A miniature speaker amplifier for your desktop

Pro-Ject Stereo Box S

(Credit:
Pro-Ject)

I've long admired Pro-Ject turntables, but I was only vaguely aware of their electronics line so it was high time to check out one of their amplifiers. I requested their baby amp, the Stereo Box S ($299). It's the smallest power amp I've ever seen, a mere 4.1 by 1.4 by 4.8 inches, and the build quality of its all-metal chassis felt robust. The amp is available in silver or black finishes. A remote control adjusts volume and switches between two RCA inputs. The gold-plated speaker binding posts are really pretty small, and so closely spaced it's nearly impossible to connect bare wires to the amp. I finally managed it, but it took a few minutes to squeeze my fingers into the space. If you have banana plugs, use them instead of bare wires.

The Stereo Box S was designed in Vienna, Austria and built in the Czech Republic, with audiophiles in mind. That's a different mindset from what I see with most budget amps. The Stereo Box S actually sounds pretty good, like a mini-audiophile amp should. The Stereo Box line includes tuners, power amps, headphone amps, digital-to-analog converters,
iPod docs, media players, and so on.

I did the bulk of my listening on my desktop, with the Pro-Ject Speaker Box 5 (speakers). The tonal balance is pretty flat, not bumped up or hyped in any way. That's another way of saying the amp and speakers sound crisp and clear with a wide range of music genres, but the bass was lightweight. If you crave a big, bassy sound, plan on adding a sub. The Stereo Box S amp is rated at 30 watts per channel, but it definitely doesn't sound that powerful. On the desktop, sitting 30 inches from the speakers, their power was adequate, but when I moved the amp out into the room with the same speakers, the sound didn't impress. Back on the desktop volume wasn't an issue. I think the amp is better than the Pro-Ject speakers, and if desktop space is really limited the Stereo Box S is a no-brainer.

Read More..

Pictures: Fungi Get Into the Holiday Spirit

Photograph courtesy Stephanie Mounaud, J. Craig Venter Institute

Mounaud combined different fungi to create a Santa hat and spell out a holiday message.

Different fungal grow at different rates, so Mounaud's artwork rarely lasts for long. There's only a short window of time when they actually look like what they're suppose to.

"You do have to keep that in perspective when you're making these creations," she said.

For example, the A. flavus fungi that she used to write this message from Santa grows very quickly. "The next day, after looking at this plate, it didn't say 'Ho Ho Ho.' It said 'blah blah blah,'" Mounaud said.

The message also eventually turned green, which was the color she was initially after. "It was a really nice green, which is what I was hoping for. But yellow will do," she said.

The hat was particularly challenging. The fungus used to create it "was troubling because at different temperatures it grows differently. The pigment in this one forms at room temperature but this type of growth needed higher temperatures," Mounaud said.

Not all fungus will grow nicely together. For example, in the hat, "N. fischeri [the brim and ball] did not want to play nice with the P. marneffei [red part of hat] ... so they remained slightly separated."

Published December 21, 2012

Read More..

Norquist: Obama, Democrats Using Newtown for 'Political Purposes'

Dec 23, 2012 11:23am

(ABC News)

National Rifle Association board member and president of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist said on Sunday that President Obama and Democrats are politicizing the Newtown tragedy by pushing for gun control.

“We ought to calm down and not take tragedies like this, crimes like this, and use them for political purposes,” Norquist told me on “This Week.” “President Obama has been president for four years. If he thought some gun control could solve this problem, he should have been pushing it years ago.”

“Democrats had a majority in the House and a supermajority in the House and the Senate for the first two years that they were in office. If they thought that this was really an important issue they might have done something then. They didn’t,” he added.

Read a full transcript of this week’s show HERE. 

On Wednesday, Obama announced that Vice President Joe Biden would head a task force of leaders from across the country to evaluate solutions to reduce gun violence.

Norquist endorsed the recommendation made by NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre at a press conference on Friday to place armed guards in schools across the country.

Other members of the political roundtable pushed for what they called “common sense” gun laws.

Like “This Week” on Facebook here. You can also follow the show on Twitter here.

Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker, who is a member of the pro-gun control group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said that there is more agreement than disagreement on measures to stop the mentally ill and criminals from acquiring weapons.

“I don’t think anyone has seen someone shot—I have,” Booker said. “I don’t know if anybody here has had to put their hand in somebody’s chest, and try to stop the bleeding so that person doesn’t die—I have. What frustrates me about this debate is that it is a false debate.”

“Most of us in America including gun owners agree on things that would stop the kind of carnage that is going on in cities all across America,” Booker said, adding that loopholes that allow criminals to buy guns in “secondary markets” should be closed.

Get more pure politics at ABC News.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com.

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan said that LaPierre’s suggestion that the effect of a violent culture on the mentally ill has contributed to increased gun violence, but she believes that Congress should pursue some gun control measures.

“I am for the banning of the extended magazines and extended clips,” Noonan said.

Editor and Publisher of The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel said that focusing on the mentally ill is a distraction from the issue of gun violence.

“The mental illness argument has been used to evade action,” vanden Huevel said. “More guns and bullets, more dead children.”

SHOWS: This Week

Read More..

Today on New Scientist: 21 December 2012

Cadaver stem cells offer new hope of life after death

Stem cells can be extracted from bone marrow five days after death to be used in life-saving treatments

Apple's patents under fire at US patent office

The tech firm is skating on thin ice with some of the patents that won it a $1 billion settlement against Samsung

Himalayan dam-building threatens endemic species

The world's highest mountains look set to become home to a huge number of dams - good news for clean energy but bad news for biodiversity

Astrophile: Black hole exposed as a dwarf in disguise

A white dwarf star caught mimicking a black hole's X-ray flashes may be the first in a new class of binary star systems

Blind juggling robot keeps a ball in the air for hours

The robot, which has no visual sensors, can juggle a ball flawlessly by analysing its trajectory

Studio sessions show how Bengalese finch stays in tune

This songbird doesn't need technological aids to stay in tune - and it's smart enough to not worry when it hears notes that are too far off to be true

Giant tooth hints at truly monumental dinosaur

A lone tooth found in Argentina may have belonged to a dinosaur even larger than those we know of, but what to call it?

Avian flu virus learns to fly without wings

A strain of bird flu that hit the Netherlands in 2003 travelled by air, a hitherto suspected by unproven route of transmission

Feedback: Are wind turbines really fans?

A tale of "disease-spreading" wind farms, the trouble with quantifying "don't know", the death of parody in the UK, and more

The link between devaluing animals and discrimination

Our feelings about other animals have important consequences for how we treat humans, say prejudice researchers Gordon Hodson and Kimberly Costello

Best videos of 2012: First motion MRI of unborn twins

Watch twins fight for space in the womb, as we reach number 6 in our countdown of the top videos of the year

2012 Flash Fiction winner: Sleep by Richard Clarke

Congratulations to Richard Clarke, who won the 2012 New Scientist Flash Fiction competition with a clever work of satire

Urban Byzantine monks gave in to temptation

They were supposed to live on an ascetic diet of mainly bread and water, but the monks in 6th-century Jerusalem were tucking into animal products

The pregnant promise of fetal medicine

As prenatal diagnosis and treatment advance, we are entering difficult ethical territory

2013 Smart Guide: Searching for human origins in Asia

Africa is where humanity began, where we took our first steps, but those interested in the latest cool stuff on our origins should now look to Asia instead

The end of the world is an opportunity, not a threat

Don't waste time bemoaning the demise of the old order; get on with building the new one

Victorian counting device gets speedy quantum makeover

A photon-based version of a 19th-century mechanical device could bring quantum computers a step closer

Did learning to fly give bats super-immunity?

When bats first took to the air, something changed in their DNA which may have triggered their incredible immunity to viruses

Van-sized space rock is a cosmic oddball

Fragments from a meteor that exploded over California in April are unusually low in amino acids, putting a twist on one theory of how life on Earth began

Read More..

S'pore students set for workforce & world: global quiz host

SINGAPORE: Singapore students have a hunger for knowledge and are ready to face the workforce and the world, observed a key partner of the Tata Crucible Campus Quiz.

Mr Giri Balasubramaniam, more popularly known as "Pickbrain", is the host of the global business quiz.

He said the world looks up to Singapore in many ways, and one of them is quality education.

The Tata Crucible Campus Quiz has been held in India, Singapore and the UK.

The defending team from Singapore Management University (SMU) won the challenge in Singapore this year.

This is SMU's fourth win, and its third consecutive one since it was held in Singapore five years ago.

The team from the National University of Singapore took second place, and the Nanyang Technological University took third spot.

The quiz tests students' knowledge on business-related topics as well as their lateral-thinking abilities.

The SMU team is set to represent Singapore in April next year at the International Finals in India.

The quiz covers a wide range of subjects from the world of business and economy, including business houses, personalities, brands, and markets.

Organiser Tata group aims to encourage lateral association, speed of thought and out-of-the-box thinking, among youth.

Tata group is made up of more than 100 firms in various sectors, and has operations in over 80 countries globally.

- CNA/xq

Read More..

On truths, dreams, confessions -- and the iPhone

Oddly emotional.

(Credit:
Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Sometimes I just wander into places.

No reason I should. No reason I shouldn't.

Tonight it was a fascinating North Vietnamese restaurant called Khong River House in Miami Beach. It's been open only four days and the staff have that staring-eye look that reminds you of exam day at college.

Still, for reasons of sheer art, they have an installation near the restrooms. The idea is that you take one of the provided pens and write down your truth, your dream, or your confession on a piece of board that you then hang for all to see.

Just like the Web, it's entirely anonymous.

But I imagine that a lot of slightly inebriated people come by and -- just like the Web -- post things because it makes them feel better to release something of themselves.

I went through most of the submissions. Of course, some of them must be jokes. But, I suspect, not all of them.

"My daughter isn't my husband's biological child, but he doesn't know," read one that seemed oddly real.

"I like to pluck my pubic hair," said another. I am not sure whether this was a truth, a dream, or a confession.

"I'll be knocked up, fat, and ugly in 2013... and my bf won't marry me :(" read one painfully realistic confession.

The more I stared, the more mesmerized I became with people's apparent openness about their own lives and life itself.

"If you're lucky, life is one problem after the next," began one plaintive philosopher. "If you're not so lucky, it's the same problem over and over again."

And then came the slightly sad stunner: "I like my iPhone more than most of my friends."

Contrary to the opinion of some contrary readers, I don't happen to be obsessed with Apple products. I use precisely two: an iPhone and a
MacBook Air. I succumbed to the iPhone only because Nokia dumped me (and everyone else in America) and simply didn't launch a decent phone.

Yet I stared at this confession and wondered whether I could imagine any other brand being written about in the same way. Would someone have written: "I love my Galaxy S3 more than most of my friends"?

Would anyone have trumpeted: "I love my
Nokia Lumia 920 more than most of my friends"?

I'm not sure that they would. For reasons understandable or not, the Apple brand has found a way to creep into people's being in a way no other has.

You can decide whether this is a good or a bad thing. But it's so real that Samsung has to make jokes about it.

More Technically Incorrect

This may not last forever. It may be overtaken both by an Apple faltering or a Samsung/Nokia/Microsoft/Google stroke of emotional genius.

But it hasn't happened yet. Somehow, Apple still gets you at the core, while other brands stroke you at the peripheries.

I looked through most of the hanging boards to see whether some other gadget might have touched a soul.

All I found was: "Truth: Men Cheat. Dream: A Faithful Man. Confession: Women are worse."

As well as gems such as: "I blamed my arrest on being heartbroken," "I am in the military and I'm scared to die," and "When I was mad, I stuck his toothbrush in the toilet."

My favorite was this: "My wife still gives me butterflies after 8 years."

Strangely, for quite a few people, so does Apple.

Life is cruel.

(Credit:
Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

That is a confession.

(Credit:
Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Read More..

Pictures: Fungi Get Into the Holiday Spirit

Photograph courtesy Stephanie Mounaud, J. Craig Venter Institute

Mounaud combined different fungi to create a Santa hat and spell out a holiday message.

Different fungal grow at different rates, so Mounaud's artwork rarely lasts for long. There's only a short window of time when they actually look like what they're suppose to.

"You do have to keep that in perspective when you're making these creations," she said.

For example, the A. flavus fungi that she used to write this message from Santa grows very quickly. "The next day, after looking at this plate, it didn't say 'Ho Ho Ho.' It said 'blah blah blah,'" Mounaud said.

The message also eventually turned green, which was the color she was initially after. "It was a really nice green, which is what I was hoping for. But yellow will do," she said.

The hat was particularly challenging. The fungus used to create it "was troubling because at different temperatures it grows differently. The pigment in this one forms at room temperature but this type of growth needed higher temperatures," Mounaud said.

Not all fungus will grow nicely together. For example, in the hat, "N. fischeri [the brim and ball] did not want to play nice with the P. marneffei [red part of hat] ... so they remained slightly separated."

Published December 21, 2012

Read More..

'Fiscal Cliff' Leaves Boehner a Wounded Speaker

John Boehner is a bloodied House speaker following the startling setback that his own fractious Republican troops dealt him in their "fiscal cliff" struggle against President Barack Obama.

There's plenty of internal grumbling about the Ohio Republican, especially among conservatives, and lots of buzzing about whether his leadership post is in jeopardy. But it's uncertain whether any other House Republican has the broad appeal to seize the job from Boehner or whether his embarrassing inability to pass his own bill preventing tax increases on everyone but millionaires is enough to topple him.

"No one will be challenging John Boehner as speaker," predicted John Feehery, a consultant and former aide to House GOP leaders. "No one else can right now do the job of bringing everyone together" and unifying House Republicans.

The morning after he yanked the tax-cutting bill from the House floor to prevent certain defeat, Boehner told reporters he wasn't worried about losing his job when the new Congress convenes Jan. 3.

"They weren't taking that out on me," he said Friday of rank-and-file GOP lawmakers, who despite pleading from Boehner and his lieutenants were shy of providing the 217 votes needed for passage. "They were dealing with the perception that somebody might accuse them of raising taxes."

Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

That "somebody" was a number of outside conservative groups such as the Club for Growth and Heritage Action for America, which openly pressured lawmakers to reject Boehner's bill. Such organizations often oppose GOP lawmakers they consider too moderate and have been headaches for Boehner in the past.

This time, his retreat on the tax measure was an unmistakable blow to the clout of the 22-year House veteran known for an amiable style, a willingness to make deals and a perpetual tan.

Congressional leaders amass power partly by their ability to command votes, especially in showdowns. His failure to do so Thursday stands to weaken his muscle with Obama and among House Republicans.

"It's very hard for him to negotiate now," said Sarah Binder, a George Washington University political scientist, adding that it's premature to judge if Boehner's hold on the speakership is in peril. "No one can trust him because it's very hard for him to produce votes."

She said the loss weakens his ability to summon support in the future because "you know the last time he came to you like this, others didn't step in line."

Boehner, 63, faces unvarnished hostility from some conservatives.

"We clearly can't have a speaker operate well outside" what Republicans want to do, said freshman Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan.

Huelskamp is one of four GOP lawmakers who lost prized committee assignments following previous clashes with party leaders. That punishment was an anomaly for Boehner, who is known more for friendly persuasion than arm-twisting.

He said Boehner's job would depend on whether the speaker is "willing to sit and listen to Republicans first, or march off" and negotiate with Obama.

Conservative Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said one of the tea party's lasting impacts would be if Boehner struggled to retain his speakership due to the fight over the fiscal cliff, which is the combination of deep tax increases and spending cuts that start in early January without a bipartisan deal to avert them.

"If there's a major defeat delivered here, it could make it tough on him," King said. "He's in a tough spot."

Read More..

Himalayan dam-building threatens endemic species

The Himalayas, the world's highest mountain range, may soon hold another record: it could become home to the greatest density of dams in the world. More than a thousand are either already operating, under construction or being planned in northern India, Nepal and Bhutan. Besides providing clean energy, they could improve flood control and access to drinking water. But they will also pose a serious threat to indigenous species.

Hydroelectricity supplies about one-fifth of India's power, but even so nearly 300 million of the country's inhabitants have no access to electricity. More dams could help plug the energy shortfall: India's hydropower potential is estimated to be four times its current production of 39 gigawatts.

Maharaj Pandit at the University of Delhi, India, and R Edward Grumbine at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Kunming, have now studied the impact 292 of the planned Himalayan dams will have. They used satellite imagery and published data on Himalayan species richness to estimate how each dam's location would affect forest cover and biodiversity.

Extinctions loom

"We project that about 1700 square kilometres of forests would be submerged or damaged by dams and related activities", says Pandit. He and Grumbine predict that such deforestation will result in the likely extinction of 22 flowering plants and 7 vertebrate species by 2025. This number would rise to 1505 flowering plants and 274 vertebrates by 2100 if construction work continues.

Another recent study suggests the dams will be bad news for many of the Himalayas' 300 species of fish. Jay Bhatt and colleagues at the University of Delhi studied distribution of fish species in 16 Himalayan rivers, and found that those richest in biodiversity, with the greatest number of endemic species, were also those where dams will be concentrated.

"Dozens of dam projects are already caught up in litigation due to faulty environmental impact assessments, displacement of people, inadequate compensation, destruction of traditional water and livelihood sources, and loss of biodiversity," says Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People, an informal group of organisations and individuals interested in the impact of dam-building. The combined effect of several hundred new dams would be gargantuan, he adds.

Journal references: Pandit and Grumbine study: Conservation Biology, doi.org/j3z; Bhatt study: PLoS One, doi.org/j3x

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

Read More..

N. Korea confirms arrest of US citizen

SEOUL: North Korea confirmed Friday that it had arrested a US citizen in November, saying legal action would be taken against him but giving no details of the charges.

The man, identified as Pae Jun-Ho, entered North Korea on November 3 as a tourist, and "committed a crime" against the country, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

"He was put into custody by a relevant institution," it added.

The United States has no diplomatic ties with North Korea and KCNA said consular officials from the Swedish embassy, which acts on behalf of the US, had visited Pae on Friday.

"Legal actions are being taken against Pae in line with the criminal procedure law" of North Korea, the agency said without elaborating.

The arrest was first reported earlier this month by a South Korean newspaper which had identified the detainee as a a 44-year-old Korean-American tour operator.

KCNA said Pae was detained as he entered the north-eastern port city of Rason which lies inside a special economic zone near North Korea's border with Russia and China.

Several Americans have been held in North Korea in recent years.

In 2010 former US president Jimmy Carter won plaudits when he negotiated the release of American national, Aijalon Mahli Gomes, sentenced to eight years of hard labour for illegally crossing into the North from China.

On another mercy mission a year earlier in 2009, former president Bill Clinton won the release of US television journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, jailed after wandering across the North Korean border with China.

- AFP/jc

Read More..