Stunning Maps Help Visualize Complex Data

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In this map that visualizes segregation of races in New York City, white people are represented by blue dots, African-Americans by green, Asians by red and Latinos by orange.

Income divides aren’t the only measures of metropolitan segregation. As post-racial as we’d all like to believe we are, the fact of the matter is that many neighborhood borders are drawn along racial divides.

Dustin Cable, of the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, has created a colorful map that vividly illustrates this division. Using 2010 U.S. Census data, the map shows one dot per person, color-coded by race. In all, that’s 308,745,538 dots, or around 7 GB of visual data.

White people are represented by blue dots, African-Americans by green, Asians by red and Latinos by orange. All other race categories from the Census are represented by brown. The above photo is an image of the greater NYC metro area.

It’s not the first map to show every single person, nor is it the first to show ethnic dissemination. It is, however, the first map to do both, making it the most exhaustive map ever created on race in America.

For a truly startling glimpse of how sharp racial dividing lines in American cities can be, be sure to check out Detroit, which is nearly split in half by 8 Mile Road.

Why Chemical Weapons Cross the Red Line

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The Obama Administration, which last year warned the Syrian regime that using chemical weapons would cross a "red line" for unacceptable behavior, now seems to be preparing to inflict punishment upon Assad, probably in the form of an air strike.

But many people are wondering why Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons is being seen by the United States as the last straw. After all, the Syrian civil war has been raging for more than two years, and 100,000 people already have died, many of them in atrocities that shock the conscience.

Last December, for example, a Syrian air force plane reportedly dropped eight cluster bombs on civilians waiting outside a bakery to buy bread in the small town of Halfaya, slaughtering 68 people.

"Anyone who has actually seen wounds from conventional artillery -- or badly treated body wounds from small arms -- realizes that chemical weapons do not cause more horrible wounds," Anthony Cordesman, an analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, writes in a blog post. He argues that "the case for intervening cannot be based on chemical weapons."

But other experts say that chemical weapons, whose use was banned in warfare by a 1925 international treaty, do indeed cross a line, into a sort of brutality so extreme that the civilized world cannot afford to tolerate it. Because modern armies are equipped with protective gear, chemical weapons tend to be effective only for committing atrocities against helpless civilian populations. And in addition to inflicting excruciating pain upon victims who often die a lingering death, their use has an even more widespread, devastating psychological effect.

"Our minds are hard-wired to be afraid of poisons," explains Charles Blair, a senior fellow with the Federation of American Scientists who teaches graduate courses in biodefense at George Mason University and Johns Hopkins University. "Things that you can’t see or smell or taste are very frightening to people."

The psychological trauma inflicted by chemical warfare was documented in a 2006 study of survivors of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, one of the few modern conflicts in which militaries used such weapons. Researchers found that nearly 60 percent of subjects who'd been exposed to chemical weapons during the war suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, about twice the rate of those who had been in the war but avoided chemicals. About 40 percent of the subjects who’d been exposed to chemicals suffered from severe depression, compared to only 12 percent of those without chemical exposure.

Chemicals have been used in warfare since ancient times, when Spartan soldiers burned wood dipped in a mixture of tar and sulfur to create noxious fumes on the battlefield. But it wasn't World War I that armies on both sides began deploying industrially-manufactured poison gases -- such as lung-searing phosgene and chlorine, and mustard gas, which causes blistering when it comes into contact with skin and mucous membranes -- as weapons.

An estimated 90,000 soldiers were killed by gas attacks during the war, and about a million soldiers suffered injuries that often plagued them for the rest of their lives, according to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international monitoring group. In a secret report prepared at the war's end, U.S. Army Lt. Col. C.G. Douglas, a physiologist, concluded that "The particular value of the poison is found in its remarkable casualty-producing power as opposed to its killing power."

Walking shark found shopping in waters

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A walking shark, which uses its fins like legs, has just been discovered taking a stroll off a remote Indonesian island, according to the Indonesian Ministry of Marine Affairs and fisheries.

Scientists from conservation international and the Western Australian Museum made the unusual find. Their timing could not have been better.

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"The (long-tailed carpet) epaulette shark, Hemiscyllium halmahera, uses its fins to walk across the ocean floor in search of small fish and crustaceans," Emmeline Johansen of Conservation International's Asia Pacific Field Division, told Discovery News.

"The discovery comes at a time when Indonesia is significantly ramping up its efforts to protect shark and ray species that are now considered vulnerable to extinction, including whale sharks and manta rays."

The shark, distinctive spots over lives in waters off of the eastern Indonesian island most which sports of its narrow body, of Halmahera. Females lay small egg cases under coral ledges. The baby sharks hatch, coming into the world small, and generally lead a sedentary life with very limited dispersal.

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This species is one of just nine known walking sharks in the entire world. All have very restricted ranges that do not cross deep water. For instance, H. halmahera is found only on Halmahera, H. freycineti is found only in Raja Ampat, and H. galei is located only in Cendrawasih Bay in West Papua.

Six of the nine walking sharks come from Indonesia, a country that's home to at least 218 overall species of sharks and rays. It so hosts well over 75 percent of the world's coral species.

The rocky sea floor terrain is no problem for the walking shark, as you can see in this video.

"After nearly three decades as the world's largest exporter of dried shark fins and other shark and ray products, Indonesia is now focusing on the tremendous economic potential of its sharks and rays as living assets," Johansen said. "In the last six months' alone, two of the country's top marine tourism destinations, Raja Ampat and West Manggarai (home of the famed Komodo National Park) have declared their waters as fully protected shark and ray sanctuaries."

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Agus Dermawan, head of the Indonesian Ministry's marine conservation Directorate, added, "there is a growing awareness in our country of the important ecological role that sharks play in maintaining healthy fish stocks and especially in the tremendous economic potential of shark and manta-focused marine tourism."

(Image: Conservation International/mark Erdmann)

Three popular myths about cats and fleas

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Gyroscope guided Gigglefest by SPHERO

The SPHERO-2.0 is not always the most obviously practical gadget. This new one that hides $129.99 plastic ball, a gyroscope, accelerometer, and a range of engines, the up to under the control of a mobile app role.

Oh, and it lights up in various colors.

But if based Orbotix - a faster, better this self-propelled cybernetic sphere from Boulder, Colorado shipped version of a model in 2011 - does nothing particularly out of the box, can it add certainly recklessness a small robot to your life.

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First, there is the challenge of driving a SPHERO. Try to draw a device without an obvious front or rear, and also through all its axes freely, a recipe for disorientation.

I needed practice (read: time giggling at my inability to prevent that a SPHERO-2.0 into a corner or other) before I realised the importance of its equivalent of the boat tiller constantly to check. This is the function in apps SPHERO drive, which will light the blue light and can turn it into the place, to the desired direction.

(I suppose this is what there is to learn driving a tank.)

As soon as the front and rear end a SPHERO have found you, it's not too hard to drive, one around, if you emphasize on accurate navigation not. A SPHERO-2.0 awarded by the company smoothly about different flooring types without any problems, but always over threshold values rolled or needed a gentle start on thick carpets.

A few plastic ramps contain the corresponding, but my errant goal meant that the ball just a little air ever caught in four.

SPHERO charges wirelessly in a small plastic base, which loses points for requiring a proprietary adapter connect to a wall instead of survey on a micro-USB cable. You pairs via wireless Bluetooth; The review model had trouble, the reconnection with an iPad and Android phone when woken up require a journey to any device Bluetooth settings.

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This gadget is much better with an audience - as Orbotix found as President Obama tried a tactical SPHERO during a campaign stop in Boulder drive. Our three-year old was fascinated by the case; She said "come back to me, robot ball!" before the hunt to seize it. (The manner the SPHERO constantly vibrating motors, make as you hold it in your hand feel incredibly alive, as if it were a game, robot baby bird.) But our neighbours cat was less enthusiastic.

Under the growing variety of SPHERO apps may be the worst the same name just release on iOS and Android updated. The update makes some useful control options and adding game mechanics, for example, too many walls hit your SPHERO harms virtual shields to the point that you need to stop driving, so that they can regenerate, which learn steering interfere with the intricacies of the SPHERO.

The Orbotix SPHERO drive apps for Android and iOS, Android, and offer a better introduction and allow it you it with either joystick-esque touchscreen controls or by tilting you your mobile device, left, right, forward and back to drive.

You can try a wide selection of games after that. For example, one you can play a virtual game of golf with a SPHERO. Other titles reflect the script through the use of a SPHERO as alternative of input mechanism for a phone or one tablet control. An etch-O-Matic app prompts you draw the screen, turning a SPHERO in hand.

This selection provides a useful reminder of this robotic ball that potential: for all its silliness, it is, in fact, a machine, you can program as everyone else. And interesting things tend to arise from this scenario.

Credits: Rob Pegoraro/discovery

Find the best litter box for your cat

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Half man half star Fireworks prohibited

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