- Days like this one are when science fulfills its purpose
and makes the world an infinitely better place. While curing fatal diseases and
helping fix problems such as famine and climate change-related issues are
important and necessary, finding a way to make sh*t invisible is where it’s at.
While it may seem like the plot of a lame science fiction movie, scientists have made the impossible possible,
disappearing a cylinder by guiding light around it before putting those photons
back on their original path. By bending light around the object, they were able
to make that cylinder “invisible” and succeed where so many others have failed.
Sure, there is a catch, namely that the phenomenon only works from one
direction, but it is a good start to full-on invisibility. The entire process
is based on über-complex math and materials that are extremely difficult to
produce, so don’t expect to see it used commercially any time soon. Its underpinning
concepts allow invisibility in microwaves and hold promise for radar, but
science is a long way from making the concept work at optical wavelengths. Duke
University’s Nathan Landry and John Pendry of London’s Imperial College led the
project and spent the past six years building upon their initial discovery in
2006, a new approach to “transportation optics”: artificially structured stuff
called meta-materials designed with specific properties. In their experiments,
they moved light around in particular ways to shape an electromagnetic
signature and thereby hide an object from radar and some types of cameras.
Spurred by their ongoing success, interest and research in the field of
invisibility exploded in the past six years and yielded approaches reliant on
meta-materials that reflect some of the incident light, making invisibility
impartial. Landry and Pendry are the first to achieve full invisibility using a
diamond-shaped cloak that allows the edges of an object to match up. At 1 cm.
high and 7.5 cm.-wide, the cylinder was covered by the cloak and became
invisible. “We built the cloak, and it worked,” said Landry, a graduate student
working in the laboratory at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering. “It split
light into two waves which traveled around an object in the center and
re-emerged as the single wave minimal loss due to reflections.” The catch for
the cloak is that it can only hide objects so small they are not visible to the
naked eye. With scores of potential defense applications, don’t think governments
around the world aren't watching this topic closely………
- A brawl over Budweiser has subsided for the time being
in Manitowoc, Wisc. For years, Budweiser had a plant in Manitowoc. The plant
closed long ago, but massive banners remained up for the same reason such displays
still stand in towns around the world – no one wants to take the time or spend
the money to get rid of them. However, Riverland
Agriculture now owns the silos on which the tall advertisements are located and
had announced plans to sandblast the displays off on Friday. Those plans
produced a massive public outcry and within 48 hours, a grassroots campaign to
save the main mural in the display was launched. "I had 1,200 emails from
people about a Budweiser sign,” Mayor Justin Nickels said. “The main concern
was that it was historic. It's part of our community and when people think of
Manitowoc they think of this.” Given that no one outside of Manitowoc actually
thinks about Manitowoc, maybe the mayor has a point. With public support in
favor of the mural, painted on the side of a silo, the city and Riverland Agriculture
reached a deal. “We have taken the position that the painting, the mural up
there right now will stay as is. We talked to the company and they have taken
the position that they will keep it,” Nickels said. Locals who created a
Facebook page and held a candlelight vigil (seriously) to save the mural
celebrated the decision, hailing it as a piece of pop art culture. These do-gooders
had best be prepared to back up their words because according to the mayor,
they will now be responsible for the mural's upkeep. “We have so many local
artists who actually do murals and we have mural projects coming up next year
in Manitowoc, so it's going to be a perfect fit and we're just really happy
that this piece of art history will be preserved,” said supporter Kim Geiser.
She and her cohorts plan to form a more permanent coalition to preserve the art
in the future……..
- While there are many rock-and-roll reasons to miss a gig –
being too drunk, being too stoned, being hospitalized for snorting too much
coke, having a marathon sex session with groupies and forgetting about the show
entirely – what nearly happened to Florence And The Machine drummer Chris
Hayden is nowhere on that list. Hayden was neither drunk no stoned, nor was he
in a hotel room with a bunch of mindless groupies when he almost did not make
it to stage for the band's performance at the Rivoli Ballroom in London on
Thursday. Prior to the show, Hayden hit up the backstage restroom – no, not to snort
anything illegal – and used the facilities. As sometimes happens when in a
smaller venue, the restroom was no huge and the stall was bit too small to fit
Hayden. He found himself stuck in the stall and remained trapped until he was rescued
by the venue's staff. A handyman for the club had to remove the door to the
cubicle to get him out and Hayden rushed to the stage to join the rest of the
group to perform on presenter Jo Whiley's Radio 2 show. "I didn’t know
whether to say it on stage because I didn't want to embarrass him, but he got
trapped in the loo. He was screaming," lead singer Florence Welch joked. "He
got really freaked out. We could hear him trying to bash the door down, and
they had to take the door off its hinges, so my dad did offer to stand in. But
he did escape." Yes, everyone is a comedian where he or she isn't the one
stuck inside a filthy public restroom stall, unable to escape. As Florence And
The Machine set out on a UK and Ireland arena tour next month venues in Exeter,
London, Coventry, Aberdeen, Liverpool and Dublin are advised to do some testing
and handiwork to ensure that their restroom stalls are wide enough to
accommodate all members of the band………
- There is an added focus on head injuries, both from
prevention and treatment standpoints, in the NFL these days. The league is
trying hard to make up for its willful ignorance and negligence over the past
few decades when it comes to concussions by making sure equipment is better,
dangerous hits that could cause a concussion are penalized and prevented and
forcing players who do suffer a concussion to remain on the sideline until they
are symptom-free. So there is NO way that an NFL quarterback could throw a 14-yard touchdown pass in the second
quarter of a regular-season game while playing with blurred vision before
coming out with a concussion…right? It would seem that way, but that is (allegedly)
exactly what happened to San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith during Sunday's
24-24 tie against the St. Louis Rams. Coach Jim Harbaugh claimed Monday that
Smith connected with Michael Crabtree for a TD pass a whopping six plays after
he began experiencing blurred vision on a 1-yard keeper early in the second
quarter. Smith suffered a jarring hit from St. Louis linebacker Jo-Lonn Dunbar
as he scrambled to his left and started to slide before turning. Dunbar blasted
him in the back of the neck with 1:10 left in the first quarter, but Smith
merely grabbed his face mask and grimaced before staying in the game. "He
said he had the blurred vision after the quarterback sneak," Harbaugh
said. "There's no telling. Did that earlier hit contribute? I don't know.
I don't know Alex knows for sure, either." The fact that Smith doesn’t
know and was able to remain in the game without a doctor or trainer noticing is
scary. He did not return to the game after being pulled out and although he
reportedly improved overnight after the game, he did see a neurologist later
Monday. Ironically enough, the 49ers’ next matchup is a primetime game Monday
night against another team whose quarterback suffered a concussion last week
and is questionable for this week’s game, the Chicago Bears and quarterback Jay
Cutler……
- Being described
as a modern-day Rasputin can’t be all bad, even if it does lead to a French
court convicting you of brainwashing three generations of an aristocratic
French family for nearly a decade, swindling them of their fortune and their
turreted manor. In fact, the entire story sounds extremely badass, even if the
man at the center of it is named Thierry Tilly. Tilly was convicted Tuesday and
sentenced to eight years in prison by a court in Bordeaux. His long con began
when he became a confidante of the landed Vedrines family in 2000. Over the
course of nine years, the man who has been described as a “guru” by French
media outlets, manipulated the family of 11 — aged from 16 to 89 — into
believing there was a secret Masonic plot against their lives. It’s a bizarre
and unfathomable scheme that he was amazingly able to work effectively enough
to convince family members to lock themselves inside their chateau for several
years, terrified they would be killed. Apparently without access to common
sense or the wherewithal to hop on a plane and leave the country, these kooks sold
their possessions — including the family manor — and handed over $5.7 million.
Tilly had even created a fake Canadian charity that was set up to pay the
Vedrines' "protectors." His attorney argued at trial that the family
from the 13th-century village of Monflanquin in southwestern France had acted
willingly. "These 11 family members aren't ill, have their feet on the
ground, a level of self-awareness. Eleven people manipulated by mysterious
forces by a single man? The legal basis for case is weak," lawyer
Alexandre Novion said. Novion ridiculed testimony about the family's mental
state, saying a man's freedom should not depend on "an old Freud tome
found in a psychoanalyst's attic." Furthermore, he suggested that accomplice
Jacques Gonzalez, who was sentenced to four years in prison, was the ringleader
and absconded with all the money. The trial itself was a circus in which Tilly
claimed that he was a member of the Habsburg dynasty, that he once almost
played football for Marseille and that he knew former French President Francois
Mitterrand. He vowed to take his case to the European Court of Justice in
Luxembourg after being convicted of arbitrary detention, using violence against
vulnerable people and abusing people weakened by "psychological
subjection." "(The trial) has only just begun," Tilly declared
immediately after the verdict was announced…….
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