Innovation: A Portable Generator Charges Devices With Fire

The FlameStower can charge USB-powered devices with fire.

Courtesy of FlameStower

The FlameStower can charge USB-powered devices with fire.

Courtesy of FlameStower

In our Weekly Innovation blog series, we explore an interesting idea, design or product that you may not have heard of yet. Do you have an innovation to share? Use this quick form to send it to us.

Hikers and campers can now keep their cameras charged with FlameStower, which uses heat from a campfire, stove or even candles to charge any device powered by a USB connection. While this can seem superfluous — powering up while getting away from it all — creators Andrew Byrnes and Adam Kell says the device can also bring power to people in developing countries where wireless technology has leapfrogged others, places where people have cellphones but not electricity.

Byrnes and Kell were both studying materials science at Stanford University and at first thought about a generator wired to a toaster, but they quickly dismissed that idea. They spoke to a business school professor, who told them something that's been their guiding principle since — build something that can cook a pot of rice and charge a cellphone at the same time.

The technology is fairly simple. The FlameStower has a blade that extends out over the fire, while the other end is cooled by a reservoir of water. That means one part of the blade is hotter than the other. The temperature difference generates electricity, and semiconductors amplify the voltage to a useful amount. It gives you the same charge as connecting your phone to a laptop. The Mars Curiosity Rover uses the same technology, though its heat source comes from decaying radioactive materials.

This phenomenon of heat to electricity is called the Seebeck effect, and it doesn't generate a lot of energy, which means it wasn't that useful until people started walking around with cameras and smartphones.

"Now you have these tools that are insanely powerful, and increasingly are stingy on their energy use, so that value of the low amount of electricity is getting higher," Byrnes says.

He and Kell want to bring the FlameStower not only to stores in the U.S. but to developing countries as well. Kell recently returned from a trip to rural Kenya and Ethiopia to refine the FlameStower for users there, because around 65 percent of people in Africa have cellphones, but only 42 percent have electricity.

"[The cellphone] has been the first technology that people in rural villages are actually buying," Kell says.

Kell says products sold in developing countries are usually made to be cheaper than their counterparts in the U.S., with the exception of energy, which is much more expensive and less reliable.

Kell and Byrnes aren't the only people to come up with something like this. The BioLite CampStove and PowerPot are both pots that will charge a device and cook your food or boil water at the same time. But Kell says they weren't as successful in developing countries because people there often want to use their own pots, so the FlameStower founders made something that can work on any stove or fire.

At the moment a FlameStower costs $80, and the project is being funded on Kickstarter until late October.

Alan Yu is a Kroc fellow at NPR.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/10/15/234737102/innovation-a-portable-generator-charges-devices-with-fire?ft=1&f=1003
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Mysterious elephant wins photo prize

By Melissa Hogenboom
Science reporter, BBC News

Elephants have a mysterious and "tangible energy" according to South African photographer Greg Du Toit.

Now after a 10 year quest, his portrayal of this "energy" has been captured in an award-winning photo.

Titled "Essence of Elephants", the work has earned him the overall title in this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

Preparation and passion, he says, were key to achieving the winning shot, taken from just over one metre away.

"There was one particular day when a baby elephant raced past right in front of my camera and I was ready. I had to be prepared for that moment," said Mr Du Toit.

He took the picture at a waterhole in Botswana's Northern Tuli Game Reserve from a hide (a sunken freight container) that provided a ground-level view. He had been going to the area five or six times a year for 10 years.

"I chose elephants because I feel a very special energy and connection when I'm around them," he told BBC News.

"But although you feel that energy it's very difficult to translate that into a camera because an elephant is such a big animal and they're not very charismatic, whereas a predator is far more charismatic."

Authentic moments

Using a very slow shutter speed on a wide angle lens "allowed all that energy to come into my camera" making him able to depict "these gentle giants in an almost ghostly way".

To achieve the cool blue hue he attached a polarising filter and set his white balance to a cool temperature.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPY) "means a lot to me for various reasons", said Du Toit, especially because photos were submitted anonymously, putting professionals and amateurs on an equal footing.

"In my mind it's one of the last places in the world you can actually look at a wildlife photo and trust that the moment is authentic."

Chair of the judging panel Jim Brandenburg said: "Greg's image immediately catapults us to African plains. This image stood out for both its technical excellence and the unique moment it captures - it is truly a once in a lifetime shot."

This year's Young Wildlife Photographer of the year is 14-year-old Udayan Rao Pawar from India.

His photo was of a fresh water crocodile with hatchlings on its head "kind of resembling a crown", explained Mr Pawar.

He crept up on the nestling colony of gharials on the banks of the Chambal River,

Grunting sounds

"When the dawn broke early in the morning I hid myself behind a rock, and when the morning light came I took those images.

"I could hear them making little grunting sounds. Very soon a large female surfaced near the shore, checking on her charges. Some of the hatchlings swam to her and climbed onto her head. Perhaps it made them feel safe."

Despite conservation efforts, the gharial fresh water crocodile is on the verge of extinction with an estimated 200 mating pairs remaining.

"The Chambal River is the gharial's last stronghold but is threatened by illegal sand-mining and fishing", added Udayan.

Wildlife photographer and Judge Tui De Roy said the composition and timing of the photograph was perfect.

"The mother's gaze seems directed at you, appealing to you to let her live and thrive in peace. This image is beautiful and thought provoking, but at the same time also wonderfully playful, making it a clear winner," he said.

WPY is one of the most prestigious competitions in world photography. Organised by London's Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine, it is now in its 49th year.

Images are submitted anonymously by professional and amateur photographers alike. They are selected for their creativity, artistry and technical complexity and must be submitted as a raw file with no manipulations.

The winners beat 43,000 entries submitted from 96 countries. You can see more images by clicking here. Some viewers may find the last photo in the gallery distressing.

The WPY exhibition opens on Friday 18 October at the Natural History Museum.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24534106#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Smug Life: Why Is 'Catfish' So Dumb When It Doesn't Have To Be?

Max and Nev, probably thinking about how terrible Internet liars are.

MTV

Max and Nev, probably thinking about how terrible Internet liars are.

MTV

If you're not in the habit of watching MTV's Catfish, which ends its second season Tuesday night with a new episode and a reunion special, you might be surprised by how many interesting questions it raises.

Of course, you might be even more surprised by how blithely it ignores them.

Catfish as a television show is spun off from Catfish the 2010 documentary, in which handsome smoothie Nev Schulman (the kind of handsome smoothie who's very into how handsome and smooth he is) fell for a gorgeous woman online and then found out that it was a ruse by a substantially older, sadder, plainer woman impersonating a version of her own daughter. A lot of people questioned the veracity of some or all of the events in Catfish, but that didn't prevent it from sparking a lot of conversation.

So MTV, of course, made it into a TV show where Nev and his friend Max — and Max's utterly unnecessary little point-and-shoot camera, which he carries around constantly but could be fired into the sun without affecting the show at all — go around and visit other people who are in online relationships to, the show claims, help them learn the truth about whether the object of their affection is what he or she claims to be.

The structure of any given episode is that Nev and Max meet the Fished Person, who is earnest and hopeful and in love. Fished Person mentions a few obvious red flags — they've never video chatted with the Beloved, the Beloved has canceled three different phone numbers, the Beloved asks for money, whatever. Nev and Max look meaningfully at each other, because they've concluded that This Sounds Fishy (pun intended).

And then Nev and Max do some sleuthing, which literally consists essentially of using Google and Facebook to poke around, much like you might if you undertook such a project yourself and had a fourth-grade knowledge of the internet. They track down the Beloved and take the Fished Person to meet him or her. Usually, one or more of the following things happens:

1. The Beloved is much larger than the photos suggested. (This is the case for probably at least half, if not three-quarters, of episodes, to the point where Lovable Or Size 24? would make a decent alternate title if they ever need one.)

2. The Beloved is actually male [or female] when The Beloved was believed to be female [or male].

3. The Beloved is socially awkward.

4. The Beloved is in some other way not at all what was advertised.

Max and Nev and the Fished Person spend a lot of time saying HOW DARE YOU! to the Beloved, and the Beloved weakly apologizes and pleads insecurity or fear or tragedy. Max and Nev cart off the Fished Person, who vows not to give up on love but, in most cases, is through with the Beloved.

The moral is always the same: Lying is terrible, and liars are a menace, and it's easy to be taken advantage on the internet, so make sure you use Google at least as well as a fourth-grader.

The focus is consistently — perhaps not unerringly, but consistently — on the Fished Person as victim and the Beloved as betrayer. Over and over, the same sadness comes over Max and Nev as they realize they must break it to yet another completely innocent victim that they are just too good and pure for this earth.

Here are the kinds of questions that are almost never asked:

Why were you so eager to believe that a person who had only what looked like modeling photos on her Facebook page was exactly who she said she was?

Why did you ignore every sign that this wasn't on the up and up, and do you think it's possible that you have an unrealistic set of expectations?

If this person had told you the truth about who he really was, and had shown you a real photo, would you have given him the time of day? If not, does that provoke any remotely interesting thoughts in you about how you process first impressions?

Would you have told this girl that your affection for her was contingent on her appearance if she had asked you? If you would not, were you not leading her on as well?

And this question is not put to the audience: This person believed her real self would be rejected out of hand, so she presented a false self. What do you think about the fact that she was exactly right that her real self would be rejected out of hand? If we all agree that this is in no way an excuse for lying, can we still sit with it and understand that it probably hurts to live that way, and that perhaps the desire to be loved overwhelmed the desire to be ethical, which is perhaps not as open-and-shut as Nev and Max suggest?

Maybe it's not surprising that Nev, whose entire bio is based around feeling victimized because his hot internet girlfriend didn't turn out to be as advertised, isn't much interested in turning things around on the Fished Person to investigate how their expectations and wants and small dishonesties allowed the entire situation to continue.

It's sad, though, that so often, the show has it right in the palm of its hand, the fact that Everybody Hurts, Everybody Cries, and so forth, and while it often allows the Beloved to make a sincere apology followed by a sort of repenting dignity (he's decided to stop lying forever, hooray!), it rarely takes any interest in interrogating how, exactly, a Fished Person winds up falling in love with someone who never was. Instead, it retains the smug sense that every heartbreak has a victim and a perpetrator, and while the perpetrator may apologize and make good, she'll be the perpetrator forever.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/10/15/234719125/smug-life-why-is-catfish-so-dumb-when-it-doesnt-have-to-be?ft=1&f=1008
Category: Common App   obama   roger federer   Rihanna   hell on wheels  

Government shutdown: Boehner's effort collapses in House (Los Angeles Times)

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Lawsuit accuses BlackBerry of raising false hopes

Ottawa (AFP) - BlackBerry shareholders on Tuesday launched a class-action lawsuit against the company, alleging its optimistic sales forecasts for its new smartphones cost them hundreds of millions of dollars, lawyers announced.

The lawsuit on behalf of Canadian shareholders who purchased BlackBerry stock between September 27, 2012 and September 20 of this year, alleges that senior management "knowingly or negligently" misrepresented that its BlackBerry 10 line of smartphones were being well-received by consumers and that the company was in a strong financial position.

The class action is the second launched against BlackBerry in the past week.

"For almost a full year, BlackBerry management made market statements based on prophecy rather than fact," class-action lawyer Tony Merchant said in a statement.

"Thousands of Canadians who invested in BlackBerry Limited in the past year have lost hundreds of millions of dollars."

BlackBerry unveiled its new platform in January as it sought to regain lost momentum, but its most recent numbers suggest this has been a spectacular failure.

Last month, the company announced it was laying off 4,500 staff -- or one third of its global workforce -- after losing $965 million in its last quarter as sales plummeted.

BlackBerry still has some 70 million subscribers worldwide, but most of these are using older handsets, with the newer devices on the BlackBerry 10 platform failing to gain traction.

BlackBerry's share price meanwhile has slid from a 52-week high of $17.80 in January to below $9 recently.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lawsuit-accuses-blackberry-raising-false-hopes-213808879.html
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Tuesday Morning Political Mix

Good morning from Washington, D.C., your nation's capital, where we are now into Day 15 of your government's shutdown and counting down to your government's looming default on its debt.

Yes, we all wish we were still in bed with the pillow over our head. (Even, we imagine, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who told The Wall Street Journal that military readiness is being damaged by the budget standoff.)

Dire? There is little argument, except from the most ardent default-is-no-big-deal fringe.

Chinese leaders, grasping the opportunity handed them, in a weekend commentary in their state-run news agency advised a "befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world."

Even the much publicized White House garden has taken a hit from Washington inaction, its veggies literally rotting on the vine. Insert metaphor here.

But, dear readers, the buzz-phrase for Tuesday: "Congressional leaders near agreement on framework for a bipartisan deal."

Here's how The New York Times characterized the situation:

WASHINGTON — While Republican senators prepared to meet on Tuesday morning to hear from their leadership about a potential deal with Democrats that could reopen the government and lift the threat of an American default by raising the debt ceiling, House Republicans tempered their demands to scale back President Obama's health care law, announcing that they would soon vote on a proposal meant to counteract a less conservative plan coming from the Senate.

• House Republicans today will head into a 9 a.m. closed door conference meeting to discuss Senate developments that reports say would lift the nation's borrowing power through the first week in February and provide for a resolution to finance the government until Jan. 15. Long-term budget and tax fixes are also said to be part of the conversation, perhaps even some "modest items" related to the Affordable Care Act, Fox News tells us. One possibility: requiring income verification for health care subsidies, a concession many House Republicans see as weak tea.

• A warning, however, precedes today's meetings. Even if Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell come up with a deal, passage is far from a sure thing in the fractious, GOP-controlled House. Jonathan Strong, writing in the National Review, says that "even a deal cut by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is no fait accompli in the House ..." And Strong brings up the tricky timing of the whole endeavor, suggesting that even if the Senate begins work on today on a debt-ceiling bill, it could take until Saturday to get passed. "In that time," he says, during which Thursday's debt-ceiling deadline hits, "(GOP House Speaker John) Boehner could go on offense."

• There remains much uncertainty about what rogue Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas may have up his sleeve to stop or delay any plan that doesn't gut Obamacare. Joshua Green of Bloomberg says Cruz has a couple of options, including dragging out Senate debate. And Roll Call reported that Cruz met into the wee hours Monday with a group of House Republicans in the basement of a Capitol Hill restaurant.

• We have found the Congressional Budget Office's primer on the debt limit helpful in recent weeks. Here's a quick explainer about the current debt limit:

The current statutory limit on total debt issued by the Treasury is just under $16.7 trillion. The No Budget, No Pay Act of 2013 (Public Law 113-3) suspended the debt ceiling from February 4, 2013, through May 18, 2013. The act also specified that the amount of borrowing that occurred during that period should be added to the previous debt limit of $16.394 trillion. On May 19, the limit was reset to reflect the cumulative borrowing through May 18 and now stands at $16.699 trillion.

Because the No Budget, No Pay Act provided no additional borrowing authority above the amount of debt that had already been issued as of May 18, the Treasury has no room under the newly established limit to increase total borrowing. Therefore, to avoid a breach of that limit, the Treasury has begun employing its well-established toolbox of so-called extraordinary measures to allow continued borrowing for a limited time. As it reported in May, CBO projects that those measures will be exhausted in either October or November of this year.

As Congress continues to work on its "framework for a bipartisan deal," here are a few other stories we're watching:

• Federal prosecutors plan to bring a captured Libyan terrorism suspect before a New York judge today, what the Los Angeles Times' David Savage says is a "marked a departure from what had become the norm for dealing with suspected terrorists over the last 12 years."

• There are new revelations about the National Security Agency collecting millions of contact lists from instant messaging and personal email accounts, including, the Washington Post's Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani write, many belonging to Americans.

The information is from senior intelligence officials and from top-secret documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. A key finding: Each day, the Washington Post reports, the NSA collects contacts from an estimated 500,000 buddy lists on live-chat services as well as from the inbox displays of Web-based e-mail accounts.

• We're keeping on eye on New Jersey, where Wednesday Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat, will face off against Republican Steve Lonegan for the U.S. Senate seat that become vacant when frank Lautenberg died in June. Polls show Booker with a comfortable lead.

• And, finally, we loved this New York Times story on how President Taft grappled with his heft.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/10/15/234660901/tuesday-morning-political-mix?ft=1&f=1014
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Nginx Raises $10M Series B Round Led By NEA

Nginx, the company behind the increasingly popular web server by the same name, today announced that it has raised a $10 million Series B round led by New Enterprise Associates. This round also includes full participation by the company's existing investors, including Series A investors, e.ventures, Runa Capital, MSD Capital, as well as participation from Aaron Levie, CEO and founder of Box. Today's announcement comes almost exactly two years after Nginx raised its $3 million Series A round.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/wGCdUf9ZuPk/
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