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Hitler at Home: Rare Color Photographs Show How the Nazi Leader Relaxed While He Waged War


The Daily Mail, UK
Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:27 UTC
Image
© Time & Life/Getty Images
The German leader eats a meal with Gertrud Deetz - the wife of Gauleiter Albert Forster, at the Berghof, Hitler's estate in Upper Bavaria in the late 1930s. Gertrude did not hear about her husband's death in 1949 until 1954
Relaxing with a cup of tea and sharing a joke with a crowd of admiring women - these are the rarely seen intimate portraits of Adolf Hitler at the height of his power.

The snapshots of the dictator were taken between 1936 and 1945 as the Nazi party strengthened its grip on Germany and then waged war against its European neighbours. While Hitler was demonized by Western 'allied' powers during and after the Second World War, up until late 1938 he was supported financially by the same powers and lauded as a 'statesman'.

In one series of pictures from 1939, Hitler is shown admiring his 50th birthday present - a specially designed convertible VW, which was given to him by Ferdinand Porsche.

He received the glossy black automobile at his Eagle's Nest home in the Alps. The mountain-based chalet was built as a retreat for Hitler and a place for him to entertain visiting dignitaries.
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Info

Scientists Use Giant Laser to Measure Cloud Temperature

Felicity Ogilvie
ABC News, Australia
Sat, 25 Sep 2010 10:45 UTC
Measuring Cloud With Lasers
© Adelaide University
The laser will be pointed into the sky above Davis Station in Antarctica.
The Australian Antarctic Division will use a giant laser to measure climate change in the atmosphere.

The laser will be pointed into the sky above Davis Station in Antarctica and will take the temperature of clouds that form almost 100 kilometres above the earth's surface.

Scientists say those clouds are more easily seen as the world warms up.

Jeff Cumpston operates one of the lasers at Davis Station.

"Our atmospheric dynamics are such that as we've got a warming troposphere - which is where we live - as that warms that in fact is interlinked with a phenomenon called global cooling up in the mesosphere above 50 kilometres," he said.

"And so we expect that with a cooler mesosphere we'll see an increased occurrence of these clouds."
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Robot

Hair-Washing Robot Leaves Your Locks Silky-Smooth

Tim Hornyak
CNET News
Fri, 24 Sep 2010 22:07 UTC
Hairbot_1
© Panasonic
Lie back and let those mechatronic fingers give your scalp some love.

Bad hair day? Now you can blame your robot. Panasonic has developed a hair-washing bot that lets you lie down while your locks are gently shampooed.

Designed for Japan's growing elderly and bedridden population, the device consists of a reclining chair and a computerized washbasin.

The machine incorporates robot hand technology, with 16 mechatronic magic fingers that rinse and wash hair. It also remembers each user's individual data, such as head shape and massage preferences.

According to a Panasonic release, a moving arm in the machine first scans your head in 3D to determine its shape and the optimal amount of force to use while shampooing (one hopes this is foolproof technology).
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Info

Kuiper Belt Dust Could Tell Aliens We're Here

Lisa Grossman
Wired.com
Thu, 23 Sep 2010 19:05 UTC
Dust Models
© NASA/Marc Kuchner and Christopher Stark
Dust models.
A hole in the dust disk surrounding our solar system would tell alien observers there are planets here, a new simulation shows. The new model, which tracks thousands of tiny particles beyond the orbit of Neptune, could help astronomers work out the properties of planets in other stars' dust disks.

"We're trying to create a new planet search technique, and we're practicing on the solar system," said NASA exoplanet scientist Marc Kuchner, lead author of a paper describing the results in the September 7 Astrophysical Journal.

The cloud of dust comes from the Kuiper Belt, the region beyond Neptune that contains small, icy bodies, including Pluto. These giant snowballs sometimes smack into each other, sending up flurries of ice grains. These tiny clots of ice and minerals get tugged around by the gravitational influence of giant planets, as well as the solar wind and small nudges from sunlight.

Similar clouds of dust has been spotted around several other stars, including Fomalhaut, the first star to have its planets directly photographed. Most extrasolar planets are too dim to have their portraits taken directly, but their presence can warp the disk of dust and debris around their stars into distinctive shapes, telling outside observers the planets are there.
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Magic Wand

World's first pedal-powered ornithopter takes flight in Canada

Lewis Page
The Register
Thu, 23 Sep 2010 07:28 UTC
Sky-pedalo inventors get into a flap

Vid Canadian enthusiasts have finally achieved a feat that has eluded humanity's finest engineers since the time of Leonardo da Vinci - to build a machine, powered by a human pilot's muscles, which flies by flapping its wings: an ornithopter.

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Telescope

Breaking Waves in the Lagoon Nebula


ScienceDaily
Wed, 22 Sep 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© NASA, ESA
This close-up shot of the centre of the Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8) clearly shows the delicate structures formed when the powerful radiation of young stars interacts with the hydrogen cloud they formed from.
A spectacular new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the heart of the Lagoon Nebula. Seen as a massive cloud of glowing dust and gas, bombarded by the energetic radiation of new stars, this placid name hides a dramatic reality.

The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a dramatic view of gas and dust sculpted by intense radiation from hot young stars deep in the heart of the Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8). This spectacular object is named after the wide, lagoon-shaped dust lane that crosses the glowing gas of the nebula.

This structure is prominent in wide-field images, but cannot be seen in this close-up. However the strange billowing shapes and sandy texture visible in this image make the Lagoon Nebula's watery name eerily appropriate from this viewpoint too.
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Meteor

Egyptian Desert Expedition Confirms Spectacular Meteorite Impact


ScienceDaily
Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© n/a
Kamil crater in Google maps
A 2008 Google Earth search led to the discovery of Kamil crater, one of the best-preserved meteorite impact sites ever found. Earlier this year, a gritty, sand-blown expedition reached the site deep in the Egyptian desert to collect iron debris and determine the crater's age and origins.

One day within the last several thousand years, a rare metallic meteorite travelling over 12 000 km/hour smashed into Earth's surface near what is today the trackless border region between Egypt, Sudan and Libya. The impact of the 1.3 m, 10-tonne chunk of iron generated a fireball and plume that would have been visible over 1000 km away, and drilled a hole 16 m deep and 45 m wide into the rocky terrain.

Since then, the crater had sat undisturbed by Earth's geologic and climatic processes, which usually render all but the very largest terrestrial impact craters invisible. It was also, as far as is recorded, unseen by humans.
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Sherlock

Did Uruk Soldiers Kill Their Own People? 5,500-Year-Old Fratricide at Hamoukar Syria

Owen Jarus
Heritage Key
Thu, 23 Sep 2010 02:28 UTC
Image
© Clemens Reichel
An archaeologist uncovers a skeleton at the Uruk colony. Was this person killed by his/her own people?
Five years ago an archaeological team broke news of a major find that forever changed our views about the history of the Middle East.

Researchers from the Oriental Institute, and the Department of Antiquities in Syria, announced in a press release that they had found the "earliest evidence for large scale organized warfare in the Mesopotamian world."

They had discovered that a city in Syria, named Hamoukar, had been destroyed in a battle that took place ca. 3500 BC by a hostile force. Using slings and clay bullets these troops took over the city, burning it in the process. Their motive may have been to gain control over trade in the area - particularly that of copper coming from Southern Turkey.

The likeliest culprit for this act is a city named Uruk - located to the south in modern day Iraq. The artifacts found at Hamoukar which postdate the battle, were created in the same style as those discovered at Uruk.
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Sherlock

Ancient Bulgar Burial Ground Found


The Sofia Echo
Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:11 UTC
Image
© Svilen Enev
Pliska, Bulgaria
Archaeologists in Bulgaria have unearthed a circular mound which they believe used to serve as a burial ground for the ancient Bulgars in pre-Christian times, Bulgarian National Television (BNT) said on September 21 2010

The site, unique in South Eastern Europe, was found near the north coast of the Black Sea, where the Bulgars first settled after arriving from the east. Thus, the scientists have ascribed the origin of the site to the ancient Bulgars, "about whom very little is known" the report said.

The Huns also had similar burial mounds but they were of significantly smaller proportions than those used by the ancient Bulgars, the report said, and if the findings confirm what the archaeologists believe, it is likely that they will eventually discover the remnants of "old Bulgar aristocracy" once excavation is complete.

It is believed that the site dates back to the pre-Christian Pliska period of Bulgaria. The mound itself was detected about 15 metres from the royal complex in layer of earth about 70cm below the medieval town of Pliska.
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Sherlock

Ancient Tomb Halts Construction in Albania


FOXNews
Wed, 22 Sep 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Hektor Pustina
View of the 6th century A.D. tomb which delayed a renovation project in the western port city of Durres, 21 miles (33 km) west of the Albanian capital Tirana Tuesday, Sep. 21, 2010.
A redevelopment project in this Albanian town has been halted after construction work discovered a 6th-century tomb.

Officials hailed the delay as a landmark decision in this impoverished Balkan country, where rampant construction often obliterates cultural heritage such as archaeological sites.

Vangjel Stamo of Albania's archaeological service said Tuesday that recent development in Durres has "damaged so much of the archaeology."

Two years ago, Albania created a state archaeological service, but laws meant to ensure that potential archaeological sites were excavated ahead of development were regularly ignored. Officials say they don't know how many sites may have been lost to construction.

Archaeologists now intend to build a shelter over the tomb discovered in Durres last weekend, which contained bones but no artifacts, and to dig around it in the hope of finding an entire cemetery.
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