Monthly Archives: February 2010

Putting the "Path" into Flexible Path

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Analysis: NASA must take next giant step, Houston Chronicle

"The rationale given by administration officials was viable, said Keith Cowing, a former NASA manager who for years has served as editor of the NASA Watch Web site as well as Spaceref.com. "The costs were spiraling, the rockets weren't working and the cost would have been something NASA never would have been expected to get. I was surprised they went as far as they did. ... There's something to be said for killing it completely, once and for all." What Cowing and others -- meaning just about everyone else -- have a difficult time understanding is where exactly manned exploration under NASA is headed. "Flexible is an interesting word," Cowing said. "It means you adapt, you listen, you learn. But path means there is a direction you are heading. I don't see that yet."

Pet Speakers Are the Perfect Valentine’s Gift For Your Dog [Pets]

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Did you know that the music you're listening to is literal torture for the sensitive ears of your pet? It's scientifically probably true! My Pet Speaker filters out harsh animal-only frequencies, so you and Fido can jam together in comfort.

The speakers are made by Pet Acoustics, who have previously blessed us with an iPhone app dedicated to music explicitly written for the three most common household pets: dogs, cats, and... horses. Anyway! Their My Pet Speakers take a slightly different approach to serving your four-legged friend's aural needs:

My Pet Speaker features an Omni directional speaker with a 4" drive unit and cone reflector which disburses the music in 360 degrees recreating how animals hear in nature. By producing limited frequencies and featuring a soft bass design for listening comfort, your pets will not be startled or disturbed by jarring volumes and piercing sounds that put them on alert.

That's right! Fido won't be disturbed. Your friends and loved ones might be, though, after they find out you spent $250 on a speaker for your pet. [Pet Acoustics]


The Faulty iMac Saga, Chapter 5: The Moment of Truth [Broken]

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The iMac's notorious flickering problem has been solved through a firmware update. And after a few weeks' hiatus, Apple has continued shipping 27-inch iMacs. This may be it.

Can You Safely Buy a New iMac Yet?

Nope, but you might be able to next week.

Why?

There are two noted problems with iMacs—the 27-inch models in particular. First is an issue where their screens flicker. Apple released a firmware update for the problem, but it didn't seem to fix it. However, the second firmware update looks to have been more successful. How successful?

Combing through about 30 pages of this thread (thanks Kyle), dozens have found the second update successful—and similar threads have come to similar conclusions. A few outliers still exist, but the vast consensus seems to be that the issue is nullified when the update is properly installed.

So it looks like the flickering problem is fixed for most users. This is great news—a huge breakthrough in this whole saga. If your iMac is still flickering after the update, call up Apple and demand new hardware. It finally seems safe to say, you're probably in the minority.

But the existing, huge question mark is regarding the yellow screens. Are these fixed yet? Apple halted production lines in what we assumed as an attempt to solve the yellow screen problems (among other iMac quirks). Now they're shipping new 27-inch iMacs again.

Theoretically, the yellow screens could be behind us. But until customers actually receive and test these iMacs, we don't know if Apple was able to solve whatever problems are going on.

Apple most certainly hasn't made claims either way.

What Ever Happened With Those Apple Pay-outs

We received reports from the UK, and then the US, that Apple was essentially buying back faulty iMacs for 15% over the sticker price. It was until later, however, that we learned the catch. What once looked like a pretty great deal turned out, well, mediocre. The 15% was a flat payback rate that was meant to cover both tax and shipping. We assume it covered purchasing expenses, but a money hand-out it was not. It's also worth mentioning that this deal was handed out sporadically, and I'm not sure it's still being offered to customers at all.

Quote of the Week

"[Apple] said they can issue me a refund via check that'll come 4-6 weeks. That's nearly $2600 of my money they're going to hold for over 2 months since the day I paid for this messed up computer."

Apple Is All In

So this is it, the big moment of truth. Without official word, we are forced to interpret the delivery freezes as both a silent admission that there were problems with iMacs and an attempt to fix them. But who knows if Apple actually solved the yellow screens. Especially if the source of the issue is really in the LG panel itself—which some suspect given similar complaints with similar Dell monitors—it's possible that Apple can't cure the jaundice without raising hell down at the factory, or shopping for another supplier. (This problem shouldn't be the consumer's inconvenience, of course.) We won't know until we see the latest iMacs in the wild.

We've got a lot of sources—retail/repair spies, plenty of tipsters who are on their third or fourth faulty iMac and, of course, all of you—just waiting to share their replacement experiences. Tip us at submissions@gizmodo.com and join in.

Apple, I hope we can put these problems behind us because neither of us wants to see how bad that apple on the table can rot.


Bad Valentine: On Finding Awkward, Geek Love [Bad Valentine]

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Love can be difficult. Throwing tech into the mix can complicate things even more.

We've got tech that can put us in touch with so many people at once, but can keep us from real intimacy with our closest few: Facebook friends don't have to meet, tweets don't require thoughtfulness, movie dates don't require talking, and sexting obviates touching. But we still need to get down to brass tacks for love and fucking. Uh, so to speak.

The underlying game remains but it seems like we have a lot more interference to deal with.

Of course, it isn't that one-sided. We're meeting people we might have never met before, and we're engaging with them, even superficially, across barriers and distances and with immediacy impossible even a few decades ago.

But my guess is that when we spend all this time at arms length or farther, engaging in little meaningless conversations with the crowd, it's hard to imagine we're all as good at the one-on-one time than we might been sometime in the last century. I might even suggest from my pop psychobabble arm chair that gadget geeks who prefer to fiddle with apps at a party instead of conversing with other human beings are at least slightly damaged romantic goods. I'd be speaking about myself. And so would my girlfriend:

When Brian first brought his iPhone home, it was like he'd taken a mistress. All day, all night, he fondled its touchscreen and gawked at its shiny face. He couldn't keep his eyes off of it for more than five minutes at a time. Like a good Japanese girlfriend, I let him get the lust out of his system instead of trying to stop the inevitable. I pretended not to care while he lay in bed smoothing his finger across the unlock bar, and sat stoically at the other end of the dinner table as he and the iPhone whispered sweet nothings to each other.

Geek-on-geek love isn't all bad. Nerds use the same websites and gadgets and develop, together, the same affinities and rules of right and wrong. The challenge is, along the worldwide spectrum from geek to non-geek, everyone gets comfortable with these modern tools at different paces. What's left, and constant, then, is human nature.

For the next few days, counting down to Valentine's day, we're exploring love in modern times. Our resident love doctor, Dr. Debby Herbenick, will be sharing wisdom and data to help us understand the new challenges, and we'll all be publishing various takes on this complicated subject, as well as sharing your experiences as well.

It's not all bad, in fact, sometimes it's beautiful, but let's face it, love is messy enough and adding social networks and smartphones into the mix without any established rules for how or when to use them properly, things can only get messier.

This is where our theme—and our exploration of awkward geek love—begins.

You can read all our Bad Valentine stories here.


Falling Inside a Black Hole [Image Cache]

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Have you ever wondered how wicked and weird the Universe would look as you free fall into a black hole at nearly the speed of light? Wonder no more, my dear Alice, and play this video.

The stars' light gets distorted as you get closer to the black hole's horizon. First, their light turns redder, as the photons try to escape the black hole's strong gravitational field, which stretches the light wavelength. But since you are traveling at nearly the speed of light, the effect gets compensated by the Doppler effect, turning them back to blue. At the middle of the black hole, the entire universe looks like a bright ring around the black hole.

In this video you can see the same fall, but with rockets slowing the spaceship descent into the hole:

The simulation was created by Thomas Müller using his program—available as a Linux and Windows download. His software accurately shows the effect of black holes in the Universe light, using physics and a map of more than 118,000 stars created using the information captured by ESA's Hipparcos spacecraft. [VIS via New Scientist]


Water Appearing Through PT Slab on Grade

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I have recurring water intrusion problem on a PT slab in Erie CO. The 60 x 60 slab was poured for an airplane hangar and voids were left around plumbing penetrations (toilet, shower, plumbing vent etc. The slab is about two years old and during construction, (of course) there were no problems. Since

Did Somebody Say Something About CMEs?

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The Sun does a lot of interesting things while it’s sitting out in space; not the least of which is to periodically fling billions of tons of charged particles out into space, with an average speed of 500 km/s.  These are Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), and they are quite a show.

USGov/NASA, TRACE

Often compared with solar flares, CMEs are (as the name suggests) massive ejections of matter from the Sun’s corona.  Not all CMEs are “pointing at” the Earth; many are discharged harmlessly into space.  It doesn’t have to be “spot-on”, either.  In traveling, the mass spreads out and accelerates (or decelerates) to about the speed of the solar “wind” (400-500 km/s).

When all this highly-charged mass hits the Earth’s magnetosphere, it compresses it on the “leading edge”, the side facing the Sun, and elongates the “following edge”, the side facing away from the Sun.  Of course, the particles falling back to Earth along the magnetic lines is what’s responsible for the Aurorae.

USGov/NASA, TRACE, Aaron Kasse

If unprepared, CMEs can cause a great deal of damage to satellites and power grids serving large communities.  The NASA-launched STEREO Mission, Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory, allows for constant stereoscopic imaging and observation of the Sun.  This will give scientists enough warning (hopefully) when an extremely energetic CME is headed Earth’s direction.

For some very nice images of the Sun, take a look at these collected by TRACE.

Woodworms

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Dear all, I have problems with woodworms that have started destroying my wooden ceiling, could some out there advice me on the best pestcide that I can use without affecting the people in the house and my two lovely cats that stay in the house. Luyombya.

Wall Clips Organize Controllers In Wiimote Locations [Accessories]

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Controllers can be a hassle to keep track of, and often clutter up valuable home entertainment space. But here comes the Wall Clip, what Mary Poppins would surely have used if the Banks children had been gamers.

I'm sure the Wall Clip can be used to mount any number of non-video-game-accessory items to your wall, and it's that flexibility that makes them so handy. You can mount anything from a Wii Nunchuck to a Guitar Hero axe by bending and shaping each Wall Clip as necessary.

They're available in a range of ten colors, and you can pick up four for just ten bucks. And if anyone questions why you've got video game controllers hanging on your walls, explain to them that it's part of the decor, and politely escort them from the premises. [Laboratory 424 via Unpluggd]


Insulation… OF TOMORROW | Bad Astronomy

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This is cool: recent tech advances have lowered the cost of making aerogel sufficiently that it can be used for home insulation!

I’ve written about his bizzaro stuff before: it’s a silica gel that has so many air pockets in it it is essentially barely more dense than air itself. It has a lot of uses, like putting on board spacecraft to catch particles from comets. But it’s such a good insulator that it may very well revolutionize the industry.

It’s been around since before the space program, so we can’t attribute this invention to space age tech, but it does have a lot of uses, and I bet as the price lowers people will find lots of other ways to use it.

I love living in the future.


We May Soon Be Able to Clone Neanderthals. But Should We? | 80beats

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neanderthal_childLast year DISCOVER asked the question, “Did We Mate With Neanderthals, or Did We Murder Them?” Now, Zach Zorich at Archaeology magazine is asking another big question about our hominid siblings: Should we bring them back?

Thanks to a slew of recent advances, the possibility is getting closer. 80beats reported a year ago that researchers had published the rough draft of the Neanderthal genome. However, that’s likely to contain many errors because it’s so difficult to reconstruct ancient DNA. Within hours of death, cells begin to break down in a process called apoptosis. The dying cells release enzymes that chop up DNA into tiny pieces. In a human cell, this means that the entire three-billion-base-pair genome is reduced to fragments about 50 base-pairs long [Archaeology].

Even if scientists succeed in figuring out the entire Neanderthal genome, they’d be faced with another problem before they could even consider the possibility of cloning one of these ancient hominids: We don’t have any living Neanderthal cells to work with. Thus, researchers will have to figure out how to put DNA into chromosomes, and how to get those chromosomes into the nucleus of a cell. What about altering the DNA inside a living human cell, and tweaking our genetic code to match the Neanderthal’s? This kind of genetic engineering can already be done, but very few changes can be made at one time. To clone a Neanderthal, thousands or possibly millions of changes would have to be made to a human cell’s DNA [Archaeology].

Even if scientists manage to put Neanderthal DNA in a cell nucleus, their problems aren’t over. The next step in creating a baby clone is to move the cell nucleus into the egg of a related species in a technique called nuclear transfer, and then implanting the altered egg in a female who can bear it to term. But in this process, which has been extensively tested on animals, cells often get sick or die, causing fetuses to die in the womb or clones to die young. That’s why the vast majority of scientists oppose using this method on people. Even if nuclear transfer cloning could be perfected in humans or Neanderthals, it would likely require a horrifying period of trial and error [Archaeology].

But Archaeology suggests that many of these obstacles will eventually be overcome, and proposes another cloning option: making Neanderthal stem cells. Last year researchers managed to turn mouse skin cells back into a pluripotent state, where they can act like stem cells, and used those to create a cloned mouse. Cloning a Neanderthal is a lot different than cloning a mouse, but if the process worked, a cloned Neanderthal would grow up with their genes expressing they way they were meant to.

That’s the “could we.” But what about the “should we?” More work has been done on this than you might think. In 1997, Stuart Newman, a biology professor at New York Medical School attempted to patent the genome of a chimpanzee-human as a means of preventing anyone from creating such a creature [Archaeology]. But he lost his case because the patent office said it would violate the 13th amendment prohibitions against slavery. And since Neanderthals would be even more human, it stands to reason that they’d receive at least some human rights protections.

Rightfully so. But as the bioethicist Bernard Rollin points out in the Archaeology piece, there’s more to worry about than the law. While Neanderthals are our close relatives on the evolutionary tree, you’d know one if you saw one. Tulane anthropologist Trenton Holliday argues that they could talk and act like us, therefore eventually they’d fit in. But that seems like wishful thinking. With no culture, no peers, and an unknown capacity to cope with the modern world mentally or physically, a Neanderthal would be adrift—caught between a zoo animal and a human being. The main point in cloning one would be for scientists to study it, but as law professor Lori Andrews says, a Neanderthal could be granted enough legal protection to make doing extensive research on it illegal, not just unethical.

That’s not to say there would be no benefits to science. But some things are best left in the past.

Related Content:
80beats: Did Spear-Throwing Humans Kill Neanderthals?
80beats: Controversial Study Suggests Early Humans Feasted on Neanderthals
80beats: Neanderthal DNA Shows They Rarely Interbred With Us Very Different Humans
80beats: Give Neanderthals Some Credit: They Made Nice Tools
80beats: Scientists Reprogram Skin Cells To Create Cloned Mice
DISCOVER: Will We Ever Clone a Caveman?
DISCOVER: Did We Mate With Neanderthals, or Did We Murder Them?

Image: Wikimedia Commons


eVouse Mouse Concept Bridges Regular Mice With Air Mice [Concept]

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Air Mice are fine enough if you have to control an HTPC from your bed, across the room, they're usually inaccurate and finicky. Why not make it a regular mouse too? And lo, the eVouse is.

This concept, which designer Marcial Ahsayane shoved a Microsoft logo on, transforms from a right-side-up B2 bomber in regular mouse mode to a holy-crap-stop-turning-so-sharply B2 bomber in air mouse mode. You use the latter mode to do stuff "like drawing, "optical pens" do, like drawing and pointing at stuff. [Yanko Design]


India Says No to Genetically Modified Eggplants | 80beats

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Eggplant_dsc07800After much debate over balancing the need for independent scientific testing and the needs of poor Indian farmers, the Indian government has decided to put on hold the introduction of genetically modified eggplant in the country. The move hampers the expansion of seed makers including Monsanto Co. in the world’s second-most populous nation [BusinessWeek]. The government said there was no overriding food security argument for GM eggplant, and added that more safety studies needed to be done before the ban could be reconsidered.

There is little evidence that GMO eggplant would cause harm to people eating it, but the crop is consumed very often in India, and some scientists and regulators argued that they needed more proof that long-term consumption wouldn’t cause a problem. “It is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary principle-based approach and impose a moratorium on the release of Bt Brinjal till such time independent scientific studies establish, to the satisfaction of both the public and professionals, the safety of the product” [Daily News and Analysis], said the environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, who delivered the announcement.

The eggplant had been genetically modified by introducing a gene called cry1Ac from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt. The gene instructs the plant to produce a protein toxic to certain insects, so the GM eggplants would have been able to fend off common borer pests. The Bt was sourced from Monsanto, which already sells Bt corn and Bt cotton seeds in the United States. In the 1990s, Monsanto triggered a huge debate in India by introducing genetically modified cotton.

Alhough the GM eggplant (or brinjal, as it is called in India) was cleared by a federal agency, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), the government put the roll-out on hold. Ramesh also said the national bureau of plant genetic resources had found that India’s diversity rich regions were likely to be affected by the introduction of Bt Brinjal due to gene flow [Daily News and Analysis]—the tendency of crops to cross-breed and share genetic traits with other plants.

Related Content:
80beats: Genetically Modified Tomatoes Can Last 45 Days on the Shelf
80beats: GM Corn & Organ Failure: Lots of Sensationalism, Few Facts
80beats: GM Corn Leads to Organ Failure!? Not So Fast
80beats: New Biotech Corn Gives Triple Vitamin Boost; Protesters Unmoved
80beats: Germany Joins the European Mutiny of Genetically Modified Crops
DISCOVER: “Frankenfoods” That Could Feed the World
DISCOVER: Genetically Altered Corn, and how GM corn not intended for humans got into the food supply

Image: Wikmedia / David. Monniaux


Google Buzz: The Search Giant’s Attempt at a Facebook-Killer | 80beats

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buzz-dayFor folks who already spend most of their time updating Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts, here is one more site to add to the mix. None other than Google has decided to jump into the social networking fray by launching Google Buzz–a social networking tool that is also integrated with email and mobile phones.

Buzz can be accessed through any Gmail account and lets users share updates, photos, links, or anything else with their Gmail contacts. Bloggers have likened it to Twitter, except that it dwells within your Gmail. Google has already rolled out Buzz to some journalists, and Gmail users can expect to see it within their inboxes over the next couple of days.

The Buzz tab will be located right below your inbox tab. To get someone started with Buzz, Gmail is expected to pull info about the user’s contacts to create a list of people who the user frequently emails and instant messages with. This list becomes the blueprint for the people the user “follows.” The user can then “buzz” them, sharing pictures and links. When a user posts to Google Buzz, he can share publicly to followers and his Google profile, or privately to his existing Gmail groups or custom groups. Notifications of shares and comments will appear in a user’s inbox with a special Buzz icon next to those items. Comments will appear in real time [ReadWriteWeb].

It may seem that Google is late to the social networking party–and indeed, it may be tough to convince Facebook’s 350 million active users to switch to a new platform. But Google Buzz does have one edge, in that it aims to be the easiest, most functional social networking tool for smart phones. If you log onto Google Buzz on your smart phone, the company will find you via your GPS, translate that from lat-long coordinates into English, “I’m outside Waldorf-Astoria,” and use that for all sorts of services. Your friends can now see where you are and hook up for a chance meeting…. If you’re looking for a good nearby restaurant, Google Buzz will let you scan all the public posts about establishments in your area [The Big Money].

There is a downside to this utility. Since Buzz will garner so many details about a user’s movements, some worry that our entire lives will be in Google’s database, making us active targets for advertisers. And with Buzz’s deep-embedded real-time tap on your life and both passive and pushed advertising, alongside its arch-rival Apple’s extensive plans for location-aware ads, the upshot is that there may not be a moment in your day when you’re not sharing deeply-personal data with Google, and having personalized ads thrust upon you [Fast Company].

It’s also worth noting that Facebook, the current ruler of the social networking universe, won’t just be standing by and watching Google tempt away its users. Facebook is reportedly working on a “Gmail-killer” tool of its own. Facebook is completely rewriting their messaging product and is preparing to launch a fully featured webmail product in its place, according to a source with knowledge of the product. Internally it’s known as Project Titan [TechCrunch].

To get a sense of how Buzz works, take a look at this demo video.

Related Content:

80beats: Google to China: No More Internet Censorship, or We Leave
80beats: Googlefest Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: 3 New Ways Google Will Take Over Your Life
DISCOVER: Big Picture: 5 Reasons Science [Hearts] Google
DISCOVER: Google Taught Me How to Cut My Own Hair
DISCOVER: How Google Is Making Us Smarter

Image: Google