Mind-reading car could drive you round the bend
“One of the world’s largest motor manufacturers is working with scientists based in Switzerland to design a car that can read its driver’s mind and predict his or her next move.
The collaboration, between Nissan and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), is intended to balance the necessities of road safety with demands for personal transport.
Scientists at the EPFL have already developed brain-machine interface (BMI) systems that allow wheelchair users to manoeuvre their chairs by thought transference. Their next step will be finding a way to incorporate that technology into the way motorists interact with their cars.
If the endeavour proves successful, the vehicles of the future may be able to prepare themselves for a left or right turn – choosing the correct speed and positioning – by gauging that their drivers are thinking about making such a turn.
However, although BMI technology is well established, the levels of human concentration needed to make it work are extremely high, so the research team is working on systems that will use statistical analysis to predict a driver’s next move and to “evaluate a driver’s cognitive state relevant to the driving environment”.
By measuring brain activity, monitoring patterns of eye movement and scanning the environment around the car, the team thinks the car will be able to predict what a driver is planning to do and help him or her complete the manoeuvre safely.”
Read more at The Guardian (Thanks Laurence)
Turn orange peel into plastic? It’s not as crazy as it sounds
“British scientists are pioneering a novel way of recycling that turns orange peel into plastic.
The technique relies on high-powered microwaves that can degrade the tough cellulose molecules of plant matter so that they release volatile gases that can be collected and distilled into a liquid product.
These valuable biodegradable chemicals can then be used in water purifiers, cleaning agents and plastics. Researchers behind the process say it is 90 per cent efficient and works not just on orange peel but almost any plant-based waste such as straw or coffee grounds.
James Clark, professor of green chemistry at the University of York, said he is building a small demonstrator facility to show the novel recycling scheme can be scaled up in order to suit industrial applications.
“It will be able to cope with tens of kilograms an hour. We believe it is the right scale to prove to people that this is a viable technology,” Professor Clark said.
“You dice the peel and put it into a microwave field. You then focus the microwaves as you would with a domestic microwave oven but at higher power,” he said.
“The microwaves activate the cellulose and that triggers the release of chemicals or further chemical reactions inside the orange peel,” he told the British Science Festival at Bradford University.
Volatile chemicals are released in the process, including d-limonene, which is responsible for the distinctive smell of citrus fruit and is used in cosmetics, the cleaning industry and as a biological insecticide.
“As you produce the volatiles you strip them off continuously. It’s a continuous process. You feed the peel into a microwave zone and have a pipe that takes off the volatile fractions as they are produced,” he said
“The unique feature of our microwave is that we work at deliberately low temperatures. We never go above 200C. You can take the limonene off or you can turn limonene into other chemicals,” he said. “It works really well with waste paper. It can take a big range of bio-waste material.”"
Read more at The Independent
Hipnotizados!
Forty-one Colombian high school students experienced mass-panic and had to be taken to hospital following a hypnotism show at the culmination of their annual ‘Fun Day’.
Out of an amassed (paying) audience of 590 students, eight were put into a trance by Miller Zambrano Posada who then made them lift their arms, walk in circles, cry like babies, laugh hysterically, bark like dogs and act like chickens (were it not for the setting, one could be forgiven for thinking that they were behaving like a very normal group of teenagers during breaktime).
The performance was concluded to a round of unforced applause, but as the eight students made their way back to their seats the proceedings appeared to go a bit “Pete Tong”.
Some children in the audience began crying while others dived to the ground for no reason Others beat their chests with the palms of their hands and one female student screamed that she could see ‘the devil’
A total of forty one students experienced what has been described as a mass panic, only one of whom had been an on-stage participant in the hypnotism routine.
Whilst the children were escorted to the hospital, Miller Zambrano Posada was escorted off the premises in police custody facing charges of witchcraft from the parents and teachers.
Source: Hispanically Speaking News
Protect Your Family Jewels
According to Mid-Day, a popular news service in Mumbai, a gang of thieving eunuchs are hypnotising unwitting housewives and relieving them of their valuables:
Asha Dilip Pandit, 55, was chatting with her daughter Shivali, 26, a teacher, when two eunuchs entered their home. Shivali gave them Rs 5 but the eunuchs refused to leave, while one of them asked for a glass of water. While Shivali was getting them water the other eunuch asked for tea.
One of the eunuchs followed Shivali into the kitchen. The other sat at the entrance of the house and told Asha that according to Vaastu Shastra, her entrance was in the wrong direction. This, she was told, was the main cause of suffering in the family.
The eunuch then asked for an empty glass, water and salt. They asked Asha and Shivali to watch the glass, and hypnotised them. They stole Asha’s mangalsutra and gold chain, Shivali’s gold ring and her father’s ring
“The eunuch entered my house at 10.45 am. We regained consciousness at 12.30 pm. We don’t remember anything that happened in between,” said Asha. They later managed to piece together the story after one of their neighbour’s told them that a eunuch was seen standing outside the house.On realising they were looted, the family registered an FIR at LT Marg police station. The incident apparently is a common one in the area.
“We have carried out several raids to trace the gang of eunuchs who are hypnotising people before looting them. We have carried out searches at Kamathipura, Tardeo, Mahim, Bandra, Colaba and Bhandup areas,” said a police officer.
We would like to remind our readers to guard their own valuables with renewed vigilance and to steer well clear of anybody making non-sequiterial requests for liquids and salts anywhere within their vicinity.
Source: Mid-Day
South Korean Scientists Create Glowing Dog – pics
On Wednesday, Scientists from Seoul National University in South Korea announced that they have created a glowing dog while utilising a cloning technique designed to find cures for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Pictured is the team’s genetically modified female beagle, Tegon, which was born in 2009 and was found to glow in a fluorescent green colour while under ultraviolet light.After two years of testing, the research team has found that the glowing ability is triggered by a doxycycline antibiotic and can be turned on or off by adding or removing certain drugs to the dog’s food.
“The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases,” explained lead researcher Lee Byeong-chun. He went on to state that humans and dogs have 268 common diseases, and that creating dogs with artificial symptoms could help in the treatment of these deadly diseases that affect humans.
Full story and pics at Toms Guide
Man with roughly 50-75% of his brain missing works as civil servant, lives normal life
A man with an unusually tiny brain manages to live an entirely normal life despite his condition, which was caused by a fluid build-up in his skull.
Scans of the 44-year-old man’s brain showed that a huge fluid-filled chamber called a ventricle took up most of the room in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue (see image, right).
“It is hard for me [to say] exactly the percentage of reduction of the brain, since we did not use software to measure its volume. But visually, it is more than a 50% to 75% reduction,” says Lionel Feuillet, a neurologist at the Mediterranean University in Marseille, France.
Feuillet and his colleagues describe the case of this patient in The Lancet. He is a married father of two children, and works as a civil servant.
The man went to a hospital after he had mild weakness in his left leg. When Feuillet’s staff took his medical history, they learned that, as an infant, he had had a shunt inserted into his head to drain away hydrocephalus – water on the brain.
The shunt was removed when he was 14. But the researchers decided to check the condition of his brain using computed tomography (CT) scanning technology and another type of scan called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). They were astonished to see “massive enlargement” of the lateral ventricles – usually tiny chambers that hold the cerebrospinal fluid that cushions the brain.
Intelligence tests showed the man had an IQ of 75, below the average score of 100 but not considered mentally retarded or disabled.
“The whole brain was reduced – frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes – on both left and right sides. These regions control motion, sensibility, language, vision, audition, and emotional and cognitive functions,” Feuillet told New Scientist.
The mystery of the monumental post-apocolypse stones
The strangest monument in America looms over a barren knoll in northeastern Georgia. Five massive slabs of polished granite rise out of the earth in a star pattern. The rocks are each 16 feet tall, with four of them weighing more than 20 tons apiece. Together they support a 25,000-pound capstone.
Nobody knows exactly who commissioned it or why. The only clues to its origin are on a nearby plaque on the ground—which gives the dimensions and explains a series of intricate notches and holes that correspond to the movements of the sun and stars—and the “guides”, written in many different languages on each side, instruct a future society on how to conduct itself.
The story of the stones is just as strange as the monument itself. It’s since been covered in mystery and controversy. Books have been written, TV and press have swarmed to it and conspiracy theorists have pulled a mass of ideas for it’s use, from UFO landing sites to satanic cults ready to take over the world.
Wired magazine’s fascinating article writes:
The astrological specifications for the Guidestones were so complex that Fendley had to retain the services of an astronomer from the University of Georgia to help implement the design. The four outer stones were to be oriented based on the limits of the sun’s yearly migration. The center column needed two precisely calibrated features: a hole through which the North Star would be visible at all times, and a slot that was to align with the position of the rising sun during the solstices and equinoxes. The principal component of the capstone was a 7\8-inch aperture through which a beam of sunlight would pass at noon each day, shining on the center stone to indicate the day of the year.
The main feature of the monument, though, would be the 10 dictates carved into both faces of the outer stones, in eight languages: English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, and Swahili. A mission statement of sorts (LET THESE BE GUIDESTONES TO AN AGE OF REASON) was also to be engraved on the sides of the capstone in Egyptian hieroglyphics, classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Babylonian cuneiform. The United Nations provided some of the translations (including those for the dead languages), which were stenciled onto the stones and etched with a sandblaster.
Read the full article at Weird Wired
Great white shark leaps on board research boat
According to the Cape Times, six researchers from South Africa are reflecting on what they describe as the fright of their lives after their own close encounter with a great white shark.
The research team from Oceans Research was working off Seal Island, near Mossel Bay, on South Africa’s Cape coast, when the nearly 10-foot-long creature reportedly made its move.
Team leader Dorien Schroder told the newspaper that following more than an hour of shark activity around their boat, the Cheetah, the waters at the stern fell quiet.
“Next thing, I hear a splash and see a great white breach out of the water from one side of the boat hovering, literally, over a crew member chumming on the port side,” she reportedly said.
According to Schroder, the shark landed with half its body in the boat, but in a panic, thrashed its way further onto the vessel, cutting fuel lines and damaging equipment.
As the team scampered toward a safer portion of the boat, the shark reportedly became stuck.
Full Story at MSNBC
Wild boar with bullet proof skulls invade New York, killing pets and chasing people
(Reuters) – Wild boar are invading the farms of central New York state, attacking livestock, killing family pets, chasing people and posing “devastating consequences” for the area, federal officials warn.
The feral swine are a non-native species suspected of escaping from game farms, and as many as a couple of hundred are roaming the state, said Paul Curtis, a natural resources professor at Cornell University.
While an exact picture of the wild boar population in New York State is unclear, a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture said the swine were successfully breeding in the three counties and producing litters averaging 4 to 6 piglets.
“We’ve shot probably 15 to 20 of them in the last three years,” said Peter Andersen, a third generation farmer in Long Eddy in Sullivan County.
Noting how difficult it is to kill the wild boar, Andersen described what sounded like a scene from a horror movie that could be called “Robo-Swine.”
“We’ve shot them right square in the head and the bullet will glance off and they’ll get up and go. Their skulls are so thick in the front, if you don’t happen to hit it at a perfect 90 degrees, with the way their heads have that kind of curved shape, the bullet will glance right off,” he said.
Full article at Reuters
Apple holding more cash than USA
Apple now has more cash to spend than the United States government.
Latest figures from the US Treasury Department show that the country has an operating cash balance of $73.7bn (£45.3bn).
Apple’s most recent financial results put its reserves at $76.4bn.
The US House of Representatives is due to vote on a bill to raise the country’s debt ceiling, allowing it to borrow more money to cover spending commitments.
If it fails to extend the current limit of $14.3 trillion dollars, the federal government could find itself struggling to make payments, and risks the loss of its AAA credit rating.
The United States is currently spending around $200bn more than it collects in revenue every month.
Apple, on the other hand, is making money hand over fist, according to its financial results.
In the three months ending 25 June, net income was 125% higher than a year earlier at $7.31bn.
Full Story at BBC
