Tesla Model S is the best-selling US luxury sedan, by a wide margin

Third-quarter sales of the Tesla Motors Model S electric sedan surged 59 percent from last year to 9,156 units, the company confirmed to Autoblog today. The sales are about five percent more than our previous third-quarter estimate, since that was a guess based on Tesla’s disclosure of its global quarterly sales. Bloomberg News, which first reported the US sales figures, said the Model S was the country’s best-selling luxury sedan in the third quarter, and by a wide margin. Tesla also sold 5,428 Model X vehicles during the quarter, Tesla confirmed.
The Model S sales were almost double the sales figures for the No. 2 US luxury sedan, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, and more than double the sales of the BMW 7-Series. No other model moved more than 2,000 units during the quarter. In all, the Model S accounted for almost a third of the country’s third-quarter large luxury sedan market, which also includes models from Audi, Lexus, Porsche, Jaguar, and Maserati.

Our prior estimates, which assumed that 55 percent of Tesla’s global Model S sales are in North America, had Tesla selling 8,691 Model S vehicles during the third quarter. Either way, the Model S continues to be a category-defining vehicle.

The better-than-previously-reported news marks a bit of positive direction for a company dogged by investor concerns that it’s burning through too much cash, especially as it prepares to complete its acquisition of solar-energy service provider SolarCity. CNBC recently cited an analyst note from Oppenheimer’s Colin Rusch that estimated that Tesla may need to raise as much as $12.5 billion by the end of 2018 in order to stay financially solvent. Tesla chief Elon Musk refuted any notion that the company would need to raise additional cash by the end of the year in a Tweet last week.

Via: Automotive News

Source: Bloomberg

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The Funniest Wildlife Photos of 2016

oxen

In the wild, you sometimes have to deal with crap — a vivid finalist for the 2016 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

The middle of October during a presidential election year is a really good time to remember not to take the world so seriously.

Case in point: The organizers of the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards announced the finalists for the funniest animal photograph of 2016. The competition, in only its second year, is the antithesis of your traditional, staid wildlife photography contests. It’s a light-hearted competition that showcases the inner comedians in the animal kingdom, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

And if these critters make you laugh, that’s great! But let’s try to keep them around. A primary reason Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tim Sullam, both based in the United Kingdom, started this competition in 2015 was to promote conservation. Hopefully, by bringing a smile to your face you’ll give the animals that brightened your day a second thought.

“Well … you are now obviously going to go to your office, home, pub, club or wherever and talk about the dire need for us all to be conservationists in our own little way,” they write, tongue-in-cheek, on the competition website.

So, without further ado, here are a few of the finalists for most comedic wildlife photograph of 2016. You can see more by visiting the competition website.

#BearFail

bear-fail

A happy frog

frog

Sweet cheeks

munching-corn

Foxhole?

comedy-wildlife-3

Eagle eyes

eagle-eye

Meerkat meltdown

contest

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Studio Ghibli’s first TV series getting English dub courtesy of Amazon

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Expect Ronja to rob… your heart.

Studio Ghibli

Famed animation studio Studio Ghibli launched its first TV series, Ronja the Robber’s Daughter, in 2014, and fans’ wait for an official Western version is now coming to an end, thanks to Amazon.

After the series’ 26-episode run wrapped, the studio began shopping an English-language version to various international channels and distributors. That shopping apparently concluded this week, as Amazon confirmed via a Friday press release that Ronja’s dub will debut exclusively on Amazon Video in the US, UK, Germany, Austria, and Japan. The news didn’t include a release date, but it did confirm one familiar voice joining the Ronja cast: Gillian Anderson, whose voice previously appeared in famed Ghibli film Princess Mononoke.

As the studio’s first release to employ 3D-rendered characters, Ronja the Robber’s Daughter represents a huge shift for Ghibli’s production process. This style will look familiar to anybody who has seen the mix of 2D and 3D animation and heaping dollops of cel-shading from the animation studio’s cut scenes in the Ni No Kuni JRPG series of video games. (That game’s sequel has yet to launch in either Japan or the West.)

The company’s first TV series plays it safe by adapting an existing children’s story as opposed to creating its own—in this case, from the works of Swedish author Astrid "Pippi Longstocking" Lindgren. Reviews of its Japanese version point to an approach tailored specifically for little kids, but we imagine Ghibli-loving parents will want to tune in to see the directorial work by Goro Miyazaki, son of Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki.

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When Picard and Data Get Autotuned, You Get this Awesome Song! [Video]

When Picard and Data Get Autotuned, You Get this Awesome Song! [Video]

From Pogo:

A remix of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Details below!

Temba, his arms wide! In Tamarian this signifies the giving of a gift, first heard in the excellent episode Darmok. Data & Picard is my tribute to one of the greatest TV series of all time. It is an original track featuring the voices of Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Commander Data (Brent Spiner), accompanied by a music video I shot entirely in my living room with a green screen and lights.

The track opens with the Klingon Victory Song, followed by a remix of Data singing Che Gelida Manina in the episode ‘In Theory’. This episode was the first ever to be directed by Patrick Stewart and I didn’t realize this until after the track was finished.

The guy makes a very good Data! Most impressive! I also love the inclusion of the password from “Brothers” (Star Trek: TNG Season 4, Episode 3)

173467321476c32789777643t732v73117888732476789764376

[Pogo]



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E Is For Empathy: Sesame Workshop Takes A Crack At Kindness

Actor Mark Ruffalo and Murray the Muppet talk about empathy.

Sesame Street via You Tube

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Sesame Street via You Tube

Actor Mark Ruffalo and Murray the Muppet talk about empathy.


Sesame Street via You Tube

Parents and teachers are worried.

They believe that today’s kids are growing up in an unkind world and that learning to be kind is even more important than getting good grades. But, when it comes to defining "kind," parents and teachers don’t always agree.

That’s according to a new survey of some 2,000 parents and 500 teachers from the educational nonprofit behind Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop.

Kindness is well-trod territory for Sesame. Here’s actor Mark Ruffalo trying to teach a Muppet named Murray about a very big word: empathy.


Sesame Street
YouTube

The folks at Sesame Workshop worried that too much of the world doesn’t understand empathy — or doesn’t try hard enough to feel other people’s pain.

"We … were concerned what the long-term impact of that would be on children and society as children grow older," said Jeffrey D. Dunn, CEO of Sesame Workshop. "This survey confirms our concerns. It is time to have a national conversation about kindness."

Indeed, a whopping 86 percent of teachers (and 70 percent of parents) admitted to worrying often that the world is an unkind place for children.

And they want to do something about it, says Jennifer Kotler Clarke, who is in charge of research and evaluation at Sesame Workshop.

"Both parents and educators overwhelmingly felt that being kind was more important than having high academic achievement," says Kotler Clarke.

But kindness can mean different things to different people, and here’s where the results get complicated. And more interesting.

Kotler Clarke says, for the survey, they used several words to represent kindness, including empathy — but also helping, thoughtful, and manners. As a result, "parents generally felt that their children were kind, but less-so helpful and thoughtful."

How can a child be kind without being helpful or thoughtful? By being polite. It turns out that manners were very important to parents. When given a choice between having manners and having empathy and asked, "Which of these is more important for your child to be right now?", 58 percent chose manners compared with just 41 percent who chose empathy.

Kotler Clarke suggests that some parents may assume that teaching a child manners is a good way of building empathy. But, she says, "there’s really no great evidence around that. In fact, bullies are very good at having manners around adults."

On this point, teachers broke with parents, overwhelmingly preferring empathy (63 percent) over manners (37 percent). And teachers can see the disconnect in their classrooms. Thirty-four percent say, of the children they teach, that all or most of their parents are raising kids to be empathic and kind, while just 30 percent say all or most parents are raising children with values consistent with their teachers’.

As part of the survey’s release, Sesame Workshop linked to a number of outside resources, for parents and teachers looking for practical ways to help cultivate empathy in kids.

In one guide from Harvard’s Making Caring Common Project, researchers recommend grown-ups tune into kids’ emotional and physical needs, hold regular family meetings and engage in community service.

Because the vast majority of parents and teachers agreed: It’s important to be kind not just to your own family but to everyone else, too.

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Forget Tomayto/Tomahto: The Real Debate Is, Should It Be Refrigerated?


Refrigerating tomatoes may be making them less flavorful, according to a new study.



Ryan Tir/Flickr

Last summer, I went on Morning Edition to talk about the quest for a great-tasting tomato. And at the very end of the conversation, I confidently declared that no one should ever put tomatoes in the refrigerator. It kills the taste, I said. That’s what I’d heard from scientists and tomato growers alike.

Afterwards, I heard from several friends. It seems I’d taken sides in a domestic dispute that has long divided husbands and wives. Someone on Twitter also pointed out a blog post that seemed to contradict my statement. I’ll say more about that later.

First, some new science: There’s a laboratory at the University of University of Florida, in Gainesville, that has been at the forefront of research on tomato taste. Scientists there have been studying the chemical makeup of great-tasting tomatoes, as well as the not-so-great tasting ones at supermarkets.

“There’s a lot of things wrong with tomatoes right now,” says Denise Tieman, a Research Associate Professor there. “We’re trying to fix them, or at least figure out what’s going wrong.”

These researchers studied this refrigeration question. They looked at what happened when a tomato goes into your kitchen fridge, or into the tomato industry’s refrigerated trucks and storage rooms.

Some components of a tomato’s flavor were unaffected, such as sugars and acids. But they found that after seven days of refrigeration, tomatoes had lower levels of certain chemicals that Tieman says are really important. These so-called aroma compounds easily vaporize. “That’s what gives the tomato its distinctive aroma and flavor,” she says.

The researchers also gave chilled and unchilled tomatoes to dozens of people to evaluate, in blind taste tests, “and they could definitely tell the difference,” says Tieman. The tomatoes that weren’t chilled got better ratings.

The scientists also figured out how chilling reduced flavor; cold temperatures actually turned off specific genes, and that, in turn cut down production of these flavor compounds.

Tieman speculates that someday scientists will figure out how to keep those genes turned on, even when chilled, so the tomato industry can have it both ways: They can refrigerate tomatoes to extend shelf life, without losing flavor.

Thankfully, chilling didn’t seem to affect nutrition – the chilled tomatoes were just as nutritious as the non-refrigerated ones.

The new findings appear in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As significant as the results are, they probably won’t end the great tomato refrigeration debate.

“It’s not so clear cut,” says Daniel Gritzer, culinary director at SeriousEats.com, a food website. Two years ago, he did a series of blind taste tests with many different tomatoes, in New York and in California.

“Sometimes I found that the refrigerator is, in fact, your best bet,” says Gritzer.

That’s especially true for a tomato that’s already ripe and at peak flavor, he says. If you let that tomato sit on your counter, it’ll end up tasting worse.

Gritzer wrote a long blog post, detailing his results, and got a flood of reaction. “Some people wrote to say, ‘Hey, this is what I’ve always found, I’m so glad you wrote this,'” Gritzer says. “And then, a lot of people pushed back saying, ‘You’re insane, you don’t know what you’re talking about.'”

It’s a “thorny one,” Gritzer says. People just feel very strongly about their tomatoes.

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Scientists found a way to convert CO2 to ethanol, almost by accident

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They thought it would take a series of reactions to convert CO2 into fuel, but the first step did the job.

Continue reading Scientists found a way to convert CO2 to ethanol, almost by accident

Scientists found a way to convert CO2 to ethanol, almost by accident originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 19 Oct 2016 09:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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