Key takeaway: If you really love trees, just stay away from the middle of the United States.

Although most of you probably already knew that little tidbit, I bet you’ve never seen a map of the U.S. based on “woody biomass” before.

This tree density map, released by NASA, is a product of a collaboration between Josef Kellndorfer and Wayne Walker of the Woods Hole Research Center, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. As a lover of woodlands, I must say, it’s nice to live near the Appalachians. Check it out below:

The visualization above was created with data from the National Biomass and Carbon Dataset. What you’re really seeing is concentrations of organic carbon, which is stored in the trees. More carbon concentration = more trees.

Here’s how NASA describes the effort:

Over six years, researchers assembled the national forest map from space-based radar, satellite sensors, computer models, and a massive amount of ground-based data. It is possibly the highest resolution and most detailed view of forest structure and carbon storage ever assembled for any country.

Forests in the U.S. were mapped down to a scale of 30 meters, or roughly 10 computer display pixels for every hectare of land (4 pixels per acre). They divided the country into 66 mapping zones and ended up mapping 265 million segments of the American land surface. Kellndorfer estimates that their mapping database includes measurements of about five million trees.

Bonus Takeaway: the tree density map really looks like a population density map of the U.S. Go figure.

Nissan wants to make dinged up iPhone cases a thing of the past, as they have just announced the Nissan Scratch Shield iPhone Case, billed as “the world’s first self-healing iPhone case.”

“Self-healing” means that when you scratch your case, it will automatically fix the blemish. Easy as that. This works because “the outer ‘paint’ is made from polyrotaxane, which means that when damage occurs to the coating in the form of a fine scratch, the chemical structure is able to react to change back to its original shape and fill the gap.”

The healing process will take anywhere from an hour to a week, depending on the size of the scratch. This paint technology was originally developed back in 2005, and is currently in use in Nissan automobiles like the Murano, 370Z and X-Trail, as well as some Infiniti models.

The Scratch Shield case touts other beneficial features, as Nissan says the flexible, tight-fitting case sports a tactile gel-like surface as opposed to a glossy surface – which cuts down on scratches in the first place and provides a better grip.

So when can you get your hands on one? According to Nissan, hopefully later this year. The first batch of prototypes is going through beta testing with a select group of consumers. If all goes according to plan, you could have your self-healing case before the end of 2012.

This isn’t the first time this scratch technology has been used outside of automobiles:

“We’re really excited about the possibilities provided by this technology, said Bob Laishley, Overseas Program Director Business Development for Nissan in Europe. “In Japan, we’ve already linked up with world-leading mobile operator NTT DoCoMo to allow them to use the Scratch Shield technology on its Style Series N-03B mobile phones, and we think this technology has real scope beyond the automotive world. We’re passionate about innovations that get people excited, and that means not being restricted to one industry or genre.”

For anyone whose iPhone case takes a beating on a regular basis, it’s a no-brainer that they might want to at least give this new case a look.

[Images Courtesy JapanTrends]

So, going by my rule, ants are usually okay. That is, until you give them giant freaking heads.

Detailed in a study published Friday in the AAAS’ Science journal, scientists have uncovered an ancient genetic trait in a certain genus of ant. This led to the creation of an absolutely terrifying mutant ant with a gargantuan head and jaws.

With the help of Ed Yong from Discover Magazine, here’s how my biologically-challenged brain understands the issue.

The Pheidole are a large genus of ant with over 1,100 species. Some of them have a certain “caste” with large heads, called a solider caste. A tiny fraction of those species (like eight) have been known to produce a supersoldier ant, the ones with the giant heads that we’re talking about here.

Researchers discovered that the ability for ants to produce these freaky supersoldiers is actually not limited to these few species. The ability, on a genetic level, to make these giant-headed ants runs through the whole Pheidole genus. It’s just buried deep inside them somewhere.

The team hit some normal ants with a particular hormone and was able to induce the development of these supersoldier ants.

So that clarifies one important point: the researchers didn’t just create some mutant ant out of thin air. They simply activated an expression that is very rare – but already exists.

Here’s how the study explains it in Science Mag -

Complex worker caste systems have contributed to the evolutionary success of advanced ant societies; however, little is known about the developmental processes underlying their origin and evolution. We combined hormonal manipulation, gene expression, and phylogenetic analyses with field observations to understand how novel worker subcastes evolve. We uncovered an ancestral developmental potential to produce a “supersoldier” subcaste that has been actualized at least two times independently in the hyperdiverse ant genus Pheidole.

This potential has been retained and can be environmentally induced throughout the genus. Therefore, the retention and induction of this potential have facilitated the parallel evolution of supersoldiers through a process known as genetic accommodation. The recurrent induction of ancestral developmental potential may facilitate the adaptive and parallel evolution of phenotypes.

In the wild, the giant heads are used to guard and protect their ant colony from enemy ants.

But I think the point here is that people who are much smarter than I am are able to produce terrifying super ants. Awesome.

[Images from The Daily Mail]

Let’s back up a bit. The robot hasn’t really been trained – it’s actually controlled by a human. Oh, that’s cooler? Yeah, you’re right.

Developer Taylor Veltrop spent the better part of 2011 constructing this little gem – a system that allows him to get in the mind of a two-foot tall NAO robot, and use that control to thoroughly satisfy or seriously annoy (honestly, who can tell with cats?) his feline companion.

Veltrop hacked a Kinect and uses two Wii remotes to control the bot’s arms. He then uses a treadmill in correlation with the Kinect to control the bot’s movement. A head mounted display allows him to control the bot’s head as well as see through its eyes.

The result is this: an amazingly elaborate scheme to brush your cat. Enjoy:

And oh look! There are plans for more:

After doing this exercise, it became apparent that the next feature to add is hearing and speaking through the robot. Luckily both the NAO and my HMD have microphones and speakers so this shouldn’t be too difficult.

You can debate whether or not this project deserved a year of someone’s life. Hey, maybe this invention will allow people with extreme cat allergies to interact with kitties via robotic surrogate? Who knows. But one thing you can’t argue is that it’s nice to see a robot given a task that doesn’t threaten human life as we know it.

[Hat Tip to Engadget]

If any of that applies to you, or you’re simply looking to take a trip down memory lane with the best ‘stache in pop culture history (with apologies to Tom Selleck), you have to dial 719-266-2837 (719-26-OATES).

What resides at that number is truly amazing. It’s the Callin’ Oates emergency Hall & Oates hotline.

The Callin’ Oates hotline will play you a Hall & Oates song with the simple push of a button. Press 1 to hear “One on One.” Press 2 to hear “Rich Girl.” Press 3 to hear “Maneater.” And finally, press 4 to hear “Private Eyes.” I pressed four. And by that I mean all four.

The Verge caught up with the Callin’ Oates creators, who work for San Francisco-based cloud communications company Twilio. The company requires all new employees to build an app –

With the idea secure, [Michael] Selvidge (@selviano) and [Reid] Butler (@rbutlersf) built and launched the hotline this weekend, mixing a bit of PHP and links to public URLs on Dropbox to create a simple interactive voice response system. The custom 1-719-26-OATES number costs $1 / month, and Selvidge found it via an online phrase search

According to a recent tweet, the project seems to be off to a good start:

Here’s the hotline in action:

Callinoates.com has already been set up to allow you to dial the hotline without getting out your mobile device.

With any luck, they’ll expand the repertoire of the hotline. As far as what songs should be added to the catalog, please, for your consideration:

[Lead Image Courtesy]

Of course, in the many years of photography, people have captured an innumerable amount of iconic images. But the question is specific: what’s the most epic? User submissions prove that the concept of “epic” means something different to everybody. To some it means important, to others it means large scale, and to a few it simply means awesome.

Although it’s virtually impossible for there to be a consensus on the most epic photo ever, this Quora thread is an amazingly fun read. I’ll give you a taste by presenting the top 10 epic photos, as currently voted by users.

Want to feel small and insignificant? Here’s the Earth from about 3.7 billion miles away. This image was taken and transmitted by Voyager 1 about 13 years after its initial launch. If you want scope, here you go – it’s hard to get more epic than this. We’re that little spec – the single pixel on the right side of the image:

User Mark Hughes says that his choice “encompasses a fundamental horror and truth about humanity today.” The image was taken during the 1993 famine in Sudan. Epic? Debatable. Heart-wrenching? Wow:

Apollo 8′s snapshot of Earth from the Moon. ‘Nuff said:

Historical significance is paramount in this classic photo taken at Tienanmen Square. One of the most iconic images of the 20th century:

This image from the Hubble telescope is mind-warping. I’ll let user Phillip Schaffer describe why it’s so epic to him – “Background – as a pure act of curiosity, in 1995 the Hubble was aimed at a very small patch of sky thought to be empty. Data were added up over 10 days to make the image, and what was seen was a total surprise. The area was packed with galaxies. The size of the image below covers an area of sky the size of a dime viewed at 75 feet. Look at the number of galaxies and extrapolate that to the entire sky. Then multiply by perhaps a billion stars in each galaxy. Then make a rough estimate of the % of stars that might have intelligent life in their planetary system. I also never tire of just examining the variety of galaxies found in this picture. Every tiny smudge of light is an entire galaxy, possibly home to intelligent beings.”

Another iconic image makes a play for most “epic” photo ever. This image of the immolation of a Buddhist monk won its photog, Malcolm Browne, the Pulitzer prize.

This image captures three big events: On the left, fireworks. Barely visible in the middle is Comet McNaught. And on the far right, a thunderstorm. Pretty epic.

High-fiving a whale. That is all:

This photo was taken on September 11th at the World Trade Center. The photographer, Bill Biggart, was killed shortly after taking the photo. One Quora user writes, “Epic story, not epic photo.” What do you think?

Finally, number 10 in Quora users’ minds is this National Geographic image of camels in the desert. It gets a little better when you realize the photo was taken from high above during a sunset and the black images are only shadows:

What do you think of the picks by Quora users? What are you favorite images ever? Let us know in the comments.

[Lead Image is #12 on the Quora thread - goodbye, sound barrier!]

[Major Hat Tip to Google+ Chief Architect Yonatan Zunger for his Google+ post pointing me in the direction of this thread]

The new technique, which they call femto-photography, involves shooting a laser pulse as a flash and recording the light at about 1 trillion FPS. The laser pulse lasts less than one trillionth of a second, and that coupled with a narrow field of view meas that what you’re about to see “is captured over several minutes by repeated and periodic sampling.”

Here’s a pretty technical explanation of the awesome light-into-a-coke-bottle video you just saw:

The new technique, which we call femto-photography, consists of femtosecond laser illumination, picosecond-accurate detectors and mathematical reconstruction techniques. Our light source is a Titanium Sapphire laser that emits pulses at regular intervals every ~13 nanoseconds. These pulses illuminate the scene, and also trigger our picosecond accurate streak tube which captures the light returned from the scene. The streak camera has a reasonable field of view in horizontal direction but very narrow (roughly equivalent to one scan line) in vertical dimension.

At every recording, we can only record a movie of this narrow field of view. In the movie, we record roughly 480 frames and each frame has a roughly 1.71 picosecond exposure time. Through a system of mirrors, we orient the view of the camera towards different parts of the object and capture a movie for each view. We maintain a fixed delay between the laser pulse and our movie starttime. Finally, our algorithm uses this captured data to compose a single movie of roughly 480 frames each with an effective exposure time of 1.71 picosconds.

What’s the use of such a technique? Medical imaging, for one. It could also serve a purpose in an industrial or scientific setting. The researchers hope that at some point in the near future, this type of camera can be available for the masses in what would be an amazing advancement in consumer photography.

Here’s a way to visualize just how fast the light is actually moving and just how amazing this really is (condensed from the NYT):

That “movie” you saw of the light traveling through that Coke bottle was created by recording around 500 frames in a billionth of a second. Like I mentioned before, a narrow field of view makes it so that this process must be repeated over and over to build a complete picture of the scene. If they tracked the flight of a bullet in this way, that movie wouldn’t last 2 minutes like the one above. It would last 3 years.

What do you think? Do you see your iPhone 10 being able to capture at the speed of light?

For a visual explanation of the technology, check out this video below:

This study comes courtesy of Richard Stevens of Keele’s School of Psychology, and has just appeared in the American Journal of Pain. The findings, as reported in that amazingly titled magazine, show that pain tolerance is indeed increased by swearing – but only if the person in pain is not used to cursing like a drunken sailor.

His research was conducted by using an ice-water challenge, a classic test of pain tolerance where part of the subject is subjected to incredibly cold water and is judged based on their ability to withstand that type of pain.

He found that among those who reported swearing only a few times a day, the time that they could keep their hands submerged in the ice bath doubled when they employed a couple of naughty phrases.

But when people who reported frequent swearing (60 times a day or more) tried to use the expletives to increase their pain tolerance – nothing really happened. Their swearing had no effect on the amount of time they could keep their hands in the ice bath.

The simple takeaway: Swearing helps- but only if you are merely a casual user of bad language in your everyday life.

From The Independent:

The mechanism, the scientists say, is simple, swearing elicits an emotional response leading to what is termed “stress-induced analgesia”, also known as the “fight or flight” response, along with a surge of adrenalin.

Frequent swearers can utter profanities without feeling an emotional response,and thus do not get the same pain-relieving effects. So, it seems, swearing lightly in one’s daily routine can help in the occasional, stressful situation

This isn’t great news for me – according to the study I receive absolutely no benefit from breaking out the bad words when I cut myself shaving or something. Although this knowledge probably won’t stop me from sounding like an episode of The Wire every time it happens.

This study corroborates another incredibly scientific study – the one performed by the Mythbusters in 2010. They also confirmed the myth that swearing increases pain tolerance through the ice bath test. Here’s some footage of my favorite mythbuster taking part in the experiment:

I want one. I want one. I want one. I want one. The only problem is that my “path to ownership” includes a couple of lottery wins or some sort of felony. This water-powered jetpack will run you close to $100,000.

The company is JetLev, and the device is the JetLev R200, a 30 lb. jetpack that can achieve 420 pounds of thrust. According to the site, you can ride up to 80 miles or 4 hours at a top speed of 25 mph and a height of 30 feet. Explore the ocean in style, hovering three stories above in a freaking jetpack.

The inventor, Raymond Li, went through four prototypes and 200 test flights before his water-powered jetpack got off the ground, per say. Here’s how he managed to get it going, according to PopSci -

When Raymond Li decided to build a jetpack propelled by water instead of rocket fuel, most of his friends thought he had gone crazy. Worse, engineers told him it would be impossible to manage the water’s mass and thrust to keep it stable in the air.

Li, however, figured that if he attached a hose to his pack, and put the engine and water pump in a separate vessel that dragged behind him, he could seriously reduce his weight, and therefore the amount of thrust needed to stay aloft. In theory, a stiff hose filled with heavy, pressurized water would also add drag to stabilize the jetpack for better forward flight control.

So yeah, you have a 33-foot long hose dragging behind you and you’re pulling a small vessel behind you, but after you watch this video you’ll see that those minor thing will be the last thing on your giddy little mind –

The real “path to ownership” begins with a test flight, after which you secure your jetpack with a 20% deposit. After that, you participate in a certification and safety course. Your first payment of 40% MSRP is due 60 days before delivery.

That MSRP is currently $99,500.

The JetLev R200 comes in portal white, deep black and fire red – and for an extra $3500 can can paint it viper blue or dark toreador red.

What do you think? Worth the price tag? Anyone out there feeling extra generous this holiday season? Let us know in the comments.

[Hat Tip to Mashable]

Ok, when I say “whizzed by your head” I mean about 202,000 miles away and when I say “narrowly escaped death” I mean that NASA scientists knew that it would miss us all along. But hey, a huge space rock flew past Earth last night? Pretty awesome, right?

And it’s even cooler when you discover just how close 202,000 miles really is in the grand scheme of things. For instance, the average distance between the Earth and the Moon is 239,000. So this asteroid, tagged as the size of an aircraft carrier, came between us and the Moon. It passed by Earth at its closest point around 6:30 EST.

That’s the closest that an asteroid that large has come to Earth in 35 years.

The particular asteroid, 2005 YU55, is in an orbit that regularly brings it near Earth, as well as Venus and Mars. But it hasn’t been this close in at least 200 years.

This time, NASA scientists were able to bounce radar off the asteroid to give us an image equivalent to a “celestial sonogram.”

During tracking, scientists will use the Goldstone and Arecibo antennas to bounce radio waves off the space rock. Radar echoes returned from 2005 YU55 will be collected and analyzed. NASA scientists hope to obtain images of the asteroid from Goldstone as fine as about 7 feet (2 meters) per pixel. This should reveal a wealth of detail about the asteroid’s surface features, shape, dimensions and other physical properties

They were able to capture this photo on Monday, and more detailed images are likely to emerge:

The image shows a fairly spherical asteroid – a shape that not all asteroids takes. For instance, the 1999 JMB asteroid captured in 1999 was an asymmetrical, oddly shaped object.

Here’s a visual representation of how close YU55 came on Tuesday, courtesy of NASA:

So this asteroid didn’t send us humans the way of the dinosaurs. It is a reminder, however, that there’s a ton of stuff floating around out there, any and all of which could possibly smack into our sweet little home.

The 2005 YU55 will pass close to Earth again in 2028.

[Image Courtesy IMDB]