.

Like Moog's best work, it's both very impressive and very fun. A working pitch wheel! You can record and save your performances, and share them--if they're amazing--below.

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