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Beyond her technological achievements, the United States, which carried 1,928 passengers and 900 crew on Atlantic crossings between 1952 and 1969, is a marvel of mid-century design. In our 1952 article, we touted her elegance: “There is a lightness and easiness about her lines. The bow springs forward not sharply, but cleanly and in harmony with the bulk behind it. The white superstructure and the great stacks lie easily on the sleek black hull.”. Eric Adams
She’s the most famous ship that never sank, and a technological triumph of her era. At her launch, she boasted the most extensive use of lightweight aluminum in any structure, full air-conditioning, and the most rigorous fireproofing ever seen in a commercial vessel. She was fast, too—the speed record she set on her maiden transatlantic voyage in 1952 still stands.
Today, in this age of bloated, outrageously overendowed cruise ships, our elegant national treasure, the SS United States, languishes at a pier in Philadelphia. There, within sight of the diners downing Swedish meatballs at Ikea, she awaits either a successful preservation bid, or the scrapyard. With luck–and a committed backer–it will be the former, says Susan Gibbs, executive director of the SS United States Conservancy and granddaughter of the ship’s designer, renowned naval architect William Francis Gibbs. “The SS United States is an American original, an iconic symbol of the nation’s post-war pride, national purpose, and industrial might,” Gibbs notes. “Not only is she still afloat, but even in her dotage, she symbolizes something important about ambition, innovation, and this nation’s can-do spirit. She tells us that anything is possible.”
A May 1952 feature in Popular Science noted the vehicle’s ambitious goal of raising the bar in nautical performance, safety, and luxury—and stealing supremacy from the Britain’s RMS Queen Mary and RMS Queen Elizabeth.
I wanted to see for myself what the experience of her three-day crossings might have been like, so I went aboard recently with several of the Conservancy’s leaders. Though all the furnishings and most of the vessel’s hardware have been removed and sold or auctioned off, the ship remains in remarkably good condition. Critically, it’s also still got its mojo. Even in its embattled state, the United States commands authority and respect.
Beyond her technological achievements, the United States, which carried 1,928 passengers and 900 crew on Atlantic crossings between 1952 and 1969, is a marvel of mid-century design. In our 1952 article, we touted her elegance: “There is a lightness and easiness about her lines. The bow springs forward not sharply, but cleanly and in harmony with the bulk behind it. The white superstructure and the great stacks lie easily on the sleek black hull.” Eric Adams
The ship’s knife-like prow helped her cut through the water at up to 38 knots, or 44 mph. Her four Westinghouse steam turbines generated 240,000 shaft-horsepower. The SS United States is 990 feet long and 101 feet across, with 12 decks and a 47,000-ton water displacement. By comparison, the RMS Titanic was similarly sized—882 feet long and 92 feet wide, with 9 decks and a 52,000-ton displacement. (SS United States has a lower displacement than Titanic thanks to the former’s lightweight construction. Her contemporaries, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, each displaced about 80,000 tons despite being similarly sized.) By the way, the current world’s largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s MS Allure of the Seas, is a relative beast: 1,187 feet long, 198 feet across, with 16 passenger decks. It displaces a mammoth 100,000 tons. Eric Adams
This door on the port side shows the deteriorating paint. The ship was assembled with 1,500,000 aluminum and steel rivets and more than 1,500 miles of welding. Many of the ship’s capabilities and specifications were kept secret, since the U.S. government—which helped finance construction—held the right to convert the ship to a troop transport in times of war. The converted vessel could carry up to 15,000 troops—though it’s unclear if they would all be permitted to use the ship’s pool. Eric Adams
The starboard-side promenade on the Promenade Deck was fully enclosed, but with operable windows. SS United States was the first fully air-conditioned passenger ship. That posed a particular challenge to engineers, since air-conditioning at sea is more challenging than on land—there’s greater moisture and greater disparities between interior and exterior temperatures. Designers installed traps to collect moisture, and thermostatic controls in each cabin to warm the air—circulated at a steady 50 degrees—to the occupant’s preference. Eric Adams
This is the Man Deck passageway, with the remains of first-class cabins on the right. All cabin furnishings were made of aluminum or plastic instead of wood, lending the interior design a distinctly modern look. The color schemes ranged from soft tones to brighter hues. Think Mad Men at sea. Eric Adams
The tourist-class smoking room on the Main Deck, sitting just forward of the grand staircase. Allure of the Seas—Royal Caribbean’s monstrous flagship—has 25 restaurants and cafes, an ice-skating rink, and a two-deck dance hall, but I’d take this any day. (Well, minus the smoking…) Eric Adams
The port-side foyer on Promenade Deck. Through this door sits an small dining area that’s separate from the main dining room. The black paint here is the original color. Eric Adams
The grand staircase on the Main Deck level. The staircase was built of steel and linoleum. There are also elevators, just opposite the staircase. Eric Adams
The ballroom on the Promenade Deck. The ship contained a multitude of luxuries—sculpted glass decoration, a plaster relief map of the North Atlantic, anodized aluminum panels in soft colors, and many sculptures. The only wood on the ship was a butcher’s block and a grand piano, which was made of a rare fire-resistant wood. Eric Adams
One of the two movie theaters on SSUS, this one on the Promenade Deck, for first-class and cabin-class passengers. There’s also a swimming pool, barber shop, night club, library, and several lounges and beauty shops onboard. Eric Adams
This passageway from the port-side dining area on the Promenade Deck into the ballroom contains the only remaining original and untouched surface on the ship—the white ceiling in the curved passageway. This is one of the few jogs in the ship’s layout—most passageways are long straightaways in which you can distinctly see the curvature of the floor. Eric Adams
Looking aft from the port side of the Bridge area. The railings are all long sections of extruded aluminum, and the decks, per our original reporting in 1952, are “remarkably open, swept free of the all possible protrusions and fittings, with few ups and downs.” The stacks, shown here, are fitted with panels that wind-tunnel tests proved would keep exhaust fumes clear of all decks, regardless of the ship’s speed. Eric Adams
The ship’s port-side Sun Deck, looking aft through a porthole. The ship had appearances in many movies—including West Side Story—and hosted a long list of dignitaries and personalities on its voyages, including Bob Hope, Princess Grace of Monaco Harry Truman, and Rita Hayworth. (Former President Bill Clinton sailed on SSUS in 1968, and is a strong supporter of current efforts to preserve the ship.) The ship was taken permanently out of service in 1969, after a decade of financial struggles plagues the ship and her operator. It was a victim of labor disputes, skyrocketing oil prices, and the growing jet age, which spawned a fundamental shift in how people chose to travel. Eric Adams
The view from above the Bridge, looking forward. Despite her superficial rust and peeling paint, the SS United States is still structurally sound, and offers over half a million square feet of “prime waterfront real estate,” Gibbs says. She hopes the ship will become a mixed-use development and museum complex, and with retail, hospitality, and event space. Eric Adams
The restored vessel could also include the SS United States Center for Design and Discovery, a museum and educational center that Gibbs envisions would explore the ship’s history as well as “themes of 20th century industrial design and innovation, the transatlantic liner era, and American cultural identity and artistic expression.” The Conservancy estimates that it would cost $1 billion to return the ship to full maritime service, but a fraction of that to restore it and make it usable as a permanent installation. Eric Adams
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Emotional Robots: Can Robots Be Our Emotional Companion?
Robots have disrupted every industry. They are everywhere. But can they help fight loneliness?
The current pandemic has made us befriend one technology which is often considered as our intellectual rival: robots. We have read several accounts of how robots have been resourceful in helping us fight the harrowing effects of COVID, like assisting us in our mission to find a cure drug and even sanitize public spaces. However, the crisis has also shown that robots can be our emotional support too. The scientists from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, have programmed robots to address the instances of loneliness caused due to social distancing and isolation that have become new normal and mandatory due to COVID. This is not the first time that researchers around the world have been experimenting with emotional AI for the greater good of humans. Mauro Dragone, who is the project’s lead scientist, believes that this study can help understand the needs of the most vulnerable at this time and what technology could be used to make their lives better. Her team at Heriot-Watt University, are working to incorporate robots in social care as a potential solution to reach out to vulnerable groups affected by the social distancing measures that have resulted in decreased visits and restricted activities. In this study named, Ambient Assisted Living, the scientists observed robots like Pepper perform everyday household tasks. The objective was to see if robots can assist healthcare workers with stretched hours of work and responsibilities by taking over simple household chores. The work of these robots was similar to a nurse bot that not only reminds older patients on long-term medical programs to take their medication but also converses with them every day to monitor their overall wellbeing. Around the same time, another group of scientists from Ohio State University’s College of Nursing and Vanderbilt University received a grant of US$3.13 million to develop socially-assistive robots that can promote social interaction among older adults. The humanoid and animal-like robots are scheduled to be trialed next summer. According to one of the faculties, Dr. Lorraine Mion, robots can be a great assistive technology to the nursing homes and the assisted living areas that can then be used to facilitate older adults to engage with one another. The SoftBank Robotics, who holds credit for developing Pepper, emotional robots would not replace humans but complement them. By coexisting with us, these robots hold promise for leading all people to a smarter, safer, healthier, and happier existence.
The current pandemic has made us befriend one technology which is often considered as our intellectual rival: robots. We have read several accounts of how robots have been resourceful in helping us fight the harrowing effects of COVID, like assisting us in our mission to find a cure drug and even sanitize public spaces. However, the crisis has also shown that robots can be our emotional support too. The scientists from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, have programmed robots to address the instances of loneliness caused due to social distancing and isolation that have become new normal and mandatory due to COVID. This is not the first time that researchers around the world have been experimenting with emotional AI for the greater good of humans. Mauro Dragone, who is the project’s lead scientist, believes that this study can help understand the needs of the most vulnerable at this time and what technology could be used to make their lives better. Her team at Heriot-Watt University, are working to incorporate robots in social care as a potential solution to reach out to vulnerable groups affected by the social distancing measures that have resulted in decreased visits and restricted activities. In this study named, Ambient Assisted Living, the scientists observed robots like Pepper perform everyday household tasks. The objective was to see if robots can assist healthcare workers with stretched hours of work and responsibilities by taking over simple household chores. The work of these robots was similar to a nurse bot that not only reminds older patients on long-term medical programs to take their medication but also converses with them every day to monitor their overall wellbeing. Around the same time, another group of scientists from Ohio State University’s College of Nursing and Vanderbilt University received a grant of US$3.13 million to develop socially-assistive robots that can promote social interaction among older adults. The humanoid and animal-like robots are scheduled to be trialed next summer. According to one of the faculties, Dr. Lorraine Mion, robots can be a great assistive technology to the nursing homes and the assisted living areas that can then be used to facilitate older adults to engage with one another. The SoftBank Robotics, who holds credit for developing Pepper, emotional robots would not replace humans but complement them. By coexisting with us, these robots hold promise for leading all people to a smarter, safer, healthier, and happier existence. Some months ago, Japanese robotic startup Groove X designed Lovot , a tiny, plush robot designed to spread love. Lovot, which looks like an adorable mix between a penguin and a teddy bear, is supposed to help lonely people cope with their emotional needs. Speaking to a Forbes interview , Lovot creator and Groove X CEO Kaname Hayashi said, “Our robot doesn’t do any work for humans, and it doesn’t have any contents for entertainment purposes. But neither do dogs or cats. What it does is recognize you and bother you. That’s the aim of our robot.” Meanwhile, we have, Phobot, an interactive robot developed by student researchers at the University of Amsterdam, serves as a strong visual and learning aid to help children who suffer from anxiety and phobias. Another robot studio called BeatBots, based in San Francisco and Sendai, Japan—created Keepon Pro in 2003 specifically for children with developmental disorders like autism. People with autism often have trouble keeping eye contact with other people, so a therapist can use Keepon to interact with a child in a social setting without the child shutting down. All these notable examples cite that robots can ready to become our emotional companion. This is quite encouraging both in robotics and Emotional AI too. All the COVID pandemic worsen, the demand for care workers rise, these ‘social robots’ will prove helpful in an often ignored aspect of healthcare. The noble work at Heriot-Watt University and SoftBank’s Pepper are just a start!
Can Digital Photos Be Trusted?
Around the same time, another image popped up on the forums of the conservative Web site chúng tôi Now the sign read “Lcpl Boudreaux saved my dad, then he rescued my sister,” and a debate raged. Other versions of the sign appeared-one was completely blank, apparently to show how easily a photo can be doctored, and another said “My dad blew himself up on a suicide bombing and all I got was this lousy sign.” By this point, Boudreaux, 25, was back in his hometown of Houma, Louisiana, after his Iraq tour, and he found out about the tempest only when a fledgling Marine brought a printout of the “killed my dad” picture to the local recruiters´ office where Boudreaux was serving. Soon after, he learned he was being investigated by the Pentagon. He feared court-martial. It would be months before he would learn his fate.
Falling victim to a digital prank and having it propagate over the Internet may seem about as likely as getting struck by lightning, but in the digital age, anyone can use inexpensive software to touch up photos, and their handiwork is becoming increasingly difficult to detect. Most of these fakes tend to be harmless-90-pound housecats, sharks attacking helicopters, that sort of thing. But hoaxes, when convincing, can do harm. During the 2004 presidential election campaign, a potentially damning image proliferated on the Internet of a young John Kerry sharing a speaker´s platform with Jane Fonda during her “Hanoi Jane” period. The photo was eventually revealed to be a deft composite of two images, but who knows how many minds had turned against Kerry by then. Meanwhile, politicians have begun to engage in photo tampering for their own ends: This July it emerged that a New York City mayoral candidate, C. Virginia Fields, had added two Asian faces to a promotional photograph to make a group of her supporters seem more diverse.
“Everyone is buying low-cost, high-quality digital cameras, everyone has a Web site, everyone has e-mail, Photoshop is easier to use; 2004 was the first year sales of digital cameras outpaced traditional film cameras,” says Hany Farid, a Dartmouth College computer scientist and a leading researcher in the nascent realm of digital forensics. “Consequently, there are more and more cases of high-profile digital tampering. Seeing is no longer believing. Actually, what you see is largely irrelevant.”
That´s a problem when you consider that driver´s licenses, security cameras, employee IDs and other digital images are a linchpin of communication and a foundation of proof. The fact that they can be easily altered is a big deal-but even more troubling, perhaps, is the fact that few people are aware of the problem and fewer still are addressing it.
It won´t be long-if it hasn´t happened already-before every image becomes potentially suspect. False images have the potential to linger in the public´s consciousness, even if they are ultimately discredited. And just as disturbingly, as fakes proliferate, real evidence, such as the photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, could be discounted as unreliable.
And then there´s the judicial system, in which altered photos could harm the innocent, free the guilty, or simply cause havoc. People arrested for possession of child pornography now sometimes claim that the images are not of real children but of computer-generated ones-and thus that no kids were harmed in the making of the pornography (reality check: authorities say CG child porn does not exist). In a recent civil case in Pennsylvania, plaintiff Mike Soncini tussled with his insurance company over a wrecked vehicle, claiming that the company had altered digital photos to imply that the car was damaged before the accident so as to avoid paying the full amount due. In Connecticut, a convicted murderer appealed to the state supreme court that computer-enhanced images of bite marks on the victim that were used to match his teeth were inadmissible (his appeal was rejected). And in a Massachusetts case, a police officer has been accused of stealing drugs and money from his department´s evidence room and stashing them at home. His wife, who has accused him of spousal abuse, photographed the evidence and then confronted the cop, who allegedly destroyed the stolen goods. Now the only evidence that exists are digital pictures shot by someone who might have a motive for revenge. “This is an issue that´s waiting to explode,” says Richard Sherwin, a professor at New York Law School, “and it hasn´t gotten the visibility in the legal community that it deserves.”
But Farid and other experts are concerned that they´ll never win. The technologies that enable photo manipulation will grow as fast as the attempts to foil them-as will forgers´ skills. The only realistic goal, Farid believes, is to keep prevention and detection techniques sophisticated enough to stop all but the most determined and skillful. “We´re going to make it so the average schmo can´t do it,” he says.
Such programs abound. Five million copies of Adobe Photoshop have been licensed, iPhoto is bundled with all new Apple computers, and Picasa 2 is available free from Google. This software not only interprets the original data; it´s capable of altering it-to remove unwanted background elements, zoom in on the desired part of an image, adjust color, and more. And the capabilities are increasing. The latest version of Photoshop, CS2, includes a “vanishing point” tool, for example, that drastically simplifies the specialized art of correcting perspective when combining images, to make composites look more realistic. Nor are these programs difficult to master. Just as word-processing programs like Microsoft Word have made the production of professional-looking documents a cakewalk, photo-editing tools make us all accomplished photo manipulators fairly quickly. Who hasn´t removed red-eye from family pictures?
Before the digital age, photo-verification experts sought to examine the negative-the single source of all existing prints. Today´s equivalent of a negative is the RAW file. RAWs are output from a camera before any automatic adjustments have corrected hue and tone. They fix the image in its purest, unaltered state. But RAW files are unwieldy-they don´t look very good and are memory hogs-hence only professional photographers tend to use them. Nor are they utterly trustworthy: Hackers have shown themselves capable of making a fake RAW file based on an existing photo, creating an apparent original.
But digital technology does provide clues that experts can exploit to identify the fakery. In most cameras, each cell registers just one color-red, green or blue-so the camera´s microprocessor has to estimate the proper color based on the colors of neighboring cells, filling in the blanks through a process called interpolation. Interpolation creates a predictable pattern, a correlation among data points that is potentially recognizable, not by the naked eye but by pattern-recognition software programs.
Farid has developed algorithms that are remarkably adept at recognizing the telltale signs of forgeries. His software scans patterns in a data file´s binary code, looking for the disruptions that indicate that an image has been altered. Farid, who has become the go-to guy in digital forensics, spends a great deal of time using Photoshop to create forgeries and composites and then studying their underlying data. What he´s found is that most manipulations leave a statistical trail.
Consider what happens when you double the size of an image in Photoshop. You start with a 100-by-100-pixel image and enlarge it to 200 by 200. Photoshop must create new pixels to make the image bigger; it does this through interpolation (this is the second interpolation, after the one done by the camera´s processor when the photo was originally shot). Photoshop will “look” at a white pixel and an adjoining black pixel and decide that the best option for the new pixel that´s being inserted between them is gray.
Each type of alteration done in Photoshop or iPhoto creates a specific statistical relic in the file that will show up again and again. Resizing an image, as described above, creates one kind of data pattern. Cutting parts of one picture and placing them into another picture creates another. Rotating a photo leaves a unique footprint, as does “cloning” one part of a picture and reproducing it elsewhere in the image. And computer-generated images, which can look strikingly realistic, have their own statistical patterns that are entirely different from those of images created by a camera. None of these patterns is visible to the naked eye or even easily described, but after studying thousands of manipulated images, Farid and his students have made a Rosetta stone for their recognition, a single software package consisting of algorithms that search for seven types of photo alteration, each with its own data pattern.
If you employed just one of these algorithms, a fake would be relatively easy to miss, says digital-forensic scientist Jessica Fridrich of the State University of New York at Binghamton. But the combination is powerful. “It would be very difficult to have a forgery that gets through all those tests,” she says.
provide information about the compressed and lower-quality photos typically found on the Internet.
Given those rather large blind spots, some scientists are taking a completely different tack. Rather than try to discern after the fact whether a picture has been altered, they want to invisibly mark photos in the moment of their creation so that any subsequent tampering will be obvious.
Jessica Fridrich of SUNY Binghamton works on making digital watermarks. Watermarked data are patterns of zeros and ones that are created when an image is shot and embedded in its pixels, invisible unless you look for them with special software. Watermarks are the modern equivalent of dripping sealing wax on a letter-if an image is altered, the watermark will be “broken” digitally, and your software will tell you.
The Canon kit won´t prevent self-made controversies, such as National Geographic´s digitally relocating an Egyptian pyramid to fit better on its February 1982 cover, or Newsweek´s grafting Martha Stewart´s head onto a model´s body on its March 7, 2005, cover, but it would have caught, and thus averted, another journalism scandal: In 2003 photographer Brian Walski was fired from the Los Angeles Times for melding two photographs to create what he felt was a more powerful composition of a British soldier directing Iraqis to take cover. Still, many media outlets remain dismissive of verification technology, putting their faith in the integrity of trusted contributors and their own ability to sniff out fraud. “If we tried to verify every picture, we´d never get anything done,” says Stokes Young, managing editor at Corbis, which licenses stock photos. As damaging mistakes pile up, though, wire services and newspapers may change their attitude.
Meanwhile, work is progressing at Fridrich´s lab to endow photos with an additional level of security. Fridrich, whose accomplishments include winning the 1982 Czechoslovakian Rubik´s Cube speed-solving championship, is developing a camera that not only watermarks a photograph but adds key identifying information about the photographer as well. Her team has modified a commercially available Canon camera, converting the infrared focusing sensor built into its viewfinder to a biometric sensor that captures an image of the photographer´s iris at the instant a photo is shot. This image is converted to digital data that is stored invisibly in the image file, along with the time and date and other watermark data.
Lawyers are just beginning to grasp the technology and its ramifications, but the bench is especially ignorant. “Trial judges have not been adequately apprised of the risks and technology,” says New York Law School´s Sherwin. “I can recount one example where in order to test an animation that was being offered in evidence, the judge asked the attorney to print it out. What we really have is a generation gap in the knowledge base. Courts are going to have to learn about these risks themselves and find ways to address them.”
One bright spot is that for now, at least, we only have to worry about still images. Fredericks says that to modify video convincingly remains an incredibly painstaking business. “When you´re dealing with videotape, you´re dealing with 30 frames per second, and a frame is two individual pictures. The forger would have to make 60 image corrections for each second. It´s an almost impossible task.” There´s no Photoshop for movies, and even video altered with high-end equipment, such as commercials employing reanimated dead actors, isn´t especially believable.
Digital-forensics experts say they´re in an evolutionary race not unlike the battle between spammers and anti-spammers -you can create all the filters you want, but determined spammers will figure out how to get through. Then it´s time to create new filters. Farid expects the same of forgers. With enough resources and determination, a forger will break a watermark, reverse-engineer a RAW file, and create a seamless fake that eludes the software. The trick, Farid says, is continuing to raise the bar high enough that most forgers are daunted.
The near future of detection technology is more of the same, only (knock wood) better: more-secure photographer-verification systems, more tightly calibrated algorithms, more-robust watermarks. The future, though, promises something more innovative: digital ballistics. Just as bullets can be traced to the gun that fired them, digital photos might reveal the camera that made them. No light sensor is flawless; all have tiny imperfections that can be read in the image data. Study those glitches enough, and you recognize patterns-patterns that can be detected with software.
Still, no matter what technologies are in place, it´s likely that top-quality fakes will always elude the system. Poor-quality ones, too. The big fish learn how to avoid the net; the smallest ones slip through it. Low-resolution fakes are more detectable by Farid´s latest algorithm, which analyzes the direction of light falling on the scene, but if a photo is compressed enough, forget about it. It becomes a mighty small fish.
Which brings us back to Joey Boudreaux, the Marine who found himself denounced by his local paper, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, as having embarrassed “himself, the Marine Corps and, unfortunately, his home state.” The Marines conducted two investigations last year, both of which were inconclusive. Even experts with the Naval Criminal Investigative Services couldn´t find evidence to support or refute claims of manipulation.
Boudreaux has taken the incident in stride. “My first reaction, I thought it was funny,” he said in a telephone interview. “I didn´t have a second reaction until they called and said, â€You´re getting investigated.´ ” He insists that he never gave the Iraqi boy a sign with any words but “Welcome Marines,” but he has no way to prove it. Neither he nor anyone he knows still possesses a version of the image the way he says he created it, and no amount of Internet searching has turned it up. All that exists are the low-quality clones on the Web. Farid´s software can´t assess Boudreaux´s claim because the existing images are too compressed for his algorithms. And even Farid´s trained eye can´t tell if either of the two existing images-the “good” sign or the “bad” one-are real or if, as Boudreaux claims, both are fakes.
An unsatisfactory conclusion, but a fitting one. Today´s authentication technology is such that even after scrutiny by software and expert eyes, all you may have on your side is your word. You´d better hope it´s good enough.
Steve Casimiro is a writer and photographer in Monarch Beach, California.
by Courtesy of chúng tôi
How well did you spot the phonies? REAL Plane landing at the St. Maarten airport, located about 40 feet from the beach
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How well did you spot the phonies? FAKE China lands on moon! Not really. But making it look authentic is easy, for a forger.
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How well did you spot the phonies? FAKE chúng tôi
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How well did you spot the phonies? FAKE A skyscraperâ€Jenga game merger, from chúng tôi
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How well did you spot the phonies? FAKE chúng tôi
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How well did you spot the phonies? FAKE From chúng tôi which hosts Photoshop contests
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How well did you spot the phonies? REAL An F/A-18´s sonic boom. Experts are unsure what creates the cloud; it may be caused by water-droplet condensation
by Courtesy of chúng tôi
How well did you spot the phonies? FAKE A composite that hit the Internet as a purported National Geographic photo
by Courtesy of chúng tôi
How well did you spot the phonies? REAL Nine-foot, 646-pound catfish recently caught in Thailand
You Can Actually Be Allergic To Exercise
Joe O’Leary went to dinner with his parents at around 8 p.m. one Wednesday in March of 2023. He split a pizza, topped with tomatoes and peppers, with his mom. Then he set out for the gym and hopped on the elliptical. But about a half-hour into the workout, he started feeling weird. “My eyes were watering, I was having trouble breathing,” he says. “In another five minutes I was struggling to breathe. I looked behind me into the mirror, and my eyes were swollen—every part of my face was swollen.”
O’Leary was rushed to the emergency room and pumped full of steroids and antihistamines. He’d had an allergic reaction, but not just to what he’d eaten for dinner: it was the combination of food and exercise that did him in. Doctors quickly diagnosed him with a condition called exercise-induced anaphylaxis, where a reaction to an allergen only happens in conjunction with exercise. If he combines them with exercise, O’Leary will have an anaphylactic reaction to tomatoes, peppers, soy, and nuts.
Exercise-induced anaphylaxis was first described in 1979, and probably affects around 50 in every 100,000 people. While awareness of the condition among allergists has gone up, researchers and doctors still don’t know exactly why it occurs, says Maria Castells, an allergist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
For between 30 to 50 percent of people, the reaction comes from combining certain types of food and exercise. For others, strenuous activity triggers a reaction to drugs like aspirin. Some women only experience the phenomenon when they’re at the point in their menstrual cycle with high levels of the hormone estrogen, because it can bind to the cells involved with an allergic reaction. “There are a variety of things that it might be,” Castells says. “And for a proportion it’s nothing, really, just the exercise itself.”
The amount of exercise needed to trigger a reaction varies from person to person, Castells says. It generally takes more to cause anaphylaxis in someone who is relatively fit than someone who isn’t in great shape. Almost all types of exercise, like running, dancing, or biking, have been reported to cause anaphylaxis—though there haven’t yet been any reports of anyone having a reaction after swimming, Castells says.
It’s still not exactly clear what causes the connection between exercise and anaphylaxis. There are a number of working theories about the mechanism involved, tied to the physiological changes that happen in the body during exercise. Increased blood flow might push sensitive immune cells around the body, for instance. Or perhaps certain proteins in the gut change their behavior during exercise, interacting with food in ways that could cause an allergic reaction. And since exercise increases the absorption of material from the gastrointestinal tract, it’s possible that there are simply more allergens able to make their way into the body during a workout.
It’s difficult to test those theories, though, because the condition is difficult to recreate in a laboratory setting. “So there’s no mouse model and no human model of the ideas,” Castells says. There are a number of groups trying to develop a model, but they need more time.
O’Leary didn’t get a ton of information after his diagnosis, but his allergist was able to give him the basics. To cope, O’Leary cut all of his allergens out of his diet completely. Even though he could avoid a reaction by waiting to exercise after eating tomatoes or nuts, he prefers to just avoid them all together. He would rather sacrifice ketchup than risk having an unexpected attack.
You may also be interested in:How We Can Burn Our Way To A Better Future
The West is experiencing continually record-breaking flames, but the solution is more fire.
That’s why experts say that we need prescribed burns now more than ever. It’s a complex topic that many people are only just starting to hear about, but ecologists and Indigenous peoples are well aware of exactly how helpful the practice can be.
The case for firePrior to Euro-American settlement of western lands, fire was a fact of life. In California alone, more than four million acres burned annually on average. Hazy summer skies were not unusual, and in fact might have been beneficial at times. In the Klamath River Basin, the Native Americans used fires in part to produce smoke that shaded the region and cooled river temperatures, enhancing salmon habitat. Lightning also ignited regular fires.
Many, though not all, ecosystems in the American West are adapted to fire. Lower elevation conifer forests in the past may have burned every 3 to 30 years, and oak woodlands and savannah had even more frequent fires. Some higher elevation forests probably also had blazes, though the interval between flames was somewhere around 40 to 80 years, explains Kip Van de Water, a fire management specialist with the Forest Service in Klamath National Forest.
Fire has a profound influence on these systems. Some seeds literally can’t sprout without it. A serotinous cone, for instance, produced by certain pines, won’t free its seeds until it’s heated up. You can see that process occurring in a toaster oven in the video below.
Fires also open up clearings, letting sunlight reach teeny trees so they can grow. The flames also release nutrients into the soil. There are many more benefits, but one that’s less often paid attention to—and more unusual—is the impact on plants’ immune systems. Sharon Hood, a Forest Service research ecologist in Montana, explains that flora have immune systems analogous to those of fauna, and in fire-adapted ecosystems, fire stimulates that immunity. Low-severity embers can ramp up a tree’s response such that it’s better equipped to fight back bark beetles, native parasites than can devastate entire stands of conifers when the trees are already weakened by forces like drought. Without those fires, they’re more vulnerable.
How controlled burns workThere are a few ways that we can return fires to lands starved of it. At the Forest Service, Van de Water explains that fire crews use two main methods: broadcast burns and pile burns.
In a broadcast burn, numerous workers are on the ground, digging out fire lines—areas where the ground has been scraped to act as a barrier to further fire travel—and lighting a blaze with drip torches, hand-held canisters that drizzle flaming fuel onto the ground. There are firefighters on standby in case the burn jumps its boundary. Having the right conditions is crucial. An ideal window is when winds are calm and temperatures are cool, and fires are usually planned ahead of rainfall to put a natural end to the treatment. Prescribed burns burn at a lower intensity, eating up debris and twiggy materials but leaving bigger trees intact.
Pile burns involve heaping up dry fuels from a given area, then burning them. It doesn’t provide all the ecosystem benefits that burning the whole area would, but it can still help reduce catastrophic fire risk. Van de Water says that most of the acres he treats in Klamath National Forest are done via pile burns. That’s because it can be cheaper, requires fewer people on the ground, and can be done across a wider weather window. “It’s easy to write a contract for piling and burning, and then hire a private company with people with chainsaws to do them,” he says.
Native American tribes also have traditional ecological knowledge of how to conduct burns, methods which they developed over thousands of years of managing their lands. After more than a century of being barred from performing their burning, there have been some moves in recent years to return the practice. The Karuk Tribe has developed a climate adaptation plan for their territory that focuses heavily on restoring cultural burning practices. The Yurok Tribe in northern California has been able to buy back their traditional lands through carbon credits they earned by maintaining forests with prescribed fire. And North Fork Mono tribal leaders are partnering with officials to bring the benefits of fire back to the oak woodlands of the Sierra Foothills.
Why we don’t do it enoughAll of these current efforts are just a sliver of the millions of acres that need fire. And areas that do get a prescribed burn often don’t get a follow-up fire treatment. In the Northern Region of the Forest Service’s jurisdiction—covering 23 million acres of land in Washington, Idaho, Montana and the Dakotas—only about 30,000 acres are treated every year, says Robert Keane, an emeritus research ecologist with the Forest Service and editor of the research journal Fire Ecology. “We’re not gaining on the [fire] deficit.”
Keane says that a major roadblock is pushback from communities adjacent to areas planned to burn. Some are afraid their homes are at risk if a fire escapes its bounds, or that the smoke will harm their health. However, the evidence suggests that planned burns rarely escape, and that their smoke is not as hazardous as that from the high-intensity fires that ignite when forests don’t receive treatment. “When society doesn’t want this to happen, we’re ensuring we’re going down this spiral,” says Keane. “And then a big fire will happen and it will burn an ecosystem.”
Survey work has found that the public is mostly accepting of the prescribed burns, however, points out Kate Wilkin, fire ecologist at San José State University. The main impediments are personnel time and money, researchers have found.
Indeed, the budget for maintenance has not been helped by the megafires of the past decade. Fire suppression once used only eight percent of the Forest Service’s budget, but Keane says it now sucks up over half the money available. That means there’s less funding left for proactive treatments.
Ironically, environmental protection laws sometimes get in the way, too. While relatively small burns intended to regenerate habitat—say, 100 acres to improve mule deer range—are exempt from rigorous analysis, larger projects can take years to be approved, says Van de Water. When agencies do prepare their environmental impact reports, timber companies and environmental groups alike find reasons to sue.
Individuals in charge of planning fires might also be reluctant to do so, because the risk of being held liable if anything does go wrong. It’s a thankless job. People don’t see the absence of fires and thank their local officials for periodically burning the land. Burn leaders generally aren’t celebrated for helping avoid a fire in the same way firefighters receive gratitude for their work, points out Keane. And when something does go wrong, burners can be held legally liable.
How to restore fireFor some solutions, we might look across the country to Florida. Prescribed burns are the norm there. Fires are heavily used because fuels build up so fast due to the ample moisture available for plant growth, says Hood. Part of what makes it possible to do these treatments is that Florida has ‘right to burn’ laws that reduce liability for people planning a burn. “Liabilities are reduced if you go through all the right steps,” says Hood. “You’re not as likely to be held liable in the Southeast compared to the West … So it really promotes the use of prescribed burning.”
Due to a century of fire suppression, many forests in the West are incredibly dense with trees, which can make it especially hard to do a controlled burn because small trees can act as “ladder fuels” and help transport fire into the canopy. Wilkin says that these regions may need thinning treatments to cut out some of the trees to reduce that risk before bringing in fire.
Increased funding dedicated for forest treatment can help, too. Recently, burners have been able to apply for funds derived from California’s cap-and-trade climate program. Van de Water is part of a team at Klamath National Forest that just received such a grant for a proposed burn in the Klamath region.
Because of their traditional knowledge honed over millennia, “tribes are uniquely positioned to lead the way,” wrote University of Oregon researchers in an article at the Conversation. However, they still face barriers in being able to conduct burns. “We’ve been trying to work within existing processes to make it all come together,” says Bill Tripp, the director of natural resources and environmental policy for the Karuk Tribe. “We’ve been pretty successful in starting to make some changes and getting more thinning and pre-burn treatments done. But we’re struggling to get through the agency bureaucracy far enough to even burn piles.”
Due to hurdles such as environmental impact reporting requirements, the tribe is only able to burn on the two percent of their territory that is not overlapping with national forest land. “I believe it’s time for the federal and state governments to recognize Indigenous sovereignty and start to take a hard look at how that relationship … can build the coalition needed to make all this [prescribed fire] work,” says Tripp. “If we can get back there within three years and start to rebuild our Indigenous fire management cycles and get those into place, we’ve got a shot at making this happen.”
This story has been updated to provide further detail on how and why pile burns are used.
How Iot Can Be Used For Preventing Fires
IoT is now often referred to any small, internet-connected device that can record specific data and transmit the recorded data to a central location or device for further interpretation. The sensors used are capable of recording audio, video, temperature data, location data, etc. In today’s time, the predominant applications of IoT include driverless cars and home appliances. In the domain of fire safety, the most notable application of IoT could include the use of sensors installed in the buildings. The collection of atmospheric data could be the foundation of altering the human approach for preventing fires, firefighting, and ultimately saving the lives of one and all.
Benefits IoT Offer 1. Smarter and Faster Solutions on Robust NetworksFire prevention and fire safety equipment have undergone a revolution with due credits to IoT. With connections to low power wide area (LPWA) or even cellular networks, fire safety IoT is present for enhancing fire preventions, speeding up response times, and also keeping the first responders safe when they encounter fires. The enhanced data capabilities of IoT has provided the firefighting team with more information for planning evacuations, rescues and most importantly fire suppression.
2. Tracking Team MembersThe fire engines can act as a wireless hotspot for every IoT linked device present in the inventory of the fire department and the head of the firefighting team can monitor team as well as the movement of every member when they ‘enter’ the fire and direct them accordingly. IoT can be integrated with devices such as alarms, personal safety devices, and fire suit technology. The tracking technology has ensured to keep the firefighters safe by reporting the exact location of each member directly to the commander-in-charge. Lightweight RFID-based trackers reveal the team member’s location at any time-instance and this can be embedded in the fire suit of the member. With the monitoring of each team member’s location, the commanders can map out the response location and offer a precise evacuation for the team movement.
3. Preventing and Suppressing FiresIoT powered fire safety plays an active role to keep everyone safe. A smart home system needs to be capable enough for linking the fire alarm or carbon monoxide detector with home appliances. If there is a detection of fire or carbon monoxide, then it needs to automatically cut off the ignition sources. Today, most of the buildings are equipped with sprinkler systems and the underlying functionality is that the office equipment is usually cheaper than replacing the entire building structure. IoT offers a more targeted firefighting capability, thereby cutting off small fires. A smart IoT-enabled fire system could be used for deploying different measures for specific rooms in order to minimize the damage.
4. Robotic ScoutsIn the coming time, IoT may even have robotic scouts for clearing the way, marking out the difference between the safe and dangerous rooms. The robotic scouts can also be used to identify the fire victims that are in need of rescue. Robotic scouts could also be used for arriving on the place of fire before humans, thereby reducing the response times. These robots could also be combined for mapping technologies and heat sensors and maybe even deployed to carry oxygen supply for victims and firefighters that are trapped inside a burning infrastructure.
5. Sensors for Detecting Early FiresFires caused due to electrical and heating equipment are the top-reasons for any residential fire. If the equipment is not properly monitored and maintained, they can undergo electric malfunctions and overheat, resulting in fires. In order to reduce the risk of fires, sensors can be used for performing preventative maintenance on all the household types of equipment like- electrical and fire heating systems. Sensors can be placed on equipment for monitoring the heat signatures and establish a baseline performance to indicate when the equipment has exceeded the prescribed safety norms. The use of sensors could be used for monitoring equipment so that individuals are informed about the unexpected temperature spikes or even equipment misfires.
IoT Architecture for Fire PreventionOn the edge of the system, there are pieces of hardware that detect the fire. The hardware includes- Fire Panel systems or sensors for smokes or gas leakages. The next level in the architecture comprises of hardware that is responsible for communicating with the prior layer by the means of either wired means or wireless RF signals. Prior layer consists of hardware like Nodes, Hubs or Gateways and these hardware devices have Internet access by wired or wireless means. This layer is responsible for communicating with the Cloud application server by using the IP protocol and communicates all kind of events that are sensed by the ‘edge’ devices like fire panels and sensors. The health monitoring of the system is very critical as the usefulness of the entire architecture is dependent on the healthy state of the system. The Cloud server serves as the central repository for all the event and health information. It even can have information pertaining to the actual real estate which has the information on the placement of sensors and panels. All the critical information has to be linked to a specific information sensor so that in case of a fire, the firefighting team, as well as the house occupants, are made aware of fire. Accompanying relevant and actionable information will definitely result in causing no damage to life and property.
IoT-Based Architecture for Fire PreventionIoT is now often referred to any small, internet-connected device that can record specific data and transmit the recorded data to a central location or device for further interpretation. The sensors used are capable of recording audio, video, temperature data, location data, etc. In today’s time, the predominant applications of IoT include driverless cars and home appliances. In the domain of fire safety, the most notable application of IoT could include the use of sensors installed in the buildings. The collection of atmospheric data could be the foundation of altering the human approach for preventing fires, firefighting, and ultimately saving the lives of one and chúng tôi prevention and fire safety equipment have undergone a revolution with due credits to IoT. With connections to low power wide area (LPWA) or even cellular networks, fire safety IoT is present for enhancing fire preventions, speeding up response times, and also keeping the first responders safe when they encounter fires. The enhanced data capabilities of IoT has provided the firefighting team with more information for planning evacuations, rescues and most importantly fire chúng tôi fire engines can act as a wireless hotspot for every IoT linked device present in the inventory of the fire department and the head of the firefighting team can monitor team as well as the movement of every member when they ‘enter’ the fire and direct them accordingly. IoT can be integrated with devices such as alarms, personal safety devices, and fire suit technology. The tracking technology has ensured to keep the firefighters safe by reporting the exact location of each member directly to the commander-in-charge. Lightweight RFID-based trackers reveal the team member’s location at any time-instance and this can be embedded in the fire suit of the member. With the monitoring of each team member’s location, the commanders can map out the response location and offer a precise evacuation for the team chúng tôi powered fire safety plays an active role to keep everyone safe. A smart home system needs to be capable enough for linking the fire alarm or carbon monoxide detector with home appliances. If there is a detection of fire or carbon monoxide, then it needs to automatically cut off the ignition sources. Today, most of the buildings are equipped with sprinkler systems and the underlying functionality is that the office equipment is usually cheaper than replacing the entire building structure. IoT offers a more targeted firefighting capability, thereby cutting off small fires. A smart IoT-enabled fire system could be used for deploying different measures for specific rooms in order to minimize the chúng tôi the coming time, IoT may even have robotic scouts for clearing the way, marking out the difference between the safe and dangerous rooms. The robotic scouts can also be used to identify the fire victims that are in need of rescue. Robotic scouts could also be used for arriving on the place of fire before humans, thereby reducing the response times. These robots could also be combined for mapping technologies and heat sensors and maybe even deployed to carry oxygen supply for victims and firefighters that are trapped inside a burning infrastructure.Fires caused due to electrical and heating equipment are the top-reasons for any residential fire. If the equipment is not properly monitored and maintained, they can undergo electric malfunctions and overheat, resulting in fires. In order to reduce the risk of fires, sensors can be used for performing preventative maintenance on all the household types of equipment like- electrical and fire heating systems. Sensors can be placed on equipment for monitoring the heat signatures and establish a baseline performance to indicate when the equipment has exceeded the prescribed safety norms. The use of sensors could be used for monitoring equipment so that individuals are informed about the unexpected temperature spikes or even equipment chúng tôi the edge of the system, there are pieces of hardware that detect the fire. The hardware includes- Fire Panel systems or sensors for smokes or gas leakages. The next level in the architecture comprises of hardware that is responsible for communicating with the prior layer by the means of either wired means or wireless RF signals. Prior layer consists of hardware like Nodes, Hubs or Gateways and these hardware devices have Internet access by wired or wireless means. This layer is responsible for communicating with the Cloud application server by using the IP protocol and communicates all kind of events that are sensed by the ‘edge’ devices like fire panels and sensors. The health monitoring of the system is very critical as the usefulness of the entire architecture is dependent on the healthy state of the system. The Cloud server serves as the central repository for all the event and health information. It even can have information pertaining to the actual real estate which has the information on the placement of sensors and panels. All the critical information has to be linked to a specific information sensor so that in case of a fire, the firefighting team, as well as the house occupants, are made aware of fire. Accompanying relevant and actionable information will definitely result in causing no damage to life and property. Source The Cloud server application is responsible for supporting notification management and has the ability to communicate with the connected occupants regarding the fire-affected property areas to guide them in case of fire events. This communication can take place through either- emails, SMS or even PA systems. The communication tools are engaged by the application administrators based on the emergency situation.
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