All posts tagged: phantom

New Phantom Twist drone spins so quickly that it virtually disappears

New Phantom Twist drone spins so quickly that it virtually disappears

Published by Jenni Sidey

A drone spinning above the ground can become difficult to separate from the scenery behind it. Northwestern University engineers have turned that visual weakness into the defining feature of a new aircraft called Phantom Twist. The drone does not rely on camouflage paint, transparent shells or optical systems that bend light. Instead, its entire body rotates as fast as 25 times per second. At that speed, the human eye no longer sees a clear machine. What remains is a pale, ghostlike blur. The design uses motion blur, the familiar effect that makes a fast fan or propeller appear transparent. By spreading the drone’s components apart and keeping the full structure in motion, the team reduced the sharp edges and stationary forms that normally make a flying robot easy to notice. Components are spread around the drone — at different heights and different angles with lots of space in between — to prevent them from visually overlapping when spinning. So, when everything blurs together, the drone becomes a faint, semi-transparent cloud rather than a distinct shape. …

Councils ordered to improve tracking of ‘phantom NEETs’

Councils ordered to improve tracking of ‘phantom NEETs’

Published by skeptic

More than two dozen councils have been ordered to improve how they track teenagers after new data found the education, employment or training status of 32,100 16 and 17-year-olds was unknown. The Department for Education said 32,100 so-called “phantom NEETs” were recorded by councils on the basis that their activity could not be confirmed. Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has told 26 councils facing the “greatest challenges” they will be required to agree improvement plans over the next six months. Every other council will receive a letter setting out expectations for improving how young people at risk of becoming NEET are tracked and supported. It follows an FE Week investigation in March which found councils held no record of whether 44,000 school leavers had received an appropriate post-16 offer through the ‘September guarantee’ policy. Councils blamed poor data sharing, staff pressures and delays receiving information from schools and colleges for the poor quality of information they hold on young people. Phillipson has said today accurate and timely tracking was “not a box-ticking exercise” but “the difference …

Phantom Obesity: The Dark Side of Weight Loss

Phantom Obesity: The Dark Side of Weight Loss

Published by Jenni Sidey

Sandra couldn’t understand it. Through a combination of GLP-1 medicine treatment, dietary changes, and a regular walking program, she had lost 41 pounds over the last six months. Her scale confirmed it. Her clothing displayed it. Her doctor recorded it. Even her friends routinely lauded her for it. But Sandra couldn’t see it. Instead, when she looked in the mirror, she still saw her pre-weight-loss body. She still instinctively reached for larger clothing sizes and looked for larger chairs. The hardest parts of all were emotional. She expected to be happier. To feel more confident around others and to enjoy the sincere compliments about her weight loss. Instead, it all felt surreal, as if she was living in someone else’s body. Intellectually, Sandra knew she was physically changing. But her self-image remained stuck in the past, and she worried that something was wrong. What Sandra didn’t realize is that her experience is increasingly common in the era of GLP-1 weight-loss treatments. Millions of people are now struggling with the same strange emotion that arises when …

Ryanair insists we failed to board a phantom flight | Consumer affairs

Ryanair insists we failed to board a phantom flight | Consumer affairs

Published by Sam Flores

I was on a Ryanair flight from Bristol to Dublin that took off during Storm Amy in October last year. It was unable to land at Dublin after two abortive attempts and was diverted to Manchester, where we sat on the plane for six hours, with no complimentary refreshments, before being unceremoniously ejected at nearly midnight. We were told Ryanair staff would organise taxis and hotels, but no crew disembarked with us, and the terminal was deserted. I, along with other passengers, was forced to take a taxi to a hotel for the night. There was no word from Ryanair and no flights showed as available the next day, so I took two buses back to Bristol. The abortive trip cost me £900 but Ryanair failed to offer a ticket refund and has refused my £240 claim for the hotel and transport because it seems to have recorded the flight as having landed in Dublin. RC, Bishop’s Tawton, Devon Your communications with Ryanair make for surreal reading. Customer service agents first insisted that you submit …

Phantom codes could help quantum computers avoid errors

Phantom codes could help quantum computers avoid errors

Published by skeptic

Detail of a QuEra quantum computer based on extremely cold atoms QuEra Algorithms called phantom codes could help quantum computers run complex programs without errors, overcoming a big hurdle for making the technology more broadly useful. Early on, some physicists doubted that quantum computers would ever be useful because they expected these devices to be too prone to hard-to-correct errors. Today, several types of quantum computers exist and have already been used for scientific discovery and exploration. Yet, while progress has been made, researchers have not managed to fully curtail the error-making problem. Many popular error-correcting programs enable quantum computers to store information without errors, yet struggle when it comes to computation, says Shayan Majidy at Harvard University. In search of a remedy, he and his colleagues focused on calculations that include many computational steps, which makes them long and inefficient to run, and runs the risk of additional errors creeping in. Quantum computers are made from physical units called qubits, but these computations involve logical qubits, or groups of qubits that share information to …

Devialet Phantom Ultimate 108 dB wireless speaker review: Sound refined and redefined

Devialet Phantom Ultimate 108 dB wireless speaker review: Sound refined and redefined

Published by Jenni Sidey

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more › Sign Up For Goods 🛍️ Product news, reviews, and must-have deals. Plenty of speakers can fill a room with sound. That’s sort of their whole point. Far fewer speakers have an organic presence before they’re even turned on. That’s sort of the Devialet Phantom Ultimate 108 dB’s whole thing. Originally debuted in 2015 and purposefully refined for a decade, these Parisian-produced wireless speakers dominate the conversation from whatever perch they occupy. In a landscape populated by the KEF LS50 Wireless II’s coaxial composure and the JBL 4329P’s studio-bred punch, the Devialet Phantom’s improbable profile doesn’t fit in. Nor does it want to. What this $3,800 outlier does want is to prove that its sculptural enclosure can dominate audibly as well as it does visually. With a name that is part promise, part warning, the Devialet Phantom Ultimate 108 dB is the latest iteration of a powered speaker for those who appreciate sonic ambition and industrial design …

Giant phantom jellyfish spotted deep in Pacific

Giant phantom jellyfish spotted deep in Pacific

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Like a scene out of a Jules Verne novel, scientists from Schmidt Ocean Institute recently encountered a giant phantom jelly (Stygiomedusa gigantea). The enormous deep-sea jellyfish was spotted about 830 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean by a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) exploring the Colorado-Rawson submarine canyon wall off the coast of Argentina. During a dive over the winter holidays, the team explored the wall of a submarine canyon and encountered the creature—also called the giant phantom jelly. It is a very rare find, with only about 118 sightings over 110 years. It is believed to be widespread throughout the world’s oceans, except in the Arctic Ocean. Giant phantom jellyfish have four long oral arms that do not sting the way the tentacles on other jellyfish do. Instead, they use these appendages to grab their prey and guide it towards their mouths According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California, they can reach lengths of 3.3 …

Hate “The Phantom Menace”? The Ewok Line theory could explain why

Hate “The Phantom Menace”? The Ewok Line theory could explain why

Published by Sam Flores

Twenty-five years onward from the theatrical debut of “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace,” nearly every one of its haters has a story about how George Lucas wrecked their childhood. Maybe it was the acting, or more accurately, its absence. Many cite the introduction of the whole midichlorians pseudo-science which, as my still-traumatized husband explained during a recent rewatch, negated the mystical wonder of the Force connection. “The podracing . . . the podracing . . . ” he muttered his breath with all the resignation of Colonel Kurtz gasping out his last words. This man loved “Star Wars” well into his 20s . . . until Lucas brought Jar Jar Binks and the Gungans into his orbit. The Naboo natives’ barely intelligible patois moved critics like NPR’s Bob Mondello to wonder what Lucas was thinking in “ [introducing] “a race of idol-worshiping primitives who speak with Caribbean accents and behave like refugees from ‘Amos n Andy.’”  The Jar Jar hatred ran so deep and fierce that it brought years of virulent harassment upon Ahmed Best, the actor who voiced him. To the manchild …