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Is Drosophila melanogaster, one of science’s favorite creatures, about to lose its name? Rex Dalton at Nature has the story of this taxonomic imbroglio.

[Image by André Karwath aka Aka via Flickr]

Filed under: Concept Cars, Coupe, Performance, Aston Martin, Design/Style, Luxury

Some of you might remember Ugur Sahin. He’s a designer that we’ve featured before, specializing in grand touring cars that make our mouths water. Starting with already beautiful designs, he somehow manages to make shapely Chevrolet Corvettes and Ferraris look even better. From the Corvette Z03 to the Ferrari Dino and Ferrari-599-based USD GT-S Passionata, he’s created some of the most exotic and graceful shapes we’ve ever had the pleasure to lay eyes on.

The latest automaker to earn Sahin’s attention is Aston Martin. His latest design, the Gauntlet, blends some of our favorite design cues into a wholly unique package that’s simultaneously sensual and brutal. Study the images and you might see a bit of One-77 in the mix, along with a dash of DB AR1, or perhaps you are carried back to the old DB3S, a car that Ugur mentions specifically as inspiration for the Gauntlet.

There’s also some Maserati GranTurismo mixed with a little Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione as well, but we’re definitely not complaining. It’s a terrific design that has us wishing that Aston is looking at Sahin’s designs for the next DBS and V12 Vantage. For those who still lament the loss of the Vanquish, with its broad shoulders and studly swagger, this might be the car for you. It’s definitely earned a spot in our dream car garage.

You can read more of his thoughts on the project after the jump, and be sure not to miss the huge high-res gallery of pics below.

[Source: Ugur Sahin Design]

Continue reading Ugur Sahin dreams up Aston Martin Gauntlet concept

Ugur Sahin dreams up Aston Martin Gauntlet concept originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 07 Apr 2010 20:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scientists have just discovered the first multicellular animals that can survive entirely without oxygen. They live in the L’Atalante Basin in the Mediterranean Ocean, a place with salt brine so thick it doesn’t mix with oxygen-containing waters above. More »

Here’s the latest version of the ScummVM team’s classic cross-platform point-and-click adventure games emulator, ScummVM. Notable features of the latest update of the homebrew includes support for more games, Amiga style menus, more fixes and various other

Former DWP Board President Nick Patsaouras sued the DWP Wednesday to force it to hand over $73.5 million it had promised to the City of Los Angeles.

Patsaouras, an influential City Hall and Department of Water and Power critic who co-chairs the Saving LA Project’s Rate Payer Advocate Committee with Jack Humphreville, resigned from the DWP Board 18 months in protest with the direction the mayor was moving on utility policy.

The DWP backed out of the agreement when the City Council rejected the department’s proposed rate hikes. The lawsuit names the DWP, four members of the Commissioner board and DWP Interim General Manager David S. Freeman.

Westside lawyer and activist, Noel Weiss, handled the filing.

You can read the full lawsuit by visiting OurLa.org

I had seen brief references to a WTO complaint against China related to the credit card industry, but didn't know the details.  Here's the argument, as set out by Eric Grover in the Washington Times:

Chinese banks have 1.88 billion debit cards and 190 million credit cards outstanding, on which cardholders made 19.7 billion purchases last year. But they can't buy domestic card payment network services from American Express, Discover, JCB, MasterCard or Visa. China UnionPay (CUP) enjoys a protected card-payment-network monopoly. And merchant processors such as First Data and Global Payments, which have joint ventures in China with British banks Standard Chartered and HSBC respectively, can't compete with CUP and Chinese banks providing domestic card acceptance to merchants.

…

By Dec. 11, 2006, China's entire domestic credit and debit card market should have been open to foreign payment networks and processors. But there has not yet been a single domestic MasterCard or Visa payment transaction in China, almost nine years after it joined the WTO and three years after it pledged to have completely opened its domestic retail cards market.

While Chinese banks co-brand payment cards with MasterCard and Visa, it's only for use overseas where CUP's acceptance network is weak. Similarly, foreign merchant processors only provide card acceptance for MasterCard and Visa payments by tourists and business travelers visiting China.

…

China's ban on American, European and Japanese firms from its domestic credit and debit card market violates the letter and spirit of its WTO commitments, harms Chinese consumers and merchants, and hurts businesses such as Amex, Discover, First Data, Global Payments, JCB, MasterCard and Visa. Dialogue with no credible possibility of punitive consequences won't change China's conduct. Successful WTO complaints have borne fruit in other sectors. The United States should bring a card-payments WTO action against China unilaterally, or, possibly, with Japan and the EU.

In their ever expanding drive to create a more sustainable military, the various branches of the U.S. armed forces have entered some interesting new territories, from wastewater recycling to weed-powered jet planes (okay so biofuel powered jet planes).  Now the U.S. Army Research Office has upped the ante with funding for a new technology that could drastically reduce the energy consumed by ceramics manufacturing.

At first glance the Army’s interest in ceramics may seem somewhat off base but in addition to its usefulness in the manufacture of coffee mugs, ceramic material plays a significant role in military equipment such as ceramic body armor and heat shields, as well as numerous other uses including insulators and spark plugs.

(more…)

It’s such a simple concept that you kick yourself for not thinking of making a digital version yourself. Who hasn’t wasted time by shooting crumpled up paper into the garbage? Add some wind and it becomes a (some-what) challenging game. Two recent additions to the Android Market, Toss It and Paper Toss, bring the result to your Android device.

They both feature the same gameplay: You swipe your finger in the direction you want to throw the paper ball with the goal of getting it into the trash can. Different speeds of wind (symbolized by a tabletop fan) challenge you to compensate your angle of attack.

Paper Toss (free, ad supported) from Backflip Studios has been on the iPhone for a while now and has finally made the move to Android. It features very nicely rendered 3D backgrounds. Your score and Main Menu button are cleverly worked into the scene so the screen is left uncluttered (except for the ad banner, a necessary evil). There is only a local leaderboard so it will only display the best streak of someone playing on your device. Sounds effects are great including clapping when you are a streak and an “Aww” when the streak ends. I did find the background office clatter a bit annoying but it’s easy enough to turn off. In addition to the Easy, Medium and Hard office levels you are also given an Airport, Bathroom and Basement level. One does have to wonder though, for a game on iPhone and Android, why do the computer screens in the office all show Windows XP desktops?

Toss It (UK£1.99) from Boolba Labs is an Android exclusive and one big thing I noticed right away are the photographic backgrounds in a variety of settings. Let’s face it, this style of game can (and does) get old real quick. Having different settings makes it a little fresh. Toss It also features a global leaderboard, though there is either something wrong with it or something wrong with “Six6Sicks”. I find it hard to believe someone played this game long enough to get a streak of 28,771 baskets, even if it is on easy. Sound effects are very good. Like Paper Toss there is clapping when you are successful and “Awws” when you are not. The only background sound is the noise of your virtual fan which was both realistic and acted as a sort of calming white noise that I hardly noticed, but may annoy those around you. An interesting twist with Toss It is that you can challenge another player using virtual coins as a wager. The game comes with 5 coins to start with but additional coins are going to cost you (there are different levels to purchase them starting at 10 for .99 working up to 500 coins for $14.99). An clever idea but I don’t think people are going to want to spend much more money on a game that is essentially a $3. Of concern is the fact that I often encountered problems when exiting Toss It. My Nexus One hung up for long periods of time with a black screen. It was quicker to reboot than wait it out. I am sure Boolba Labs are already on the case as they have pushed out updates pretty quickly since Toss It was released.

Right now, if you will pardon the pun, it’s a toss up. Both games feature the same basic gameplay and both have their pluses and minuses. Because of the closing issue I have with Toss It I have been playing Paper Toss more, though I find the animation in Toss It more realistic. Paper Toss is free and is ad supported while Toss It has a free limited preview version. I suggest you check them both out.

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Did pregnancy tests help drive frogs extinct around the world? In my latest podcast, I talk to wildlife disease expert Peter Daszak about his research on how germs can drive animal species to extinctions, and jump from animals to us. Check it out.

If you just have time to read one more thing tonight, may we nominate today’s speech from KC Fed President and Fed Board dissenter Thomas Hoenig, who delivered a powerful speech today in Santa Fe blasting the Fed’s ongoing zero interest rate policy, lovingly known as ZIRP.

Hoenix acknowledges reasons why the Fed is in no rush to tighten: The job market isn’t so hot, the construction business is still horrible, and real estate has yet to come back to life.

But what Hoenig gets is that the current regime is a free lunch to Wall Street, and the Board of Governor’s decision to keep the “Extended Period” language intact is a clear signal that there’s nothing to worry about for at least the next six months.

Basically, Bernanke & Co. are living in the same never-neverland as Greenspan found himself in coming out of the 2002 recession, in thinking that it’s better to be late than sorry, which is reasonable if your only fear is a little bit of inflation, but if the real damage is in creating bubbles, then it’s not so reasonable.

Indeed, perhaps having seen the fallen Maestro, Greenspan, Hoenig understands how mere humans can acknowledge their failure to see bubbles, and yet still prevent them.

Here’s his conclusion:

Low rates, over time, systematically contribute to the buildup of financial imbalances by
leading banks and investors to search for yield.  The Wall Street Journal article tells a story about the
market coming back that also makes my point.  The search for yield involves investing in less-liquid
assets and using short-term sources of funds to invest in long-term assets, which are necessarily
riskier.  Together, these forces lead banks and investors to take on additional risk, increase leverage,
and in time bring in growing imbalances, perhaps a bubble and a financial collapse.

I make no pretense that I, or anyone, can reliably identify and “prick” an economic bubble in a
timely fashion.  However, I am confident that holding rates down at artificially low levels over
extended periods encourages bubbles, because it encourages debt over equity and consumption over
savings.  While we may not know where the bubble will emerge, these conditions left unchanged will
invite a credit boom and, inevitably, a bust.  

Read the whole speech. It’s quick. And if you like it, for more Hoenig, also check out his recent interview with The Huffington Post, in which he calls for the breakup of megabanks and the end of too big to fail. Good stuff.

hoenig.santafe.04.07.10

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Prada Marfa

A perfect recreation of a Prada Store in the middle of the West Texas desert

The middle of the West Texas desert isn’t the first place you’d expect to find a fully stocked Prada store, but stop a few miles outside of the tiny town of Valentine, Texas and you’ll find just that.
The brainchild of Berlin-based artistic team Elmgreen and Dragset, Prada Marfa was meant to be a “pop architectural land art project.” Built of a biodegradable adobe-like substance, the building is meant to slowly melt back into the Earth, serving as a surrealist commentary on Western materialism. Interesting, then, that Miuccia Prada herself was consulted on the project, handpicking the merchandise for the inside of the store and allowing Elmgreen and Dragset to use the Prada logo. Costing a sum total of $80,000 – or put another way, costing about 40 Prada handbags – Prada Marfa’s grand opening occurred on October 1st, 2005, and the perplexed associated press spread the news all across the country.
With all the press coverage, it was only a few days before vandals converged on the site, breaking the windows, looting the store, and grafitiing the walls. Elmgreen and Dragset came in and repaired the building, but this time around they’ve taken precautions: all of the store’s Prada wares are heavily alarmed, and stronger windows have been installed to protect the interior from forced entry. While the vandalism might be the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to Prada Marfa, the site still gets thousands of visitors a year, despite Route 90’s low traffic flow.
Most people buy the artists’ story, but a few vocal dissenters have flooded the internet with conspiracy theories. Some even argue that Prada Marfa is a trap set by aliens meant to attract potential abductees. Visitors beware.

Read more about Prada Marfa on Atlas Obscura…

Category: Outsider Architecture
Location:
Edited by: gabeschwartz, Dylan

So far in the world of Android, the myTouch has been the most popular series of devices on the market. There are 3 versions available now including the hot “Fender Edition”. Soon, this slider will join the myTouch ranks at T-Mobile.

Engadget has gotten their hands on a spy shot of Radio Shack’s inventory. In the picture the device is listed as coming soon. Initial rumors peg this device for an early May release and looks like it’s on track to meet or beat that. Some are calling this the true successor of the G1 but I’m keeping my hopes up for a real G2 with a full 5 row QWERTY, 1.5 CPU 1GB of ROM and Ram and an AMOLED 3.7 or better screen. I can “Dream” cant I?

According to Engadget’s sources the inside dope from inside Sprint HQ is that they are homing in on June 13th as the release date for the Evo 4G. They are quick to point out that this isn’t 100% confirmed with June 6th apparently being bandied about as a less favored option, but it is encouraging that June 13th is the latest date under discussion.

It seemed unlikely that Sprint would let the release of their new flagship device slip behind Apple’s new iPhone, but it is gratifying to have internal chatter confirm that they are going to get this out on the early side of their previously stated summer window.

Sadly the pricing of the almighty Evo 4G remains a mystery; however, the same source revealed the 4G hotspot access would be just an additional $10-20 with no price bump to the standard “Simply Everything” plans for using 4G on the phone itself.

So with the last real unknown being the price, what’s everyone’s guess as to what the Evo 4G will set you back come the 13th?

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(photo: rene ehrhardt)

You know how people like to bandy around the term “mortgage fraud”? Saying that people got “liar’s loans” and bought houses they knew they could not afford and so deserve to be foreclosed upon and evicted?

Those people never talk about predatory lending. They don’t talk about mortgage brokers who encouraged people to take out higher interest rate/no document check loans, who told them if they had trouble making the higher payment when the adjustable rate suddenly shot up in year 3, they could just refinance again and get back to the low teaser rate.

I know, I threw a mortgage broker out of my dining room when he kept trying to talk me out of a fixed rate mortgage and he gave me that exact spiel. People, believing that no bank would be so foolish as to lend to them if the bank did not think they could repay, got loans that they could barely afford at the teaser rate. When the loans reset, they could not make the payments, and defaults began, this set off a wider financial panic and then people lost their jobs, so even more loans defaulted and housing prices plummeted.

Many, many people are now underwater in their mortgages and cannot refinance. And Congress and FOX want to blame it on homeowners. They don’t want to blame it on predatory lending.

Now foreclosures are happening at an astounding rate. I was filing a motion in court on Long Island a month or so ago and I overheard the clerks talking about the new special mortgage foreclosure court. They were getting around 40 filings a day.

There are specialty foreclosure parts in most, if not all, of the counties in NY now. I know other states have special “land courts” to handle these kinds of cases. The idea is for the judges to develop expertise in the minutia of foreclosure and land recordation.

And it’s paying off. In a case where the demoralized homeowner did not even put up a fight and defaulted on a motion by the bank to foreclose upon her home, Justice Schack, in Deutsche Bank v Harris, observed that the person signing claiming to be an employee of MERS was the same person signing claiming to be an employee of the Bank. And that the Bank, MERS, and INDYMAC all claimed the same suite of offices in California to be their principal place of business. There are more cases just like this, and not just in NYS.

Now comes the revelation, that is a pool of names of individuals who have signed documents under oath, claiming to have assigned mortgages into various pools and trust under circumstances not credible on their face. Basically these individuals, and more cases are being identified every day, are claiming to Vice Presidents of multiple banks and other mortgage related entities, all at the same time. In reality, they appear to be low level clerks at a company called DOCX. Take a minute and go read this report and then for even more fun, go look at actual examples of these titles and signatures.

What does this mean? It means that banks, and the companies that they used to warehouse and process the mortgage documents backing their securities, either knowingly or negligently mishandled the documents and failed to actually transfer them into the trusts that back those securities. They acted as if they had. All would have gone well except that homeowners began to default and when the trusts went to foreclose, they found out that they don’t actually have the mortgages in their trusts. So, to cover it up, it appears that these document mills are fabricating missing documents, backdating documents, and doing assignments of documents after the time to lodge those documents in the trusts has long expired. In other words, they are committing fraud to cover up the fact that they failed to “perfect” their ability to foreclose.

Congress may be blind, deaf and dumb to the families needlessly made homeless, most prosecutors may be wringing their hands not knowing what to do—this latter part amazes me b/c you would think an ambitious prosecutor would love to become a populist hero by riding to the rescue of beleaguered homeowners—but, at least, bankruptcy judges and mortgage part and land court judges —perhaps because they are seeing so many boiler plate filings—have begun to smell the coffee.

Filed under: Technology, Toys/Games, Humor

At some point during the last seven years, Rooster Teeth went from making hilarious videos using Halo multiplayer and a little voice-over action to taking on questions Myth Busters-style. What kind of questions? Try, “What would it be like to drive a real-live F-150 in third-person?” The crew set up a fairly ingenious rig using a Canon 5d Mk II, an HDMI cable and a 15-inch monitor. Then they blacked out the entire green house and had two guinea pigs test subjects run a cone course. Did we mention they had to fight their way to the truck through two “Yakuza” armed with foam baseball bats?

The results are somewhat predictable, but hilarious none the less. Turns out it’s just as hard to drive a real vehicle in the third person as it is in Grand Theft Auto. Hit the jump to see the video for yourself, though be warned, there’s some NSFW elements, including a little language and a big blow-up doll.

[Source: Joystiq]

Continue reading Video: Crazy people create real-life third-person driving apparatus

Video: Crazy people create real-life third-person driving apparatus originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Photographers looking to create High Dynamic Range images in the field have traditionally been faced with heavy equipment and the lack of user controls offered by digital SLR cameras. HDR Labs took a Nintendo DS gaming device, created a custom camera interface, loaded on some innovative imaging apps and the Open Camera Control Project was born. The open source, DIY controller puts powerful image processing control right in the palm of your hand…

Tags: DS,
DSLR,
HDRI,
Nintendo,
Open Source

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Review: 2010 Honda Accord Crosstour hatches a new niche

It may have entered the world through a botched social media campaign, but the Accord Crosstour is selling and we find out why.

GSR Autosport BMW 350R: Part II – We decimate a 335i and a Formula Drift racecar materializes

Stuffing an M5’s V10 into an E92 3 Series is no easy feat, but we tackle the task with GSR Autosport before the team campaigns its Frankenbimmer in this year’s Formula Drift season.

Spy Shots: Best look yet BMW’s forthcoming hi-po 1 Series [w/poll]

We still don’t have a name, but we do know that the M-fettled BMW 1 Series is on the way, and it’s shedding a bit more camo each day.

Also of interest:

• More powerful Honda hybrid coupe in the works?
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Browse our archive of Daily U-Turn posts or subscribe to the RSS feed

Daily U-Turn: What you missed on 4.7.10 originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you thought the Muvi Micro DV was tiny, check out the new Muvi Atom video camera. At 1.57 x 0.78 x 0.59 inches and 1.4 ounces, this $122 nano camera is destined to record a billion amateur gonzo videos. More »