“A sophisticated software algorithm on certain Volkswagen vehicles detects when the car is undergoing official emissions testing, and turns full emissions controls on only during the test,” the EPA said in a statement. “The effectiveness of these vehicles’ pollution emissions control devices is greatly reduced during all normal driving situations. This results in cars that meet emissions standards in the laboratory or testing station, but during normal operation, emit nitrogen oxides, or NOx, at up to 40 times the standard.”
“One key reason why air pollution kills 400,000 citizens annually is that carmakers cheat the tests for diesel cars, causing many times more pollution on the road,” said Greg Archer, the clean vehicles manager for Transport and Environment. “The development of a new real-world driving emission test is an important step forward to tackling urban air pollution. EU states should now support the Commission’s proposals and ignore the whinging from carmakers that the rules are too tough.”
A few years ago in a lab in Panama, Klaus Winter tried to conjure the future. A plant physiologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, he planted seedlings of 10 tropical tree species in small, geodesic greenhouses.
What created this unusual hole in Mars? The hole was discovered by chance on images of the dusty slopes of Mars’ Pavonis Mons volcano taken by the HiRISE instrument aboard the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently circling Mars.
The hole appears to be an opening to an underground cavern, partly illuminated on the image right. Analysis of this and follow-up images revealed the opening to be about 35 meters across, while the interior shadow angle indicates that the underlying cavern is roughly 20 meters deep.
Why there is a circular crater surrounding this hole remains a topic of speculation, as is the full extent of the underlying cavern. Holes such as this are of particular interest because their interior caves are relatively protected from the harsh surface of Mars, making them relatively good candidates to contain Martian life.
These pits are therefore prime targets for possible future spacecraft, robots, and even human interplanetary explorers.
Mohamed Abdi Hassan is seen as the leader of a group of pirates responsible for hi-jacking countless vessels off the coast of Somalia. Belgian prosecutors are taking him to court for the hi-jacking of the Pompei, a vessel operated by the Belgian dredging company Jan De Nul. The crew of the vessel was only released after a ransom of two million euros was paid. Abdi Hassan was enticed to come to Belgium in 2013 after he was convinced that a film was to be made about his life as a pirate. The chief defendant was also active in Somali politics and when he was detained a high-ranking Somali official who was accompanying him was also arrested. Both men now face charges in Bruges.
“The post-photographic is not a style, not a tendency or artistic movement. It’s a kind of attitude towards photography. How are people using photographs, cellphones, how do they react to this cascade of pictures on the internet?” Or, put another way, Robert Pellegrinuzzi’s cloud-like sculpture of 250 000 photos asks: “Do we, in fact, produce images, or do images produce us?”
Agricultural fields surround the villages of Novo Selo Rok and Sivica in Medimurje County, Croatia. Of the county’s 729.5 km² total area, nearly half - 360 km² - is used for agricultural purposes.
“We isolated the 3 products (Coca-Cola Company’s Coca-Cola Classic™, Fanta Orange™ and Sprite™) and were able to reproduce coefficients between 0.94 and 0.96 in subsequent experiments. Checking the spectrum footprint against our existing databases revealed that the missing 0.06 to 0.04 could be closed significantly with the addition of a fourth source: Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)11. The resulting pool (further referred to as CFS(m)) was ranked at up to 0.984 correlation coefficient by our model (fig. 3). Given the 0.15 error margin generally accepted by the flavor industry this is equivalent to a confident match with the full flavor spectrum.”
The TSA is learning a basic lesson of physical security in the age of 3-D printing: If you have sensitive keys—say, a set of master keys that can open locks you’ve asked millions of Americans to use—don’t post pictures of them on the Internet.
