Giant virus revived from ancient permafrost

Melting permafrost could unleash new human pathogens

Scientists have discovered a new type of  virus in 30,000-year-old permafrost and managed to revive it, producing an infection.

The giant virus obtained from Siberian permafrost was frozen for 30,000 years, but was able to infect an amoeba when it was revived. (Image courtesy of Julia Bartoli and Chantal Abergel, IGS and CNRS-AMU.)

Fortunately, the new virus, namedPithovirus sibericum, infects amoebas and is not harmful to humans. 

But its ability to become infectious again after so many millenniums is a warning, writes Jean-Michel Claverie at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at Aix-Marseille University and his colleagues in a new study published Monday..

"The revival of such an ancestral amoeba infecting virus … suggests that the thawing of permafrost either from global warming or industrial exploitation of circumpolar regions might not be exempt from future threats to human or animal health," they wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Giant DNA viruses, first discovered just 10 years ago, are so big compared with most other viruses that they are visible under a visible light microscope. Before the new virus was discovered, just two families were known. Both infect amoebas.

The researchers collected a 30,000-year-old permafrost core from Siberia. In order to hunt for giant viruses, they took a type of amoeba that often gets infected with giant viruses and used it as bait. After the amoebas were exposed to permafrost samples, the amoebas became infected with a previously unknown giant virus. The virus has a mix of traits from the two known giant virus families.

The researchers suggest that looking for amoeba-infecting viruses in permafrost is an "inexpensive and safe way to realistically assess the threat" posed by pathogens that might be released from ancient frozen soils and sediments as permafrost melts, either due to global warming or industrial activities such as mining and drilling.

Earliest Case of Child Abuse Discovered in Egyptian Cemetery

When the researchers came across the abused toddler, labeled "Burial 519," in Kellis 2, nothing seemed out of the ordinary at first. But when they began brushing the sand away, they noticed prominent fractures on the child's arms. The excavated in situ burial of 519 shown here.

          A 2- to 3-year-old child from a Romano-Christian-period cemetery in Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, shows evidence of physical child abuse, archaeologists have found. The child, who lived around 2,000 years ago, represents the earliest documented case of child abuse in the archaeological record, and the first case ever found in Egypt, researchers say.

         The Dakhleh Oasis is one of seven oases in Egypt's Western Desert. The site has seen continuous human occupation since the Neolithic period, making it the focus of several archaeological investigations, said lead researcher Sandra Wheeler, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Central Florida. Moreover, the cemeteries in the oasis allow scientists to take a unique look at the beginnings of Christianity in Egypt.

         In particular, the so-called Kellis 2 cemetery, which is located in the Dakhleh Oasis town of Kellis (southwest of Cairo), reflects Christian mortuary practices. For example, "instead of having children in different places, everyone is put in one place, which is an unusual practice at this time," Wheeler told LiveScience. Dating methods using radioactive carbon from skeletons suggest the cemetery was used between A.D. 50 and A.D. 450.

        When the researchers came across the abused toddler — labeled "Burial 519" — in Kellis 2, nothing seemed out of the ordinary at first. But when Wheeler's colleague Tosha Duprasbegan brushing the sand away, she noticed prominent fractures on the child's arms. 

Archaeologists discovered the remains of a toddler in Romano-Christian-period cemetery in Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, who showed evidence of child abuse. Here, mud bricks for two tomb structures in the cemetery. In the foreground, several excavated graves can be seen.

"She thought, 'Whoa, this was weird,' and then she found another fracture on the collarbone," Wheeler said. "We have some other kids that show evidence of skeletal trauma, but this is the only one that had these really extreme fracture patterns."

Signs of abuse

The researchers decided to conduct a series of tests on Burial 519, including X-ray work, histology (microscopic study of tissues) and isotopic analyses, which pinpoint metabolic changes that show when the body tried to repair itself. They found a number of bone fractures throughout the body, on places like the humerus (forearm), ribs, pelvis and back.

Whereas no particular fracture is diagnostic of child abuse, the pattern of trauma suggests it occurred. Additionally, the injuries were all in different stages of healing, which further signifies repeated nonaccidental trauma.

One of the more interesting fractures was located on the child's upper arms, in the same spot on each arm, Wheeler said. The fractures were complete, broken all the way through the bone — given that children are more flexible than adults, a complete break like that would have taken a lot of force.

Close-up of upper body of burial 519, the 2,000-year-old remains of the abused toddler in Egypt.

        After comparing the injury with the clinical literature, the researchers deduced that someone grabbed the child's arms and used them as handles to shake the child violently. Other fractures were also likely caused by shaking, but some injuries, including those on the ribs and vertebrae, probably came from direct blows.

       The archaeologists aren't sure what ultimately killed the toddler. "It could be that last fracture, which is the clavicle fracture," Wheeler said, referring to the collarbone. "Maybe it wasn't a survivable event."

       A unique case Child abuse in the archaeological record is rare. One possible reason, Wheeler said, is that archaeologists didn't really pay much attention to child remains until about 20 years ago, believing that children couldn't tell them much about the past.

       A few cases of possible child abuse have since come out of France, Peru and the United Kingdom, all of which date back to medieval times or later. "Certainly, our case has the best context in terms of the archaeology and skeletal analysis," Wheeler said. Of the 158 juveniles excavated from the Kellis 2 cemetery, Burial 519 is the only one showing signs of repeated nonaccidental trauma, suggesting child abuse wasn't something that occurred throughout the community. The uniqueness of the case supports the general belief that children were a valued part of ancient Egyptian society.

       By contrast, though Romans loved their kids immensely, they believed children were born soft and weak, so it was the parents' duty to mold them into adults. They often engaged in such practices as corporal punishment, immobilizing newborn infants on wooden planks to ensure proper growth and routinely bathing the young in cold water as to not soften them with the feel of warm water.

 "We know that the ancient Egyptians really revered children," Wheeler said. "But we don't know how much Roman ideas filtered into Egyptian society," she added, suggesting that the unique child abuse case may have been the result of Roman influence.

Via livescience

Nissan eliminates blind spots with rear-view mirror that doubles as a wide-angle LCD

As car tech goes, here’s a small but useful step forward: Nissan created a rear-view mirror with a full-width LCD that shows a wide angle view behind you. The video feed comes from a rear-mounted camera. Flip a switch on the mirror and it reverts to being a traditional reflective mirror. Flip back and it’s a camera again.

Nissan will unveil the mirror at the Geneva Motor Show next week. It will first be used at the 24 Hours of LeMans Race on a car that doesn’t have any significant rear view other than the side mirrors. Nissan hasn’t said what passenger car it would be on. It will be offered this spring as a dealer add-on accessory in the Japanese market, followed by an introduction to global markets in 2015.

Special 4:1 aspect ratio LCD

Nissan said it developed a special 4:1 aspect ratio LCD that fits inside the rear review mirror. Even a 16:9 wide-angle LCD common on laptops or desktops would be too squarish. It’s linked to a 1.3-megapixel camera at the rear of the vehicle. In an artist rendering, the camera is mounted at the top of the window glass on a crossover SUV. It isn’t clear where it would go in a sedan — perhaps on the trunk or rear window glass.

According to Andy Palmer, chief planning officer and executive vice president of Nissan, “[The Smart mirror] offers the possibility of new and exciting designs for our upcoming models because Smart rearview mirror is an alternative to a very wide rear window for good visibility. We’ll have the flexibility to create new shapes, and to further improve aerodynamics for better fuel efficiency.”

Put another way, Nissan is playing catch-up on visibility, but faster than the competition: car designs with high rear deck lids and big C (rear) pillars already restrict rear visibility, so this restores the rear vision drivers lost in the last generation. Also, SUVs with more side pillars generally have worse rear vision than cars.

Ready for the backup camera mandate?

Sooner or later, the US will mandate backup cameras so you don’t back over kids, pets and bicycles. It has been proposed for several years and postponed by the Department of Transportation. If Nissans are equipped with smart rear-view mirrors, it’s thought that automakers wouldn’t need to put “costly” (their term) color LCDs in the center stacks of all cars. The problem is, automakers will still need a center stack LCD for infotainment. You can’t tell buyers the two- or three-line display on the head unit is good enough for searching through 1,000 songs or a 500-name phone book.

A few car models have already tried backup camera displays in the rear-view mirror, produced by Gentex and other suppliers (photo right). Unlike Nissan’s width-of-the-mirror display, the Gentex-style displays were small insets in the mirror. The image was so small that you might not see a child if there’s sun flare on the lens, or if the person is wearing clothing that blends in to the background.

Smart rear-view mirror answers questions, raises others

The Nissan smart rear-view mirror is pretty cool. It deals nicely with limitations on what the driver can see, but some questions remain. Will drivers have trouble adapting to a view that’s three to 12 feet (one to four meters) behind the mirror? If the view is so wide that you can see cars in your blind spot, does that make cars a couple hundred yards back too small? At night, will the headlamp glare on the lens be better, worse, or different from the glare on your eyeballs? Will this also double as the rear backup camera, and how will the driver judge the last 12-24 inches if the camera is mounted up high on a sloping rear glass?

The camera might be more useful with blind spot warning so the driver doesn’t miss a short car that’s pulling alongside.

First, let’s go racing

Nissan says the first car to use the smart rear-view camera will be the Nissan ZEOD MP. It’s an experimental car entrant and is capable, Nissan says, of running a lap (eight miles or 13km) at a time solely on electric power; ZEOD stands for zero emissions on demand. The other laps are run on the 90-pound, three-cylinder gasoline engine. The engine is so small — 20 x 16 inches — that it would fit on a plane as a carry-on.

As the photo shows, there’s almost no vision to speak of. For the race car, the rear camera should be a big advantage because even cars with inside rear-view mirrors have limited vision.

Nissan also has a significant small- and medium-size truck business. For the first time, for all tracks — but especially panel vans — drivers could actually see what’s behind them, not just what’s behind them in adjacent lanes.

New State Of Matter Discovered in Chicken Eyes

New State Of Matter Discovered in Chicken Eyes

photo credit: Joseph Corbo and Timothy Lau, Washington University in St. Louis

The retina of the eye is home to rods and a variety of cones, which help the brain perceive color. When studying the retina of the chicken, researchers found that the five different types of cones are arranged in what is known as “disordered hyperuniformity” and has never before been seen in biology until now. The research was led by Yang Jiao of Washington University and was published in Physical Review E.

When a small section of the pattern is viewed, the position of the individual components (in this case, the different types of cones) appears to be random. On the large scale, there appears to be more some order to the perceived madness. This hyperuniform state of matter has been seen before in plasmas and liquid helium (which occurs at -269 degrees C, -450 degrees F) and allows the substance to act both as a crystal and a liquid.

Because the different types of cones are different sizes, this arrangement allows the retina to take on the crystal-like ability of maintaining the density throughout. However, all of the cones also have the same physical properties, just like a liquid. Chickens and other birds depend on acute eyesight, which is aided by their five types of photoreceptive cells that are densely packed into the retina. It is speculated that this ordered arrangement lends to the integrity of the retina while allowing them to perceive light and colors evenly.

Each type of cone has a set pattern that, when viewed individually, appears pretty obvious. When all of the patterns are put together, it has a very complicated order that is described as a “uniform disarray.” Each cone appears to have a zone around it which helps space out cones of the same type. This is a multi-hyperuniformity that has not been seen before, and the researchers believe it calls for a new state of matter to be used to describe it.

Beyond just being a neat fact about avian vision, disordered hyperuniformity is used to develop optical circuits which operate or restrict based on certain wavelengths. Now that this type of patterning has been found in a biological system, the field may be expanded in future research. Researchers hope that other scientists will go back and reexamine old data to determine if there are more instances of disordered hyperuniformity that may have gone unnoticed. 

Concrete-Eating Robot Recycles Buildings

Concrete-Eating Robot Recycles Buildings

Building demolition demands a lot of heavy machinery to crush concrete and separate valuable materials for reuse. Often, those materials are transferred to offsite locations, which wastes time and resources. The process also wastes a lot of water in order to prevent harmful dust clouds from blooming. However, a Swedish student’s concrete-eating robot aims to change all that.


The ERO Concrete Recycling Robot was designed to efficiently disassemble concrete structures without any waste, dust or separation and enable reclaimed building materials to be reused for new prefabricated concrete buildings,” explained Omer Haciomeroglu of the Umea Institute of Design of Design. ”It does so by using a water jet to crack the concrete surface, separate the waste and package the cleaned, dust-free material.”

The idea is to send in a fleet of the ERO robots that will scan buildings to determine the best route to execute demolition. Once the robot goes to work, using vacuum suction and electrical power, it erases the building.

“ERO deconstructs with high-pressure water and sucks and separates the mixture of aggregate, cement and water. It then sends aggregate and filtered cement slurry separately down to the packaging unit to be contained,” Haciomeroglu wrote. ”Clean aggregate is packed into big bags, which are labeled and sent to nearby concrete precast stations for reuse. Water is recycled back into the system.”

Turbulence dynamos strategically placed inside air suction chambers even provide a percentage of ERO’s energy needs. Once the last wall has been demolished, essentially nothing has gone to landfills or been sent away for additional processing.

BLOG: Electric Ice Cream Makes Sweet Music

“Even the rebar is cleaned of concrete, dust and rust and is ready to be cut and reused immediately,” Haciomeroglu stated. “Every bit of the load-bearing structure is reusable for new building blocks.”

So far the design remains a concept, but influential organizations are starting to take note. Last year, Haciomeroglu’s concept won in the Student Designs category of the International Design Excellence Awards.

via Inhabitat

Japanese Charity Breast-Squeeze!

A charity breast squeeze took place last weekend in Shinjuku, Tokyo as part of the “Erotica will Save the World” event.

Is this a typical reward for donating to charity in Japan? We go hands on… I mean… just read on for more details.

“Erotica will Save the World” is a 24-hour live-streamed fundraising event that took place last Saturday and Sunday (August 25-26). Men and women (yes, that is right) came out to enjoy two days of erotically-charged festivities: Some of the areas had stalls selling goods and DVDs, other areas had fun events such as a “Masturbation Marathon.” We’ll leave the details of that that competition up to your imagination.

The most popular attraction was the “Breast Fundraiser”, which encouraged people to donate to charity. How did it encourage them to do that? Well, if you donate some money you are allowed to squeeze the breasts of one of ten lovely adult video actresses (known as oppai momi in Japanese – yes, they have a phrase for it).

The 10 volunteers

Here is a quick rundown of the “Breast Fundraiser”:

1. Line up, have your ID checked (must be over 18)
2. Donate money
3. Sterilize your hands (they don’t know where they have been)
4. Squeeze breasts (up to two squeezes per hand)

The organizers have recommended that if the allocated squeeze is not enough for you, to go through processes 1 to 4 again.

Showing how it is done…

All money raised will be donated to STOP!AIDS, a charity aimed at promoting the awareness, treatment, and prevention of AIDS.

Oppai momi is particularly popular in Japan, and there are plenty of Japanese style pubs where you can go have a beer and also a squeeze of the waitresses breasts after a hard day in the office.
This is the first oppia momi fundraiser we are aware of though.
Source:

Tokyo Sports, Paradise TV

Half of all edits to Wikipedia are made by bots.

Half of all edits to Wikipedia are made by bots.

Half of all edits to Wikipedia are made by bots. That stat, from a new study monitoring the site’s revisions, might seem like cause for alarm. But according to Wikipedia researchers, it’s key to the crowdsourced encyclopedia’s success.  

For a paper in the physics journal arXiv, Thomas Steiner, a Google engineer and Université Claude Bernard Lyon post-doctoral student, developed an appthat monitors the edits on Wikipedia’s 287 language sites in real time. Newsweek ran the app for four days and found that, at the time of this post, 46 percents of edits were made by bots.

Bots, which are automated editing scripts running off of Wikipedia users’ computers, contribute relatively few edits to the English Wikipedia site. In the period evaluated by Newsweek, they accounted for about 5 percent. Meanwhile, in Spain, that number rose to 14 percent. In Italy it was 53 percent. And in Vietnam, nearly all edits were made by bots.

The reason for the differences across countries, according Wikimedia Foundation researcher Aaron Halfaker, is due in large part to the maturity of the each site. In countries where Wikipedia is newer, and thus the encyclopedia is less fleshed out, there is more work for bots to do.  

So what are these bots up to? “They mostly do tedious things that we don’t want to do,” Steiner told Newsweek via chat. Some bots perform simple tasks like correcting spelling and grammar errors. Others are more specialized, performing “human” tasks like building country pages from census data or using NASA reports to create articles about asteroids.

Indeed, the line between bots and humans often blurs on Wikipedia. Some bots work in tandem with humans to evaluate complicated edits or enforce community rules in Wikipedia--”cyborgs,” Halfaker calls them. Over time, says Berkeley computer science graduate student R. Stuart Geiger, programmers have had to make these bots more personal. “Bots that interact with newcomers were very harsh, casting everyone as vandals,” he says, and were “turning off a lot of people.”  

The biggest use of bots, says Steiner, is “detecting vandalism--kids replacing George Washington’s name with lower body organs. Stupid things like that.”

Vandalism, which has a long history on Wikipedia, may be the bots’ greatest success. Halfaker says that a decade ago, a group of Internet trolls began a simple yet obnoxious campaign to deface the site by editing in mentions of a Spongebob Squarepants cartoon character. “They were referencing Squidward all over Wikipedia.” In response, Wikipedia users developed a bot that would comb the site’s entries, detect the word “Squidward,” and undo all the nefarious edits. The fix was a simple one, but would eventually lead to the development of sophisticated anti-vandal bots.

Today, according to Halfaker, the most prolific anti-vandal bot is called ClueBot. It can detect and fix everything from profanity to mashed keys within seconds, he says. It is responsible for almost half of all edits on the English Wikipedia site. “From a computational perspective, its brilliant,” says Geiger.

ClueBot also serves to ensure that a relatively small group of vandals can’t degrade the site’s legitimacy enough that volunteers stop putting in the time and effort to maintain it. “When that bot goes down,” Geiger says, “it eerily limits Wikipedians ability to make an encyclopedia.”

The fact that humanity needs bots to save the world’s knowledge from itself is made only slightly less painful by the fact that these bots, in turn, need humans. As Geiger explains, they are not housed in Wikimedia Foundation servers. Instead, they are developed by everyday users and kept on privately-owned computers. (To run on Wikipedia, they must pass through a Bot Approval Group. If you try to sneak one past the Group it will likely be caught by an “anti-bot bot.”)

Geiger remembers one bot he built, called AfDStatBot, that tracked debates between Wikipedia editors. He ran it from his home computer. When he had to move out of his apartment unexpectedly, he found himself without a place to connect the computer to the Internet. “The bot just disappeared because I couldn’t take care of it anymore.” 

The Car That Runs On Air

The Car That Runs On Air

Bringing new meaning to running on fumes

For more than a century, air cars have remained a quixotic quest of engineers—an idealistic exercise with little long-term likelihood of entering mass production. As fuels go, air has obvious upsides: It’s ubiquitous, clean, and, best of all, free. But air requires energy to store energy because it must be compressed, limiting the utility of an all-air car. Two engineers from French automaker PSA Peugeot Citroën thought they could overcome that problem by pairing two tried-and-true technologies: a gasoline engine and hydraulics. To test the concept, they formed the Hybrid Air Program in 2010 and connected the engine of a subcompact car to a commercial airplane’s hydraulic system. “We were trying to push the project against a lot of people who didn’t trust the fact that we would succeed,” says engineer Karim Mokaddem.

The Hybrid Air powertrain, which Mokaddem designed with Andrés Yarce, uses a hydraulic pump and a piston to compress the nitrogen gas in a tank called the high-pressure accumulator. Hitting the accelerator releases the pressurized gas, which then moves hydraulic fluid through the same pump in reverse. The pump acts as a motor to power the wheels and the hydraulic fluid ends up in a second tank.

During normal driving, the system will switch between gas and air power, says Yarce. Much like with hybrid-electric vehicles, the gasoline engine provides a boost up steep hills and on the highway, and it repressurizes the nitrogen tank if the regenerative-braking system hasn’t done so. Yarce and Mokaddem predict that, for urban driving less than 43 miles per hour, between 60 and 80 percent of drive time will be under air power alone. Compared with gasoline-electrics, the Hybrid Air powertrain is lighter and cheaper, and there are no bulky batteries that wear out or intrude on passenger and trunk space. “The system is designed to live for the life of the vehicle,” says Yarce. “The only possible [maintenance] will be an air recharge.”

Yarce and Mokaddem’s prototype was so successful that PSA Peugeot Citroën has decided to manufacture production vehicles. The Hybrid Air powertrain will appear in all Citroën and Peugeot subcompacts as an option in Europe and possibly other international markets in 2016. The company hasn’t yet released a price, but it says that its air cars will cost around the same amount as other gasoline hybrids. 

The Air Car 

Illustration by Graham Murdoch

1) The Hybrid Air Car uses compressed nitrogen, which is held in a tank called the high-pressure accumulator.

2) A hydraulic pump and piston compress nitrogen in the accumulator. When the nitrogen is released (by pressing the accelerator), the pump runs in reverse. Acting now as a motor, it harnesses the energy of the moving hydraulic fluid to send power to the wheels.

3) After the hydraulic fluid passes through the motor, it flows to the low-pressure accumulator, where it is stored for later use.

4) A gasoline engine supplements the air power when accelerating or going up hills. This could be an 82-hp 1.2 L I3 for subcompacts and a 110-hp 1.6 L I4 for compacts.

This article originally appeared in the March 2014 issue of Popular Science.

Watch Snowflakes Forming in front of eyes

Snowflakes are often said to be completely unique; every fluffy flurry that has fallen to the ground does not have an identical companion. While that might be a tough one to prove experimentally, there is a high level of variation from one snowflake to the next, due to the sensitive nature of their formation. While it's theoretically possible to have identical twin snowflakes, it is extremely unlikely.

As tiny cold water droplets get carried up into the atmosphere, they meet microscopic particles in the air (such as pollen or dust) and begin to freeze into an ice crystal. Water's unique ability to expand upon freezing and hydrogen bonding between the water molecules determine the crystal’s shape, forming a symmetrical and hexagonal prism.

As more tiny droplets land and freeze on the crystal, the snowflake continues to grow. This additional freezing water occurs more quickly on the edges, forming cavities that will become the gaps and grooves seen in the final snowflake plate. Six arms begin to grow out of the corners, and the size and shape of those is also impacted by the changing weather conditions as the snowflake gets whipped through the air. However, all of the arms will look pretty much the same, because they were all subjected to the same environmental conditions.

The exact shape of the snowflake is a product of temperature, humidity, amount of water, and the size of the pollen or dust particle. Snowflakes that look like thin hexagonal needles occur in colder air while the most intricate shapes and plates occur when it is slightly warmer and slightly more humid. As the air can change depending on location and elevation, the snowflake’s shape can be influenced in many different ways before it finally comes to rest on the ground.

Filmmaker Vyacheslav Ivanov has created an amazing time-lapse film of the formation of snowflakes. The two-minute-long video is called Snowtime and is pretty much mesmerizing.

This week in Science

This week in science!

Lungs: http://bit.ly/1h2GnQD
Electron: http://bit.ly/1k3Ms2v
Monkey avatar: http://bit.ly/1k0OTzI
Elephants: http://bit.ly/1hmFnFm
Supernova: http://bit.ly/NpsqkP
Blind mice: http://bit.ly/1bAWXao
Black holes: http://bit.ly/NpsroJ
Venus: http://bit.ly/1fLvhvo

Paris's Abandoned Métro Stations, Reimagined as Theaters and Pools

Paris's Abandoned Métro Stations, Reimagined as Theaters and Pools

The Paris Métro, opened in 1900, extends over more than 200 kilometers of track, serving more than 300 individual stops. But there are 11 more stations that, though once built, now stand nearly abandoned. Many of these "ghost" or "phantom" stations shuttered after the occupation during WWII.Two of them, Porte Molitor and Haxo, never opened at all.

Parisian mayoral candidate Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet has a bold plan for these phantom stations. The center-right candidate, known as NKM to her supporters, has argued that these abandoned spaces should be reclaimed for the city's residents.

To envision what these future public spaces could look like, NKM teamed up with architect Manal Rachdi and urban planner Nicolas Laisné. They drew up a few crazy-looking renderingsto get started, starting with Arsenal, a 4th arrondissement station closed since 1939. She haspledged to solicit more inventive ideas if elected (though her opponent, Socialist Anne Hidalgo, is the frontrunner).

These proposals include a theater:

A restaurant:

A night club:

A pool:

And this strange art installation:

Photos via NKM Paris, from Oxo architects + Laisné Architect. 

The Top 10 Most Expensive Digital Cameras

The Top 10 Most Expensive Digital Cameras

Gone are the days when all cameras make use of film that needs to be developed before one can see the moment that it has captured. The rapid development of technology has led to the rise of the digital camera that would allow you to immediately review the shot that had just been taken. From single-lens reflex to medium-format to panoramic views, digital cameras have taken over the photography market. Here now is a list of the top 10 most expensive digital cameras.

10. Sony Alpha A99 – $3,300

The Sony Alpha A99 is the flagship digital single lens reflex of the Sony group. Photos taken with it have a resolution of 24.3 megapixels. Sony also developed a new full frame CMOS sensor for this model. The Alpha A99 has the SLT technology that features an electronic viewfinder instead of the ordinary optical kind. This allows the viewfinder to have a resolution of 2.4 million dots that, along with the OLED technology, makes it one of the best in the market.

9. Canon EOS 5D Mark III – $3,900

The Canon EOS 5D Mark III boasts of a 22.3 megapixel resolution coming from a full frame CMOS sensor. It also incorporates the DIGIC 5+ image process of Canon. The camera has a 61-point AF module and a wide ISO range from 100 to 25,600, which is further expandable to 102,400. It is also capable of full high definition movie recording. Its numerous shooting options is backed up by one of the best image quality from any digital single lens reflex in the market.

8. Nikon D4 – $6,000

The Nikon D4 has been touted as one of the fastest professional cameras around that is particularly suited for sports or action photography. It has a 16.2 megapixel CMOS sensor in the FX format that, along with the EXPEED 3 processor, allows for up to 11 frames per second. It has an ISO range of 100 and 12,800 in full, half or third stops. The camera has 51 AF points.

7. Pentax 645D – $10,000

The Pentax 645D is a medium format digital camera that can deliver a 40 megapixel image quality and ultra high resolution images for even the largest print sizes. Its 44 x 33 mm CCD sensor has a top resolution of 7264 x 5440, thus allowing for extreme flexibility when cropping an image. It has an 11-point autofocus system and an ISO range from 100 to 1,600. The viewfinder is made of glass and has a trapezoid pentaprism with interchangeable focusing screens, thus allowing a 98 percent field of view for accurate framing applications.

6. Canon EOS 1D Mark III – $12,000

The Canon EOS 1D Mark III is a digital single lens reflex camera with 10.1 megapixels. It has a 28.1 x 18.7 mm CMOS sensor with maximum resolution of 3,888 x 2,592. This dedicated sensor has a 45-point AF. It has an ISO range of 100 and 3,200, expandable to 50 and 6,400 when used with the custom function. It is considered a favorite because of its ability to shoot fast while delivering high quality images.

5. Leica S2-P – $30,000

While Leica has always been one of the favorite brands among professional photographers, the Leica S2-P model is particularly popular for those who engage in a lot of outdoor photography. The camera produces 37.5 megapixel images, backed up by a sensor with 30 x 45 mm. It is water-resistant and the battery has an extremely long life. What’s more, the auto focus features have a wide range of options from the ultra wide to the super telephoto. Along with the usual Leica outputs of sharp and clear color in the pictures, this model has indeed become the camera of choice for those on the road.

4. Panoscan MK-3 Panoramic – $40,000

The Panoscan MK-3 Panoramic camera delivers just that, a panoramic and full 360-degree view that can be done in just eight seconds. The flat and panoramic images that it captures are compatible with practically all the major virtual reality players, like Quicktime VR, Flash VR and even most players based on the Java platform. The camera makes use of a specially dedicated digital signal process that allows it to create the panoramic image. It has found a special use in the police and military engaged in forensic crime scene investigation and tactical mapping, respectively.

3. Phase One P65+ Digital Back Medium Format with 645 DF – $40,000

The Phase One P65+ is a medium format digital camera that has a full frame sensor. This sensor technology allows you to easily capture images of extremely high quality. Even at an ISO of 3200, the camera can produce a picture of up to 15 megapixels. The camera can be attached to the 645 DF body that was developed by Phase One in collaboration with Mamiya. Both companies sell the body under their own name.

2. Seitz 6×17 Panoramic – $43,000

The Seitz 6×17 Panoramic camera is capable of up to 160 million pixels. It can capture 300 megabytes of data every second, allowing you to capture the image quickly. The camera is easy to control and you can even preview and store the image via a connected tablet or any personal or Macintosh computer. The camera is ideal for landscapes, group shots, fine art, architecture and any photography subject that require a high resolution.

1. Hasselblad H4D 200MS – $45,000

The Hasselblad H4D 200 MS is a top of the line camera from one of the best camera makers in the world. It has an astounding resolution of 200 million pixels that allows for amazing detail unprecedented in photography. The camera has a sensor mounted into a symmetrical multi shot frame. This allows the sensor to be precisely positioned, using what the company calls piezo-electrical actuators. Moving the sensor one and a half pixel at a time then captures six shots; this makes for a 200-megapixel image. Color rendering issues are eliminated as a result.

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Softdrinks Tin can kill U..............Be Careful.

IMPORTANT:

SHOULD READ and do not ignore this message without SHARING.

On Sunday a family went to picnic with a few drinks tin. Monday, two family members admitted to hospital and placed in the Intensive Care Unit space. He died on Wednesday, Autopsy results concluded it hit Leptospirosis. The virus is stuck to the tin cans are drunk, without the use of glasses / cups. Test results showed that tin was infected mice that had dried urine containing Leptospira. Highly recommended to rinse the parts evenly on all soda cans before drinking it. Cans are usually stored in the warehouse and delivered direct to retail stores without cleaning. A study shows that the top of all beverage cans more contaminated than public toilets (full of germs and bacteria.)So, clean it with water before putting mouth in order to avoid all accidents total.

Use of Straws to drink can be one of the possible safety measure if u don't have water to clean the top of the tin.

SHARE This message to your Loved Ones..!!

French Woman Receives $15 Quadrillion Cell Phone Bill

If Thomas Paine were to update his famous quotation for modern times, perhaps he’d consider cell phone companies just as necessary of an evil as he did government back in 1776. And a French woman has reason to complain louder than the rest of us. When Solenne San Jose terminated her cell phone contract last month, she had no idea what switching providers would cost her.

When the woman from Pessac, near Bordeaux in southwest France, severed ties with provider Telecom Bouygues before her contract ended, and the company warned her she’d have to pay a cancellation fee that would appear on her next bill, Technorati reported. But she didn’t anticipate just how much.

Upon opening the statement, she found herself face-to-face with a bill somewhat higher than usual: €11,721,000,000,000,000. That’s the equivalent of about 15 quadrillion U.S. dollars. In case the total is a bit too large to comprehend, it works out to about 5,872 times of France’s annual GDP. In fact, there’s not even that much money in circulation in the whole of Europe. If she gathered every euro available, it would only represent .0008% of the amount she owed. Worst of all, Bouygues automatically charged San Jose’s bank account, according to French publication Sud Ouest.

San Jose called Bouygues several times to dispute the charge, but the company neither stopped the transaction on her bank account nor admitted to making a mistake on the bill. She continued to barrage the provider with calls, which tacked €12.50 to her bill each time. Bouygues twice offered San Jose a payment plan for the fee before finally confessing it made a printing error, Sud Ouest reported.

Other customers have faced unreasonably large cell phone bills in the past, but none can stand up to the sheer exorbitance of San Jose’s. In 2006, the Associated Press reported that a Malaysian man received a bill for the equivalent of $218 trillion, which his provider gave him 10 days to pay. More recently, the Associated Pressreported in 2011 that T-Mobile charged a Florida woman $201,000 because her brothers had racked up thousands of dollars in texting and data charges when during a visit to Canada for two weeks without switching to an international plan. In the end, T-Mobile slashed the bill to $2,500 and gave the woman six months to pay for the charges after she approached the local FOX affiliate WSVN with her story.