Coming soon: your personal flying car

It's 2013. Where's my flying car? Answer: about eight years away.

Learning how to safely operate a TF-X vehicle should take an average driver no more than five hours. 

Terrafugia is a Massachusetts company previously known for the Transition, which is best described as a plane you can drive. Its wings fold up, meaning pilots can drive it off the runway and straight home. Which is great for pilots, but what about the rest of us?

Now Terrafugia is working on a futuristic flying car, the TF-X, which it expects to start selling in the early 2020s. It's a cross between a Google self-driving car, a helicopter and a plane. The carbon-fibre vehicle takes off vertically, from your driveway (presuming you have 100 feet of clearance), using electric-powered rotor blades mounted on each side.

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Once in the air, the rotor blades drop and a rear-mounted gas engine takes over. In normal weather, the computer lands for you, though you have a parachute as a backup – just in case you encounter any HAL-style situations. It has a range of up to 800 kilometres.

The concept behind the TF-X is that it puts as much of the process as possible on autopilot; as much as your average commercial aeroplane, if not more. "Learning how to safely operate a TF-X vehicle should take an average driver no more than five hours," the company claims.

Terrafugia isn't announcing the cost until it gets closer to production, though it does claim: "With investment in automotive scale production, early studies indicate that it is possible that the final price point could be on-par with very high-end luxury cars."

Currently, the company estimates it will start shipping the $US270,000 Transition plane to customers in 2015. If they sell well, it will increase the likelihood of the TF-X flying car becoming a reality in the early 2020s.

Mashable is the largest independent news source covering digital culture, social media and technology. This post was originally published on Mashable.

ABBA museum unveiled in Stockholm

SWEDEN'S iconic pop group ABBA has no plan for a reunion, but a new Stockholm museum opening will offer the second-best opportunity to experience the foursome on stage.

"In the museum you can see us together again. That I think is the closest you could ever get," band member Bjoern Ulvaeus, a youthful-looking 68-year-old, joked in front of a group of reporters ahead of Tuesday's opening.

Bjorn Ulvaeus, former member of the Swedish music group ABBA,
is photographed during a press preview of 'ABBA
The Museum' at the Swedish Music Hall of Fame in
Stockholm, Sweden

ABBA The Museum expects to draw a quarter million visitors before the end of the year, showing that nearly 40 years after they broke onto the world music scene, the Scandinavian superstars have lost none of their lustre.

Ulvaeus stressed that the band, which split in 1983, will never perform together again even though they all remain friends.

In an interview with AFP, he admitted that he had initially been lukewarm towards the idea of becoming a museum piece, and that the three others - Anni-Frid (Frida) Lyngstad, Agnetha Faeltskog and Benny Andersson - had reacted the same way.

"The others were like, 'a museum, no, really?' ... but we were all won over by the idea," he said.

"A museum, that's something permanent, it'll be in the guidebooks!"

The quartet dominated the 1970s disco scene with their glitzy costumes, kitsch dance routines and catchy melodies such as "Voulez Vous", "Dancing Queen" and "Waterloo", the song that won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest and thrust the band into the international spotlight.

The group has sold some 378 million albums worldwide.

Swedish music group ABBA memorabilia seen during a
press preview of 'ABBA The Museum' at the
Swedish Music Hall of Fame in Stockholm, Sweden

The museum was unveiled to the press on Monday and a VIP event in the evening was to be attended by Ulvaeus, Lyngstad and Andersson - or Bjoern, Frida and Benny, as they're better known.

Agnetha Faeltskog told Swedish television SVT recently that she would be in London promoting her latest solo album and would not attend the opening.

But some fans are hoping Agnetha will make a surprise appearance nonetheless.

Outside the museum early on Monday, a group of about 50 ABBA lovers stood around hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous foursome.

"They told us Agnetha wasn't coming but my gut feeling is that she'll be here," Patricia, a 47-year-old who came from Belgium with two friends for the opening, told AFP.

At the state-of-the-art five-storey museum, located on Stockholm's leafy island of Djurgaarden, visitors can pretend to be the fifth member of the band, appearing on stage with the foursome and recording a song with them in a computer simulation.

Another room dedicated to the song "Ring, Ring" features a 1970s telephone, for which only the four band members have the number. They are expected to call occasionally to speak live with museum visitors.

Other rooms will feature childhood photos, the band's costumes, replicas of their recording studio and dressing rooms, and their stylist's worktable.

Visitors will get the inside story told "with humour and warmth. They'll get close to the truth," said Ulvaeus, who was married to Faeltskog.

Andersson and Lyngstad were also married.

"We also talk about daily life, life with the children, our break-up, the crises, things we haven't talked much about, the divorces. We've gone beyond the happy image that we presented," he told AFP. 

Source - http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/music/abba-museum-unveiled-in-stockholm/story-e6frfn09-1226636680236

Scientists find cure for going grey

LONDON: A cure for grey hair that will allow millions to throw away their hair dyes could soon be available, researchers say.

They found people who are going grey develop "massive oxidative stress" via accumulation of hydrogen peroxide in the hair follicle, which causes hair to bleach itself from the inside out.

The journal for biological research, FASEB Journal, reported that the research team, which included experts from Bradford University's School of Life Sciences, had discovered the accumulation of hydrogen peroxide could be remedied with a proprietary treatment.

LONDON: A cure for grey hair that will allow millions to throw away 

their hair dyes could soon be available, researchers say.

The researchers, who made their discovery after studying an international group of 2411 patients, described the treatment as "a topical, UVB-activated compound called PC-KUS [a modified pseudocatalase]", the journal said.

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The treatment can also be used for people with the skin condition vitiligo, which causes a loss of pigmentation.

Study author Karin Schallreuter, a specialist in vitiligo, said: "The sudden loss of the inherited skin and localised hair colour can affect those individuals in many fundamental ways. The improvement of quality of life after total and even partial successful re-pigmentation has been documented."

FASEB Journal editor-in-chief Gerald Weissman said: "For generations, numerous remedies have been concocted to hide grey hair but now, for the first time, an actual treatment that gets to the root of the problem has been developed.

"While this is exciting news, what's even more exciting is that this also works for vitiligo.

"This condition, while technically cosmetic, can have serious socio-emotional effects of people.

"Developing an effective treatment for this condition has the potential to radically improve many people's lives."

Source - http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/beauty/scientists-find-cure-for-going-grey-20130506-2j3to.html

200 Years of Charity in Australia - and a new coin to celebrate

A new collectable coin has been launched by the Royal Australian Mint and The Benevolent Society to celebrate 200 years of the charity. 

   The Benevolent Society was founded as Australia's first charity in 1813 to address issues such as free maternity care and legal aid, as well as campaign for the end of child labour and the introduction of the old-age pension.

   To celebrate the milestone the first 200 people to donate $200 online to the charity will receive one of the new collectible $1 coin.   Chief Executive of the Royal Australian Mint, Ross MacDiarmid said it was only fitting that the pioneering organisation had been recognised on an Australian legal tender coin on its 200th anniversary.

   “The Royal Australian Mint has a proud tradition of recognising the different attributes that have helped make our society what it is today, and The Benevolent Society is an important part of that social tapestry,” Mr MacDiarmid said.
   
“Each person that has been offered a helping hand by The Benevolent Society over the past 200 years, including those that are here with us today, is part of the story that is reflected by this $1 coin.”

   Chief Executive of The Benevolent Society, Anne Hollonds said the charity had provided help and support to millions of Australians since it was established on 8 May 1813 and the coin design featured that same logo that appeared 200 years ago. 

   “The Benevolent Society is honoured to have been chosen by the Mint to appear on an Australia coin in recognition of our 200th anniversary,” Ms Hollonds said.

Source - http://www.psnews.com.au/Page_psn35911.html

Uncle Wes changing lives in western Sydney

To 17-year-old Blake Ellis, Aboriginal elder Uncle Wes is the "the biggest role model in Mount Druitt".

Blake Ellis' childhood was hard and as a boy he sought refuge with Uncle Wes and his family.

"I was only young when I was staying with him and spent more time with him than my own family," he said.

As Uncle Wes puts it: "They've got to have someone they can talk to, someone they can depend on."

Wes Marne is 91 and for the past 30 years, he has been an Aboriginal elder in western Sydney.

"I have responsibility for everything, everything whatsoever," he said.

He is an advocate for "his people" at Centrelink, the Department of Housing, Community Services, Juvenile Justice and he is a regular visitor to young Aboriginal men in prison.

"Just to let them know there's somebody here who cares," he said.

"I suppose there's a lot of mongrel things I've done in my time that I could have gone to jail for but no, I'm out here."

Michael Waites, 25, has been in and out of jail "numerous times".

"Ever since I turned 18 I've probably been eight times," he said.

"I've never had that person to put me on the right track."

But a meeting with Uncle Wes when he was in prison had a profound impact.

"That made my day, him coming there," he said.

"I could feel the spirit inside me."

Uncle Wes conducted a smoking ceremony which Mr Waites says "cleared my mind."

"It more or less gave me the strength to get out of jail."

As a child, Wes Marne lived tribally on the banks of a river in southern Queensland.

"I still think my happiest times were when I lived on the river in the old tin camp," he said.

"We didn't have to worry about much at all, we fished and we hunted and we swam."

At the age of 10, his family were moved to a reserve in northern New South Wales.

"I never had much education. I left school when I was 11 and I never started til I was 10."

At 11, Wes Marne went where ever he could find work.

His first job was carrying water to ring barkers.

"I was a water boy. I used to run around giving everyone a drink of water and it was no easy matter, chasing a lot of men though the bush carrying a hessian water bag about, but anyway it was a living," he said.

He went on to be a boxer, losing most of his teeth in the ring, then there was the "back breaking" work at a tannery, a chicken factory and picking and packaging tobacco all over the country.

"A lot of people didn't want to give us work," he said.

"When we got work we were always the last one to be put on and the first one to be put off."

Uncle Wes says he moved to Sydney to give his children a better education.

"I thought my children would be better off, and it was hard from the word go," he said.

He has outlived four of his children. One baby died from cot death, two were killed in a car crash, another drowned.

"You don't have to be Aboriginal to realise it's a hard old world out there, a hard old world," he said.

But Uncle Wes remains committed to helping his people.

"Even in the night, 1.00 or 2.00 in the morning, you get a call; 'Uncle Wes can you come up? my old man is bashing me here'."

When he is not helping out in the community or teaching his culture in schools, detention centres and prisons, Uncle Wes enjoys a yarn with the locals in Mount Druitt Plaza.

He says it is all about doing something for his people

"You can't retire, once you're an elder you can't retire," he said.

Source - http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-05/uncle-wes-changing-lives-in-western-sydney/4669032

CERN reposts the world’s first Web page

In an effort to preserve the Web’s history, CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) republished the world’s first Web site — two decades after physicists made the technology behind the Web open to everyone.

The site’s reappearance is part of a project to preserve the history of the Web, and tocelebrate 20 years of a “free, open Web” that changed the way we do just about everything.

Photo taken on April 30, 2013 in Geneva shows a 1992 copy of the world's first web page. The world's first web page will be dragged out of cyberspace and restored for today's Internet browsers as part of a project to celebrate 20 years of the Web

The first reaction to the Web was less than enthusiastic. Mike Sendall, the supervisor who reviewed a 1989 proposal to create an information network from British physicist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, gave his nod to the project with the words: “Vague, but exciting.”

Berners-Lee first designed the network to act as a way for CERN physicists and engineers to manage and share information.

On April 30, 1993, a team at CERN first made the technology underlying the World Wide Web available, royalty-free, to anyone who wanted to use it.

The Web site itself isn’t much to look at — just a rundown of the product that includes a look at its development history, instructions of how to create your own pages and technical information about the World Wide Web — but it laid the groundwork for an estimated 630 million Web sites to come in the next 20 years, CERN said in a blog post.

The page that started it all went offline sometime between its birth in 1993 and its twenty-year anniversary and was never preserved with so much as a screenshot, CERN said in its blog post, but those working on the project have been sifting through server files to find the earliest copies of the first Web files that they possibly can.

Interest in the first Web site was so high Tuesday that the site went offline again, however briefly, when it was overwhelmed by Web traffic. The group responsible for its restoration posted a Twitter message saying that the interest brought the site “to its knees.”

“We’re working on it,” the message read. “Terrific to see so much interest!”

The page’s resurrection is part of a larger project to preserve the Web’s earliest days, including efforts to recreate the experience of using early Web browsers, preserving data on the first Web servers used by British computer scientist and Web pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee and providing an archive of information on the earliest days of the Web.

The group is also trying to preserve the first hardware used to host early Web files, including, the BBC reported, a 1990s era, $6,500 computer built by NeXT — the company founded by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs after he was ousted from the company in 1985. The computer is still intact but does not work.

Source - http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/cern-reposts-the-worlds-first-web-page/2013/04/30/d8a70128-b1ac-11e2-bbf2-a6f9e9d79e19_story.html

Robert Downey Jr honors New York City teens who volunteered to help Hurricane Sandy ravaged areas

Iron Man proved his mettle.

Actor Robert Downey Jr. played the hero Monday night, making an unannounced cameo at a

special screening of “Iron Man 3,” co-hosted by Disney and the Daily News to honor teens from 

the Police Athletic League who volunteered to clean up Hurricane Sandy-ravaged areas around

the city.

When his name was announced the 39 honored teens - as well as the several hundred fellow 

PAL members and family who thronged the gargantuan theater in Manhattan’s E-walk multiplex

 — the cheers and squeals were defeaning from the shocked crowd.

“I’m from New York and Tony Stark’s from New York, so I guess that means Iron Man’s from

 New York,” the actor, looking like a rock star in a white tuxedo jacket, sunglasses and silver 

sneakers, told the crowd.

Actor Robert Downey, Jr. tells the crowd that they are the future and 'I guarantee if you keep doing the right thing, you’re going to be running the joint.'

“I just want to say thank you to the Daily News and the Police Athletic League and all of you 

folks. I know you’re all here because you’ve been doing somethng special in the five boroughs, 

for this great city.

“You’re the future of the nation. I guarantee if you keep doing the right thing, you’re going to be 

running the joint in a minute,” he said, before posing for pictures with the wide-eyed guests of 

honor.

Downey had wanted to keep the visit a secret — to see the look of surprise on the kids’ faces.

"I'm just out of words," said Corey Fitchett, 18, one of the real-life heroes being honored, after 

the screening. "It definitely shows he cares about volunteers and the community."

“I think that went well,” Downey told a Daily News reporter — but not before pausing to take a 

few photos with the police officers that were stationed outside the theater for security.

This bit of PR clearly meant a little more to Downey.

“Of course,” he said, “it’s my hometown.”

“Everywhere we drive, I have a memory of playing Frisbee in front of that office building or trying 

to sneak into the back door of a ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ midnight showing, because I 

knew someone who was working concessions,” he added.

“Also, coming back here reminds me of my origins, so it’s thematically concurrent with what 

Tony Stark’s doing.”

Source - http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/iron-man-3-downey-surprises-kids-screening-article-1.1330686