Five awesome ways they bent physics for ‘The Avengers’

Captain America’s shield
Captain America harnesses the power of “Vibranium,” a metal extracted from a meteorite that crashed in Africa. The shield is capable of absorbing, storing and redirecting kinetic energy, and the material becomes more powerful as more weapons are turned against it. In the movie, Captain America redirects a shot from Iron Man’s repulsor ray into a bunch of Chitauri warriors sneaking up on Iron Man.

“The property that lends Vibranium its remarkable characteristics is its ability to store or channel energy in its atomic structure,” said Suveen Mathaudhu, a program manager in the materials science division of the U.S. Army Research Office.

Scientists have yet to find a material that gets tougher the more it gets knocked around, but battlefield materials are getting increasingly better at dissipating impact energy.

Thor controls lightning
The Norse god Thor is able to summon lightning by wielding Mjolnir, his trusty enchanted hammer. Thor can channel the storm’s fury into devastating energy blasts that can destroy even secondary Adamantium. In real life, companies are tinkering with artificial lightning. Applied Energetics, a company that develops lasers and particle beam systems, has built a lightning gun that can stall cars or defuse roadside bombs.

keep reading for all 5 – Science on MSNBC

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Ray Bradbury reads his poem – “If Only We Had Taller Been” (1971)

Sci-fi author Ray Bradbury reads his space travel-themed poem “If Only We Had Taller Been” in this 1971 video posted yesterday by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Also in the scene are Arthur C. Clarke, Walter Sullivan, Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray

 

“hoping an inch of good is worth a pound of years”

 

// Thx – Laughing Squid

IPv6 – It’s only the biggest change to the internet – ever!

It’s only the most significant architectural development in the history of the Internet, and presto, it transpired last night at 00:01 GMT. Did you notice?

I’m betting not, and that you probably didn’t even know it was happening, which is precisely how things were supposed to go down. Don’t worry, you’re fine, you don’t need to do anything, and as far as most of the Internet is concerned, turning on IPv6 — of tectonic caliber at the architectural level, minus the earthquakes — won’t impact how you interact with the Internet any time soon. But it will eventually. And it was necessary, to prevent the Internet from running out of real estate.

Thus “IPv6 Day,” which is what participants have dubbed June 6, 2012, the day some of the world’s biggest Internet service providers and companies like AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Time Warner Cable, enable IPv6 permanently on their hardware. It’s the followup to World IPv6 Day, which occurred a year ago on June 8, 2011, when providers turned on IPv6 for a single day in a kind of symbolic “time to pay attention to this” act.

via Time – Techland

 

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NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s multiple crusades to improve public health

Mike Bloomberg is a mayor with a mission. More specifically, a public health mission: Over the course of a decade he has made New York City a laboratory to test policies that manipulate the healthiness of public environments. His much-protested idea for a large-soda ban comes from a long lineage of much-protested smoking bans and trans-fat bans that have tested what, exactly, government can and cannot do to encourage healthier behaviors.

Some of Bloomberg’s ideas have proved remarkably effective in making New Yorkers healthier and become models for national policy. Some have flopped, showing little public health impact or running into trouble even getting off the ground. From smoking to soda bans, here’s a quick tour through Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s public health crusade.

  • NYC first major city to ban smoking in bars and restaurants.
  • Bans the use of trans-fat in all foods.
  • Requires restaurants to post calorie counts.
  • Proposes a voluntary effort on behalf of Americans’ food producers to reduce salt consumption by 20 percent.
  • Congestion pricing for cars entering New York City.
  • Limit access to sugary sodas.

 

keep reading to learn the impact on public health of each policy – Mayor Bloomberg Public Health: A Brief History

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Mexico awards its highest honor for foreigners to three Americans

Two San Diegans — a scholar who found fulfillment studying Mexican migrants and a refugee who built a successful spa in Baja California — are receiving Mexico’s highest honor for foreigners, it was announced Wednesday.

Wayne Cornelius, 66, a longtime professor at the University of California San Diego, was selected “for his work of more than five decades to achieve greater and better understanding of Mexico in the United States,” according to a statement by President Felipe Calderón.

Deborah Szekely, the 90-year-old founder of the internationally known Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, was praised for contributions “oriented to preserving the environmental, social and cultural heritage over the past seven decades.”

A third American recognized with the distinction — called the Order of the Aztec Eagle — is Rick Bayless, a chef who specializes in Mexican cuisine. He hosts the PBS television series “Mexico: One Plate at a Time,” which recently aired a segment on Baja California cuisine.

via U-T San Diego

 

Additionally, both Deborah Sezekely and Rick Bayless are receiving their honor, in part, due to their environmental and sustainable efforts.

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The most visited countries in the world

  1. France – 77 million
  2. United States – 61 million
  3. China – 56 million
  4. Spain – 53 million
  5. Italy – 43 million
  6. United Kingdom – 28 million
  7. Turkey – 27 million
  8. Germany – 27 million
  9. Malaysia – 25 million
  10. Mexico – 22 million

 

Interesting to note that both France and Spain receive more visitors than their entire population:

  • France – population 65 million – with 77 million annual visitors
  • Spain – population 46 million – with 53 million visitors.

That’s quite a tourism business for them.

Not to worry as the world seems ready to travel more than ever. Sometime this year we will set a record with 1 billion international tourists, and the graph below shows that at least half of them are heading to Europe!

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Hobbit Production Video #7 – behind the scenes at the studio

Peter Jackson has released his newest high definition HD Hobbit movie video blog from New Zealand. This time the video features Jackson at the studio and introduces many popular Hobbit characters. Enjoy!

Electric vehicles get 70-80 miles per charge – Honda Fit leads with 82 miles/charge

Honda has leapfrogged its competitors in mileage range and EPA ratings for the upcoming Honda Fit electric vehicle.

The all-electric version of the popular Fit subcompact will be able to travel 82 miles on a single charge, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

That’s better than the Ford Focus electric (76 miles), the Nissan Leaf (73 miles) and the Mitsubishi i-MiEV (62 miles).

The EPA rated the car at 118 mpg equivalent. The Mitsubishi is 112, the Focus, 105 and the Leaf, 99.

via L.A. Times – Money & Co

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Time Magazine Specials – extensive coverage of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee

I’ve been fascinating by the British Monarchy for a while, having written about topics ranging from their extensive wealth to the Queen’s favorite dresses.

I even watched the CNN footage of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee last Sunday, despite all the rain and bad weather. To keep learning about the Jubilee, I found Time Magazine’s special coverage of the event, with more than 25 articles.

My favorite was – 86 surprising facts about the Queen

A screenshot of all the articles:

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Transparent Aluminum from Star Trek – yeah we’ve had that since 1981

The material, called aluminum oxynitride (AlON), or transparent aluminum is used to make bulletproof windows in armored cars.

Here’s the story:

The scene, as written, seems to imply that Scotty is talking about some fancy way of making metallic aluminum into a transparent form. Which ain’t happening. What has happened, however, (and in fact what was happening in research circles at least as far back as 1981) is the development of a transparent aluminum-based ceramic called aluminum oxynitride, aka “AlON,” that sounds a heckuva lot like the stuff Scotty is peddling. In fact, Star Trek IV came out in 1986, and it’s entirely likely that one of the film’s six (!) credited writers got wind of transparent aluminum from then-ongoing publicity about AlON, and decided to use it in the script.

AlON can do amazing things. Here, for instance, a 1.6″ thick AlON plate successfully resists a huge, powerful .50 AP bullet that smashes easily through more than twice that thickness of conventional laminated glass armor:

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