Integrate a Wireless Charger Into Your Nightstand

If your phone supports wireless charging, but you don't want to clutter your nightstand with an ugly charging pad, you can build it straight into the furniture.

The video above does a great job of walking you through the process, but basically you'll use a chisel or router to create a cavity on the underside of the top of the nightstand, then slide the charger into place. The video uses an IKEA HEMNES nightstand and a Nokia Qi charger, but the basic steps should be similar no matter what you're working with. This particular arrangement does allow the charger to rest on the side wall of the nightstand, but if you aren't so lucky, a thin piece of scrap wood or metal will keep it from falling.

This is similar to a previously-mentioned project that added a PowerMat charger to a bookshelf, but this one doesn't require you to disassemble the charging base or permanently attach it to any furniture.

DIY Qi Wireless Charging Nightstand (cheap, quick and easy) | YouTube

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/3lyW3cXNOoU/integrate-a-wireless-charger-into-your-nightstand-478949465

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Wavii Confirms Google Buy, Shuts Down Its Service To Make Natural Language Products For The Search Giant

Wavii, the natural language technology startup, has updated its home page, and its previously-monochromatic logo, to officially confirm that it has been acquired by Google -- a deal that we noted earlier this week was "north of $30 million." And to set speculation running about what might be coming next, Wavii CEO Adrian Aoun confirmed that it will be shutting down its service so that it can use "our natural language research at Google in ways that may be useful to millions of people around the world."

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/_vxkDmAxOJw/

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Signs of culture in whales and monkeys

Mammals learn feeding behaviors from their friends and family members

By Meghan Rosen

Web edition: April 25, 2013

Enlarge

A humpback whale slaps its tail on the ocean?s surface to help catch prey. Whales learn the hunting technique by spending time with other humpbacks.

Credit: Image courtesy of Jennifer Allen/Ocean Alliance

The phrase ?monkey see, monkey do? applies to humpback whales. Vervet monkeys and humpback whales both copy behaviors from their neighbors, researchers report April 25 in Science. The two studies suggest that, like humans, some wild animals pick up new habits from each other.

Accurately imitating one another?s actions is a ?potential building block of culture,? says cultural evolutionist Peter Richerson of the University of California, Davis, who was not involved with the work. Complex culture builds upon people learning skills from each other, he says.

Scientists have previously spotted signs of social learning in monkeys, birds and other animals, but most studies relied on field observations or experiments with captive animals, says cognitive biologist Andrew Whiten of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

To gauge the role of social learning in wild animals, Whiten?s team trained four groups of vervet monkeys living in a South African game preserve to eat either blue or pink corn and despise corn of the other color. Whiten and colleagues did this by soaking one type of colored corn in an aloe solution that the monkeys found disgusting.

Then the researchers waited four to six months until the monkeys had given birth to a new generation. The team brought out both colors of corn again ? but this time, none was tainted with the nasty flavor. Most of the adult monkeys stuck with the color they had learned was tasty, and all but one of but one of the 27 infants munched on the color that their group preferred.

Enlarge

An infant vervet monkey follows his family?s example by munching on corn dyed pink.

Credit: Image courtesy of Erica van de Waal

Since adult male vervet monkeys migrate among groups, the researchers could observe that nine out of 10 males that moved from pink to blue groups or vice versa swapped their color preference and ate what the locals were eating.

The migrants may have been tapping into local knowledge about food, Whiten says. Or the animals could have been trying to fit in with their new friends. ?Trying to be like others is a way of bonding with another group,? he says.

Humpback whales learn from their buddies as well, reports marine biologist Luke Rendell, also from the University of St. Andrews ? in this case, a feeding behavior. Humpbacks commonly blow bubbles underwater to round up prey, but in 1980, a single whale was seen adding a new twist to the old technique: Before casting a bubble net, the whale whacked its tail on the sea?s surface. The loud smack shakes up the water and may help the whale catch more prey. Since then, more and more whales have adopted the skill, called lobtail feeding.

The new results suggest the more time whales spend with members of their species who lobtail feed, the faster the whales learn the technique.?

Rendell?s team drew on a gigantic collection of whale sightings in the Gulf of Maine, from a 27-year-long project. Whale watchers made more than 73,000 sightings, and logged date, identity, and behavior information (including hunting technique) about each humpback they spotted. The research team then used network analysis to draw connections between whales and their friends ? a social network for humpbacks.

The more lobtail-hunting friends a whale had, Rendell says, the more likely the animal was to pick up the skill. The results suggest that humpback whales, which researchers have previously shown learn songs from one another, also pass on hunting behaviors.?

?In this population, you?ve got multiple traditions going on,? Rendell says. He argues that this could constitute culture in the whales.

?Claims of tradition and culture in wild animals can be very contentious,? says evolutionary anthropologist Rachel Kendal of Durham University in England. Rendell?s group did a good job heading off potential criticisms, she says.

Still, Rendell says, ?I?d love to be able to say that the case is closed, but I think there will always be debate about culture in animals.? And now, when people have that debate, he says, humpback whales will have to be part of it.

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/349980/title/Signs_of_culture_in_whales_and_monkeys

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Just what makes that little old ant change a flower's nectar content?

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Ants play a variety of important roles in many ecosystems. As frequent visitors to flowers, they can benefit plants in their role as pollinators when they forage on sugar-rich nectar. However, a new study reveals that this mutualistic relationship may actually have some hidden costs. By transmitting sugar-eating yeasts to the nectar on which they feed, ants may be indirectly altering the nectar-chemistry and thus affecting subsequent pollinator visitations.

Many species of plants benefit from interacting with ants, and some even secrete special sugary substances to attract ants. Plants produce sugar, in the form of nectar, and in exchange ants provide services such as pollination or protection from herbivores.

The main components of nectar that attract pollinators include three dominant sugars?sucrose, fructose, and glucose?and amino acids (or proteins). The chemical composition of nectar differs among plant species and has been thought to be a conservative trait linked to pollinator type. For example, plants pollinated by hummingbirds tend to have nectar with high amounts of sucrose. In addition, nectar composition is thought to be regulated by the plant.

"When people think about how flowers are pollinated, they probably think about bees," notes Clara de Vega, a postdoctoral researcher at the Estaci?n Biol?gica de Do?ana, Spain. "But ants also pollinate flowers, and I am interested in the role ants play in pollination since it is still poorly understood."

De Vega joined forces with Carlos M. Herrera, an evolutionary ecologist at the Estaci?n Biol?gica de Do?ana, to investigate the relationship between ant pollinators and nectarivorous yeasts. Nectar-dwelling yeasts, which consume sugars, have recently been discovered in the flowers of many temperate and tropical plant species. De Vega and Herrera have already discovered that some ant species not only carry certain types of sugar-metabolizing yeasts on their bodies, but they also effectively transmit these yeasts to the nectar of flowers they visit.

In their most recent work, published in the American Journal of Botany, De Vega and Herrera investigated whether flowers visited by these ants differed from flowers that were not visited by ants in their sugar chemistry, and whether sugar-chemistry was correlated with the abundance of ant-transmitted yeasts found in the nectar.

By excluding ants from visiting inflorescences of a perennial, parasitic plant, Cytinus hypocistis, and comparing the nectar chemistry to inflorescences that were visited by ants, the authors tested these ideas experimentally.

When the authors compared the sugar content in the nectar of flowers visited by ants versus those enclosed in nylon mesh bags to exclude ants, they found that nectar of flowers exposed to ants had higher levels of fructose and glucose, but lower levels of sucrose compared with the ant-excluded flowers.

Interestingly, in flowers visited by ants, there was a high correlation between yeast cell density and sugar content. Nectar that had higher densities of yeast had more fructose and less sucrose, suggesting that the types of yeasts change the sugar content of the nectar. Flowers that were excluded from ants did not have any yeast in their nectar.

"Our study has revealed that ants can actually change the nectar characteristics of the flowers they are pollinating," says de Vega. "The microorganisms, specifically yeasts, that are present on the surface of ants change the composition of sugar in the flower?s nectar."

"This means that nectar composition is not completely controlled by the flower?it is something created in cooperation with the ants that visit the flower," she notes. "We also think that these ant-transported yeasts might have the potential to affect plant reproduction."

Indeed, if a plant cannot control the sugar content of its nectar, then it may lose some of its target pollinators, which would potentially affect overall seed set and plant fitness.

Moreover, if introducing these yeasts to nectar changes the chemistry of the very components that serve to attract pollinators, then perhaps ants are indirectly changing the foraging behavior of subsequent flower visitors and thereby affecting seed dispersal patterns.

This study has revealed an additional layer in the complex association between ants and flowering plants, as pollinating ants alter sugar-nectar chemistry in flowers via sugar-consuming yeasts. But the story does not end here. De Vega plans to continue researching the role that these nectarivorous yeasts play on the reproduction of plants.

"I plan to study the whole interaction of plants, yeasts, and pollinators?how are they interrelated and what mechanisms shape these relations?"

###

Article: http://www.amjbot.org/content/100/4/792.full.pdf+html

American Journal of Botany: http://www.amjbot.org/

Thanks to American Journal of Botany for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127919/Just_what_makes_that_little_old_ant_change_a_flower_s_nectar_content_

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Satoru Iwata stepping in as Nintendo of America CEO following weak Wii U sales, diminished forecast

Yannick LeJacq , NBC News contributor ? ? ? 3 hrs.

Current president and CEO of Nintendo Co., Ltd. Saturo Iwata was just given a new gig by his struggling employer. In addition to the roles he already has, Iwata will now assume the position of CEO of Nintendo of America (NoA), replacing current chief executive and chairman Tatsumi Kimishima, who is transferring to the company's Kyoto headquarters to serve as the General Manager of both the Corporate Analysis and Administration as well as the General Affairs Division.

Iwata will now oversee NoA president and Chief Operating Officer Reggie Fils-Aime. His and Kimishima's new appointments are just one part of an executive-level reshuffling for Nintendo's board of directors as several key members plan to retire.

In a statement announcing the new appointments, Nintendo said the move will support "the company's unified global strategy" and "allow streamlined decision making and enhance Nintendo's organizational agility in the current competitive environment."

Nintendo announced the executive shifts alongside its 2013 fiscal year earnings report, which saw the company return to profitability after posting its first loss in three decades the previous year.

The news is hardly encouraging for the world's largest video game console maker, however. Nintendo reported a net profit of ?7.10 billion ($71.7 million) for the year ended in March, up from a loss of ?43.20 billion in the previous year but nearly half the company's projected ?14 billion.

Much of this income gap stems from lower-than-expected sales of its new home entertainment console, the Wii U, which was first released last November. The company announced that just 3.45 million Wii U units have shipped worldwide so far?more than half a million units short of its January forecast for 4 million, which was itself a diminished forecast from the original 5.5 million projection. These figures imply that the Wii U only shipped an additional 390,000 units globally in the last three months.

The company predicted that net income will rise to ?55 billion yen in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2014, saying that it expects to sell 9 billion Wii U consoles in the coming year. Analysts, however, have remained wary about the console's commercial prospects as it faces increased competition from competitors like Sony and Microsoft ? both of which are expected to release next-generation gaming devices of their own in time for the 2013 holiday season.

Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities who told NBC News last week in no uncertain terms that he thinks Iwata "sucks" at his job, said the Wii U is "just a baffling thing" that disregards the very interests of the home console market to which it is meant to appeal.

"I've always said that I think they came up with a solution and never identified the problem that they were solving," Pachter said.

"And the proof of that is: how many people call it a tablet when it first came out?" he added, referring to the large touchscreen controller officially known as a "GamePad" that comes with the device.

Pachter didn't doubt the attraction that many gamers still feel to beloved Nintendo game franchises like "Super Mario Bros." and "The Legend of Zelda," but he felt that the fact that Nintendo had to release a separate Xbox 360-style "Wii U Pro" controller showed that the company no longer knows how to appeal to many of the gamers would be willing to make a hefty investment into a new console.

And without a guaranteed audience of dedicated console gamers like Sony or Microsoft has, the company risks losing its already tenuous third-party support to make new games for the Wii U.

"It doesn't appear they're going to get long-lasting third party support," Pachter said. "The ones that did support are going to abandon it if it doesn't sell better," presumably once the PlayStation 4 or new Xbox can offer developers a larger customer base than the Wii U can.

Without that third-part support, Nintendo is left with its many "Mario" and "Zelda" franchises, which have certainly done enough to support the 3DS, but not necessarily an additional console ? and a pricier one at that.

"None of us can figure out why exactly we want one," Pachter said. "We don't need a home console that's like the 3DS, and that's just what the Wii U is."

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2b2178d2/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Ctechnology0Cingame0Csatoru0Eiwata0Estepping0Enintendo0Eamerica0Eceo0Efollowing0Eweak0Ewii0Eu0E6C9588738/story01.htm

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China sends largest fleet yet to disputed islands

China sent a fleet of patrol ships today to the sea area it disputes with Japan, following a controversial visit by Japanese officials to a war shrine. The latest moves are seen as a setback for a diplomatic resolution.

By Ralph Jennings,?Correspondent / April 23, 2013

Chinese surveillance ships sail in formation in waters claimed by Japan near disputed islands called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China in the East China Sea Tuesday.

Kyodo News/AP

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Spats between Asia?s two most powerful nations, China and Japan, have grown uncomfortably routine since Tokyo nationalized a group of disputed islands in September. On Tuesday tensions reached a new and potentially worrisome high.

Skip to next paragraph Ralph Jennings

Taiwan Correspondent

Ralph Jennings has covered news in China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia for the past 14 years. He lives in Taipei and holds a degree in mass communication from the University of California in Berkeley.?

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China sent eight surveillance vessels into Japanese territorial waters, apparently to track a flotilla of Japanese activists who had gone to look at the contested area. China?s presence ? an effort to exercise authority in the region ? is its largest since Japan nationalized the uninhabited islets, Kyodo News reported.

China?s use of ships in disputed waters isn?t expected to cause a war, but it raises the specter of a miscalculation at sea that could in turn create a new diplomatic row, set off more protests in Chinese cities, and strike another blow at Japanese business caught in the crossfire. Hopes of polite negotiations are also off the map for now.

"Only when Japan faces up to its aggressive past can it embrace the future and develop friendly relations with its Asian neighbors," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a news conference on Monday.

As if the 80 pro-Tokyo activists weren?t enough to upset Beijing, that same day 168 Japanese lawmakers visited a Shinto shrine that?s reviled elsewhere in Asia for memorializing World War II heroes. Japan occupied parts of China from 1931 to 1945. Three cabinet ministers had already visited Yasukuni Shrine over the weekend, causing calculated reaction.

In protest, a high-level Chinese military official bailed on a trip this week to Japan as the foreign ministry lashed out.?

And China?s surveillance vessels probably weren?t loaded with olive branches. The Communist country has increasingly jousted?with Japan since around 2005 as it rose to become the world?s second largest economy.

?Such an intrusion [in the East China Sea] was certainly not undertaken spontaneously, but would have been planned and coordinated some time in advance for execution as soon as an opportunity presented itself,? says Scott Harold, associate political scientist with US-based think tank the RAND Corporation.

Japan controls the disputed islets, which it calls the Senkakus, despite 40 years of competing claims from China and a wave of destructive anti-Japanese street protests in Chinese cities last year. China criticizes the Shinto shrine visits because a memorial at the venue also honors 14 major war criminals.

The two sides are also disputing rights to an undersea natural gas field, while China periodically accuses Japan of not apologizing for the war of the 1940s. Japan says it has apologized.?

China and Japan, as the world?s No. 2 and No. 3 economies, also mean a lot to each other trade wise. The number of Japanese subsidiaries in China has grown eight times since the 1990s, and they sold $147 billion worth of goods to the country in the 2011 fiscal year.

Will the two keep meeting, along with South Korea, to discuss a three-way trade agreement? After momentum last month, the latest raises concern that this puts progress on ice.

?Both sides need to be more flexible,? suggests Ralph Cossa, president with US think tank Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies. ?Japan needs to acknowledge that the territory is in dispute, at least from a Chinese perspective, and the Chinese need to acknowledge that they are under Japan?s administrative control and that a military solution is unacceptable.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/JNlHK-p_sik/China-sends-largest-fleet-yet-to-disputed-islands

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Mississippi barge traffic snarled by floods, accidents

By Karl Plume

(Reuters) - Commercial shipping traffic was moving again on the Mississippi River south of St. Louis after a pair of barge accidents that forced the U.S. Coast Guard to close the waterway over the weekend, but navigation remained severely impaired further north.

Flooding following torrential rains across the central United States forced the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to close about a dozen locks on the Illinois River and the Mississippi River north of St. Louis late last week.

The U.S. Coast Guard will also close a section of the Illinois River near Peoria to all traffic later on Monday to protect levees, and was considering shipping restrictions in other areas as heavy currents made navigation treacherous.

The shipping headaches come just three months after near-record-low water threatened to close the Mississippi River along a busy stretch from St. Louis to its confluence with the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois.

"While the conditions are much different than they were this winter, the effects are quite the same. We're placing operational guidelines on the vessel industry and shutting parts of the river," said Coast Guard spokesman Colin Fogarty.

A 15-mile stretch of the Mississippi River near St. Louis was closed late Saturday after 114 barges primarily owned by American Commercial Lines (ACL) broke free from a fleeting area and 11 of them, all containing coal, sank.

All of the barges were secured and an aerial survey on Monday found that none of the sunken barges posed a risk to navigation. The Coast Guard, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and ACL were coordinating plans to remove the sunken barges.

"Two of the barges were just barely outside the channel so we were able to allow navigation by them. There was also one barge that sunk in the middle of the channel, but it is currently under about 20 feet of water so it doesn't pose a threat," Fogarty said.

A queue of at least four upriver vessels and four downriver vessels towing 79 barges formed during the 36-hour closure and should be cleared quickly as the river was open to two-way traffic.

Another barge accident further south near Vicksburg, Mississippi, shuttered the river Sunday morning between mile markers 415 and 436 before one-way traffic was allowed to resume early on Monday.

Three grain barges and 27 coal barges had broken free of a barge tow. One sank and at least one struck a railroad bridge, the Coast Guard said.

When the river reopened to southbound traffic, 12 vessels pushing about 120 barges were awaiting passage. A northbound queue of 16 vessels pushing about 230 barges would be cleared through the area once the southbound queue had passed, the Coast Guard said.

The Army Corps shuttered about a dozen locks on the Illinois and Mississippi rivers late last week and over the weekend due to high water, but most could reopen by the end of April or early May, according to the latest river crest forecasts from the National Weather Service.

Grain export prices climbed as the shipping disruptions, expected to persist to some degree for at least another week, severed the farm-to-port supply pipeline for shippers at the Gulf of Mexico.

Some 60 percent of U.S. grain exports are shipped via the Mississippi River system from production areas in the Midwest to export terminals at the Gulf of Mexico. Various other commodities, including oil, coal and fertilizer are also shipped on the inland waterway system.

Spot corn prices at the Gulf rose to the highest in a month while soybean prices hit a three-month high as exporters scrambled for needed supplies.

(Reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago; Editing by Dan Grebler and Jim Marshall)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mississippi-barge-traffic-snarled-floods-accidents-225410069.html

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