National Geographic's top 10 most viewed photos of 2008

1. Best Wild Animal Photos of 2008 Announced

Man and right whale size each other up in the winner of the 2008 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition' s underwater category, announced on October 30. "The whales were highly curious of us. Many of these animals had never seen a human before," Skerry told National Geographic.

2. Giant, Unknown Animals Found off Antarctica

Collected from deep Antarctic seas, this 9.8-inch-long (25-centimeter- long) giant sea spider was one of 30,000 animals--many new to science--found during a 35-day census in early 2008 and featured in a National Geographic News gallery on March 28. Other odd discoveries included a balloon-like sea squirt and giant starfish.

3. Best Science Images of 2008 Announced

Under intense magnification, a long-fin squid's suckers--each no wider than a human hair--resemble the leafy star of Little Shop of Horrors. This electron-micrograph image may have only won an honorable mention in the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, but thanks to enthusiastic bloggers, these suckers were the breakout stars of National Geographic News's gallery of the contest's highlights, posted on September 25. Among the other marquee attractions: a bugged-out take on the Mad Hatter's tea party and a "glass forest."

4. Eight Natural Wonders Added to UN Heritage List

Filed with forests, waterfalls, and fantastically shaped granite peaks and pillars, China's 56,710-acre (22,950 hectare) Mount Sanqingshan National Park was among the 174 wild sites--eight of them featured in this gallery--added to the UN World Heritage list in July 2008. Chosen by a committee of the UN's Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Heritage sites are natural and cultural areas recognized for their universal value to humanity. (Photo: CRIOnline)

5. Hurricane Ike Pummels Texas Coast

On Sept. 13 a worker inspects damage in front of the JPMorgan Chase Tower in downtown Houston, Texas, after powerful Hurricane Ike slammed into the Gulf Coast, damaging buildings, flooding streets, and knocking out power for millions of people.With winds reaching 110 miles (177 kilometers) an hour, Ike came ashore above Galveston, Texas, as a strong Category 2 storm just after 3 a.m. ET.

6. Chile Volcano Erupts With Ash and Lightning

After 9,000 years of silence, Chile's Chaiten volcano erupted, generating on May 3 what may have been a "dirty thunderstorm. " These little-understood storms may be caused when rock fragments, ash, and ice particles collide to produce static charges--just as ice particles collide to create charges in regular thunderstorms. The eruption, which continued off and on for months, forced the evacuation of thousands of residents and cattle from this corner of Patagonia.


7. Alien-like Squid Seen at Deep Drilling Site

A mile and a half (two and a half kilometers) underwater, this alien-like, long-armed, and--strangest of all--"elbowed" Magnapinna squid is seen in a still from a video clip obtained by National Geographic News from and published on Nov. 24.

8. Colossal Squid Revealed in First In-Depth Look

The carcass of a colossal squid floats in a tank at the Museum of New Zealand on April 30, giving scientists their first close look at the elusive deep-sea creature. The squid was frozen for months after being caught by fishers off Antarctica in 2007. A dissection of the thawed beast yielded astonishing discoveries, including the animal kingdom's largest eyes and light-emitting organs that may serve as cloaking devices, scientists said.

9. Best Microscopic Images of 2008 Announced

Glowing-hot carbon nanotubes form an expanding orange ball in this winning image from the 2008 Small World photomicrography competition, sponsored by Nikon and featured in an October 15 National Geographic News gallery. In nine other masterworks of magnification, a beetle danced on a pin, and drugs yielded crystal rainbows.


10. Hurricane Ike: Galveston Braces for Storm

Sylvia Renteria recoils as a wave churned by Hurricane Ike meets a seawall in Galveston, Texas, on Sept. 12. Before landfall, the National Weather Service's chilling warnings of "certain death" spurred officials and residents of the coastal town to gird for the worst--and stoked fears of a replay of the devastating 1900 Galveston hurricane that killed 6,000.

Latte Art - ( coffe Art )

Ok, you read this guide, you know how to pull a killer shot of espresso, and you've done things: espresso perfection awaits at the bottom of your cup. You’d take a picture if you didn’t have a pitcher of pristinely foamed milk, with nanometer-sized bubbles and a quicksilver sheen in your hand. The proportion of foam is perfect. You want to pour latte art....

Much like rubbing your tummy and tapping your head, pouring latte art requires that you do two things at the same time. Pour the milk at a consistent and even rate AND shake the pitcher side to side with the even tempo of a metronome.

Use a wide mouth cup. Ideally I like a smaller size (6oz) but some might find a larger 12oz size to work better. The trick is with the wide mouth you will more easily see the design develop and if anything the wide mouth can assist in its development.

Here's something you might not want to do, but should: Practice with water first. It doesn’t have the same viscosity of milk but it can give you a chance to get a feel for pouring and then shaking at the same time. You will also need to be gradually but steadily raising the pitcher so that the milk continues to pour at a steady rate. Later in the pour there is less milk in the pitcher and to keep the milk flowing you will need to tilt the bottom of the pitcher up.

To give you a further sense of what's going on - any fly fishers out there? David Schomer, that maestro of the latte art, likes to compare the art of pouring to casting a line while fly fishing. Dave's an avid fly fisher, you see, and he says there's a similar rhythm in casting a fly line and pouring latte art. You need to have patience when casting the line, letting the line drift back, waiting until it loads the rod before accelerating the line again with the snap of your wrist. When pouring latte art there is a mimicking of this process swinging the pitcher side to side, waiting for the milk to "load" up in the side of the pitcher before changing direction and swinging it to the other side. Typically new people oscillate the pitcher back and forth too quickly, trying to rush the process. The side to side motion needs to be more rhythmical, almost lazy, much like the casting of a fly line. Be patient and let the milk set the timing of the osciallations.

I'm assuming if you're a fly fisher, this makes perfect sense. If you're not go rent "A River Runs Through It" and you'll get a bit of a better idea of what David is talking about.

Getting back to the practical, you're ready to pour, and you need to position. Hold the cup on a slight angle, with the back of the cup being raised up and the edge of the cup closest to you sitting slightly lower. This fans the coffee out in the cup and helps in the development of the leaves for our Rosetta.

Pour starting in the center of the coffee, especially for small cups. Just start pouring straight into the middle of the coffee. I like to keep the edge of the pitcher resting on the edge of the cup at this point.

With the cup about halfway to 3/4 full give the pitcher a little side to side shake and you should start to see the leaves of the penumbra begin to form. Your wrist has also managed to do the "throw" that Schomer describes in his latte art seminars.

Continue the shake, continuing to pour in the center of the coffee. The leaves should move away from you on the surface of the espresso. After about 4-6 shakes you will need to begin moving the pitcher back towards you, continuing to shake side to side with a little bit of a tighter oscillation.

This movement is slower than what many people attempt initially. Don’t get nervous and try to rush things. It won’t work. Slow, steady, almost "natural" slow beat metronome movements are your goal.

As you near the edge of the cup having created lots of leaves or delineations in the surface of the espresso you want to then draw through those leaves with the pour of the milk. Do this slowly, and also elevate your pour just a bit to keep the center stem slim and complimentary to the leaves.

Do it too quickly and it will pull the leaves up tight making your Rosetta look like a Christmas tree that hasn’t had its branches come down yet.

Last bit of advice: Practice, practice, practice. Pro Baristi pour hundreds of drinks a day, and that's their practice time. You have the luxury of no lineups to deal with. Use it.

Top 10 Inventions of 2008

1. The Retail DNA Test
Learning and sharing your genetic secrets are at the heart of 23andMe's controversial new service — a $399 saliva test that estimates your predisposition for more than 90 traits and conditions ranging from baldness to blindness. Although 23andMe isn't the only company selling DNA tests to the public, it does the best job of making them accessible and affordable. The 600,000 genetic markers that 23andMe identifies and interprets for each customer are "the digital manifestation of you," says Wojcicki (pronounced Wo-jis-key), 35, who majored in biology and was previously a health-care investor. "It's all this information beyond what you can see in the mirror."

We are at the beginning of a personal-genomics revolution that will transform not only how we take care of ourselves but also what we mean by personal information. In the past, only élite researchers had access to their genetic fingerprints, but now personal genotyping is available to anyone who orders the service online and mails in a spit sample

2. The Tesla Roadster
Electric cars were always environmentally friendly, quiet, clean — but definitely not sexy. The Tesla Roadster has changed all that. A battery-powered sports car that sells for $100,000 and has a top speed of 125 m.p.h. (200 km/h), the Roadster has excited the clean-tech crowd since it was announced in 2003. Celebrities like George Clooney joined a long waiting list for the Roadster; magazines like Wired drooled over it. After years of setbacks and shake-ups, the first Tesla Roadsters were delivered to customers this year. Reviews have been ecstatic, but Tesla Motors has been hit hard by the financial crisis. Plans to develop an affordable electric sedan have been put on hold, and Tesla is laying off employees. But even if the Roadster turns out to be a one-hit wonder, it's been a hell of an (electric) ride.



3. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
It may have been a long time since the U.S. built the world's best cars, but nobody can touch us when it comes to spacecraft. nasa is about to prove that again with the planned launch in February 2009 of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (lro). Our first unmanned moonship in 11 years, the lro will study the things lunar orbiters always study — gravity, temperature — but it will also look for signs of water ice, a vital resource for any future lunar base, and compile detailed 3-D lunar maps, including all six Apollo landing sites. Wingnuts, be warned: yes, we really went there.


4. Hulu.com
When cable eventually dies, websites like Hulu will be held responsible. Unlike YouTube and other amateur-video-upload sites, Hulu is a hub for network TV shows and movies: Hulu offers shows from nbc, Fox, pbs and other channels, including free full episodes of SNL, The Daily Show, The Office and other hits the TiVo-less masses often miss, plus films like Ghostbusters, The Fifth Element and Lost in Translation. Created as a network-approved alternative to YouTube's grab bag, Hulu was at first roundly mocked as a ham-fisted corporate knockoff of the grass-roots glory that is YouTube. (It was also mocked for its weird name.) Instead it proved that suits can play in the Internet video space too and that studio content can coexist online with the user-generated kind. In doing so, it delivered the final blow that untethered TV from that box in your living room.




5. The Large Hadron Collider
Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest particle accelerator, which went online in September, ran for 10 days and then had to shut down at least until next spring because of an overheated wire. The mammoth machine will send protons wheeling in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light, then smash them together at 6,000 times a second to try to answer such deep questions as why mass exists and whether the universe has extra dimensions. If it takes a few extra months to find out, so what?




6. The Global Seed Vault
Superman had it right: if you want to keep something safe, build a mountain fortress above the Arctic Circle. That's the thinking — more or less — behind the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Almost every nation keeps collections of native seeds so local crops can be replanted in case of an agricultural disaster. The Global Seed Vault, opened this year on the far-northern Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, is a backup for the backups. It's badly needed — as many as half the seed banks in developing countries are at risk from natural disasters or general instability. The vault can hold up to 4.5 million samples, which will be kept dry at about 0°F (-18°C). Even if the facility loses power, the Arctic climate should keep the seeds viable for thousands of years. Let's just hope we still like corn then.




7. The Chevy Volt
No-emission electric motors — which began the automobile revolution — are the technology of tomorrow for cars. But today's batteries can't support the typical driving experience.. Chevy's Volt is a nice compromise. The sedan has an electric motor with a battery that can provide up to 40 miles (about 65 km) of range on a single charge. A gas engine kicks in to recharge the battery while you're driving.. Since nearly 80% of us drive less than 40 miles a day, that means that unlike the Prius, the Volt could get drivers off gas altogether. The best of both worlds lands by the end of 2010.




8. Bullets That Shoot Bullets
Think of the Army's new Active Protection System (APS) as Star Wars for soldiers, designed to protect them from rocket-propelled grenades and other short-range threats. Raytheon's APS will automatically detect an incoming round and then launch a missile to destroy it, all within a split second. If it works, future Army vehicles will be able to head into combat with less armor.




9. The Orbital Internet
In space, no one can hear you scream. But you will be able to send e-mail, thanks to a new protocol being developed for use there. It's hard to maintain a stable connection in orbit, so the interplanetary Internet will have to be especially tolerant of delays and disruptions. In September, a satellite used the new protocol to relay an image of the Cape of Good Hope back to Earth.




10. The World's Fastest Computer
On May 26, at 3:30 in the morning, a $133 million supercomputer nicknamed Roadrunner broke the long-sought-after petaflop barrier: 1 quadrillion calculations per second. Built by IBM for Los Alamos National Laboratory, Roadrunner will be used primarily to simulate the effects of aging on nuclear weapons.InventionsInventions