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Photographer Awarded TED Prize for Work on War, Disease
Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Wired.com
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: Photo: James Nachtwey Last year, acclaimed war photographer James Nachtwey was honored with the 2007 Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Prize for his work documenting images of war, disease and political unrest across the globe for over 25 years. Along with President Bill Clinton and Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson, Nachtwey was awarded $100,000 to help him bring "one wish to change the world" to fruition. James' wish was to share an underreported worldwide story, prove the power of news photography in the digital age and raise awareness about a global health issue that has the potential to become a worldwide pandemic — Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (XDR TB). Tonight Nachtwey will unveil the images of the disease he hopes to combat at a special screening at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. His poignant images will be used to offer awareness about the worldwide spread of tuberculosis through a multimedia campaign on all seven continents, in 50 cities around the globe, and across the web. You can find out more information about screenings and the images at www.xdrtb.org. Nachtwey shared his digital images with us and took a few moments to tell Wired.com what he learned during the yearlong process of tracking the global spread of tuberculosis. : Photo: James Nachtwey Wired.com: When did you first encounter XDR-TB? James Nachtwey: In 2000, I did a story for Time on AIDS in Africa. It was my first introduction to that subject. In South Africa...
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Happy Birthday, Lasers: Wired.com's Best Laser Stories
Posted: May 16th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Wired.com
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: Lasers are like your favorite uncle who can do no wrong. You know, the one who's always hip to the latest technology, does amazing magic tricks at all the family dinners, always photographs well, and has more than once saved baby Med-Tech from a burning house of boring. All the other technologies wish they were he, and Wired.com readers openly admit he's their favorite.
So in celebration of one of our greatest news topics here at Wired.com, we've selected a compilation of the best recent laser appearances on our site. Thanks for the memories, Big L. (Have your own favorite laser news item? Let us know in the comments.)
Left:
Texans Build World's Most Powerful Laser
Scientists have switched on the world's most powerful laser, which for one-trillionth of a second is 2,000 times more powerful than all the power plants in the United States. The laser's output tops a petawatt, which is a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) watts of power.
Photo: Courtesy Mikael Martinez and Texas Petawatt Project, led by Todd Ditmire
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The power of a laser, its output in watts, is determined by the energy of the laser pulse, measured in joules, divided by its duration, measured in seconds (tiny fractions of a second in this case). So, to get high power, you can either turn up the energy or cram the same amount of energy into a shorter duration pulse -- or do both. The problem is that turning up the energy makes it more difficult to get short pulses.
The solution to this problem requires an almost Rube Goldberg setup inside a 1,500-square-foot clean room. The most powerful laser in the world starts, poetically enough, with a "seed laser" that puts out a wimpy nanojoule of energy for a couple of hundred femtoseconds (that's 10-15 seconds). It must be run through a series of amplifiers, compressors and stretchers before it can recreate the conditions inside the sun for a trillionth of a second.
Photo: Courtesy Mikael Martinez and Texas Petawatt Project, led by Todd Ditmire
: Beamz Music System Lets You Compose a Symphony With the Power of Freaking Lasers
If Dr. Evil of Austin Powers fame were more musically minded, he may have demanded something like the beamz -- a musical instrument with "fricking lasers" attached to it. This large USB peripheral includes six laser beams that, when broken, activate elements of 30 songs stored on your computer.
: Laser-Etched QR Codes: Digital Graffiti For Gadgets
Forget stickers. Real geeks show their commitment with something more permanent: laser engraving. And Jason Fields takes your etching and raises you one QR code. Sure, it's too big for most little QR readers to handle, and the gray on gray isn't exactly contrasty, but Jason has squeezed in his "e-mail signature file, postal address, with links to my blog and twitter pages as well."
: The Geekiest Van Conversion Ever
This is the Tele Atlas map machine, a Toyota van tricked out with tens of thousands of dollars worth of cameras, laser range detectors and global-positioning hardware. The laser sensors on the back (the devices labeled SICK) are used to determine the height of overpasses and buildings to help delivery vehicles find the route with the most overhead clearance.
Photo: Michael Calore/Wired.com
: The Ultrashort Pulse Laser in Action
Raydiance, a startup company in Petaluma, California, has developed a laser it says can cleanly cut just about any material you can think of -- from human skin to glass -- without throwing off heat or damaging the surface.
This glass slide is seconds away from being ablated by the Raydiance USP laser.
Photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com
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A new patent granted to Lockheed Martin seeks to combine multiple lasers into a single, higher-power beam, which would, in theory, help achieve the power output needed for laser weapons. The patent outlines a method to "combine multiple laser beams into a single coherent beam without requiring insertion of optical elements into the laser beam."
: This Laser Trick's a Quantum Leap
Ph.D. student Elliot Fraval (left) and Dr. Jevon Longdel perform scientific measurements on light in the lab at Laser Physics Centre at Australian National University.
Photo: Tim Wetherell
: Navy Pushing Laser 'Holy Grail' to Weapons Grade
For decades, scientists have been slowly working on a laser that never runs out of shots -- and can be "tuned" to blast through the air, at just the right wavelength. For most of that time, all they could get was a laser at light-bulb strength. But researchers at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility finally managed in 2004 to assemble a "Free Electron Laser," or FEL, that could generate 10,000 watts of power.
Now the Navy has started an effort to design and build a new FEL, 10 times as strong. That would bring the laser up to 100 kilowatts -- what's considered the minimum threshold for weapons grade. But it would also be just a steppingstone on the way to an energy weapon as powerful as any produced. If ray gun researchers can get the thing to work, that is.
: Stupid Laser Tricks: Make Your Own Piece of Jesus-Miracle Toast
They can do everything from nuclear fusion to vaginal rejuvenation, so you know it's a mathematical certainty that lasers = awesome. Plus, your right to tinker with dirt-cheap lasers in your basement is all but guaranteed in the Constitution! With that in mind, here are a few of our favorite DIY laser hacks. (Disclaimer: If you are foolhardy enough to try any of these and end up maiming yourself or getting sucked into the Tron game grid, something else was probably going to remove you from the gene pool soon anyway.)
Photo: Gene Lee
: Laser-Guided Saw: Cool Tool or Novelty Toy?
It might not cut as effectively as a lightsaber, or even a real laser cutter, but at least your lines will be (theoretically) straight.
At $20, though, it's probably too cheap to actually do its job. If you've ever used a cheap saw you know that the blade will flex and buck, leaving your supposedly neat cut looking about as straight as Earring Magic Ken. And the laser doesn't even come with a battery. We say: Avoid. You'll get a better result with an old popsicle stick.
: DIY Laser Lightshow for $80: Useless but Awesome
What's cooler than a green laser? A green laser that paints semirandom moving spirograph patterns on your wall. Toronto-based hardware hacker Artur Petrovskyy shows you how to make one of your own from about $80 in parts in a new how-to on Instructables.com: Laser show for poor man.
Image: Instructables.com
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Wired.com Readers' Most-Wanted Rare Gadgets
Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 9:00pm EDT by Wired.com
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: We asked our readers to submit the coolest, hardest-to-find gadgets they could think of. After two weeks, these are the favorites. There are far too many gems to include here, so visit the rare-gadget submission page to browse more than 100 entries.
Left: Smallest Mechanical Pocket Calculator
Submitted by AnonymousSubmitter's comment:
"Designed by an Austrian prisoner (Curt Herzstark) in KZ Buchenwald during World War II, it remains the smallest pure mechanical calculating device on Earth. Its more than 700 pieces are all made out of metal, nearly all types of calculations are possible: Enter the number, turn the crank, and out comes the result."
: An Enigma!
Submitted by Mokum Von AmsterdamThe Enigma machine was most famously used by the Nazis to create encrypted messages during World War II. Allied forces were able to decrypt many important Enigma messages, elevating its significance in the history books.
Submitter's comment:
"The Enigma machine based its cipher capabilities on a series of wired rotor wheels and a plugboard. Through a web of internal wiring, each of the 26 input contacts on the rotor was connected to a different output contact. The wiring connections of one rotor differed from the connections on any other rotor."
: Widelux
This is our own submission, but many of our readers voted for it, so we're including it here. The Widelux has a swing-lens that takes beautiful wide-angle shots. The lens preserves perspective so that faces don't appear distorted as with most wide-angle lenses. They went out of production in the '80s and are a rare treat for camera junkies.
: Loco Box "The Choker" Compressor Pedal
Submitted by Alamo Death TollSubmitter's comment:
"Jason Falkner, guitarist and producer, mentioned it in Tape Op magazine: 'It's an incredible-sounding foot compressor. Whomever I tell about this -- an engineer or producer -- they go on the hunt for it.... Everything on my four-track recordings went into that Choker.' After that article, the value of this impossible-to-find pedal skyrocketed."
: Pixar Image Computer
Submitted by DanSubmitter's comment:
"Way before Pixar made movies, they made parallel-image computers. Wikipedia says fewer than 300 of these were ever sold, and I think that may be an overestimate."
: Nixie Tubes
Submitted by AnonymousSubmitter's comment:
"These outdated display devices from the 1950s use 10 number-shaped cathodes suspended in a thin gas to create glowing digits, and are every steampunk toymaker's dream."
: Vectrex, Vector Graphics Home Video Console
Submitted by JagerSubmitter's comment:
"While I never actually got to own one, I used to play with this machine in Sears whenever we were at the mall (and c'mon, it was the '80s -- when weren't you at the mall?).
"Fun and addictive -- like most videogames of the time -- but original, as it used an actual built-in vector-graphics monitor for gameplay (as opposed to "raster" graphics). Fun fun fun!"
: Golden DeLorean
Submitted by AnonymousSubmitter's comment:
"American Express originally intended to build 100 of these gold-plated DMC-12s as a Christmas 1981 advertising promotion, but only two were ever built, and a third from spare parts."
: Nagra SNST
Submitted by David A. GoldfarbSubmitter's comment:
"Nagra Cold War spy recorder originally designed for undercover surveillance during the Kennedy administration, later widely used in law enforcement. It uses tape the same width as cassette tape but on open reels and packs automatic dynamic level control and audio-compression circuitry into its machined aluminum 145 x 100 x 28 mm case."
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ARP 2600
Submitted by Chris YewellSubmitter's comment:
"The ARP 2600 is without a doubt one of the finest analog synthesizers ever. It is very popular and has been used by artists for more than 20 years in all forms of music, especially today's electronic music. The 2600 is a professional, semi-modular, monophonic, patch-cable synthesizer that competed directly against the first professional Modular Moog synths during the early 1970s. From Vintage Synth Explorer.
: PXL 2000 Deluxe Audio Cassette Video System
Submitted by MvESubmitter's comment:
"What makes this camera unique? In 1987, Fisher-Price manufactured a video camera capable of recording audio and video onto a standard Type II audio cassette. The image quality topped out at 160Khz (compared with 2.5Mhz for a normal signal), so the image comes out grainy and ghostly. A favorite these days for film students wanting an ethereal and artsy feel. Find yours on eBay."
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Bjork's Wanderlust in 2-D
Posted: April 21st, 2008, 1:15pm EDT by Wired.com
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For those of you lacking 3-D glasses....
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Submit Your Best Star Wars Tribute Photo
Posted: March 25th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Wired.com
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Wired.com asks for photo submissions of your favorite tribute to all things , from costumes to animated re-creations.