Last week, a company called Wicked Lasers promised to attach lasers to sharks if enough people Liked the idea on Facebook. They did. It happened. It is awesome. More »
from Gizmodo
From Gizmodo: Real Lasers on Actual Sharks
From Discover Magazine: Mutant flu paper is finally published, reveals pandemic potential of wild viruses | Not Exactly Rocket Science
Am I the only one that thinks this is a bad idea??!! Â o.O
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It’s finally out. After months of will-they-won’t they and should-they-shouldn’t-they deliberations, Nature has finally published a paper about a mutant strain of bird flu that can spread between mammals.
The strain was produced by Yoshihiro Kawaoka from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was trying to understand whether wild bird flu viruses have the potential to start a pandemic. These viruses can occasionally infect humans, but so far, they’ve been contained by their inability to efficiently jump from human to human. Kawaoka’s work makes it clear that they can evolve that ability.
Kawaoka’s study, along with a similar one from Ron Fouchier, has been the subject of intense debate for the last several months (catch up on the backstory here). What are the benefits of the research, and do they outweigh the risks? Now that the paper is finally out, we can start to answer those questions.
I’ve written about the paper for Nature News, focusing very heavily on the science rather than the politics. Head over there for a tighter version of this story. In this post, I’m going to highlight four important themes from the paper.
One: H5N1 can evolve to spread …
from Discover Magazine
From Autoblog: Video: Japanese owner of Harley-Davidson that washed up on Canadian shore found
Filed under: Etc., Japan, Videos, Motorcycle, Canada
As far-fetched as it may seem, the owner of the Japanese Harley-Davidson motorcycle that washed up on the coast of Canada has been found. Beachcombers sent photographs of the bike to Harley-Davidson, which managed to track the registration to Ikuo Yokoyama in Miyagi Prefecture. Yokoyama lost three family members and his home in the tsunami that struck Japan a little more than a year ago and assumed his bike was gone forever. But the beachcombers have extracted the bike from the remote shore, and at its own expense, Harley-Davidson reportedly plans to have the machine shipped back to Miyagi, where it will be restored and returned to its rightful owner. Yokoyama is still living in a temporary shelter.
The bike drifted some 3,100 miles across the Pacific ocean in the back of a cube van. Yokoyama was using the box as storage for the bike on his property. Harley-Davidson says that despite plenty of corrosion, the motorcycle is in surprisingly good shape given what the machine has endured.
Miyagi Prefecture was one of the hardest-hit areas of Japan, where the disaster left 11,000 people dead or missing. Click past the jumpto watch a CBC report on the remarkable story.
from Autoblog
From Gizmodo: Sweat-Eating Bees Are Invading Our Cities
From News: Facing Death, Afghan Girl Runs To U.S. Military
After a teenage Afghan girl spoke to a boy by phone, she was threatened with death by her brothers, who said she dishonored her family. She fled to a U.S. military base, creating a quandary. If returned home, she faced almost certain death. If the military kept her on the base, the deeply conservative Afghan community would be outraged.
from News
From Gizmodo: Apparently, Copyright Trolls Don’t Need to Tell the Band When Suing Its Fans
This is just a sham…
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Unless your band’s name ends with “etallica,” suing your fans for copyright infringement is very bad for publicity (and even if it does, that’s still a dick move Lars). So, imagine All Shall Perish’s surprise when they learned that a Panamanian copyright troll, which no one remembers hiring, recently filed suit against 80 of their fans. More »
from Gizmodo
From Engadget: Study says wind turbines raise surrounding area temperature, but only at night
Who said the butterfly effect couldn’t apply to renewable energy? Though wind farms are considered pretty green on the energy-generating spectrum, it looks like they, too, have an impact on the planet. According to a study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, turbines can raise the local temperature — albeit slightly. From 2003 to 2011, researchers monitored satellite data for west-central Texas, which is home to 2,350-plus turbines and four of the world’s largest wind farms. In that decade, scientists observed a temperature increase of 0.72 degrees in wind farm regions compared to areas without turbines. That warming trend was especially marked at night, when the temperature difference between the ground and the air is highest. The temperature increase was also higher in winter; researchers say that these cooler, windier conditions cause turbines to generate more electricity and therefore create more heat. Since the study didn’t find any change in daytime temperatures, it looks like we don’t have to ring the global warming alarm just yet.
from Engadget