Micro stories - small news bits too small to have their own thread

[SvenSvensonov]

Police Dispose Of 20,000 Pounds Of Fireworks By Detonating Them All

Recently, 20,000 pounds of fireworks were seized in Glasscock County, Texas, and the local bomb squads helped the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to dispose of them. How? By exploding the whole lot of them over the course of three and a half days and creating a tower of sparkling smoke.

The Midland Police Department posted this video to YouTube, explaining that Odessa, Lubbock, and Amarillo bomb squads were also present to assist with the fireworks disposal. It doesn't say just how many pounds of fireworks were detonated in this particular video, but it's still an impressive show. We can only imaging what it looked like to passersby.

On the department Facebook page, the MPD elaborates on the display:

To answer some of the questions we are getting, these fireworks were seized by ATF, not MPD. This disposal was very informative for our bomb techs who are charged with handling explosives. Also, this was done during the day because it was not meant to be a fireworks show. These fireworks could not be donated since their destruction was court-ordered.

Here's How You Can Help Build a Quantum Computer

Quantum computers—theoretical machines which can process certain large and difficult problems exponentially faster than classical computers—have been a mainstay of science fiction for decades. But actually building one has proven incredibly challenging.

A group of researchers at Aarhus University believes the secret to creating a quantum computer lies in understanding human cognition. So, they've built computer games to study us, first.

There are ways in which modern computers vastly outstrip our cognitive capacity—storing and regurgitating facts, for instance. But while most humans will struggle to memorize a list of a hundred names, we can learn recognize a hundred faces—a much more complex task—with ease. For decades, neuroscientists and engineers have dreamed of designing a computer that performs tasks such as facial or hand-writing recognition efficiently.

To understand how humans solve complex problems, Jacob Sherson and his colleagues created Quantum Moves, a simple problem-solving game in which a player searches for the best way to move atoms around on the screen. Ultimately, the researchers hope their freely accessible game—which has already been played over 400 thousand times—will offer insights into how our brains easily perform tasks that stump computers.

"The players showed us that there's an unexploited capacity for ingenuity in the human brain. We see solutions that a computer would never have allowed, and which optimize the processes," said Sherson in a press release.

The game has already produced some interesting findings. For one, while your loved ones may scold you for your lack of attentiveness, when it comes to problem solving, the ability to disregard irrelevant information is a blessing. Computers are unable to ignore even the most obscure details, and waste precious energy trying to incorporate them into the solution.

"We presumably manage to separate whatever is of no importance in relation to a given problem," Sherson said. "We hope to transfer this to the work with quantum computers, where the behaviour of atoms is the crucial factor."

So, while the actual business of building a quantum computer may out of reach for those of us lacking a Ph.D. in physics, now at least there's a way for us plebeians to contribute to the effort, by doing what we do best—playing games.

You can check out (and play!) the games that researchers are using to map our thoughts and design better computers here.

 

[SvenSvensonov]

Great Horned Owlet Has You In Its Sleepy Sights

A very young owlet (estimated to be around 10 to 14 days old!) hangs with its mother at Metzger Farm Open Space in Westminster, Colorado. The photographer notes: "Given the mother owl's behavior in the previous photo, there are likely other younger owlets in the nest."

For more pictures of the owls (this is the only shot so far of any young 'uns), check out this photostream.

And for the owl-obsessed (guilty), check out this streaming peek into a Great Horned Owl nest in Savannah, GA, an operation so social media-savvy it has its own Twitter account.



Researchers Turn Packing Peanuts Into Rechargeable Batteries

Many of us have shared the guilty twinge of pouring a box of packing peanuts into a trash bag, knowing that our convenient foam waste will end up sitting in a landfill for the next few thousand years. Soon, however, we may be able to juice these little nuts for energy.

That's because chemical engineers Vilas Pol and Vinodkumar Etacheri of Purdue University have just developed a method to turn foam peanuts into components for rechargeable batteries.Like the rest of us, Pol felt guilty about tossing foam nuts whenever his lab received new equipment. He decided to do something about it, and with Etacheri's assistance, devised a way to turn peanuts into carbon microsheets and nanoparticles that can serve as anodes in lithium ion batteries. According to Pol, the new anode outperforms graphite-based anodes currently on the market, with 15 percent higher electrical storage capacity.

A video explains how Pol and his research team are turning packing peanuts into rechargeable battery components:

Made from polystyrene—the same poorly degradable material found in Styrofoam—only about 10 percent of packing peanuts made in the United States are recycled today. According to Pol,both traditional packing peanuts and newer, "environmentally friendly" alternatives can pose risks:

"Outside in a landfill, potentially harmful substances in the peanuts, such as heavy metals, chlorides and phthalates, can easily leach into the environment and deteriorate soil and water quality. The starch-based alternatives also contain chemicals and detergents that can contaminate ecosystems," he said.

Pol is optimistic that his new process could be scaled up and says that foam-based carbon microsheets and nanoparticles may be ready for commercial use within two years. He's also working on applying the method to the more-degradable starch based nuts. So hold onto those little foam nuts for now—soon, they may find a new home in all your favorite devices.

 

[Dubious]

Reposting this from online. Please read.

“This piece was primarily a trust exercise, in which she told viewers she would not move for six hours no matter what they did to her. She placed 72 objects one could use in pleasing or destructive ways, ranging from flowers and a feather boa to a knife and a loaded pistol, on a table near her and invited the viewers to use them on her however they wanted.

Initially, Abramović said, viewers were peaceful and timid, but it escalated to violence quickly. “The experience I learned was that … if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed… I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.”

This piece revealed something terrible about humanity, similar to what Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment or Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiment, both of which also proved how readily people will harm one another under unusual circumstances.”

This performance showed just how easy it is to dehumanize a person who doesn’t fight back, and is particularly powerful because it defies what we think we know about ourselves. I’m certain the no one reading this believes the people around him/her capable of doing such things to another human being, but this performance proves otherwise.”

and then a follow up comment:

So every single person who told me ‘ignore them they’ll go away’ and ‘you can’t let them know they bothered you’ and ‘They’ll stop if they don’t see you react’ and all that bull shit, my entire school career, I want you to look good and hard at this.

I want you to think about what you said.

What you keep saying.

What you are telling your children.

You are making them powerless."

 

[SvenSvensonov]

Welcome to Marine One

Love him or hate him, Obama looks ace stepping off M1 like that.

VVIP and head of state aircraft are sensitive places, and pictures from inside the confines of the USMC's VH-3Ds and VH-60Ns are scarce, but they do exist. We've assembled a collection of these photos to show you what life is life skirting the skyline in the President's point-to-point vehicles of choice.

There is no denying that the Presidential helicopter fleet is old. The VH-3D Sea Kings that have served for many decades are especially in need of a replacement, but as you can see in some of the historical pictures at the bottom of this post, their age is partially their charm. These aircraft are flown by Marine Helicopter Squadron HMX-1 out of Quantico, VA as well as the newer and smaller VH-60N White Hawks. The whole fleet is stated to be replaced with the Sikorsky VH-92in the coming decade.

These highly modified military helicopters are called "White Tops" after their white upper accents that denote their Presidential airlift mission (or "Marine One" when the POTUS is onboard). Also of note is that whether the President is flying on a VH-3D or a VH-60N, he has a designated 'throne chair' embossed with the Presidential Seal.

I can't get on a plane with a pocket knife. This fool gets to bring swords?

 

[Taygibay]

I can't get on a plane with a pocket knife. This fool gets to bring swords?

LOL Sven, buy your own plane man, problem solved?
Those restrictions are for commercial flights, so mere mortals like you and I.
If they applied to ALL aircrafts, weapons trade would be done by boats and military invasions impossible BTW!

Tay.

 

[SvenSvensonov]

Scientists Use This Laser Flower Instead of Nuclear Explosions

It might look like something out of a nightclub, but this so-called Wide-angle Optical Multi-channel Probe is straight from the research halls of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

You'd be entitled to ask why they were in possession of such a piece of kit. So here's a brief explanation of what it can do:

This specialized laser instrument allows Los Alamos scientists to perform sophisticated nuclear experiments and gather significant amounts of data without a critical mass of plutonium. The data is used to help validate the extremely complex computer codes that reside on the laboratory's world class supercomputers. These codes along with thousands of experiments conducted across the laboratory allow Laboratory staff and ultimately the Director to assess the state and health of the Nation's nuclear deterrent and report those findings ultimately to the President of the United States.

And if you want know more about the safety, reliability, and performance of the Los Alamos-designed nuclear bombs and warheads, you can read more here.





These Huge Beer Keg Tanks Will Study Cosmic Explosions

Located 13,500 feet above sea level on the slopes of Mexico's Volcán Sierra Negra, a new scientific tool comprised of 300 huge tanks holding 55 million liters of water, will soon detect the highest energy photons ever observed.

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-Ray Observatory was inaugurated a few days ago, March 20, and will begin collecting data at full capacity soon. The goal is to study explosive events like supernovae, neutron star collisions, and active galactic nuclei, to learn more about the nature of high-energy radiation.

Here's the scientific explanation:

Each of HAWC's detectors is a huge tank containing 50,000 gallons of ultrapure water with four light sensors anchored to the floor. When gamma rays or cosmic rays reach Earth's atmosphere they set off a cascade of charged particles, and when these particles reach the water in HAWC's detectors, they produce a cone-shaped flash of light known as Cherenkov radiation. The effect is much like a sonic boom produced by a supersonic jet, because the particles are traveling slightly faster than the speed of light in ultrapure water.

The light sensors record each flash of Cherenkov radiation inside the detector tanks. By comparing nanosecond differences in arrival times at each light sensor, scientists can reconstruct the angle of travel for each particle cascade. The intensity of the light indicates the primary particle's energy, and the pattern of detector hits can distinguish between gamma rays and cosmic rays. With 300 detectors spread over nearly three football fields, HAWC is able to "see" these events in relatively high resolution.

Below is a cool timelapse video of the construction of the first 250 tanks in the HAWC array, taken between April 2013 and May 2014.

 

[SvenSvensonov]

LOL Sven, buy your own plane man, problem solved?
Tay.

Yes and no, so your question mark is appropriate since there is a wide variation in the application and applicability of this stipulation. There are weapon transportation restrictions on private aircraft too. It largely depends on state laws. This link is for fire-arms only, but similar laws govern other weapons:

General Aviation Guide to Flying with Guns and Ammo - LuckyGunner.com Labs




The Trick to Hacking Top-Secret Computers: Just Add Heat

Security researchers just found a way to hack into specially secured computer systems by sending messages using blasts of air. This is another example of how even the most walled-off systems can still get hacked.

By messing with a computer's thermal sensor, researchers at Ben-Gurion University were able to hack into air-gapped computers. Air-gapping is a computer security technique that keeps information safe by cutting off all access to the internet. It's a way to isolate super-sensitive data used by top secret military networks, as well as bankers, journalists, and anyone with information they desperately want to keep private.

But, as this demonstration shows, it's not foolproof. In fact, a heater positioned the wrong way could screw everything up.

Since air-gapped computers are protected from typical network attacks, the researchersmanipulated their thermal sensors—the sensors that determine when a computer is getting too hot—by blasting air at specific temperatures using a nearby computer. The researchers designed a malware that made the "safe" computers receive these hot air emissions as a binary code, so a blast of air 1 degree above the standard temperature would get translated as a "1."

Simply by adding heat, the researchers tricked an air-gapped computer into turning a model missile-launch toy. Watch the hack in action above.

Now, this isn't something that anybody running an air-gapped system needs to freak out about. For this hack to work, both systems need to be infected with malware. And they need to be very close together, fifteen inches or less. This isn't a hugely applicable trick.

But it is worth paying attention to as evidence that air-gapping is not a magical solution either, and that hackers are going to get creative with the internet of things. The researchers used another computer here, but any internet-connected system will do. That means an air-gapped computer left near a smart home heater, for instance, would be a prime candidate for this sort of hacking.

As more of the stuff around us is connected, it's inevitable that there will be more opportunities for hacking. People taking the time to secure their computers by air-gapping will also have to be careful about securing their larger connected environment if they really want to keep people out.

 

[Taygibay]

Agreed to your precision but that's worth for America only. In Canada, you can still go to a lodge to hunt with your guns by private plane without restrictions and the same is mostly true in Europe. Airport size likely plays a big role too as well as destination.

But yes you understood the sense of the question mark.
Read you later mate, Tay.

 

[SvenSvensonov]

Researchers Have Uncovered The Secrets Of The Velvet Worm's Slime Jets

Researchers led by Andrés Concha, of Adolfo Ibañez University in Santiago, used high speed video to determine that the velvet worm's flailing slime cannons move too quickly to be caused by muscular contractions. They also put velvet worms under the microscope to observe their slime glands – soft, accordion-like tubes called "oral papillae" that can fold and unfold in rapid succession. As National Geographic's Mary Bates explains:

Connected to the oral papillae is a reservoir system where slime is stored. The reservoir contracts and drives the slime through a small duct in the papilla, a syringe-like action that accelerates the slime's movement.

The papillae then work like a garden hose—as the slime travels through them, the glands' soft, elastic nozzle waves around, causing the goo to form a net of slime.

"Our analyses show that muscles are not needed," says Concha.

Read more about their findings, which were published in last week's issue of Nature Communications, at National Geographic.

 

[SvenSvensonov]

Making a real life version of Link's shield from The Legend of Zelda

Making a real life version of Link's iconic Hylian Shield from the Legend of Zelda may be the most impressive item Man at Arms: Reforged has ever made. It required a perfect design, a lot of grunt work in curving the metal sheet, expert embossing and basically melting pieces of metal together to form the final shield.

It's really an impressive work of art.

 

[SvenSvensonov]

Check Out This Rare Smoke Ring Created By a Missile Launch

A US Air Force photographer captured a perfect smoke ring during a missile launch today, an awesome phenomenon I've never seen during a rocket launch before.

The unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile was launched at 3:36 a.m. PDT, at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The missile was randomly selected to test and evaluate the system's operational state.

And if the smoke ring is not extraordinary enough for you, try this: a fire angel was also captured. Just look at the photos below:

 

[SQ8]

Love him or hate him, Obama looks ace stepping off M1 like that.

Regardless of how one feels about his policies, makes me proud to live in a country having a leader with that much charisma.

 

[SvenSvensonov]

USS Ross guided-missile destroyer looks like it has its own force field

Here's a really cool photo of guided-missile destroyer USS Ross ripping through the Mediterranean while under high wind conditions. To me, it looks like the warship has activated a force field around it and is impenetrable to everything. In reality, however, the destroyer is drenched.



These Light-Emitting Fibers Could Make Fabrics That Glow

A team of researchers has developed a new light-emitting fiber than could be woven into fabrics, providing flexible smart fabrics than can illuminate themselves.

The fibers use a stainless steel wire core, which is coated with a thin layer of ZnO nanoparticles and then wrapped in electroluminescent polymer. Finally, a transparent coating of carbon nanotubes is applied. The resulting millimeter-diameter fibers are effectively long, thin polymer light-emitting electrochemical cells.

In tests the devices worked for several hours, glowing either bright blue or yellow. But in theory these devices could last for thousands of hours—and yes, other colors should be possible, too. The light gets thrown out in all directions, so it can be seen from any angle, and they also consume less power then conventional LEDs.

The researchers claim that the fibers are lightweight and highly flexible, which means it should be possible to easily incorporate them into fabrics. Indeed, the team, from Fudan University in Shanghai, suggest that they could "be woven into light-emitting clothes for the creation of smart fabrics." This could be the fabric the 80s always needed.

Currently, though, the fibers are too short and delicate to be woven into fabrics at commercial scale. If their resilience can be increased and diameter reduced, it's possible to imagine a fabric densely woven with the fibers that could appear invisible, suggests Engadget, by emitting the right patterns of light. But let's not get ahead of ourselves: for now, they're the itty bitty glow sticks that science always wanted us to have.

Curiosity Has Found Nitrates Important for Life on Mars

Samples obtained by NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars have been analyzed and shown to contain nitrogen compounds, that are a source of nutrients for living things.

Researchers have been scouring Mars for signs of organic carbon, but they've now discovered signs of nitrates at three areas on the Red Planet—Rocknest, John Klein and Cumberland. The sites were visited during a detour from the rover's main mission to visit Mount Sharp. The finding adds a little more weight to the suggestion that Mars could have once played host to life.

Rock samples from these locations were analyzed in Curiosity's on-board lab—a kind of oven that breaks samples down and then senses presence of particular compounds. Subtracting contamination effects from Curiosity itself, the researchers observed the presence of nitric oxide, which is known to be produced from nitrates.

The quantities of nitrogen compounds varied between the sites, with nitrogen levels of between 70 and 1,100 parts per million. That's comparable to dry places on Earth like the Atacama Desert.

"People want to follow the carbon, but in many ways nitrogen is just as important a nutrient for life," explained Jennifer Stern, a NASA geochemist, to the LA Times. "Life runs on nitrogen as much as it runs on carbon." Nitrates are an important source of nitrogen for living things, because it's easier to obtain the element by breaking down such compounds than it is to extract it directly from the air.

The researchers posit that the nitrates were most likely formed by a thermal shock—such as lightning strike or asteroid impact—as opposed to by living things as they are on Earth. But they don't known for sure; that's the next thing they want to find out.

 

[SvenSvensonov]

Satellite imagery reveals how gold mining is destroying tropical forests

The picture above is terrible. It shows the catastrophic effects of the deforestation caused by thecurrent gold rush in the tropical forests of South America. The consumption of gold worldwide is increasing in the last years due to the global economic crisis and the instability in the financial markets.

According to a paper published by the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras in Environmental Research Letters:

Approximately 1680 km2 (648.652 square milles) of tropical moist forest was lost in these mining sites between 2001 and 2013. Deforestation was significantly higher during the 2007–2013 period, and this was associated with the increase in global demand for gold after the international financial crisis.

 

[SvenSvensonov]

This Air Force Training Scene Could Be From a Dystopian Future

This photo of an emergency management technician in his hazmat suit gives me goosebumps. It looks like he's the last survivor of a derelict spaceship, preparing for the last clash with the hostile alien life form that killed all his crewmates. Or maybe just an actor in a movie where that happens.

What we see actually in this stunning photo? Tech. Sgt. Timothy Cotterall, an Air National Guard emergency manager of the 137th Air Refueling Wing in New Jersey, is decontaminating himself after attempted to identify multiple biological contaminants in a simulated lab during a Global Dragon training event on March 18, 2015.