The US space agency (Nasa) would like its rubber ducks back, please.
Ninety bathtub toys were hurled into a drainage hole on the Greenland ice in September – an experiment to see how melt waters find their way to the base of the ice sheet.
It was hoped the ducks would flow along subglacial channels and eventually pop out into the sea. They may still, but nothing has been seen of them so far.
“We haven’t heard anything from them yet,” said Nasa’s Alberto Behar. “If somebody does find one, it will be a great breakthrough for us.”
Dr Behar is a robotics expert with the agency at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. He has been studying the tubular crevasses that appear on the surface of the Greenland ice known as moulins.
These “plug holes” can drain vast lakes of melt water that settle on the top of the ice during summer months. Scientists would like to know how and to what extent this water can help lubricate the base of the ice sheet, moving it faster towards the ocean.
It is undeniable: winter has arrived here in Europe. Piles of snow line the roads, white roofs and snowmen call for your attention. I can’t help but start thinking about skiing and snowboarding.
A very easy and visual way of checking the latest snowfalls in ski resorts in the Alp regions of Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland is the new “Ski resorts in the Alps” layer in Google Earth. You can find it in the Gallery folder of the layers panel under “Travel and Tourism”.
All information on the ski resorts are provided by bergfex who aggregates the data from the ski resorts to make sure that you get the latest data in this layer. The icons represent the average snow depth of that area; the whiter the icon, the more snow you can expect. Check back often, as these snow depth readings are updated four times a day.
Every balloons displays useful information such as the fresh snow depth from within the last 24 hours (on the mountain and also in the valley), the altitude of the skiing area, the length of the slopes, useful phone numbers, and much more!
Now use Google Earth to get the latest info and then get outside to enjoy the snow, the real stuff, on-site!
Bueno, mi primer post bilingüe. A través de MENEAME he visto este post sobre lugares espectaculares del mundo. Por supuesto, como primer lugar, añado mi propia casa
This is my first bilingual post. I have found through MENEAME a post with 10 amazing places of the world. Of course, first of all, my villa in Majorca
Arizona guarda muchos secretos, pero quizás entre los más espectaculares, está la llamada “ola del desierto”, una formación rocosa modelada magistralmente por el viento, de tan difícil acceso que incluso quienes viajan a fotografiarla, a veces regresan frustrados por no poder encontrarla.
One of the best kept secrets in Arizona. The “Desert’s Wave” is like a rocky dune modelled by the wind. It is so hard to reach that you have to walk for 3 miles through the desert and climb winding pathes up to 300 feet.
Situado en la inhóspita región de la depresión de Afar, en el noreste de Etiopía, una inusual fuente de luz y calor emerge desde las entrañas de la Tierra: el lago de lava del volcán ErtaAle.
Situated in Afar’s region, NW of Ethiopia, an unusual light and heat font comes up from the center of the Earth: the lava lake of the Erta Ale volcano
A MICROSCOPIC swimming machine that works like a paddle steamer could help deliver drugs inside the body and move chemicals around inside miniaturised labs. The device is the first artificial microswimmer to move without using chemical propulsion or bending itself into different shapes.
For microscale swimmers, the viscosity of water presents a much bigger barrier to motion than we are used to on everyday scales. It is like swimming through honey for a human: any forward movement during one half of a swimming stroke would be negated by an opposite backwards motion in the second half, with the result that the swimmer goes nowhere. “In a stiff fluid, what you achieve in half of your swimming cycle you undo in the next half-cycle,” says Ramin Golestanian, a physicist at the University of Sheffield in the UK.
That’s why bacteria like Escherichia coli use a rotating corkscrew-like tail called a flagellum to propel themselves forward. With a continuously rotating propeller rather than a backwards-forwards swimming motion, the bacteria barrel along.
Now Golestanian and Pietro Tierno at the University of Barcelona in Spain have been able to achieve a similar goal with a micromachine that swims by mimicking a paddle wheel. The researchers built their microswimmer from two beads, 1 and 3 micrometres in diameter. They coated the beads in a protein called streptavidin that binds strongly to DNA and then fastened them together with two 8-nanometre strands of DNA.
The beads are made of a magnetic material and so align themselves with any applied magnetic field. By rotating this magnetic field, the researchers set the beads spinning, and were delighted to find that the beads moved through water at about 1 micrometre per second. “I didn’t expect to see real propulsion like [that seen] in bacteria, to tell the truth,” says Tierno.
The movement occurs only when the micromachine is close to the bottom of a vessel. This is because there is a less mobile boundary layer that “sticks” to the bottom surface of the fluid container and so exerts a larger force on the rotating bead than the rest of the water (see diagram). This makes the whole thing move, just as a paddle wheel can propel a boat because water resists the paddles more than air does.
Golestanian says: “It’s like a unicycle wheel with the smaller bead as the pedal making it go around – with the DNA as the pedal shaft.”
The team believes its technology can easily be shrunk to the nanoscale – the level at which it would be useful as a drug carrier. “Microscale and nanoscale hydrodynamics are not all that different,” says Golestanian. The boundary-layer properties that the device needs to swim should be present in small blood vessels.
Tierno says the swimming beads could also shuttle reagents from one part of a miniaturised “lab-on-a-chip” to another. John Illingworth, a biologist at the University of Leeds in the UK, is impressed. “What they’ve done is certainly tough to achieve,” he says.
This gem comes to us from GOSHone, A self-described “mad scientist with computers, gadgets, and musical equipment and stuff,” G1 used his jailbroken iPhone and a copy of Cycorder to produce what I can only describe as a little slice of wonderful. I can’t verify with any certainty that this is, in fact, the “world’s first,” but I’m going to go with it.
GOSHone says that, while making the video was fun and relatively pain-free, he did struggle with the lack of a preview screen, and “tried to rely on the shiny black back and the chrome Apple logo for reflection.” That’s a simple, clever trick I hadn’t thought of, mostly because I always have a case on my iPhone.
Have a look at his video, then download his free album. It’s good stuff.
Majorca, Spain – You simply can’t have enough of a good thing, especially if it’s an Audi. The A4 was recently voted the 2009 Best New Luxury Vehicle in Canada by members of AJAC. Last month, Audi gave auto writers their first drive in its even more athletic sibling the new Audi S4.
While they look alike, the faster and more agile S4 and S4 Avant, its wagon-bodied edition, are the gifted jocks in the A4 family. A new supercharged V6 engine replaces the outgoing V8, plus Audi also has come up with new and clever ways to convert power into rapid, yet very stable, vehicle motion.
The new 3.0-litre TFSI engine combines direct fuel injection with a low-pressure supercharger. It can produce 333 horsepower, yet fuel consumption is surprisingly low. An official Canadian fuel rating, however, has not yet been established.
At the heart of the S4 is Audi’s brilliant Quattro permanent four-wheel-drive system that now sends 60 per cent of drive power to the rear wheels, during normal operation. A six-speed manual transmission is standard and a new seven-speed S Tronic automatic is an option.
New engineering tricks start with Audi Drive Select. The driver is given three driving-style choices that alter the working modes of the engine, the S Tronic transmission and a new optional Sport Differential.
In the “comfort” mode, safety and stability are priorities along with optimal suspension damping. The “auto” mode is a balance between all functions. And the “dynamic” mode emphasizes agility and the dynamic effect of the new Sport Differential.
The Sport Differential is actually a conventional differential with additional clutch packs and gear seats on each axle. An electro-hydraulic system is used to engage a clutch pack and this can increase the wheel speed of that axle by up to 10 per cent.
I got an opportunity to play with this system on a race-track, while on the island of Majorca. Heavy rain during our one-day stay in Spain (on a plain, wouldn’t you know) actually added to the driving experience and gave me a better appreciation of the Quattro drive and Sport Differential systems.
The Sport Differential can accelerate an outside rear wheel in a curve primarily to counter understeer (a tendency to run wide). The torque intervention enables the S4 to retain directional accuracy by “forcing” the car into a corner.
An advantage of supercharging over turbocharging is that the torque boost is immediate at low engine speeds. Maximum torque of 325 lb.-ft. is available between 2,900 and 5,300 r.p.m. The S4 can sprint to 100 km/h in just 5.1 seconds and it has an electronically governed top speed of 250 km/h. As already mentioned, the surprising part is that its fuel consumption has also been reduced, by 27 per cent, according to Audi.
[flash mode=0]
Quick facts about the new Audi S4:
New 3.0-litre TFSI engine with mechanical supercharging delivers 333 hp and 324.53 lb-ft of torque.
Zero to 100 km/h in 5.1 seconds and it has top speed of 250 km/h (governed).
A 27 percent lower fuel consumption – combined estimate 9.7 L/100 km.
Six-speed manual gearbox as standard and an optional seven-speed S Tronic automatic.
Quattro permanent four-wheel drive with new rear-biased characteristics.
Optional sport rear differential.
Sports suspension with firm settings, optional Audi drive select dynamic driving system with adaptive damper control and dynamic steering.
High-performance brake system with large discs and black callipers.
Standard 18-inch wheels and optional 19-inch wheels.
‘Tis the season for hellish travel. If the prospect of getting on a plane makes you want to boycott the holidays altogether, you’re not alone. When the folks at MadTV put this skit together early this year, it was meant to parody the myriad ways that airlines nickel and dime their passengers — the clip shows passengers being forced to pay an extra charge for seat belts and an emergency supply of oxygen.
But the soaring cost of air travel and the elimination of even peanuts from cross-country flights is no joke anymore. Watch and weep.
This is the first time I saw this, Google Maps embedded in an ATM machine of “La Caixa”. I don’t know how long it has been there and I’ve been living in Barcelona for almost 10 months now and use these ATM machines often. I was planning on buying some tickets for a concerts using one of these “ServiCaixa” ATM machines of La Caixa. I couldn’t find what I was looking for so I decided to go into the Help (ayuda) section of the machine. There I found the ability to look for closest service centers of La Caixa. As you can see on the picture, this was implemented with the help of Google Maps. Google Maps embedded in ATM Machine
Cool to see Google Maps embedded in Kiosks and such. I read about embedding Google Maps before, offering directions and Coupons at gas pump stations, but other than just the reports I didn’t see any real-life implementations.
Bueno, mi primer post bilingüe. A través de 
