Too much of a basic human need

Water is essential to life but in such places as India, Pakistan, China, and Thailand deluges have once again caused misery. Typhoon Nesat hit the Philippines earlier this week on its way to south China. In Pakistan, more than 5 million people have been affected by recent flooding, according to the aid agency Oxfam. Pakistan is still struggling to recover from the devastating monsoon rains in 2010. -- Lloyd Young(36 photos total)

A village boy sits on the banks of the swelling Daya River, near Pipli village, about 25 kilometers from the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneshwar Sept. 9. The flood situation in Orissa state worsened with the release of more water downstream from Hirakud dam, according to a news agency. A high alert has been sounded in 11 districts of the state. (Biswaranjan Rout/Associated Press)

Rumor: Next iPhone to feature powerful Assistant, 1 GB of RAM (Updated)

Last week a reliable source (who asked not to be named) approached TUAW with information about upcoming iPhone features that sounded incredible. We didn't run the post at that time, however, both out of concern for the source and because we couldn't corroborate the details.

This morning, 9to5 Mac posted pretty much exactly what we heard from our source -- that the next iPhone is going to feature an amazing voice control and device navigation system called Assistant.


That's not all -- the source (who may or may not be the same person who talked with 9to5) told us that the iPhone will come packed with 1 GB of RAM and the Apple A5 dual-core processor, as well as a vastly improved 8 MP camera. 9to5 reported some details TUAW didn't get, including that the new phone will contain Qualcomm's Gobi Baseband chipset for use as a true world phone (GSM and CDMA).


The Assistant, however, is a game-changer. Assistant is an outgrowth of Voice Control, which was introduced with the iPhone 3GS in 2009. It is based on technology from Siri, a company that was purchased by Apple last year. The Assistant requires the power of the A5 CPU as well as the 1 GB of RAM, which is why existing iPhones will not be able to take advantage of the new feature.

The speech interface is launched by holding the home button for several seconds, after which a microphone interface slides up from the bottom of the screen, covering only about a quarter of the display. In contrast to the existing iPhone Voice Control capabilities, Assistant can help you with just about anything.

Want to send an iMessage without typing? I could just say "send a text to Barb saying I'm going to the bank" and the message is created and sent. You can also use Assistant with the location-based reminder feature in the iOS Reminders app, by using commands like "Remind me to buy Vitamin D when I'm at Whole Foods Market." Voice requests for directions are also a feature -- asking "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" won't result in the expected response ("practice, practice, practice") but directions from your current location to 881 7th Avenue in New York City.

Assistant also has a conversation view, in which the system literally converses with the user in order to provide the best results. Let's say set up a meeting with Tim Cook on October 4th. You'd say "Set up a meeting with Tim Cook," and the iPhone would respond by asking "Which email address should Tim Cook be notified at, home or work?" When you'd respond "Work,", the iPhone would ask the time and date you want to schedule the meeting for. At the end of the conversation, you'd be shown the details of the calendar event for confirmation.

We're told that you can speak to the Assistant in your normal tone and speed of voice; it's that accurate. Assistant is also integrated with Wolfram Alpha, so you could also ask your iPhone questions like "Convert 10.2 acres to hectares" or "What's the cube root of 924?" and get an immediate answer.

One more fascinating feature that is likely to be packed with privacy settings is "Find my Friends." With this feature, you could ask your phone "Where's Erica Sadun?" and (provided she's made her location information available to me) the iPhone would display her location. This could be very useful for finding TUAW teammates at Macworld Expo 2012.

As with any leaked information, this could all be a ploy by Apple to a) figure out who is leaking to the Apple press or b) get all of us excited about an upcoming announcement. Well, we're already quivering with anticipation about the announcement, and if the new device(s) are anything remotely like what we've heard about, Apple will have another winner on its hands.

China: Daily Life Sept. 2011

This Big Picture post gives us a glimpse of daily life in parts of China, documented by wire photographers from the Associated Press, Reuters and Getty. The post begins with a short essay by Reuters photographer Jason Lee. Lee photographed six-year-old Wang Gengxiang, known as the "Masked Boy." Gengxiang was severely burned in an accident involving a burning pile of straw last winter. Most of the skin on the little boy's head was burned off, requiring him to wear a full surgical mask. The mask is said to prevent his scars from becoming infected. According to the local media in the village where Gengxiang was photographed, the doctors cannot continue his skin-graft surgery until his damaged trachea (or windpipe) is strong enough. The Lee essay is following by a black slide, and then more "slice of life" photography from a still somewhat mysterious China. -- Paula Nelson (50 photos total)

Wang Gengxiang on Children's Day, June 1, 2010, and after he was severely burned in an accident, at Mijiazhuang village on the outskirts of Fenyang, North China's Shanxi province, September 9, 2011. Gengxiang, age 6, known as "Masked Boy", was severely burned in an accident involving a burning pile of straw last winter. (Jason Lee/Reuters)

Afghanistan, September 2011

Afghanistan, September 2011:

Tribal elders say the Taliban are far from defeated. The Taliban continue to wage a brutal war, taking a toll on Afghan citizens and American forces. The Department of Defense has identified 1,761 American service members who have died in the Afghan war and related operations as of Sept. 21, about 10 years since the start of the war. In visiting Afghanistan monthly in The Big Picture, we try to reflect our troops presence in the country as well as their interaction with the Afghan people. -- Paula Nelson (54 photos total)

US soldiers from the 27th Infantry Regiment fire 120-mm mortar rounds toward insurgent positions at Outpost Monti in Kunar province on Sept. 17. After a decade of fighting in Afghanistan, 130,000 troops from dozens of countries continue to battle resilient Taliban, who use homemade bombs and guerrilla tactics in a bid to undermine the Afghan government and the NATO mission. (Tauseef Mustafa/AFP/Getty Images)

Screw Portraits by Andrew Myers

California-based artist Andrew Myers drills thousands of painted screws into wood and then individually paints each screw head. A labor-intensive process, Myers explains that these are more a labor of love than a profitable endeavor.

Colonial Cousins- Something About The Way You Smile

A step-by-step guide to celebrating

All it takes are two groups of people, one to gather and one to march past them. Parades took place across the globe these past two months for a variety of celebrations, from shows of military power, to tributes to organized labor, to pride for one’s country or culture. -- Lloyd Young (37 photos total)A performer dances in the street parade at the annual Notting Hill Carnival in central London Aug. 29. (Toby Melville/Reuters)

Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light, According to One Experiment

f it's true, it will mark the biggest discovery in physics in the past half-century: Elusive, nearly massless subatomic particles called neutrinos appear to travel just faster than light, a team of physicists in Europe reports. If so, the observation would wreck Einstein's theory of special relativity, which demands that nothing can travel faster than light.

In fact, the result would be so revolutionary that it's sure to be met with skepticism all over the world. "I suspect that the bulk of the scientific community will not take this as a definitive result unless it can be reproduced by at least one and preferably several experiments," says V. Alan Kostelecky, a theorist at Indiana University, Bloomington. He adds, however, "I'd be delighted if it were true."
The data come from a 1300-metric-ton particle detector named Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus (OPERA). Lurking in Italy's subterranean Gran Sasso National Laboratory, OPERA detects neutrinos that are fired through the earth from the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. As the particles hardly interact at all with other matter, they stream right through the ground, with only a very few striking the material in the detector and making a noticeable shower of particles.
Over 3 years, OPERA researchers timed the roughly 16,000 neutrinos that started at CERN and registered a hit in the detector. They found that, on average, the neutrinos made the 730-kilometer, 2.43-millisecond trip roughly 60 nanoseconds faster than expected if they were traveling at light speed. "It's a straightforward time-of-flight measurement," says Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of Bern and spokesperson for the 160-member OPERA collaboration. "We measure the distance and we measure the time, and we take the ratio to get the velocity, just as you learned to do in high school." Ereditato says the uncertainty in the measurement is 10 nanoseconds.
However, even Ereditato says it's way too early to declare relativity wrong. "I would never say that," he says. Rather, OPERA researchers are simply presenting a curious result that they cannot explain and asking the community to scrutinize it. "We are forced to say something," he says. "We could not sweep it under the carpet because that would be dishonest." The results will be presented at a seminar tomorrow at CERN.
The big question is whether OPERA researchers have discovered particles going faster than light, or whether they have been misled by an unidentified "systematic error" in their experiment that's making the time look artificially short. Chang Kee Jung, a neutrino physicist at Stony Brook University in New York, says he'd wager that the result is the product of a systematic error. "I wouldn't bet my wife and kids because they'd get mad," he says. "But I'd bet my house."
Jung, who is U.S. spokesperson for a similar experiment in Japan called T2K, says the tricky part is accurately measuring the time between when the neutrinos are born by slamming a burst of protons into a solid target and when they actually reach the detector. That timing relies on the global positioning system, and the GPS measurements can have uncertainties of tens of nanoseconds. "I would be very interested in how they got a 10-nanosecond uncertainty, because from the systematics of GPS and the electronics, I think that's a very hard number to get."
No previous measurements obviously rule out the result, says Kostelecky, who has spent 25 years developing a theory, called the standard model extension, that accounts for all possible types of violations of special relativity in the context of particle physics. "If you had told me that there was a claim of faster-than-light electrons, I would be a lot more skeptical," he says. The possibilities for neutrinos are less constrained by previous measurements, he says.
Still, Kostelecky repeats the old adage: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Even Ereditato says that one measurement does not extraordinary evidence make.

Samsung Unveils Flexible Android Smartphone

Think a flexible smartphone is just science fiction? You might have to think again, thanks to Samsung. The Korean company recently unveiled Galaxy Skin, an Android smartphone that can take on different shapes and take on even hammer blows, set to begin production in 2012 Q2 with murmurings of a release sometime thereafter.

So aside from its flexible form, what specs can Galaxy Skin boastof? For starters, it will have a flexible 4″ AMOLED display (800×480) made of plastic polyimide substrate. Samsung already confirmed that they have started production of such screens. This form of AMOLED technology consumes less energy but still delivers good screen brightness compared to the normal Samsung AMOLED screens.

Other known specs of Galaxy Skin include 1 GB RAM; 1.2 GHz processor; 8 MP rear camera and VGA front camera with auto focus, self-portrait, stop motion, action shot, and Panorama shots; and 1500 mAh battery. Connectivity-wise, it has Bluetooth 3.0, USB 2.0, and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n features. It will reportedly run on Android Jellybean (the next Google OS version after Ice Cream Sandwich), but there are speculations that Google will make a special version for it, namely Android Flexy.

With the Galaxy Skin, one can have table clock, smart projector, or even a wristwatch. Now we await Apple’s statement regarding this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5boywxr8ot4&feature=player_embedded

Windows 1 v Windows 8 – have we really come this far??

Funny GIF

A look at Real Madrid's headline financial figures

Real Madrid is one of several major clubs (hello Chelsea) who publish a gushing press release summarising their financial results several weeks ahead of the full figures. This year's summary came out on 16th September, ahead of RM's AGM on 25th September. This post takes a look at what the figures say and makes a comparison with Manchester United (the only other major club to report 2010/11 figures so far).

Revenues - performance on the pitch drives growth

Despite finishing second in La Liga to Barcelona for the third successive season, 2010/11 was a better season for RM than 2009/10. The club won silverware in the Copa del Rey and perhaps more importantly made it beyond the first knock-out round of the Champions League for the first time since 2003/04 (even if it was FCB that knocked them out in the semi-final).

The better on-pitch performance was the major factor behind the 8.6% (€37.9m) increase in revenue to €480.2m (£411m). The new three year Champions League TV deal and the club's progress to the semis increased RM's CL income from €26.8m in 2009/10 to €39.3m in 2010/11. The two cup runs meant Real Madrid played 29 home games in total, compared to 24 the previous season and this will largely account for the rest of the revenue increase. No split between Matchday, Media and Commercial revenues is given in the press statement.

Costs - wages up, other costs sharply lower

The 2010/11 season saw the start of the Mourinho era at the Bernebeu and with him came significant transfer spending and a large hike in the wage bill.

Despite the increase in income, the ratio of wages to turnover increased to 45% from 43.5%, although this is still a very healthy performance compared to other clubs (FCB reported a ratio of 67% in 2009/10, Chelsea 84% and City 107%).

We can use the reported ratio to separately identify staff and non staff costs. Despite the departure of club legend Raul as well as Guti, Diarra, van der Vaart and others, the arrival of Carvalho, Di Maria, Ozil, Khedira etc as well as Mourinho himself meant the wage bill rose a very punchy 12.4% year on year. It is reasonable to assume there was an increase in bonuses during the season to match the better playing performance.

With staff costs rising sharply, the club did very well to maintain virtually flat operating expenses (before depreciation and amortisation). With total costs only rising 0.5%, non-staff expenses must have fallen 15.9% year on year. This cost line has proved volatile in past years (non-staff expenses fell 12.7% in 2007/08 and then rebounded 24% in 2008/09) but this is still a very commendable performance. It appears Real Madrid have found significant economies at the club which has allowed them to spend more on the playing side.

EBITDA - up sharply but very low profit on player sales

With revenue up 8.6% and total operating expenses only up 0.5%, EBITDA (ex-player sales) rose very sharply in 2010/11, up almost a third to €147.7m. The EBITDA margin was a healthy 30.8%, a huge improvement on 2009/10's 25.2% and almost double the 16.9% the club made in 2004/05.

With only van der Vaart commanding any sort of proper sale fee, the club's "profit on player" sales (transfer proceeds compared to a player's book value) was sharply lower at €3.4m vs. €34.0m, leaving total EBITDA up 3.8% at €151.1m. Profit on player sales is a volatile figure for any club and I would not include it in any measures of fundamental profitability.

After EBITDA - small rise in amortisation

Between the €151.1m of EBITDA including player sales and Real Madrid's reported operating profit of €46.5m are charges for depreciation and player contract amortisation. Unhelpfully the club did not split out the two categories but depreciation is likely to be a very small element (Barcelona's depreciation charge in 2009/10 was only €8.1m for example). Player contract amortisation is how transfer spending is reflected in football club accounts. The value a club pays for the contract of a player is "amortised" or charged over the length of the contract.

The implied depreciation and amortisation charge for 2010/11 is €104.6m, up slightly from €101.7m in the previous year. This movement reflects around €50m of transfer spending (which assuming the new players were on five year contracts would add c. €10m to amortisation) less the sales of Diarra (whose original €26m cost was amortising at c. €5.2m pa) and van der Vaart (his €13m cost was amortising at c. €2.6m pa).

Real Madrid's amortisation charge is the highest in world football, reflecting years of big name signings at record breaking prices.

Debt and interest

The Real Madrid press release trumpets a 30.6% fall in debt to €169.7m from €244.6m the previous year. The club's own definition of debt is very wide, including football creditors and stadium debt. There is no breakdown of bank debt, transfer fees due and other creditors in the release.

The €75m fall in debt looks entirely consistent with EBITDA (ex-profit on player sales) of €148m, net (cash) transfers of c. €40m, interest of around €10m (my estimate based on lower average debt and the interest paid in 2009/10), tax and capex.

The Real Madrid balance sheet is pretty strong and at only 1.1x EBITDA debt is not a major concern for the club.

A quick comparison with MUFC

Manchester United is the only other major European club to have published 2010/11 results so far. I have converted the Real Madrid figures to £ (at the average rate between 1st July 2010 and 30th June 2011 of €1 = 85.65p).

Real Madrid's turnover continues to exceed United's, but the gap closed in the last twelve months as United reached the CL final and saw very strong growth on the commercial side. Both clubs have seen an enormous increase in income over the last five years, but the very significant price increases at United mean it has grown revenue faster (+13.9% CAGR 2006-2011 vs. 10.4% CAGR at Real).

There remain several structural reasons for the gap in turnover between the clubs including;

a) The membership fees Real's Socios pay (c. 60,000 people paying a total of c. £7m pa)

b) A higher proportion of executive facilities at the Bernabeu compared to Old Trafford and

c) The hugely unbalanced La Liga TV deal which brings FCB and Real Madrid around £110m each per annum (vs. the £60m United earned from the Premier League).

In addition to these factors, Real Madrid has for many years been one of the most effective drivers of commercial income in football earning over £116m from this source in 2009/10.

The two clubs have virtually identical wages/income ratios (45% for RM and 46.1% for MUFC). With Real's higher income base this means the Spanish club spend £33m more than United on wages. It should be noted however that the Real figure include around £20m for the club's basketball team and that the United number includes bonuses for winning the league and reaching the Champions League final (which RM did not of course have to pay) of £9.7m. Taking these into account, we can see that Real spend around 15% more than United on "normal" football wages.

United's other operating expenses are significantly lower than Real's, but the two numbers are converging rapidly. United has long had higher margins than Real due to lower wage costs, but the gap is now as close as it has been in recent years at only 2.7%.

It is after the EBITDA line that the major differences between the two club's business models is evident.

United's depreciation and amortisation charges are almost half Real Madrid's reflecting the far lower reliance on expensive transfers at United in the last five years.

Of the eighteen players who appeared more than 20 times for Real Madrid in 2010/11, only one (Casillas) came through the club's youth system, one was a loanee (Adebayor) and sixteen were players bought in at an average cost of £19m per player.

By contrast at United, there were also 18 players who made more than 20 appearances last season but four were youth products and those who were not cost an average of only £12m each.

The money saved by United on transfers goes on interest. Real Madrid reported an interest charge of £11m in 2009/10 and I estimate it will have fallen (as the debt has fallen) to around £8m in 2010/11. At United of course, interest on the bonds soaks up around £44m per annum, purely for the honour of being owned by the Glazer family. In previous years the Glazer's financial structure has involved other major costs for United. In 2009/10, swap losses, FX losses and other charges cost an additional £40m. In 2010/11 there was a small net gain of £5m on such items.

Putting the two clubs side by side, we can see two very profitable football clubs putting their resources to very different uses. Neither will struggle under the new Financial Fair Play regulations.

Real Madrid would benefit from having United's youth set-up of course, but United would benefit from having Real's balance sheet. Both need to find a way to beat Barcelona....

Amazing Rescue in Utah

The Evolution of Greek Debt

A light-hearted illustration (if that is possible in these grim times) of how the problem of Greek debt has grown in size over the last two years.

Sunday School WIN

The Southern Lights From Space

Astronaut Ron Garan takes photos in space and posts them to Google+. This photo was taken yesterday, aboard the ISS, and shows the Southern Lights.

WTF NEWS: World's Largest Sperm Bank Says They Don't Want Your Ginger Sperm

Cryos, a Danish network of international sperm banks and the largest one of its kind, has officially stopped taking sperm from redheaded guys. Despite an overall increase in donations, the demand for ginger sperm just isn't that high. Sorry, Matt.
Essentially, no one loves redheads sterile couples by and large don't want to make redhead babies. Cryos director Ole Schou even went on record to state that, unless a woman's partner was a ginger or she had a preference for red hair, he didn't see many people choosing red hair over other hair types. In fact, the only country where the specimens were running off the shelves was Ireland.
I just wonder how other hair colors factor into the mix. Platinum blonde can't be doing that much better can it?

Foldit players solve AIDS puzzle

Gamers model retroviral protease, which has baffled scientists for a decade, in just three weeks.

Players of the online game Foldit have helped discover the structure of an enzyme that had the scientific community stumped for a decade, representing a significant step forward in attempts to cure retroviral diseases like AIDS.
The enzyme, a Mason-Pfizer monkey virus (MPMV) retroviral protease, was accurately modelled by Foldit players in just three weeks, and opens the door to development of antiretroviral drugs. Foldit makes use of players' 3D puzzle-solving abilities and competitive nature to solve problems that computers alone have been unable to do.
A report, published by the University Of Washington and crediting gamers as well as researchers, says the discovery "provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs."
Firas Khatib, of the university's biochemistry lab, said: "We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed. The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."
Foldit co-creator Seth Cooper added: "People have spational reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at. Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans.
"The results show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before."
Foldit, a collaboration between the University Of Washington's computer science and biochemistry departments, was launched in 2008. The University says it has two further discoveries - one algorithmic, the other a brand-new protein - which it intends to publish in the near future.

The Mystery of Wrinkly-When-Wet Fingers, Solved

Mystery of the century, you guys. No, the millenium. All times. A new paper in the journal Brain, Behavior and Evolution has a new answer to the eternal question: why do our fingers and toes get all wrinkly after bathtime? The answer: traction.

The old solution is that wrinkling is simply the result of your fingers and toes absorbing water after a long period of being submerged. But there are problems with this! First: why is it only our fingers and toes that get wrinkly? Second: why is this such an unusual trait among mammals (only humans and macaques get wrinkly)? Third: why, if this is a simple tale of osmosis, do our fingers and toes cease to wrinkle when nerves to them are cut?

The paper, which you can read here, suggests that wrinkled fingers actually provide drainage for water so as to ensure greater traction, just like tires on a car. By examining the soaked fingers of 28 subjects, the scientists discovered that each finger showed a similar pattern of wrinkles: as the New York Times puts it, "unconnected channels diverging away from one another as they got more distant from the fingertips." That allows water to drain away more efficiently from the fingers as they are pressed against an object, giving more surface area and a firmer grip.

Of course, this is all just a theory, and the scientists still have to study whether these precise rivulets actually do provide a better grip, as well as why the trait is found only in these few species. Still, it's a major step to answering the question we all asked as children (or as privileged adults with hot tubs).

Past as Prologue? How Today Looked 100 Years Ago

Past as Prologue? How Today Looked 100 Years Ago:



Architects working with robots, firefighters equipped with artificial wings, electric learning machines and airships for everyone: this is the year 2000 – as imagined in 1910 – and it’s a vision of mechanical wonder decked out in Edwardian finery. French artist Villemard produced these illustrations predicting what life would be like at the dawn of the 21st century, and while some are hilarious, others are surprisingly accurate.







Firmly entrenched in the Industrial Age, the forward-thinking minds of the early 20th century were sure about one thing: machines would play an increasingly vital role in daily life well into the future. Reaching 90 years into the future, Villemard correctly anticipated technological advances like teleconferencing, radio news broadcasts and motorized roller-skates.





We may not have motorized hair-brushing machines, robot tailors or headsets that enable us to learn by osmosis, but we certainly rely on technology to perform more of our basic tasks than ever before. Villemard’s idea to use radium as a heat source would have proved disastrous, of course, but he wasn’t too far off – nuclear power was right around the corner.





When these images were created, suspended monorails, electric trains, blimps and bi-planes were state-of-the-art technology, seeming like the height of innovation. So it seemed only natural that, by the new millennium, we’d all be navigating the skies in personal aircraft, chased by police officers that resemble flying squirrels. And while floating airships are now largely a thing of the past, we’re still waiting on the flying cars we were promised by futurists so many decades ago.

A glimpse of North Korea

North Korea has long been enigmatic - especially to the West. An elaborate cult of personality created around the ruling Kim family permeates both the cultural and political lives of the nation. The world's most militarized nation, it has been developing nuclear weapons and a space program. In 2002, President George Bush labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil," primarily due to its aggressive military posture but also because of its abysmal human rights record. North Korea has long maintained close relations with the People's Republic of China and Russia. In an attempt to ameliorate the loss of investments due to international sanctions over its weapons program, North Korean officials have initiated a tourism push, focused on Chinese visitors. Still, every travel group or individual visitor is constantly accompanied by one or two "guides" who normally speak the mother language of the tourist. While some tourism has increased over the last few years, Western visitors remain scarce. The last several photos in this post are by Associated Press photographer David Guttenfelder, who offers rare glimpses of life in the shuttered country. -- Paula Nelson (54 photos total)

Rolling out the red carpet for tourists is not commonly associated with the reclusive North Korean government, but that is what workers did for the departure ceremony of Mangyongbyong cruise ship in Rason City on Aug. 30. About 130 passengers departed the rundown port of Rajin, near the China-Russia border, for the scenic Mount Kumgang resort near South Korea. North Korea's state tourism bureau has teamed up with a Chinese travel company to run the country's first ever cruise. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)