Outside Magazine: News From The Field RSS Feed http://www.outsideonline.com Outside Magazine: News From The Field RSS Feed en Copyright 2011, Outside Magazine Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:20:39 -0700 Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:20:39 -0700 http://feed2.w3.org/docs/rss2.html 180 http://media.outsideonline.com/designimages/outside-magazine-small.png Outside Magazine: News From The Field RSS Feed http://www.outsideonline.com 127 33 Outside Magazine: News From The Field RSS Feed NASA Selects 4 Women as Trainees After vetting 6,100 applicants over a two-year search, NASA has selected eight new candidates to be its newest astronaut trainees, four of whom are women, the highest number selected in the program's history. (There were four women in the class of 1998, but they accounted for only 16 percent of the class.)

All eight trainees are between the ages of 34 and 39, so they'll be into their fifties by 2030, the earliest possible date for a Mars mission.

Until then, astronauts could test vehicles built by private companies or spend time aboard the International Space Station. NASA also has a plan to capture an asteroid and drag it into orbit around the moon in the next two decades.

]]> Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:20:39 -0700 Jeannie Longo to Race Again Fifty-four-year-old veteran cyclist Jeannie Longo will compete in the French national championship in a bid to win her 60th title this week. In 2012, Longo finished 5th in the time trial and 12th in the road race, eliminating her chances of competing at the Olympic Games. While her performance sparked talk of retirement, she chose to continue racing.

"I think that [retirement] would be wrong, that is why I relaunched myself this spring. As long as there is life, there is hope," she told CyclingNews last June.

Longo and her husband, Patrice Ciprelli, have a checkered history with performance enhancing drugs. Ciprelli was investigated for buying EPO in 2007 from disgraced American cyclist Joe Papp. In a reasoned decision issued in 2011, Longo was cleared for missing three out-of-competition drug tests, which would normally lead to a two-year ban.

]]> Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:18:16 -0700 New Sleeping Bag Charges Cell Phones Music festival attendees this summer will get to try out a new way of charging their smartphones: a sleeping bag that turns body heat into electricity while its user snoozes. Developed in conjunction with the University of Southampton, the Recharge sleeping bag can provide up to 24 minutes of talk time or 11 hours of standby time from eight hours of sleep.

On Vodaphone's blog, Professor Stephen Beeby of the university's Electronics and Computer Science Department explained how the device works:

"Basically, we’re printing down pairs of what are called ‘thermocouples’,” he explains. “You print lots of those down and connect them up to make a thermoelectric module. “One side of that is cold and the other is hot, and when you get a flow of heat through it you can create a voltage and a current. Voltage and current together equals electrical power.”

Vodaphone will test the device at several music festivals this summer, including Bonnaroo and the Isle of Wight Festival.

]]> Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:16:15 -0700 WATCH: Volcano Spews 4km Ash Plume Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano erupted Monday afternoon, sending a plume of ash almost four kilometers into the air and starting a number of wildfires. The 5,452-meter volcano is one of the most active in Mexico and has experienced several major eruptions since 1994. While small amounts of ash are expelled almost every day, Monday’s eruption was the largest in weeks and raised the volcano alert level to Yellow Phase 2.

Surrounding roads are now only open to controlled traffic and officials have set up a 12-kilometer restricted access area around the volcano. A time-lapse of Monday’s eruption can be seen here:

Nearly 4.5 million people live within 50 kilometers of Popocatepetl. Of those, 650,000 are in areas considered high risk.

]]> Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:03:44 -0700 Grand Canyon Tightrope Walk Will Go Forward Seventh-generation acrobat Nik Wallenda plans to becomes the first man to traverse the Grand Canyon by tightrope this weekend. Wallenda will walk a quarter mile on a steering cable 1,500 feet above the Little Colorado River if all goes according to plan.

Last year, Wallenda completed a similar feat across the Niagara Falls, but was forced to wear a safety harness. There will be no such safety precautions this weekend. “In the history of my family’s career, we’ve never worn a tether,” Wallenda announced last year.

He'll be facing high winds and temperatures reaching into the triple digits. To train for the event, Wallenda has been practicing in Florida. His 20 to 30 minute walk will be shown live on the Discovery Channel.

]]> Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:27:50 -0700 New York Plans Composting Program New York mayor Michael Bloomberg is preparing to roll out a composting plan for the city, aimed at preventing 100,000 tons of food scraps from reaching landfills every year. While the program will be voluntary at the start, it will become mandatory sometime after 2016.

Last April, 100 city restaurants joined a trial composting plan, and 150,000 households along with 100 high-rises and 600 schools will be on board by 2014. The goal is to have the entire city recycling food scraps by 2015 or 2016.

New York plans to divert up to 75 percent of its solid waste from landfills by 2020, and officials hope the composting program will move the city toward that goal. Food waste currently makes up a third of the trash collected in the city. The program is also expected to save the city roughly $100 million a year.

]]> Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:35:40 -0700 Crews Make Progress on Big Meadows Fire Fire crews made progress on a remote fire in Rocky Mountain National Park on Sunday, but said they feared high winds and lightning could erase some of their gains. The Big Meadows fire was 75 precent contained as of Sunday, with 604 acres consumed. Fire managers said they would send away one reconnaissance plane and a heavy helicopter assigned to they incident, and planned to release two hotshot crews.

Also on Sunday, a firefighter assigned to the blaze had to be evacuated by helicopter after suffering a medical emergency. Information officer Bill Kight wouldn't comment on the nature of the incident, except to say that the firefighter was not injured in an accident.

]]> Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:34:53 -0700 Curious Brown Bear Freed From Jar In a saga seemingly taken from the works of A.A. Milne, residents of a small Pennsylvania town were able to rescue a bear that had had its head stuck in a jar for at least 11 days. The 100-pound, jar-headed brown bear was first spotted on June 3, but eluded the game wardens attempting to free him from his glass prison.

The bear was finally rescued by a group of four residents who spotted the bear while leaving the Jamison City Hotel in the town of Benton. After a short chase through a local resident’s back yard, the impromptu rescuers were able to get a grip on the jar and pull it from the bewildered creature’s head using a rope.

Rescuers now believe it was the jar’s former contents, cooking oil, which drew the bear into its potentially deadly trap. “He put his head in, and had a problem,” said Mike Jurbala, one of the heroes of the rescue. “He'd have died in a couple more days.”

]]> Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:33:08 -0700 Explorers Find Lost Ship in Lake Michigan Divers have started exploring an underwater pit in northern Lake Michigan, hoping to find the final resting place the Griffin, a ship helmed by the 17th century French Explorer La Salle. The search began in 2001, when expedition leader Steve Libert discovered a timber slab that appeared to be human-fashioned.

Libert has spent the last three decades searching for the ship, and hopes to confirm the findings by Sunday, using sonar readings. "Soon we will find out whether our assumption is correct or not," Vrana announced aboard the Proud Maid, a 45-foot commercial fishing boat. "We've got to get those test pits dug and hit (the) structure, because anything else is pure speculation."

The Griffin was built near Niagara falls in 1679 and was commissioned to help find a passage to China and Japan. It was the first European-style vessel to traverse the upper Great Lakes. Though the cause of its disappearance is unknown, Libert believe it sank due to a strong storm.

]]> Sun, 16 Jun 2013 12:55:38 -0700 Another Gator Spotted in Long Island Environmental officials in New York are searching for the the fifth alligator spotted since April in a Long Island river. The gator was most recently seen Saturday but has been prowling the waterway for at least a week. The sightings occurred in the same area of the Peconic River where four alligators were captured in April. Authorities report that 17 gators have been found in the wild or turned over this year. 

“People are buying them as pets. They're getting too big and then they’re letting them go,” local resident Steve Hickey (who presumably does not own a gator) announced. The fine for owning an alligator is $250. Anyone who releases a gator faces up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Officials now will try to catch the gator. “They use chicken, catch poles and nets,” Matt Blaisings of the NYS Environmental Conservation told Fox News. “They’re using nets in the river itself to try to contain and isolate the animal.”

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