For nearly all of human history, there was only one way to observe a cosmic event: with your eyes. This was a bad thing if the event occurred on a cloudy day, and an even worse thing if it wasn’t cloudy but the event was a solar eclipse, which could wind up being, well, the last thing you’d ever see.
A lot has changed, and that fact was spectacularly in evidence this week, as Venus made one of its very rare transits of the sun—an event that won’t come again for 105 years. All over the world, skywatchers had telescopes and cameras pointed sunward as the black speck of Venus glided slowly across the solar disk. But 22,000 mi. (36,000 km) above the Earth, another set of eyes was watching the event. Those eyes belong to the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), whose designers know a thing or two about looking at the sun.
(PHOTOS: The Transit of Venus: Photographs from a Rare Celestial Event)
SDO was launched in 2010, as part of NASA’s Living With a Star (LWS) program—a series of planned spacecraft launches to study the sun and its impact on the Earth. That’s worth doing for far more than just scientific reasons, since solar activity can affect communications satellites, the power grid, the global climate and human health. There are six spacecraft tentatively planned for launching in the LWS program over the next several years. The only one of those to make it to space so far is the SDO, but in the case of the Venus transit, it’s a good thing that one was at the front of the line.
SDO has multiple imaging systems on board: four telescopes with filters covering 10 wavelength bands to study the surface of the sun; another instrument measuring extreme ultraviolet variability; and still another measuring subsurface magnetic storms—a phenomenon wonderfully called helioseismology.
During a six-hr. stretch on June 5 and 6, multiple imagers sensitive to multiple wavelengths recorded extremely high-definition, time-lapse footage of Venus’s trip across the solar disk and transmitted it all home to NASA. The resulting video, which went live today, offers a perspective on the Venusian crossing that the ancients—and even the not-so-ancients—never had before. There’s no telling what the imaging technology will be in 2117 when Venus reprises this week’s performance, but judging by the new footage, what we’ve got in 2012 ain’t half bad.
More Street Fashion Photography Gold from The Sartorialist in Madrid
Here is a short video that features The Sartorialist with Loewe in Madrid. If you’re quick and pay attention there are a couple tips in this video about good approach practices as The Sartorialist discusses his process.
via [ISO1200] [TheSartorialist]
This short video reminded me of the excellent documentary "Bill Cunningham New York" of an old-school (film using) street fashion photographer on the New York Times photo staff.
Four years ago, I reviewed an ingenious little product called the Arriva earbuds. The writeup went like this:
The Times’s technology columnist, David Pogue, keeps you on top of the industry in his free, weekly e-mail newsletter.
Sign up | See SampleThese earbuds are on a wavy, bendable soft wire band that wraps behind your head. And in the center is – get this – a place for an iPod Shuffle. It snaps right on there, adding (oooh!) a whole half an ounce to the headband.
At that point, you’re in heaven. Why?
* Because there are no cords to tangle and catch on things, and no iPod to manage. You don’t need an armband, a belt clip, a car holder or any other apparatus; the entire thing clings comfortably to your head. You’re a cyborg with your own secret soundtrack.
* Because it’s dead simple to operate the Shuffle without looking. Reach around and tap its one big button to play or pause. If you really need to adjust the volume or skip tracks, you can feel for those buttons at the four compass points. For quick phone calls, or chatting with your jogging partner, or ordering at the drive-through window, this setup makes it much faster and simpler to shut off the music than having to find and fumble with a real iPod strung to your ears.
* Because the whole thing is so much faster and easier to slip on and off. It’s one piece, not three (two earbuds and a player).
* Because these things are great while you jog or exercise. Much less weight and clutter, and they stay put.
I’ve always loved this big idea from a small company — and I felt sorry for Arriva when Apple terminated the one-inch-square iPod Shuffle design that made the whole thing work.
Well, Arriva is back.
Here again are the bendable, back-of-the-head earbuds. Here again are the big, finger-friendly volume and play/pause buttons at the nape of your neck. The Arriva Leo, as it’s called, however, doesn’t need an iPod Shuffle. Instead, it has Bluetooth. So it plays the music from an iPhone, iPod Touch, Android phone, BlackBerry, iPad, laptop or anything else with Bluetooth.
The idea now is that you can keep the phone in your pocket while you run or work out. It transmits your music to the earbuds on this comfortable, nearly weightless headband while you work, jog or run.
As a newly minted runner — I’ve been at it for only a month — I’m a strong believer in the concept of listening to music or podcasts while running. (Yes, yes, I know this is not exactly a world-shaking observation.)
But I had two problems with the standard iPhone earbuds cord. First, I have weirdly shaped ears that can’t hold earbuds in place. I’m deformed; I’m missing the antitragus. Second, that cord is a hassle when you’re running, and even when you’re not. So I figured that the Leo would be the perfect solution to both problems.
And it is.
During my first run with these things, they kept slipping out of my ear sockets. I spent some time on the company’s fairly amateurish Web site, though, and found videos that explain how to customize them. The entire headband is made of bendable metal with a couple of squiggles along the way, which you can pinch to tighten or pull apart to enlarge. You can also bend the stalks that have the actual earbuds on them.
By turning those stalks almost 90 degrees, forcing the earbuds straight into my ears, I managed to sculpt the Leos into a shape that doesn’t budge during runs.
Unfortunately, I find myself having to repeat these bendy tweaks before every run. That’s about the only time you can use “hassle” and “Leo” in the same sentence.
The sound is very good; the Leos are sweatproof and splashproof; they play for five hours on a charge; and they let you take phone calls, too. When you tap the power button behind your head, you answer the call, which comes in on only the right earbud. I was about to object to the arrangement, when it occurred to me that you use your regular cellphone only on one ear, too! This one-ear calling thing is a drawback only when compared with regular Android or Apple earbuds, which bring the call to both ears.
By learning which of the three big buttons do what functions when you tap or hold them, you can skip tracks, adjust volume and even operate Siri voice control (“play some Beatles”).
The Leos come with a pocket carrying case and a set of “Acoustibuds,” silicone snap-on cones for earbuds that go deeper into your ear. There are other Bluetooth earphones, of course, but I haven’t found any others that have both Bluetooth and a behind-your-head design, instead of over it. That style means you can wear them with glasses, sunglasses, helmets or hats — and even if you’re wearing nothing at all on your head, it doesn’t mess up your hair. Note to spies or people in boring meetings: If you have long hair, this design means that you can even listen to music without anybody realizing it.
The Leos cost $75, and I’m happy to say that they continue the old Arriva’s tradition of cleverness and smart design.
By MICHAEL HOWARD SAUL And ANDREW GROSSMAN
A New Yorker tucking into a Big Mac at the McDonald's restaurant on 161st Street in the Bronx couldn't order it with any sweetened soda larger than 16 ounces, under a proposed city ban on large sugary drinks.
But that same thirsty customer could walk around the corner to the J&M Grocery and buy a 67-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola.
As public-health officials praised New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal to ban the sale of large-size drinks in restaurants and other locations Thursday, some academics and business groups called the plan an ineffective way to handle the obesity crisis and criticized it as government overreach.
Mr. Bloomberg, who led the city's ban on smoking in bars and restaurants nearly a decade ago, wants to prohibit the sale of sugary drinks—such as soda, sports drinks, sweetened tea or coffee—in cups or containers that have more than 16 fluid ounces. The ban would affect beverages served at restaurants, mobile food carts, delis and concessions at movie theaters, stadiums and arenas.
But puzzling to many in the city are the exceptions to the ban: It wouldn't pertain to supermarkets, groceries or convenience stores. More specifically, 7-Eleven's "Big Gulp" drink would be safe.
Mr. Bloomberg defended the proposal on Thursday as an effort to take on obesity which he called "a local problem for us," and "to encourage people to live longer."
"If you remember, the smoking ban was very controversial at the beginning," he said. "I don't think the public would stand to go back to the days where you have to breathe other people's smoke."
The city's health department said obesity has led to a surge in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes, which can result in blindness, hypertension and amputations. One in three adult New Yorkers either has diabetes or a condition known as pre-diabetes, the department said.
Corinne Krupp, a professor of public policy at Duke University, described the proposal as "silly."
"I just don't think it's an effective public policy to address obesity," Ms. Krupp said. "It's just going to shift behavior from buying one big soda to buying smaller ones."
Executives in the beverage industry lambasted the mayor and called on the city's residents to voice their disapproval. "New Yorkers expect and deserve better than this," a statement from Coca-Cola Co. KO -0.44% said. "They can make their own choices about the beverages they purchase."
The mayor has the power to enact the proposal through the city's Board of Health, over which he has presumed control because he has appointed its members. His potential successors, however, are already raising the possibility of lifting the ban after Mr. Bloomberg leaves office in December 2013. The ban could begin as early as March.
Michael Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington group that focuses on nutrition and food safety, lauded the mayor for a "creative step to help stem the obesity epidemic."
"It's really the responsibility of a health department to reduce chronic disease rates," he said. "New York City is saying that's our responsibility and we're going do it."
Public health officials across the country and advocates against obesity have long discussed the dangers of sweetened drinks, but the mayor's proposal is believed to be unprecedented in scope in the U.S.
The mayor's proposal comes after a series of failed efforts by his administration to limit the intake of sugary drinks. Last year, the Obama administration rejected the mayor's request to bar city food-stamp recipients from using their benefits to buy soda and other sugary drinks. In New York, the state legislature has rejected the mayor's call for a soda tax.
Part of the allure of Mr. Bloomberg's new proposal, administration officials concede, is that the mayor doesn't need the approval of a governmental authority outside Mr. Bloomberg's control.
Thomas Farley, commissioner of the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, explained the rationale behind allowing stores to sell tbig, sugary drinks but not restaurants.
"When a restaurant serves you an item, it's meant to be consumed at one sitting," he said. "Whereas when a grocery sells you an item, it's maybe consumed by multiple people across multiple (meals). It makes sense that there would be different rules that apply. It's also true that the Board of Health regulates restaurants but it's the state that regulates grocery stores. So, we don't have the legal authority to do this at the Board of Health".
Karen Congro, director of the Wellness for Life program at the Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York, said she thinks the extensive publicity sparked by the proposal would help inform the public about the dangers of sweetened drinks. But the actual ban, she said, is unlikely to reduce obesity. "Without education, I think, it's limited what can be done with this," she said. "They're just going to buy two smaller drinks."
Brian Wansink, a Cornell University professor who wrote a book on the topic called Mindless Eating, said he received a call Wednesday from City Hall about the proposal. He asked whether the administration had consulted retailers about how they might be able to collaborate on a solution.
"I was a little bit disappointed to see that they hadn't tried to engage retailers to try to figure out a solution that risked less backlash," Mr. Wansink said.
He pointed to ideas that have come out of his research, such as 100-calorie packages of snacks, that food companies have since implemented.
"All of a sudden it's not pushback," said Mr. Wansink, who directs Cornell's Food and Brand Lab. "It's you gave them…win-win idea about how to make money and make people skinnier."
In a McDonald's near Yankee Stadium, Dave Rodriguez, 35 years old, sipped a 32-ounce sweet tea. He said he was torn.
"It has a positive and a negative side to it," he said. "When it comes to health issues with sugary drinks, you can get all types of diseases. The negative would be you're telling them what to do with something they buy."
Ethan Knecht, a 27 year old teacher who lives in Brooklyn, soaked up the sun Thursday afternoon while sipping a sugarless black cherry seltzer.
"I think it's a good idea," he said. "It's a governmental issue. The amount of sugar that corporations are putting in beverages is out of control and the government needs to be able to regulate it."
—John Letzing, Alison Fox
and Danny Gold
contributed to this article.Write to Michael Howard Saul at michael.saul@wsj.com and Andrew Grossman at andrew.grossman@wsj.com
31 May 2012
Body odor reveals age
by Will Parker
Reporting their findings in the journal PLoS ONE, researchers from the Monell Center say that humans can estimate the age of other humans based only on differences in body odor. The Monell Chemical Senses Center is a non-profit research institute working to better understand the mechanisms and functions of taste and smell. The research paper also notes that contrary to popular supposition, "old-person smell" is rated as less unpleasant than the body odors of middle-aged and young individuals.
Human body odors contain a rich array of chemical components that are known to change across a person's lifespan. In humans, "old-person smell" is recognized across cultures. In Japan, there is even a special word to describe it - kareishû.
It is theorized that age-related odors may help animals select suitable mates: older males might be desirable because they contribute genes that enable offspring to live longer, while older females might be avoided because their reproductive systems are more fragile.
Previous studies with animals have demonstrated the ability to identify age via body odor, so Monell neuroscientist Johan Lundström set out to investigate whether humans are able to do the same.
The body odors tested were collected from three age groups: Young (20-30 years old), Middle-age (45-55), and Old-age (75-95). Each donor slept for five nights in t-shirts containing underarm pads, which were then cut into quadrants and placed in glass jars.
Odors were assessed by 20-30 year old evaluators, who were given two body odor glass jars in nine combinations and asked to identify which came from the older donors. The evaluators also rated the intensity and pleasantness of each odor and were asked to estimate the donor's age.
The researchers found the evaluators were able to discriminate via odor the three donor age categories. Interestingly, the evaluators rated body odors from the old-age group as less intense and less unpleasant than odors from the other two age groups.
Estimating exact donor age was less accurate, although the evaluators were better at estimating samples in the old age category. Similarly, there were significant differences in the perceptual ratings of body odors originating from male and female donors for all age categories except the old-age group.
"Elderly people have a discernible underarm odor that younger people consider to be fairly neutral and not very unpleasant," said Lundström. "This was surprising given the popular conception of old age odor as disagreeable." He added that other sources of body odors, such as skin or breath, may have different qualities.
Lundström believes that; "similar to other animals, humans can extract signals from body odors that allow us to identify biological age, avoid sick individuals, pick a suitable partner, and distinguish kin from non-kin." He added that future studies will attempt to identify the underlying biomarkers that evaluators use to identify age-related odors and also determine how the brain is able to identify and evaluate this olfactory information.
Source: Monell Chemical Senses Center
Short movie: http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,1654702591001_0,00.html
Clichés are tricky things. They convey a kind of truth — but can ring hollow. They can sound profound — but once uttered, they’re utterly forgettable. And while often employed to pay tribute to an individual, or to describe a specific profession, some clichés can be applied to a litany of vocations.
When other people run away from danger, they run toward it. They go into battle armed with nothing but courage. Like everyone else, they experience fear — but unlike everyone else, they keep going.
Ultimately, though, there’s one especially odd, defining characteristic about clichés: they endure for a reason. And while some of the assertions above — about running toward danger or experiencing fear — could easily pertain to any number of pursuits, from firefighting to mountain climbing, very few occupations in the world can make those platitudes sound new and meaningful again quite like the job of war photographer.
Here, in a short film by Will Wedig, Jonah Weintraub and Bill Shapiro — made to honor recipients of Time Inc’s prestigious Briton Hadden Lifetime Achievement Award — the profession and the passion of war photography, as practiced across decades by acknowledged masters, get their due.
One of the honorees, LIFE’s Ralph Morse, was sent to the Pacific in World War II as the youngest war correspondent working in that theater. All he managed to accomplish during the conflict was to survive the sinking of a cruiser off of Guadalcanal; make dozens of the most celebrated (and shocking) pictures to come out of the global conflagration; chronicle the liberation of Paris in 1944; and record the German surrender to Eisenhower in 1945. (Morse went on to so devotedly and inventively cover the early days of the Mercury Seven and the Space Race that John Glenn dubbed him the “eighth astronaut,” while LIFE’s long-time managing editor George Hunt once declared that “if LIFE could afford only one photographer, it would have to be Ralph Morse.”)
The late, British-born Larry Burrows distinguished himself covering Southeast Asia from 1962 until his death in 1971. His work, from the searing single image, “Reaching Out” (featuring a wounded Marine desperately trying to comfort a stricken comrade after a fierce 1966 firefight in a landscape that might have given Hieronymus Bosch nightmares) to his great photo essay, “One Ride With Yankee Papa 13,” not only captured the war in Vietnam. For millions of people around the world, Burrows’ pictures encompassed and defined the long, divisive catastrophe.
He and three fellow photojournalists died when their helicopter was shot down during operations in Laos. Larry Burrows was 44.
Finally, there’s James Nachtwey, who has covered civil strife, natural disasters and armed conflicts around the globe for more than three decades. He has seen fellow photographers and friends injured and killed while doing their jobs. He has been wounded himself (in Iraq in 2003, when an insurgent tossed a grenade into a Humvee that he and TIME’s Michael Weisskopf were riding in). He was the subject of the 2001 Oscar-nominated documentary, War Photographer, and is widely regarded as the greatest living photojournalist.
“To see life,” Henry Luce wrote in his now-famous 1936 mission statement for LIFE magazine, delineating what he envisioned as his new venture’s workmanlike method and its lofty aims. “To see the world; to eyewitness great events … to see strange things — machines, armies, multitudes … to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed.”
Across decades, Morse, Burrows and Nachtwey have seen, and have helped us see, the very best and the absolute worst that humanity can offer.
When other people ran from danger, they ran toward it. They went into battle armed with nothing but courage. They experienced fear — and they kept going. These are war photographers.
Ben Cosgrove is the editor of LIFE.com.
very good article