Fat Irish barrels at Mullaghmore Head

Shambles "A day in the life" from Peter Martin

Mullaghmore Head 05/10/2010 from Peter Martin

Mullaghmore Head "Tow in Surf Session" from Mully Productions

-> localization with the Marine GeoGarage

Why geography matters

A look behind the scenes into why Geography matters, as students around the country prepare for the 2011 National Geographic Bee.
Learn why it's important from an Ocean Explorer, Global Rower and Adventurer.

Thomas Coville : close, but no cigar

Solo round the world sailing record attempt : Sodebo's 'Etch-A-Sketch' finish

From TheDailySail

After setting out on Saturday 29 January at 11:07:28 GMT on his attempt to break the solo round the world record, Thomas Coville and his 105ft maxi-trimaran Sodebo crossed the finish line off Ushant today, Thursday 31 March at 12:15 GMT) after 61 days, 7 minutes and 32 seconds at sea.
This was 3 days, 10 hours, 43 minutes and 26 seconds longer than the time of 57 days 13 hours 34 minutes and seconds Francis Joyon managed aboard IDEC when he set the record in 2008.

Ironically now the numbers have been crunched Sodebo's latest lap may have taken longer but was actually carried out at a faster speed than Joyon's.
Sodebo covered 28,431 miles at an average of 19.42 knots, or 2,031 miles more than that sailed by Joyon, who covered 26,400 miles at an average of 19.11 knots.
This was because due to less favourable weather conditions, Coville wasn’t able to follow as direct a route as the record holder.

Today on the water conditions were similar to when Sodebo departed two months ago, but the maxi-tri was kicking up plumbs of spray from her damaged starboard bow.
On finishing, Coville spun his giant Irens-Cabaret design south for her homeport of La Trinité sur Mer, SW Brittany.

Pulling alongside at La Trinité, Quai des pêcheurs, Coville commented:
"When you see her here, you say to yourself that ultimately it’s a simple feat: this boat which was my companion for 60 days. You transfer human qualities onto her, but when you’re far away from land, she is your shelter, your survival, above all else."

A few minutes earlier, the skipper had raised his head, looking at the crowds along the quay.
With tears in his eyes, he exchanged glances with the anonymous faces, who had come to listen to what the sailor had to say on his return from a two month solo circumnavigation of the globe.
He accepted the ritual champagne, even though he admitted that “this is really something that is reserved for victories.”
The cork wouldn’t budge and ended up being cut with a knife; the same knife the skipper had with him aboard at all times.

“This is for those who attempt things… in life you have to attempt things guys!” Coville proclaimed to those who had gathered at sunset to see him in.

He sprayed the support team and took a mouthful before giving the bottle to the members of his team.

“When we arrived off Ushant this morning, the timekeeper hadn’t even seen me.
It was me that gave him the final time,” he began.
“On arriving at Trého earlier (the channel into La Trinité), it was like an Etch-a-Sketch, you know, the kids’ toy where you can do some doodling and then erase the whole lot with a sweep of the stylus! It suddenly takes you right back to scratch. Today, that Etch-a-Sketch is you! It’s also my wife, my kids, this Sodebo family, this business with whom we’ve built this adventure. There’s a major human element in all this. Even though I’m showing off in front of you, I’m a competitor at heart and this hurts”.

Coville recounts his voyage to the assembled crowd and tells of the Saint Helena high and the moment when he considered returning home; the beat up towards Kerguelen, saying that “going there close-hauled is crazy”, followed by his route south of the ice zone “my pride… even if those routes are there, you shouldn’t take them.”

In what is now a dark night, the scene is reminiscent of a comfortable living room where tales of the sea are told by the fireside.
A voice asks, “and the moment where you buried all three bows at Ushant?!”
“Ahhh, there, if you turn back at Ushant, you’re certainly going to look like an idiot! But I also recall another moment of ‘freestyling’, where the boat reared up till she was completely bolt upright. I was standing on the winch pedestal and there, deep in the South Atlantic, if you turn back, you don’t look like an idiot, you’re just in a very awkward situation.”

So, yes then, “you have to accept the law of Mother Nature as the Anglo-Saxons say. She didn’t want to give me this record, but I’m here this evening so I reckon she’s been kind to let me return. She didn’t keep me.”

After struggling to better ‘the perfect course traced by Francis Joyon” for the third time, the skipper of Sodebo tonight paid homage to the sailor, who remains the fastest man around the world, singlehanded aboard a sailboat.
“I haven’t beaten the record set by a very great gentleman! A sportsman’s main focus is to be an athlete, to respect your adversary and to respect this reference time, which was set by an exceptional man who goes by the name of Francis Joyon. I think that perhaps I am one of the only people to respect his true value because I’ve played with him and against time. This guy, who slogged it out for years to attempt this record, I saw him here in La Trinité. The exceptional guys are those who are in the right place at the right time, and this gentleman performed a perfect circumnavigation of the globe. This evening, I’d like to pass on my hearty congratulations to Francis Joyon.”

Another voice shouts out “Next time Tom!” The sailor replies that “it would be arrogant to look at you here and tell you that I’ll make another attempt at it. Today, it’s such a commitment that I can’t answer you now.”

Joyon, a neighbour of Coville's just outside La Trinite, himself sent this message:

“In a world where oil escaped from the sea bed for weeks on end offshore of New Orleans, a world where nuclear power stations are throwing out radioactive clouds and where seawater has been irradiated to the extent that it has damaged life for generations to come, Thomas Coville has proven, through his journey around the world under sail, that natural energies aren’t lacking in strength. The fact that he hasn’t beaten the round the world record isn’t the most important thing. The key to this journey is that our circumnavigations of the globe, in crewed as well as solo configuration, have been more effective under sail than under power.

"Right now, no boat powered by an engine has managed to circumnavigate the globe as quickly as we do under sail, due to their weight and range associated with the massive amount of fuel required aboard.

"If our sail boats could influence the upcoming decisions about energy, which are both vital and urgent, they could help us understand that the only way forward is free of pollution, CO2 and radiation, using natural energies: the wind, the current and the sun...

Congratulations to Thomas for this fast, damage-free journey across the ocean.

"Francis Joyon”

Links :

• YouTube : Sodebo passing the Cape Horn (other video : Neutrogena fiming Sodebo)

Flex Touchscreen Interface: warp before you scroll

Parts of the content that are normally pushed outside the screen by scrolling are distorted to keep them within the screen.
This enables users to navigate around the map while keeping an eye on the parts of the map that were originally on the screen.

From Technabob

Scrolling is one of the most frequent actions made in interacting with touchscreen devices.

For me it’s such a basic action that I actually didn’t think too much of it, until I saw this new control interface developed by a research team at Osaka University.
Called the Flex, it’s a touchscreen interface that basically distorts the contents of the screen when you put your finger down and scroll, as opposed to scrolling immediately.
When you let go of the screen, then the content will warp back into its original shape, scrolling in the process.

What are the advantages of having an interface that distorts the content before scrolling it?
First, it lets you preview what you’re going to see when you scroll before you actually scroll.
With today’s interface, the moment you move your finger to scroll the content immediately moves.
With Flex, you can for example distort Google Maps in several directions and quickly preview the surrounding area while still seeing where you originally were on the map.

Flex also makes it easier to go back to where you originally were on the screen, although with small touchscreens like on smartphones that second advantage might not be too noticeable.
The researchers also claim that Flex could be easily integrated into any touchscreen-based device, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself being able to distort the screen of your next phone or tablet.

Gravity satellite yields 'Potato Earth' view

It looks like a giant potato in space

From BBCNews

And yet, the information in this model is the sharpest view we have of how gravity varies across the Earth.

The globe has been released by the team working on Europe's Goce satellite.
It is a highly exaggerated rendering, but it neatly illustrates how the tug we feel from the mass of rock under our feet is not the same in every location.
Gravity is strongest in yellow areas; it is weakest in blue ones.

Scientists say the data gathered by the super-sleek space probe is bringing a step change in our understanding of the force that pulls us downwards and the way it is shaping some key processes on Earth.
Chief among these new insights is a clearer view of how the oceans are moving and how they redistribute the heat from the Sun around the world - information that is paramount to climate studies.

Those interested in earthquakes are also poring over the Goce results.
The giant jolt that struck Japan this month and Chile last year occurred because huge masses of rock suddenly moved.

Goce should reveal a three-dimensional view of what was going on inside the Earth.
"Even though these quakes resulted from big movements in the Earth, at the altitude of the satellite the signals are very small.
But we should still seem them in the data," said Dr Johannes Bouman from the German Geodetic Research Institute (DGFI).

Technically speaking, the model at the top of this page is what researchers refer to as a geoid.
It is not the easiest of concepts to grasp, but essentially it describes the "level" surface on an idealised world.
Look at the potato and its slopes.
Put simply, the surface which traces the lumps and bumps is where the pull of gravity is the same.

Described another way, if you were to place a ball anywhere on this potato, it would not roll because, from the ball's perspective, there is no "up" or "down" on the undulating surface.
It is the shape the oceans would adopt if there were no winds, no currents and no tides.
The differences have been magnified nearly 10,000 times to show up as they do in the new model.

Even so, a boat off the coast of Europe (bright yellow) can sit 180m "higher" than a boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean (deep blue) and still be on the same level plain.
This is the trick gravity plays on Earth because the space rock on which we live is not a perfect sphere and its interior mass of rock is not evenly distributed.

The Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (Goce) was launched in March 2009.
It flies pole to pole at an altitude of just 254.9km - the lowest orbit of any research satellite in operation today.
The spacecraft carries three pairs of precision-built platinum blocks inside its gradiometer instrument that can sense fantastically small accelerations.

This extraordinary performance allows it to map the almost imperceptible differences in the pull exerted by the mass of the planet from one place to the next - from the great mountain ranges to the deepest ocean trenches.
Just getting it to work has tested the best minds in Europe.
"Ten years ago, Goce was science fiction; it's been one of the biggest technological challenges we have mastered so far in the European Space Agency," said Dr Volker Liebig, the organisation's director of Earth observation.
"We measure one part in 10 trillion; that's beyond what we understand in our daily experience."

An initial two months of observations were fashioned into a geoid that was released in June last year.
The latest version, released in Munich at a workshop for Goce scientists, includes an additional four months of data.
A third version will follow in the autumn.
Each release should bring an improvement in quality.
"The more data we add, the more we are able to suppress the noise in the solutions, and the errors scale down," said Dr Rune Floberghagen, the European Space Agency's Goce mission manager.

And of course the more precisely you know the geoid, the better the science you can do using the geoid.
"We are seeing completely new information in areas like the Himalayas, South-East Asia, the Andes mountain range, and in Antarctica particularly - the whole continent is desperate for better gravity field information, which we are now providing."
Goce sees gravity differences at Japan and the tectonic boundary (blue) that triggered the quake.

Goce sees gravity differences at Japan
and the tectonic boundary (blue) that triggered the quake

One major goal of the Goce endeavour is to try to devise a universal reference for mean sea-level.

This would make it possible to compare the true heights of things anywhere on the globe.
"We hope that after completion of the mission we will have one unified global height system," explained Professor Reiner Rummel, the chairman of the Goce scientific consortium.

"Usually, heights in the UK, say, are connected to one benchmark which is connected to mean sea-level, which might be measured at Liverpool, for example.
The French do the same, the Australians do the same and the Chinese do the same - but mean sea-level differs from one country to the next. Now, with Goce, we can unify this so that we don't get the sort of surprises we had when they built the Channel Tunnel and discovered a half-metre offset between the UK and France."

The mission has funding up until the end of 2012 when, like all European Space Agency Earth observation missions, it must seek further financial support from member states to continue.
Goce has delivered the data promised in its primary mission - some 14 months of observations in total - but researchers would like to see it fly for as long as is possible.
Because it operates so low in the sky - a requirement of being able to sense gravity signals which are incredibly weak - it needs an engine to push it forwards through the wisps of atmosphere still present at its altitude.

Without this engine, Goce would rapidly fall to Earth.
But the mission team reported here in Munich that Goce probably has sufficient propellant onboard to drive its engine until deep into 2014.

Links :

• TheGuardian : Goce satellite maps the Earth's gravity in unprecedented precision
• MarineGeoGarage blog : Goce gravity mission traces ocean circulation