You Can Apply to Use Google's Street View Backpack Now

If you've always fancied mapping out an obscure part of the globe, it could be your lucky day: you can now apply to use Google's Street View backpack.

Called Trekker, the backpack is used to image the more obscure locations around the planet that cars, trikes and snowmobiles can't access. And now If you?re a "tourism board, non-profit, university, research organization or other third party" who has access to a hard-to-reach place, Google are willing to give you the chance to use it yourself.

In fact, you can apply online here to use Trekker. Which you should. [Google]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/you-can-apply-to-use-googles-street-view-backpack-now-631925651

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Lee Gasper-Galvin: Madison would be prime location for a Department of Energy lab

A new technology field that could be advantageously addressed in the Madison area is advanced energy storage research, such as advanced batteries, ultracapacitors and advanced energy storage concepts.

Many Americans agree that if solar and wind energy could economically compete with fossil energy, these cleaner and simpler renewable forms of energy would be preferable.

Improved energy storage would go a long way toward making renewable energy more attractive and make electric vehicles and grid power storage more viable.

I propose we muster the bipartisan political will to build a new U.S. Department of Energy laboratory near Madison. The lab could focus solely on advanced energy storage research. While I acknowledge the efforts of Argonne and other national labs in this field, so far they have not been sufficient.

I envision the synergism of a multidisciplinary team from UW-Madison?s world class engineering and science departments and Wisconsin's battery and related industries working with Department of Energy scientists and engineers.

That would be a powerful force for solving our nation?s energy storage problems. It also would spawn many new businesses and create private sector jobs.

-- Lee Gasper-Galvin, Sun Prairie

Source: http://host.madison.com/news/opinion/mailbag/lee-gasper-galvin-madison-would-be-prime-location-for-a/article_6553ed1c-2193-5cbb-b00f-042c2f76fa75.html

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Identifying climate impact hotspots across sectors

July 1, 2013 ? One out of 10 people on Earth is likely to live in a climate impact hotspot by the end of this century, if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated. Many more are put at risk in a worst-case scenario of the combined impacts on crop yields, water availability, ecosystems, and health, according to a new study.

It identifies the Amazon region, the Mediterranean and East Africa as regions that might experience severe change in multiple sectors. The article is part of the outcome of the Intersectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP) that will be featured in a special issue of PNAS later this year.

"Overlapping impacts of climate change in different sectors have the potential to interact and thus multiply pressure on the livelihoods of people in the affected regions," says lead-author Franziska Piontek of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "This is why we focus on multisectoral impacts around the world, which turn out to be felt in developed as well as developing countries."

The study is the first to identify hotspots across these sectors while being based on a comprehensive set of computer simulations both for climate change and for the impacts it is causing. Modelling groups from all over the world collaborated under the roof of the ISI-MIP project to generate consistent data. This is an unprecedented community effort of climate impact researchers worldwide to elucidate the risks that humankind is running. It aims at laying a new foundation for future analyses of the consequences of global warming.

"Now we looked for instance into the water availability during the last thirty years," says co-author Qiuhong Tang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "We took as the threshold the water availability only undercut by the three driest years. When the average water availability in our projections under global warming sinks below this threshold, we call this severe. So what today is considered extreme could become the new normal." This is the case in the Mediterranean.

The combination of multiple different impact and climate models increases -- even though this at first glance seems to be a contradiction in terms -- both the robustness and the spread of results. "We get a broader range in projections of future crop yields, for example, when we recognize assumptions in both the climate and the impact model processes. However, locations with strong agreement among model approaches are more reliable hotspots than those identified by a projection based on just one model with all its underlying assumptions," says co-author Alex Ruane of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "It allows for a risk management perspective -- in the hotspot parts of Africa, for instance, even small temperature rises can lead to additional losses that many small farmers simply cannot afford."

The study takes a conservative approach with regard to model agreement. To make allowance for the large spread of results, the scientists also computed a worst case-scenario, based on the most worrying 10 percent of computer runs. This assessment shows a large additional extent of multisectoral climate impacts overlap, with almost all the world's inhabitated areas affected.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/hnQKbSJHqcw/130701151604.htm

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vPulse In-Ear Headphones review

As I do more and more earphone and headphone reviews, I’m struck by the sheer volume of new models becoming available almost daily. Not only that, but companies that have never offered personal audio before are now jumping in big time. One such company is Velodyne. Anyone familiar with high end home audio will recognize [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2013/07/01/vpulse-in-ear-headphones-review/

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Southern city in Egypt takes on Islamists

Mourners carry the coffin of Mohamed Abdel Hamid Mecca Masjid, who was killed Sunday when gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a protests against Egypt's Islamist President, Mohammed Morsi, in Assiut, Egypt, Monday, July 1, 2013. In the city of Assiut, a stronghold of Islamists, gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a protest in which tens of thousands were participating, killing one person, wounding several others and sending the crowd running. (AP Photo/Mamdouh Thabet)

Mourners carry the coffin of Mohamed Abdel Hamid Mecca Masjid, who was killed Sunday when gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a protests against Egypt's Islamist President, Mohammed Morsi, in Assiut, Egypt, Monday, July 1, 2013. In the city of Assiut, a stronghold of Islamists, gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a protest in which tens of thousands were participating, killing one person, wounding several others and sending the crowd running. (AP Photo/Mamdouh Thabet)

ASSIUT, Egypt (AP) ? The southern Egyptian city of Assiut has long been a haven for radical Islamists, and its Christian minority has largely kept a low profile. That all changed this weekend.

An estimated crowd of 50,000 packed the streets this weekend to join protests calling for President Mohammed Morsi's ouster, prompting a violent response that left three people dead.

The show of defiance can only be fairly measured in view of the city's bloody history and the shifts in the local centers of power when Morsi became president a year ago, empowering many of the hard-line Islamist groups around the country, including those in Assiut.

The bloody end of the protest ? 32 people were also injured ? points to the high risks that Assiut residents, particularly Christians, face if they were to join the wave of opposition to Morsi's rule that culminated Sunday when millions of Egyptians came out across the country to demand his ouster.

"I, my kids Mariam and Remon and my husband, Nabil, came out because we miss the Egypt we know and we want it back," Assiut resident Mary Demian said. "These people (militant Muslims) say we are infidels and they terrorize us, but we are not scared. This is our nation and we have always lived with Muslims in peace."

The size of Sunday's rally was nearly five times the demonstration that celebrated the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. But what is equally important is that the protesters showed a level of defiance and courage that may have been unthinkable just days ago.

It defined a change of mood in a city of 1 million people where political activism has traditionally been the exclusive domain of the powerful Islamists of Gamma Islamiya, a hard-line group that fought a bloody insurgency against Mubarak's regime in the 1990s. The insurgency left more than 1,000 people dead, including foreign tourists and Christians.

The group, born in Assiut in the 1970s, has since renounced violence and set up a political party after Mubarak's ouster, joining a new political landscape dominated by Islamists. Thousands of its members were jailed under Mubarak's 29-year rule. It is now one of the strongest allies of Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood.

Adding to the combustible mix, Christians in Assiut province make up about a third of its 4 million people. In all of Egypt, Christians make up about 10 percent of the estimated 90 million people.

In that context, Assiut can be a major flashpoint if the two sides decide to fight it out. Islamists across much of the country were mobilizing their supporters Monday night after the chief of the armed forces gave Morsi and his opponents 48 hours to work out their differences. If they don't, warned Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the military will intervene with a political road map of its own for the nation's future.

In the meantime, millions of Morsi opponents are rallying for a second day in a row, filling Cairo's Tahrir Square, the thoroughfare outside Morsi's presidential palace, and elsewhere in the country.

Sunday's events in Assiut underline the city's potential as a main battlefield in the fight between the two sides.

Significantly, the anti-opposition rally was held in tandem and in close proximity to another one by Gamaa Islamiya, whose members toured the city on motorbikes chanting "Down with the saboteurs!" before they gathered near a government building only 50 yards from the opposition rally.

"Our rally was a message to everyone that we are here on the streets doing what our conscience dictates to us and that we shall not allow saboteurs to do what they wish," said Tareq Beder, the Gamaa official in charge of Assiut.

In the run-up to the opposition rally, several activists also received threatening text messages. "All of you infidels will die," said one, sent to Christian activist Joseph Amin.

The protesters burned posters of Morsi and Assem Abdel-Maged, a longtime leader of Gamaa.

"Oh Assiut, tell the terrorists that Muslims and Christians are united!" they chanted. "Down, down with Assem Abdel-Maged the terrorist!" they screamed.

Abdel-Maged, a native of Assiut, has been taking the lead in a campaign to discredit Morsi's critics, delivering fiery speeches that brand them as communists, extremist Christians and paid Mubarak loyalists.

The violence began soon after the festive rally got underway when a suspected Islamist riding behind another man on a motorbike opened fire on the crowd, killing a 21-year-old Christian man, Abanob Atef, and injuring 11. Protesters used the blood from the fatal head wound to write on the ground "Erhal!" or "Leave!" ? the chant of the Arab Spring protesters now directed at Morsi.

Enraged by the violence, many of the protesters moved to the nearby villa housing the local branch of the Freedom and Justice party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Suspected Morsi supporters in the villa opened fire on the protesters, killing two more and injuring another 21, according to security officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Fighting continued with the protesters pelting the villa with firebombs and rocks. Policemen, angered by the death of one of their own, joined the fight on the side of the protesters.

The fighting continued for hours, with the police occasionally retreating because of heavy gunfire. Morsi's supporters, some wearing construction helmets and homemade body armor, shot at the protesters and police from pickup trucks and motorbikes that came in waves.

Both the Gamaa and the Muslim Brotherhood in Assiut have denied involvement in the violence.

Violence resumed Monday, with about 3,000 anti-Morsi protesters storming and torching the villa housing the Freedom and Justice party.

___

Hendawi reported from Cairo.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-07-01-Egypt-Spreading%20Anger/id-d26cc85b490041d290f16c779efe98e4

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Cloud behavior expands habitable zone of alien planets

July 1, 2013 ? A new study that calculates the influence of cloud behavior on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of stars in the universe. This finding means that in the Milky Way galaxy alone, 60 billion planets may be orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone.

Researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University based their study, which appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters, on rigorous computer simulations of cloud behavior on alien planets. This cloud behavior dramatically expanded the habitable zone of red dwarfs, which are much smaller and fainter than stars like the sun.

Current data from NASA's Kepler Mission, a space observatory searching for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, suggest there is approximately one Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of each red dwarf. The UChicago-Northwestern study now doubles that number.

"Most of the planets in the Milky Way orbit red dwarfs," said Nicolas Cowan, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern's Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics. "A thermostat that makes such planets more clement means we don't have to look as far to find a habitable planet."

Cowan is one of three co-authors of the study, as are UChicago's Dorian Abbot and Jun Yang. The trio also provide astronomers with a means of verifying their conclusions with the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018.

The formula for calculating the habitable zone of alien planets -- where they can orbit their star while still maintaining liquid water at their surface -- has remained much the same for decades. But the formula largely neglects clouds, which exert a major climatic influence.

"Clouds cause warming, and they cause cooling on Earth," said Abbot, an assistant professor in geophysical sciences at UChicago. "They reflect sunlight to cool things off, and they absorb infrared radiation from the surface to make a greenhouse effect. That's part of what keeps the planet warm enough to sustain life."

A planet orbiting a star like the sun would have to complete an orbit approximately once a year to be far enough away to maintain water on its surface. "If you're orbiting around a low mass or dwarf star, you have to orbit about once a month, once every two months to receive the same amount of sunlight that we receive from the sun," Cowan said.

Tightly orbiting planets

Planets in such a tight orbit would eventually become tidally locked with their sun. They would always keep the same side facing the sun, like the moon does toward Earth. Calculations of the UChicago-Northwestern team indicate that the star-facing side of the planet would experience vigorous convection and highly reflective clouds at a point that astronomers call the sub-stellar region. At that location the sun always sits directly overhead, at high noon.

The team's three-dimensional global calculations determined for the first time the effect of water clouds on the inner edge of the habitable zone. The simulations are similar to the global climate simulations that scientists use to predict Earth climate. These required several months of processing, running mostly on a cluster of 216 networked computers at UChicago. Previous attempts to simulate the inner edge of exoplanet habitable zones were one-dimensional. They mostly neglected clouds, focusing instead on charting how temperature decreases with altitude.

"There's no way you can do clouds properly in one-dimension," Cowan said. "But in a three-dimensional model, you're actually simulating the way air moves and the way moisture moves through the entire atmosphere of the planet."

These new simulations show that if there is any surface water on the planet, water clouds result. The simulations further show that cloud behavior has a significant cooling effect on the inner portion of the habitable zone, enabling planets to sustain water on their surfaces much closer to their sun.

Astronomers observing with the James Webb Telescope will be able to test the validity of these findings by measuring the temperature of the planet at different points in its orbit. If a tidally locked exoplanet lacks significant cloud cover, astronomers will measure the highest temperatures when the dayside of the exoplanet is facing the telescope, which occurs when the planet is on the far side of its star. Once the planet comes back around to show its dark side to the telescope, temperatures would reach their lowest point.

But if highly reflective clouds dominate the dayside of the exoplanet, they will block a lot of infrared radiation from the surface, said Yang, a postdoctoral scientist in geophysical sciences at UChicago. In that situation "you would measure the coldest temperatures when the planet is on the opposite side, and you would measure the warmest temperatures when you are looking at the night side, because there you are actually looking at the surface rather than these high clouds," Yang said.

Earth-observing satellites have documented this effect. "If you look at Brazil or Indonesia with an infrared telescope from space, it can look cold, and that's because you're seeing the cloud deck," Cowan said. "The cloud deck is at high altitude, and it's extremely cold up there."

If the James Webb Telescope detects this signal from an exoplanet, Abbot noted, "it's almost definitely from clouds, and it's a confirmation that you do have surface liquid water."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/g9tQ0dZnz1k/130701135131.htm

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Burnam to re-file marriage equality bill for Special Session 2 (Offthekuff)

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