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Soccer Stars Sleeping In Altitude Tents To Prep For World Cup

340x altitude tent Soccer Stars Sleeping In Altitude Tents To Prep For World Cup

Outside of the U.S., soccer is taken quite seriously. So seriously, it turns out, that members of England‘s national team will soon sleep in oxygen-deprivation tents to prepare for their high-altitude matches at the upcoming World Cup in South Africa.

The players are subjected to a variety of creepy tests at the team’s Hertfordshire “hotel,” which basically sounds like that facility where Drago trained in Rocky IV. That’s fitting, though, because I’ve always imagined the U.S. national team preparing for the World Cup by getting together at a cabin and heaving some big logs around.

At the facility, England’s players ride exercise bikes with masks that limit the amount of oxygen they can breath. Those who huff and puff a little too hard will have the oxygen-deprivation tents delivered to their homes, so they can gradually acclimatize their bodies to low-oxygen, high-altitude conditions. Matches at this summer’s World Cup will take place at heights of up to 5,000 feet above sea level, and the tents can precisely match that altitude with a hypoxic pump that flushes 100 liters of air through the tent every minute.

Professionally handsome footballer David Beckham slept in an oxygen-regulated tent before the 2002 World Cup to help heal a broken foot (his provided him with more air), and the World Anti-Doping Agency considered whether or not to ban the practice for giving teams an unfair advantage. They didn’t rule against use of the tents, however, and now, somewhere in England, Wayne Rooney is complaining about this being the worst camping trip ever.

The New iPhone 4.0

 The New iPhone 4.0

You are looking at Apple’s next iPhone. It was found lost in a bar in Redwood City, camouflaged to look like an iPhone 3GS. We got it. We disassembled it. It’s the real thing, and here are all the details.

What’s new

• Front-facing video chat camera
• Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS)
• Camera flash
• Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad)
• Improved display. It’s unclear if it’s the 960×640 display thrown around before—it certainly looks like it, with the “Connect to iTunes” screen displaying much higher resolution than on a 3GS.
• What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack
• Split buttons for volume
• Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic

What’s changed

• The back is entirely flat, made of either glass (more likely) or ceramic or shiny plastic in order for the cell signal to poke through. Tapping on the back makes a more hollow and higher pitched sound compared to tapping on the glass on the front/screen, but that could just be the orientation of components inside making for a different sound
• An aluminum border going completely around the outside
• Slightly smaller screen than the 3GS (but seemingly higher resolution)
• Everything is more squared off
• 3 grams heavier
• 16% Larger battery
• Internals components are shrunken, miniaturized and reduced to make room for the larger battery

Find more info at www.gizmodo.com

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