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Favourable reception
Reviewers were generally more favourable toward the MSX machines, praising the platform's implementation of Basic and the platform's mandated software compatibility, but were critical of the ageing hardware specification and its relatively high price.
"Microsoft has done a good job in providing a powerful and clean Basic," wrote Glyn Moody in Your Computer's November 1984 issue. "Everything you would expect from a reasonably structured Basic is there, along with powerful sound, graphics and sprite commands... Editing is carried out simply and efficiently using the cursor, insert and delete keys."
MSX Basic boots
MSX Basic had some novelties, most notably its trigger commands, including INTERVAL, KEY, SPRITE and STRIG, allowing programs to jump to subroutines at, respectively, set time intervals, on joystick trigger presses, on key presses and when sprites collide. A fifth command, STOP, was triggered when the Stop key was pressed.
Separately, VPEEK and VPOKE applied the notion behind the commonplace PEEK and POKE commands to the video Ram.
"In ordinary loops and GOTOs, the MSX machines emerged as about half as fast as the BBC [Micro] and twice as fast as the Spectrum. But in one speed check designed to test the maths routines - such as calculating sines, logs and so on - the MSX micros were markedly slower. This is mostly due to the fact that they work to 14-digit precision. This is hot stuff for a home micro, but the penalty you pay is loss of speed in intensive number crunching activities." Other Basics used ten-digit precision.
Anticipating the imminent arrival of an eager fanbase, UK publishers began to lay out their stalls for MSX titles, among them Argus Specialist Press' MSX User, and What MSX? and MSX Computing, both from Haymarket and published on alternate months.
Toshiba's HX-10
Source: Quagmire
"You're going to hear so much about MSX in the future that it will become as much a part of your vocabulary as Hoover, Sellotape or VHS," said What MSX? magazine. "In the not-too-distant future, the MSX computer is going to be as much a part of the home as the telephone, the television and the car."
By the autumn of 1984, a year on from MSX's Japanese launch, the format had about 15 per cent of the Japanese micro market running from home machines to business desktops, based on the number of machines sold, What MSX? reported. According to MSX User, the format's share of the Japanese home computer market stood at almost 40 per cent.
Sony, Matsushita's National, Toshiba and Fujitsu accounted for around 80 per cent of MSX sales, followed by Canon, Yamaha, Hitachi, Sanyo and Mitsubishi, who took most of the rest, leaving a little left over for JVC, Pioneer and others.
Here in the UK, it was very different. Christmas 1984 was tough for all home computer makers and sellers in the UK. There's no readily available sales data for the performance of MSX over the holiday season, but if the likes of Oric, Sinclair and, in particular, Acorn suffered so badly, it's hard to believe that MSX sales were conversely strong.
Of course, the cost model was different. Domestic companies were manufacturers - the UK wings of Sony, Toshiba, Yamaha, Hitachi and co. were simply importing kit built by their parent companies. Sales were strong in Japan. Whatever sales the subsidiaries made in the UK were bonuses.
Casio's MX-15
Source: Staffan Vilcans
And MSX itself was already moving on. A second-generation spec, initally called MSX-E, had been discussed as far back as the Japanese MSX launch in 1983, and by spring 1985, vendors were giving private views of their MSX 2 kit with its 512 x 212 hi-res graphics, 80-column text screen, and support for 256 colours and nine sound channels. The improved graphics derived from the addition of a Yamaha V9938 video chip in place of the TI 9918. A new version of MSX-Basic, MSX-Basic 2.0, provided extra commands to make use of the new facilities.
A now sound chip, also from Yamaha, the YM2149, replaced the original General Instrument AY-3-8910. MSX 2 supported 48KB of Rom to encompass an extra 16KB for disk or audio Bios extensions. The memory size was upped to a minimum of 64KB, and the video buffer to 128KB. The already selected 3.5-inch disk format may not have been mandatory, but it was certainly so widely used as to be a de facto standard.
Toshiba, said to have been the most successful MSX backer in Britain, in part thanks to its leadership of the MSX Working Group here, demo'd its HX-33 and HX-34 micros - the latter capable of connecting to a video disc player - though it insisted in public that neither would go on sale before Christmas 1985. Other vendors likewise pointed to an early 1986 launch.


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Abstract|Ext A first approximation to abstract literature Various authors 240 pages. 148x210mm. Perfect bound, Silkscreened soft-cover. First edition April 2015. Printed in Spain. ISBN 978-84-606-6994-4 A collective effort to push the boundaries of written text, in order to achieve a very promising first approximation to abstract literature. All texts are delivered in a limited edition of 1000 printed copies,… Read more →
Tag: Orville Vinz
Thanks Big Time David Quiles Guilló for sending out the Books in advance! So glad to be included in this project Abstract/Ext! They look fantastic and read even better! Lots of love to you and anyone else that was included! http://abstracteditions.org/ Read more →

subset: commoncrawl


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In Car Education Driver Training
$39 for a 45 Minute Lesson or Practice Test in Your Own Vehicle with a Qualified Driving Instructor from In Car Education (value $80)
- Highlights
- Fine Print
- Company
The Offer
- Give yourself or your child a wheely great start with a driving lesson or practice test in your own vehicle (auto or manual).
- $39 for a 45 minute lesson or practice test with a qualified driving instructor from ICE (value $80)
- Feel safe and calm with your professional, qualified and friendly driving instructor.
- Takes place in your own vehicle or the vehicle you'll be sitting your licence with, to better prepare you for your test.
- Already an experienced driver? Learn to conduct a 'pre-restricted driving test', incorporating the new changes of which you may not be aware, or simply want to know more about.
- Service area: Hamilton city - for outside this area, please email or text Claudine directly on 027 663 0130
- Perfect for someone ready to sit their Restricted Licence, Restricted to Full Licence, or Full Licence to advance your current driving skills.
- ICE specialises in overseas conversions with driver testing experience.
- Available 7 days for your convenience.
What We Like
Learning to drive can be a terrifying, stressful experience (and that's just from the passenger seat). But with this treat you'll be feeling cool as ICE!
Just $39 will get you a 45 minute driving lesson or practice test, conducted in your own vehicle or the vehicle you'll be sitting your license in. You'll be taught by a professional, qualified and friendly driving instructor. This is a great way for you or your kids to start on the road in the safest way possible.
With this treat, you can choose to have a 1 hour practice test instead of a lesson. Normally these are carried out prior to or immediately before the actual test, however they recommend you have a minimum of 4 lessons prior to an advanced assessment.
When you drive, your instructor will discuss your driving, offering advice, and recommendations where appropriate. Benefits to this lesson include saving money, smoother driving and less wear and tear on tyres and the vehicle, being less likely to incur fines from speeding and bad calls, protecting your licence - and of course helping you get more enjoyment out of driving!
Remove the white-knuckle element of learning to drive (no matter who's behind the wheel... click Buy Now and stay cool with ICE!
The Fine Print
Offer expires on 15 June, 2016
Multiple vouchers can be purchased (limit: 10 for you & 10 as gifts)
1 voucher must be per customer per visit
Bookings are essential & subject to availability
24 hour cancellation policy applies - non-attendance or late cancellation voids voucher
Requirements: driver must have a current driver's license (Learner's to Full) and carry the license on the day of the lesson, with a minimum of 4 lessons or practices with a qualified instructor or 6 months of driving experience
Lesson is held in driver's own vehicle, which must have current WOF and registration; please notify ICE Driver Training beforehand if WOF and rego is not current
Failure to abide by these conditions means your voucher could be void
Timing of session usually varies and may take up to 60 minutes
Servicing: Hamilton city - for outside this area, please email or text Claudine directly on 027 663 0130
No exchanges
No refunds or cash back (except where required by law)
Not for use with other offers


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Coolpad Tracker + Safe & Found
At Sprint 632 W Main St Ste 106, American Fork, UT
At Sprint 632 W Main St Ste 106, American Fork, UT
- $0 / mo. and $0 down today
Buy or upgrade today
Order onlineShip to home Buy for pickup Additional discounts may apply
Choose a plan, and select shipping or store pick-up at checkout
Choose a plan, and select shipping or store pick-up at checkout
Get in-store In StockDirections Call store Make an appointment
Don't lose track of what's important to you with Tracker featuring Safe & Found from Sprint. It's a simple device you attach to your vehicles, kids, pets, bikes, luggage and more for real-time location tracking.
Compact and easily portable design provides the flexibility to transfer and attach to virtually anything you value at any time.
Pet collar accessory available
Features List:
- Real time location tracking with a long battery life
- Personalized Safety Zones and notifications
- Water Resistant
- Location Updates even if you are miles away
- Tracks historical data
- Built in light sensor detection
- Check ins and other alerts
- Android and iOS compatible
Similar Products In Stock at Sprint 632 W Main St Ste 106
Nearby Sprint LocationsFind a store near you
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text:
Latest Heart News
(HealthDay News) -- Heart palpitations are sensations that your heart isn't beating in its regular rhythm. In some cases, they can indicate a serious cardiovascular problem such as an irregular heartbeat. In other cases, they can be relatively harmless.
The U.S. National Heart Lung and Blood Institute says any new or unexpected heart palpitations should be checked by a doctor. They could be caused by:
- A serious heart problem, such as an irregular heartbeat (medically called an arrhythmia).
- Conditions including dehydration, fever, thyroid problems, anemia, low blood pressure or low blood sugar.
- Strong emotions, such as anxiety, stress or fear.
- Intense exercise or physical activity.
- Changes in hormone levels due to pregnancy, menstruation or menopause.
- Certain foods, alcoholic beverages. medications or supplements.
-- Diana Kohnle
Copyright © 2012 HealthDay. All rights reserved.


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"Dawn at the Downs," the popular Louisville tradition that gives visitors an opportunity to enjoy breakfast in Millionaires Row while watching Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks contenders during morning workouts, returns to Churchill Downs on Tuesday, April 30 through Thursday, May 2.
Award-winning horse racing columnist Gary West will describe the on-track activity by the Oaks and Derby contenders from Millionaires Row 4 and discuss the contenders' past performances and provide invaluable insight to the Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks races. Morning workouts also will be shown on television monitors and the commentary will be heard throughout the facility.
Reserved seats in Millionaires Row 4 & 6 and the Matt Winn Dining Room, which include breakfast, are $35 for adults and $22 for children age 4-12 (children age 3 and under are admitted free). The dining spaces afford the best views at the track with a four-tier balcony that overlooks the legendary Churchill Downs homestretch and finish line.
The Dawn at the Downs breakfast buffet will be served from 7-8:45 a.m. and will include scrambled eggs; hickory smoked bacon; breakfast sausage; Kentucky country ham and grits; skillet breakfast potato casserole; buttermilk biscuits and gravy; seasonal fruit; assorted breakfast breads; and coffee, tea, juice and milk.
Reserved tickets are available by visiting Churchill Downs' official online box office at www.KentuckyDerby.com/Tickets or by calling (502) 636-4400.
Those looking for a more casual Dawn at the Downs experience are invited to view the morning workouts from the Trackside Rail and Sections 116-117 free of charge. Breakfast items will be available for purchase at the Paddock Grill.
Parking lots for Dawn at the Downs will open at 6:30 a.m. with Gates 10 and 17 open for admission at 6:45 a.m. Morning workouts at Churchill Downs are conducted between 6-10 a.m. with an 8 a.m. renovation break, but there is an 8:30-8:45 a.m. window exclusive to Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks horses.


text:
1090 W Wood St
Decatur, IL 62522
10am - 6pm
S: 10am - 4pm
Su: Closed - 5pm
Just in new clothing from Nike, & One More Mile.
If you have been intrested in seeing how compression could help you during traning & recovery this stuff might just be the ticket. Compression has been prioven to Improve Circulation, Reduce Fatugue, Heighten Agility, Reduce Muscle Damage and Improve the Recovery process. Focusing on your lower body with Compression Tights, Compression Calf Guard, Compression Race Socks & Compression Recovery Socks. That's a lot of Compression & just what you might need.
We recently added Womens specific collection running apparel from Oiselle.
The right piece of activewear can make all the difference. Fleet Feet Sports carries the best women's and men's technical athletic apparel for walking, running, aerobics, yoga, or simply just hanging around town. We also offer extended sizes and an extensive selection of sportsbras.


text:
About the Carolina Retina Center
At the Carolina Retina Center, we have a highly trained and skilled staff who cares for more than just your eyes. We care about you, and are your partners in treatment. Recognizing that you may have concerns and questions, we want to address them and be sure you know exactly what to expect during your visit. If you have a question, just ask - we are here for you.
Our doctors are committed to research and education that will keep them at the forefront of ophthalmic procedures. They publish widely in major professional journals, and are often asked to lecture and make presentations around the United States.
But they are more than a team of highly trained retinal specialists who are leaders in their field. They are caring individuals who entered medicine because of the desire to help people and who chose ophthalmology because they know that restoring or improving a person's sight is one of the greatest gifts a doctor can offer.


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The 85th Annual Academy Awards is always a hit with fans because it is a chance to watch their favorite celebrities and see the stars dressed to impress. This year was no exception and in reviewing the looks that were worn by the majority of the stars, they can easily be broken down into three main categories: Long, flowing styles; Loose, low-slung up-styles; and Short or Gamine Styles. Let's start with the long, flowing looks.
Long, Flowing Tresses:
The long hairstyles present on the red carpet this year seemed inspired by old-Hollywood glamour days and the carefully-crafted smooth looks worn by starlets like Veronica Lake. The styles, though long and free-moving, were smooth, and looked carefully controlled. Most notable for their Old-Hollywood inspiration were the styles worn by Jessica Chastain and Helen Hunt. Jennifer Hudson, also sported her long locks in a clean, sleek style, but the overall look appeared more contemporary with the sharp lines of the fringe and glossy finish.
Loose, Low-slung Up-styles:
As with any mention of a formal Hollywood occasion, there were a number of up-styles worn. What made this year's up-styles significant was their consistency in being loosely gathered and slung low on the crown and nape areas of the head. These up-styles looked elegant, but not nearly as fussy and stiff as the up-styles from yesteryear. Stars like Amy Adams and Jennifer Garner wore their up-styles augmented with loose tendrils to frame their faces, creating softness with the elegant looks. Jennifer Lawrence – by contrast – also wore her hair in a low-slung up-style, but her overall look was more-tightly confined and the backward swept locks were defined by fingermarks in the styling effort.
Gamine, Short Hairstyles:
Some stars favor short hair all the time, while others change their hair frequently for many reasons. (Anne Hathaway actually sacrificed her previously long tresses in filming "Les Miserables" in which her character sells her hair to a wigmaker to support her child.) When this happens they generally appear at awards shows with their short hair styled in glamorous ways as befits their personalities. And let me tell you, rarely does a star dare to walk a red carpet with short hair without looking striking. Halle Berry is a star who has often sported gamine looks and always draws favorable attention. Charlize Theron, too, seems incapable of looking anything but amazing, no matter how short her hair becomes. And the aforementioned Anne Hathaway looked striking in a pixie-cut with an ear-length weight line and side part, since her hair has grown in beautifully after her cutting it for her film.
Photos by PR Photos


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Robotic surgery – UT Medical Center
Robotic surgery is a method to perform surgery using very small tools attached to a robotic arm. The surgeon controls the robotic arm with a computer.
Robot-assisted surgery; Robotic-assisted laparoscopic surgery; Laparoscopic surgery with robotic assistance
You will be given general anesthesia so that you are asleep and pain-free.
The surgeon sits at a computer station and directs the movements of a robot. Small surgical tools are attached to the robot's arms.
Robotic surgery is similar to laparoscopic surgery. It can be performed through smaller cuts than open surgery. The small, precise movements that are possible with this type of surgery give it some advantages over standard endoscopic techniques.
The surgeon can make small, precise movements using this method. This can allow the surgeon to do a procedure through a small cut that once could be done only with open surgery.
Once the robotic arm is placed in the abdomen, it is easier for the surgeon to use the surgical tools than with laparoscopic surgery through an endoscope.
The surgeon can also see the area where the surgery is performed more easily. This method lets the surgeon move in a more comfortable way, as well.
Robotic surgery can take longer to perform. This is due to the amount of time needed to set up the robot. Also, many hospitals may not have access to this method.
Robotic surgery may be used for a number of different procedures, including:
Robotic surgery cannot be used for some complex procedures.
The risks for any anesthesia and surgery include:
Robotic surgery has as many risks as open and laparoscopic surgery. However, the risks are different.
You cannot have any food or fluid for 8 hours before the surgery.
You may need to cleanse your bowels with an enema or laxative the day before surgery for some types of procedures.
Stop taking aspirin, blood thinners such as warfarin (Coumadin) or Plavix, anti-inflammatory medicines, vitamins, or other supplements 10 days before the procedure.
You will be taken to a recovery room after the procedure. Depending on the type of surgery performed, you may have to stay in the hospital overnight or for a couple of days.
You should be able to walk within a day after the procedure. How soon you are active will depend on the surgery that was done.
Avoid heavy lifting or straining until your doctor gives you the OK. Your doctor may tell you not to drive for at least a week.
Surgical cuts are smaller than with traditional open surgery. Benefits include:
Eichel L, McDougall EM, Clayman RV. Fundamentals of laparoscopic and robotic urologic surgery. In: Wein AJ, ed. Campbell-Walsh Urology. 10th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier Saunders; 2011:chap 9.
Fried GM. Emerging technology in surgery: Informatics, electronics, robotics. In: Townsend CM Jr, Beauchamp RD, Evers BM, Mattox KL, eds. Sabiston Textbook of Surgery. 19th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier Saunders; 2012:chap 17.
Hu JC, Gu X, Lipsitz SR, Barry MJ, D'Amico AV, Weinberg AC, et al. Comparative effectiveness of minimally invasive vs. open radical prostatectomy. JAMA. 2009;302(14):1557-64. PMID: 19826025 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19826025.
Oleynikov D. Robotic surgery. Surg Clin N Am. 2008;88:1121-30. PMID: 18790158 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18790158.
Review Date: 6/29/2015 Reviewed By: Jennifer Sobol, DO, Urologist with the Michigan Institute of Urology, West Bloomfield, MI. Review provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Isla Ogilvie, PhD, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.
A.D.A.M., Inc. is accredited by URAC, also known as the American Accreditation HealthCare Commission (www.urac.org). URAC's accreditation program is an independent audit to verify that A.D.A.M. follows rigorous standards of quality and accountability. A.D.A.M. is among the first to achieve this important distinction for online health information and services. Learn more about A.D.A.M.'s editorial policy, editorial process and privacy policy. A.D.A.M. is also a founding member of Hi-Ethics and subscribes to the principles of the Health on the Net Foundation (www.hon.ch).
The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Call 911 for all medical emergencies. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. 1997- A.D.A.M., Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.
See the article here:
Robotic surgery - UT Medical Center


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Remarkable how different planets come out from different people, eh?
Did you use actual Earth world map in that High Orbit picture? I'm having some difficulty finding a high-res picture of earth. Of course, I could use whatever kind of surface map.
Oh, and would you want to reveal how you make that nice blue atmospheric diffuse light that strengthens in the distance? It looks so real that I almost fear my screen will break and the air in my room be gushed into vacuum... well, not really, but almost.
AFAIK they use similar (almost) textures than the models and effects, and textures can be practically as good as you can make them, for example 32-bit DDS (or are they actually 24-bit...?) or TGA pictures.
Anyway, skyboxes are quite a lot better in most regards as backgrounds than traditional background images, as far as I know. I'll have to check the wiki if there's a skybox howto/description...
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I implore my journalist friends to take note of what I say in this post.
Much has already been said on the topic of modern neuroimaging masquerading as "new phrenology". A lot of these arguments and conversations are hidden from the lay public, however, so I'm going to expose the dirty neuroscientific underbelly here.
(Image source: The Roots - Phrenology)
This post was prompted by a question over on Quora: What is the neurological basis of curiosity? Where does curiosity reside in the brain?
The question itself is of a type that is commonly asked in cognitive neuroscience: where is <vague behavior> in the brain?
But what does it even mean to ask where "curiosity" is in the brain? What would an answer look like?
According to the article linked to in the current top answer on Quora:
In study after study, scientists have found that the striatum lit up like an inferno of activity when people didn't know exactly what was going to happen next, when they were on the verge of solving their mystery and hoped to be rewarded—it was more active then, in fact, than when people received their reward and had their curiosity satisfied.
"So," you may ask, "what's wrong with that answer? That seems reasonable and sound and very sciencey!"
You just got brain-mesmerized!
I can prove, with one statement, that this answer is wrong (if you're impatient, jump to point 2 at the bottom).
I'm not picking on the person who answered the question; they had no way to know. They were just following the discourse of the media narrative about neuroscience findings.
So what is wrong with this explanation (he says, finally getting to the damned point)? I'll break both of these points down in detail later.
1. The question is phrased in such a way that it presumes that "curiosity" is a singular thing.
2. The question presumes that a complex behavior or emotion can be localized to a brain region or regions. There are several philosophical pitfalls packaged into the answer, such as the ontological commitment to the narrative of cognitive neuroscience and the cerebral localization of function.
To be clear, what I'm not saying is that behaviors aren't in the brain. What I am saying is that the cerebral localization narrative is too simplistic.
Let me break down these points.
1. "Is curiosity a singular thing?"
When you ask "where is curiosity in the brain" you assume that researchers can somehow isolate curiosity from other emotions and behaviors in a lab and dissect it apart. This is very, very difficult, if not impossible. Neuroimaging (almost always) relies on the notion of cognitive subtraction, which is a way of comparing your behavior or emotion of interest (curiosity) against some baseline state that is not curiosity.
Or, as I say in my book chapter from The Mind and the Frontal Lobes:
The underlying assumption in these studies is that activity in brain networks alters in a task-dependent manner that becomes evident after averaging many event-related responses and comparing those against a baseline condition. Deviations from this baseline reflect a change in the neuronal processing demands required to perform the task of interest.
2. "Can curiosity be localized to one brain region?"
No, it cannot. Here's how I know: I've personally worked with people who have a severely damaged striatum. Know what? They still have curiosity. If the striatum is where curiosity is in the brain, how can someone whose striata are gone still have curiosity? They cannot. Yet they do. Poof. Hypothesis disproved.
Imagine asking "where is video located in my computer?" That doesn't make any sense. Your monitor is required to see the video. Your graphics card is required to render the video. The software is required to generate the code for the video. But the "video" isn't located anywhere in the computer.
Now there's a subtlety here. It may be that people with damaged striata have curiosity impairments (whatever that means), which would agree with the fMRI study discussed in that link above, but it proves that the striatum is not where curiosity is in the brain. More technically: the striatum may be a critical part of a network of brain regions that support curiosity behaviors, but that is different from saying that the striatum is where curiosity is.
Or, as I say in my chapter:
...the cognitive subtraction method... provide[s] details of functional localization that can then be tested and corroborated using other methodologies, including lesion studies. The interpretation of these localization results is confounded, however, by a lack of clarity in what is meant for a "function" to be localized. For example, Young and colleagues (2000) noted that for a given function to be localizable that function "must be capable of being considered both structurally and functionally discrete"; a property that the brain is incapable of assuming due to the intricate, large-scale neuronal interconnectivity.
Thus, discussing behavioral functions outside of the context of the larger cortical and subcortical networks involved with that function is a poorly posed problem. Therefore, the scientific study of cognition requires detailed neuroanatomical and connectivity information to compliment functional activity findings.
God. I was going to end this with some links to news stories talking about neuroscientists finding out where (love/happiness/hate/prejudice/sexytimes/etc.) were located in the brain, but I just gave up. There are some damned many of them.
If you're a journalist and you're reading this, please change the way you talk about these results.
If you're a student, if you remember nothing else from this post, just remember to ask, "can a person who has a lesion to that brain region not experience that emotion or do that behavior anymore?" If the person still can, then that is not where that behavior is located in the brain. And, in all likelihood, that function can't be localized to any one region at all.
Editor's selection: Neuroscience
Editor's selection: Social Science
Barres, B. (2010). Neuro Nonsense PLoS Biology, 8 (12) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001005
Racine E, Bar-Ilan O, & Illes J (2005). fMRI in the public eye. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6 (2), 159-64 PMID: 15685221
Editors (2004). Brain scam? Nature Neuroscience, 7 (7), 683-683 DOI: 10.1038/nn0704-683
Weisberg, D., Keil, F., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., & Gray, J. (2008). The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20 (3), 470-477 DOI: 10.1162/jocn.2008.20040
Young, M., Hilgetag, C., & Scannell, J. (2000). On imputing function to structure from the behavioural effects of brain lesions Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 355 (1393), 147-161 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2000.0555


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Show Floor Update: According to Jeff Conrad, VP and general manager of Acura sales, the 2014 Acura RLX that just hit the Acura stand at the 2012 L.A. auto show, "looks good from any angle." While we're sure there will be folks out there who would beg to differ, there's no doubt the new Acura flagship is a dramatic step up in the styling department from blandmobile RL it's replacing. The RLX's fancy LED "Jewel-Eye" headlights look much better in person, and the floating design reminds us of the trick headlights found on the NSX concept.
Before reading the rest of this, stop and ask yourself this question: "When was the last time I saw an Acura RL?" You'll probably be thinking about it for a while. The RL has never been a big seller for Acura, and in its twilight years it has only sold in the hundreds. That's not a good place for a brand's flagship to be, which is why Honda is throwing almost everything it has into making the RL's replacement, the 2014 Acura RLX, far less anonymous. Visually, the production RLX isn't all that different from the "concept" shown in April at the 2012 New York auto show. In fact, all that seems to have changed are the wheels and fascia. The once-controversial power plenum grille remains, but it is far more elegantly executed than the initial versions. Surrounding it on either side are fancy LED headlights. Dubbed Jewel-Eye by Acura, these not only provide a unique (possibly insectile) look to the RLX, but also are said to improve illumination. The most visible features at the rear are its Accord-esque taillights and hidden exhausts, allowing Acura to give the fascia a clean look.
As was the case with the RL, power for the RLX comes exclusively from a six-cylinder engine — fortunately for Acura, the recent move away from V-8s has made the lack of one a non-issue. The RLX is powered by a version of Honda's 3.5-liter V-6 fitted with direct injection and cylinder deactivation technology (Variable Cylinder Management in Acura-speak) good for 310 horsepower and 272 lb-ft of torque. Though those are improvements of just 10 hp and 5 lb-ft over the RL's 3.7-liter V-6, the RLX's engine is said to make 90 percent of its torque from 2000 to 6000 rpm. More important, the Acura expects the RLX to be rated at 20/31 mpg city/highway — a considerable improvement over the RL's 17/24 city/highway numbers. The engine is mated to an updated version of the RL's Sequential Sportshift six-speed automatic. The RLX's version gets revised gearing, a new shifter, steering wheel-mounted paddles, and a Sport mode that Acura says makes for more aggressive shifts. Curiously, however, the RLX is not fitted with any sort of all-wheel drive. Instead, Acura uses a new system called Precision All-Wheel Steer (yes, there's an acronym: P-AWS) that independently controls the toe angles of the rear wheels. Those looking for all-wheel drive will have to wait for the arrival of the 370-hp RLX Hybrid.
Beyond the four-wheel steering is a considerable list of active safety technologies. It starts with a new version of the AcuraLink connectivity system that now includes traffic information for surface streets as well as freeways; continues into the existing lane departure and collision warning systems (Lane Keeping Assist System and Forward Collision Warning, in case you want to keep up with the marketers); and finishes with adaptive cruise control with a special low-speed following setting, which presumably allows the RLX to close the gap more tightly when in traffic. Acura also mentions an Agile Handling Assist dynamic braking system, something we'll have to look into when we get our hands on the car.
Size-wise, the RLX doesn't deviate much from the RL. At 196.1 inches in length, the RLX is just 0.3 inch longer than its predecessor, but rides on a wheelbase Acura says is 2 inches longer, without providing specifics. Mathematically, that would mean 112.2 inches for the RLX versus 110.2 inches for the RL. The practical result of the stretched wheelbase is a spacious rear seat that offers a whopping 38.8 inches of rear legroom. One dimension that is smaller on the RLX than on the RL is curb weight. Acura was able to cut the fat through extensive use of aluminum, reducing heft to around 3950 pounds — roughly an 100-pound drop — despite the addition of all the extra technology.
When it arrives in spring 2013, the 2014 Acura RLX will be offered in five flavors: base, Navigation, Technology, Krell, and Advance. The first two come with 18-inch wheels, and, as its name implies, the RLX with Navigation comes with an 8-inch navigation screen. The other three come with 19-inch wheels and increasing levels of equipment, most notably the high-end Krell audio system in the top two trims. Full feature details will be announced closer to the launch date, along with pricing information. Expect a price slightly north of $50,000 for the base RLX and one around $60,000 for the RLX with Advance Package. It remains to be seen whether X will mark the spot for Acura when it comes to the competitive $50,000-plus market that's home to sharks like the new Lexus GS, Mercedes-Benz E-Class, BMW 5 Series, and Audi A6, but the RLX is certainly a better-aimed shot than the RL ever was.
2014 Acura RLX
BASE PRICE $50,000 (est)
VEHICLE LAYOUT Front-engine, FWD, 5-pass, 4-door sedan
ENGINE ENGINES 3.5L/310-hp/272-lb-ft SOHC 24-valve- V-6
TRANSMISSION TRANSMISSIONS 6-speed automatic
CURB WEIGHT 3950 lb (mfr)
WHEELBASE 112.2 in (est)
LENGTH X WIDTH X HEIGHT 196.1 x 74.7 x 57.2 in (est)
EPA CITY/HWY FUEL ECON 20/31 mpg (est)
ENERGY CONSUMPTION, CITY/HWY 169/109 kW-hrs/100 miles (est)
CO2 EMISSIONS 0.82 lb/mile (est)
ON SALE IN U.S. Spring 2013


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A 750-foot oil tanker struck one of the towers of the Bay Bridge linking San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., late Monday morning. There was no immediate major damage.
The vessel, named the Overseas Reymar, struck the so-called "Echo Tower," or Tower 6, on the far east side of the bridge's western span around 11:20 a.m., according to the Coast Guard. The visibility at the time was about a quarter mile. The vessel had just left Martinez, officials said, before the accident occurred.
At an afternoon news conference, Coast Guard Lt. Commander Shawn Lansing said there was no "spill or discharge into the water," and everyone aboard was safe.
Still, Lansing said, investigators are looking at the integrity of the ship, to make there is no extensive, internal structural damage.
U.S. & World
Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney said the ship damaged its own starboard-side fender system but there was no damage to the bridge itself. The Coast Guard described the damage as a "crushing" of the ship's fender (seen in the image below to the right ).
But the most important thing to remember, Ney added emphatically: "The Bay Bridge is safe." He described the whole affair as a "scrape."
From the NBC Bay Area chopper, there was some visible damage to the base of the bottom floating portion of the concrete base of the bridge.
While this incident did not appear to wreak much havoc, the proximity of a tanker so close the Bay Bridge brought up immediate memories of the Cocso Busan.
That huge spill occurred on Nov. 7, 2007, when more than 53,000 gallons of fuel spilled into the San Francisco bay, after the container ship, the Cosco Busan, struck the Delta Tower of the Bay Bridge in thick fog.
Investigators in that case found that pilot John Cota was impaired from his use of prescription pharmaceuticals. He was sentenced to ten months in federal prison. Then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency, releasing a flow of funds to clean up the major environmental damage.


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North Dakota CDL Practice Test: Tank - Test 4 2020(From the 2020 North Dakota CDL Handbook)
|Number of tests:
|Number of questions:
|Passing score:
Directions: To obtain this endorsement for hauling any liquid or gaseous materials in a tank or tanks, applicants must pass a 15-question test. And to pass the test, applicants must score at least 80%. Test questions are from the North Dakota Commercial Driver Handbook. The Tanker Vehicles endorsement can be used with the Class A, B, or C CDL. If you need additional information, please contact your local DMV office. You can find your nearest DMV office at North Dakota DMV locations.
1. What is a baffled liquid tank?
2. When you are driving a tanker, in what ways can you control liquid surge?
3. A closed tractor protection valve ________.
4. While driving a tanker on wet roads, you should ______ the normal stopping distance.
5. Trailers made before 1975 that are equipped with air brakes ______.
6. ________ help to control the forward and backward liquid surge.


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The European Commission took legal action against Italy on Wednesday over a growing crisis in Naples and the surrounding region where thousands of tonnes of uncollected waste have piled up high in the streets.
BRUSSELS -- The European Commission took legal action against Italy on Wednesday over a growing crisis in Naples and the surrounding region where thousands of tonnes of uncollected waste have piled up high in the streets.
"The television reports we have all seen showing piles of garbage rotting in the streets of Campania or set on fire by angry residents have been truly shocking," Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said in a statement.
"I urge the Italian authorities to act urgently to bring waste management facilities in the Campania region up to standard so that waste is collected and disposed of without endangering human health or the environment, as European law requires," he said.
Italy declared a state of emergency for waste in the Campania region in 1994. But, hindered by organised crime and local mismanagement, it has failed to stop periodic crises in which locals have no choice but to dump and often burn rubbish in the streets, adding to pollution levels.
Temperatures approaching 40 degrees Celsius (104.00F) in recent days have added to the discomfort of locals as authorities scrabble to find temporary waste dumps pending the opening of a giant new incinerator after the summer.
The European Commission took the first steps on Wednesday that could lead to a case against Italy in the European Court of Justice, the EU's top court.
"Reflecting the urgency and gravity of the situation, the Commission is giving Italy one month to respond to its warning letter instead of the usual two-month deadline," it said.
Brussels said the situation posed serious health and environmental risks through the spread of disease and through pollution of air, water and land.
It also said it was checking whether four planned new waste landfill sites in Campania meet EU law and if they will help solve the waste problems, especially in the longer term.
Source: Reuters
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BookMusings: (Re)Discovering Pagan Literature
A lively discussion of ancient and modern Pagan literature -- including children's books, graphic novels, science fiction, fantasy, and mysteries -- along with interviews, author highlights, and profiles of Pagan publishers.
On My Personal Pagan Theoilogy
Over on The Wild Hunt, Teo Bishop has made an interesting proposition: he would like to crowdsource Pagan theology in anticipation of an upcoming conference presentation. People are encouraged to post their personal Pagan theology in the comments section, on their blogs, and on Twitter.
When I have to use any kind of terminology at all, I define my personal theoilogy (not theology, thank you) as polytheistic panentheism. Translation: I acknowledge the existence of a multitude of autonomous Powers which are simultaneously inherent/manifest within creation and transcendent/beyond creation. Some Powers are intimately interwoven with creation -- for instance, the dryad who lives and dies with her tree. Other Powers manifest within but are not as tightly bound to creation -- Athena, for instance, with Her ties to olive trees and owls and serpents, is also connected to "higher" qualities such as wisdom and creativity. And I do mean multitude; how many Powers have existed since before the beginning or been born in the interim I dare not even guess.
There is no one book which completely and perfectly explicates my personal theoilogy. (I am sure the same is true for many people.) There are, however, quite a few books which have informed my theoilogy, supplying bits and pieces here and there, clarifying points of confusion, helping me to develop it over the years.
The comic book/graphic novel series Artesia by Mark Smylie is a excellent example of how a fictitious polytheism can inform real-world spirituality. Smylie's world-building and mythology are richly-realized and deeply moving. I found myself digging through the footnotes (and even the role-playing guidebook) for every little tidbit of information about the Gods, Goddesses, myths and rituals of Artesia's world. And, yes, I totally photocopied some panels as devotional artwork.
The Balance of the Two Lands: Writings on Greco-Egyptian Polytheism by H Jeremiah Lewis (aka Sannion) is an articulate, heartfelt, sometimes sarcastic, never boring collection of essays centered around my ancient spiritual home, Alexandria*. In my heart, I carry around an idealized vision of Alexandria: it is a city of soaring stone temples, beautifully painted, rich with incense and song and praise, while the streets echo with a hundred different tongues, neighbors honoring each others' right to worship the God/s/ess/es of their choice. While Lewis never glosses over the flaws of the real Alexandria, his love of that city reflects my own, giving me hope that -- someday -- something like it may exist again.
In contrast to Lewis' book, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans by Pierre Chuvin fills me with sadness and anger. It reminds me that polytheistic traditions have an deep, rich history; that too much has been lost; that it could all be lost again if we are not vigilant; and that we have a responsibility to recover and revitalize those traditions to the fullest extent of our ability.
Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth by Graham Harvey was one of the first books on modern (neo)Paganism that I purchased; most of my library to that point was comprised of mythology and history texts. I was so enamored of Harvey's book that I showed it off to all my classmates. This book made clear to me not only that modern Paganism is an incredibility diverse community -- thus leading me to learn about as many paths as I could -- but also that not everyone desires to join or identifies with the "Pagan" community.
The other early purchase was the updated edition of Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America. Originally published in 1979, with the most recent version released in 2006, Adler's book built on what I had learned from Harvey: Paganism is not just a big tent, but a community of tents; even if we disagree with out neighbors, common courtesy and self-interest alike compel us to respect (or at least tolerate) our neighbors' beliefs and practices when they do not adversely affect us.
Oddly enough, despite the fact that I am Hellenic in my devotions, Karl Kerenyi's seminal The Gods of the Greeks was a relatively late purchase. Kerenyi's text is accessible, but he does not talk down to his audience. He refuses to smooth out the rough edges of the Gods and their myths, presenting them as complex, willful beings. He makes it abundantly clear that, while the Gods are indeed powerful and wise, they most definitely are not to be screwed with.
When Hellenistic Religions: The Age of Syncretism by Frederick C Grant was mentioned off-hand on a discussion list, I was able to track down a relatively inexpensive used copy. This is a must for anyone interested in the Hellenistic era or ancient Alexandria, with its web of mutually-influential spiritual traditions and vibrant Gods. The primary sources are inspirational, and the brief accompanying analytical text fascinating.
While Grant's text contains mostly primary sources, in Her Share of the Blessings: Women's Religions Among Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Greco-Roman World author Ross Shepard Kraemer examines those surviving literary and archaeological sources to get a clearer picture of the place and function of women's spirituality at that time. The answer is ... not entirely comforting. In many cases, religion served as a release valve for women: like the Bacchantes featured on the cover, religious festivals, women-only events and even monastic communities allowed women to escape the restrictions of their patriarchal societies. Kraemer's conclusions are paradoxically disheartening and invigorating; on the one hand, it makes clear that just because a society honors Goddesses, it does not mean that society also recognizes the equality and worth of women; on the other hand, while we honor the same Deities as the ancients, we are under no obligation to follow in their footsteps in other areas. Their spirituality and festivals and practices are sources of inspiration, not commandments carved in stone.
Ginette Paris' Pagan Grace: Dionysus, Hermes and Mother Memory and Pagan Meditations: Aphrodite, Hestia, Artemis examine the Gods from a psychological perspective. A Jungian analyst, not a Pagan herself, Paris focuses on what the myths and personalities of the Gods and Goddesses reveal about us. For example, was does it mean to describe Artemis as a virgin? What does that term mean to use as a society as a whole, to women as a group, to women as individuals? What does it say about our attitude towards women's sexuality and physical bodies? And so on.
Finally, there is John Michael Greer's A World Full of Gods: An Inquiry Into Polytheism which I urge every Pagan to add to his/her library. This is an erudite defense and articulation of the logic of polytheism. This is a good book to hand out to friends and relatives when their response to your faith is "hunh?"
There are many other books which I am sure have influenced my personal theoilogy, some directly, some more subtly. The Grimm Brothers, for instance, and the fantasy worlds of Mercedes Lackey and Diane Duane, and history books too numerous to count. The books listed above, however, are among the most memorable and important, and well worth tracking down.
*For an excellent history of Alexandria, and an examination of its lasting influence on history and science, check out Justin Pollard and Howard Reid's The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern World.
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Louisville Slugger will hide 30 commemorative World Series bats Saturday around San Francisco landmarks such as the Palace of Fine Arts, Fisherman's Wharf and AT&T Park, and fans are invited to track them down in a digital scavenger hunt.
The first bat will be hidden at AT&T Park, and Louisville Slugger will begin posting clues on its Facebook page and Twitter accounts at 9 a.m. Saturday as to the items' whereabouts. Another clue will be posted every 15-20 minutes. The company's Twitter handle is @sluggernation.
The bats are full-sized Major League quality. They are inscribed with the World Series trophy and the Giants logo. Only 2012 bats were made and they are individually numbered.


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Dr. Thomas Emmett Francoeur reviews medical content for Healthwise, a
nonprofit organization with a mission to help people make better health
decisions. His research and clinical interests include developmental and behavioral pediatrics, pain syndromes in children, stress and coping in school-aged children, neurodevelopmental assessment techniques, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, psychosocial effects of chronic disease, suggestibility of children's testimony, and child and adolescent psychopharmacology. Dr. Francoeur is a former president of the Canadian Pediatric Society and is the Director of the Child Development Programme and the Co-Director of the Psychopharmacology
Clinic of the Developmental Behavioural Pediatric Service at the Montreal Children's Hospital in Montreal, Quebec. He has participated in numerous lecture series in Montreal
and is a frequent presenter throughout Canada.
MDCM: McGill University, Montreal, QC, 1974
Rotating Internship: St. Joseph's Hospital, London, ON,
Resident in Pediatrics: Montreal Children's
Hospital, Montreal, QC, 1975–1978
Resident and Chief Resident in
Pediatrics: Montreal Children's Hospital, Montreal, QC,
Fellowship in Ambulatory Pediatrics: Montreal Children's
Hospital, Montreal, QC, 1979–1980
Research Fellow in Developmental
Pediatrics: McGill University-Montreal Children's Hospital Research Institute,
Montreal, QC, 1980–1981
Royal College of Physicians of Canada
Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, American Board of Pediatrics
Associate Professor, McGill University,
Montreal, QC, 1984–present
This reviewer reported no financial conflicts.
Last Revised:
January 27, 2010
Healthwise Staff
This information does not replace the advice of a doctor. Healthwise, Incorporated disclaims any warranty or liability for your use of this information. Your use of this information means that you agree to the Terms of Use. How this information was developed to help you make better health decisions.
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Here's a personal story about my brief involvement in the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts (LPMA). I want to say up front that I value the friendship and good will of my colleagues in the party. The people I worked with were good to me and offered me a lot of encouragement. My remarks in this post don't take away from that. I do want to make some comments about my experience, to offer encouragement to other people who participate in their state parties.
In fall 2008, I joined the board of my state's Libertarian party and became the organization's newsletter editor. Shortly thereafter, in Massachusetts' November 2008 election, Bob Underwood received over three percent of the vote running as a Libertarian for the U. S. Senate. That made the state's Libertarian party a major political party in Massachusetts.
Not so surprisingly, Massachusetts' election laws don't make it easy for people to get on the ballot, least of all candidates for third parties. The laws are somewhat arcane, and leave some room for interpretation. One interpretation, backed by two decades or more of history, is that being a major third party is a particularly bad place to be if you want to place your candidates on the ballot. To secure the 10,000 signatures you need for your nomination papers, you want to be a Democrat, a Republican, a minor party candidate, or an independent who might choose to run under a political designation.
After Underwood's good showing, LPMA's board wanted to avoid the disadvantages of being a major third party in the state. Board members discussed how to make the organization a political action group rather than a political party. Persuasive, experienced members of the board carried the day. I was a quiet member of the skeptics, those who wanted to preserve our status as a political party, whether major or minor. I had no interest in devoting time to a political action group, indistinguishable from thousands of other special interest groups out there. A political party fields candidates, and I wanted to help build the state's Libertarian party.
The upcoming special election to fill Ted Kennedy's seat is a good example of the current situation. Joseph Kennedy (no relation to Ted) wants to run in the special election as a Libertarian. Acting on the LPMA's advice, however, he won't seek nomination as a candidate of the Libertarian party. Instead he'll seek nomination under the political designation Liberty. To get 10,000 signatures for your nomination papers, you need a lot of money to pay an organization to collect them, or a good volunteer organization to do the same. The Democrats have many contributors and volunteers in the state, and have no trouble placing their candidates on the ballot. The Republicans are much weaker, and leave many races uncontested. The Libertarians have virtually no money and no volunteer organization. Therefore a candidate like Joe Kennedy must pay professional signature collectors out of his own bank account.
To make matters worse, an independent candidate can collect signatures from any registered voter, whereas a candidate from a major political party can collect signatures only from independents and people enrolled in that party. So if you run as a major party Libertarian, the pool of people eligible to sign your nominating petition is much more restricted.
Yet it's confusing for a candidate to run under the Liberty designation, and a mistake to abandon the opportunity offered by as candidate's success in winning three percent of the vote. If Massachusetts Libertarians achieve major party status while short of money and volunteers, it should use the momentum to strengthen the party and make it competitive. The state badly needs a new opposition party – everyone can see that. Instead, much of the party's energy went toward renouncing its status as a major political party, in order to work around state requirements that make it highly problematic for third parties to get off the ground!
Nomination procedures required to place your candidate's name on the ballot are one issue. I haven't mentioned the organization's second major concern. By the letter of the law, the state's oversight of a political organization's books is more strict for a major political party. One board member said he didn't want to go to jail because we didn't keep our books properly. Another member would say to others at the table, do you want to go to jail? The discussion rose to higher levels, but I couldn't stand it. The question had no answer.
My enthusiasm went way down. Given the party's weakness, it was bound to revert to minor party status the next time it ran a candidate in a state wide election and received less than three percent of the vote. It had already gone through the minor -> major -> minor cycle when Carla Howell ran for governor about a decade ago. She received over three percent on election day, and the party went through the double change of status without upheaval or undue interference from the secretary of state's office. I felt we should endure the same transition again. If we focused our energy on party building, we could strengthen the group's ability to field candidates and win votes. Any organization has to trudge a lot of miles before it becomes successful, and the trudging doesn't stop even then.
We did some party building, but far more energy went toward a debate about how to make ourselves into something other than a political party. First we had to remove the word party from our name. But if you don't call yourself a party, what are you? If you're a group of activists but not a party, exactly what role do you play in the state's electoral system? When you're a major third party, you're playing in the big leagues even if you're the weakest team. No baseball team would voluntarily switch to the minor leagues, no matter how many games it lost or how much the major league's rules were stacked against it. To make yourself a political action group rather than a party, you cease to play in any league at all. You become a booster club.
More generally, when an organization changes its name, not to mention its legal status, the people involved become confused and doubtful. Even members, those closest to the group, become unsure about their own organization. What's going on?, they ask. Why the change? Should I continue to support the new group? You depend on current members to recruit new members, but doubt makes some portion of your current members less willing to act. They're not solidly loyal anymore. The organization starts to shrink instead of grow.
The state libertarian parties throughout the United States need loyal, enthusiastic support. The Republican party can go the way of the Whigs 160 years ago if a real alternative emerges. To quote a long-time libertarian activist, let's put the Republican party out of its misery. Let's keep our state libertarian parties healthy and ready to participate. Let's make them grow, make them able – as parties – to compete successfully in elections. The potential and promise of success are both there, and we have to seize the chance.


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AMB Cotton Solid in Khaki #12
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According to reports the total cost of the three Shivalik-class frigates (Project 17A) will be Rs 7,883 crore. Imported components, like the on-board weapons, sensors and radars, engines, transmission etc, account for approximately Rs 2,710 crore - approximately 40 percent. An agreement with Essar Steel for manufacturing warship-grade steel helped in lowering the cost of imported equipment. Crucial dimensions of design and integration have also been indigenised. Indigenisation levels are expected to rise dramatically in the next two lines of warships that are coming on stream next year, i.e. in Project 15B (four destroyers) and Project 1A (seven frigates).The ship is powered by 2 US-origin General Electric LM-2500 gas turbine engine and 2 French SEMT Pielstick diesel engine, one on each shaft driving a large diameter controllable pitch propeller. The LM 2500 Gas Turbine engines enable the ship to generate speeds in excess of 30 knots (or over 55 kmph) and the SEMT Pielstic Diesel Engines are for normal cruising speeds. This is known as CODOG (combined diesel or gas) configuration.The 142.5-metre-long warship, with 6,200-tonne displacement, has versatile control systems with signature management and radar cross-section reduction features. It has been provided with structural, thermal and acoustic stealth features to augment its potent capability. The Satpura is equipped with a mix of imported and indigenous weapon systems and sensors, including Barak surface-to-air missiles, 'SHTIL' air defence system, rapid fire guns and basic anti-submarine warfare weapons. The ship's electric power is provided by four Diesel Alternators, which together produce 4 Mega-Watts of power-enough to light up a small town.The power generation and distribution on board is controlled through an 'Automated Power Management System' (APMS).A stealth warship is designed to have low signatures so that they remain undetected to enemy sensors. Its shape is designed to evade detection by radar; it is engineered to give off minimal infra-red (IR) emissions; and every piece of equipment on board, is designed to work silently to escape the enemy's sonar and acoustic sensors.From a small dry dock built to service ships of the British East India Company, Mazagon Dock Limited is today the Country's premier warship building yard. By next year, MDL would have delivered all three in the series. The Shivalik Class frigates are part of the Project 17 of the Indian Navy under which multi-role frigates with stealth features are being built for the Indian Navy at Mazagon Dock Limited. The first ship of the Class INS Shivalik was commissioned on April 29 last year and launched India into the league of countries with the capability of building stealth frigates.
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John Kostecki has one instruction for me: "Hold on." It's a sunny day in New Zealand's Hauraki Gulf, off the coast of Auckland, and I've just boarded Kostecki's boat. Actually, calling it a boat suggests something a lot more substantial than what I'm standing on. It's the barest skeleton of a raft, a wisp of a catamaran 22 feet wide by just under 45 feet long. Called an AC45, it's a bantam version of the next-generation America's Cup yacht, and it's unlike anything else on water. Above me is not a sail but a solid wing, mounted vertically like a fin. At 70 feet tall, it is longer than the wing of a Boeing 727. Yet the craft that this massive airfoil propels is almost fully dematerialized—a CAD file in wireframe hovering over the bay. As far as I can tell, there's nothing to hold on to.
As the craft bobs idly in the water, Kostecki, the boat's tactician, motions for me to head out to the center of the netting stretched between the two knifelike hulls, a place where I'm least likely to get in the way. The skipper, Jimmy Spithill, watches silently from behind mirrored sunglasses as I crawl out and embrace the base of the mast. As soon as I'm settled, the three other sailors on board begin to stir their winches. This causes a cat's cradle of lines to spring up all around me and begin to dance. Just above my head is the wing's bottom edge, a massive horizontal pole with a half dozen separate lines running in and out of it. It's like a giant robot's arm strung with rope tendons, and as it starts to flex—positioning the towering wing to catch the breeze—the boat accelerates with a gut-twisting quickness. Within seconds we're outpacing the speedboat that dropped me off. A rooster tail of spray shoots from the bow of each hull, leaving me thoroughly soaked.
Next, accompanied by the terrible groaning howl of rope straining under maximum tension, the boat starts to tip up onto its side. One of the hulls lifts free of the water. "Hike out!" Kostecki barks, and the crew races—half running, half speed-climbing—to the high side of the boat. "Sorry, mate," says one sailor after trampling across my back and flinging himself over the breaching hull. Their weight is the only thing keeping us from flipping. To gain maximum leverage they hang off the boat upside down, facing up, with their feet tangled in the netting and everything past their knees cantilevered over the side. The goal is not to bring our wayward hull back to the water but rather to bring it as close to the surface as possible without touching down. Flying the hull eliminates its drag. Flitting across the water, literally and figuratively on edge, the black carbon-fiber boat takes on a distinctly alien, insectoid grace. The next America's Cup race takes place in 2013, but one thing is already sure: The event's pioneers wouldn't recognize their sport now.
Back in 1851, when the stately yacht America bested the greatest naval power that had ever ruled the seas to win the cup, Queen Victoria, in a bit of stiff-upper-lip hopefulness, famously asked who took second place. "Your Majesty," the queen's counselor advised, "there is no second." And that is really the key to understanding the oldest trophy in international sport. The America's Cup—the Super Bowl of sailing—is unique among major competitions in that it's essentially structured as a winner-take-all bet. The grand prize of the America's Cup race is dominion over the next America's Cup race. It's as if the Green Bay Packers were rewarded with not just the Vince Lombardi Trophy but also the NFL. Or if the San Francisco Giants were now in charge of baseball, and not just the Major Leagues but the Japanese and Cuban leagues, too. The team that takes the cup gets nearly complete control over the race, the only caveat being that an official "challenger of record" must agree to the final rules. No wonder the world's richest men have always been so keen on the contest.
The last cup, in 2010, was a highly contentious battle between Oracle Racing, bankrolled by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and Alinghi, the alter ego of the Italian-born Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli. It marked what may be the nadir of the sport: Alinghi, who won the previous cup, attempted to radically change the rules by using a sham challenger of record. Ellison's organization sued and won, becoming the official challenger, but as a result the match reverted to the anything-goes rules of the 19th century. Alinghi spared no expense on a specially designed high-speed catamaran. Oracle spared even less expense, devising a paradigm-breaking trimaran with a wing for a sail. Oracle won.
Wing-sail technology carried the day, but the acrimony over the rules seriously tarnished the potential value of Ellison's prize. Old-line sailors tsk-tsked about the abandonment of the traditional single-hull yacht design. Never before had there been two crass-looking multihulls competing for the America's Cup. And Ellison's wing? For traditionalists, it was downright offensive. But even worse for Ellison, the masses—especially the young—tuned out the competition entirely, turned off by the endless lawsuits and massive egos. Facing this reality, Ellison did what any successful businessperson would do after acquiring an underperforming asset: He ordered a shake-up. Instead of bringing back the design rules that had governed the sport for 15 years, Ellison decided to completely reinvent the race. The next America's Cup will, as Oracle Racing's CEO Russell Coutts puts it, "meet the expectations of the Facebook generation, not the Flintstone generation."
America's Cup 2.0 is still two years away, but the beta is already here: the America's Cup World Series. Featuring everyone from Oracle Racing to Team Korea, the series is a preseason road show, a tour of racing events meant to build public awareness of the main America's Cup event, which will be held in San Francisco in September 2013. Ellison's new cup has two points of distinction. For starters, the rules will be fair. Teams will sail the same basic boat, which means the America's Cup events will measure the skill of the racers, not their lawyers. The second distinction is the radical new design formula: ultralight, ultraquick, wing-powered catamarans. Ellison is gambling on untested technology—one that will be world-record-setting fast, very hard to sail, and completely unforgiving of mistakes.
In their final build, these boats will be 72 feet long and carry a crew of 11. But before that can happen, racers need to learn how to sail ultralight, ultraquick, wing-powered catamarans. Right now, that's a challenge for even the world's most experienced sailors. So, for the World Series, the competition will race the scaled-down AC45—the boat I clung to for dear life in New Zealand.
The AC45s carry five sailors and are capable of reaching speeds of up to 40 mph. All are made by the same boat fabricator in New Zealand. Their mix of speed and agility, their skittishness, and a blue-sky design that no one's ever raced before mean that spectacular crashes and capsizes aren't just likely, they're inescapable.
It's a Silicon Valley cliché that every bold idea must start life hidden away in someone's garage, and the new America's Cup is no exception. In this case, yacht makers, event officials, and racers are holed up in a complex of boat sheds in Auckland's Viaduct Harbor. Upstairs in one building is a loft strewn with folding tables, chairs, and cat-5 networking cable—squint and it's a startup. It's here that officials are trying to sort out everything from how races will be run to how they might be televised. All of it is given careful thought with an eye to bringing back audiences. A memo is going around: Yachts will no longer be referred to as "yachts"; instead, they are "boats." Similarly, "protocol" is "rules," "syndicates" are "teams," and "sailors" are henceforth "athletes." Another missive lays out the alphabet soup of overlapping authorities. The America's Cup Event Authority is in charge of marketing the event, while another organization—America's Cup Race Management—runs it. Ellison established both organizations, but they are nominally independent of him and make their decisions based on what's best for the cup. In a surprisingly self-aware and forward-looking move, Ellison has created an infrastructure that he hopes will last—something that can weather the loss of any one billionaire patron.
As for the boats themselves, the brief that came down from Ellison was to "make it exciting to sail, exciting to watch," says Ian Burns, Oracle Racing's team coordinator who was one of the leaders on the AC45 design team.Ellison wanted a new class of boat, one that sacrificed everything for speed. To a mechanical engineer like Burns, speed "is a simple equation," he says. "It's the amount of horsepower you've got divided by the amount of drag you have to fight."
Burns started with horsepower: the design of the mainsail. From a physics perspective, in terms of how much lift—and thus power—a sail can create, there's no real question. Wings beat soft sails, without a doubt. "A traditional sail will always have that droopy catenary shape," Burns says, "but you can have any shape you want in a wing." It turns out the shape you want is an elongated teardrop, thick and rounded headed into the wind with a trailing edge that tapers into a thin wedge. "With a traditional sail, the maximum lift coefficient you can generate is around 1.2, but these wings," Burns says, gesturing toward an AC45 floating in the harbor, "can get coefficients up to 2 or more." With the AC72s the coefficient could go up to 4 or 5. Wing-sails are simply more powerful.
Furthermore, a wing requires much less boat. To hold a soft sail in shape, you have to pull it tight from the lower corner using a rope called a mainsheet. "And that takes an astronomically high amount of tension," Burns explains. For example, USA-17, the boat that won Ellison the last America's Cup, was fitted with both a soft mainsail and a wing-sail. The mainsheet tension needed to control the shape of the soft sail was on the order of 20 tons. "That's about the weight of 10 Chevy Suburbans hanging nose-to-tail off the back of the thing," Burns exclaims. To support this load, the boat has to be fairly burly. The rigid wing-sail, on the other hand, holds its own shape and thus exerts much less of a load on the boat itself. As a result, the craft doesn't need to be nearly as substantial.
Oracle's second major design decision, after choosing a wing over a soft sail, was to choose between a multihull (catamaran or trimaran) or traditional monohull (the kind of boat conjured up by the word yacht). But after the load calculations were done, the AC45's catamaran configuration was cast in carbon, so to speak. Compared to monohulls, "multihulls, almost by definition, weigh less," Burns says, and therefore generate "less drag when pushed through the water." Every design cue goes back to that fundamental calculus of speed: power over drag. "Multihulls are almost always more powerful, faster, more extreme," he says.
They are not easy to control, however. Actually sailing one of the new America's Cup boats is a feat akin to having a crew of daredevil wing-walkers fly an aerobatic plane from outside the fuselage using a system of ropes that thread into the cockpit and are tied to all the essential controls: the throttle, the foot pedals, the yoke. Things go wrong all the time—lines jam, tangle, get loose—but it makes for an exciting spectacle.
Photo: Gilles Martin-Raget
Photo: Gilles Martin-Raget
Photo: Gilles Martin-Raget
Photo: Gilles Martin-Raget
The trick of sailing an extreme machine like the AC45 is to keep all the powerful forces that act on it in proper balance. Take a wave the wrong way and the AC45 will respond by burying its nose in the chop. That's like slamming on the brakes—the drag on the boat skyrockets when the hulls are forced to plow deep furrows into the water. This can cause the wing to simply outrun the craft, flipping it. "When we designed the boat we had visions of capsizings where the whole wing detonates," Burns says. "We imagined nothing left except a couple of hulls and a crossbeam or two."
The AC45 has a power-to-weight ratio 3.2 times greater than the old monohull designs. Not only that, the acceleration and handling characteristics of a wing-sailed catamaran are completely different from those of a monohull with soft sails. Here, in the choppy waters off Auckland, the most skilled and experienced sailors on the planet are learning the basics of boat handling all over again, attempting to deal with a radically overpowered machine that almost wants to flip.
By the time I arrive in New Zealand in May, pretty much all the teams on the water have rolled their AC45 at least once. "It's actually been a pleasant surprise," Burns says. "To date, there's been very little damage—we haven't had a catastrophic capsize, touch wood." The AC45 is so light and has so little inertia that in a capsize it tends to lose nearly all its speed just before the wing slaps down on the surface of the water. It's a much less destructive fall than the reverse situation, an upside-down skid, where the sail stops the forward motion of the boat by digging under the waves.
"That wasn't necessarily good design," Burns adds, "so much as a lucky break."
Burns and the team designed the boats, but it's Tim Smyth's job to get them made. A tall, affable Kiwi, he and his business partner, Mark Turner, are in charge of boatbuilding for Oracle Racing. Their team built the largest wing-sail ever made—for USA-17—and is now working on the dozen or so AC45s that have been ordered by race teams from around the world. Smyth's workshop-factory is in the village of Warkworth, 45 minutes north of Auckland, in the cavernous hulk of a former printing plant. "During the last America's Cup I was trying to keep wing-making a secret because it was a big leg up," Smyth says. But now that Ellison holds the cup and everyone is using the same design, he adds, "we show all the teams how it's done." Conceptually, laying carbon fiber is no different than laying fiberglass. There's epoxy resin, a catalyst to activate it, and then the material itself—in this case, carbon fibers rather than glass fibers. Yet there is an art to it.
The process starts inside a walk-in freezer. The temperature is arctic, and the lone lightbulb is not strong enough to illuminate the far corners of the long, low-ceilinged room. Industrial racks lined up like a regiment of soldiers hold bolt after bolt of sticky black fabric. "We are vertically integrated," Smyth says. "Nothing bigger than a drum or a roll comes through the door." A couple of months later, out goes an AC45.
The rolls are sheets of carbon fiber in a nearly raw form. Unspooled, a bolt of carbon looks like something you might find on the floor of a barbershop—if every hair were combed across a paper backing and hair-sprayed into place so that they all lay in the same direction. The sticky "hair spray" is actually the slow-acting epoxy resin impregnated into the carbon. The freezer retards the catalyst. Once the rolls are pulled out of cold storage, however, they'll go stale in about four weeks.
Some of the fiber goes into making large standardized panels. The carbon-fiber sheets are unrolled and hand-laid on big cutting tables in a chilly, temperature-controlled, and positively pressurized clean room. Care is taken to arrange the layers so that fibers cross north-south, east-west, and at every compass point in between. Then a high tech honeycomb material called Nomex (a relative of Kevlar) is laid on top of the carbon fiber, and another layer of crisscrossed carbon fiber is laid on top of that. The Nomex-and-carbon-fiber sandwich is then bagged under vacuum pressure, loaded onto baking racks, and rolled into a hot oven the size of a small garage. At 185 degrees, the epoxy begins to flow, catalyze, cure, and finally set. The result looks like a cross between obsidian and cardboard, feels like a superlight plastic, and performs like steel. Smyth calls it, with a bit of wry disdain, "black aluminum." Boeing uses a lot of "black aluminum" in its new 787 Dreamliner. A Nomex-carbon panel makes a fine stand-in for plain old plate metal.
But to Smyth, this so-called black aluminum is actually a waste of carbon's potential. "To fully utilize composites you need to take a more bioengineered approach," he says. "You can contour carbon to make all the fibers follow the load paths—that's where the skill comes in." To do this, carbon fiber has to be carefully draped in layers over molds that will give it a final shape. It's the difference between turning the stuff into a stand-in for metal, which then has to be cut to shape, and turning the sheets of carbon fiber directly into the thing itself. The art is in laying the carbon fiber thick where it needs to be and thin where it doesn't. It's a very human, artisanal process at the heart of a factory filled with machine tools, water- and laser-jet cutters, milling machines, and computers. Doing it well requires an uncanny understanding of the forces that stress each part. Carbon is brittle if the fibers are not oriented in the direction of force, so the contouring process is actually more akin to weaving or felting than traditional shop work. "There is a lot of tailoring," Smyth says, observing that parts made in this manner tend to look more organic than machined.
AC45 vs. AC72
The AC45 is essentially a practice boat for the main craft—the bigger, faster, even less-forgiving AC73
|Area of Wing
(sq ft)
|Size of Crew
|Top Speed
Illustration: Joel Kimmel
Smyth walks me over to a line of rough plywood cradles holding a glossy, super-elongated basin, pointed at one end and open at the other. A few burly young men are bent over it, sanding down some imperfection. At first I mistake the object for the outer hull of an extreme racing shell, as it could easily fit a team of oarsmen seated in a line. I couldn't be more wrong: It's the leading edge of an AC45 mast. Functionally, the carbon half-tube does double duty as both the front of the wing and its main structural component. "It's actually quite a cunning piece," Smyth says, directing me to look inside.
I see that its curve is only a few layers of carbon fiber thick and almost translucent. That membrane is reinforced by long, thick stringers of "uni"—hundreds of bundles of unidirectional carbon fiber—that run down the middle and both edges. Precision-cut bulkheads of "black aluminum" sheeting reinforce the mast and build out the framework that defines the rest of the wing.
As the Austral winter approaches, the weather in Auckland turns ugly. The chop in the gulf roils, egged on by a gusty, confused wind that blows up to 30 mph. Just before noon, a sputtering rain starts to fall. Though the first race of the World Series is less than four months away, only four of the 10 teams competing—Artemis Racing, Emirates Team New Zealand, and Oracle—have their AC45s. (Oracle actually has two teams and two AC45s, called Oracle Black and Oracle White. Such are the advantages of being the cup's defender.) America's Cup Race Management has a lot to figure out, too: Which course designs will make for the most exciting tournaments? Will the newfangled race-management software work? And what about that umpire-on-a-Jet Ski idea? It's time to get on the water.
The embryonic fleet of five—Artemis, New Zealand, Oracle Black, Oracle White, and the Race Management boat—makes its way from Viaduct Harbor to the Hauraki Gulf for its first-ever day of race testing. Little things start to go wrong almost immediately. The radio transmissions of the two mounted umpires cannot be heard over the engine noise of their Jet Skis. Someone on the Oracle team sits on his boat's race computer and causes it to go haywire. A downwind course marker blows loose. The custom-built course management system, which tracks every mark and race boat via GPS, crashes—repeatedly. But Andy Hindley, Race Management's chief operating officer, just shrugs, smiles, and says, "That's why we're testing, to work the bugs out." Hindley is happy because the AC45s themselves are sailing fast and furious. What they lack in monohull majesty they more than make up for with speed and lots of overtaking action. It's the new league's first scrimmage, and the competition is intense. Not surprisingly, given their experience, the Oracle teams are schooling the rest—winning, winning, winning—until the last race of the day, when everything that can go wrong, does.
The final race starts like the others. A call comes in to Oracle White's UHF radio, which John Kostecki keeps strapped to his chest. "Five minutes to start," he announces from where he stands in the middle of the catamaran. The rest of the crew synchronize their watches while Kostecki bounces across the netting to consult with skipper Spithill. It's a standard windward-leeward course, which runs upwind to a turnaround point and then back down. They decide on a tricky gambit called a port start, which is the sailing equivalent of zigging when everyone else zags. Starting on a port tack means sacrificing the right-of-way advantage: One of the most basic rules of sailing is that boats on a port tack must give way to boats on a starboard tack. It's a close cousin of the rule that says if two cars arrive simultaneously at a stop sign, the driver on the right gets to go first. Starting port means you will likely begin in last place but have a clear lane after that. In a sailing race, starting position is not assigned; you're expected to jockey for position in the "prestart" with the goal of crossing the line at full speed just as the official completes the countdown—and not a second before. "Five … four … three …" his words come in loud and clear over the radio.
The three boats on starboard tack—Oracle Black, Artemis, and New Zealand—have all been picking up speed and are heading straight for the gap between the two buoys that mark the starting line. Oracle White and the Race Management boat are charging from the opposite direction. Because they're on a port tack, they must steer behind the other boats, but the Race Management team edges too close to one of the starboard tacking boats and has to lift its port hull out of the water to avoid crashing into the back of it. It's an impressive trick, a sideways-wheelie worthy of Herbie the Love Bug, but after setting back down on both hulls, the boat starts skittering out of control and threatens to knock into Oracle White.
"Watch out for ACRM," Kostecki calls to Spithill, who's manning the helm. "These guys are going to capsize!"
The Race Management boat manages to stay upright, but just barely. It has lost so much speed and position that it drops out of the race before the contest even technically begins. When the race official calls "Start!" it's New Zealand off the line first, followed by the two other boats on starboard tack, Oracle Black and Artemis. Oracle White is last, but now that Race Management has ditched, it has the right side of the field to itself.
New Zealand's lead lasts only a few seconds before it, too, starts gyrating out of control. Spithill, squinting through the dripping fog, notices it first: "Now look!" he says to Kostecki. "New Zealand hooked the starting pin." Sure enough, squeezed at the gate by Oracle Black and Artemis, New Zealand cut it too close and caught its port rudder on the marker buoy's anchor line. Flopping like a fish on a hook, the boat manages to stay up, but it takes so long to unhook that the team decides to drop out of the race.
Artemis is still in it, but for all intents and purposes there are only two boats that matter now: It's Oracle versus Oracle, Black versus White, and it's personal. Black is piloted by 49-year-old Russell Coutts, 1984 Olympic gold medalist in sailing, Oracle Racing's CEO, and the winningest cup skipper ever. Spithill, 32, is the prodigy—the youngest skipper ever to win the event when he took the cup for Ellison in 2010.
As White and Black tack to converge at the upwind mark, it looks to the uninitiated eye as if Spithill is about to T-bone his boss. If the boats do collide at a 90-degree angle, they wouldn't exactly crash. Spithill would likely sail right on through Coutts, knifing Oracle Black into several pieces. The carbon fiber in the twin hulls of the AC45 catamaran is less than a millimeter thick and quite brittle. Hit at speed by the wave-slicing prows of another AC45, the ultrathin hull wouldn't have a chance. The sailors call it the can-opener effect.
They don't collide, of course. But the right-of-way rules invite a game of chicken at every turn. Converging just before the upwind turnaround mark, Spithill on Oracle White now has the starboard right-of-way, and he uses it to edge Coutts aside, cutting him off and forcing him to either change course or decelerate. Coutts chooses to step on the brakes, adjusting his wing to dump wind. White, in contrast, steps on the gas: Kostecki decides to deploy a supplementary sail. "Unfurl code zero!"
The code zero is a downwind sail, and by hoisting it just before the mark and unfurling it as they turn, White has moved well in front of Black. Spithill, Kostecki, and the rest of the White crew are hiked out on the windward side of the boat, flying just over the surface of the water to counter the tipping force exerted by the wind.
Fully dialed in, the AC45 is so efficient that it can easily outrun the wind, but the speed comes at a price. "Everything happens much quicker on these boats," Kostecki says, "so when you have one problem, it compounds and creates a million others." The chop in the water causes the boat to pitch fore and aft. Kostecki doesn't think much of it until the hobbyhorse suddenly hits a weird wave. White's twin bows submerge, causing the stern to kick up into the air.
Spithill loses steerage as the stern rises. It's a classic pitchpole tumble, an ass-over-teakettle forward somersault. On the way up, Spithill calls out a warning to his untethered crew: "It looks like this time"—the boat's deck reaches full vertical, tossing Kostecki and Dirk de Ridder, the wing trimmer, into the water—"we're really going"—Spithill's voice is even and calm as the boat pirouettes on her port hull to flop on her side—"all the way …"
The wing, slapping onto the surface of the water, stops the boat from rolling any further. Except for its carbon-fiber-and-Nomex skeleton, the wing is completely hollow: It floats. With a little help, the boat can be righted. And so Spithill and the two others who managed to hold fast keep working—only sideways. The crew furls the code zero, Spithill catches a line from the team's nearby speedboat, and Oracle White is jerked upright in a tremendous burst of sea spray. They're sailing again within five minutes. "Eventually," Kostecki says, "we may be able to capsize the boat, right it, and keep on racing."
But not this time. The crash tore the wing's delicate skin and broke half a dozen ribs up top, which makes rejoining the race pointless, but it's not severe enough to stop Spithill from sailing White back to the harbor under her own power. Indeed, after a single night of bone-setting and surgery inside Oracle's boat shed, the craft races the next day, good as new. Since every AC45 is identical, spare ribs are simply a matter of having Smyth dial up his sonic knife and cut new ones out of a sheet of black aluminum.
Difficult as the AC45s are to sail, it won't be long until the America's Cup teams will move up to the supersize AC72. Its mast is nearly twice as tall as the AC45's, with at least three times the wing area and thus three times the power. Pete Melvin, a Southern California boat designer and multihull specialist, worked with Oracle to set the AC72's design parameters, which push the dimensions of the big boat to the very limit of what muscle power alone can control. "Anything larger," he notes, "and you'd need motorized winches" to wind in the lines that adjust the hard sail. The AC72's wing is longer than the wing of Boeing's massive 747.
The big AC72s will debut in the Louis Vuitton Cup in July 2013, slated for San Francisco Bay—the contest that will determine the challenger for the 2013 America's Cup finale (Oracle gets in for winning last time). Unlike the AC45s, the big boats will not all be identical. They'll be governed by a formula devised by Melvin and Oracle, but within those specifications, anything goes. Wing design will be an especially fertile area for innovation. After all, the more gracefully an airfoil can curve the air that flows around it, the more lift it will generate. You can bet that the wings will get especially complex, with multiple flaps, slots and control arms. Traditional ropes could be replaced with in-wing hydraulics like you would find in a modern jet aircraft. The straight shape of the AC45's daggerboards (the fins beneath the boat that prevent sideslipping) will give way to curved hydrofoils that provide a measure of lift from below as well as stability.
The AC72s will need all the refinements they can get, because they'll be built to sail even closer to the edge than the AC45. Even though the big boat has roughly three times the power, the platform the wing is mounted on is scarcely twice as wide and only 60 percent longer. "It's going to be a wild ride," says Craig Thompson, CEO of the America's Cup Event Authority. "Accidents are inevitable."
"If we do get a collision, say in the prestart where there's a lot of action," Race Management's Andy Hindley says, "it'll be a car crash at 30 miles per hour—only with no airbags and no seat belts." If a sailor were to lose his grip as an AC72 capsized, he might fall four stories before hitting the water. "Broken bones are likely," Hindley says. Medically trained rescue divers will be on hand to deal with the human carnage.
And the boats? "There is just not a lot of data about wing crashes," Melvin says, adding that the AC45s are, relatively speaking, built to a robust standard. The AC72s, in contrast, will be built to win. They'll be even more high-strung and intolerant of error. "A couple notches faster, a couple notches harder to sail, and so the consequences of getting it wrong will be a couple of notches worse," Melvin says with a laugh.
"That," he adds, "is the idea."
Exciting to sail and exciting to watch? Done and done.
Adam Fisher ( email@example.com) will be covering the Americas's Cup for Wired until the final event in 2013.Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.