A British inventor has created a new underwater scooter that allows tourists to explore coral reefs without learning to scuba dive - or even swim.
Holidaymakers can sit on the HydroBOB and dive to depths of 100ft at tourist sites around the world.
Andrew Sneath, HydroBOB designer and company founder, said: "With minimal training the rider can cruise the underwater world without the need to wear cumbersome dive equipment."
Mr Sneath, a former car factory worker from Bromsgrove, near Birmingham, now based in Florida, added: "Riding HydroBOB is a unique memorable experience of a life time."
The HydroBOB's helmet-like dome contains an air bubble that is continually filled with oxygen from an onboard tank.
The clear acrylic dome gives a 180 degree view and the oxygen tank is big enough to give over an hour's use before resurfacing.
Users don't need goggles, breathing apparatus or a wet suit. They can wear glasses and even talk underwater.
A 12 volt battery stored under the seat allows the scooter to move at two knots. Depth is controlled by a bounce bag, similar to that worn by a scuba diver to control buoyancy.
Users are given a simple ten minute briefing on underwater signalling and how to equalise the pressure in their ears.
Hydrodome has made 350 HydroBOBs - or breathing observation bubbles - for rental at tourist destinations worldwide, including the Bahamas, Australia and Tenerife. ...
via Brit invents underwater scooter | Orange UK.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Brit invents underwater scooter
Brit invents underwater scooter
Holidaymakers can sit on the HydroBOB and dive to depths of 100ft at tourist sites around the world.
Andrew Sneath, HydroBOB designer and company founder, said: "With minimal training the rider can cruise the underwater world without the need to wear cumbersome dive equipment."
Mr Sneath, a former car factory worker from Bromsgrove, near Birmingham, now based in Florida, added: "Riding HydroBOB is a unique memorable experience of a life time."
The HydroBOB's helmet-like dome contains an air bubble that is continually filled with oxygen from an onboard tank.
The clear acrylic dome gives a 180 degree view and the oxygen tank is big enough to give over an hour's use before resurfacing.
Users don't need goggles, breathing apparatus or a wet suit. They can wear glasses and even talk underwater.
A 12 volt battery stored under the seat allows the scooter to move at two knots. Depth is controlled by a bounce bag, similar to that worn by a scuba diver to control buoyancy.
Users are given a simple ten minute briefing on underwater signalling and how to equalise the pressure in their ears.
Hydrodome has made 350 HydroBOBs - or breathing observation bubbles - for rental at tourist destinations worldwide, including the Bahamas, Australia and Tenerife. ...
via Brit invents underwater scooter | Orange UK.
Alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack: study
...It's sobering news for drinkers.
Alcohol is even worse than heroin and crack on the list of "most harmful" drugs, according to a new study published in the British medical journal, The Lancet.
A variety of social, physical and psychological problems that are caused by drugs were examined by a panel of experts, who concluded that alcohol, heroin and crack were the most harmful to others while heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine were the most harmful to individual users, CNN reported.
Dr. Petros Livados, director of the Addiction Institute of New York at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, agreed with the study findings.
"Both in terms of the medical consequences as well as societal consequences, I agree that alcohol ranks very high in overall harmfulness,"he told the News. "Alcohol has tremendous repercussions in our society in terms of drunk driving and societal consequences.”
Twenty drugs were scored on 16 criteria – nine related to the harms that a particular drug does to an individual and seven to the harms a drug does to others. All the drugs were scored out of 100 points, and overall, alcohol came in the highest, at 72 points, according to The Lancet. Heroin came in second with 55 points and crack cocaine took third place with 54 points.
While cocaine and tobacco were found to be equally harmful, LSD and ecstasy were found to be the least harmful, according to BBC.com. ...
via Alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack: study.
Alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack: study
Alcohol is even worse than heroin and crack on the list of "most harmful" drugs, according to a new study published in the British medical journal, The Lancet.
A variety of social, physical and psychological problems that are caused by drugs were examined by a panel of experts, who concluded that alcohol, heroin and crack were the most harmful to others while heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine were the most harmful to individual users, CNN reported.
Dr. Petros Livados, director of the Addiction Institute of New York at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, agreed with the study findings.
"Both in terms of the medical consequences as well as societal consequences, I agree that alcohol ranks very high in overall harmfulness,"he told the News. "Alcohol has tremendous repercussions in our society in terms of drunk driving and societal consequences.”
Twenty drugs were scored on 16 criteria – nine related to the harms that a particular drug does to an individual and seven to the harms a drug does to others. All the drugs were scored out of 100 points, and overall, alcohol came in the highest, at 72 points, according to The Lancet. Heroin came in second with 55 points and crack cocaine took third place with 54 points.
While cocaine and tobacco were found to be equally harmful, LSD and ecstasy were found to be the least harmful, according to BBC.com. ...
via Alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack: study.
The angel with the machine gun on the sun
Top left image looks like a fire angel with a machine gun. Other interesting shapes in this one too... a tornado, a skull and cross bones, a drooling ghost dog ... what do you see?
This view, captured today by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, is a classic example: On the left edge of the disk, a huge twister is erupting into space. Or should that be an "untwister"? That's what SpaceWeather.com's Tony Phillips argues, since the eruption resulted from the sudden untwisting of a magnetic filament on the sun's surface. At its peak, the eruption towered 220,000 miles (350,000 kilometers into space), or nearly the distance between Earth and the moon. This SpaceWeather.com video shows the twister in the midst of its untwisting. ...
via msn
The angel with the machine gun on the sun
Top left image looks like a fire angel with a machine gun. Other interesting shapes in this one too... a tornado, a skull and cross bones, a drooling ghost dog ... what do you see?
This view, captured today by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, is a classic example: On the left edge of the disk, a huge twister is erupting into space. Or should that be an "untwister"? That's what SpaceWeather.com's Tony Phillips argues, since the eruption resulted from the sudden untwisting of a magnetic filament on the sun's surface. At its peak, the eruption towered 220,000 miles (350,000 kilometers into space), or nearly the distance between Earth and the moon. This SpaceWeather.com video shows the twister in the midst of its untwisting. ...
via msn
How Google crossed the creepy line
Shane Richmond - When Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, said that his company’s policy was “to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it” he will have provoked more than a few shudders. Schmidt’s remarks, made in an American magazine earlier this month, come with the company fighting privacy battles across the world.
The latest development, last week, saw Google admit that it had been collecting emails, passwords and web addresses from wireless networks across Britain. The data was collected by Google’s Street View cars, which traverse streets across the globe taking photographs that Google uses in its mapping services. Google apologised and a spokesman said that the company had not collected the data intentionally. “We are mortified by what happened,” said Alan Eustace, Google’s vice-president of engineering and research.
Nevertheless, Google’s critics see this as another step over “the creepy line” and the Information Commissioner’s Office says that it will reopen its investigation into Google’s collection of wifi data.
It is the latest in a long series of complaints about Google Street View. The faces of people who appear in Street View images are now blurred after criticism from privacy campaigners. Defence and security experts have warned of the danger of photographing sensitive sites and Google has been in protracted negotiations with the EU about the length of time that it retains photographs. Negotiations can only get you so far, however. Last year, the people of Broughton, in Buckinghamshire, formed a human barrier to stop Google’s Street View car from entering their village.
Street View is just one part of Google’s vast empire of data about us and our habits. Its search engine stores information on what you search for online, even if you are not logged in to a Google account, and Google scans the text of emails sent by Gmail users and delivers adverts based on the content. Turn on Google Latitude, the company’s location tracking app, and it will know where you are, too. ...
via How Google crossed the creepy line - Telegraph.
How Google crossed the creepy line
The latest development, last week, saw Google admit that it had been collecting emails, passwords and web addresses from wireless networks across Britain. The data was collected by Google’s Street View cars, which traverse streets across the globe taking photographs that Google uses in its mapping services. Google apologised and a spokesman said that the company had not collected the data intentionally. “We are mortified by what happened,” said Alan Eustace, Google’s vice-president of engineering and research.
Nevertheless, Google’s critics see this as another step over “the creepy line” and the Information Commissioner’s Office says that it will reopen its investigation into Google’s collection of wifi data.
It is the latest in a long series of complaints about Google Street View. The faces of people who appear in Street View images are now blurred after criticism from privacy campaigners. Defence and security experts have warned of the danger of photographing sensitive sites and Google has been in protracted negotiations with the EU about the length of time that it retains photographs. Negotiations can only get you so far, however. Last year, the people of Broughton, in Buckinghamshire, formed a human barrier to stop Google’s Street View car from entering their village.
Street View is just one part of Google’s vast empire of data about us and our habits. Its search engine stores information on what you search for online, even if you are not logged in to a Google account, and Google scans the text of emails sent by Gmail users and delivers adverts based on the content. Turn on Google Latitude, the company’s location tracking app, and it will know where you are, too. ...
via How Google crossed the creepy line - Telegraph.
UFO Sighting Over Knotts Berry Farm?
Is it a bird? A plane? Or perhaps -- gasp -- a UFO? Those are the questions being asked about an iPhone picture taken at Knotts Berry Farm in Buena Park.
"This photo is extremely creepy," said Ryan Boone, who claims to have snapped the shot Tuesday before 10 p.m., while waiting in line to ride the Xcelerator rollercoaster.
The 31-year-old Beverly Hills resident sent the photo (original pic) to NBCLA. The photo, which Boone claims is not doctored, shows part of the coaster and looming above it, is a glowing, triangular object in the sky.
"At first I thought it had to be a glare, but there was nothing in the sky to glare off of," said Boone.
He laughed, "I've never been a believer in UFOs until I took this photo and saw it with my own eyes." ...
via UFO Sighting Over Knotts Berry Farm? | NBC Los Angeles.
I'm sure it is just a coincidence that the floating shape is the same shape as the brightest light source in the image... ;-)
UFO Sighting Over Knotts Berry Farm?
Is it a bird? A plane? Or perhaps -- gasp -- a UFO? Those are the questions being asked about an iPhone picture taken at Knotts Berry Farm in Buena Park.
"This photo is extremely creepy," said Ryan Boone, who claims to have snapped the shot Tuesday before 10 p.m., while waiting in line to ride the Xcelerator rollercoaster.
The 31-year-old Beverly Hills resident sent the photo (original pic) to NBCLA. The photo, which Boone claims is not doctored, shows part of the coaster and looming above it, is a glowing, triangular object in the sky.
"At first I thought it had to be a glare, but there was nothing in the sky to glare off of," said Boone.
He laughed, "I've never been a believer in UFOs until I took this photo and saw it with my own eyes." ...
via UFO Sighting Over Knotts Berry Farm? | NBC Los Angeles.
I'm sure it is just a coincidence that the floating shape is the same shape as the brightest light source in the image... ;-)
Humans mastered tool making earlier than thought
A group of prehistoric people mastered a difficult and delicate process to sharpen stones into spears and knives at least 75,000 years ago, more than 50,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a report.
This technique, known as pressure flaking, allowed for the more precise shaping of stones to turn them into better weapons for hunting, a paper published on Thursday in the U.S. periodical Science said.
"These points are very thin, sharp and narrow and possibly penetrated the bodies of animals better than that of other tools," said Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and a study co-author.
The new findings show pressure flaking took place at Blombos Cave in what is now South Africa during the Middle Stone Age by anatomically modern humans and involved the heating of silcrete -- quartz grains cemented by silica -- used to make tools, the university said in a news release. ...
via Humans mastered tool making earlier than thought | Reuters.
Humans mastered tool making earlier than thought
This technique, known as pressure flaking, allowed for the more precise shaping of stones to turn them into better weapons for hunting, a paper published on Thursday in the U.S. periodical Science said.
"These points are very thin, sharp and narrow and possibly penetrated the bodies of animals better than that of other tools," said Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and a study co-author.
The new findings show pressure flaking took place at Blombos Cave in what is now South Africa during the Middle Stone Age by anatomically modern humans and involved the heating of silcrete -- quartz grains cemented by silica -- used to make tools, the university said in a news release. ...
via Humans mastered tool making earlier than thought | Reuters.
Monkey Fossils Suggest Primates Came Out of Asia, Not Africa
Brandon Keim - The discovery of four ancient, palm-sized primates in what is now Libya suggests the human family tree’s taproot is in the Middle East, not Africa.
The conventional narrative of primate development places the origins of anthropoids — monkeys and apes, including humans — in Africa. Some paleontologists, however, think Asia is the more likely cradle for that ur-primate, or what Christopher Beard has called the “Dawn Monkey.”
Beard, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, is among the co-authors of the paper describing the new primates, published October 28 in Nature. The four species’ fossils, representing three distinct taxonomic families, are 40 million years old. Nothing similar was known to have lived in Africa at that time.
The diversity and timing of the new anthropoids raises two scenarios. Anthropoids might simply have emerged in Africa much earlier than thought, and gone undiscovered by modern paleontologists. Or they could have crossed over from Asia, where evidence suggests that anthropoids lived 55 million years ago, flourishing and diversifying in the wide-open ecological niches of an anthropoid-free Africa.
That humans may trace their evolutionary lineage to creatures like the newly discovered anthropoids, which likely weighed between four ounces and one pound and could sit comfortably in your hand, is an intriguing possibility. ...
via Monkey Fossils Suggest Primates Came Out of Asia, Not Africa | Wired Science | Wired.com.
Monkey Fossils Suggest Primates Came Out of Asia, Not Africa
The conventional narrative of primate development places the origins of anthropoids — monkeys and apes, including humans — in Africa. Some paleontologists, however, think Asia is the more likely cradle for that ur-primate, or what Christopher Beard has called the “Dawn Monkey.”
Beard, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, is among the co-authors of the paper describing the new primates, published October 28 in Nature. The four species’ fossils, representing three distinct taxonomic families, are 40 million years old. Nothing similar was known to have lived in Africa at that time.
The diversity and timing of the new anthropoids raises two scenarios. Anthropoids might simply have emerged in Africa much earlier than thought, and gone undiscovered by modern paleontologists. Or they could have crossed over from Asia, where evidence suggests that anthropoids lived 55 million years ago, flourishing and diversifying in the wide-open ecological niches of an anthropoid-free Africa.
That humans may trace their evolutionary lineage to creatures like the newly discovered anthropoids, which likely weighed between four ounces and one pound and could sit comfortably in your hand, is an intriguing possibility. ...
via Monkey Fossils Suggest Primates Came Out of Asia, Not Africa | Wired Science | Wired.com.
Bronze Age hoard found intact in Essex field
Archaeologists have unearthed a collection of Bronze Age axe heads, spear tips and other 3,000-year-old metal objects buried in an Essex field.
The items include an intact pottery container with heavy contents which has been removed undisturbed.
The materials are now at a local museum where archaeologists hope to uncover new insights into Bronze Age Britain.
"This is a really exciting find," said local archaeologist Laura McLean.
"To find a hoard still located in its Bronze Age context, below the level of ploughed soil, is very rare. The fact that there is pottery involved makes the find even more unusual."
The location was reported to archaeologists at Colchester and Ipswich Museums by a landowner from the Burnham-on-Crouch area and Mr J Humphreys, a metal detectorist. ...
via BBC News - Bronze Age hoard found intact in Essex field.
Bronze Age hoard found intact in Essex field
The items include an intact pottery container with heavy contents which has been removed undisturbed.
The materials are now at a local museum where archaeologists hope to uncover new insights into Bronze Age Britain.
"This is a really exciting find," said local archaeologist Laura McLean.
"To find a hoard still located in its Bronze Age context, below the level of ploughed soil, is very rare. The fact that there is pottery involved makes the find even more unusual."
The location was reported to archaeologists at Colchester and Ipswich Museums by a landowner from the Burnham-on-Crouch area and Mr J Humphreys, a metal detectorist. ...
via BBC News - Bronze Age hoard found intact in Essex field.
Leisure-time exercise 'reduces depression risk'
People who take regular exercise during their free time are less likely to have symptoms of depression and anxiety, a study of 40,000 Norwegians has found.
But physical activity which is part and parcel of the working day does not have the same effect, it suggests.
Writing in the British Journal of Psychiatry, the researchers said it was probably because there was not the same level of social interaction.
The charity Mind said that exercise and interaction aids our mental health.
Higher levels of social interaction during leisure time were found to be part of the reason for the link. ...
"Exercise gives you a natural high and is a great way to boost your mood. However, another mental health benefit of physical activity is derived from social interaction.
"So going out with a running club, taking part in a team sport or working on a communal allotment is far better for your mental well-being than a physically demanding job.
"Mind has found that after just a short country walk 90% of people had increased self-esteem," Mr Farmer said.
via BBC News - Leisure-time exercise 'reduces depression risk'.
Leisure-time exercise 'reduces depression risk'
But physical activity which is part and parcel of the working day does not have the same effect, it suggests.
Writing in the British Journal of Psychiatry, the researchers said it was probably because there was not the same level of social interaction.
The charity Mind said that exercise and interaction aids our mental health.
Higher levels of social interaction during leisure time were found to be part of the reason for the link. ...
"Exercise gives you a natural high and is a great way to boost your mood. However, another mental health benefit of physical activity is derived from social interaction.
"So going out with a running club, taking part in a team sport or working on a communal allotment is far better for your mental well-being than a physically demanding job.
"Mind has found that after just a short country walk 90% of people had increased self-esteem," Mr Farmer said.
via BBC News - Leisure-time exercise 'reduces depression risk'.
Digger finds Neolithic tomb complex
Archaeologists on Orkney are investigating what is thought to be a 5,000-year-old tomb complex.
A local man stumbled on the site while using a mechanical digger for landscaping.
It appears to contain a central passageway and multiple chambers excavated from rock.
There is a large neolithic burial complex nearby called The Tomb of the Eagles where over 300 bodies were found.
"Potentially these skeletons could tell us so much about Neolithic people," said Orkney Islands Council archaeologist Julie Gibson.
"Not only in relation to their deaths, but their lives."
One end of the tomb was accidentally removed as it was discovered and as a result, the burial site has now been flooded.
Archaeologists are in a race against time to recover its contents before they are damaged or destroyed.
"There might also be other material, pottery or organics such as woven grass, buried in there - which cannot last under the circumstances," said Ms Gibson. ...
via BBC News - Digger finds Neolithic tomb complex.
Digger finds Neolithic tomb complex
A local man stumbled on the site while using a mechanical digger for landscaping.
It appears to contain a central passageway and multiple chambers excavated from rock.
There is a large neolithic burial complex nearby called The Tomb of the Eagles where over 300 bodies were found.
"Potentially these skeletons could tell us so much about Neolithic people," said Orkney Islands Council archaeologist Julie Gibson.
"Not only in relation to their deaths, but their lives."
One end of the tomb was accidentally removed as it was discovered and as a result, the burial site has now been flooded.
Archaeologists are in a race against time to recover its contents before they are damaged or destroyed.
"There might also be other material, pottery or organics such as woven grass, buried in there - which cannot last under the circumstances," said Ms Gibson. ...
via BBC News - Digger finds Neolithic tomb complex.
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