From butterflies' wings to bank notes - how nature's colors could cut bank fraud

Scientists have discovered a way of mimicking the stunningly bright and beautiful colours found on the wings of tropical butterflies. The findings could have important applications in the security printing industry, helping to make bank notes and credit cards harder to forge.

IMAGE: The bright green wings of the P. blumei butterfly result from the mixing of the different colors of light that are reflected from different regions of the scales found on the wings of these butterflies.

Credit: Mathias Kolle, University of Cambridge

The striking iridescent colours displayed on beetles, butterflies and other insects have long fascinated both physicists and biologists, but mimicking nature's most colourful, eye-catching surfaces has proved elusive.

This is partly because rather than relying on pigments, these colours are produced by light bouncing off microscopic structures on the insects' wings.

Mathias Kolle, working with Professor Ullrich Steiner and Professor Jeremy Baumberg of the University of Cambridge, studied the Indonesian Peacock or Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio blumei), whose wing scales are composed of intricate, microscopic structures that resemble the inside of an egg carton.

IMAGE: This SEM image of concavities is covered by a conformal multilayer stack of 11 alternating layers of titania and alumina.

Credit: Mathias Kolle, University of Cambridge

Because of their shape and the fact that they are made up of alternate layers of cuticle and air, these structures produce intense colours.

Using a combination of nanofabrication procedures – including self-assembly and atomic layer deposition – Kolle and his colleagues made structurally identical copies of the butterfly scales, and these copies produced the same vivid colours as the butterflies' wings.

According to Kolle: "We have unlocked one of nature's secrets and combined this knowledge with state-of-the-art nanofabrication to mimic the intricate optical designs found in nature."

"Although nature is better at self-assembly than we are, we have the advantage that we can use a wider variety of artificial, custom-made materials to optimise our optical structures."

As well as helping scientists gain a deeper understanding of the physics behind these butterflies' colours, being able to mimic them has promising applications in security printing.

"These artificial structures could be used to encrypt information in optical signatures on banknotes or other valuable items to protect them against forgery. We still need to refine our system but in future we could see structures based on butterflies wings shining from a £10 note or even our passports," he says.

Intriguingly, the butterfly may also be using its colours to encrypt itself – appearing one colour to potential mates but another colour to predators.

IMAGE: This scanning electron micrograph shows that the surface of a wing scale is covered with concavities.

Credit: Mathias Kolle, University of Cambridge

Kolle explains: "The shiny green patches on this tropical butterfly's wing scales are a stunning example of nature's ingenuity in optical design. Seen with the right optical equipment these patches appear bright blue, but with the naked eye they appear green.

"This could explain why the butterfly has evolved this way of producing colour. If its eyes see fellow butterflies as bright blue, while predators only see green patches in a green tropical environment, then it can hide from predators at the same time as remaining visible to members of its own species."

The results are published today in Nature Nanotechnology.

Fitness First Weight Splashing Billboard At Bus Stop

Terrifying or brilliant marketing idea, it is up you to decide?

Global fitness chain Fitness First has come up with new marketing idea by constructing a bus stop with weight splashing billboard in Netherlands.

If any commuter sit at the bus stop, the commuter weight will be shown at the billboard.

It's a noble effort taken by Fitness First to promote the important of taking care one health by doing exercise.

However, if my weight is more than 100 kg, certainly I don't want to take a seat at the bus stop.

Process Involved In Drilling A Relief Well in the Gulf of Mexico

BP crews are set to begin drilling a relief well in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) to stem the flow from the MC252 well.

A drilling rig drills a relief well or second well to intersect the original, flowing well as deeply as possible. A specialized heavy liquid is then pumped into the flowing well to bring it under control.

This liquid is denser than oil and so exerts pressure (known as hydrostatic pressure) to stem the flow of oil. Once the flow is stopped, the well can be returned to a safe condition.

A relief well should be faster to drill than the original well thanks to the knowledge already gained about the geology and pressure in the reservoir.

However, drilling a well of this nature presents many technical challenges to ensure that the flowing well is intersected in the right position and that the fluid pumping operations are effective.

BP has assembled a world-class team of experts from within the company and key specialists in the industry to ensure that the relief well operations are conducted safely and successfully.

A second relief well could form part of the contingency plans in case the first well encounters any delays. This means that progress can still be made to stem a flowing well should one drilling operation encounter a problem.

Prehistoric fish extinction paved the way for modern vertebrates

Event of unknown origin occurred as first vertebrates tested land

A mass extinction of fish 360 million years ago hit the reset button on Earth's life, setting the stage for modern vertebrate biodiversity. The mass extinction scrambled the species pool near the time at which the first vertebrates crawled from water towards land.

Those few species that survived the bottleneck were the evolutionary starting point for all vertebrates--including humans--that exist today, according to results of a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"Everything was hit; the extinction was global," said Lauren Sallan of the University of Chicago and lead author of the paper. "It reset vertebrate diversity in every single environment, both freshwater and marine, and created a completely different world."

The Devonian Period, which spanned from 416 to 359 million years ago, is also known as the Age of Fishes for the broad array of species present in Earth's aquatic environments.

Armored placoderms such as the gigantic Dunkleosteus and lobe-finned fishes--similar to the modern lungfish--dominated the waters, while ray-finned fishes, sharks and tetrapods were in the minority, according to Maureen Kearney, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research, along with NSF's Division of Earth Sciences.

But between the latest Devonian Period and the subsequent Carboniferous period, placoderms disappeared and ray-finned fishes rapidly replaced lobe-finned fishes as the dominant group, a demographic shift that persists to today.

"The Devonian period is known as the Age of Fishes, but it's the wrong kind of fish," Sallan said. "Just about everything dominant in the Devonian died at the end of the period and was replaced."

"There's some sort of pinch at the end of the Devonian," said the paper's second author, Michael Coates, an organismal biologist and anatomist at the University of Chicago.

"It's as if the roles persist, but the players change: the cast is transformed dramatically. Something happened that almost wiped the slate clean, and, of the few stragglers that made it through, a handful then re-radiate spectacularly."

Scientists have long theorized that the Late Devonian Kellwasser event--considered to be one of the "Big Five" extinctions in Earth's history--was responsible for a marine invertebrate species shake-up.

But an analysis of the vertebrate fossil record by Sallan and Coates pinpointed a critical shift in diversity to the Hangenberg extinction event 15 million years later.

Prior to the extinction, lobe-finned forms such as Tiktaalik and the earliest limbed tetrapods such as Ichthyostega had made the first tentative "steps" toward a land-dwelling existence.

But after the extinction, a long stretch of the fossil record known as "Romer's Gap," is almost barren of tetrapods, a puzzle that had confused paleontologists for many years.

Sallan and Coates' data suggest that the 15-million-year gap was the hangover after the traumatic Hangenberg event.

"Something that's seen after an extinction event is a gap in the records of survivors," Sallan said. "You have a very low diversity fauna, because most things have been killed off."

When tetrapods finally recovered, those survivors were likely the great-great-grandfathers to the vast majority of land vertebrates present today.

Modern vertebrate traits--such as the motif of five-digit limbs that is shared by all mammals, birds and reptiles in utero--may have been set by this early common ancestor, the authors propose.

"Extinction events remove a huge amount of biodiversity," Coates said. "That shapes in a very significant way the patchiness of biodiversity that persists to the present day."

The analysis benefitted from recent advances in filling in the vertebrate fossil record, Coates said.

Previously, estimates of the earlier extinction had been made using fossils of invertebrates such as mollusks and clams, which are far more abundant.

With a larger dataset of vertebrates and analytical techniques borrowed from modern ecology, Sallan and Coates were able to see the abrupt changes in species composition before and after the Hangenberg event.

"It's a big extinction during what was already considered a critical time in vertebrate evolution, so it's surprising that it went unnoticed for so long," Sallan said. "But it took the right methods to reveal its magnitude."

What remains mysterious is exactly what happened 360 million years ago to trigger this mass extinction.

Other researchers have found evidence of substantial glacier formation at the end of the Devonian period, which would have dramatically lowered sea levels and affected life.

The first appearance of forest-like environments in some regions might also have produced atmospheric changes catastrophic to animal life.

The research also raises questions about the pattern of evolution after the extinction event.

It remains unclear why groups that were abundant before the event did not recover, while other groups spread and diversified in radical new ways.

Regardless of these questions, the consequences are still being felt hundreds of millions of years later.

"It is a pivotal episode that shaped modern vertebrate biodiversity," Coates said. "We are only now beginning to place that important event in the history of life and the history of the planet, which we weren't able to do before."

###

Funding was also provided by the University of Chicago Hinds Fund, the Paleontological Society, the Palaeontological Association, the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, and the Evolving Earth Foundation.

The flora and fauna of the Devonian and Carboniferous periods

24K Gold-Plated USB Drive From Gold Noble

A Korean company called Gold Noble has just launch a 24 K Gold-plated usb drive.

It has 8 GB data storage and if you want to buy one, expect to spend about 106 USD for the usb drive. It is design just like a gold bar.

To order the 24k gold plated usb drive, please visit Gold Noble's site below.

http://goldnoble.kr/en/product/prod.asp?prod_id=52

You can buy the usb drive as a gift for your loved ones.

RQ-4 Global Hawk Enterprise High-Altitude, Long-Endurance Unmanned Aircraft Systems

The family of high-flying Global Hawks builds on the common RQ-4 high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aircraft system (UAS). 

When equipped with a variety of available mission-specific sensors, they provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) information over a vast geographic area without putting anyone in harm’s way. 

Global Hawk missions are to provide a broad spectrum of ISR collection capability to support joint combatant forces in worldwide peacetime, contingency and wartime operations. 

The systems can also be used for various civil and commercial missions such as border patrol, port surveillance, hurricane monitoring, disaster relief support, and high-altitude scientific research. 

The systems complement manned and space reconnaissance systems by providing near-real-time coverage using imagery intelligence (IMINT) sensors, signals intelligence (SIGINT), and communications relay capability.

Current RQ-4 Programs:

Global Hawk (U.S. Air Force)

A combat-proven HALE UAS with extraordinary ISR capabilities, providing near-real-time high resolution imagery of large geographical areas all day and night in all types of weather. During its trials with the Air Force's 31st Test and Evaluation Squadron and during its first deployment in Operation Enduring Freedom, the Global Hawk system was shown to be flexible and dynamically re-taskable. Global Hawk media gallery.

GHMD (U.S. Navy)

The U.S. Navy procured two Block 10 Global Hawks for the Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration (GHMD) program from the U.S. Air Force, and is using them to help define concept of operations for maritime surveillance, as well as for sensor technology experimentation and fleet orientation exercises. GHMD media gallery.

Euro Hawk® (Germany)

First international version of the Global Hawk UAS for the German Ministry of Defence. The Euro Hawk® is a derivative of the Block 20 Global Hawk, equipped with new SIGINT mission system developed by EADS. The SIGINT system provides stand-off capability to detect electronic intelligence (ELINT) and communications intelligence (COMINT) radar emitters. EADS will also provide the ground stations that will receive and analyze the data from Euro Hawk® as part of an integrated system solution.

NASA Global Hawk (NASA Dryden)

Partnership between NASA Dryden and Northrop Grumman to demonstrate HALE capability for future customers and experiments for the environmental science community to include NOAA, NASA, Department of Energy, and universities. Northrop Grumman will share in use of the aircraft to conduct its own flight demonstrations for expanded markets, missions and airborne capabilities, including UAS integration into national airspace.

NATO AGS (U.S. and allied nations)

After many years exploring options for a NATO owned and operated airborne ground surveillance capability, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has agreed to a program of record based on the Block 40 Global Hawk with an MP-RTIP sensor. In September 2007, nations agreed to move forward with a UAS-only solution based on an off-the-shelf Block 40. Northrop Grumman will be the prime contractor for the NATO AGS program, supported by industries in the 15 participating nations. NATO AGS media gallery.

Background

Global Hawk has its origins in the 1995 High-Altitude Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (HAE UAV ACTD) program initiated by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office (DARO). The Global Hawk effort succeeded because it focused on the design and construction of a practical air vehicle that was developmentally mature enough to be transitioned into an operational weapons system. While still a developmental system, the Global Hawk system began supporting overseas contingency operations only two months after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, with thousands of combat hours and missions completed thus far.

Distinctions

Global Hawk has achieved several distinctions and awards, including setting an endurance record for a full-scale, operational unmanned aircraft on March 22, 2008, when it completed a flight of 33.1 hours at altitudes up to 60,000 feet over Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. It also set another aviation record on April 23, 2001, when it landed in Australia at 8:40 p.m. local time after a 23-hour, 20-minute trip across the Pacific Ocean. This nonstop flight from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., marks the first time that an unmanned, powered aircraft crossed the world's largest ocean.

In 2001, Northrop Grumman along with key government and industry partners received the coveted Robert J. Collier Trophy for designing, building, testing, and operating Global Hawk. In addition, Global Hawk is the first UAS to achieve a military airworthiness certification, which along with the certificate of authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration, recognizes Global Hawk's ability to routinely fly within national airspace.

Features

The Global Hawk system consists of the RQ-4 aircraft, mission control element (MCE), launch and recovery element (LRE), sensors, communication links, support element, and trained personnel. They offer a wide variety of employment options. 

Cruising at extremely high altitudes above 60,000 feet for more than 32 hours at a time, the aircraft can survey large geographic areas with pinpoint accuracy, giving military decision-makers near-real-time information regarding enemy location, resources, and personnel.

The Block 10 configurations carry the IMINT sensors, which include synthetic aperture radar, electro-optical and medium-wave infrared sensors. The Block 20 versions carry an enhanced integrated sensor suite similar to the Block 10 but provides longer range and better resolution. 

The Block 30 carries the Block 20 imagery sensors as well as the airborne signals intelligence payload, while the newest version, Block 40, carries the Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program (MP-RTIP) active electronically scanned array radar.

The MCE serves as the RQ-4 cockpit during the operational portion of the mission with a pilot and sensor operator crew. Command and control data links provide RQ-4 crews complete dynamic control of the aircraft. 

The pilot workstations in the MCE and LRE act as the cockpit on the ground for the pilot to control and display platform status transmitted from the aircraft via the command and control link (health and status of the aircraft, sensors, navigational systems, and communication links). 

From this station, the pilot communicates with outside entities to coordinate the mission (air traffic control, airborne controllers, ground controllers, other ISR assets, etc.). When necessary the pilot can land the aircraft at any location provided in the aircraft mission plan. 

The sensor operator workstation manually provides the capability to dynamically update the collection plan, monitor sensor status, initiate sensor calibration and process, distribute, and store data. The sensor operator provides quality control of images on selected targets of high interest (ad hoc, dynamic targets, etc.).

Unlike all other unmanned aircraft, Global Hawk is flown autonomously by flight control software under the direct supervision of a pilot. The pilot does not physically manipulate the control surfaces in flight but instead, he commands the computer to take action when needed, or the system can be left alone and fly a complete preprogrammed mission. 

Takeoff and landing are software controlled and poor weather is not a limiting factor for operation like it is for other unmanned systems. The pilot and crew can focus on executing the national security intelligence collection mission, collecting thousands of pixels full of critical security intelligence, while the aircraft is flown by the sophisticated flight control computer.

Specifications

The Block 20/30/40 version represents a significant increase in capability over the Block 10 configuration. The larger Block 20/30/40 aircraft can carry up to 3,000 pounds of internal payload and operates with two-and-a-half times the power of its predecessor. 

Its open system architecture, a so-called "plug-and-play" environment, can accommodate new sensors and communication systems as they are developed to help military customers quickly evaluate and adopt new technologies.

When fully fueled for flight, the Block 20/30/40 weighs approximately 32,250 pounds. More than half the system's components are constructed of lightweight, high-strength composite materials, including its wings, wing fairings, empennage, engine cover, nacelles, and three radomes. Its main fuselage is standard aluminum, semi-monocoque construction.

Block 10

Wingspan: 116.2 ft (35.4 m) 

Length: 44.4 ft (13.5 m) 

Height: 14.6 ft (4.2 m) 

Gross Takeoff Weight: 26,700 lbs (12,110.9 kg) 

Maximum Altitude: 65,000 ft (19.8 km) 

Payload: 2,000 lbs (907.2 kg) 

Ferry Range: 12,000 nm (22,236 km) 

Loiter Velocity: 343 knots TAS (True Air Speed)

On-Station Endurance at 1,200 nm: 24 hours 

Maximum Endurance: 32+ hours

Block 20/30/40

Wingspan: 130.9 ft (39.9 m) 

Length: 47.6 ft (14.5m) 

Height: 15.4 ft (4.7 m) 

Gross Takeoff Weight: 32,250 lbs (14,628 kg) 

Maximum Altitude: 60,000 ft (18.3 km) 

Payload: 3,000 lbs (1,360 kg) 

Ferry Range: 12,300 nm (22,780 km) 

Loiter Velocity: 310 knots TAS (True Air Speed)

On-Station Endurance at 1,200 nm: 24 hours 

Maximum Endurance: 32+ hours

CBS New and NBC New Report Coverage on Vivos

First I thought it was another scam brewing up in the US.  Then found out in YouTube that CBS New and NBC New have news coverage on Vivos. The video is below. 

More than 1000 people have already applied for Vivos membership.  However, before you invest your hard earn money on Vivos, please do more research about it.