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Video of the Day

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Stanford scientists are trying to work out how birds fly:

From the press statement:

As a graduate student working with Stanford mechanical engineer David Lentink, Eric Gutierrez trained this member of the second smallest parrot species in order to precisely measure the vortices it creates during flight. Their results, published in the Dec. 6 issue of Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, help explain the way animals generate enough lift to fly and could have implications for how flying robots and drones are designed.

“The goal of our study was to compare very commonly used models in the literature to figure out how much lift a bird, or other flying animal, generates based off its wake,” said Diana Chin, a graduate student in the Lentink lab and co-author of the study. “What we found was that all three models we tried out were very inaccurate because they make assumptions that aren’t necessarily true.”

Fortunately, it only took a goggle-eyed mini-monster to show them the way.

Video of the Day

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Amazing stuff, dragging a wreck off the seabed.

And for all that I know it’s impractical, and even a negative in many cases, I’d still like to see humanity clean up its messes just like this: pick the whole thing up, salvage what can be salvaged, and make the sea clean again. There’s a few ships, such as World War II oilers and munition ships, that really need to be neutralized and removed.

Word Of The Day

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Bombogenesis:

To understand bombogenesis, you need to first remember the basics of high and low pressure. High pressure tends to clear the skies and calm the winds. Low pressure tends to pull in wetter air and gusty winds. Thus, the higher the pressure, the calmer it’ll be, and conversely, the lower the pressure, the stormier it’ll be.

Pressure? Yes, we measure the state of the atmosphere in millibars. “Static” or standard low pressure is about 1013 mb. Low-pressure systems tend to be in the upper 900 mb range.

As a storm forms, we refer to its “genesis” to borrow the biblical term – it is growing. If a storm grows quickly, it’s called rapid intensification. If a storm’s central pressure drops more than 24 mb in 24 hours, that’s bombogenesis. [krem2]

Sounds a bit silly. Noted in this Ryan Hall video.

A Weird Mix Of Yesterday And Tomorrow

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I’m glad I’m not living in Lebanon:

Footage shared online shows people in Lebanon going about their days before their pagers exploded.

In one video, a man is seen shopping in a fruit and vegetable market before an object explodes from his midriff. The man collapses to the ground and cries out in pain, while other bystanders scatter in fear.

In another, security camera footage shows a man about to pay for goods at a store before something on his person explodes, sending a burst of smoke into the air.

In another, a person films the damage inside a bedroom after an apparent explosion. Two holes have been torn through the top and bottom of a drawer, smashing a nearby mirror and scattering debris across the room. [CNN]

Reminds me of Stand On Zanzibar by John Brunner, which is weird since I don’t remember anything more of the novel than a scene in which a soldier is killed with a nanowire. I get the impression the novel was all about future political violence, which I suppose we’ve been living ever since that novel was published in 1968.