Google/Screenshot

Google, the company that owns YouTube, Android and Chrome, is reorganizing.

Instead of the massive supercompany called Google, it will be a massive supercompany called Alphabet, with Google still being its largest subsidiary. According to a blog post by Google CEO Larry Page, who will now be the CEO of Alphabet, this restructuring allows the new conglomerate of companies to be more independent and better managed. Sergey Brin, the current president of Google, will become the president of Alphabet, while Sundar Pichai, the current head of Google’s Android and Chrome divisions, will be the next CEO of Google.

Google/ Screenshot

A screenshot of abc.xyz, the site for Alphabet, which now owns Google.

Google will be slimmed down, ostensibly to web services, while other pursuits like Calico (Google’s war on aging) and Life Sciences (developing the glucose-sensing contact lens) are split into separate entities. Alphabet will also include Google’s Wing drone delivery attempt and its X lab, as well as its Venture and Capital investment companies. (Also, if you click the period after mention of the self-driving car on Page's blog post, you're taken to a fake Hooli.xyz site, featuring the Google-esque company from HBO's Silicon Valley.)

Based on Google's SEC filing, the merger will happen later this year, and Alphabet will report the company's Q4 earnings.

Under the new operating structure, its main Google business will include search, ads, maps, apps, YouTube and Android and the related technical infrastructure (the “Google business”). Businesses such as Calico, Nest, and Fiber, as well as its investing arms, such as Google Ventures and Google Capital, and incubator projects, such as Google X, will be managed separately from the Google business.

Here's a pretty good summary, via tweet:

Alphabet will replace Google as the publicly-traded entity, according to the post. The change will happen automatically, and all shareholders will have the same number of shares and the same rights. Google, which will be owned by Alphabet, will be also continue to be traded as GOOG and GOOGL on the Nasdaq.

The move seems to have been coming for a while. Google registered abc.xyz, Alphabet’s new domain, in March 2014, according to Yoni Appelbaum, editor at The Atlantic.

Why the name Alphabet? Page says that the alphabet integral to Google's search function, the basis of all the company's success. "Alpha" is also an investment return above benchmark (which business-types like).

“From the start, we’ve always strived to do more, and to do important and meaningful things with the resources we have,” Page wrote. He then talks about being crazy. But only time will tell on this one.

The "Blue Dream"

Bugatti 100p Project

Consider it a technology tragedy of World War II. Designed in the 1930s by legendary carmaker Ettore Bugatti, the 100p Bugatti was a propeller-driven passenger plane that in theory boasted a speed of 500 mph. Abandoned as the war began, the incomplete plane was never flown. A Kickstarter project that closed in 2013 raised enough money to build a working reproduction of the plane, and take it to the sky. It’s dubbed the “Blue Dream,” and it looks like an alternate history of flight:

The plane features swept-forward wings, Y-shaped tail, and two contra-rotating propellers. The engines sit behind the pilot, who has a large glass cockpit right behind the propellers. Forward-swept wings mean improved handling at high speed, though it risks bending the wings upwards if they’re not made strong enough. Project creators state“Had it flown in the summer of 1940, it would be seen today as an historically-significant aircraft,” and given the rapid development of fighter aircraft in the early 1940s, it’s easy to imagine designers borrowing traits from a racing plane for their latest war machine. Crimson Skies, a videogame re-imagining of an alternate 1930s full of aerial warfare, features a fighter with wings swept-forward, though not as elegant as the Bugatti 100p.

The Bugatti 100p has successfully taxied, with an expectation of a flight soon. While it’s hard to imagine the plane having a worse record than its predecessor, the latest backers-only Kickstarter update is titled “First Flight Video Problems.” Here’s hoping that’s problems with the video, and not the flight itself.

[The Verge]

New Model Truck

=GT at China Defense Forum

This new 12X12 all terrain truck is the biggest TEL vehicle yet seen to date for Chinese cruise missiles. While the exact type and nature of its missile is unknown, it likely would represent another great leap forward in its force projection and access denial operations in the Western Pacific.

In mid August 2015, eagle eyed Chinese drivers spotted a new Chinese military vehicle that may give an indication of new missile launcher capabilities on the way.

DH-10 Launch

Xinhui, via China Defense Forum

This clear image of a TEL vehicle launching a DH-10 provides us with a detailed look at the cruise missile; while the tailfins have deployed, the air intake and wings have not. The debris is from the breaking open of the canister, while the short cylinder attached to the missile's rear is its integrated rocket booster that brings the missile into flight before the turbofan engine starts.

Transporter Erector Launch (TEL) vehicles provide a mobile, survivable platform for surface to air, cruise and ballistic missiles, allowing them to disperse across the countryside in preparation for quick launches. This new TEL vehicle is similar to the all terrain 8X8 TEL for the CJ-10 land attack cruise missile (LACM), but it's much, much bigger. It appares to share a similar powertrain to the CJ-10 TEL and has the same width, but it's much longer; it has 6 axles with 12 all terrain wheels. There's an extended section above the first and second axles, which would likely hold additional personnel and equipment for missile launch and flight corrections. Also, it has a satellite communications dome, suggesting that it requires higher bandwidth for datalinks necessary to operate a more sophisticated missile.

Upgrading the Truck

=GT at China Defense Forum

The new 12X12 TEL has the same width as the CJ-10's TEL vehicle, but only two launchers instead of three, suggesting missiles with a 50% greater width over the CJ-10 LACM. Also note the satellite comm dome on top of the cab, and larger cabin area above the first and second axles, presumably for additional crew and control equipment.

What's more extraordinary about this new missile launcher is its two giant mystery missiles. While the CJ-10 TEL vehicle comfortably carried 3 CJ-10 missile canisters, the new TEL carries only two missile canisters, suggesting a missile much wider than the CJ-10. Also, despite the new TEL vehicle's greater length, its twin missile canisters still extend to its rear bumper, showing that the new missile is longer and wider. The new canisters appear to be about 9-10 meters long, which is longer than the 7 meters for the CJ-10 LACM canister.

They Have a Bigger Missile

=GT at China Defense Forum

The cruise missile launched by the new 12X12 TEL vehicle is much larger than the CJ-10 LACM. Its greater length could suggest it to be the 540km range YJ-18 antiship missile, though its greater width and pointed nose cone could make it another supersonic anti-ship missile, or high performance air defense missile.

Speculation is that the new TEL truck is for the 540km range YJ-18 anti-ship missile, a Chinese adaption of Russian Klub rocket/cruise missile technology. The Klub missile uses a discardable turbofan engine to cruise at subsonic speeds for most of its flight, and then uses a rocket engine to reach supersonic speeds of Mach 3 in its final 50 kilometers of flight. Given that the longest Klub missiles are about 9 meters in length (including booster), the new TEL could be for the YJ-18 anti-ship missile. However, greater diameter of the new missile could point to other possibilities, such as the long range surface to air and anti-ballistic HQ-26 missile, an ultra long range (4,000km+ cruise missile) or another large supersonic cruise missile. What can be certain is that the new missile launch vehicle, its increased sophistication, along with a likely larger missile it will carry, shows China's continued goal to develop and deploy new weapons as part of an updated and integrated architecture for extending its reach in the Asia-Pacific region.

You may also be interested in:

China Signs Huge Arms Deal with Russia, Buys the World's Best Missile

China Shows Off Its Brand New Cruise Missiles

The Missiles of Zhuhai: China Displays New Strike Arsenal

Want to Know What It Feels Like to be Blown up by a Chinese Missile? Ask this Ship.

SY-400 Guided Rocket Makes TV Debut

Hypersonic Gliders, Ramjets and Even Faster Things Coming to China's Military

For bacteria, the environment is akin to a free market society. The various species work either in tandem or competition to seek out and utilize raw materials - nutrients - and employ various economic mechanisms to ensure survival in case of a change in the dynamism of supply and demand.

A prime example of theory-turned-practice occurs in the bacterial group known as the pseudomonads. These bacteria need iron to survive but they cannot simply take it into the cell. It has to be helped in. To do this, they use a variety of molecules including pyoverdine. It’s a fluorescent pigment and can be found in many species including Pseudomonas aeruginosa. It binds iron and facilitates entry into the cell thanks to a receptor, commonly called Fpv.

When P. aeruginosa cells are working together, they all produce both pyoverdine as well as the receptor. But making pyoverdine is a costly affair and requires quite a bit of expenditures. From a cellular manufacturing perspective, it’s not an optimal process to encumber. Some of the bacteria in the population realize this and tend to shut down production of this molecule. However, they do not stop producing the receptor. This effectively is cheating as these members of the community are no longer contributing but continuing to profit from others making the chemical. Society becomes imbalanced and could possibly be left unable to thrive.

In the lab, this may be nothing more than an interesting phenomenon of microbes imitating human behavior. But P. aeruginosa is also a well-known opportunistic pathogen, and has been continually found in patients suffering from cystic fibrosis (CF). It is not only a persistent infection, but it also can be difficult to treat with standard antibiotic therapy. In light of this concern, other routes for treatment are continually being sought to improve management of the bacteria but options are relatively sparse.

Because part of the goal in helping CF patients is to destabilize and kill pseudomonad colonies, using cheaters could possibly offer a direction for therapy. Last week, a European team of researchers examined this concept in cheating behavior. They honed in on pyoverdine and its receptor in the hopes of observing the cheating in real time and also how the rest of the population responded. What they found was not a destabilization of the colony but rather, an interesting path mimicking one in human economics.

The group looked at over 500 cultures of bacteria collected by a Danish Cystic Fibrosis Center. Many of the samples were collected from the same patient over time. This offered a chance to observe some 240 years of infection. The bacteria were grown in the lab and then checked for production of both pyoverdine and its receptor. The researchers also looked at the genetic elements within the bacteria to detect any mutations.

Once the observations were complete, the team went back to look for any associations between time and the presence of molecule and receptor. The goal was to determine if any shifts in production and/or mutation had arisen over time. If all went well, the team would find a loss of pyoverdine and a small reduction in receptors.

When they looked at the results, they found the expected loss of pyoverdine. The reduction also correlated nicely with time. But this wasn't all good news. When the team examined the receptor, it also went down. The decline was slow at first but then, after a few years, seemed to speed up. Instead of developing instability, the cells somehow figured out how to stop the cheaters by signalling a need to drop the receptors. If the entire community wasn't pitching in, the system was destined to be lost.

For the authors, this result uncovered a rather strange form of social economics. The cheaters literally drove the entire population to restrict and then eventually give up on pyoverdine. Despite the loss in iron, the overall energy expenditure for an inefficient system was simply not viable. This process is akin to incentive constraints in the human context. This practice slows down or stops production of a certain good to maintain competition in the environment. But there is a catch. If competing is troublesome financially, then the option to give up on the good can come into play. This has a rather nasty impact as those hard-working manufacturing members of the community find themselves in a loss position as demand on the product dries up. In the case of the bacteria, the incentive, pyoverdine, ended up being limited due to cheating. As the situation did not change but worsened, production of the molecule was simply shut off despite the needs of the colony.

In the context of treatment, this unexpected practice of incentive constraints may offer some hope. By speeding up the loss of receptors, the population could become less able to use iron and possibly more susceptible to antimicrobial treatment. The authors did not test for this but the option may be used in the future. Granted, while this may not clear an infection, it could significantly decrease its impact on the lungs and increase breathing efficiency. For sufferers of CF, this potential outcome may be well worth the effort.

Google/ Screenshot

A screenshot of abc.xyz, the site for Alphabet, which now owns Google.

As the dust settles around Google's Alphabet announcement yesterday, the company has been eerily quiet. Google+ pages haven't been updated, there's no movement on official blogs, and a blanket press statement is issued to any email queries. But there are a small handful of Google employees who are giving their opinions, on Quora, the question-answering website.

One question posed towards current and former employees asks "What do Google employees think of the creation of Alphabet Inc?" Another user wants to know what it's like to work with Sundar Pichai. So far responders include an engineer at DeepMind (Google's artificial intelligence arm) to an intern.

All in all, the responses are positive—but also confused about where each department stands. From these answers, it seems as if the employees are still unsure who will sign their paychecks come December.

DeepMind engineer Jack Rae, who used to work at Quora, wrote that this was his first year at Google, and his initial experience felt more like working within a cluster of startups joined by a common set of values rather than a company. Without being distracted by the mission of Google search, the other ventures within Google will be able to flourish, Rae writes.

Full text of the answers here.

Another employee, Jeremy Hoffman, who works in search quality, sees it the same way: making room for all the things that aren't explicitly Web-related.

He wrote he was initially surprised by the move, but it started to make sense the more he thought about it. Under Alphabet, Google is free to pursue its original mission of organizing the world’s knowledge, without having to add exceptions for every new entity it wants to create. In this view, it’s not only freeing for the other Alphabet subsidiaries, but also for Google.

Full text of the answers here.

In another thread asking about new Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Google search engineer Robert Love wrote about Pichai's idea for a file-less future.

Sundar thinks and talks fast. Sundar gets and passionately pursues a vision of the future that is cloud-based, mobile, multi-device, and infinitely connected. A great example is that, for years he didn't want to go a cloud storage system for generic storage (e.g. Google Drive) because there wouldn't be "files" in the future.

And then there was the software engineering intern, Shine Wang, who gave the insider-but-not-yet-inside perspective on Alphabet:

Our intern Hangouts chat exploded - everyone wondered if their conversion offers would indicate which PA-turned-company they would be placed under, whether it might affect the placement of new employees, and so on. We laughed at the SV Easter egg in the website's source code. But for me, an intern ineligible for conversion (yet) and without stock in the company, I just coded away, listening to music on my headphones.

Just Monday as usual.

Updated August 12 in accordance with Quora's quotation policy.

Tiger

catlovers/FlickrCC by SA 2.0

Can you identify a tiger just by listening to its roar? The non-profit Prusten Project thinks so.

“We started noticing that, when we walked by these tigers, we could recognize with our ears how different they sounded from one to another,” founder of the project Courtney Dunn told New Scientist. “If we could hear it with just our human ears, what could a software program see?”

As it turns out, it can see quite a lot. Using recordings taken from captive tigers in zoos and sanctuaries around the United States, the researchers were able to easily differentiate between individual tigers, which roared (or vocalized) for different lengths of time, and at different frequencies. The researchers were even able to tell whether a tiger was male or female by listening to the recordings (female tigers tend to have higher-frequency roars).

So far, the technology has only been proven on captive tigers, but scientists hope to expand the work into the wild, where they hope recorders set up in conservation areas could provide an additional layer of information about the wild populations, from identifying the individual tigers in any given area, to gathering information about other wildlife in the ecosystem, including human interlopers.. Currently researchers use paw prints and camera traps to track the elusive big cats.

The project is currently being tested in the jungles of Thailand and the island of Sumatra, in Indonesia.

Comet 67P On September 19, 2014

ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM, CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

It’s been a good ride for the Rosetta mission.

Since August of last year, the orbiter and lander duo have been tagging along with the duck-shaped comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it circles the Sun, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit and touch down on a comet.

Along the journey, they’ve made a number of discoveries--detecting complex organic molecules, revealing the comet’s porous inner structure, and providing a clearer picture of our solar system when it was young.

And the spacecrafts are just getting warmed up. Literally. On August 14, the mission will reach its climax when the comet speeds into its closest approach to the sun. Though the comet will only come to within about 115 million miles of the sun, temperatures on 67P will reach as high as 86 degrees Fahrenheit, and large chunks of the icy comet will boil off.

What will we see?

We’ll get a new view of Comet 67P. As the comet’s lopsided orbit brings it closer to the sun, it’s going to light up parts of the comet that so far have remained in darkness. The comet will receive about as much solar energy as Sweden or Northern Canada get in the middle of the day, says Rosetta's project scientist Matt Taylor.

The comet is also becoming more active. It has been constantly losing dust and ice—which is what forms the coma, the cloudy halo that’s always surrounding the comet. With more heat, the ice will vaporize at a higher rate, then jet off and carry dust as it moves, which will create a thicker coma.

Comet On July 30, 2015

ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

Over the course of the mission, the comet’s surface will lose several meters of material.

“Hopefully the activity doesn't split the comet into two,” Taylor says.

What can we learn from the encounter?

Throughout the comet’s approach, the orbiter will continue to snap pictures and measure the composition of the comet’s coma, as well as its mass and volume.

“The measurements we take with the instruments on both Rosetta and Philae aim to understand where a comet comes from and how it works, how that energy input drives the activity,” says Taylor, “which in some cases can be rather explosive.”

Hopefully the activity doesn't split the comet into two.

Will Rosetta survive the encounter?

The comet’s restlessness started becoming a problem for the orbiter months ago. Like a sailor, Rosetta navigates using the stars, and the comet’s thick clouds of dust aren’t making that easy.

“Imagine you are driving in a blizzard and trying to see the stars in the sky,” says Taylor. “That's what Rosetta needs to do, as we need accurate star locations to make sure we know the spacecraft’s location and orientation.”

To keep Rosetta safe, the team has had to back away from the comet a bit. Plus, as the jets of gas boiling off the comet become more explosive (and will presumably become more so during perihelion), Rosetta has had to retreat even further lately, to a distance of about 200 miles.

Cometary Jet

ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

Series of images shows part of the comet before (left), during (middle), and after (right) it releases a jet of gas.

Although the environment is harsher than scientists expected, Taylor says that the spacecraft should be safe as long as it keeps away from the densest part of the coma.

Could Philae come back to life?

Poor Philae. The lander was supposed to become the first spacecraft to touch down softly on a comet, but instead it bounced three times before crashing in the shadow of a crater rim, which left its solar panels starving for energy.

Philae is still alive, but Rosetta hasn’t been able to establish stable communications with it.

Might all those jets of water vapor and dust clear whatever obstruction might be blocking the lander’s antenna?

Taylor says that although the comet’s surface is likely to change, it’s hard to tell whether those changes will happen near the region where Philae is hiding. “We will still continue to listen out for the lander,” he says.

What’s the team doing to prepare for perihelion?

“We are doing the same as we do most of the time,” says Taylor. “We ride along and observe changes. Basically, its business as usual-- making sure we carry out the observations, but also keeping the spacecraft safe… But we are expecting a good show from the comet.”

What happens after perihelion?

The goal of the mission is to observe the comet before, during, and after its closest approach to the sun. So Rosetta will be continuing its journey until September 2016, to get a full picture of the comet’s cycle of activity. Then, the team will move the spacecraft closer and closer to the comet until it eventually collides with the surface.

“This will provide us with the highest resolution images and data possible,” Taylor says, joking: “Also, it will mean we landed four times on the comet.”

Aerial Assault Drone

Patrick Tucker, used with permission

At their core, drones are little more than computers that fly. At DEFCON, the large hacker conference held annually in Las Vegas, David Jordan of Aerial Assault revealed a drone that can swoop down and break into computer networks. On board the drone, an ultra-cheap Raspberry Pi computer runs Kali Linux, an aggressive cybersecurity diagnostic tool that looks for weaknesses in the systems it attacks. Set up as a security testing tool, with some reconfiguring it could go from a testing device to an actual weapon.

The Aerial Assault drone looks for unsecured networks, and using its onboard GPS it records the locations of the targets and relays that information back to the remote pilot. The pilot can then decide whether to use Kali Linux to, say, hack into the network's servers.

Jordan says the drone will retail for $2,500, which is on the upper end for hobbyist drones but absolutely within the budgets of businesses or government buyers.

Earlier this summer, emails released by Wikileaks showed that Boeing was potentially in talks with offensive hacking outfit Hacking Team to develop a rugged drone that could hack from the sky. Aerial Assault’s hacking drone might not be as rugged as what the venerable defense contractor could provide, but it shows there is at least some interest in drones as target markers for cyber attacks.

[DefenseOne]

Not everyone can go diving among the incredible wildlife of Thailand's coral reefs. But anyone with an internet connection can take a tour of the remarkable location by watching this gorgeous video of colorful sea life. Watch sluggish sea cucumbers, eerily camouflaged scorpionfish, and languid sea fans drift across your screen, and relax.

The video was filmed at Ko Bida Nok a popular diving site in Thailand's Phi-Phi National Marine Reserve.

Scientists are learning more about the ocean and the ocean floor every day, but there might not be enough time for us to unlock all of the ocean's secrets before they disappear.

Coral reefs, like the one seen in the video are generally thought to be in danger from the ravages of climate change, especially ocean acidification, a change in the basic chemistry of ocean water. With the international climate summit in Paris, scheduled to start on November 30th, fast approaching, videos like this one show us exactly how much we have to lose if leaders can't reach a consensus on climate change.

Smile!

Paul Reynolds/FlickrCC by 2.0

Your selfie could help researchers figure out where you are.

Say cheese, and let everyone know your travel habits! Photo-sharing site Flickr is a great way to show off your best shots, but scientists have discovered that the website is also a great tool for predicting where photographers will go next.

In a new study published today in Royal Society Open Science researchers announce that they have developed a new algorithm that uses Flickr photos to accurately predict people's present locations, using their past photo history.

The scientists looked at 8 million photos taken by 16,000 people in the United Kingdom, focusing on pictures that had both timestamps and geographic coordinates, and on users who uploaded pictures more than once. Using all that information, they were able to figure out a formula that would predict the movement of people between cities in the UK (between London and Bristol, for example.) When they compared the results of their predictions to the National Travel Survey, a government survey of travel patterns, they found that their results reflected the survey's data in 92 percent of cases.

The Flickr data collected by researchers works on two levels. With the algorithm they can either focus on individual users, and predict the likelihood that someone will be in any given city at a particular time. They can also use it on a larger scale to look at how users move between cities.

From a privacy perspective, it might be a little disconcerting to know that your pictures can give others a window into your movements. But for anthropologists or people involved in urban planning, the information could be really useful for planning future transportation options or figuring out how and where people are moving.

"Humans are inherently mobile creatures." The authors write in the paper. "The way we move around our environment has consequences for a wide range of problems, including the design of efficient transportation systems and the planning of urban areas."

The study authors don’t elaborate on whether their algorithm, or a similar one, could be used to extract data from other image-heavy social networks such as Instagram (which has undergone some location awareness controversies of its own). But they do mention that the method they've developed can be used to mine online data sources for travel information, something that many users might never have anticipated.

Legionella pneumophila bacteria magnified 8000 times.

CDC/ Margaret Williams; Claressa Lucas; Tatiana Travis

Over the past month, an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease has spread in the south Bronx in New York City, infecting at least 113 people and killing 12. NBC reports that health workers have traced the bacteria that causes the illness, Legionella pneumophila, to 18 water cooling towers across the borough, and according to the New York Times, the outbreak appears to be radiating from the Opera House Hotel on East 149th Street.

More recently, however, an inmate at Rikers Island—a jail complex located more than two miles and across the East River from the Bronx outbreak’s epicenter—has also tested positive for Legionella. PIX 11 reports that the cases aren’t likely connected.

So what is Legionnaires’ disease? Why would it be linked to cooling towers? Why is it named after military folk? And if you live in New York, should you be worried? This edition of Better Know a Plague has the answers.

Although the name of the illness conjures images of ancient Roman armies, Legionnaires’ disease was first discovered in 1977. The previous year, an outbreak sparked during a Philadelphia American Legion convention, which was held at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. Within days after the meeting, legionnaires who had attended—mainly older war veterans—began falling ill and dying. Eventually, 123 were hospitalized for the illness and 26 died. It took six months for the Center for Disease Control to find the source, testing for possible viruses, bacteria, fungi, and toxins, but eventually researchers pinpointed Legionella, which had never before been linked to human illness. (The bacteria was later discovered to be the cause of a 1968 outbreak of unknown origins in Pontiac, Michigan, a less severe illness that is now known as Pontiac Fever.)

Biopsy of a lung infected by Legionella bacteria

Yale Rosen/Flickr

Legionnaires’ disease is a type of pneumonia, or lung infection. Symptoms include cough, fever, chills, and muscle aches, which appear between two to 10 days after exposure. The bacterium likes warm damp environments and is most commonly found in fountains, hot tubs, humidifiers, and air conditioning cooling water. At the Philadelphia American Legion meeting, for example, Legionella was living in the hotel’s cooling tower. This is also why the current outbreak in New York centers on cooling towers.

How worried should New Yorkers be? On August 6th, the city’s health commissioner ordered all building owners to check disinfect their cooling towers within 14 days. In the meantime, unless you’ve been close to the areas of the known outbreaks, you’re probably pretty safe (the World Health Organization says that in some cases, exposures have happened up to 1.9 miles from the source). Legionnaires’ can’t spread between people, and so will remain relatively concentrated around the source of the bacteria.

Still, if you start noticing any of the symptoms—especially if you are among those most vulnerable to the bacteria, which include people with chronic lung problems, weakened immune systems, or the elderly—you should call your doctor and get tested. The good news is that Legionnaires’ disease is treatable with antibiotics.

Additional reading:

Tsai et al, "Legionnaires' Disease: Clinical Features of the Epidemic in Philadelphia,"Annals of Internal Medicine (1979)

Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues, Vol I

Legionellosis, World Health Organization

Legionella (Legionnaires’ Disease and Pontiac Fever, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Legionnaires’ disease, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

So you want to cut a round pipe--or any other tube--straight across. How do you mark a cutting line that remains true, instead of wandering as it wraps around the pipe?

In the latest episode of the Rebuild video series, Popular Science columnist Chris Hackett demonstrates an easy trick to ensure you cut tubes evenly every time. With the help of chalk, and straight-edged paper or tape, you can bid uneven edges goodbye.

Learn more tips and tactics from Hackett in his new book, Maker Skills.

The third episode of the Futuropolis podcast has arrived! During this exploration of everyday life in the future, we’re looking at pets. In the shiny world of tomorrow, you won’t be walking any old run-of-the-mill Fido--because we’ll have high-tech cuddling machines.

Robot pets have graced the pages of Popular Science on more than a few occasions. But first, we had to figure out what people want in a pet. In 1893, we laid out the parameters for designing the ideal (live) pet. And things have only gotten more complicated--and interesting--from there. In the future, it won’t be so strange to have a pet that runs on batteries instead of kibble. And perhaps, instead of just keeping us company, they’ll also do our bidding.

In this episode, we talk to Gail Melson, a psychologist at Purdue University who has studied how people react to real and robotic animals; Jean-Loup Rault, who researches animal behavior and welfare at the University of Melbourne in Australia; Dan Goldman, a physicist at the University of Georgia who designs robots that model real animals; and last but not least, Bill Smart, a roboticist at Oregon State University.

If you’ve ever dreamed of having a dog that doesn’t need to be walked, a cat that doesn’t require a litter box, or a 3-D printed interactive unicorn, look no further.

What kind of robotic pet do you imagine coming home to? Let us know on Twitter or Facebook, or email us at futuropolis@popsci.com. And be sure to subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, or search for Futuropolis on your favorite podcast app.

Futuropolis is a biweekly podcast on the Panoply network. Tune in every other Wednesday for more sneak peeks at the future.

Adult Female Wedge-tailed Eagle In Flight

Fir0002, via Wikimedia Commons GFDL v1.2

Nature abhors both vacuums and robots. The skies are already the domain of birds, who staked their claim millennia ago and have since perfected the skills and traits needed to maneuver through the air. Drones are newcomers to the air, and it turns out some birds don’t like these unmanned interlopers too much. Like this Australian wedge-tailed eagle:

Let’s slow that down for a second. Wedge-tailed eagles are highly territorial, and fly at altitudes of up to 6,000 feet. They’ve been known to attack helicopters and paragliders, so it’s no wonder that they’re eager to go claw-to-rotor with quadcopters. Let’s take a closer look at that attack:

This is hardly the first time birds have attacked drones in the wild. Last summer, the U.S. Forest Service banned drones from national parks, citing in part the dangers of drones disturbing nesting birds, and the risk to the birds themselves when they attack quadcopters. While it appears the eagle in this case is okay, drones could still hurt birds, and other avians can’t always count on apex predators to clear the skies of robots.

Watch the full video below:

Reflection of the California Two-Spot Octopus

Flckr CC by Nathan Rupert

With its eight grasping arms, camouflage-like skin, and large, doughnut-shaped brain, the octopus’ unique physical traits have intrigued scientists for centuries--the late British zoologist Martin Wells dubbed the sea-dwelling creature an alien. Now the predatory mollusk, which is thought to be one of the most intelligent invertebrates, with elaborate problem-solving and learning behaviors, has beat out squid, cuttlefish, and nautiluses in becoming the first cephalopod to have its entire genome sequenced.

Researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley sequenced the genome of the California two-spot octopus, Octopus bimaculoides. The work will allow scientists to study the genetic factors that give way to the octopus' odd physical traits, and may reveal novel insights not only about the unique biology of cephalopods, but also about the evolution of traits that give rise to a complex nervous system and adaptive camouflage.

The genome map reveals many genes that are unique to the octopus, including six genes that code for reflectins, the proteins that enable the animal’s skin to employ their camouflage technique by reflecting light and changing color. Reflectin has recently been studied to harness its abilities to create a better camouflage material for soldiers or others. While this new genomic information could help in that area, the study's authors say that’s still years out. First they hope to sequence the genomes of other cephalopods and compare each one’s reflectin proteins to understand them all better on the genomic level.

The researchers also found a gene family called the protocadherins to be more common and more complex than expected. The protocadherins help out in nervous system development and the interactions between neurons. The octopus genome contained 168 protocadherin genes, which is 10 times more than many vertebrates, and more than twice as many as humans and other mammals.

The octopus genome looks like it's "been put into a blender and mixed."

“This was very surprising,” said Clifton Ragsdale, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago and a co-author of the study. “We didn’t expect to see that level of expansion.” However, given the octopus’ complex nervous system, this may make sense. “It seems clear that they are vital to setting up neuronal wiring,” said Caroline Albertin, a graduate student in the department of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago and the co-lead author of the report.

The octopus also has a large number of transposons, or “jumping genes,” that are able to rearrange themselves on the genome. Albertin said in a press release that it looked like a normal invertebrate genome that’s “been put into a blender and mixed,” which leads to genes being placed in new environments and performing novel functions.

Going forward, the researchers want to study the genomes of other cephalopods, which researchers from other institutions are currently working on through the Cephalopod Sequencing Consortium. The results may be out in the next few years, allowing scientists to compare the cephalopod genomes to each other.

Roger Hanlon, a senior scientist and cephalopod researcher at the Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory, who was not involved with this study, agrees that the octopus genome not only provides an important stepping stone for understanding cephalopods, but also allows scientists to think about how the brain produces complex behaviors on vastly different levels.

“Scientists can now begin to think about how brains produce behaviors at different scales," he says. "The cephalopods are an interesting group because of their higher cognitive abilities and apparently different brain structure, all wrapped into a short lifecycle compared to vertebrate animals.”

Lightning Strikes

John Fowler/FlickrCC by 2.0

What do a lightning strike and a meteorite have in common? Beyond the fact that they are both forms of death and destruction that fall from the sky, not much. One is a discharge of energy, the other is a solid object. But it turns out that both can have the same kind of impact on rocks, at a microscopic level.

In a recent study researchers found that lightning can 'shock' tiny particles of quartz in a rock, forcing them to line up into bands called "shock lamellae," a feature previously thought to only form in the high temperatures and pressures of a meteorite impact.

In order for the crystals to rearrange themselves on an atomic level to create the shock lamellae, the pressure has to be intense. Really intense. About 20 million times greater than a punch from a boxer (or MMA fighter like Ronda Rousey) intense.

The scientists made the discovery by studying rock fulgurites, which are thin layers of glass that form on a rock struck by lightning. The glass forms when lightning melts outer layers of a rock. It looks something like this:

Fulgerite

University of Pennsylvania

A rock struck by lightning.

Fulgurites can also form in sand where they fuse into hollow glass. Don't get your hopes up though, it's nothing like the sculptures in Sweet Home Alabama. Instead of a smooth, glassy surface, they have a rough texture and are relatively rare.

Researchers hope that by learning more about fulgurites, they can better understand how lightning strikes affect rocks during a thunderstorm. But rock fulgurites have a practical use too. Lightning strikes happen all over the world, but are more concentrated in some locations than others. Seeing lots of fulgurites on stones could mean that lightning strikes in that location often, and that you should get out of Dodge if a thunderstorm is approaching.

“Once it was pointed out to me, I started seeing it again and again,” co-author Reto Gieré said in a press release. “I’ve had some close calls with thunderstorms in the field, where I’ve had to throw down my metal instruments and run.”

Here piggy piggy piggy

Mutinka via Pixabay

Every year, around 8,000 people die waiting for an organ transplant. There just doesn't seem to be enough human organs available for those who need them. Biotech company United Therapeutics has been investigating ways to grow pig organs to be used in humans, and in the four years its researchers have been working on it, the company has become the largest commercial backer of xenotransplantation (transplants between species) and has found some initial success.

In the past, doctors tried to put pig hearts and livers in people, however these attempts did not go well—patients died, and their doctors were often charged with murder. That’s because cross-species transplantation sets off a powerful response in the recipient’s immune system, and even potent immunosuppressant drugs (taken by all transplant recipients, no matter the species of their donor) can’t completely stop it. But if you’re going to harvest organs from some other species, pigs are the most logical choice. The organs are the right size, and pigs are easy to find.

Researchers from Revivcor, a division of United Therapeutics, are tweaking the pigs’ biology so that they grow human organs. “We want to make organs come off the assembly line, a dozen per day,” United Therapeutics founder and co-CEO Martine Rothblatt told MIT Tech Review. In the early 2000s, one researcher, who later co-founded Revivcor, figured out a way to suppress a type of sugar in the pigs that was triggering an immediate rejection response in human recipients. But in recent years, Revivcor researchers have been finding ways to put human genes in pigs and get them to work. In theory, this should be possible because pigs’ bodies have a lot of the same functions as ours—for example they have their own version of thrombomodulin, a protein that prevents blood from clogging—but it has proven to be very difficult.

The team is making progress, though. In June, the scientists published a paper documenting a pig kidney that was transplanted into a baboon (used as a stand in for a human) that lasted for 136 days. A transplant surgeon at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute told MIT Tech Review that one of Revivcor’s pig hearts worked for two and a half years in a baboon, setting a new record. Lungs, the next set of organs they want to try, will be even more difficult because they have a greater amount of blood vessels and are more heavily influenced by the immune system. And the research isn’t cheap. But United Therapeutics is still funding it in the hopes of creating “an unlimited supply of transplantable organs,” Rothblatt said. The Revivcor team hopes to conduct the first successful pig-to-human lung transplant in the next few years.

Bonneville Salt Flats

craig Cloutier/FlickrCC by SA 2.0

In a perfect world, this would have been the fourth day of the annual Bonneville Speed Week at the Bonneville Salt Flats. The salt flats have played host to land-speed races and records for over 100 years but this is the second year in a row that the races have been cancelled.

The extremely flat and smooth landscape is a magnet to racers, who can race their cars at insane speeds (hundreds of miles an hour in some cases) without worrying about the typical rules of the road. The problem is, the flat, white racing surface is ephemeral. Every year during the winter groundwater turns the flats into a very shallow lake. When the water evaporates in the summer, it leaves behind mud overlaid with a thick crust of salt, strong enough to support a car. That's the idea anyway. This year, heavy rains and mudslides left all but 2.25 miles of the racecourse unusable. And a little over two miles is nothing to a car racing along at 300 miles per hour.

Scientists, industries that mine the salt for minerals, and car enthusiasts are trying to figure out what's behind the larger decline of the salt flats, which have been shrinking steadily for decades. Among those implicated in the possible demise are companies who strip the salt of minerals, the rain, and climate change, but no one front-runner has been declared yet. A new study into the subject is expected to start later this year.

“Changes in weather patterns, and changes in the amount of precipitation or temperature will have a profound effect on the salt crust,” Brenda Bowen, a geologist who plans to study the flats this fall told National Geographic. “We can definitely expect to see some changes out there with climate change, and what those might look like? Well it’s hard to say.”

While the future of the place remains uncertain, one thing we do know a lot about is the salt flats' past. A look through the Popular Science archives turns up mentions of the area as far back as 1883 in an article about landforms of the Southwestern United States. Then, in 1937 we covered the construction of British record-seeker George Eyston's Thunderbolt, which broke records the next year racing at over 350 miles per hour. Take a look through the glory days of racing at the Bonneville Salt Flats. And keep your fingers crossed for next year!

Via www.shutterstock.com

You can do a lot while you sleep.

It’s easy to know when someone is in REM sleep—her eyes move quickly back and forth. Researchers have long known that the movements accompany dreaming, and theorized that the nature of the movements were indicative of some aspect of the dreams. Now researchers have monitored the activity of individual neurons to find that the eye movements are associated with a sort of “scene change” in the dream, they say. The researchers reported their findings this week in Nature Communications.

The researchers took electroencephalograms (EEGs) to monitor the brain activity of 19 patients over four years, both while they were asleep and awake. The scientists were looking at neurons all over the brain, but they were paying special attention to those in the medial temporal lobe. Interestingly, this area of the brain isn’t associated with vision—it’s important for declarative memory, your brain’s conscious recollection of facts and events.

When people were shown a picture, activity in that part of their brains spiked after 3/10 of a second, as their brains recalled all the pertinent facts to put the image in context. When the researchers took EEGs of patients while they slept, they saw similar spikes during REM sleep, implying that brain activity while awake and during REM sleep are quite similar. The eye movements during REM aren’t due to dreams’ visual nature (even babies and people who cannot see move their eyes during REM), but more like moving to the next slide on a slide projector, one of the study authors told the BBC.

This research is an important step towards understanding how the brain works during sleep and dreaming. But it doesn’t answer all the questions—like why our neural wiring allows us to dream at all. The scientists have several theories for how to answer this question, and they hope to pursue them in future work.

Aculight Laser

Lockheed Martin

If lasers are the future of war, the Army wants to make sure it gets them right. The dirt-stopping branch of America’s armed forces already has the HEL-MD laser-armed truck in development. Made by Boeing, the HEL-MD successfully destroyed mortar rounds and drones in flight in 2013. Now, to hedge their bets and make sure they get a working laser weapon, the Army is looking to Lockheed to create another laser, in case the HEL-MD doesn’t work.

Laser guns, also referred to by their duller technical name “directed energy weapons,” work by using high-powered light to melt through their target. In March, Lockheed released a picture of a truck engine they destroyed with their laser. Some laser targets, like landmines, are easy, because they just stay in one place. To burn through drones or incoming mortar rounds or missiles, a laser has to have a lot of power and be able to track their targets. The Navy has demonstrated a ship-borne laser against dummy boats and drones. For a battlefield system to accompany marines, they’re looking at one that uses multiple trucks.

The first laser tested on the HEL-MD used 10kW, enough for a demonstration but not powerful enough for combat. Lockheed is already looking at making lasers as powerful as 100kW, with a possible development of a 300kW one. If they can make that laser work, it’s not just the Army that might want them. The Air Force is looking to put laser guns on its planes by 2022.