Tag: var-scpt

State of emergency declared as Florida struck by flesh-eating screwworms

Nice place! Via PBS : The discovery occurred earlier this month in the Florida Keys, where the U.S. Department of Agriculture detected the New World screwworm, a parasite that lives inside open wounds, in a deer. About 30 deer have been found dead or been euthanized in the last two weeks due to screwworm infections. As a result, the county declared an agricultural state of emergency. “The screwworm is a potentially devastating animal disease that sends shivers down every ranchers spine,” Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam said. “It’s been more than five decades since the screwworm infested Florida, and I’ve grown up hearing the horror stories from the last occurrence.”

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State of emergency declared as Florida struck by flesh-eating screwworms

Social media surveillance software used by cops faces backlash

Geofeedia bills itself as a way for marketers to reach potential customers through geotagged “hashtag listening,” but they also sell it to police departments for “predicting, analyzing and acting on social media conversations,” like, say, peaceful protests. (more…)

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Social media surveillance software used by cops faces backlash

Britain’s new plastic money so hi-tech it can play vinyl records

In this video, a man plays Abba’s 1976 classic Money Money Money using one of the new £5 notes issued in the UK. They’re made of plastic. The new polymer five pound notes have a rather curious ability of being just about able to play vinyl records (with the aid of a contact microphone and small amplifier not shown on screen). As the corners on these new banknotes are more durable and sharper than its paper counterpart it acts like a very crude record needle. Like a lady barbarian’s armor in a computer game, the new fiver doesn’t crumple easily or get wet or tear, but still folds, and has a see-through window. “I do quite like them,” says a Briton on the street. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChqhM9C44fM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srQSzhkh8Uo

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Britain’s new plastic money so hi-tech it can play vinyl records

Silkworms eat nanotubes, spin super-silk

Nanoengineer engineers at Tsinghua University fed silkworms carbon nanotubes or graphene, both of which are approximately 100 times stronger than steel. The silkworms then spun reinforced silk that, according to Chemical & Engineering News , “twice as tough (as regular silk) and can withstand at least 50% higher stress before breaking.” The modified silks conduct electricity, unlike regular silk. Raman spectroscopy and electron microscopy imaging showed that the carbon-enhanced silk fibers had a more ordered crystal structure due to the incorporated nano materials. Some questions remain. One is exactly how the silkworms incorporate the nanomaterials in their silk. Another is what percentage of the nanomaterials eaten by the worms make it into the silk instead of being excreted or otherwise metabolized. ” Feeding Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes or Graphene to Silkworms for Reinforced Silk Fibers ” (Nano Letters)

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Silkworms eat nanotubes, spin super-silk

Terrific history of Benguiat, the ‘Stranger Things’ font

Typeroom looks back at ITC Benguiat , the font that so embodied its time that it’s now canonical for late 1970s to early 1980s. Turns out its designer and namesake Ed Benguiat was motivated by a potential big payoff: Inspired by Times New Roman and Bodoni, “he wanted to create a design that was pretty and readable in order to garner as much commission and licensing fees as possible. Back then, it was much harder to access different fonts so there was a larger incentive to have a typeface take off”. • How Ed Benguiat’s vintage font became the most hyped of the year (h/t Calpernia Addams )

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Terrific history of Benguiat, the ‘Stranger Things’ font