There’s no denying it, ladies and gentlemen: The monthly assemblage of what is now consistently 1000-2000 cyclists for Miami’s Critical Mass has hit, or is at least beginning to hit, the mainstream.
Ivory Coast Stampede: At Least 60 Crushed To Death In Abidjan Stadium Stampede
Posted in: Today's Chili(Adds government comment, details)
ABIDJAN, Jan 1 (Reuters) – About 60 people were crushed to death in a stampede outside a stadium in Ivory Coast’s main city of Abidjan after a New Year’s Eve fireworks display, the government said on Tuesday.
The incident took place near Felix Houphouet Boigny Stadium where a crowd had gathered to watch fireworks, emergency officials said.
One of the injured, speaking to Reuters at a hospital, said security forces had arrived to break up the crowd, triggering a panic in which many people fell over and were trampled.
“The provisional death toll is 60 and there are 49 injured,” Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko said in a statement broadcast on national television.
President Alassane Ouattara, visiting injured people at the hospital, called the incident a national tragedy and said an investigation was underway to determine what happened.
A Reuters correspondent said blood stains and abandoned shoes littered the scene outside the stadium on Tuesday morning.
“My two children came here yesterday. I told them not to come but they didn’t listen. They came when I was sleeping. What will I do?” said Assetou Toure, a cleaner.
She did not know if her children had escaped unhurt.
The incident was the worst of its kind in Abidjan since 2010, when a stampede at a stadium during a football match killed 18 people.
Ivory Coast, once a stable economic hub for West Africa, is struggling to recover from a 2011 civil war in which more than 3,000 people were killed.
(Reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly and Alain Amontchi; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
A new study conducted on mice has been investigating what the effect of radiation in space that astronauts would be subject to on a mission to Mars might do to the brain. NASA hopes to put astronauts on the surface of Mars or possibly asteroids closer to the earth in the coming decades. According to the study, researchers have shown for the first time that exposure to radiation levels equivalent to a Mars mission could produce cognitive problems and speed changes in the brain.
According to the researchers, the changes the radiation can cause in the brain are associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The author of the study is Kerry O’Banion, a neuroscientist from the University of Rochester Medical Center. The problem with deep space missions is that astronauts are outside the Earth’s protective magnetic field that shields us from harmful radiation.
Once astronauts venture out of lower orbit, they are constantly bombarded with dangerous cosmic rays. The longer the astronauts are in space, the greater the risk. This is concerning for NASA because it hopes to send astronauts to Mars by about 2035. The round-trip to and from Mars could take at least two years.
This study investigated a specific type of space radiation known as high-mass, high-charged particles or HZE. Shielding astronauts from these potentially hazardous particles is a very difficult job according to the study. These HZE particles have enough mass and speed to allow them to travel through solid objects such as spacecraft and astronauts inside. O’Banion says that to shield astronauts from these particles effectively the spacecraft would have to be wrapped in a 6-foot thick block of lead or concrete.
The researchers tested the mice using iron HZE particles generated by a particle accelerator at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory. The mice were dosed with radiation levels comparable to what astronauts might receive during a Mars mission. After dosing the mice with radiation, the rodents were subjected to a series of experiments where they had to recognize places linked with electric shocks to their feet. The researchers found that rodents dosed with radiation were far more likely to fail the tests than those not dosed. Dosed mice also showed signs of inflamed blood vessels and abnormally high levels of beta amyloid, which is a protein that accumulates as one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease.
[via MSNBC]
Radiation in space could cause changes in the brains of astronauts is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Rockman Corner reader Ricardo Becker made miniature figures of Mega Man and the various bosses from the first 10 Mega Man games. I’m sure part of him just wanted to squash and tear some of these bosses apart as payback for all the hard times they gave him.
Ricardo used cold porcelain – which is neither cold nor porcelain – to make the figures. They may not be as pretty, polished or accurate as other fan made work, but Ricardo made up for it with the sheer number of figures he made.
Head to Ricardo’s Flickr page for the rest of the robot masters, and marvel at the franchise’s unbelievably complex naming scheme.
[via Rockman Corner via GoNintendo]
A Firecracker Launching Slingshot Sounds Like a Dangerous Way To Ring In the New Year
Posted in: Today's Chili Most New Year’s revellers are happy to celebrate the occasion by watching the ball drop in Times Square—or just getting completely blotto. But as we’ve discovered time and time again, Joerg Sprave isn’t your average Joe. And to welcome 2013 with a bang—literally—he’s created a special slingshot capable of launching firecrackers with gusto. More »
A report from the Japanese publication Nikkei is claiming that Apple will be extending its digital bookstore into Japan this month. The report claims that the Apple iBookstore could be rolled out in Japan as early as January 2013. The report also indicates that Apple has signed up with a number of big Japanese publishers.
The Japanese publishers tipped to be involved with Japanese digital bookstore for Apple include Kadokawa, Kodansha, Shogakukan, and others. The book publishers that Apple has signed up for service are tipped to have 80,000 titles lined up. Apple already has a sizable lead in the tablet market in Japan reportedly holding 60% of the market with the iPad.
Combining its digital bookstore with tens of thousands of titles and market-leading position for its tablet, and dedicated digital readers from other manufacturers in Japan are going to have a rough 2013. Apple is also expected to boost the growth of the Japanese digital book market, which is now reportedly worth ¥70 billion.
The digital book market in Japan is expected to grow to ¥200 billion in the next couple of years. Apple will be the latecomer to the Japanese digital book market with Kobo, Google, and Amazon already established in Japan. However, the massive popularity the iPad is expected to give Apple a significant advantage.
[via The-digital-reader]
iBookstore to launch in Japan as early as January is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Sony Xperia Z ‘Yuga’ and ZL ‘Odin’ make a press shot debut on New Year’s Day
Posted in: Today's ChiliAre you ready to welcome in 2013? It’s sure to be another hot year for handsets, and if this pair of leaked Xperia smartphones is any indication, Sony is likely to be off to a solid start come CES. The svelte Xperia Z “Yuga” and slightly sleeker ZL “Odin” have made a premature debut on the Japanese tech giant’s site, with a pair of straight-on press shots appearing overnight. The Xperia Z shot appears to be in line with earlier leaks, while the ZL is shaping up to be a slightly more compact variant, potentially squeezing identical hardware into a smaller shell. Both devices are rumored to include 5-inch 1080p LCDs, quad-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro processors with 2 gigs of RAM and Adreno 320 graphics, along with a 13-megapixel Exmor RS sensor on the rear — oddly, the ZL’s front-facing camera appears to be positioned on the bottom. Sony has yet to confirm either device’s specifications, but with CES just around the corner, we don’t have long to wait for either device to become official.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Sony
Via: Engadget Spanish, Xperia Blog
Source: Sony Mobile (Z), Sony Mobile (ZL)
Urban car company smart plans to equip its next-gen ForTwo with a removable tablet dashboard, insiders claim, with the upcoming city runabout offering a detachable display to offer navigation and other information on the move. Details of the tug-off tablet have not been revealed, with Auto Express‘ sources merely suggesting that the slate section will handle sat-nav and trip computer duties, though previous smart concepts have hinted that the company has more functionality in mind than a basic PND.
The smart forstars concept from September, for instance, featured smartphone support to remotely set air-conditioning levels, stream music and video over Bluetooth, and control overall playback through the outlandish car’s dashboard-mounted projector system. Before that, the electric for-us concept used a docked smartphone in the dash to replace a traditional rear-view mirror, squirting the feed from a back-facing camera to the handset’s display.
Whether features like those will make it into the new smart ForTwo, expected to hit roads in early 2014, is unclear. The report suggests some similarities with the detachable sat-nav system in the VW up!, which is in reality a simple dockable Navigon PND. VW did flirt with the idea of more comprehensive tablet integration with its 2011 Bulli microbus concept, that put a full-sized iPad in the center console.
smart already offers a touchscreen navigation system on the current-gen ForTwo, though it is not removable. A more impressive touch system would certainly fit with the general direction of the auto industry; currently Tesla probably leads the way with its expansive finger-friendly dashboard in the Model X, though regulators look set to clamp down on overly-distracting systems.
The new smart is expected to use a 64bhp, 900cc petrol two-cylinder engine, with an 87bhp electric model arriving at the end of 2014; a drop-top will also be offered. Meanwhile, a new four-door ForFour is also due in 2014, with a crossover – based roughly on the forstars concept – tipped for late 2015 and based on the underlying architecture of Nissan’s next-gen Juke.
[via Autoblog]
2014 smart ForTwo detachable tablet dashboard tipped is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Huawei has already left little doubt as to what we’ll see from its smartphone line at CES. If official teasers aren’t enough, however, well-known phone tipster @evleaks has given Unwired View what’s purported to be press images for the three key introductions. The Ascend W1 Windows Phone (at left) looks much like we’ve seen from live shots, just with newer black and pink hues; the Ascend D2 (right) isn’t quite so rainbow-like, but supports what’s been claimed of the 5-inch phone’s aesthetic and custom interface. A shot for the Ascend Mate (after the break), despite representing the company’s stand-out device, is the least surprising given that executive Richard Yu showed customers the real thing just days ago. We’d still give these images a long look — while there’s chances for inaccuracies or surprises, they may be the best glimpses of Huawei’s early 2013 lineup before we see it first-hand.
Continue reading Huawei D2, Mate and W1 reportedly pose for press images
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Source: Unwired View
If you are the sort that likes uninterrupted sleep, you may be taking advantage of the Do Not Disturb feature of iOS 6. This feature allows you to set a specific window where all calls and alerts received are automatically silenced. Reports are coming in that some sort of flaw in iOS 6 is preventing the Do Not Disturb feature from shutting off automatically today.
It’s easy enough to tell if your phone is still in Do Not Disturb mode. If the mode is on it will have a moon icon on the status bar. Reports first surfaced from users in Japan with some reporting that the feature was enabled even though it was outside the time scheduled. The user claims that reloading the devices didn’t help and that the smartphone software was up-to-date.
The problem with having your device in Do Not Disturb mode when it’s not supposed to be is that you may not hear important calls or alerts. This isn’t the first time Apple has had problems related to New Year’s Day.
Apple has previously had problems with alarms not going off on New Year’s Day. The good news is that the Do Not Disturb feature doesn’t interfere with alarms so at least you won’t miss work or other important dates this morning.
[via MacRumors]
iOS 6 Do Not Disturb is reportedly failing to turn off today is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.