Leonardo da Vinci's notebook on flight comes to Washington

Leonardo da Vinci describes the use of flight testing apparatus to understand aerodynamics, in this undated illustration, released on September 12, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Smithsonian Libraries, from the original at the Biblioteca Reale, Turin, Italy/Handout via Reuters

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON | Thu Sep 12, 2013 5:03pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than five centuries after he scribbled in the pages of a well-worn pocket notebook, Leonardo da Vinci's seminal document detailing how humans might emulate the flight of birds has landed at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Steps from the Wright Brothers' 1903 Flyer in a shaded corner of the vast museum on Washington's Mall, da Vinci's "Codex on the Flight of Birds" goes on display on Friday for about six weeks.

Created by the Italian Renaissance visionary between 1505 and 1506, at the same time he was painting the "Mona Lisa," the codex contains the essentials of aeronautics, gleaned from da Vinci's observations of kite birds wheeling overhead.

The 18 pages of the notebook are written in the artist's idiosyncratic backwards mirror script and include drawings of the joints in bird wings, along with the ideas of lift and drag, air flow and gravity.

"When the bird beats its wings and waits to gain height, it raises the shoulders and beats the tips of the wings towards itself, thus condensing the air that stands between the tips of his wings and its chest," da Vinci wrote on one page, according to an English translation. "This makes the bird rise upward."

To aeronautical experts, the da Vinci codex on bird flight seems to have almost mystical powers.

Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said his heart started beating a bit faster when he was allowed to turn the pages of the codex during a 2011 visit to its home at Italy's Biblioteca Reale di Torino, or Royal Library of Turin. The codex is on loan from the library.

"I was so hesitant about going through the pages, but it is amazing, the things that Leonardo thought when he was drawing on this thing 500 years ago," Elachi said during a media preview of the Washington exhibit. "And basically that's the foundation of how we do flights."

Elachi wore gloves to avoid damaging the fragile notebook. In its Washington display, the document is in a sealed case and no photographs are permitted. But there are computer screens where visitors can turn the pages of a digital version of the codex, showing da Vinci's script and drawings on one side, facing the English translation on the other.

The 8-by-6-inch (20-by-15-cm) codex has traveled to the United States only once before, in 2008, and rarely leaves Italy, the museum said.

The notebook also includes some philosophical musings on lying, drawings of a leaf and the muscles in a human leg, and even a shopping list.

The codex has traveled to France, Siberia, Britain and back to Italy. A digitally scanned version of it is now on the Mars rover Curiosity, which landed on the red planet in August 2012.

One of da Vinci's ideas from the codex was to have leather bags filled with water to cushion any fall from flight by a human pilot. Elachi pointed out that this system is not far from the air bags that cushioned earlier rovers' landing on the Martian surface.

"Just imagine, 500 years ago, where he had no tools, no mathematical equations that we have now, no wind tunnels," Elachi said. "He basically was able, just by observation, to come up with a lot of the theories of what we do now."

More information and images from the exhibit are available here

(Reporting by Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Eric Walsh)

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Van Gogh copies in 3D look almost real, cost 25,000 euros

1 of 9. A copy of the Vincent Van Gogh painting ''Wheatfield under Thunderclouds'' (1890) is seen in this handout photo provided by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to Reuters on September 11, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Relievo, Wheatfield under Thunderclouds. Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam/Handout via Reuters

By Sara Webb

AMSTERDAM | Fri Sep 13, 2013 3:03pm EDT

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - It would be the envy of forgers: a technology that can mint near-perfect reproductions of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings at a rate of three a day, with differences only experts can detect.

So far, five of the Dutch painter's best-known works, including "Sunflowers" and "The Harvest", have undergone the treatment in a project backed by Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum using technology developed by the Fujifilm unit of Fujifilm Holdings Corp.

"This is the next generation of reproductions. In the past we had lithographs, then photographs, first black and white, then color. Now these are reproductions in three dimensions," Axel Rueger, director of the museum, said.

Each numbered copy on canvas with relief costs 25,000 euros ($33,300). The complex production process means only three can be produced a day, although prices may come down as production becomes cheaper and easier, Rueger said.

That's more than the usual $15 university dorm poster of "Sunflowers" but a lot less than the $82.5 million Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito paid in 1990 for Van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr Gachet" at a Christie's auction, or the $53.9 million Australian businessman Alan Bond paid for "Irises" in 1987.

The market is unlikely to feel any impact from the cheaper but technically proficient copies, one art expert said. "I don't see any harm done to rich Van Gogh collectors globally," Jop Ubbens, head of Christie's in Amsterdam, told Reuters.

"It is a brilliant innovation from a merchandising perspective by the museum reaching out to a total new target group, something completely different and very creative."

Like many arts institutions hit by government budget cuts, the Van Gogh Museum is turning to the private sector and commercial ventures for funds.

It hopes to raise tens of millions of euros for its own renovation and research by selling the three-dimensional reproductions, known as "Relievos".

The original work is copied using Fujifilm's Reliefography technique, which combines a three-dimensional scan of the painting with a high-resolution print.

A copy of the painting is first made on canvas, producing a colorless relief. Ink is applied so the brush strokes match those in the original. The image is framed and the same process is used to apply copies of the torn and splotchy official stamps stuck to the back of the frame and canvas.

Van Gogh's paintings appear highly textured as he used a technique known as "impasto", where the paint is applied thickly to the canvas, showing the brush or knife strokes.

"It's reasonably difficult to see the difference between the copy and the original. Maybe the edges of the brush strokes are not quite so sharp on the copy and the overall sheen is fairly even, whereas on the original the varnish can vary," Rueger said.

The Van Gogh Museum picked five of the artist's most famous works for the first set of Relievos, including "Almond Blossom" (1890), "Wheatfield under Thunderclouds" (1890) and "Boulevard de Clichy" (1887), as well as "Sunflowers" (1889) and "The Harvest" (1888).

For each of the five paintings, the museum is producing a limited edition of 260 reproductions.

Luxury hotels and casinos are possible buyers, and some may be used for educational purposes, Rueger said.

"Van Gogh is very popular in Asia, and Hong Kong is a very commercial market," Rueger said. "People in Asia have different attitude to reproductions. There was a lot of interest there."

(Reporting by Sara Webb; Editing by Michael Roddy and Sonya Hepinstall)

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Abu Dhabi employees in fix over losing Dubai life

By Stanley Carvalho and Praveen Menon

ABU DHABI/DUBAI | Thu Sep 12, 2013 7:08am EDT

ABU DHABI/DUBAI (Reuters) - When American Stephen Perry lost his job at a bank in Dubai following the emirate's debt crisis in 2009, he was lucky to be hired by one of neighboring Abu Dhabi's government firms.

He didn't move house, so it didn't disrupt his wife's job or the kids' schooling, despite the daily 130-kilometre (80 mile) commute each way. That was still better than the nearly 200 kms he used to put up with in the United States, and he considered it a price worth paying to keep the liberal, cosmopolitan lifestyle in Dubai.

But now Perry is in a dilemma and might not be able to manage the commute after all.

Last September, Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven Gulf emirates, told state employees that if they lived outside its city limits they would not be eligible for housing allowance, which accounts for about a third of their salaries.

The government has said the new rule was aimed at cutting traffic and road accidents, a nod to the risk of commuting on the busy desert highway between Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

But analysts and industry experts say the policy is designed to help absorb a glut of new high-end homes in Abu Dhabi and revive state developers such as bailed-out Aldar.

"Many new units have come up in Abu Dhabi, reaching the peak of its development cycle. The move is to create new demand and make sure the vacancy rates don't reach high levels," said Matthew Green, research head at property consultancy CBRE in Dubai.

The Abu Dhabi government declined to comment on the rulings implications for the property market.

About 10,000 new houses are expected to hit the market by the end of the year, with a further 43,000 by the end of 2015.

With Dubai's property market still yet to fully recover from the crisis, Abu Dhabi's attempt to boost its own struggling real estate sector once again highlights the competition and shifting dynamics between the two tiny sheikhdoms.

Oil-rich Abu Dhabi is keen to keep more of the wealth it generates, rather than having to support its flashy neighbor. Dubai's passion for tall towers and fancy hotels landed the emirate with massive debts, forcing Abu Dhabi to step in with a $20 billion bailout.

Home to the world's largest shopping mall, the tallest building and a palm-shaped artificial island, Dubai, the Middle East's party capital, has a 90-percent expatriate population.

"Dubai has something for everyone, and for an expatriate like me it is home; I don't feel out of place. I think I am echoing the sentiments of many expatriates," said Sandra Haddad, a Lebanese national who works in Abu Dhabi's aviation sector.

AN EMOTIONAL ISSUE

While Abu Dhabi is trying to shake off its more staid image by hosting an annual Formula One race and developing branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums, Dubai remains a bigger draw for shoppers and tourists.

Dubai's restaurants, hotels and nightclubs have helped it stage a gradual recovery, in contrast to Abu Dhabi, which is still struggling to emerge from the crisis.

Lower rents, better schools and hospitals make Dubai more expat-friendly, and thousands commute from there to Abu Dhabi for work.

Precise figures for the number of Abu Dhabi government employees living outside the emirate have not been released, but analysts have estimated it at roughly 15,000-20,000. Including family members, that would mean around 50,000 people could be affected by the change of rules on housing allowance.

With the rule set to be implemented at the end of this month, people are fearful they will have to move if it is strictly enforced. Some have asked their employers for exemptions.

"The commuting and accidents argument is convenient. It was never about roads," said one western executive working for an Abu Dhabi government department.

"A home is an emotional issue. You can't tell someone where to live. There ought to be some give and take."

The Abu Dhabi government said some exceptions could be made, but declined to elaborate.

"The circular is binding on all Abu Dhabi government employees. Nonetheless, special cases that require exception will be considered and assessed. Appropriate decisions will be made to each case separately," it said in a statement.

PAPER RESIDENCY

In the meantime, employees' attempts to work around the rule are fuelling a recovery in Abu Dhabi's rental market, with people taking out leases on studios and one-bedroom apartments to prove residency on paper while continuing to live in Dubai.

"My spouse has a job in Dubai, our kids are at a crucial stage of high school. I've taken up a studio in Abu Dhabi that swallows up half my rental allowance," said one government employee.

Rents for studios and one-bedroom apartments have jumped by 25 percent in areas such as Khalifa city on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, according to Mahmoud Hussain, a manager with property consultants Cluttons.

Dubai, on the other hand, will lose out if its current residents move or spend less time in the emirate, analysts said.

Overall, prime residential rents in Abu Dhabi grew 8 percent in the first quarter this year and remained stable in the second.

"This can partly be attributed to the government regulations to reduce the level of commuting from Dubai," said David Dudley, regional director of Jones Lang LaSalle, adding other factors such as government spending may have also contributed.

But some are skeptical that the new rule will have much impact.

"Not everyone is going to make the move, so rush hour traffic won't decrease, nor will we see a surge in demand for homes in Abu Dhabi, at least in the short term," said an executive of an Abu Dhabi government-owned entity, who declined to be named.

"We have to be civilized and make exceptions based on the merits of the case," he said.

(This Sept 8 story corrects company name to CBRE in paragraph 7)

(Editing by Carmel Crimmins and Will Waterman)

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Joyous Afghans celebrate football win with dancing, gunfire

1 of 3. Afghan football fans celebrate winning the South Asian Football Federation championship after their team defeated India during the final match, in the streets of Kabul September 12, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Omar Sobhani

By Hamid Shalizi

KABUL | Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:34am EDT

KABUL (Reuters) - President Hamid Karzai embraced Afghanistan's victorious football team on Thursday, hours after they united the nation in a rare moment of shared joy, but officials also told jubilant Afghans to stop firing guns into the air in celebration.

The national men's team beat India 2-0 to win the South Asian Football Federation championship in Kathmandu late on Tuesday, Afghanistan's first international football title, sending tens of thousands of joyous Afghans into the streets.

Fans in cars and on motorbikes joined others on foot, cheering, blowing horns and waving Afghan flags throughout the night. Many danced in the streets of the capital, Kabul, after crowding around television sets in their homes, restaurants and coffee shops to watch the match.

"Now I know what being proud feels like, this is the happiest time in my life," said fan Ahmad Bashir, an Afghan flag draped over his shoulders.

"I have no idea what we will do if we ever win the World Cup," he said.

Most of those out in the streets of the strictly conservative Muslim country were men, although some families in cars joined in the celebrations, many shouting "Zendabad Afghanistan!" (Long Live Afghanistan!).

Afghans have struggled under the weight of three decades of conflict, stretching back through the occupation by former Soviet forces, a civil war, austere rule under the Taliban and then another 12 years of war since the Taliban were toppled.

Such celebrations would have been unimaginable under the Taliban, who banned music and television and forbade women access to education and most public gatherings.

The Taliban also banned most sport, and even used the national football stadium in Kabul for public executions.

"Our youths proved that we have the ability to make progress and win," Karzai said in a statement issued by the presidential palace. Karzai's office tweeted a picture of him watching the match in the palace.

Celebrations continued throughout Thursday, a brief respite for Afghans who fear increased violence as most foreign troops prepare to leave by the end of next year.

The night erupted into gunfire in Kabul and elsewhere across Afghanistan immediately after the match as fans fired AK-47 assault rifles - commonplace in many Afghan households - and even machine-guns into the air in celebration.

Witnesses said many of those firing into the air had been police. The gunfire panicked some residents, who feared an attack by the Taliban, and led to warning sirens being sounded in some foreign embassies.

The Afghan interior ministry and the intelligence agency congratulated the national football team in a statement.

They had to send out a second statement on Thursday urging people to stop the celebratory gunfire because of the risk posed by bullets falling back to earth.

(Editing by Paul Tait)

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Pope Francis to drive his own 'popemobile' inside Vatican City

Pope Francis (R) is presented with a Renault 4 car during a private audience with Don Renzo Zocca at the Vatican in this picture taken September 7, 2013 and released by Osservatore Romano September 10, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Osservatore Romano

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY | Thu Sep 12, 2013 9:15am EDT

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis plans to drive around Vatican City at the wheel of a "popemobile" that is a lot like him: frugal, clad in white, and with a fair bit of mileage.

The 1984 Renault 4 economy car with 300,000 km (186,000 miles) on the clock was given to him by a 70-year-old priest from northern Italy, Father Renzo Zocca, who took the pope for a spin inside the walls of the tiny city-state.

"I think the pope will drive it a bit himself inside the Vatican," the Holy See's deputy spokesman, Father Ciro Benedettini, said on Thursday.

After the pope appealed to priests several months ago not to drive expensive cars but to save money and give it to the poor, Zocca wrote him a letter saying he had used the same car for decades and wanted to give it to the pope as a symbolic gift.

He brought it last weekend, along with some of his parishioners, to the Vatican, where the pope told him he knew how to drive it because he had had a Renault 4 in Argentina.

The pope, 76, then got in and drove it, Zocca told the Italian Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana (Christian Family).

Francis, who, as a cardinal in Buenos Aires, traveled by subway, has shown a predilection for simple means of transport even after his election in March as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years.

On the night of his election, he shunned the bulletproof papal Mercedes limousine and rode in a minibus with the cardinals who had chosen him to lead the Roman Catholic church.

During his trip to Brazil in July he was driven around Rio de Janeiro in a small silver Fiat at his own request, and when he visited a refugee centre in Rome on Tuesday, he used a Ford Focus from the Vatican's car pool.

Francis has shunned the spacious and luxurious papal apartments used by his predecessors and has opted to live in a small suite in a Vatican guesthouse.

And while Francis will likely never need them in Rome, which is hit by serious snow only about once every 25 years, Zocca's snow tires are still in the trunk.

"You never know," he told Famiglia Cristiana.

(Editing by Louise Ireland and Paul Casciato)

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Germans frown on finger gesture by Merkel's election rival

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