Δευτέρα 21 Μαΐου 2012
Haiti Kidnapping - August 2008
Haiti's dismal economy means many have turned to kidnapping, relying on ransom money to survive. In the Cite Soleil slums, these dangerous kidnappers tell their story for the first time.
"The situation is hard now. After president Aristede left, I lost my income from him. Now I kidnap and I have killed a lot of people." He is one of many kidnappers who lost their jobs as hired thugs when the dictator Arisitde was overthrown in 2004. Now they negotiate up to $4000 for the release of a captive. "This is Haiti man, a gangsters' paradise, get what you need and then get out."
The Pirates of Somalia - November 2008
Since the hijack of the Sirius Star on November 17 the world has focused on Somali piracy. In this report, we talk with pirates and those who live in the towns nearby, to uncover how and why they do it.
'We climbed aboard and demanded the captain stop', tells one pirate calmly. 'When we got our money...we released them'. Pirates claim that their country has had no effective government for 20 years and piracy is one of the few ways to make money. In Garowe, where much of the money ends up, they are applauded. 'I very much support the pirates, nobody else gives us anything.' But in Eyl, pirates are seen as armed youths after 'easy money'.
Nick Sturdee, SMI Productions
Gulf of Despair - USA
Two years after the Gulf of Mexico disaster BP say the area is back in business. But in reality oil is washing up on the beaches, local residents are falling ill and the peak of the crisis is yet to come.
"We are glad to report all beaches and waters are open", states BP in a new advertising campaign. For the oil company business can resume as normal, but for the communities whose livelihoods rely upon the waters around the Gulf of Mexico business could not be worse: "there are no oysters growing so our future is very uncertain". Moreover, many locals who volunteered during the clear up are now suffering potentially fatal health problems caused by toxins in the chemical BP used to disperse the oil, Corexit 9527. "They are having breathing problems, headaches, breaking out in rashes, asthma...", explains a community worker, Glenda Perryman. And there could still be a wider threat to human health; strong evidence suggests the oil has got into the food chain. "We're finding it in larger quantities over a one-year period after the spill, so it's bio-accumulating. It's going to impact on generations to come", says Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist. As with the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, it will take a few more years before the real impact of this spill is felt. For those in the locality, that may be too late: "I don't know if I am living or dying".
"We are glad to report all beaches and waters are open", states BP in a new advertising campaign. For the oil company business can resume as normal, but for the communities whose livelihoods rely upon the waters around the Gulf of Mexico business could not be worse: "there are no oysters growing so our future is very uncertain". Moreover, many locals who volunteered during the clear up are now suffering potentially fatal health problems caused by toxins in the chemical BP used to disperse the oil, Corexit 9527. "They are having breathing problems, headaches, breaking out in rashes, asthma...", explains a community worker, Glenda Perryman. And there could still be a wider threat to human health; strong evidence suggests the oil has got into the food chain. "We're finding it in larger quantities over a one-year period after the spill, so it's bio-accumulating. It's going to impact on generations to come", says Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist. As with the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, it will take a few more years before the real impact of this spill is felt. For those in the locality, that may be too late: "I don't know if I am living or dying".
Κυριακή 20 Μαΐου 2012
Time for coffee
La musique originale du film sera bientôt disponible sur:http://www.barakaflims.com
Plus d'infos sur le site, des photos, le topo et des fonds d'écrans à télécharger sur le site de Petzl : http://bit.ly/K9PRXs
Le Petzl RocTrip Chine s'est tenu du 26 au 30 octobre 2011, il a rassemblé plus de 600 grimpeurs et les membres du team Petzl. Tout ce beau monde s'est jeté sur le rocher à la découverte de nouvelles lignes (250 voies), spécialement équipées pour l'occasion.
Parmi les moments forts, on peut voir le premier enchaînement par Dani Andrada d'une voie extrême de 7 longueurs, Corazon de Ensueno (8c / 5.14b), qu'il a lui même équipée en 2010 lors d'un voyage préparatoire au Petzl RocTrip. Cette voie lui a valu le Golden Piton décerné par Climbing Magazine.
Il y a également l'enchaînement de Lost in Translation (8a+ / 5.13c) par Stéphanie Bodet et Arnaud Petit, ainsi que la première ascension de Coup de Bambou (9a / 5.14d) par Gabriele Moroni, et de nombreuses autres voies majeures du site.
Plus d'infos sur le site, des photos, le topo et des fonds d'écrans à télécharger sur http://www.petzl.fr
Expedition 31 Soyuz TMA-04M
Παρασκευή 18 Μαΐου 2012
The Atlantis Myth;
One of the most ancient sunken cities, just minutes from South Pantanassa in Laconia, digitally recreated through the potential of technology. A port, houses with gardens, clothes spread out on the yards, streets and squares, create a city with elements of the urban lifestyle. Only here talking about the Bronze Age! The Pavlopetri was a city with excellent layout, which included a very well constructed roads.Independent and non-dwellings up to two storeys, coexisted with public buildings. What impresses is the complex system of water management in line with the findings contained channels and gutters. "There is no doubt that this is the oldest submerged town in the world," said Dr. John Henderson, a professor of underwater archeology at the University of Notinncham.Afta discovered that surpassed all expectations. They found a city with buildings, squares, streets and monuments. The bottom is filled with scattered vessels. In the same area and found a large building, 35 meters long, which probably was the seat and residence of the political leadership of the city 'scientists are trying to find the answer to the question why the city sank. There are three theories. The first is that gradually rose, the sea level, the second otiypochorise the soil and third tsunami that sank.
images from Mars
Valles Marineris Explorer – using a robotic swarm to explore Mars
15 May 2012
Valles Marineris, the largest canyon system in the Solar System and a potential refuge for extraterrestrial life, is 7000 metres deep and stretches for some 4000 kilometres along the Martian equator. But this complex terrain of mountains, gorges, canyons and caverns can only be explored efficiently and cost-effectively using a swarm of airborne and ground units. The Valles Marineris Explorer project is jointly funded by the Space Administration of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and the German state of Bavaria, and involves researchers from Technische Universität Braunschweig, the DLR Institute of Communications and Navigation and Technische Universität München. Conducting simulations and practical experiments on Earth, this project aims to devise navigation solutions to enable such a robotic swarm to search for life deep in the craters and canyons of another planet.
View from an imaginary point above the adjacent highland across the central Valles Marineris from south to north. The three central valleys – Melas Chasma, Candor Chasma Searching for life in Valles Marineris
The Valles Marineris canyon on Mars is an interesting exploration target; the deep breaks in the Martian crust offer new insights into the geological history of the Red Planet and, possibly, prospects for finding extraterrestrial life. Spacecraft only image areas visible from orbit, so they are not suitable for finding evidence of microorganisms. Semi-autonomous rovers, which have been used on the surface for some time now, can only explore easily accessible areas with no large obstacles. "But these places are of rather limited interest in the search for extraterrestrial life on Mars. If life did develop on Mars billions of years ago, it could only have survived in protected niches, because the environmental conditions have since become hostile to life. The deep chasms in Valles Marineris represent such a biological niche. The atmospheric pressure in such places may even be high enough for pools of water to exist – the ideal habitat for microorganisms, as we know from Earth. These places, which are hard to get to, can only be explored with any efficiency by a robotic swarm," says Oliver Funke, leader of the DLR Space Administration elements of the project.
Exploration with a robotic swarm
The key technologies for dependable position finding with a swarm of airborne devices and rovers that do not rely on an infrastructure must first be researched and tested on Earth. This has potential for other uses, such as navigation underground or during search and rescue operations in regions devastated by catastrophes. But what form might such a mission scenario take? A swarm is despatched from a base station to the target area. Upon arrival, it will need to navigate through the unknown terrain autonomously, reliably and accurately. Potential obstacles will need to be detected and bypassed or flown over. The individual elements of the robotic swarm will need to be able to locate one another in order to orientate themselves while they are exploring the target area by means of cameras, laser scanners and measuring instruments. These two tasks are being combined into a compact navigation solution, under the leadership of Technische Universität Braunschweig.
"While the airborne elements will survey large areas quickly and generate a map, the rovers will explore the mapped area and any objects of interest in detail. The orientation of the rovers will be improved by the better view from the airborne elements and the knowledge of their positional relationships. This can be extremely helpful both in the Valles Marineris on Mars and for catastrophes on Earth," says Funke, explaining the benefit of swarm navigation. Street maps quickly become useless for logistical purposes in a city devastated by an earthquake, because of the rubble. In this event, accessible routes for heavy machinery need to be found quickly.
As soon as all the swarm elements are in place, a communication network used to transmit the data acquired about difficult terrain to all the swarm elements is established. The DLR Institute of Communications and Navigation is working on the technical solutions for this swarm communication and cooperation, and is building a Mars scenario simulator. The network established by the swarm provides redundancy for the exploration and data transfer as well as in the event of failure of individual swarm elements – but if several systems fail, these faults must be compensated for. Technische Universität München is working on this challenge, as well as flight control and optical navigation.
Fast, autonomous navigation in difficult terrain
But a large number of technological challenges will need to be solved before an airborne device can be used on Mars. Due to the lack of systems such as GPS or Galileo there, an airborne device has to rely on the terrain and on a limited number of onboard sensors for navigation. "Airborne devices will need to use the data acquired immediately for flight control, so navigation must operate substantially more autonomously than with the NASA Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. It takes 40 minutes for a radio signal to travel from Earth to Mars and back, so remote control via telemetry is out of the question. The airborne device must therefore be capable of exploring independently," says Funke. At the moment, there are large gaps in our capabilities for exploring other planets; the partners in the Valles Marineris Explorer project are looking to close these gaps.and Ophir Chasma, each around 200 kilometres wide – can be seen running parallel to one another. Candor Chasma is visible in the foreground, with Ophir Chasma behind. The steep cliffs in the background and the centre of the image are around 5000 metres high and show traces of intensive erosion; the remnants of massive landslides can be seen at the foot of the cliff wall. It is unclear how this massive structure was formed.
video 3d
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