So let’s say you’ve got a photograph of some place, and you really wish it contained something that wasn’t present at the time the image was taken. A recent presentation at SIGGRAPH (Rendering synthetic objects into legacy photographs) shows how to do just that in a realistic way, and Photoshop isn’t involved:
If you’d like to find out more, check out the presentation’s home page.
The past week’s bounty crop of (mostly) science-related blog carnivals for your reading pleasure:
Grand Rounds Vol. 8 No. 18 comes in four parts:
This week’s picture comes to you from the Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum in Tutusville, Florida. It’s a Klimov VK-1 jet engine — the first jet engine to see mass production in the Soviet Union:
If you recall any of the other old jet engines I’ve talked about (Jumo, J-33), this picture should look a bit familiar to you.
In the post-WWII era, Stalin was paranoid about the potential for being attacked by the west, so the MiG-15 jet fighter was quickly designed (based in no small part on captured German designs). To power it, Soviet engineers attempted to reverse-engineer the Juno jet engine used in the Me-262, but failed.
Fortunately for them, the U.K. in the post war years had a rather naive Prime Minister and pro-Soviet Trade Minister. With a bit of prompting, the U.K. gave them 25 Rolls Royce Nene jet engines as a good-will gesture, along with a license to manufacture more of them. The Soviets promptly tossed the license agreement aside, and started reverse-engineering it. Their first attempt resulted in the RD-45, but it had issues in actual use. So the Soviets improved on and enlarged it, resulting in the VK-1 design you see above.
The VK-1 went on to power the MiG-15 and MiG-17 fighters, and the Il-28 “Beagle” bomber.
For those who haven’t become saturated by the argument (in the U.S., anyway) over the SOPA / PIPA bills floating around in Congress, here’s a bit more background for you. First, some video from Fight For the Future:
Next, an explainer from the Khan Academy (direct link):
If you’d like to read more, here are some good links:
A SOPA/PIPA Blackout Explainer | Wired.com
Why ONA opposes SOPA – Online News Association
What is SOPA and how does it work? The Stop Online Piracy Act explained | The Verge
How SOPA would affect you: FAQ | CNET News
Just In Case, Here’s SOPA For Dummies
The past week’s collection of science-related blog carnivals for you:
43rd edition of The Giant’s Shoulders: People, Places, and Things
Grand Rounds: Volume 8, No. 17
Powered by Twitter Tools
From the San Diego Natural History Museum, here’s a cut-away Albertosaurus:
The various subspecies of Albertosaurus look a bit like Tyrannosaurs, and they’re related — but dramatically smaller (about a third the mass of a T-rex). So you can think of them as the “sport model” of the T-rex.
Named after the Canadian province where the first of their fossils were found, Albertosaurs roamed the earth some 8 million years before the Tyrannosaurs. The first specimen (a partial skull) was found in 1884, but since then the remains of more than 30 individuals have been found. 22 of them were found at a single site, indicating that they lived (or at least hunted) in packs.
Lest there’s any doubt that ingenuity is driving China to a real estate bubble, here’s the latest construction innovation to come from the Middle Kingdom: a prefab 30-story hotel built in 360 hours (direct link):
OK, granted — they actually install the thing in 360 hours (over 15 days). Construction per se took longer since 90% of it was done in a factory. Still, if you need room in a hurry (and don’t mind the fact that every hotel will look absolutely the same), this is an impressive way to do things. Since the parts are factory-built, you also have less construction waste — good for sustainability.
H/T: Architizer
The past week’s crop of science-related blog carnivals for you:
Carnival of Space 229 (a bit out of sequence, things apparently got a little confused over the holidays)
This week’s image comes to you from the Houston Museum of Natural Science — it’s an Egyptian cat mummy:
Cats have been kept as pets, and revered in one fashion or another for centuries in Egypt. So it shouldn’t be any surprise that cats were one of the most commonly mummified animals in ancient Egypt — cat mummification becoming particularly popular once a cat cult sprung up around the figure of Bast in (or possibly before) the Second Dynasty.
So many millions of cats were mummified that one 19th century farmer sold the contents of a cat cemetery he found — the buyer shipping off 38,000 pounds of cat mummies to be pulverized and used for fertilizer in England.
