Flickr/ annstanley59

Ah, the employee goodbye letter. Sentimental, all-encompassing, and most importantly, time-consuming. You only get one shot and the people you're directing this letter to are human beings you've spent family-levels of time around. Better nail it! Or just automate it.

When serial bot-maker and artist Darius Kazemi, whose favored medium is semi-scripted software unleashed on Twitter or other sites, was leaving his job, he created a farewell letter automaton for his co-workers. Here are a couple examples:

To My Esteeemed Colleagues,
I'm not very good at this kind of stuff so I guess I'll get right to the point. Due to family obligations, I need to move across the country. Fortunately, Mississauga Productions had a position open for an animal breeder and I'll be starting there soon.

Working with each and every one of you has been one of the best experiences of my life. I couldn't have asked for a better group of colleagues and friends. It's been so great working with you. I can't imagine a better group of coworkers.

To Viva and Roberto -- I'm happy to continue to provide career advice. Anyone is welcome to find me on LinkedIn or Facebook and stay in touch!

I guess this gem from Skinny Puppy's classic song "Anger" really sums it up:

Anger thought so no thought touched inside crazy
Goodbye,
Chanell Molen

A once in a lifetime animal breeding position. 

Dear Coworkers,
It's probably time I informed you that Friday will be my last day at Inscription Productions. Due to family obligations, I need to move across the country. Fortunately, DiscriminationCo had a position open for a detective and I'll be starting there soon.

During these last 3 years you've taught me everything there is to know about being a detective. I couldn't have asked for a better group of colleagues and friends. It's been so great working with you. I can't imagine a better group of coworkers.

I look forward to keeping in touch with you all.

Sincerely,
Twanna Teagues

P.S. Those dirty dishes in the kitchen? They were MINE.

Try it out here.

[Tiny Subversions]

The humble chicken is distantly related to the T. rex. This raises an important scientific question: How could we make chickens walk like they're little dinosaurs? A new study provides the equally important answer! And also video! 

Researchers from the Universidad de Chile wanted to study dinosaur strutting, but there being few dinosaurs available, stuck a prosthetic tail on the creatures' fowl analog, raising them from birth to adapt for walking in a more dinosaur-like way. As you can see from this video, the chicken was successfully made to walk like a doofus.

"These results indicate a shift from the standard bird, knee-driven bipedal locomotion to a more hip-driven locomotion, typical of crocodilians (the only other extant archosaur group), mammals, and hypothetically, bipedal non-avian dinosaurs," the researchers write in the study. So although we don't quite have any dinosaurs to double check, the scientists are pretty sure this is a fair representation of how dinos strolled.

One step closer to a Jurassic Park petting zoo. Onward, science. 

[PLOS ONE via io9]

BMW i3

BMW engineers shaped the nose of the Sochi bobsled into a point, a unique feature that makes it more aerodynamic.

Courtesy USBSF/BMW

No American has medaled in the men’s two-person bobsled since 1952 or won gold since 1936. So after the 2010 games, the U.S. team recruited engineers from BMW to completely overhaul its sled. They replaced the typical fiberglass body with one made of carbon fiber similar to the material developed for the new BMW i3. That freed up about 15 pounds, which the engineers redistributed to lower the sled’s center of gravity, making it faster. 

The Sochi bobsled course is one of the most technical in the world, with sloping turns and three uphill sections. Drivers will need to steer skillfully to reach a medal-worthy top speed of 80 to 90 mph. “Once the push is complete, they can’t accelerate or brake like they would in a car,” says BMW designer Michael Scully. “Driving a bobsled is hugely dependent on steering.” BMW repositioned and resized the ropes and bungee cords that make up the sled’s steering system to match individual athletes’ preferences. “No two drivers like the exact same setup,” says Mike Dionne, the team’s assistant coach. 

Video courtesy BMW USA.

Click here for the rest of our 2014 Olympics coverage.

This article originally appeared in the February 2014 issue of Popular Science.

RoboCop

After near-fatal injuries, Officer Alex Murphy becomes RoboCop.

Courtesy Columbia Pictures

On February 12, RoboCop will step back onto the screen. But unlike a cartoonish steel cyborg, the new Officer Alex Murphy is eerily imaginable. Director José Padilha and production designer Martin Whist were inspired by some of today’s most promising (or perilous) science as they conceived the part-human, part-robot peace­keeper of 2028.

Ultimate Armor

Rather than clanging metal plates, Whist chose graphene for Robo­Cop’s armor. The lattice of carbon atoms is 200 times stronger and six times lighter than steel. Although graphene is now only produced in small batches, corporations, including Samsung, are researching more efficient ways to produce the material.

All-seeing Vision

RoboCop can identify a face in a matter of seconds, a feat that’s not far-fetched for 2028. The FBI currently can match faces to mug shots with up to 80 percent accuracy, and researchers have developed algorithms that identify faces in video. The hitch will be securing enough bandwidth to analyze all that data on the fly.

Drone Control

Today, military and law enforcement agencies can send flying drones to do their dirty work. In Padilha’s dystopian future, we’ll send robotic people. Although Officer Murphy wants to believe that he has free will, he’s never quite sure whether the computer implants in his brain are what’s actually guiding his decisions and actions.

Finicky Implants

The majority of Officer Murphy’s body is robotic. Because of that, his human body is likely to reject the machine parts and constantly battle infection. So between shifts, he enters a full-body docking station, which protects his brain, lungs, and other surviving biological bits by performing a complete blood transfusion.

This article originally appeared in the February 2014 issue of Popular Science.

Science is so much more engaging when you can actually see it. Yesterday, the journal Science and the National Science Foundation released the winners of the International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. The competition awards videos, games, posters, and images for creatively portraying scientific information visually. From a photograph that shows the intricate process of building coral to a pastel that maps the brain's cerebral cortex, see the winning images here.  

A rhesus macaque monkey

J.M.Garg via Wikimedia Commons

A new study found that rhesus macaque monkeys fed an omega-3 rich diet from birth had well-organized and highly connected brains, with networks remarkably similar to those found in healthy humans. The brains of monkeys raised on a diet low in these fats, on the other hand, had impaired connections, a disorganized structure and couldn't function normally, according to the study, published Feb. 5 in The Journal of Neuroscience.

"The data shows the benefits in how the monkeys' brains organize over their lifetime if in the setting of a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids," said Damien Fair, study co-author and researcher at Oregon Health & Science University, in a statement. "The data also shows in detail how similar the networks in a monkey brain are to networks in a human brain, but only in the context of a diet rich in omega-3-fatty acids."

The study provides more evidence that omega-3 fatty acids are crucial for "developing and/or maintaining distributed, large-scale brain systems, including those essential for normal cognitive function," the authors write. All the more reason to eat fish high in omega-3 fatty acids but low in mercury. 

ProDesk3D

botObjects

Back in May, a startup called botObjects unveiled what seemed like a stunning consumer gadget: the world's first full-color, desktop 3-D printer, the ProDesk 3D. The idea--an entry-level printer that crafts gorgeous objects--was hailed, here and elsewhere, as a potentially great entry into the field. But not long after, doubts started to creep in. A printer with the specifications (color across the spectrum, good resolution) and reasonable price ($3249 plus shipping) of the ProDesk could represent a major leap forward in home printing. How, exactly, did this machine work? Who was the team behind it? And why were details on it so scarce? "If this were a concept I would go easy on it but they say they have this device and it will be on the market in weeks. I am highly skeptical," Joris Peels wrote at VoxelFab in an article called "My doubts about BotObjects."

"My opinion has not changed," Peels wrote me recently. "I will only believe in botObjects if the thing is sitting on my desk."

The company has been taking paid pre-orders for months, but missed a planned shipment date of October (it's now set for shipment in March); meanwhile, scrutiny and skepticism of the printer and company has only increased. There's even a Twitter account, @botobjectstruth, dedicated to compiling grievances from unhappy botObjects customers. There was an accompanying website, too, although the account recently tweeted this:

The duo behind the printer, CTO Mike Duma and CEO Martin Warner, are, by their own admission, media shy, granting few interviews to reporters and even less access to their machine. (TechCrunch sent a videographer to view the printer, reported that it did, in fact, exist, and posted an article without a video.) So I was pleasantly surprised when I asked a publicist for an interview and became one of the anointed, sitting down the next day in a New York suite between Duma and Warner for a 30-minute chat--with the printer present. But even now, with a deadline past and controversy intensifying, the pair is tight-lipped about the printer. 

"I hope you realize we're being very transparent," Warner told me in his British accent, garrulous and smiling. The proof: I was allowed to take a phone video of the printer in action, but only on the condition that it last approximately 30 seconds and did not show the bottom display. Warner took the phone from my hands to inspect it after I was done. 

I told Warner I would have to mention those restrictions in the article, for transparency's sake. "Is that really good information to have?" he asked me. (Considering some of the information the company declined to provide, and at least one dubious detail--well, yes, it could be good information to have.)

Before taking a look directly at the machine, I had a few questions about its marketing. Warner and Duma, at first, hadn't posted a video of the ProDesk working, although they since have, and the first images of objects the machine had printed were these:

ProDesk Objects

botObjects

Why, I asked Warner and Duma, had they decided to post renderings, instead of photos, to show the power of the ProDesk? (I assumed the images were computer-generated or -enhanced; the website only has an ambiguous "[e]arlier images printed on the ProDesk3D, see the gorgeous colors you can create for your models.") They told me these were photos, taken professionally, in a dark room, and had neither been rendered nor digitally manipulated. (Click here to see a larger version of the vase.) Amateur sleuths had been posting on message boards and forums, attempting to dissect the light and shadow in the images to prove they were renderings. Those people, Warner and Duma said, were looking for something that wasn't there. 

They told me these were photos, taken professionally, in a dark room, and had neither been rendered nor digitally manipulated.

Sure. Potentially frustrated customers posting on message boards? Not the best source of information. So instead I asked a professor of computer science at Brown University who specializes in computer renderings, John Hughes, to take a look. He wrote me back after I sent the images and source website:

My opinion is that the middle one [the vase] certainly appears to be rendered rather than real. (The table in the other two looks enough like the table in the middle one that I have doubts about them as well.) 

The main evidence is at the place where the vase meets the table. The dominant light in the scene is above the vase, and a little closer to the camera than is the vase -- you can tell that from the shadow. It's also an area light rather than a pinpoint light (which you can also tell from the shadow). But at the right-hand side of the vase-to-table joint, the table is no darker near the vase than it is an inch or so to the right. That's an effect that's almost impossible to achieve with real lighting, unless you have some of the best lighting folks around. 

The striations, seen in another, more definitively photographic image of the vase, didn't seem to quite match up in the directional pattern of the image, Hughes wrote. There's also the fact that "the table is exactly horizontal in the image. It's not off by a single pixel. That's really hard to do, even for a first-rate photographer." 

So...I think that they're renderings. Finally, if you chase the link for the vase to http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:55203, you see that this particular vase has strong horizontal striations, and some fairly specular reflection (i.e., shiny highlights). The center pic doesn't show that at all.

(I followed up with Warner on this via phone. "I don't know what to say to that," he said. "It's just completely preposterous." He asked if I had any more questions, asked when I planned to publish this story, and hung up without saying goodbye.)

The more photo-like images of the vase were added to the site some time after the first round of images; the images of the robot and recorder are the only ones of their kind on the site. As for why the company normally forbids journalists from taking their own images: "We're very protective of our brand," Warner says.

Warner has more experience on the business side of dealings, working on multiple software-related projects, according to his website, although on-the-fringe hardware like 3-D printing seems like a major step sideways. Duma handled the technical side of the conversation, explaining the finer points of how the ProDesk works while the machine whirred and blipped, although there are still gaps that haven't been accounted for.

Vase Photos

botObjects

Here's how they say it works, in a basic outline: the cartridges feed plastic up through printer heads at the top of the machine, combining different strands of filament to mix the colors. The filaments are heated it in the nozzle at the top, and the printer spits out layer upon layer of plastic, until an object is formed. In the ProDesk, the company says, two fans keep the machine relatively cool as it pumps out nearly 400-degree Fahrenheit material.

One of the claims that has induced the most skepticism of the project is that can fit such complicated mechanics in a desktop-sized frame: there are four different color cartridges (CMYK, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, which can be mixed together to form any color) and a cartridge for a supporting material. I watched it start printing out an object (a small, pink piece of machinery), and then asked Duma how they'd managed to pack the cartridges. He told me the filaments were treated with an "additive." I asked what the additive was. "We're not disclosing that at this time," he told me. This was a common refrain. I asked approximately how many printers they'd pre-sold, and Warner told me that was not being "disclosed," although it was "a lot." The reason they'd missed the October deadline was due to problems discovered late in stress testing, although the specifics, beyond the fact that there were issues with the chip set and case, weren't being disclosed.

According to Warner, everything innovative about the machine is patent pending. A search of the patent database and a call to the patent office didn't turn up anything, at least with botObjects' name on it; in the followup call, Warner told me he wasn't sure if the patents were available online, but said that "certainly at some point we could share them."

When we met, I asked if it was the patenting process that stopped them from saying what the additive was. Warner paused, stared briefly, and chuckled. Surely, he said, knowing that information would only help the competition.

Assuming botObjects reaches its March shipment goal, and the printers start being delivered, intrepid buyers may crack the machine open to figure out the mechanics. In the meantime, there are questions we might not get answers to. "There are things that are never released," Warner told me, "and for good reasons."

Earth from Mars, January 2014

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/TAMU

Wave hello! This is what Earth looks like from Mars. Curiosity snapped this photo 80 minutes after sunset on its 529th Martian day, or sol, on the Red Planet's surface. Back on Curiosity's planet of birth, it was January 31, 2014.

A human standing on Mars would be able to see both Earth and the moon easily with his or her naked eyes, according to NASA. They would look like large, bright stars. That's not as clear in the above Curiosity photo, but NASA helpfully made this image:

Earth and Moon from Mars, January 2014

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/TAMU

[NASA]

New crocodile

This is Mecistops cataphractus, the central African slender-snouted crocodile. The west African variety has been found to be a new species.

Thesupermat / Wikimedia Commons

Meet the west African slender-snouted crocodile. It looks quite similar to slender-snouted crocs in central Africa. But a recent investigation found that it is in fact a different species, and separated from its central African cousin by at least seven million years, according to a study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Unfortunately for this species, the western African area it calls home--stretching east from Gambia, along the Atlantic Ocean--has been heavily hunted, and the animal is likely critically endangered. ”If our surveys are truly representative of this species status in the wild,” researcher Matthew Shirley told Scientific American, it "is easily one of the two or three most endangered crocodilians and, without question, one of the most endangered vertebrates in Africa.”

But that's not all, as Scientific American noted: 

Perhaps just as notable as the discovery of the new species, the paper confirms earlier research that indicates these slender-snouted crocodiles are not “true” crocodiles of the genus Crocodylus but rather belong to their own genus [the taxonomic classification above species], Mecistops. The central African slender-snouted crocodiles are now known as M. cataphractus. The west African species is still awaiting a new taxonomic species name.

That brings the total known number of African croc species to seven, up from three just five years ago. 

In semi-related news, a new species of river dolphin was recently discovered in Brazil. 

Sarah Hendrickson

Nate Christenson/Red Bull Content Pool

Though it may seem like an eternity, ski jumpers typically spend just a few seconds in the air. To refine their form at various air speeds and temperatures, jumpers can use a wind tunnel—if they have access to one. Such facilities are scarce and expensive, and so were a rare luxury for U.S. team members before last year.

Video courtesy Red Bull Media House.

In May, Darko Technologies finished construction of a wind tunnel near the team’s base in Utah. The tunnel is primarily used for vehicles racing at the nearby Bonneville Salt Flats, but Alan Alborn, head coach of the women’s ski-jumping team, adapted it for his athletes by adding an elevated stand with ski bindings. Darko then custom built a device that projects lift and drag data onto the floor so that ski jumpers can evaluate it in real time. Skiers use the data to adjust their form and then practice it on outdoor ski jumps an hour away. “The close location means we get to use it more,” says Alborn, “and we’ve already seen dramatic effects on performance.”

In-Run

Sarah Hendrickson hones her “in-run” position—her form as she approaches the jump—in a wind tunnel. This year, women will be competing in Olympic ski jump for the first time.

Nate Christenson/Red Bull Content Pool

Click here for the rest of our 2014 Olympics coverage.

This article originally appeared in the February 2014 issue of Popular Science.

HAWKEYE Camera Array And Cessna 207

Persistent Surveillance Systems

A new surveillance camera system can track movements in a city center for over six hours. Made by the aptly named "Persistent Surveillance Systems," the HAWKEYE II can watch a 4-mile square, and because it goes on the bottom of a manned airplane like a Cessna, it is, unlike drones, probably legal.

Aerial surveillance as we know it generally involves a single powerful camera watching one spot at a given time. The MQ-1 Predator drones used in America's targeted killing campaign, for example, are like that, with the camera focusing on a single house. This approach captures great detail, but only a tiny part of the picture.

Persistent Surveillance Systems HAWKEYE II camera system instead uses 12 off-the-shelf Canon cameras, mounted in an array to capture a huge swath of terrain. The array is carried by a commercial plane, which flies at an altitude of between 8,000 and 10,000 feet. The resolution of the final image is less than that from a single camera, but because the HAWKEYE can see such a large area for so long, the composite reveals something new instead: movement.

It turns out that, while an image of a group of people isn't all the revealing, where those people go next and who travels together reveals a lot. Researchers at MIT were able to identify people from just four location points generated by their cell phones over the course of a day with 95 percent accuracy. A map that captures movement in real time over a large area could capture similar information, watching the places a person goes after he flees the scene of a crime, for example. During the demonstration of the technology over Dayton, Ohio, a man attempted to rob a Subway but failed. Combining that information with the footage from HAWKEYE, however, told police far more about the robber:

By reviewing the images frame by frame, analysts were able to help police piece together a larger story: A man had left a residential neighborhood at midday and attempted to rob the bookstore, but fled when somebody hit an alarm. Then he drove to Subway, where the owner pulled a gun and chased him off. His next stop was a Family Dollar Store, where the man paused for several minutes. He soon returned home, after a short stop at a gas station where a video camera captured an image of his face.

Watch a video about the technology below:

[Washington Post]

Human Embryonic Stem Cells

In this image, the human embryonic stem cells are colored blue.

Clay Glennon, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Hey, isn't it great that university scientists are working on making embryonic stem cell therapies? They've done some especially promising work in treating certain causes of blindness, including age-related macular degeneration. But now a strange but serious roadblock has come up. Because of certain federal rules, the majority of embryonic stem cell therapies being studied in universities actually aren't eligible to become sellable treatments, the journal Cell Stem Cell reports.

Universities usually do research on U.S. National Institutes of Health-registered embryonic stem cells. However, the NIH's rules don't match up with rules from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which would have to approve any embryonic stem cell-based therapy for use the U.S. So these university-created treatments technically aren't allowed to move past the research stage. What a dilemma!

Historically, the FDA has allowed clinical trials of therapies created from NIH-registered embryonic stem cells, which suggests the administration knows what's going on and is willing to move stem cell therapies along. So maybe the rules will change in the future. For now, however, they're at an impasse.

This is a pretty new problem, brought on by the speed of the advancement of embryonic stem cell research. The NIH-FDA mismatch wasn't a big deal in the early days of the field. "I just don't think people think about [commercialization] while they're doing research until, 'Whoa, we could be close,'" Joy Cavagnaro, the president of a drug development consulting firm called Access Bio, told the magazine The Scientist. "And now it’s an issue."

Why does this weird mismatch exist in the first place? In brief, it's because the NIH's and FDA's jobs are slightly different.

The NIH's rules were set up to ensure scientists obtained embryonic stem cells ethically. They require that the cells come only from embryos created for in vitro fertilization, a fertility treatment during which infertile couples create a bunch of embryos in lab. Usually couples don't use all of their embryos, so they are able to donate the extras to research, if they like. The NIH requires registered embryonic stem cells come with a signed form from the parents saying they wanted to donate their embryos to research. Any scientists that don't use NIH-registered embryonic stem cells can't get NIH funding, which would be a huge loss for universities and other nonprofits.

The job of the FDA, on the other hand, is to ensure prescription medicines in the U.S. are safe and effective. That means it wants all embryonic stem cell therapies to come from embryos whose parents have been tested for a battery of diseases, including HIV, hepatitis B and C, and prion diseases, a family of infections that are related to mad cow disease. For the majority of NIH-registered embryos, that never happened.

The best solution might be retroactive testing of the embryos for diseases. So far, the FDA hasn't said that retroactive testing is an acceptable replacement for parent testing, Cell Stem Cell reports, so things are still in limbo.

[Cell Stem Cell, The Scientist]

Bottled Coca-Cola

Sipping ice cold Coke from a bottle may become a thing of the past.

Wikimedia Commons, Shahroozporia

Keurig machines boldly accelerated the path to a caffeine fix, getting rid of the measuring and the whole-pot wait. With the simple drop of a pod into a machine, a single-serving of coffee-flavored drink is made within seconds. But what if instead of having a mug full of steaming hazelnut brew dispensed, you got a cold bubbly beverage? Well, it's happening – Coca-Cola will be working exclusively with the makers of Keurig to produce Coke-branded single-serve, pod-encased cold drinks.

According to CNN Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, the maker of the Keurig, is developing a cold system that will likely be released in late 2014 or 2015. Similar to the Keurig machines that sit in waiting rooms and office lounges, "Keurig Cold will use formulated single-serve pods to dispense cold beverages including carbonated drinks, enhanced waters, juice drinks, sports drinks and teas." The Wall Street Journal reports that the soda pods will have two chambers: the first will have a liquid syrup for flavoring and the second will contain "a pre-form of carbonation" that will be released once the drink-making process starts. (Your guess is as good as ours as to what that consists of: just compressed CO₂?)

Although disposable Keurig pods have become quite popular and useful to make a quick cup of coffee, the K-cup technology has been attacked forfilling up landfills and not being the nicest to the environment. The plastic of the pods are recyclable, but combined with other materials such as the aluminum foil covers and leftover coffee grounds renders the pod unrecyclable. Keurig is looking into ways to offer a more sustainable product, but it seems that there hasn't been much development.  

Will the new machine do to SodaStream's at-home fizzy-drink business what Keurig pods have done to coffee? We'll have to wait and find out. Until the clash of countertop pop-maker titans commences, we can just imagine all the other foods that will soon be delivered in handy pod form.

New jellyfish

Scarlet Truman / YouTube

Government scientist Lisa-ann Gershwin told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that although the species had been spotted before in the water, it hasn't been technically classified and is new to science. "It's a whopper," she said. "We do get large jellyfish and this one just happened to be this absolutely enormous specimen." 

The animal grows about 5 feet long, and is able to sting, but is not deadly, Gershwin added. There have been several reports of this new species, and related jellyfish, appearing in large numbers off Tasmania this year.

"We don't actually know what's going on that's led, not only to this species, but many, many types of jellyfish blooming in massive numbers," Gershwin told The Sydney Morning Herald. "Jellyfish do bloom as a normal part of their life cycle, but not usually this many." 

She is working to get the new species classified and has picked out a name, but hasn't yet revealed what it is. One hopes it involves the local colloquial name for the lion's-mane jelly, "snotty." 

Jellyfish do well in damaged ecoystems where top-level predators like sharks have been removed, and some scientists expect to see jellyfish numbers expand in the future. 

Merel Bekking's Brain

Merel Bekking

A toy apple? A clown nose? Dutch product designer Merel Bekking says she's discovered the perfect, most appealing object is plastic, red and has a "closed organic shape."

How did Bekking hit upon the ideal design? She put 20 people into an MRI machine for an hour each and recorded their brain activity while she showed them images of objects of different materials, colors and shapes. She designed and conducted the study with the help of a neuroscientist at the marketing research firm Neurensics in Amsterdam.

It's not clear what exactly what she and the Neurensics scientist, Steven Scholte, were looking for in their MRI data to indicate liking. Bekking's own writing about the project only says the two "created their own method for scientifically researching people's preferences and dislikes."

Interestingly, her data belied what her study subjects told her. "If you ask people what they like, as a group they like blue, wood and round, open shapes," she said an interview with Dezeen, "but if you do research with an MRI scanner, they show that they like red, plastic and organic, closed shapes."

Bekking plans to use her findings to create everyday objects, which she'll show at a home furnishing conference in Milan in the spring.

[Merel Bekking]

An F-4 Phantom, Converted to a Drone QF-4

82 Aerial Targets Squadron, USAF

Here's a round-up of the week's top drone news, designed to capture the military, commercial, non-profit, and recreational applications of unmanned aircraft.

Retro Drone Crash

Retired military fighter jets sometimes get a second life as flying robot targets. F-4 Phantoms, the dominant U.S. fighter jet during the Vietnam War, are now commonly converted into drones and used as dummy targets, with the designation QF-4. One of these crashed near White Sands National Monument in Southern New Mexico this morning, prompting officials to close the monument. 

Concept Car Comes With Onboard Drone

Made by France's Renault, this Kwid concept car includes a quadcopter that can be piloted by passengers. Concept cars are inherently gimmicky, and this is no exception. In the video below, the drone does less scouting the road ahead (a totally useful thing car drones could do) and instead spends all its time navigating the curves and interior of the Kwid. 

Watch this weird concept video about it below:

Drone Journalism Stymied At Home, Allowed Abroad

People in Hartford, Conn., questioned a man who was operating a drone near the scene of a car crash, and the FAA launched an investigation into his actions. Right now, private use of drones is legal, but commercial use is forbidden by the FAA without express permission. This includes the use of drone for journalism, though first amendment advocates argue otherwise. 

Journalists in other countries don't have to worry about the FAA forbidding their drone use. The Sunday, the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Gráfica used a drone to record people lining up to vote for the presidential election.

Videogame Cartograpy

ReRoll, a survival roleplaying game about a future Earth beset by crises, is using Sensefly eBee drones to try to 3-D map the entire planet for a video game.

Because ReRoll is a survival game, the vast space of Earth and the distances between people are important. It's an ambitious undertaking, and likely the game will begin before the whole world is mapped, but eventually, hiding from enemies in the vast tracts of Siberia may become a viable strategy.

Watch a video explaining the mapping and the game below:

The Former Governor Of Minnesota Is Hiding From Drones In Mexico

Jesse Ventura, formerly a professional wrestler and governor of Minnesota, appeared on national television as one of many talking heads debating the state of the middle class in America. Ventura, though, was nowhere in America. As he told the host and fellow panelists, he was in Mexico, hiding from U.S. drones. Unfortunately for him, the United States has used both manned aircraft and drones to help Mexican police, so he's actually more likely to be found by an American drone in Mexico than he is within the lower 48. Also, going on national television isn't really a great strategy for staying hidden.

Documentarian Sebastien Montaz-Rosset filmed some insane, insanely brave people attempting to tightrope-walk across hot air balloons. And here is the video! Don't watch it if you're scared of heights or of falling off hot-air balloons. 

I assume everyone had parachutes, although we don't actually see them get pulled, which is, uh, discomfiting. Someone does have a parasol, though, and you can probably just Mary Poppins your way down with one of those. So we're good.

[Vimeo] 

XStat

RevMedx

15 seconds: the time it takes this simple new invention to seal a gunshot wound with tiny sponges

$15,000: the price of the first consumer ATV with airless tires, which never go flat

Polaris Sportsman WV850 H.O. ATV

9 hours: the battery life of the Skully P-1, the first motorcycle helmet with a digital head-up display and 180-degree rear-facing camera

The Skully P-1

Sam Kaplan

10 snow guns: have been running 24/7 since early December to ensure good coverage on Sochi's ski jump 

Sochi

Courtesy Snow Secure

13 Gs: the peak G forces during a normal landing for snowboarder Scotty Lago (that's three times the force Formula 1 drivers feel as they’re braking)

154 decibels: the eardrum-rupturing maximum output of the most powerful sound system in Europe

Big Horn

Engineer Kees van Zijtveldt stands in front of a Large European Acoustic Facility horn.

ESA/Guus Schoonewille

26 species: have successfully recovered and been removed from the endangered species list since it was created 40 years ago (the Oregon chub just became the first fish to do so)

The Oregon chub

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

5 feet: the length of the lion's-mane jellyfish that recently washed onto a beach in southern Tasmania, startling a family

New jellyfish

Scarlet Truman / YouTube

DNA

The nation has been studying the genes of its top athletes for two years, and have picked out a set of 50 genes that they will search for in Uzbek kids' DNA starting early next year, said Rustam Muhamedov, director of the genetics laboratory at Uzbekistan's Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry:

"Developed countries throughout the world like the United States, China, and European countries are researching the human genome and have discovered genes that define a propensity for specific sports," Muhamedov says. "We want to use these methods in order to help select our future champions." In practice, Muhamedov says that after the 50 genes of a child are tested from a blood sample, "their parents will be told what sports they are best suited for"—such as distance running or weightlifting.

Experts are skeptical. It isn't known what most genes do, and even then, it's often unclear how multiple genes interact. As journalist David Epstein writes in his book The Sports Gene, if you want to see which kid is likely to be the fastest (in the present, as well as the near future), its best to line them up and have a race.

"Actually, it doesn't make much sense to do it at the genetic level at this point," Epstein told The Atlantic. "What they are trying to do is learn about someone's physiology. If you want to learn about someone's physiology, you should test their physiology instead of the genes." Uzbekistan's program is the first to test children to glean their future athletic prowess, he added. But there have been tests on adults, Epstein said:

"There was an Australian rugby team testing players for one gene called ACTN3 that codes for a protein found only in fast-twitch muscle fibers—the kind for sprinting and jumping. If you don't have the so-called 'right version,' you're just not going to be in the Olympic 100-meter final. That's just a fact," he says. "So that has a little predictive power. But that only rules out one of 7 billion people on Earth. So it's an incredibly poor predictor."

[The Atlantic]