Category: News

It’s so dry it borders on passive-aggressive. “Immediately following the attempted attack, Director Blair initiated reviews to identify [intelligence community]-wide shortcomings and potential solutions,” reads a statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, responding to this afternoon’s declassified Senate report on systemic intelligence failures that allowed would-be-bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board a passenger aircraft on Christmas. “The findings of these reviews identified many of the same systemic problems noted in today’s [Senate intelligence committee] report.” If only a press release could yawn performatively.

The full statement is after the jump.

The Intelligence Community (IC) fully supported the Senate Intelligence Committee’s review of IC information and procedures prior to the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Immediately following the attempted attack, Director Blair initiated reviews to identify IC-wide shortcomings and potential solutions. The findings of these reviews identified many of the same systemic problems noted in today’s SSCI report.

As a result of the ODNI’s internal review and the President’s January 7 directive, the IC has undertaken certain corrective actions to address these shortcomings. Specifically:

The DNI clarified roles and responsibilities among the IC’s counterterrorism functions, ensuring that any stream of threat reporting receives follow-through to its conclusion;
The establishment of a dedicated analytic element at NCTC to thoroughly and exhaustively pursue terrorist threat threads, including identifying appropriate follow-up actions by other intelligence and law enforcement organizations, and increasing the number of personnel resources dedicated to enhancing the records of information on individuals contained in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment or TIDE;
Renewed efforts to integrate disparate data and information systems to make data more discoverable/accessible by analysts IC-wide; and
Investments in education and training, which will provide counterterrorism analysts with a career-long curriculum to facilitate integration, collaboration, and tradecraft improvements.

In light of the recent Times Square bombing attempt, Director Blair noted that, “The Intelligence Community is aggressively focused on potential threats, especially new tactics by radicalized individuals. At the same time, institutional and technological barriers remain that prevent seamless sharing of information. We can and must outthink, outwork, and defeat our enemies. The Intelligence Community is absolutely committed to that goal.”

Alpina’s B7 is as close to an M7 as you can get.

For readers who aren’t totally steeped in BMW lore, the Alpina name may be a bit of a mystery. But it’s a pretty simple one to clear up: Alpina is to BMW what AMG used to be to Mercedes-Benz: an independent racing and tuning shop that has factory approval. (AMG is now wholly owned by Mercedes, however.) Alpina, for instance, co-developed the fabulous 3.0 CSL coupe with BMW in the early 1970s and is formally recognized as an automobile manufacturer by the German Federal agency.

Keep Reading: 2011 BMW Alpina B7 – First Drive Review

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It’s Tuesday once again guys and you know what that means, it’s time for your weekly dose of PlayStation Store US goodness. Headlining this weeks update is the long awaited ModNation Racers demo for the PS3, the

Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

Celula, a molecular diagnostic startup founded in San Diego five years ago, has raised $15 million in a secondary round of venture funding led by Palo Alto, CA-based Skyline Ventures, according to a VentureWire report today.

Celula’s top executives did not return a call this afternoon seeking to confirm the report, although Skyline lists Celula as a portfolio company, as do two other new investors, CHL Medical Partners of Stamford, CT, and Kaiser Permanente Ventures of Oakland, CA. Previous investors Enterprise Partners Venture Capital of San Diego and Versant Ventures, which has offices in the Bay Area and Newport Beach, CA, also participated in the Series B round, according to VentureWire. A previous investor, Arch Venture Partners, was not identified among the current investors.

Celula was founded in May 2005, according to New York-based CB Insights, but has maintained a low profile. The company’s website says Celula develops innovative instruments for personalized diagnostics that use advanced micro-fluidics and other technologies. Skyline venture offers what may be a more succinct description, saying, “Celula is developing a prenatal diagnostic test based on isolation of fetal cells from the mother’s blood.”

It might be worth noting that Celula co-founder Andy Katz was previously a senior executive at Genoptix Medical Laboratory (NASDAQ: GXDX), a Carlsbad, CA-based company that provides centralized diagnostic laboratory services for blood specialists. Enterprise Partners’ Drew Senyei, a Genoptix venture investor who has remained as board chairman, also was an early venture investor of Celula, and serves on Celula’s board.

Defying the odds of fertility, Grease actor John Travolta, 56, and his wife Kelly Preston, 47, are expecting their third child together, if a scoop from Star Magazine is to be believed.

“Kelly is about three months pregnant. Both she and John are absolutely over the moon — they knew in their hearts that the time was right for this to happen,” a snitching snoop blabbed to the tab.

The couple — whose dogs were tragically killed in a freak accident at a Maine airport last week — are still recovering from the seizure-induced death of their 16-year-old son Jett in 2009.

The Travoltas have a 10-year-old daughter, Ella Blue.

UPDATE: The Travoltas have confirmed the baby news. “It’s impossible to keep a secret … especially one as wonderful as this,” they said in a press statement Tuesday evening. “We want to be the first to share this great news with everyone that we are expecting a new addition to our family. Love, John, Kelly, and Ella…”

Congrats!

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Article Tags: Alan Caruba

Image source

“Denial” is not a river in Africa, nor is it a proper term for the legion of climatologists, meteorologists, geologists, and others like myself who have devoted decades to debunking the utter rubbish called “global warming.” So toxic has the term become, the charlatans pushing the fraud have long since abandoned it and begun to refer to “climate change” instead.

The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and I daresay that its climate has been changing since it first cooled, oceans formed, and one-celled forms of life began to develop into complex creatures like dinosaurs, Al Gore and politicians continuing to lie about global warming.

The Fourth International Conference on Climate Change concluded Tuesday in Chicago. Sponsored by The Heartland Institute, a non-profit, free market think tank, it brought together eminent (and legitimate!) scientists and other distinguished folk for panels and speeches addressing the arcane mysteries of climate.

Source: factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com

Read in full with comments »   

The collection of desert boots and oxford shoes share Oliver’s trademark brick red EVA wedge sole which the designer champions in his own collection of tailored shoes. The desert boots are available in navy blue, stone and chocolate brown suede. The oxford toe-caps are available in navy blue and cream nubuck with white stitching. Available at Topman New York and the Oliver Spencer boutique, the shoes begin at $150 and the boots for $170.

Continue reading for more images.

Topman 478 Broadway NYC (212)966-9555

Oliver Spencer 330 East 11th Street NYC (212) 475-0079

Hint: It makes your hard drive work and also makes pretty colors in the sky.

From fantasy to fact? Personal Genomics, tipping points and a personal perspective:

But now I think we’ve turned a corner. It feels, to mix metaphors, that we’ve hit a tipping point. The Human genome project, the mapping and sequencing of the/a human genome from 1990 to 2003, cost approximately 2,700,000,000 dollars (that’s 2.7 billion, I wanted to get all the zeros in). Celera did the genome for 300,000,000. The cost of sequencing an entire human genome has been plummeting ever since. In 2007, the cost of sequencing the genome of James Watson (co-discoverer of DNA) was about 2,000,000. The today cost is about 10,000. Complete Genomics and other companies are on the march to quickly reducing the cost of sequencing a genome under 1,000.
…
So, within a year, the cost of sequencing your, my, genome will reach 1,000. If not less. We’ve seen this coming for years now, and it’s upon us. But what does it mean? A lot of data. But data means nothing without context and analysis. Sequencing my genome would be a waste of 1,000 dollars if I gleaned nothing from it.

I can believe that we’ll be able to get a tarball with our own full sequence for a reasonable price in a few years. Cheaper than orthodontia and cosmetic surgery even. Though the utility in prevention and treatment is a different matter. Most people already have a treasure trove of data through family history, and that doesn’t seem to change behavior for many in the short-term. Once the magical power of genomics wears off I suspect that knowing you have variant X with risk Y will be less transformative than not.

Is Campbell Brown leaving the sinking ship at left-leaning news syndicate CNN?

Industry snoops say so.

The anchor of CNN’s 8 PM ET broadcast has reportedly had enough of her nightly ratings war with FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC; she’s asked to be released from her contract with the network, The New York Times said Tuesday.

Brown has agreed to continue anchoring the broadcast until a replacement is hired.

Just to remind you, this is a 12-team PPR mock draft of a league with the following starting positions: QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, WR, TE, K, DEF. Still, the odds that someone will draft RB-RB-RB then write about their flex position are very strong. Earler results here: Round 1

Calvin Johnson(notes), Det, WR – Round 2, Pick 1
After selecting Randy Moss(notes) at the end of the first round, a running back obviously would have been the prudent choice. Yup. No doubt. But rather than take a third-tier RB – and in a PPR format, that’s what the Burner is – this team has decided to draft an elite talent, then let the backfield situation sort itself out. There’s enough running back depth in the player pool to make this gamble work (or at least that’s the hope. And if it becomes necessary, I can always edit other people’s picks). Megatron isn’t clearly better than the next few wide receivers on the board – Rice, Austin, Roddy, the Jacksons, et al – but there’s a historic season somewhere in his future. The Lions have substantially upgraded the skill positions; their offense is built for shootouts. (Andy Behrens)

Michael Turner(notes), Atl, RB – Round 2, Pick 2
This is far from an ideal PPR pick, let’s just start there. Turner has caught only 11 passes in two seasons with Atlanta. That’s not helpful. Of course the backs who follow him on the cheat sheet – DeAngelo, Mathews, Greene, Benson, Grant – aren’t exactly the 1999 version of Marshall Faulk(notes), either. So Turner it is. He’s averaging a touchdown and 20.5 carrier per game with the Falcons; his workload is safe, and his red zone responsibilities should help overcome the lack of targets in the passing game. (Behrens)

Brandon Marshall(notes), Mia, WR – Round 2, Pick 3
Marshall and Wes Welker(notes) are the only two players with at least 100 receptions in each of the last three seasons. That’s a format-friendly stat, and as we know Welker is no guarantee to see the field anytime soon (though could probably pull off 100 grabs in a 10-game season). Marshall has proven to be adaptable in his four-year career – new system, new QB, no problem – and there’s a clear arm-strength upgrade in Miami. He’s saying and doing all the right things so far with the Dolphins, but obviously discord hasn’t been a big obstacle to production for him in the past. (Matt Romig)

Roddy White(notes), Atl, Atl – Round 2, Pick 4
The easiest thing to do to appease followers of a mock draft is to just take the next best available player. If the name fits the slot, people are happy. But you can’t be blind to format, and this league doesn’t feature a flex position, so running back depth isn’t as critical, and of course we’re drafting PPR. The elite wideouts would be picked clean by the time this team is up in the third round. White is coming off a career-best 11 touchdowns and a 100-reception campaign (it would be his first) isn’t out of the question with Matt Ryan(notes) entering his third season. (Mig)

Miles Austin(notes), Dal, WR – Round 2, Pick 5
The Cowboys 2009 season was saved when Roy Williams suffered a rib injury at Denver in Week 4; it enabled Austin to enter the starting lineup the following Sunday and the rest was history. If you grade the receivers from Week 5 to the end of the year, Austin ranks fifth in catches (76), first in yards (1,239) and third in receiving touchdowns (10). Let’s get in on that. (Scott Pianowski)

Pierre Thomas(notes), NO, RB – Round 2, Pick 6
It was frustrating to watch Thomas be somewhat underused for most of 2009, but Sean Payton employed Thomas more as a pass-catcher down the stretch and that’s going to play nice in this format. Thomas caught 31 passes from Weeks 9-16 (third-most at the position over that span), and he tacked on 12 receptions during the championship run, including six in the Super Bowl. And while Thomas doesn’t get heavy work on the ground, it’s not like he’s chopped liver in that area – he averaged 5.4 yards per carry, he collected 793 yards rushing and he scored six times. You won’t take Thomas this early in a traditional format, but the PPR rules drive this selection. (Pianow)

Ryan Mathews(notes), SD, RB – Round 2, Pick 7
Wide receivers are flying off the board, but I’m sticking with the backs, including a rookie here who finds himself in a terrific situation to succeed right away. Mathews is slated to immediately become San Diego’s workhorse, and he inherits a role that produced an incredible 28 goal-line rushing attempts last season – the second-most since 2004 (which also happened to be San Diego’s lead back). Coach Norv Turner doesn’t have a veteran currently on the roster he needs to worry about as far as seniority is concerned – in fact, he’s already stated a desired goal of getting Mathews 290 touches. Not only does Mathews have a high ceiling as lead back in one of the NFL’s best offenses, but as crazy as it sounds, thanks to his role he’s also one of the safer picks, even as a rookie. (Dalton Del Don)

Shonn Greene(notes), NYJ, RB – Round 2, Pick 8
Considering Greene didn’t catch a single pass during the regular season last year, he’s hardly an ideal pick in PPR formats. Still, that’s likely why he fell into the middle of the second round, because he should be a top-10 pick in most standard leagues. It might be safer to go with a proven WR here, but I’m all about upside, and Greene enters 2010 with a ton of it. Greene, who had the second fewest stuffs/carry (6/108) in the NFL last year, was unleashed in the playoffs, when he ran for 304 yards on 54 rushes (5.6 YPC) over 2.5 games. Questions remain whether he can hold up physically as a lead back, but Greene is certainly in the right situation in New York – a team that possesses one of the three best offensive lines in the NFL, one of the best defenses in the league and with Santonio Holmes(notes) eventually joining Braylon Edwards(notes) out wide, a potentially dangerous passing attack as well. And even if LaDainian Tomlinson(notes) is given more carries than he deserves at this stage of his career, the Jets had a whopping 607 rushing attempts last year, which led the league by 82 carries, so there will be plenty to go around. (DDD)

Aaron Rodgers(notes), GB, QB – Round 2, Pick 9
Clearly the biggest cheese of last year’s quarterback class, A-Rod bested second place finisher Drew Brees(notes) by 30-plus total points in standard scoring formats. His improving accuracy, underappreciated ground contributions and consistency are unmatched. Last season, he totaled 11 multi-TD performances and surpassed the 20-point mark in 13 of 16 starts. Rodgers, regardless of scoring system, is a supreme bargain 20 picks into the draft. Given his youth, experience and comfort level in Green Bay’s spread scheme 35-plus total touchdowns is again very attainable. (Brad Evans)

Jahvid Best(notes), Det, RB – Round 2, Pick 10
If Mathews is a Clydesdale, Best is a versatile stallion. Explosive, interiorly tough and undaunted, the former Cal Bear will be an instant impact player for an ascending Lions club. Questions about Detroit’s offensive line are apparent, but if Matthew Stafford(notes) can make significant strides in his development, the first-round pick should pay a handsome dividend, particularly in PPR formats. Last year, as a junior, he averaged 7.1 yards per touch. Jim Schwartz has made it clear he wants to establish a strong ground identity, which means the youngster will be leaned upon heavily. Expected to tote the load with Kevin Smith(notes) sidelined for at least the first few weeks of the season, the rookie could be Ray Rice(notes)-light. (Noise)

Sidney Rice(notes), Min, Wr – Round 2, Pick 11
I’m assuming that Brett Favre(notes) is returning, which is the kind of carefree license you’re allowed to take in a mock-only setup. In the real world, I’ll be drafting my leagues in late August/early September, a time when the "What’s Brett gonna do?" season will have passed and we’ll have an answer to that $64k question. Assuming Favre plays, Rice is a no-brainer here. At 6-foot-4, 200 pounds, Rice physically dominates opposing corners. In the final 16 games of ’09 (including two postseason contests), Rice caught 88 passes for 1,450 yards and 12 TDs. (Brandon Funston)

DeAngelo Williams(notes), Car, RB – Round 2, Pick 12
After pacing his position in fantasy points in ’08, Williams finished a respectable seventh in points per game among running backs last season. A PPR setup hasn’t helped him much in the past, but I suspect with a new QB behind center (be it Matt Moore(notes) or Jimmy Clausen(notes)) and little in the way of proven receiving talent outside of Steve Smith, the Panthers’ backfield might be more involved in the passing game than has been the case in recent years. (Funston)

—

Photos via US Presswire

Mercedes-Benz E-class vehicles have garnered the attention of the NHTSA because of concerns of improper deployment of airbags. The agency said today in an internet posting that approximately 100,000 vehicles from model-years 2005-2006 may be affected.

NHTSA officials have said they have received four complaints about failures in the module-wiring harness of the steering column, which can potentially result in air bags failing to inflate in the event of a frontal crash. No injuries have been reported to date.

Robert Moran, a company spokesperson based out of Montvale, N.J. had no immediate comment. The U.S. Congress has focused more attention on this issue in the wake of the recent troubles concerning Toyota and its recalls.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

Beer maker Anheuser-Busch has just announced the completion of a rooftop solar energy installation at its Newark, NJ brewery that will generate about 525,000 kilowatt hours a year.  It’s the second installation for the company, which also uses solar power at its brewery in Fairfield, California. Given the flood of megawatt-scale renewable energy projects coming online, half a million kilowatts from a rooftop may sound like small potatoes but all those  rooftops can add up when it comes to a giant of the manufacturing sector.

The Anheuser-Busch installation is significant because it helps set a standard for other global-scale brands.  The company has almost half of the U.S. beer market and its global sales of Budweiser and Bud Light are world leaders.  With its all-encompassing advertising, the iconic brewer has the potential to take solar energy squarely into the American mainstream.

(more…)

Flash Co-creator and former Macromedia CTO Jonathan Gay is disappointed that the media is letting Steve Jobs trash Adobe’s Flash as a closed platform while Apple is at the same time advocating for H.264 and a closed app environment that doesn’t support and cross-platform development. Gay, who left Adobe in 2005, told Cold Hard Flash in a lengthy but very interesting interview (hat tip to Flashstreamworks) that Jobs’ attacks could be a sign for many partners and customers asking Apple to support Flash on its devices. He also said that Apple’s anti-Flash stance is not about openness at all. From the interview:

“Apple wants to displace Flash’s role in video delivery on the Web with the H.264 standard and Apple wants developers to build custom applications for the iPhone and not cross platform applications. Both of these goals support Apple’s business goals driving their closed iPhone application platform but are destructive to openness on the web.”

Apple isn’t the only one criticized by Gay. He also has some choice words for the MPEG LA consortium that’s overseeing the licensing of H.264. Macromedia didn’t have enough money to license H.264 in its early days, according to Gay, which is why they had to settle for a codec made by On2. Again, from the interview:

“The H.264 license fee model is very anticompetitive. H.264 licensing is free for very small users, expensive for medium size companies and inexpensive for very large companies.”

However, Gay is skeptical that Google’s plans to open-source its VP8 video codec will be able to fundamentally change this situation, cautioning that it may be impossible to build open-source codecs that don’t infringe on someone’s patents.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: A Brighter Week Ahead for Flash (subscription required)

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Good news for GPS users, Boeing is getting ready to launch the latest generation of GPS satellites, the “GPS IIF-1″. The new technology provides improved accuracy for military and civilian users, as well as being more resistant to jamming and an improved lifespan.

The satellite is scheduled to be launched on May 20th, and is the first of 12 that will eventually be in orbit over the Earth. Once the new satellites are in place, the new technology is expected to become the new core of the GPS system. The new satellite will be launched from Florida on the Alliance Delta IV rocket this coming Thursday.

The Wringer washing machine: an unusual cause of breast trauma. “A 66-year-old woman… …sustained a left-breast injury with a wringer washing machine. While manually feeding clothes through the rollers of her wringer washing machine, her left breast was drawn into the rollers when her blouse became entangled with the clothing she was wringing. The patient was not wearing a brassiere. Her husband immediately responded to her cries for help by disconnecting the electricity to the washing machine and pressing the emergency release for the rollers. This washing machine was immediately discarded.” Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Vacuum cleaner injury to penis: a common urologic problem?
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Bonus double feature: Acute management of the zipper-entrapped penis.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Rectal oven mitt. WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!

The argonauts are a group of octopuses unlike any other. The females secrete a thin, white, brittle shell called the paper nautilus. Nestled with their arms tucked inside this beautiful, translucent home, they drift through the open ocean while other octopus species crawl along the sea floor. The shell is often described as an egg-case, but octopus specialists Julian Finn and Mark Norman have discovered that it has another function – it’s an organic ballast tank.

An argonaut uses its shell to trap air from the surface and dives to a depth where the encased gas perfectly counteracts its own weight, allowing it to bob effortlessly without rising or sinking. Finn and Norman filmed and photographed live animals in the act of trapping their air bubbles, solving a mystery that has been debated for millennia.

Scientists have long wondered about the purpose of the argonaut’s paper nautilus. No less a thinker than Aristotle put forward a hypothesis. In 300 BC, he suggested that the female octopus uses its shell as a boat, floating on the ocean surface and using her tentacles as oars and sails. Despite a total lack of evidence for this ‘sailing hypothesis’, it was later championed thousands of years later by Jules Verne, who wrote about sailing argonauts in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Since 1923 and the work of Adolf Naef, the shell has been viewed as a container for the argonaut’s eggs. After mating with a male (who is around 8 times smaller and 600 times lighter), the female secretes the papery shell using the tips of two large tentacles. She lays her eggs within the structure before snuggling inside herself. Besides her eggs, her only housemate is one of the male’s arms – the hectocotylus. The arm doubled as a penis, snapped off during sex and stays inside the female’s body.

Besides the female, her eggs and her disembodied sperm package, the paper nautiluses often contain pockets of air. Naef viewed these as a problem. According to him, the unintended pockets eventually trap argonauts at the sea surface and cost them their lives. That would certainly explain the mass argonaut strandings that are sometimes found, but Naef didn’t have any evidence to back up his claims. Others have speculated that the air bubbles were caused by aeration devices in aquariums and are only seen in captive argonauts. Yet others have suggested that the animals deliberately use the air pockets to maintain their buoyancy but until now, that’s been mere speculation.

Into this debate came Finn and Norman. Their names may be familiar to regular readers – they have discovered the smash-hit octopus that carries coconut shells as a suit of armour, dolphin chefs that can prepare a cuttlefish meal, and the awesome mimic octopus. As with these earlier discoveries, their work on argonauts was based on observations of wild animals. They rescued three greater argonauts (Argonauta argo) from nets in the Sea of Japan, released them into Okidomari Harbour and filmed them as they adjusted to their freedom. It’s their beautiful video that graces the top of this post.

All of the females were checked before their release to make sure that they had no air already trapped in their shells. Without this air, they were in danger of sinking and had trouble keeping their shells upright. All three animals fixed this problem in the same way.

Each one used its their funnel to jet to the ocean surface and bob the top of its shell in the overlying air. The shell has a couple of apertures at the top, which allows the argonaut to gulp in air, sealing it inside with a quick flick of two of its arms. Having sealed away this pocket, it points its funnel upwards, rolling the shell away from the water surface and forcing itself downwards. At the depth where this compressed bubble cancels out its weight, the argonaut levels off and starts swimming.

Naef was clearly wrong. The air isn’t life-threatening or even unintended – the argonaut deliberately introduces it and has total control over it. Once the animals dived again, Finn and Norman grabbed them and rotated them through 360 degrees – not a single bubble emerged. “To my delight the argonauts immediately put to rest decades of conflicting opinions, demonstrating their expert ability at obtaining and managing surface-acquired air,” says Finn.

This neutral buoyancy is a big boon for animals that live in the open ocean, because they don’t have to expend energy on keeping their place in the water column. Other cephalopods use a combination of fins, jets of water and, in the case of the actual nautilus, chambered shells. The argonauts are the only species known to use bubbles, but it’s clearly an efficient tactic. Finn and Norman observed that once they had trapped their air pockets and reached the right depth, they could swim fast enough to outpace a human diver.

By rocking at the surface, the argonaut can also trap a sizeable volume of air, which, in turn, allows it to reach a greater depth before becoming neutrally buoyant. Finn and Norman think that this may allow these unusual octopuses to avoid the surface layers of the ocean, where they would be vulnerable to birds and other top-level hunters.

This penchant for deeper waters may also explain why this behaviour has never been seen before, even though argonauts have featured in aquariums. They simply weren’t kept in tanks that were deep enough. The animals created air pockets as they would in the wild but without the ability to dive to the right depth, the air just brought them back to the surface again.

As a buoyancy aid, the argonaut’s paper nautilus is superficially similar to the much harder shell of its namesake, the chambered nautiluses (right). These animals also use shells with trapped air, but theirs are permanently stuck to their bodies and divided internally into many gas-filled chambers. The two groups – nautiluses and argonauts – are only distant relatives, but they have both arrived at similar ways of controlling their buoyancy.

The argonaut’s solution is undoubtedly simpler and more flexible, but the nautilus’s sturdier shell prevents increasing water pressure from compressing the trapped air too much. As a result, the nautilus can dive far deeper than the argonaut, to a depth of 750 metres.

Finn and Norman’s study may have solved a longstanding argonaut mystery but there’s still much to learn about these enigmatic and beautiful animals. Even though people have known about them since Ancient Greece, their behaviour, distribution and biology are still shrouded in secrecy. To find out more, Finn and Norman are conducting a survey reviewing Australia’s argonauts, and they’ve set up a website with details about how you could help them in their Argosearch.

Reference: Proc Roy Soc B http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.0155

All photos and video by Julian Finn

More on octopuses:

• Octopus carries around coconut shells as suits of armour
• The mimic octopus (my first ever post)
• How to tell Wonderpus Joe from Wonderpus Bob

We’ve pointed out many times in the past the “unintended” consequences of certain activities, and it looks like the entertainment industry’s worldwide effort to push for more and more industry-favorable copyright laws is causing serious problems elsewhere. Apparently, Anders Ahlqvist, who runs the Swedish IT crime unit is noting that the response to the IPRED law in Sweden (pushed by the entertainment industry to crack down on unauthorized file sharing) means that it’s now more difficult for him to do his job. Part of the issue, of course, is that various ISPs responded to the law by seeking to protect their users’ privacy by deleting log files. Of course, that probably means it’s only a matter of time before the industry pushes for new data retention laws, despite evidence that more data retention can actually make life trickier for law enforcement as well. Still, at some point people need to recognize that the entertainment industry’s single-minded focus on “stomping out file sharing” rather than adding value through new business models has some serious costs elsewhere.

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The Rowing Machine for Wii is a cheap-looking rowing machine that has a spot for a Wiimote in the handlebars. It should make playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 next to impossible. More »