Reaction between compounds found to ... you're already off to fry some bacon, aren't you?

Scientists have explained the reason why humans love the smell of frying bacon.…

Airbus-and-Virgin-funded study finds oil-rich Australian shrubbery can take to the skies

Western Australian farmers who have spent decades planting trees to try and combat salinity might get a payoff: providing jet fuel to Perth airport.…

The quadchopper drone you can eat before the cops arrive

Video  …

Boffin nearly threw away first lens before realising it could end the daily grind

An accidental discovery at the Australian National University (ANU) has created a way to deposit-print small, high-quality optical lenses, in something that's been hailed as “turn a smartphone into an optical microscope”.…

As a co-worker and I were leaving a cafe, we looked and saw it was threatening to rain. “Should we walk?” I asked. He smiled and showed me this app: Dark Sky.

Dark Sky is a weather app that focuses on letting you know how long until it starts raining or snowing where you are, based on your exact GPS coordinates. Or, if it is already raining, it tells you how long it will rain and how hard. Very handy if you are about to run out, but could also give it a few more minutes to let the weather move past.

Of course, it gives you all of the other relevant weather info as well in a very understandable way: current temperature, the hourly forecast for the day, and the weekly forecast.

What makes this my go to weather app is that it anticipates my needs: the first screen tells me what is the weather near me right now and gives me all the details I need to react right away, the next screen is what the rest of the day will be like, and the next screen is what the rest of the week is like. All done in a clean and easy to understand way.

You could say what I like about this is what it doesn’t include:

- You don’t enter in location, because by default it tells me the weather where I am. (You can search for other locations or indulge your sense of schadenfreude and be shown info for interesting storms!)

- The interface is mostly grey scale and simple icons, so it is easy to read.

- Also, the app isn’t free, so that means there aren’t ads.

It’s a small thing, but as I travel, I’ve also liked how it tells me the address it thinks I am near. Convenient when you call for a cab.

These are the same people who do forcast.io – while you get most of the same information with the same simple design, you don’t get the precipitation information. If you use an iPhone, they made their site into a web app: visit the site on your phone, and follow the instructions on the bottom banner. It’s sort of like getting a “lite” version of Dark Sky.

-- Mark Krawczuk

Dark Sky for iOS
$4

The city of Velaux organized its third annual Auto Rétro car last weekend. We will publish a full report from the show tomorrow but in the meantime, can you guess what make and model the following headlights come from?  We’ve purposely included pieces of grille and trim in the photo to make it a little easier.

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The “collectivists promise heaven, but deliver hell” quote is taken from that recent Charles Koch editorial in the Wall Street Journal. It’s time to think outside the Cold War box and consider the threat posed by corporate collectivism against the individual.

The logic is basically quite simple.

If the threat to the American people (or whomever) is sufficiently great to justify my torturing someone, it should be sufficiently great that I'd be willing to die or go to prison to meet that threat. 

If I am not willing to face a death penalty — or far more probably some government agent isn't willing even to do serious jail time — then the situation isn't serious enough to warrant torture.

In any event, torture should be treated as a crime as serious as murder, and punished as severely. If there are mitigating circumstances, such as actually finding the ticking hydrogen bomb (so to speak) and saving Dallas from annihilation, let the relevant Executive commute the sentence after a few years of imprisonment, and perhaps give the criminal a medal.

If torture is not treated as a major felony, it can become routine, and far too often, it does. 

If patriotic cops and CIA agents are unwilling to risk execution or even just a few years of hard time to prevent some disaster, they don't find the threat existential — and they're probably correct.

Spook tech just got spookier

University of Michigan boffins have created a tiny light detector that reaches into the infared, and is already small enough to be delivered as a contact lens.…

Modern tech solves brain ache

Graphic video  Doctors at the University Medical Center in Utrecht have saved a woman's life – by carrying out the first skull transplant using plastic parts built in a 3D printer.…

Fondle your phone for free electricity, thanks to the power of polydimethylsiloxane!

A group of Chinese researchers reckon they're close to a practical method of harvesting the static electricity you generate when tapping and swiping the screen of your smartphone as backup power for the phone itself.…

Photo: Ducati

Riding gear with airbags are one of the greatest safety innovations for motorcyclists since body armor and back protectors. But until now, they’ve had to rely on sensors mounted inside the suit to detect a crash. That changes with the introduction of Ducati Multistrada D-Air, the world’s first motorcycle that wirelessly integrates with airbag riding jackets.

Ducati and Dainese have teamed up to create a specially equipped version of the Multistrada equipped with a passive safety system that uses sensors built into the touring-adventure bike’s stock electronics. The sensors are constantly monitoring the Multistrada’s dynamics–accelerating, braking, or worse, falling over–and if these systems detect a crash, it sends a wireless signal to the Dainese D-Air jacket to deploy the airbag in a scant 45 milliseconds.

The system connects with both the rider and the passenger’s airbag-equipped gear, but for now, the system is only available on the D-Air Multistrada and only in Europe, with sales beginning in May.

Photo: Ducati

Prof cracks open bubbly at news of creation signal

Vid  Returning soldiers with children running into their arms. The look of shock during a birth or marriage proposal. Thanks to the ubiquity of phones, cameras and social networks, you're never far from a reaction shot online. And occasionally these snaps swerve around Facebook walls and into the history books.…

This 1979 Maserati Khamsin was originally delivered new in the US, but has since had the spectacularly awful DOT rear treatment swapped out for the innovative sub-window design as originally penned by Gandini. The car looks to be in excellent condition in, out, and under the hood, and is said to have undergone a major overhaul since being imported to England. Find it here at Furlonger Specialist Cars in Kent, England for 89,990 GBP (~$150,652 today).