Why Do Crocodiles Eyes Shine So Beautifully at Night?

Those little bright lights belong toyacarés—caiman latirostris. They are broad-snouted caimans, crocodilian reptiles typical of eastern and central South America. Why do their eyes shine in such a pretty way?

It's the crystals inside their retina, inside a layer called tapetum. This tissue reflects light in such a way that makes these yacarés and the rest of the crocodiles have night vision. Oh, little crocodiles, you are so pretty!

These were photographed by Daniel Fox at the Yacaré Pora farm in Ituzaingo, Argentina. He probably thought they were too pretty to ignore. Lewis Carroll agrees:

How doth the little crocodile
Improve upon his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!

Next time you are in the zoo, don't forget to put your hand between the bars of the crocodile cage and give them whatever food you have. They like it all and they are such gentle, grateful beasts!

It’s 11:11 11-11-11! You Know What That Means

In binary, 1111 11 11 11 means "The world is ending right now and I'm still in bed wearing my Wolverine underpants." Good bye my friends.

Apparently nothing happened. Maybe it will mean that tonight at 11:11pm. STAY TUNED.

Adobe Releases final Flash Player Version for Android, BlackBerry PlayBook, Promises Future Updates

When Adobe announced the death of Flash Player on mobile devices earlier this week, it did so while promising to issue a final version for Android devices and the BlackBerry PlayBook. Now, that promise has come to fruition, with the release of version 11.1. Like pretty much every Adobe update, this latest refresh promises to patch up a host of security flaws -- 12 "critical" ones, to be exact. More intriguing, however, are Adobe's plans for future security support. 

In a blog post published Wednesday, company exec Danny Winokur confirmed that Adobe will "continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations." This sentiment was echoed in a Twitter post yesterday from Brad Arkin, senior director of product security and privacy: "Adobe will continue to ship security updates for Flash Player mobile after the final feature release." But neither Winokur nor Arkin have specified how long this patch distribution will continue, and the company has yet to offer any sort of timeline for future tablet and smartphone updates. For more information on the latest release, check out the source link below, or hit up the coverage link to grab the Android version for yourself.

 

 

Pork Molded into a Piglet Is Disgusting and/or Awesome

I love pork. I like pigs. They're cute, and fun to eat, and intelligent among mud-dwelling beasts. But what I don't like is for my dinner to artificially resemble the killed animal from which it was derived. This is gross.

Or is it amazing? The shrink wrapped pseudo-pig, a pork roast molded into the vague form of its prior self, is certainly a feat of food engineering. I'd expect nothing less from Costco, the Ikea of edibles. But will pork taste more like pork when it's compressed into animal form? Chicken nuggets are absolutely better in dinosaur shape, but there you have a sort of perverse species incongruence. Would the pork roast be delicious and aesthetically acceptable if it were molded into the shape of, say, a cat, whale, or amoeba? Does anyone out there have a hydraulic press and an ample supply of raw meat?

 

 

Stanford Is Building the World’s Biggest Digital Camera

So just how much can a digital camera the size of a Hyundai see? Hopefully, if you're the Stanford team building it, enough to answer some fundamental questions about our galaxy.

It will be the world's largest digital camera by a good margin, built by the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope—a large aperture survey telescope designed to find and photograph faint astronomical objects from its perch high atop a Chilean mountain. Specifically, the LSST will investigate astronomical phenomena including dark energy, dark matter, and near-Earth asteroids, as well as inventory the solar system and explore the transient optical sky.

The features and specs of the new LSST surpass any current telescope, either land-based or orbital. Its 8.4-meter-diameter mirror will be able to scan large swaths of the night sky while generating 3D maps via 800 15-second exposures every session—nearly 50 times as much area as the moon takes up in the sky. The LSST's 3.2-gigapixel camera will consist of 189 CCD ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light-sensitive sensors, cost roughly $170 million, and have enough resolution to spot your car's headlights at a distance of 400 miles.

 

 

Apple Says Siri Never Coming to Older Phones

If you've been looking forward to a non-jailbroken build of sassy Siri to land on your old iPhone, abandon hope. Apple officially has no plans to take Siri beyond the 4S, says Michael Steeber. It's Apple bullshit, but totally expected.

After one Cult of Mac reader pestered Apple tech support over a paid Siri upgrade for non-4S iPhones, he says he received this in response, which he forwarded to CoM's Steeber:

Engineering has provided the following feedback regarding this issue:
Siri only works on iPhone 4S and we currently have no plans to support older devices.

Which, as noted, is bullshit—we've seen proof that Siri can run just fine on older hardware. Apple's 4S restriction is an arbitrary roadblock. But should we expect anything else? Siri is the big 4S hype factor, and without that, Apple would have a hard(er) job convincing anyone the upgrade is worth it. Without any physical difference between the 4 and 4S, being able to bring up Siri at a party and ask her to count your farts is the 4S owner's only way of standing out. Apple's not going to give that up.

Tango Video Calling app Prances its Way into Windows Phone Marketplace

The video calling service finally hit the Marketplace today, more than a year after launching on iOS and Android, and barely a month after expanding to PCs. Compatible with Windows Phone 7.5 or higher, Tango for Mango allows users to make free phone and video calls over 3G, 4G and WiFi connections, including free international calls to fellow Tangonians. Users can also chat with Tango members across other operating systems and platforms, which should help tide them over until that Skype integrationbecomes a reality.

Ziiiro Celeste Watches Tick off the Hours in Multi-hued Fashion

Ziiiro is one of those companies that consistently finds its way on to the wish lists with watches like the Orbit and Gravity. Celeste is its latest offering, which represents your linear travel through the fourth dimension as a pair of overlapping colored disks. As the partially transparent bands circle about, they blend together to create dynamic hues of blue and gray, on the Mono models, or green and blue, on the Colored editions. The watches are housed in matte-finished stainless steel in chrome, gunmetal or black. You can pre-order the Celeste Mono and Celeste Colored now for €149 ($205), and they'll start shipping on November 18th here.

 

 

Scientists Create the Definitive Flu Killer

University of Texas Southwestern's scientists have created a new flu vaccine that can protect us against any kind of flu, not just one type. Unlike the current type of vaccines, this can even protect us if the virus mutates.

That's the big problem of the current vaccines: every year, medical experts guess what's going to be the dominant flu strain and create a vaccine using a weakened version of that virus. When it gets injected, our body gets to know the weakened virus safely, producing cells that can neutralize that virus if a real attack occurs. The problem is that, if that virus mutates, this prevention becomes useless. That is why people may get the flu even when they are vaccinated.

The team led by Dr. Beatrice Fontoura took a completely different approach:

What we are doing is something different. We are actually stimulating our own response which is already there – boost it – to fight an infection.

Their solution boosts our natural immunological system, targeting a protein in our bodies called REDD-1. Fontoura's team discovered that, when REDD-1 levels are low in a cell, the flu virus can easily infect the cell. The vaccine increases the protein's levels, creating a shield that is impossible for the virus to penetrate.

According to the team, the new vaccine is so effective that it can even protect us against the Spanish Flu, the H1N1 influenza virus that killed between 50 and 100 million in 1918, mostly healthy young adults. Another deadly H1N1 virus was the Swine Flu, which may have infected 11% to 21% of the world's population in 2009.

Sadly, the vaccine is still not ready for mass distribution yet. They have to complete the usual FDA procedures to be introduced in the market, a process that may take years.

 

 

HAL Suits Could Help Support Nuclear Cleaners

A Tungsten vest provides its wearer fantastic protection from radiation's damaging effects. Problem is—said vest also weighs about 132 pounds. So how does the Haz-Mat crew of tomorrow gird their loins in this radiation-resistant element? Exo-suits, obviously.

Cyberdyne (the real Japanese company, not the fictional LA firm responsible for Skynet) has adapted their Hybrid Assistive Limb, or HAL (oh, come on), to support these heavy tungsten tunics. HAL suits monitor the body's electrical impulses and attempt to support the user by anticipating his movements. "This new type of HAL robot suit enables their wearers to work on the site without feeling the burden," the company said in a statement. "It is hoped that this will reduce risks of working under harsh environments and contribute to early restoration operations by humans in the wake of disasters."

And, when used in conjunction with the conventional Tyvek suit, which is designed more for keeping radioactive materials from melting into your skin than protecting you from actual radiation, workers will be effectively protected. The company has not said whether these devices will be used at the Fukushima plant where roughly 2,000 workers daily struggle to sanitize the site.

 

 

EZmouse Packs a Backup So It Never Runs Out of Batteries

They lost their annoying USB cables, but in the process wireless mice also gained an appetite for batteries. Recently they've been put on a power diet, but Digitz's EZmouse goes double deuce on the rechargeable batteries so you never need to hunt down a fresh AAA ever again.

The mouse's main rechargeable battery is good for about four to five weeks of use before it needs to be removed and connected to a USB port on your computer for charging. And to ensure you can keep on wirelessly mousing while the main battery's powering up for two hours, a smaller, non-removable backup provides up to three days of additional use. When the main battery is topped off and re-inserted into the $50 mouse, the backup then automatically recharges itself so it's ready for the next time it's called upon. A feature I wouldn't mind seeing added to digital cameras and other devices with removable rechargeable batteries.

 

 

LG's thin and Mighty P330 Laptop Surfaces at Korean Retailer

The Core i7 processor has been replaced by an i5-2435M running at 2.4GHz, but that's hardly a deal breaker -- and it's possible a higher specced variant will eventually see daylight too. The other key credentials are all intact: an NVIDIA GeForce GT555M taking care of the visuals, a 40GB / 640GB SSD and HDD combo for snappier performance, and an IPS display built into an all-metal 1.7kg (3.6-pound) chassis. The price is listed as ₩1,364,000, which converts to a hefty $1,220

iOS 5 Battery Help Is Almost Here

A few days ago, Apple admitted that there's an unknown issue with the iPhone 4S's battery performance, and two days ago it seeded a beta for iOS 5.0.1 to developers to try to address the problem. Now Beta 2's already been pushed out, which shows that Apple's taking this battery business seriously.

 

 

Dell Latitude S Tablet Available for Pre-order, Might just Arrive Before Christmas

Serving as further evidence that the stylus really is back, Dell's coy enterprise slate, the Latitude S is now available for pre-order with an estimated delivery date of November 29th and an $859 price tag. If your too impatient to wait for Windows 8, this one's sporting Microsoft's seventh generation, weighs a hefty 816g -- nearly twice as much as the BlackBerry PlayBook -- and contains a 1.5GHz Intel Atom Z670processor.

 

 

A Leopard-Print Garden Hose Cover for Your Summer Home at the Jersey Shore

I'd imagine this is the sort of hose Snooki would own—were I to also imagine Snooki capable of fathoming the whole "watering plants" concept. The "Hose Clothes" cover slips onto hoses up to 5/8-inches in diameter and costs $24 for 25 feet or $34 for 50 feet at Dirt Couture.

Korean Bendy Memory Could Make Plenty of Trendy Tech

Flexible displays aren't much good unless there's flexible memory alongside. It's been attempted before, but bending memory pushes the individual transistors so close that they begin to interfere with one another -- causing degradation and shortening the device lifespan to just a single day. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has solved the problem by pairing transistors with memristors, which are immune to such annoyances. By fixing both inside a flexible substrate, you can push them as near as you like without any electo-radiation spanners jamming up the works. This also means that the flexible RRAM behaves just like flash memory; maybe in the future it won't just beantennas sewn into our clothes.

 

 

Magically Transform Brown Eyes to Blue with Lasers

There is something about blue eyes that can pierce another person's soul while also acting as a revealing window into your own. Brown eyes? Not so much. What if you wanted blue eyes, though? Color contacts? Meh. Try this new laser surgery that'll permanently transform your brown eyes to blue.

Brown to blue, permanently. That's what Dr. Gregg Homer from Stroma Medical in California says he can do. His Lumineyes procedure uses a laser tuned to a specific frequency to blast the brown out of eyes into blue. The process only takes 20 seconds too and it literally removes the melanin—the brown—from a person's eyes, which in turn reveals a blue color in two to three weeks (of course the blue isn't real, natural blue eyes have lower melanin in the front of the iris—the blue color in blue eyes come from the same effect as to why the sky is blue).

Dr. Homer says he still needs about $800,000 to complete clinical trials and if all goes to plan, the procedure will be available in 18 months outside the US and 3 years inside the US. The process is expected to cost around $4,800.

Microsoft-Approved Windows Phone 7 Unlocker Goes live

Let the great Windows Phone 7 unlocking begin! ChevronWP7, the Microsoft-sanctioned Windows Phone unlocker, went live today. The project is aimed at "hobbyist developers," giving owners of WP7 handsets the ability to run and test unsigned apps on their phones. Interested parties need a Windows Live ID and $9 to sign up -- that price'll give you unlimited unlocks on a single phone. You can grab more info and an unlock here.

 

 

How to Securely Wipe Your Data from Any Phone on Any Platform

It's phone upgrading season, and if you're industrious, you might be looking to sell your phone on eBay or craigslist or pass it on to your snot-mouthed little brother. Whatever, it's going; it's gone; fare thee well, you old piece of junk!

But please oh please oh please don't forget to wipe your data before your phone changes hands. Here's a quick guide for anyone who might need it, so you're not fumbling through options and settings for half the day.

iPhone

• First, you should probably back up your phone using iTunes
• Go to Settings
• From there, go to General
• Now go to Reset
• Select Erase All Content and Settings
• You'll be prompted to enter your passcode at this point
• It will take a few minutes, unless you've got a fairly ancient iOS device

• ---

  Android

• Backing up for Android is relatively straightforward; just connect your phone to your computer via USB and drag all of your files into a new folder.
• Pull down your Menu and go to Settings
• Scroll to Privacy
• Click Factory data reset

• ---

  Windows Phone 7 and 7.5

• Back up with Zune software if you're on Windows, but there's currently no way to totally back up your SMS texts for Windows Phone, so keep that in mind if you like to keep hang onto your messages.
• Go to Settings
• Tap About
• Scroll to the bottom of the page and tap "reset your phone"
• Press "yes" when the warning prompt appears
• Warning: You won't be asked to confirm your password

• ---

  BlackBerry OS 6

• Use BlackBerry Desktop Manager to back up your phone
• Go to Options
• Scroll to Security
• Now scroll to Security Wipe
• Select all options (Email & Contacts, Applications, Media card)
• Type the word "blackberry" into the box and hit confirm

 

 

Cheaper Android Phones Are Crap Compared to iPhone and BlackBerry

Fandroids say that iPhones, Blackberries and Windows Phones are way too expensive. Anyone can buy a cheaper Android! Now a study covering 600,000 support calls has found that these cheap Androids are exactly that: Cheap. And cheap phones break.

According to this study by wireless service company WDS, hardware failures are more common in Android handsets than in the more expensive competition. Makes sense: The culprit is not Android itself, but Google's OS licensing. Since it's so easy to license Google's OS, inexpensive phones are common. And inexpensive phones do not put as much of an emphasis on construction as expensive ones.

But the thing is, these are not cheapo phones from the developing world. The study's 600,000 support calls come from Europe, North America, South Africa and Australia—primo mobile markets.

It makes sense: while top of the line, more expensive Android phones from Samsung or HTC are solid, the inexpensive phones that are helping Google take so much market share are also its Achilles Heel. According to WDS' Tim Deluca-Smith: "At the moment, Android is a bit of the Wild West." Giddyup.