Wired: Top Stories (16 unread)
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California Is Due for Katrina-Style Disaster
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 8:03pm EDT by Betsy Mason
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The Hayward Fault in the San Francisco Bay Area has a major quake on average every 140 years. The last one occurred 140 years ago. The next one could be a disaster of Hurricane Katrina proportions.
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5 U.S. Earthquake Hot Spots Beyond California
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 8:03pm EDT by Betsy Mason
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Some of the country's largest earthquakes occur outside of California in lesser-known earthquake hot spots. Here are five of the most dangerous seismic zones lurking throughout the United States.
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How to Take Bokeh Photographs
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 7:30pm EDT by How-To Wiki
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It's the fuzzy photo effect with the funny name. Bokeh (rhymes with OK) celebrates the art of the lens blur, the natural effect you get when a camera's lens is set to capture a limited depth of field. Serious photographers can produce the effect with by tweaking the camera, but those of us without the fancy gear can get similar results using software.
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Dropping 'Heroes' Dead Weight Could Shock Show Out of Slump
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 7:17pm EDT by Scott Thill
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Time-travel flakiness and standard-issue plot developments won't lift the show out of its death spiral, but thinning the superhero herd might.
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Former Teen Cheerleader Defies RIAA Over $7,400 File Sharing Tab
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 7:00pm EDT by David Kravets
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The Recording Industry Association of America is demanding $7,400 from a woman who was a teenager when she infringed the record labels copyrights on the file sharing program Kazaa. Whitney Harper of Texas, now 20, downloaded the songs between the ages of 14 and 16, and didn't realize she was breaking the law. In response, the RIAA says the woman, who is demanding a jury trial, should pay up instead of "choosing to drag this out."
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RIM Could Rot With the Economy
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 3:21pm EDT by Betsy Schiffman
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Despite a slate of fancy new BlackBerry phones, Research In Motion could find itself in a pretty ugly situation, as corporate and consumer spending dry up in the slowing economy.
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Real-Life Pac-Man Plays Out in the Streets of Portland
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 3:00pm EDT by Adam DuVander
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Attendees of this weekend's WhereCamp PDX took part in a real-life game of Pac-Man on the city grid of downtown Portland, Oregon, on Sunday. In this version of the classic video game, dubbed PacManhattan, four players in ghost suits chase a pellet-collecting, Bluetooth-headset-wearing Pac-Man. The game served as a demonstration of location-based gaming's potential.
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Headaches Continue at Gmail, New Outages Reported
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 3:00pm EDT by Michael Calore
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Some users are continuing to have problems with Google's free e-mail service Monday. It marks the latest bump in the road for Google's web services as the company tries to put a particularly bad week behind it.
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Learn to Profit From Piracy at PopTech
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 2:02pm EDT by Chris Snyder
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A former radio DJ, Matt Mason argues that piracy can be beneficial to businesses if they learn to use it as a marketing tool in a presentation at the annual PopTech conference this week in Camden, Maine.
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Pop!Tech: Machine Therapist Bonds With Her Blender
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 1:33pm EDT by Priya Ganapati
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Machine therapist Kelly Dobson shows off her ideas for humans to interact with their machines, including a blender that responds to voice commands mimicking blender sounds, at Pop!Tech 2008 in Camden, Maine, this week.
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U.S.-Iraq Deal Could Mean Jail Time for Contractors
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 10:41am EDT by Nathan Hodge
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Not too long ago, private security contractors in Iraq had a get-out-of-jail-free card; they could run around the country without a chance in the world that they could be prosecuted for anything they did. A draft of the U.S.-Iraq security deal, now making the rounds in Washington and Baghdad, could change all that. Guns-for-hire in Iraq could suddenly find themselves facing time in an Iraqi prison, if they broke the local laws.
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Six Apart CEO: Down Economy Boosts Blogging
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 10:28am EDT by Portfolio.com
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If you're looking for something -- anything! -- that might actually benefit from the present stinking rotting corpse of an economy, try blogging companies. We caught up with Six Apart CEO Chris Alden over a Belgian beer in downtown Washington, DC. As you might imagine, talk turned to the economy. And Alden offered a surprising note of optimism for his company.
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Fate of America's First Bullet Train Rests With California Voters
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 7:00am EDT by Dave Demerjian
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Californians dream of the day when bullet trains will whisk them around the state. Proponents say now's the best chance to make that dream reality.
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Note to Next President: Modern-Day WPA Will Save the Economy
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 6:00am EDT by Dave Demerjian
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Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have been all but silent when it comes to repairing America's failing infrastructure. The candidates can talk all they want about shoveling money into alternative fuels, electric cars and high-speed rail, but none of that will mean much if our roads, bridges and rails can't support them.
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Oct. 20, 1984: An Aquarium for the Ages Opens
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Tony Long
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1984: The Monterey Bay Aquarium opens in California.
The aquarium occupies the site of an old sardine cannery at the edge of Monterey Bay, one of the most fertile and diverse marine environments on earth. That diversity inspired the idea of devoting the aquarium solely to the rich marine life indigenous to its own stretch of the Pacific coast. (However, a few concessions have been made to geography over the years: A colony of South African blackfooted penguins is currently in residence, for example.)
The Monterey Bay Aquarium was in the vanguard of the new generation of aquariums emphasizing conservation, education and research as much as exhibition space. It was the brainchild of four marine biologists from Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station in nearby Pacific Grove.
The aquarium's original building, designed by a San Francisco architectural firm, was made to resemble the old Hovden Cannery that once occupied the spot. David Packard (yes, that David Packard) got the ball rolling by throwing in a spare $55 million (about $125 million in today's money) to cover construction and startup costs.
A new wing was added later, housing the Outer Bay Waters exhibit that focuses on the open-ocean environment. Other popular exhibits include the kelp forest, the sea otters and the visually arresting Jellies, which was such a hit that other aquariums have since copied Monterey.
The aquarium pumps water directly from Monterey Bay — at a rate of 2,000 gallons per minute — to feed more than a hundred exhibit tanks. The water is filtered during the day to keep the tanks clear for viewing, but at night raw sea water, rich in plankton and other nutrients, is pumped through the exhibits.
Through its sister institution, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the aquarium conducts marine-science research projects, including ongoing conservation efforts involving sea otters and tuna.
If he were alive today, John Steinbeck would be appalled by the tourist-trap tawdriness that characterizes most of Monterey's historic Cannery Row. But Steinbeck and his old buddy, Doc Ricketts, would have loved the aquarium. It's real, for one thing.
Source: Monterey Bay Aquarium
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Gallery: Under the Surface at Monterey Bay Aquarium
Posted: October 20th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Jon Snyder
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: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comWater covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface and supports some of the most complex eco-systems and bizarre creatures on the planet. Yet we only know about a fraction (really, it’s roughly ten percent) of what’s swimming around down there.
But every day at Monterey Bay Aquarium, researchers are hard at work trying to understand what’s going on in the abyss. You may have been to the aquarium and seen the exhibit, but just like the ocean, there’s a lot more going on underneath the surface.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comThe aquarium is home to the largest jellyfish exhibit of its kind. Currently, Black Sea nettles, seen here, call this 2500-gallon tank home. The apparatus includes a circulating water flow that mimics ocean currents and keeps the nettle’s delicate skin from rubbing against the acrylic walls.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comBehind the jellyfish exhibit, the luminescent tank looks quite different. The massive acrylic walls were custom-made by Nippura, a Japanese company that specializes in acrylic aquarium design and fabrication.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comThe jellyfish in the exhibit are cultured on site. These dishes contain specimens in their polyp stage of life. The polyp stage of the reproductive process was actually discovered here at the aquarium.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comSustenance for the jellyfish is grown at the aquarium as well. Staffers create a mini-food chain by raising phytoplankton to feed brine shrimp, which in turn are fed to the jellyfish.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comIn the past, part of the difficulty in raising these jellyfish was due to containment issues. Bill Hamner, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA, developed the circular jelly holding tanks that the aquarium uses. All designs are open source, and the technology has been shared with other aquariums.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comUnderneath the exhibits is an intricate water distribution and filtration system. 2000 gallons of water are piped into the aquarium from Monterey Bay every minute. All seawater is filtered upon entering this system and sterilized when discharged. The result? Monterey Bay doesn’t get contaminated with foreign organisms.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comRoughly one billion gallons of water per year pulse through the aquarium. To handle this deluge, a full-time staff is on hand to maintain the plumbing. The large tanks seen here contain sand filters for water running to the Outer Bay exhibit, while the smaller pipes distribute both warm and chilled seawater to animals that require specific temperatures.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comOf the two million gallons of water collectively held in the aquarium, roughly half of it is routed into the largest display: the Outer Bay exhibit. The viewing window is 54 feet wide, 15 feet tall and 12 inches thick and was the largest of its kind when introduced in 1996. The exhibit houses tunas, sharks, pelagic stingrays, mahi mahi, sea turtles and the occasional great white shark.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comThese African blackfoot penguins have been on exhibit since Y2K and are a huge hit with crowds — groups gather daily to watch aviculturist Danielle York feed fish to the flightless birds. This particular species is native to the cold currents off the coast of South Africa. To keep themselves warm in the frigid waters, they have dual insulation: tightly packed feathers coating a layer of soft down.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comCalifornia sea otters are a threatened species and one of the most popular creatures at the aquarium. Rescued when they were no longer able to survive in the wild, all the otters are treated with positive conditioning, which enables the staff to work with the animals more easily when it comes time for veterinary exams and handling.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comOtter Aquarist Stephanie Cantabene holds the "Otter-Vater," a winch system that the staff uses to lift otters (comfortably confined to crates) from the sea level observation deck into an elevated otter paddock.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comThe aquarium’s founder, David Packard (of HP fame), had a vision for his staff: Don't dwell on your success. Instead look forward to new challenges ahead. This philosophy is echoed in every action taken by researchers at Monterey Bay — a dedication to exhibit development and storytelling through the power of collaboration while inspiring ocean conservation.