…Theft-Thwarting Car Stolen, USS Macon Found, Bacteria Resurrected, Five Reasons to Hate Workaholics and More!

Engineering Director Trades Up Frequent Flyer Miles
British businessman Alan Watts has traded the 2 million frequent-flyer miles he’s racked up over the years for a real journey 75 miles (120 kilometers) above Earth, reported The Associated Press yesterday.

Watts has traded his multitude of flyer miles and plans to travel on the world’s first commercial tourism flights to space, Virgin Atlantic Airways spokeswoman Katie Francis said.

He will be among the first 1,000 people to travel on a space tourism program in 2009 with Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of British entrepreneur Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic. Flights cost $200,000USD.

Watts, of London, is the managing director of an electrical engineering firm and has taken more than 30 Virgin Atlantic flights in the last six years.

The Dragon-Skin Body Armor Soap Opera
We’re not sure how we’ve missed this, but apparently there has been a “seemingly-endlessly soap opera” behind Dragon Skin body armor, according to Defense Tech. And apparently it has taken yet another plot twist.

Recently, Army program managers in charge of a competing body armor system were publicly knocking the “first practical, flexible body armor that defeats rifle rounds” while they were in the middle of supposedly impartial tests to gauge the armor’s effectiveness.

But the National Institute of Justice, which has long rated bullet-proofing systems, is expected to formally certify for Level III protection — good enough to stop AK-47 fire—within a few weeks, thus making Dragon Skin the first soft armor, without plate inserts, to get that high of a rating.

Already, according to Defense Tech, Dragon Skin has gone from “ballyhooed to banned to grudgingly accepted for testing, all in a matter of months.”

Pavers to Collect Their Own Water, Purify Run-off
Researchers say car parks, patios and other paved areas “could one day collect rainwater, purify it, then channel it to underground tanks for reuse,” reports Australia’s ABC Science Online.

Special porous pavers made of concrete containing specific additives would purify the polluted run-off, according to Professor Simon Beecham, a civil engineer from the University of South Australia. The water could then be captured in large underground tanks and be used for irrigation, cleaning and flushing the toilet.

Until now, harvesting rainwater from roads, driveways, pathways and the like — which make up 60 percent of impervious urban surfaces, creating run-off that causes flooding and waterway pollution — has proved more difficult than from roofs, says Beecham.

His team is developing a system in which porous concrete pavers allow run-off to seep into underground tanks made of galvanized metal or a flexible plastic lining filled with gravel. A special bonding material ensures the porous pavers are strong enough to withstand the heavy weight of vehicles. Additives mixed into the pavers, or into the sand and gravel bedding material beneath them, enable the system to trap pollutants.

Hubble’s Key Camera Shuts Down…Again…
Well, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), the Hubble Space Telescope’s most frequently used instrument, has shut down unexpectedly.

Again.

The ACS briefly stopped working in early summer, when its original power supply failed, reports New Scientist. It was brought back online when managers switched to backup power.

The new problem? “Totally different,” according to Preston Burch, Hubble’s mission manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Hubble’s managers are still investigating the problem. ACS has three channels, which are essentially three different cameras. The problem appears to be confined to the channel that has the sharpest vision.

Great. Now the evidence from Hubble’s probing the far reaches of space in our quest to understand the true nature of the universe is gonna be all blurry.

No Kidding, Materials Prices are Out of Control.
This week we focused a little bit on skyrocketing raw materials prices, including the cost of metals, and how they’re affecting manufacturers. But this is ridiculous. See what happens when prices for metal materials stay as high as they are:

At least seven men in five states have been fatally electrocuted since July while hacking through power lines to steal wire made of copper, which has been commanding near-record prices, police say. The men were found with wire cutters and other tools that suggested their intent.

At least 30 more copper thefts have occurred in South Carolina’s Greenville County so far this year. Nationwide, police report copper thieves stealing wires from air conditioning units, exposed pipes from underneath homes, vases from graveyards in Sumter, S.C., and bells from a church in Yonkers, N.Y.

Stolen: Car Designed to Thwart Thefts
In an ironic turn of circumstance, Dallas police this week have been investigating a “glitch” that resulted in the loss of one of their “bait” cars.

Sometime last weekend, a car outfitted with cameras, tracking capabilities and a remote engine-kill system designed to catch auto thieves was stolen somewhere in Dallas. Not only would police say where it was stolen, they also would not identify the make and model of the car so that if it is recovered, it can remain part of the undercover, theft-thwarting fleet. Ummm…right.

It is ALIVE…Again…
While most bacteria die if blasted by huge doses of radiation or parched by a severe lack of water, as “the genetic material irreversibly splinters into hundreds of pieces,” National Geographic points out, a few bacteria can “resurrect” themselves by quickly piecing their DNA back together. This strange ability has mystified biologists for decades.

Now a group of researchers have figured out how one species of these phoenix-like bacteria can rise from the ashes.

The group, led by a molecular geneticist at Université René Descartes in Paris, France, studied a bacteria called Deinococcus radiodurans, which survives in sun-baked deserts and rock surfaces. The organism can withstand massive doses of radiation and can even survive being completely dried out. When that occurs, “there is no metabolism. The genome is shattered into hundreds of pieces. It is a dead cell. But out of this horrendous damage, it can resurrect.”

Drink ‘Til Your Liver is Shot…Which Now Could Be a While
A cheap and readily available drug could reverse severe liver disease, even in patients who find it impossible to give up booze, research suggests.

Scientists had thought that the scarring associated with cirrhosis — known as fibrosis — was irreversible. However, recent studies have shown that is not the case.

Although sulfasalazine is currently used to treat arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, a University of Newcastle team, in tests on animals, has found that the drug can also aid the recovery process and reverse the scarring associated with cirrhosis of the liver, reports BBC News.

Airship Lost in 1935 Found Submerged in Pacific
This month researchers documented the wreckage of the largest U.S.-built rigid, lighter-than-air craft. On Feb. 12, 1935, the USS Macon, a 785-foot dirigible, fell from the sky during severe weather off Point Sur, California, and sunk beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, according to LiveScience.

From a Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s (MBARI) research ship, scientists recently deployed a remotely operated vehicle to capture high-definition video and still images of wreckage this month. In the airship’s hangar bay they found four Sparrowhawk biplanes, five of the eight 12-cylinder gasoline engines, and objects from the ship’s galley, including two sections of the aluminum stove, propane tanks that supplied fuel for it and a dining table and bench.

A second debris field contained the Macon’s bow section, including the mooring mast receptacle, plus aluminum chairs and desks that may have been in a port side officer’s or meteorologist’s office.

The exact location of the submerged wreckage remained a mystery for nearly 50 years until a commercial fisherman snagged a piece of the USS Macon’s girder in his net. The USS Macon is considered the last of its kind.

Five Reasons to Hate Workaholics . . .
…according to Malcolm Burgess, author of “500 Reasons Why I Hate the Office.”

1) These driven people like to set the benchmarks for the rest of us, which consist mainly of: (a) working until 11 p.m. and then apologizing for going home; (b) not even having a presenteeism cardigan; (c) asking to be excluded from the EEC 48-hour work directive — and do they really have to stay at home on Christmas Day?

5) We try not to giggle when the workaholic organization tells us to be even more “focused” and “work smarter” as it obviously hasn’t done a lot for them. Look, if God had wanted us to hang around horrible office furniture late at night, He would have given us a nicer range of Snack Pots [equivalent to U.S. "snack packs": individually packaged, single-serving snacks].

(via UK’s The Times)

Wearable Wobbly Robot Suit
Seeing as Halloween and Thanksgiving are set to come and go as they do every year, basically Christmas is just around the corner. So check out Masaaki Nagumo’s creation, the “Land Walker,” a wearable robot suit that stands 3.4m high (11 ft) and weighs a hefty 907kg (1 ton). It can walk (more like shuffle) forward, backward or sideways by operating four pedals, and it shoots sponge bullets from two air guns installed beside the cockpit.

And it is available now in Japan for $313,985USD.

So ignore the wobbling and forget for a moment that the Ewoks were able to defeat these things with only ropes and logs…and enjoy!

Cheers.