Airbag To Protect Your Smartphone From Cracking

London,:

US technology giant Amazon has devised a new motion sensor technology for an airbag that can protect your gadgets including smartphones, cameras and tablets from cracking when dropped.

The system uses motion sensors, already built into most smart phones, to detect when a phone has been dropped  and the mini airbag is then deployed before it hits the floor.

A traditional airbag in cars is deployed upon impact, cushioning the passengers’ heads as they are thrust forward.

The phone system hopes to use similar techniques to prevent damage to the mobile upon inevitable impact.

The idea is the brainchild of retail and technology giant Amazon, which has patented the protective system for mobile phones, electronic readers such as Amazon’s own Kindle, computer tablets and cameras, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported.

This week the company won approval for the patent, which was filed in America by Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, 48, a self made billionaire who has forged a career from pioneering ideas.

“Prior to impact between a surface and a device, a determination of a risk of damage to the device is made. If the risk of damage to the device exceeds a threshold, a protection system is activated to reduce or to eliminate damage to the device,” the patent said.

The patent details a system that utilises a gadget’s built-in gyroscope, camera, accelerometers and other onboard sensors in order to determine if the device has entered an airborne state.

If it has, the technology will release airbags to reduce potential damage  or possibly even change the trajectory of its fall by firing jets of air.

“This sounds like a feature worthy of Bond, codename SOS SMS. But airbags for windbags sounds like a lot of hot air to me. From a logistical point of view, the handset would have to be rather bulky to hide an airbag,” said Ernest Doku, telecoms expert at uSwitch.com.

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Great Ten Tips For Keep Your Mobile Phone Working

Want to keep your phone working as well as it can and should? We'll bet at least one of these tips from our experts will shock you.

1. Weak signals kill your battery. Phones use more power when they're trying to access a weak network signal. In fact, just leaving your phone on in area with little or no signal can completely use up your battery in a handful of hours even if you never touch your phone. And avoid stashing the phone in a packed prize or briefcase or inside a lower desk drawer: It can be harder for a phone to get a signal in those places.

[More from Consumer Reports: Electronics Ratings and reviews]

2. Smart phones need a fresh re..start. With Facebook, Twitter, and so many other compelling apps to keep you glued to you cell-phone screen, you may be tempted never to turn your phone off. But smart phones, which are actually full-fledged computers, need to be restarted every one or two days to purge memory reserved by programs no longer running and to correct various other glitches that can hinder performance.

3. Smart phones get slower with age. Operating systems are designed and updated for the newest smart phones, with their faster processors, expanded memory, larger displays, and improved cameras. Accepting over-the-air updates to your OS and apps helps stave off obsolescence. But within a few years, your phone could struggle to muster the processing power, memory, or features it needs to make the most of new apps or an upgraded operating system if it can handle them at all.

4. Video kills your data allowance. It's easy to burn through the 2-gigabyte monthly allowance of typical data plans. For example, a single HD movie could eat up 700 megabytes of data or more than a third of that 2-gigabyte budget. Other data drainers include streaming music and playing connected games online. Try to use your phone's Wi-Fi connection instead of the data connections when you're doing these things.

[More from Consumer Reports: Best treadmills for getting in shape]

5. Skip screen protectors. Many of today's touch screens already come with a protective layer of Gorilla Glass or other hardened material that make scratching them nearly impossible. Some screen protectors reduce glare, but they can also make your display less responsive and harder to see in other ways. And screen protectors, even when properly installed, often develop unsightly air bubbles and annoying scratches of their own.

6. A weak case for cases. Today's smart-phone bodies often include Kevlar, carbon fiber, or other hardened materials that are quite tough. Aftermarket cases may offer a bit of extra protection, but they'll often hinder access or slow the responsiveness of the phone's screen, buttons, and ports that you access frequently.

7. Phone camera zoom lenses really aren't. Unlike standalone cameras, cell phones don't have optical zoom lenses. Instead they come with digital zoom, which enlarges pixels and actually reduces image detail as you zoom in. For those close-up shots, we recommend you move in closer. Also consider trying small, affordable add-on lenses that fit over a smart phone's own tiny lens. They let you get in closer to the action or shoot a wide-angle or fish-eye photo without reducing image quality.

[More from Consumer Reports: Appliance Ratings and reviews]

8. Think twice about insurance and extended warranties. It can easily cost $500 to $600 to replace a smart phone. But a recent survey conducted by Consumer Reports found that only 15 percent of those polled bought a new phone because the old one broke, and only 2 percent bought one because their phone was lost or stolen. And the warranties themselves are no bargain: Plans cost $5 to $9 a month and come with a deductible of between $50 to $150. What's more, you might be entitled only to a repaired, refurbished phone rather than a new one. Here's a better idea: Keep your old phone until the new handset's contract ends.

9. Prepaid carriers are great place for smart phones. The phones offered with prepaid plans used to be just the basics. But some prepaid carriers now offer smart phones. The Samsung Galaxy S III is even available from Metro PCS and the Apple iPhone 5 is available from Cricket another prepaid company. What's more, two-thirds of Consumer Reports subscribers who switched to prepaid knocked off $20 or more off their monthly bill. Even though you have to pay full price for the phone, you'll save in the long run.

10. Haggling works. Most shoppers don't think to negotiate for a lower cell-phone price, but 17 percent of our cell-phone-buying survey respondents took a shot. Of that group, more than one in four succeeded. The median discount was $54, but a handful knocked $100 or more off the price.

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Florida man pleads guilty in New York in $1M dinosaur fossils dispute

NEW YORK –  A Florida man has pleaded guilty in New York to smuggling dinosaur fossils into the United States, admitting that he lied to U.S. customs authorities.

Eric Prokopi entered his plea Thursday in federal court in Manhattan. The plea deal requires the 38-year-old fossils dealer to give up claims to a 70 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton the government seized earlier this year.

He also must give up claims to two other Tyrannosaurus bataar skeletons, three more dinosaur skeletons and various unassembled dinosaur pieces.

In return for his cooperation, prosecutors say they will recommend leniency. The charges carry a potential penalty of up to 17 years in prison.

Prokopi pleaded guilty to conspiracy, the fraudulent transfer of dinosaur bones and making false statements to customs authorities.

He lives in Gainesville, Fla.

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Mars Express christens new space antenna with red planet images

NASA’s Curiosity rover may be getting us close-up to Mars, but the European Space Agency’s Mars Express probe has a far more macro perspective as it beams back the first shots to be received at the new Malargüe space tracking station. Powered up earlier this month, the ultra-sensitive radio antenna funneled back shots from the Mars Express’ Visual Monitoring Camera showing the red planet from over 6,000 miles away.



Mars Express was launched back in 2003, and was intended to deliver the Beagle 2 rover to the surface of the planet. That part of the mission failed; however, the orbiter section has continued to take high-resolution shots of Mars and has seen its operation extended until 2014.

The ESA Malargüe station stands forty meters tall, with the antenna section along weighing in at 610 tonnes and able to track ongoing missions at both Mars and Venus. It will also be used for radio science experiments, such as trying to identify the different types of matter transmissions pass through.

It is located 1500m high in Argentinia, and features a 20 kW amplifier to send instructions all the way to Jupiter and beyond. In contrast, a typical cellphone has a 125 milliwatt amplifier. The dish was able to receive the Mars Express’ photos sent from 327 million kilometres away in just over 18 minutes.

Routine service of the antenna will begin early in 2013.

[via NBC News]

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Full Moon is the 13th and Last of 2012

Today, Dec. 28, 2012, marks a somewhat infrequent and cool event: the 13th full Moon of the year.

Technically, the Moon was most full at 10:21 UTC (04:21 Eastern US time this morning), but will appear full to the eye all day and night. It rises at sunset no matter where you are, and stays up pretty much all night.

So what’s the big deal? Well, to be honest, it’s more of a mathematical curiosity than anything else. First, if you want to know why we have phases of the Moon in the first place, it’s not due to the shadow of the Earth on the Moon! That’s actually a common misconception.

In reality, it has to do with the angle between the Sun, Moon, and Earth. Basically, the Moon is a sphere out there in space, with half being lit by the Sun. As the Moon moves around the Earth once per lunar orbit (and the angle between the Moon and Sun changes), we see different amounts of the Moon being lit. Sometimes we see the half that’s dark (when the Moon is new), sometimes the half that’s fully lit (the full Moon), and sometimes in between. There are approximately eleventy billion web sites about this; here’s a video that explains it pretty well in five minutes.

The time it takes from the Moon to go all thee way through its phases—called the Moon’s synodic period—is 29.531 days, or 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes. That’s just about a month, and in fact is where the word “month” comes from (think “moonth”).

So you might expect to get 12 full Moons every year, and you’d be close. A year is about 365.25 days, so there should be 12.37 full cycles of lunar phases a year (dividing 365.25 days per year by 29.531 days per lunar cycle), which means 12 full cycles—so 12 full Moons—plus a little bit, about a 1/3 of a cycle more.

But that extra bit is important. That means the cycle of phases and the length of the year don’t line up. At the end of one year you have about 1/3 of a cycle left over. By the end of the second year, you have twice that much, or 2/3. That means the third year has a full cycle left over, so you get a 13th set of Moon phases for free.

Here’s another way to think of it: If we had exactly 12 cycles per year, we’d have 36 cycles every three years. But really we have 3 x 12.37 = 37.1, so we get an extra cycle every three years or so.

And here we are! 2012 is the year for that. Tonight’s full Moon is the 13th of the year.

There are a couple of more things this means, too. For one, if we have 13 full Moons in one year, there must have been a month that had two full Moons in it! This year, that happened in August, when there was a full Moon on both Aug. 2 and Aug. 31. The second full Moon is commonly called a Blue Moon. That’s just a nickname; it’s not really blue, and using it to mean the second full Moon in a month is a relatively modern custom.

Here’s something else that’s kinda nifty: If the full Moon occurs on or before January 10, then there will be 13 full Moons in a year. Like I said, the cycle of Moon phases is 29.531 days. That means you get 12 full Moons in 354.37 days (12 x 29.531), which is about 10 days less than the length of a year. So if the full Moon happens between Jan. 1 and Jan. 10, there’s enough time left in the year to get a 13th full Moon. That also means it has to happen after Dec. 21 or so.

By the way, the last time we had 13 full Moons in a year was 2009, when the 13th full Moon happened on—get this!—Dec. 31. Since, like I said, the 13th one has to happen between Dec. 21 and the 31st, a New Year’s Eve full Moon does sometimes happen. In fact, it happens once every 19 years, when the lunar cycle matches up with the length of the year—19 years is almost exactly 235 lunar cycles (19 x 365.25 is very close to 235 x 29.531)—which is called a Metonic cycle. The next New Year’s full Moon will be in 2028…which, amazingly, will also coincide with a total lunar eclipse.

Incidentally, if the full Moon happens on Dec. 31, then it must also happen on Dec. 1 or 2, making a New Year’s Eve full Moon the second full Moon of the month, so it’s also a Blue Moon.

Phew! I could go on, but that's probably enough. And now you have a head full of  the cool nerdy math that goes into this. I love this stuff; the whole Universe obeys a set of rules that makes a lot of it predictable and understandable. Once you see that, it’s hard not to be amazed and awed by it. The more you know, the more amazing it gets.

And that feeling never goes away. I’ve been in love with all this for years. So trust me: It’s not just a phase.

[If you want to know the phase of the Moon for any hour in 2013, NASA has a web page that is relevant to your interests. I have a blog post explaining it all, too.]

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Saber Tooth Starvation is a Fabrication

When scientists at Vanderbilt University took a closer look at saber tooth tigers' fossils, they expected the predator's teeth to be filed down and worn, an indicator of the hypothetical food shortage that killed off the class. Instead, they discovered no such evidence, discounting the current theory accounting for the saber tooth's death -----via Vanderbilt University News.------

Larisa DeSantis explains, "The popular theory for the Megafaunal death is that either the changing climate at the end of the last Ice Age or human activity - or some combination of the two - killed off most of the large mammals. In the case of the great cats, we expect that it would have been more and more difficult for them to find quarry, especially if they had to compete with humans. 

We know that when food becomes limited, carnivores like the great cats tend to consume more of the carcass they kill. If they spend more time chomping on the bones, it should cause detectable changes in the wear patters on top of their teeth."

The study also accounted for American lions and found the same results: there was no shortage of prey for either of the great cats. Smilodon's canines, its defining trait, calculated up to 12 inches. 

The Saber tooth last stepped foot on the Earth 10,000 years ago when the last of its breed died out.

"Tooth wear patterns suggest that these cats were not very much overwhelming entire carcasses, as was expected, and instead seemed to be living the 'good life' during the late Pleistocene, at least up until the very end, continues DeSantis.

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Video Games Of 2012 Top TEN List

New installments of popular franchises such as "Halo" and "Call of Duty," expectations ran high for video games in 2012.

While the year's most anticipated title, "BioShock Infinite," got pushed to 2013, there were still plenty of games that pushed new boundaries with innovative story lines, fantastic graphics and creative storytelling.

Two new consoles, the handheld PlayStation Vita and the Nintendo Wii U, introduced new gameplay options with touch screen controls and cross-platform titles. Meanwhile, the shaky economy continued to plague the video game industry, as some big developers filed for bankruptcy while upstarts turned to Kickstarter to finance their game projects.

Of course, any Top 10 list is subjective, depending on individual tastes. For me, the games on this list were the most well-made, the most fun to play and, thanks to some intriguing elements, the hardest to put down. (There were some fine games that came out this year that I never got the chance to play, so feel free to make suggestions or disagree with my choices in the comments.)

Here's my list, counted down from No. 10 to my favorite game of the year:

10. "ZombiU"

Zombies overrun a supermarket in this scene from "ZombiU," a dark tale of survival during a zombie outbreak in London.

This dark tale of survival during a zombie outbreak in London captured my attention for its unique style of gameplay and gritty scenarios. Players must figure out how to survive using their wits, not a plethora of weapons. And when you do die (and you will), your former character becomes a zombie for your next human character to face. So you get to kill your former self and get all your loot back. It's very twisted -- and a nice change of pace for a Nintendo console.

9. 'Spec Ops: The Line'

"Spec Ops: The Line" helps players delve into the psyche of a soldier without making it feel like a fantasy trip.

While it may look like a typical war shooter game, "Spec Ops: The Line" raised the storytelling bar by examining what war feels like on an individual level. This realistic desert-setting game hooks your emotions early on, and its action keeps you on edge until the story's dramatic finish. It was a bold move by the writers to delve into the psyche of a soldier without making it feel like a fantasy trip.

8. 'Journey'

Without a word of dialogue, "Journey" transports players to a magical land where discovery is the object of the game.

I'll be the first to admit I didn't grasp what "Journey" was about at first. But the more I played, the more I began to understand that a game with artistic value can be just as exciting as a racing game. Without a word of dialogue, the game transports players to a magical desert where they journey toward a mysterious mountain and discovery is the object of the game. By encouraging you to assist other players on the same path, "Journey" tugs at your emotions and maintains a connection that makes it hard to put down. The game is over too quickly, but every replay allows for more exposure to its fantastic world.

7. 'Escape Plan'

In this game for the handheld PlayStation Vita, players must guide two characters through a series of puzzle rooms to safety.

It won't be on many year-end lists, but this game was funny and exciting while demonstrating the strengths of the PlayStation Vita. Lil and Laarg, two unique characters with divergent abilities, must be guided through a series of dangerous puzzle rooms to get to safety. Players move them via various inputs on the Vita (dual touchscreens, microphone, analog joysticks), but failure is often accompanied by a gruesome (and sometimes humorous) death. "Escape Plan" still gets played in my house months after its release -- plus, seeing Lil on his coffee buzz is just laugh-out-loud funny.

6. 'Far Cry 3'

"Far Cry 3" is a character-centered story of adventure set in an open-sandbox world where exploration is key to survival.

The first of the year's many sequels to make my list, "Far Cry 3" takes a character-centric story of growth and danger and drops it into an open-sandbox world where you must adapt to survive. Described by others as " 'Skyrim' with guns," it goes beyond that into an exploration of personal change against overwhelming odds. Your character starts out as a timid party boy, stranded on an lawless tropical island, and evolves by necessity into something more deadly. The immersive first-person story and complex characters -- you will really hate the bad guys -- will keep you hooked throughout.

5. 'Mass Effect 3'

In "Mass Effect 3," the final chapter in a planned trilogy, players must unite the galaxy to recapture Earth from alien invaders.

Aside from its ending, which has been criticized for its lack of closure, "Mass Effect 3" is a fantastic dive back into the galactic world of protagonist Commander Shepard. Players must chart their own course through this space-war adventure, choosing their morality along the way, to resolve a storyline that began two games ago. Are all plotline questions answered? No. But that doesn't diminish the game's vast universe of aliens and enemies. I'll be sad Shepard won't be back (BioWare has said he's not part of "Mass Effect 4"), but this game will be remembered for how invested players became in his ultimate fate.

4. 'Halo 4'

"Halo 4" was a wonderful new addition to the beloved sci-fi action franchise and the best "Halo" campaign so far.

Speaking of endings, "Halo 4" brought a close to one of the popular characters in this sci-fi action franchise. No, not Master Chief, the super-soldier who will live on to kick more alien tail, but his artificial-intelligence companion, Cortana. The game's graphics are almost film-level quality, and the range of environments keeps the pacing fresh. I wish there weren't so many tangents into the non-gaming lore of the franchise. But the game's emotional ending, when we realize how much Master Chief cared about his sidekick, put "Halo 4" on the top shelf for me.

3. 'Borderlands 2'

"Borderlands 2" adds a great new storyline and characters to the original's "shoot everything" style of gameplay.

First-person shooter "Borderlands 2" takes players back to the ravaged planet Pandora while improving on what was already a good game. The guns (lots of guns) and the violence (oh, the violence) are still there. But the introduction of villain Handsome Jack and his twisted sense of right and wrong give the player a welcome target to aim for. The loathing you'll feel for Jack by the end will be palpable. I wanted to do the next mission just to find out what was going to happen. "Borderlands 2" offers the perfect mix of intrigue, explosions and humor.

2. 'XCOM: Enemy Unknown'

"XCOM: Enemy Unknown" presents gamers with a big challenge: Build and lead a worldwide military force to defend Earth from alien invaders with superior technology.

This turn-based combination strategy/squad combat game brings thoughtful gaming to a new level. One part is resource management: Can you build and lead a worldwide military force tasked with defending Earth from alien invaders? The other part is squad-level combat: Can you direct your troops to victory on various fields of battle against foes who are bent on your death? This blend of styles kept me playing for hours on end.

1. 'Dishonored"

"Dishonored," a stealth adventure game set in a grimy industrial city, offers a first-person perspective and an emphasis on player choice.

Set in a rotting, alternate-universe world where steampunk visuals blend with advanced technology, "Dishonored" forces you to seek revenge for being framed for a murder you didn't commit. As you set out to assassinate your enemies, there are two extreme modes of play -- stealth or combat -- and you can choose between the divergent styles as you see fit. The pacing is your own. The decisions, for better or worse, are yours to make. But they will have consequences along the way, so choose wisely. With a fantastic setting, an excellent storyline and the ability to make the adventures your own, "Dishonored" is my choice for the best game of 2012.

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