'Iceberg Cowboy' Finds Archway in Middle of Ocean

Forget moving mountains. Marine biologist Andrew Perry moves icebergs. And his latest adventure led to the discovery of an icy archway, right in the middle of the ocean.

Perry was out trawling for icebergs with Oceans Limited, a Canadian company that identifies which of the tremendous floaters are drifting towards stationary deep-water oil rigs, when he found the arch -- think Stargate meets portal to Narnia.

"It was a beautiful day, hardly a wave on the water. And then there it was -- a big beautiful arch," Perry told FoxNews.com. "No one had seen anything like this. We thought it was amazing."

Icebergs routinely break off Greenland and float down the Labrador coast, Perry explained, a corridor he called "iceberg alley." Along the way, they post a direct threat to deep-water oil installations. Though they don't move particularly quickly -- typically one to four knots -- they've got enough bulk to do major damage if they hit anything, he explained.

"We recorded some upwards of 350,000 tons," Perry said. Oceans Limited moves smaller icebergs by training water cannons on them for hours. "That's for the smaller ones, we call them growlers," Perry told FoxNews.com. It's much cheaper to move the icebergs, even the very large ones, than to disconnect the oil rig and move it, he pointed out: Moving a rig costs millions, while operating a small boat costs about $25,000 per day.

So Perry's company either lassos the big boys with a single boat or corrals them with a net dragged between two boats. Icebergs don't move particularly fast, Perry explained, so changing their course can take quite a while, but they don't have to move too many each year.

"Depending on the ice season, they may have to tow 10 to 20 ... during the 2009 season we profiled around 60 icebergs to get computer generated 3D images," Perry said.

But he had never run into an iceberg like this one before.

Icebergs are often seen as just giant chunks of compressed water, not stunning works of natural art. Yet beautifully sculpted icebergs like the one Perry found are actually fairly common, thanks to the natural forces of the seas and the skies, explained Ted Scambos, lead scientist for the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

"Complex, sculptured icebergs like this are usually formed from ice that broke off of fast-flowing glaciers," Scambos told FoxNews.com. "It starts off as a rugged piece of ice that waves and sunshine then sculpt."

Sure, but how did this iceberg form in such a stunning fashion? Wave action, Scambos explained, and it's more common than you might think.

"As the waves begin to pound out a dimple in the ice facewall, it focuses the wave energy, leading to more rapid erosion at the center. So, with time, the waves carve through the face to the other side," Scambos told FoxNews.com. "It's not the first one I've seen, but it's the most artistic."

Icebergs are surprisingly noisy as well, according to Perry. They're constantly moving and cracking, he said. The arch "sounded like shotguns being fired off all the time, due to the ice cracking."

And what to do with all of that ice? Perry and his fellow biologists have a unique use for icebergs: They put them in cocktails.

"To be honest it's the cleanest water you can get. The air bubbles trapped in it are under so much pressure the ice fizzes when it melts."

"Who doesn't want 500,000-year-old ice in their drink?" he joked.

Fake Skydivers Over Google Earth

Arcgis.com bigger than Flickr?

Ok, so ESRI confirmed that there were indeed 400 million maps created on arcgis.com in October, but I am still not convinced…

It is not that is impossible for ESRI to achieve such growth in one month, it’s that there just isn’t any (publicly accessible) evidence to suggest that the number is anywhere close. To illustrate my point, let’s compare Arcgis.com to another website with massive amounts of user-generated content. Since there is no such website in the GIS space, let’s take Flickr. I know that this is not “apples to apples” comparison, but since we are comparing only the amount of user-generated content it will work.

Here is what we know about Flickr: According to Compete, Flickr enjoyed almost 20 million unique visitors in October who uploaded more than 3000 images per minute. If we do a rough calculation (3000 photos * 1440 minutes * 31 days) we will arrive at 133,920,000 photos for October.

Now let’s look at Arcgis: Compete shows roughly 33K unique visitors for October and the numbers from Alexa are not much different. As I noted earlier, ESRI claims 400,000,000 user-generated maps for this period. This means that every unique visitor had to have created over 12K maps.

Either I am totally off in my calculations or Arcgis.com is 30% larger than Flickr in terms of user-generated content! This is excellent news for map geeks all over the world – making maps is finally more popular than uploading photos.

London Underwater Tube Map. London by the Sea

Wet commutes forecast as parts of London predicted to be underwater by the end of the century

Large areas of London could be underwater by 2100 as a direct result of climate change, research has shown.

Development charity Practical Action has released an alternative tube map that highlights the impact climate change and rising sea levels could have on the capital.

If climate change talks scheduled to begin in Cancun this week are not successful, it could lead to a 4C rise in global temperatures by the end of the century. This, in turn, could lead to a 4m rise in sea levels proving catastrophic for London and potentially devastating for developing countries.

The "London Underground Map 2100" highlights those areas that could be underwater if no action on climate change is taken including Westminster and the Houses of Parliament, London Bridge, Embankment, Sloane Square and Canary Wharf.

All of which would mean people would potentially face a swim rather than a walk to their jobs in the city and cause embarassment for the UK on the world stage and affect how London is perceived for business and finance.

Margaret Gardner, Director, Practical Action said "if no action is taken against the temperature and sea levels rise as predicted, large areas of London could be underwater by the end of the century - a frightening thought. But what's more frightening are the effects that will be felt in developing countries where people are already living on the front line of climate change and experiencing the worst effects of floods, droughts and extreme temperatures."

"In London we have an insurance industry and the necessary capital to do something about increased flooding risk. We can build barriers and do whatever is necessary. But in Dhaka and other cities in the developing world, there isn't the spare cash to just invest in infrastructure to help people to adapt to climate change. So the answer has to be to avoid climate change in the first place."

"Practical Action works extensively with communities living in these areas helping them to adapt to their changing climate but without action on climate change, the consequences will be too catastrophic to overcome."

Practical Action works with poor communities around the world helping them to adapt to the effects of climate change. From teaching Bangladeshi villagers to build floating gardens on flood waters in order to feed their families, to introducing camels in drought-prone regions of Kenya.

For more information and to sign up to Practical Action's climate change campaign 'Face up to 4C' please visit www.practicalaction.org/faceup.

For further information, please contact Abbie Upton, Practical Action Media Officer, on 01926 634510 or 07714 205342.

How London's Tube map could look in 2010 if climate change talks in Cancun are not successful, leading to a 4m rise in sea levels - click to open hi-res PDF version
Notes for Editors:

Practical Action believes that the right idea, however small, can change lives.

Practical Action is an international development charity with a difference, working together with some of the world's poorest women, men and children, helping to alleviate poverty in the developing world through the innovative use of technology.

Practical Action's particular strength is its 'simple' approach: finding out what people are doing and helping them to do it better. This enables poor communities to build their own knowledge and skills to produce sustainable and practical solutions: driving their own development.

Whether enabling women and men in Darfur to feed their families, providing people in Bangladesh with the chance to control the impact of flooding on their lives or working with remote communities in Peru to introduce electricity, Practical Action's activities are always people focused, locally relevant and environmentally sensitive, offering tangible ways out of poverty.

Practical Action won The Ashden Award for Light and Power in 2007 for its micro-hydro work in Peru, bringing electricity to over 30,000 people living in remote Andean villages.

*Source material here:

* http://legacy.london.gov.uk/mayor/strategies/sds/docs/regional-flood-risk09.pdf

Wife Saver KFC Advert From 1968.

You Must Watch This! Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats

Simply awesome video be sure to ping to your mates!

In-Theater Intelligence? There's An App For That

In-Theater Intelligence? There's An App For That
U.S Army Soldier Equipment To Be Modernized With iPhone and Android Smartphones


With the ever reducing cost and ever increasing capability and durability of smartphone technology, U.S. Army troops could find themselves armed with an iPhone as soon as February 2011, according to a report in USA Today.

The report states that at part of its Connecting Soldiers to Digital Applications (CSDA) program, the U.S Army is working on a soldier technology solution that would mean an iPhone or Android-based smartphone as a standard piece of equipment for every soldier - including picking up the tab on the monthly bill.

"One of the options potentially is to make it a piece of equipment in a soldier's clothing bag," Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, Director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC) told USA Today, adding that most soldiers think this soldier modernization plan is too good to be true.

Mike McCarthy, director of the mission command complex of Future Force Integration Directorate at Fort Bliss, disagrees. McCarthy told USA Today about his vision for a digitally connected army from the ground up.

"What we're doing is fundamentally changing how soldiers access knowledge, information, training content and operational data," McCarthy said. "The day you sign on to be a soldier, you will be accessing information and knowledge in garrison and in an operational environment in a seamless manner. We're using smartphone technologies to lead this."

But it isn't only smartphones. McCarthy explained to USA Today that they were looking at everything from iPads, Kindles, and Nooks, to mini-projectors. Fortunately, the U.S. Army is planning on keeping its options open instead of signing any kind of exclusivity agreement, Rickey Smith, Director of ARCIC-Forward, told USA Today.

"We're not wedded to a specific piece of hardware. We are open to using Palm Trios, the Android, iPhone or whatever else is out there."

The Army plans to begin issuing phones, network equipment and applications to the first Army brigade to be modernized under the brigade combat team modernization program in February. That test will not be limited to smart phones but will include any electronic devices that may be useful to troops.

Realising both the cost and time saving benefits of using 'tried-and-tested' technology, much like its utilization of XBox 360 controllers, the U.S. Army also states it has no plans to develop its own devices, instead opting to make minor tweaks and making the equipment rugged enough for the field.

Of course, unlike the one-time-only purchase of a XBox controller, using mobile communications technology requires an ongoing payment plan, and figuring out a system for purchasing is still in the works. One option being considered is to give soldiers a monthly stipend to spend on minutes, data, and apps, allowing the soldiers to customize their devices to speak to their specific requirements.

"If you did it that way, the advantage would be to pay for the phone once and then you pay a maintenance fee to the soldier ... and then the soldier can buy whatever iPhone, Android or hardware that he or she likes," Vane said. "Then the challenge is just figuring out how we pay for the minutes each month."

But it's not just about paying for extra minutes; the other big question for app-based technology is that of data security. Although testing over classified networks has not been conducted yet, once these issues are addressed, access to these devices would allow soldiers to access real-time geospatial intelligence information and mapping systems in-theater.

Smartphones would enable soldiers access to real-time intelligence and video from overhead unmanned systems, and track friends and enemies on a dynamic map whilst in the battlefield, officials said.

"What we're doing is fundamentally changing how soldiers access knowledge, information, training content and operational data," McCarthy said

According to recent test results, the Army has discovered that the likelihood of soldiers collecting and sharing data radically increases when equipped with smartphones, resulting in more meaningful, up-to-date and actionable data being available, massively improving soldier management both in and away from the battlefield, back in HQ.

Vane said he wants to use the phones to collect biometrics on enemy combatants.

"Can we connect this to biometrics? Well, that's the direction we're headed," he said.

"The challenge will be to work through the policy issues of sharing data and information assurance," Vane continued. "Army officials remain concerned of enemy forces hacking into the phones, but don't want that fear to paralyze the use of these phones."

Vane told USA Today that a widespread battlefield deployment could happen as soon as 2011.

Lt. Gen. Michael Vane will be speaking on this and related topics at Soldier Technology US, 31 Jan - 3 Feb, Arlington, Virginia. To make a reservation or for the full agenda visit www.soldiertechnologyus.com or email us at soldiertechnologyus@wbr.co.uk