Colorado Symphony Links Up With Pot Industry

The Colorado Symphony Orchestra, the state's only full-time professional orchestra, has inaugurated a fascinating new series to hopefully boost its audience as it struggles with dwindling attendance and shrinking budgets. Called "Classically Cannabis: The High Note Series," the orchestra has announced that it will play a series of "cannabis-friendly" fundraising concerts sponsored by the state's burgeoning pot industry. "The cannabis industry obviously opens the door even further to a younger, more diverse audience," symphony CEO Jerome Kern told The Associated Press.

In return for sponsorship, marijuana-related companies get "the legitimacy of being associated with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra." he said. The event, however, is strictly BYOC (bring your own cannabis), according to an events listing on the symphony website that says pot will not be sold. Richard Yost of Ideal 420 Soil, a New Hampshire company that sells soil and other cultivation products to marijuana growers, sees sponsoring the concerts as a chance to link his company to one of the best orchestras in the nation and to make the point that pot consumers can be clean-cut and sophisticated. An employee weighs portions of retail marijuana to be packaged and sold at 3D Cannabis Center in Denver. "You can be intelligent and savvy and enjoy cannabis as well," said Yost, adding that he plays Mozart while he works on business plans.

Another sponsor, Jan Cole, said her Boulder-based pot retailer The Farm has helped fund arts events in her hometown and a concert by Ziggy Marley in Denver. She said she hoped for a long-term association with the symphony, because its audience was "our crowd ... people who like art and music and alternative products." The first three shows will feature small ensembles of symphony players at a downtown Denver gallery. The series culminates with a concert at Red Rocks, an amphitheater outside Denver where the symphony and pop and rock groups play.

Jane West, whose Edible Events Co. is organizing the series, said concertgoers will be able to smoke pot in a separate area at the gallery. Guests must be at least 21 and purchase $75 tickets in advance. "We try to create upscale events where people can come and enjoy some cannabis just like they would a glass of wine," West said. For the final show at Red Rocks, which is owned by the city and county of Denver, organizers intend to follow rules dictated by police, West said. Smoking pot at the famed venue is officially banned, though that was flouted long before recreational marijuana became legal.

NY Police Twitter Campaign Backfires

This is hilarious! The New York City Police Department has a Twitter account, and somebody there thought it would be a good idea to ask people to post images of themselves and NYPD officers on Twitter, just to show how much they meant to the community. I guess they had images in their head of kindly benevolent officers helping little old ladies cross the street or handing out candy to children or something like that. "Do you have a photo with a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD. It may be featured on our Facebook page," the department posted on its NYPD News Twitter feed.

Of course the idea was to fuel a feel-good, low-cost public relations campaign. Well, guess what? Those are not the kind of images and tweets they got back. Some samples of the deluge of pictures they received were of alleged police brutality, including many arrests of demonstrators that included such presumed low-lights as an officer pulling the hair of a handcuffed young black woman and another of the bloodied face of an 84-year-old stopped for jaywalking.

Another image showing police after striking a protester brought the remark "Here the #NYPD engages with its community members, changing hearts and minds one baton at a time." Also largely criticized was the department's unpopular "stop and frisk" policy, which many argue unfairly targets minority youth. The NYPD so far has yet to post any happy shots on its Facebook page from its request for public submissions.

Oops!

Rock Music Boosts Solar Cell Performance

One of the biggest things that would boost acceptance of solar cells as a replacement source for electricity is a boost in their output. Guess what? According to a new study from Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College in London, music, particularly rock and pop music, boost the output of solar cells by almost 50 percent.

Solar cells, just like people, it turns out, appear to get an energy boost just by being exposed to the sounds. The high frequencies of pop and rock music cause vibrations that increased the energy generation of solar cells because of their clusters of nanorods. Scientists had already known that straining zinc oxide materials could increase voltage outputs, but the effect had not been tested extensively on solar cell efficiency.

The British researchers grew billions of zinc oxide nanorods and coated them with an active polymer that could convert sunlight into electricity. They discovered that when the solar cells were exposed to sound, the photovoltaic efficiency increased by as much as 45 percent. "We thought the sound waves, which produce random fluctuations, would cancel each other out and so didn't expect to see any significant overall effect on the power output," study co-leader James Durrant says. "The key for us was not only that the random fluctuations from the sound didn't cancel each other out, but also that some frequencies of sound seemed really to amplify the solar cell output - so that the increase in power was a remarkably big effect considering how little sound energy we put in."

The researchers noted significant improvement in solar cell performance with levels as low as 75 decibels, a sound level similar to busy street traffic. They didn't go as far as to compare the benefits of one band versus another, but did find that not all musical genres offered the same benefits. "We tried playing music instead of dull flat sounds, and the biggest difference we found was that when we played pop music rather than classical, our acoustic solar cells responded best to the higher pitched sounds present in pop music." Research is now focused on developing power sources for products that are already exposed to high-frequency acoustic vibrations, such as cars or air conditioners.

Your Tax Dollars at Work (Again)

A watchdog report has been released showing that over a thousand employees of the IRS received bonuses even though they had disciplinary issues, including over $1 million paid to employees who didn't pay their federal taxes. And the bonuses weren't just monetary. Employees with tax problems received a total of 10,582 hours of paid time off — valued at about $250,000 — and 69 received permanent raises through a step increase.

The report looked at bonuses just in 2011 and 2012, who knows about those other years? Employees' tax problems included "willful understatement of tax liabilities over multiple tax years, late payment of tax liabilities, and underreporting of income," the report said. "We take seriously our unique role as this nation's tax administrator, and we will strive to implement a policy that protects the integrity of the tax administration system and the reputation of the service,"

IRS chief Human Capital Officer David Krieg said in a written response to the audit. (Do people actually talk like that?) The IRS said it has instituted a policy to take conduct into account when handing out bonuses to senior executives. (They never thought of this before?) In fiscal year 2012, the agency awarded bonuses of $86.3 million in cash and almost 490,000 hours of time off. About 69% of the agency's 98,000 employees received some kind of bonus.

Apparently non-payment of taxes by federal employees is a government-wide problem. The IRS says 311,536 federal employees were tax delinquents in 2011, owing a total of $3.5 billion. Huh? Bills have been introduced in the House and Senate to fire federal employees with seriously delinquent taxes. Better late than never, I suppose.

Team Pays $3M Settlement for Texting

Jerry Wojcik is a Buffalo Bills fan, and he signed up for a text service from the team. The agreement said he'd get no more than five texts a week, but when he got 13 in two weeks, what did he do? Hey, this is America, so of course he sued! And won! 

The suit, filed in 2012, said the Bills' behavior was a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Well, it seems that this law was created to protect real people against unwanted spam. Some might argue he was getting precisely the sort of messages he wanted, but just a few too many, but that's a no-no according to the law. 

The Bills apparently decided not to pursue the case in court and have now settled for the sum of $3 million. No, you might ask, Mr. Wojcik didn't become $3 million richer. It was a class action lawsuit, so $2.5 million will be paid to the approximately 39,750 people who signed up for the text alert service. And, the money will not be paid in cold, hard cash. Instead, the Bills will issue debit cards that can be used at the team store. This seems rather a nifty proposal, given that all the people so heinously affected were supposedly Bills fans, desperate for information about their team. 

Mr. Wojcik himself will receive $5,000 for leading the class action. Of course, the remaining $562,500 will be going to Mr. Wojcik's lawyers. This is America, right?

Chocolate, Berries and Red Wine 'Can Beat Diabetes'

Scientists have discovered that eating high levels of dark chocolate, berries and drinking red wine can provide protection from type 2 diabetes by helping the body regulate sugar. All of these contain flavanoids, and flavanoids help regulate levels of insulin, the hormone which controls glucose in the body. They also seemed to help prevent chronic inflammation. 

The study involved 2,000 women keeping a diary of all the food and drink they consumed and blood samples being analysed. Professor Aedin Cassidy has led the research at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England says, "One portion of berries every day can help you control your blood sugar levels but also prevent you having a heart attack." But there are warnings about overdoing the chocolate and wine when finding ways to consume flavanoids. "But there is always a tipping point with things like chocolate, red wine and even coffee ... too much outweighs the benefits." 

The best flavanoids of all are anthocyanins that give fruit like berries and grapes and vegetables like aubergines their distinctive red or dark blue coloring. Yummie!

Shenzen Fines Men for Poor Aim

Men with a poor aim are to be fined if they miss their mark when using public toilets in the Chinese city of Shenzen, provoking online derision over how the rule will be enforced. The penalty will apply to those who urinate outside the bowl of facilities in the southern boom town neighboring Hong Kong. 

Draft regulations reportedly don't specify a minimum quantity of spillage required to be classed as a violation. "Such uncouth use of a public toilet will be fined 100 yuan ($16) by authorities" starting next month, according to a city government official. Users of China's Weibo social networks poured scorn on the measures, raising the prospect of hordes of toilet inspectors being deployed to inspect performance. "A number of new civil servant positions will be created. There will be a supervisor behind every urinating person to see whether the pee is straight," wrote one poster. Another added: "Very good measures. I expect they can create 20 jobs on average for every public toilet." 

Officials with the department responsible for details of the rules could not immediately be reached for comment.

Now, Your Own Pet Drone

Yes, forget cats and dogs - now you can own a pet DRONE! A Zurich startup has designed a simple quadrocopter to take aerial photos of places and events without making people feel uneasy because it's tethered. 

Unlike more complex ‘professional’ drones, the Fotokite prototype can be launched and working in under one minute. And because the aircraft is tethered to a leash, it can be classified as a kite and therefore skirt laws governing the use of drones, according to the company. For some, drones represent a frightening future where people will be constantly surveyed. But Fotokite thinks small, unmanned aircraft should be seen as approachable and has even positioned them as flying pets that can be taken for a walk on a leash. There are strict rules governing where drones can be used and by whom, but keeping a drone on its lead could side step safety and some privacy concerns. 

The Fotokite quadrocopter does not rely on GPS, machine vision or even a compass for navigation, which should decrease the chances of crashes. Sergei Lupashin, the Zurich-based roboticist behind the innovation says ‘Should something happen, the leash gives a robust fail safe - the vehicle reduces thrust and it automatically comes back to the operator.’ 

Unlike more complex ‘professional’ drones, the Fotokite prototype can be launched and working in under one minute and can be flown by people with no experience of operating complicated systems, radios and complicated aircraft.

New Telescope Large Enough to Spot Alien Life

Construction is about to begin on the largest telescope ever constructed on Earth. The European Extremely Large Telescope is going to be ten times larger than any other surface telescope and sensitive enough to be able to spot life outside of our solar system. The location is at the absolute top of Cerro Armazones, a remote mountain in Chile, where they intend to blast off enough dirt and rock to create a large plateau. 

The main mirror of the telescope will be 39 meters in diameter, which is far too large to be installed in one piece. It will use nearly 800 mirror segments that are each 1.4 meters in diameter. Each piece will have to be installed with incredible precision, as even microscopic variations can alter the images. Using mirror segments will also allow them to be mass produced, which keeps the telescope’s budget low. 

The location was selected because the peak of Cerro Armazones has incredibly dry air. With a drastically reduced amount of water droplets in the air, the images gathered by the telescope will not be as obscured. Telescopes that are used closer to sea level essentially have to peer through a mist, which is unacceptable with the level of clarity required for the E-ELT. The average relative humidity at this site is 15%. As a comparison, the average relative humidity in Phoenix (which causes people who don’t live there to say “it’s a dry heat”) is about 36%. About 20 kilometers (12 miles) away, the Paranal complex houses about 100 scientists and staff who operate the four Very Large Telescopes, which have had considerable success in tracking stars at the center of our galaxy. 

The E-ELT will outperform all of them put together. Because of its size, it will be able to collect light about 10x faster than existing telescopes, resolving certain issues that existing telescopes have not been sensitive enough to do. It is expected that astronomers will begin to use the E-ELT early in the next decade. It will first target Earth-like exoplanets in their host star’s habitable zone in search of the first glimpses of alien life, which would be one of the biggest achievements in observational astronomy ever. 

The telescope will also observe some of the oldest stars and galaxies in the universe in order to study dark matter and dark energy. Given that the telescope is years away from being functional and there are great strides being made with existing technology, the E-ELT will also be used to probe questions that aren't even close to being asked yet.