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Monday, April 8, 2013
The Week: Moving an Asteroid, Mapping the Brain and More
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Recent developments in health and science news and a glance at what?s ahead.
Iron Man s Top 10 Heavy Metal Moments Reflections on the First 50 Years of Scientific R&D from Stark Industries
At the risk of stating the obvious, a key component of Iron Man's mythology is the suit of armor. And all the science and engineering research and development that Tony Stark has poured into that suit--and related technology--through Stark Industries. With the next Marvel Studies movie ("Iron Man 3") coming up in May, I thought this was a good time to reflect back on the Armored Avenger and some of the key moments in his last half century of life. What you read below is my chronological "Top 10" list of epic technological outcomes for the Man of Metal. 1. Tales of Suspense #39 from March 1963 "Iron Man Is Born!" 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the Invincible Iron Man. So let' start by pointing out his debut in a story penned by Stan Lee and Larry Lieber with art by Don Heck and lettering by Art Simek. This is the original Iron Man origin story with Tony Stark injured in Viet Nam. Tony, along with professor Ho Yinsen, is forced by evil Wong-Chu to build weapons. Instead they build the original Iron Man "gray armor." This suit is really just like a heavily reinforced suit of armor with some rockets and limited weapons. My favorite quote is Tony Stark to Wong-Chu: "You are not facing a wounded dying man now--or an aged, gentle professor! This is Iron Man who opposes you and all you stand for!" In fact this quote makes me wonder--where are all the young, aggressive professors when you really need them? 2. Tales of Suspense #48 from December 1963 "The New Iron Man Battles... The Mysterious Mr. Doll!" Tony creates a new red and gold armor system that is much reduced in bulkiness. It may seem a subtle advance, but it is a much more anthropomorphic suit. This means he can move in it much more easily and the armor is also shown as modular and storable. While it looks much more awe-inspiring, it is less safe and protective against concussive impacts than the old armor. 3. Invincible Iron man #218 "Deep Trouble" from 1987. In this story Tony Stark develops an additional exoskeleton to fit over his Iron Man armor so he can go deep sea diving. This fantastic armor is shown in Panel "C" of the Figure below. Notice how it is pretty close to the general design ideas in the "swimmable" Newtsuit and Exosuits (shown in the A and B panels) and created by inventor Phil Nuytten. I really like this link between science fact and science fiction. I also really like how Tony wears the Iron Man helmet even while inside the additional exoskeleton for deep water action. 4. Iron Man #284 from September 1992 "Legacy of Iron" This is the full debut of Jim Rhodes as War Machine. Tony (in a "posthumous" transmission) tells Rhodey he created the new heavily militarized armor specifically for him and his body. This hints at the need for customized armor and the fact that a neuroprosthetic as advanced as the Iron Man and War Machine suits cannot simply be worn like clothing off a rack. Personal tuning and a lot of training are needed. 5. Iron Man #290 from March 1993 "This Year's Model" Tony is partially paralyzed and it is uncertain whether he will be able to regain movement. So he creates a remote control "telepresence armor" (NTU-150) that makes use of remote control via a brain implant and headset. The general idea presages concepts of brain-machine interfaces being explored now. But not for controlling robot suits of armor. Yet. 6. Iron Man (Volume 4) #1-6 from January 2005 to May 2006 "Extremis" story arc This is the arc that unveils the brilliant concept of the "Extremis" neural interface armor. It was written under the gifted hand of Warren Ellis with amazing art by Adi Granov. Iron Man's origin story is updated from Viet Nam to the Gulf War and the concept of a neural interface for the Iron Man suit is described. As I argue extensively in "Inventing Iron Man", the Extremis armor is the closest to what would be needed for the whole Iron Man concept to work with a biological human body--as a fully integrated neuroprosthetic. Lots of indications in advance of Iron Man 3 suggest Extremis will play a major part in the plot. 7. Iron Man #1-6 from March to August 2007 in special "Iron Man: Hypervelocity" series In "Hypervelocity," the Iron Man armor gains sentience and goes berserk. It flies around without a "pilot" wreaking havoc until Tony, using older armor, eventually defeats it. A good warning of the delicate balance between needing to create almost autonomous armor that can be controlled by a human user with safeguards (think Isaac Asimov's 3 laws of robotics) holding it in check and in control. 8. Marvel Studios Films Iron Man (2008) This movie introduced the motorized robotic equipment for dressing Tony Stark in Iron Man armor. Right now we don't even have the technology to safely dress Tony Stark in the Iron Man as shown in the robotics, let alone create the Iron Man armor itself. I suggest the closest we are is dressing automobiles. The 2013 Ford Escape has been reckoned as deriving from one of the most automated manufacturing processes yet seen. But we are not yet able to safely place armor plating on a human via robot controls. 9. Iron Man (Volume 5) Invincible Iron Man #8 from February 2009 "World's Most Wanted # 1: Shipbreaking" (and continued in 6 parts until July 2009). Under the deft penmanship of Matt Fraction, this storyline uses concepts from Warren Ellis' neural interface of "Extremis" with "biological upgrading" of humans and direct nanotech interface. A neat twist in this story arc is the introduction of Pepper Potts to the Extremis procedure. During which she wonders "...Where is the line drawn? Between man and machine? Where does...humanity end?" This is followed up by Pepper discovering a special suit of armor for her--officially known as the MARK 1616. But it's commonly known as "Rescue" because it was designed for "heavy rescue and recovery". Pepper in the Rescue suit really is the ultimate application of one-time military technology for full-on civilian use. In Part 5 of "World's Most Wanted" Pepper says "There's not a single weapon anywhere on this suit. Everything is defensive, protective...I kind of love it." 10. Iron Man 2 (2010) At his birthday party, Tony Stark is shown wearing and using the Iron Man suit while heavily intoxicated. Jim Rhodes dons the spare (soon to become War Machine) armor to try and subdue him. Blasts go off and huge armored bodies crash through large chunks of the building. This scene riffs heavily on the story lines in the classic David Michelinie story arc "Demon in a Bottle" from the '80s. It also shows very clearly the horrific implications of mixing technology and alcohol abuse. Here it's in the form of a fictional suit of armor, but it stands as a metaphor for our use of commonly found "exoskeletons"--our cars. 11. Yes. I know this is a Top 10 list. But in homage to the heavy metal theme, I'm going all "Spinal Tap" here--my list goes to 11. And at number 11 I am going to plug my own revised origin story for the Golden Avenger found in Inventing Iron man (2011). Instead of a chest plate magnetic field to keep shrapnel from his heart, I prefer that Tony had an arrhythmia. His life- threatening arrhythmia (let's give him ventricular fibrillation) means that the intrinsic electrical pacing that causes Tony's heart to contract and to pump blood is not working correctly. As a result of this arrhythmia, Tony's heart beats irregularly either too fast or too slow or with gaps. Because of this he creates and has surgically implanted a cardioverting defibrillator (ICD). The ICD monitors his heart rate and then provides electrical shocks to reset his heart rhythm when he has a problem. I hope Stan Lee forgives me, but I like this version better. That brings us to the end of my list celebrating Iron Man's Golden Anniversary. Now we just have to sit back and wait for the intersection points where real science fact often catches up with--and occasionally exceeds--comic book science fiction. ? Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
? 2013 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
? 2013 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iron-man-top-10-heavy-metal-moments-reflections-162600094.html
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Mobile Miscellany: week of April 1st, 2013
If you didn't get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we've opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week, Samsung introduced a new crop of smartphones for China and India, the Lumia 520 hit store shelves and Verizon introduced an LTE router... of all things. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore all that's happening in the mobile world for this week of April 1st, 2013.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/06/mobile-miscellany/
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Sunday, April 7, 2013
Kansas set to enact sweeping anti-abortion law
By Kevin Murphy
KANSAS CITY, Kansas (Reuters) - Kansas lawmakers sent the governor a sweeping anti-abortion bill that bans Planned Parenthood from providing sex education materials in schools and defines life as beginning at conception.
The 70-page bill passed 90-30 in the Kansas House of Representatives late on Friday night after easily clearing the Senate earlier in the day. Governor Sam Brownback, a Republican strongly against abortion, was expected to sign it.
Opponents of the measure say it contains numerous provisions that limit a woman's right to an abortion.
Advocates said it mainly codifies existing practices while helping women make more informed choices.
"This fulfills the legislative intent to create a pro-life state," said Kathy Ostrowski, legislative director of Kansans for Life, an anti-abortion group.
The Kansas bill is the latest in a national fight that has seen lawmakers in several states pass new restrictions on abortion in the past two years.
Those have included laws approved in recent weeks in North Dakota and Arkansas that are seen as direct challenges to the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 legalizing abortion.
The Kansas bill prohibits use of public funds, tax preferences or tax credits for abortion services.
The bill also requires abortion clinics to provide printed material about the fetus' stages of development, a link to websites, material and organizations that help pregnant women, and an explanation of legal responsibilities for an unborn child.
The bill bars school districts from letting abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood offer, sponsor or furnish course materials or instruction on human sexuality or on sexually transmitted diseases.
The bill defines life as beginning at fertilization, but does not ban abortion from that point. Several other states are considering so-called "personhood" measures that seek to enshrine life-at-conception in state constitutions. Such measures have failed in the past when put to a referendum of voters, most recently in Mississippi.
(Reporting by Kevin Murphy; Editing by Greg McCune and Doina Chiacu)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kansas-senate-passes-abortion-restrictions-014146445.html
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Arizona tribe seeks artifacts up for auction
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) ? An Arizona tribe is asking a Paris auction house to cancel its upcoming sale of dozens of items central to the tribe's religious practices and return them to their original homes in the American Southwest.
Neret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou describes the collection on its website as katsina masks of the Hopi Indians of Arizona. They are scheduled to be auctioned April 12, with some expected to garner tens of thousands of dollars each.
To the Hopis, they are living beings called katsina friends that emerge from the earth and sky to connect people to the spiritual world and their ancestors. Every member of the Hopi Tribe gets initiated into the Katsina society as a rite of passage.
Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, director of the tribe's cultural preservation office, said the religious items have no commercial value and should be in the hands of the American Indian tribes from which they were taken, including the pueblos of Jemez, Acoma and Zuni in New Mexico. The sale of such items isn't extraordinary, but the size of the collection to be auctioned in Paris and the age of the items is, he said.
The majority of the 70 katsina friends are labeled as Hopi and date back to the late 19th century and early 20th century. Kuwanwisiwma said they likely were collected from the Hopi in the 1930s and 1940s when there was documented evidence of a French citizen on the northern Arizona reservation.
"A lot of these objects were collected under suspicious conditions," he said. "You had such a huge competition by museums to collect artifacts from tribal reservations, and Hopi was no exception."
Acoma Pueblo said Wednesday that it would look into whether a piece labeled as originating from Acoma is authentic and would support any efforts to repatriate American Indian artifacts.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act gives federally recognized American Indian tribes a way to reclaim funerary objects and ceremonial items from federal agencies and museums in the United States. Sherry Hutt, the program manager for the national NAGPRA office under the U.S. Department of the Interior said the law doesn't always apply to items held internationally.
"Did it leave at the time by gift or was it removed without permission? What were the rules at the time?" she said. "Once you know that, you may or may not have an application of NAGPRA, you may or may not have statues that apply to cultural resources or other remedies, generally."
An email sent to Neret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou on Tuesday was not returned, and the auction house declined immediate comment when contacted by a reporter on Wednesday. The press release announcing the auction said the items were collected by a "connoisseur with peerless taste," who had lived in the United States for more than 30 years and had attended katsina dances at the Hopi villages but doesn't say how.
Jose Viarreal, editor of the website artdaily.org, published the news release and said he received calls afterward from Hopis furious about the sale. He said he contacted the auction house and was told the items were obtained legally.
"I think this is going to go through as planned," he said.
Kuwanwisiwma said no Hopi has authority to sell or transfer such items because they are considered cultural patrimony, and no one other than a Hopi tribal member should possess them. Things haven't always worked out that way.
The Heard Museum in Phoenix is backing the Hopi Tribe's effort to recover the items and said it was hopeful the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People could be used as leverage. France was among the first to sign the declaration that says indigenous people have the right to repatriation of their human remains, ceremonial objects and cultural patrimony.
The auction house cited a book written by the founder of the Museum of Northern Arizona in its description of the katsinas, which Hopi artists commonly depict in carved, wooden figures and sell. The museum's director, Robert Breunig, appealed to the sense of decency and humanity in asking that the auction be called off.
"To be displayed disembodied in your catalog and on the Internet is sacrilegious and offensive," he wrote in a letter to the auction house. "If one claims to value these katsina friends as 'works of art,' one must also respect the people who made them and the native traditions that govern their use."
If returned, Kuwanwisiwma said the items will be placed in the care of the head katsina priest. The tribe would not bid on the objects otherwise, he said.
"Culturally we made it clear that there's no price tag on our ceremonial and religious objects," he said. "That's pretty much out of the question."
___
Associated Press Writer Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report.
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Friday, April 5, 2013
Jurassic Park 3D Review: An Improvement on Perfection
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Who can and can't buy guns?
Later this month, the Senate is expected to begin debating a Democrat-backed bill to vastly expand the federal background check system for gun buyers. The proposed legislation, part of President Barack Obama's recent push to curb gun violence, would close the so-called gun show loophole that allows a substantial minority of overall gun sales to take place without background checks.
The bill's proponents say fewer domestic abusers, felons and mentally ill people will be able to buy weapons if Congress passes it. The National Rifle Association, however, says expanding the checks won't stop crime, because most criminals get their guns on the black market. The group also pointed out that gaping holes in the national background check system make it ineffective.
So what does the background check system do, and who will be prevented from buying weapons if it expands to cover every gun purchase?
The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which is managed by the FBI, quickly checks the name of a prospective buyer against federal and state criminal records to see if he or she is disqualified from buying a gun. Federal law prevents the sale of weapons to people who have been convicted of a felony, have a warrant out for their arrest, have used drugs within the past year, were committed involuntarily to a mental institution or ruled mentally incompetent by a judge, are living in the U.S. illegally, have a domestic-violence-related restraining order against them or have a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction. People who were dishonorably discharged from the military or who have renounced their U.S. citizenship are also barred from gun purchases.
Between 1998 and 2010, the Justice Department turned down just 2.1 million of 118 million gun applications, most of them people with felony convictions who tried to purchase a gun.
But some people?including at least one mass murderer, Seung-Hui Cho?who should not have been allowed to buy guns have slipped through the cracks over the same period.
The problem is states vary greatly in the amount and quality of information they provide to the database, especially when it comes to mental health issues. (The federal government cannot compel the states to share all their records with the database, though it can offer them financial incentives to do so.)
In 2007, Cho was able to buy a weapon from a licensed dealer and then kill 32 people at Virginia Tech, even though he had been declared mentally ill by a judge in 2005. The state never submitted that record to NICS, so his name cleared the database when he bought the gun. The incident spurred 18 states to pass laws requiring agencies to report more mental health information to the database, and a Government Accountability Office report from last year found that mental health records in the system increased eightfold from 2004 to 2011.
A 2010 Justice Department report also identified problems with states' reporting records on people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors or who are under restraining orders. Some states do not know how to determine which orders are still active, while others don't maintain records on restraining orders at all.
Even if all the holes in the database are eventually filled, some gun researchers think federal law does not go far enough in prohibiting people who may be at risk for becoming violent from buying weapons.
Daniel Webster, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says based on his research he believes more categories of people should be prohibited from buying weapons. People who have temporary domestic-violence-related restraining orders against them, for example, can still buy and own weapons under federal law. Federal law also counts only couples who have lived together or were married in the definition of domestic violence. So an ex-boyfriend with an active order of protection out against him could still buy a weapon if he was never married or lived with his former partner.
Webster also thinks there's an argument for excluding people with multiple drunken driving convictions from buyng weapons, because those who abuse alcohol are at an increased risk for committing violent crimes.
"The research indicates that people who have problems with alcohol actually have much greater risk for being violent than those who use illegal drugs," Webster said. Current law also allows people aged 18 or older to buy weapons from private dealers, while people have to be 21 to buy from a licensed seller.
But Dave Kopel, a professor at Denver University and an analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the current law sometimes excludes too many people from their constitutional right to own a weapon to defend themselves.
Kopel said the current background check system mainly catches buyers who don't realize that a past infraction prevents them from legally buying a weapon, such as "some guy who got into a fight with his live-in girlfriend in 1977, threw a coffee cup against the wall ... and pleaded guilty to disturbing the peace." Those who know they can't own a weapon go to the black market, he said.
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