High School student wins $100,000 science prize

19 Jun

Research like this is amazing no matter the age of who performs it. Congratulations Sara. How thoughtful of the New York Times to not mention Sara’s relationship status, or traditionally female hobbies in the article’s opening sentence.

Algae Lover, Contest Winner: Sara Volz, center, Intel Science Talent Search winner, changed her sleep cycle and created a lab in her room for her first-place project.

Colorado Student Receives $100,000 Intel First Prize

 By ETHAN HAUSER  |  March 12, 2013  |  New York Times

A high school senior who cultivated populations of algae under her loft bed won first place and $100,000 in the Intel Science Talent Search on Tuesday night.

he contestant, Sara Volz, 17, of Colorado Springs, Colo., researched ways to create populations of algae cells with high oil content; this algae oil can be converted into an economically feasible biofuel. “It’s something she’s worked on for years, and that shows a certain passion and drive that you don’t always see in heavily mentored projects,” said David Marker, a mathematics professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the chairman of the judging panel. “And what really set her off was that she’s so well-rounded in all areas of science — I was able to ask her very advanced math questions that she answers easily.”

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Rocket powered skatboarder gets fined

17 Jun

This is pretty amazing. Nice work Eddie.

Eddie McDonald with his rocket-powered skateboard and fine. Image www.themorningbulletin.com.au

 

‘Fast Eddie’ rockets into history on skateboard at 60kmh

Chris Schwarten  |  www.themorningbulletin.com.au  |  11th Jun 2013

WHILE the Nitro Circus thrillseekers enthralled crowds at Browne Park, Barcaldine got their own show when Eddie McDonald took off on his rocket-powered skateboard.

Skating past the Tree of Knowledge along Barcaldine’s Oak St on Saturday night, Eddie fired up his rockets to reach about 60kmh in front of a cheering crowd outside one of the town’s pubs.

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Humane Officer shoots five kittens in front of kids

15 Jun

Budgets are tight across America and spring is prime season for unwanted kitten births.  His employers are standing behind the officer and their policy of um, instant euthanasia. However, his choice of executing his duties so near small children and a house is surely in bad taste and perhaps unsafe. If the local communities disagree with the animal control policy hopefully their many rallies, increased awareness, and possibly crowd sourced alternatives will make the changes they want. There’s no changing the past but tomorrow is another day.

North Ridgeville Officer back on the job after shooting kittens

Jun 13, 2013  | WKYC-TV

NORTH RIDGEVILLE — We were told Humane Officer Barry Accorti would be back on the job today and that’s where Channel 3 found him.

He is the officer who responded to the call made by a woman who wanted a feral mother cat and her litter of five kittens removed from her backyard wood pile.

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8-Foot Shark Jumps Into Fishermen’s Boat

14 Jun

Fishermen are known for telling great stories, and this is a doozey. According to some news reports the mako did $5,000 worth of damage to their boat during the two hours it was alive on the boat while the fishermen hid.

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Philadelphia News, Weather and Sports from WTXF FOX 29

Shark Jumps Into Boat In Manasquan, New Jersey

Jun 11, 2013  |  WUSA 9

MANASQUAN (APP.com) – Two anglers shark fishing east of Manasquan Inlet got a surprise when a 303-pound, 8-foot, 4-inch mako shark leapt into the bow of their 31-foot boat. Then proceeded to eat the boat.

“It was epic. He back flipped right in,” said Clint Simek, of Brielle, who still sounded stunned by the shark’s theatrics as he retold the story Wednesday, a day after the wild encounter.

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The short life of Janus kitten “Deucy”

13 Jun

On Tuesday a Janus, or two faced, kitten was born in Oregon and named Deucy by her owners. Although given a clean bill of health by vets Deucy passed away today, perhaps due to her condition or maybe because of all the extra attention she was getting instead of sleeping in a box full of blankies. Just goes to show how tough life can be when one’s own mother rejects you.

Click here to read about a Janus cat that lived to be 12 years old and here to read about another Janus kitten who didn’t last long.

Two-faced kitten born in Oregon dies

KGW Staff  |  KGWNews  | June 13, 2013 at 11:33 AM

AMITY, Ore — A very rare two-faced kitten born in Amity, Ore. Tuesday morning died Thursday, her owners said.

“Deucy” was born with two faces, one body and an apparently healthy set of organs, veterinarians said. But she died Thursday from health complications.

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Crack baby epidemic not as bad as originally thought

27 May

One of the best headlines of the year, and good news to boot. In the late 1980s thru the 1990′s the crack epidemic created a whole generation of children born addicted to crack. Back then crack babies were reported to have holes in their brains, mental impairment, and shorter attention spans.

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Screen Shot 2013-05-20 at 11.29.42 AM

 

Crack baby epidemic not as bad as originally thought

Researchers said poverty, other factors played bigger role in children’s development

Andrea K. Walker  |  The Baltimore Sun|  May 28, 2013

Many predicted the 1980s crack epidemic would create a generation of children with major developmental and behavioral problems, but a new study found much of that hype hasn’t panned out.

Researchers from the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine found that the effects of crack cocaine in utero had only small effects on adolescent behavior, cognition and school performance. Crack is a more addictive, crystalized form of cocaine that is smoked for a intense high.

The problems traced to maternal crack cocaine use, such as a 1-point difference in IQ scores, weren’t clinically meaningful, said Maureen Black, a professor and one of the lead authors of the study.

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May ’13 What Where When Guide

16 May

If you’ve been looking for the May 2013 What Where When Guide for Playa del Fuego, here it is, click to download.

What Where When Guide May 13

What Where When Guide May 13

 

Lady Gaga’s recovers from hip surgery in golden wheelchair

3 Apr

Classy.

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Lady Gaga’s Gold Wheelchair: All the Details

Pop star recovering from surgery on 24-karat throne

By Lauren Musacchio  |  March 13, 2013   |  rollingstone

Trust Lady Gaga to turn injury into spectacle. After canceling the rest of her Born This Way Ball Tour and going into surgery for an inflammatory joint infection called synovitis, she is currently confined to a wheelchair – but, per usual, the chair is an elaborate one covered in 24-karat gold.

According to the Daily Beast, the chair was commissioned by Gaga’s stylist to jewelry designer Ken Borochov. Borochov, of the label Mordekai, completed the throne with only a week’s notice and worked with manufacturers across the country on each costly component. “It was a huge undertaking,” Borochov said. “It was made all over the United States. My assistant had to run around everywhere.”

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Rocket scientist was also “world’s best mom”

1 Apr

The venerable New York Times flubbed and thus tipped their cards about how they feel about women. Shame shame.  All humans have the capability to excel in both personal and professional aspects of their life. One would expect “a big fancy obit” to lead to lead with the stellar professional details. This can be interpreted as one of the many things that contributes to “rape culture.”

National Medals of Science & National Medals of Technology and I

Stroganoff and rocket science: For Yvonne Brill’s obit, Douglas Martin must be punished

Posted by Melinda Henneberger  | March 31, 2013  |  www.washingtonpost.com

Gentle reader, do not take the above headline too literally, as its intent is not, in fact, to argue for punishment in the case of the Internet v. Douglas Martin, the New York Times writer who stands accused of you-gotta-be-kidding sexism. Only, the way I read him, he was kidding — yes, in an obit — but his attempt to be light sailed straight into space.

His obituary for rocket scientist Yvonne Brill attempted to underscore her accomplishments by placing them in the context of other 88-year-old women who followed husbands around the country and stayed home to raise children for long stretches

It began this way: “She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said.

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Boy in Superman shirt survives fall from great height

30 Mar

Perhaps one of the best falls a child has ever made, great height, 2 somersaults, landing on his feet, unhurt, and he was wearing a Superman shirt.

Dylan Hayes was hospitalized for 20 hours, but left with barely a scratch. PHOTO: KCNC

Dylan Hayes was hospitalized for 20 hours, but left with barely a scratch. PHOTO: KCNC

Toddler Survives Three-Story Fall, Lands On Feet

8:47 AM, Mar 4, 2013  |http://www.wusa9.com

AURORA,COLORADO (CBS/KCNC) — A four-year-old boy from Colorado survived a three-story fall, miraculously landing on his feet.

The third-story window where Dylan fell from
Dylan Hayes fell out the window of his Aurora apartment while his mother was shampooing her carpets, CBS Denver affiliate KCNC reports. She had moved her couch to the wall when Dylan climbed on it to talk through the windows to the downstairs neighbors.

“I fall … really, really far,” Dylan told CBS reporter Evrod Cassimy.

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Ancient sculpture found in Tibet by Nazis is made from meteorite

29 Mar

When Hollywood cranks out dismal and dumb plots it is such as shame. All they have to do is read some history to find out that magical and wondrous things truly do exist. Analysis reveals it is from the Chinga meteorite, as “it is the rarest type of meteorites you can find.”

The statue itself measures about 24 centimetres (9.4 in) and weighs 10 kilograms (22 lb).
The undated photo provided by University of Stuttgart shows an ancient Buddhist statue that a Nazi expedition brought back from Tibet shortly before World War II. The statue was carved from a meteorite which crashed on Earth thousands of years ago. What sounds like an Indiana Jones movie plot appears to have actually taken place, according to European researchers publishing in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science this month. Elmar Buchner of the University of Stuttgart, said Thursday Sept 27 2012 that the statue was brought to Germany by the Schaefer expedition. The Nazi-backed venture set out for Tibet in 1938 in part to trace the origins of the Aryan race _ a cornerstone of the Nazis' racist ideology. The existence of the statue _ known as "iron man" _ was only revealed in 2007 when its owner died and it came up for auction, Buchner told The Associated Press. Image AP Photo/University of Stuttgart, Elmar Buchner

The undated photo provided by University of Stuttgart shows an ancient Buddhist statue that a Nazi expedition brought back from Tibet shortly before World War II. The statue was carved from a meteorite which crashed on Earth thousands of years ago. What sounds like an Indiana Jones movie plot appears to have actually taken place, according to European researchers publishing in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science this month. Elmar Buchner of the University of Stuttgart, said Thursday Sept 27 2012 that the statue was brought to Germany by the Schaefer expedition. The Nazi-backed venture set out for Tibet in 1938 in part to trace the origins of the Aryan race _ a cornerstone of the Nazis’ racist ideology. The existence of the statue _ known as “iron man” _ was only revealed in 2007 when its owner died and it came up for auction, Buchner told The Associated Press. Image AP Photo/University of Stuttgart, Elmar Buchner

Ancient statue discovered by Nazis is made from meteorite

By Matt McGrath Science reporter, BBC World Service  |  27 September 2012

An ancient statue that was recovered by a Nazi expedition in the 1930s was originally carved from a highly valuable meteorite.

Researchers say the 1,000-year-old object with a swastika on its stomach is made from a rare form of iron with a high content of nickel.

They believe it is part of the Chinga meteorite, which crashed about 15,000 years ago.

The findings appear in the Journal, Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

The 24cm (9-inch) tall statue is 10kg (22lb) and is called the Iron Man.

Origins unknown

The story of this priceless object owes more perhaps to an Indiana Jones film script than sober scientific research.

It was discovered in Tibet in 1938 by German scientist Ernst Schafer. His expedition was supported by the Nazis, in particular by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS. Himmler was said to believe the Aryan race originated in Tibet and was keen to recover objects from the area.

Release of source code – time to reflect on Photoshop

26 Mar

Rarely do company names become parts of speech. That is only the start of how Photoshop has transformed our culture. Personally I remember the introductions of layers in version 3.3 I think. Prior to that “calculations” had to be applied which would often take eons to process.

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John Knoll

John Knoll

Thomas Knoll

Thomas Knoll

 

Adobe Photoshop Source Code

Len Shustek  |  Computer History Museum  |  www.computerhistory.org  |  February, 16, 2012

pho·to·shop, transitive verb, often capitalized \?f?-(?)t?-?shäp\

  1. to alter (a digital image) with Photoshop software or other image-editing software especially in a way that distorts reality (as for deliberately deceptive purposes)

– Merriam-Webster online dictionary, 2012

 

When brothers Thomas and John Knoll began designing and writing an image editing program in the late 1980s, they could not have imagined that they would be adding a word to the dictionary.

Thomas Knoll, a PhD student in computer vision at the University of Michigan, had written a program in 1987 to display and modify digital images. His brother John, working at the movie visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic, found it useful for editing photos, but it wasn’t intended to be a product. Thomas said, “We developed it originally for our own personal use…it was a lot a fun to do.”

Gradually the program, called “Display”, became more sophisticated. In the summer of 1988 they realized that it indeed could be a credible commercial product. They renamed it “Photoshop” and began to search for a company to distribute it. About 200 copies of version 0.87 were bundled by slide scanner manufacturer Barneyscan as “Barneyscan XP”.

The fate of Photoshop was sealed when Adobe, encouraged by its art director Russell Brown, decided to buy a license to distribute an enhanced version of Photoshop. The deal was finalized in April 1989, and version 1.0 started shipping early in 1990.

Over the next ten years, more than 3 million copies of Photoshop were sold.

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