Month: March 2018

If you work or live in a city, it’s easy to forget how powerful and delicate nature is. Even if you do get quality outdoor time on a regular basis, it’s hard to hold in your mind how this dichotomy of strength and vulnerability expands across the globe, connected by systems of air, water, and sunlight that tie the whole planet into a single complex system.

But the National Geographic Channel has just the antidote to our collective myopia. A 10-episode series called One Strange Rock debuts tonight at 10ET/9CT, and if you get that channel, it’s worth checking out. The series is a detailed look at some of the Earth’s macro- and micro-scale bio-systems that keep our tiny planet alive. It's a lot like Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos, but strictly with an Earth focus.

Some pre- and post-production magic

One of One Strange Rock's interesting twists is that a lot of this ecology lesson comes from former astronauts, including Chris Hadfield, Mae Jemison, Peggy Whitson, Jerry Linenger, and more. Though it may not seem like an obvious choice to everyone, telling the story of life on Earth through the voices of the only people who have left Earth works perfectly.

If you work or live in a city, it’s easy to forget how powerful and delicate nature is. Even if you do get quality outdoor time on a regular basis, it’s hard to hold in your mind how this dichotomy of strength and vulnerability expands across the globe, connected by systems of air, water, and sunlight that tie the whole planet into a single complex system.

But the National Geographic Channel has just the antidote to our collective myopia. A 10-episode series called One Strange Rock debuts tonight at 10ET/9CT, and if you get that channel, it’s worth checking out. The series is a detailed look at some of the Earth’s macro- and micro-scale bio-systems that keep our tiny planet alive. It's a lot like Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos, but strictly with an Earth focus.

Some pre- and post-production magic

One of One Strange Rock's interesting twists is that a lot of this ecology lesson comes from former astronauts, including Chris Hadfield, Mae Jemison, Peggy Whitson, Jerry Linenger, and more. Though it may not seem like an obvious choice to everyone, telling the story of life on Earth through the voices of the only people who have left Earth works perfectly.

Enlarge / Archaeologists excavating the remains of the central platform at Star Carr (credit: Nicky Milner)

A new study finds that people at one well-situated spot in early Holocene Britain handled rapid climate swings remarkably well. Archaeologists and paleoclimate researchers combined sediment core data with dates from a major Stone Age site to reconstruct how hunter-gatherer communities adapted to a series of unpredictable, century-long cold spells around 11,000 years ago. And, it turns out, at least one group of hunter-gatherers seemed completely unbothered.

A chilly return

During the early Holocene, about 11,000 years ago, Northern Europe was emerging from nearly 100,000 years of cold storage under thick ice sheets, and rising sea levels hadn't yet cut Britain off from the rest of Western Europe. As the last of those ice sheets collapsed into the sea, their effect on ocean temperature and circulation triggered several periods of regional cooling, which lasted for about a century each. Meanwhile, small communities of hunter-gatherers started drifting back into Northern Europe.

“These societies did not simply occupy northwest Europe, but were the earliest populations to attempt to recolonize this region after the Last Glacial Period,” wrote Simon Blockley of Royal Holloway University of London. Blockley noted they did so “against a backdrop of some of the most extreme abrupt climate events known from the Holocene.” You might expect communities in that situation—just gaining a foothold in a new land and at the mercy of an unstable environment—to be pretty vulnerable to the vagaries of climate.

Enlarge / Archaeologists excavating the remains of the central platform at Star Carr (credit: Nicky Milner)

A new study finds that people at one well-situated spot in early Holocene Britain handled rapid climate swings remarkably well. Archaeologists and paleoclimate researchers combined sediment core data with dates from a major Stone Age site to reconstruct how hunter-gatherer communities adapted to a series of unpredictable, century-long cold spells around 11,000 years ago. And, it turns out, at least one group of hunter-gatherers seemed completely unbothered.

A chilly return

During the early Holocene, about 11,000 years ago, Northern Europe was emerging from nearly 100,000 years of cold storage under thick ice sheets, and rising sea levels hadn't yet cut Britain off from the rest of Western Europe. As the last of those ice sheets collapsed into the sea, their effect on ocean temperature and circulation triggered several periods of regional cooling, which lasted for about a century each. Meanwhile, small communities of hunter-gatherers started drifting back into Northern Europe.

“These societies did not simply occupy northwest Europe, but were the earliest populations to attempt to recolonize this region after the Last Glacial Period,” wrote Simon Blockley of Royal Holloway University of London. Blockley noted they did so “against a backdrop of some of the most extreme abrupt climate events known from the Holocene.” You might expect communities in that situation—just gaining a foothold in a new land and at the mercy of an unstable environment—to be pretty vulnerable to the vagaries of climate.

(credit: Steve Rhodes)

Despite underwhelming performance thus far, Apple isn't giving up on its original programming ambitions. According to a report from The New York Times, the tech giant's entertainment plans are slowly but surely taking shape. Apple could reportedly push out a number of original series and films any time between March 2019 and summer of that same year.

The process may seem slow, but Apple isn't wasting time building out its projects. Since last fall, the company signed 12 content deals. Nine of those are "straight-to-series" shows, meaning they skip the traditional pilot-episode stage and will immediately become full series. New hires and former Sony execs Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg lead Apple Worldwide Video and are expanding the staff to about 40 people. They've also ordered separations within the entertainment division devoted to adult dramas, children's shows, and Latin American and European programming.

Only broad details about Apple's overall entertainment strategy have been revealed. According to the New York Times report, producers and executives that have met with Apple claim the company is partial to programming that's in line with "its bright, optimistic brand identity," signaling that we probably won't see any dark, Game of Thrones-esque shows coming from the iPhone maker.

(credit: Steve Rhodes)

Despite underwhelming performance thus far, Apple isn't giving up on its original programming ambitions. According to a report from The New York Times, the tech giant's entertainment plans are slowly but surely taking shape. Apple could reportedly push out a number of original series and films any time between March 2019 and summer of that same year.

The process may seem slow, but Apple isn't wasting time building out its projects. Since last fall, the company signed 12 content deals. Nine of those are "straight-to-series" shows, meaning they skip the traditional pilot-episode stage and will immediately become full series. New hires and former Sony execs Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg lead Apple Worldwide Video and are expanding the staff to about 40 people. They've also ordered separations within the entertainment division devoted to adult dramas, children's shows, and Latin American and European programming.

Only broad details about Apple's overall entertainment strategy have been revealed. According to the New York Times report, producers and executives that have met with Apple claim the company is partial to programming that's in line with "its bright, optimistic brand identity," signaling that we probably won't see any dark, Game of Thrones-esque shows coming from the iPhone maker.

Acer

Chrome OS tablets have been expected for years, and today Acer and Google are finally teaming up to launch the first ever Chrome tablet: the Chromebook Tab 10. It's a pretty standard budget tablet hardware with Chrome OS loaded on it. There's no keyboard, just a touch screen and a passive Wacom stylus.

Google has a blog post pitching the device as a new piece of education hardware. Chrome OS notebooks dominate in the education sector, and this tablet easily plugs into that ecosystem with identical apps and security configurations. The lack of a keyboard will mean typing out long homework assignments won't be ideal, though. Tomorrow, Apple has an education-focused event where it is widely expected to announce a cheaper iPad, and it seems like Google is trying to steal some of educators' attention with this announcement.