Dog and monkey

ITV News - Flood forms furry friendship

(Scroll down for video)
A monkey and a dog in northern Mozambique have surprised locals by becoming firm friends after flooding in 2002.

Villagers in Caia are not sure how the unlikely pair met, but think they bonded as they fought to survive the raging waters in the area.

The monkey Kiko and dog Billy eat, walk and even sleep together. The sight of the skinny dog emerging from the bush with a tiny monkey on his back is now a common sight in the region.

The two friends now live with a family that runs a bar in Caia. While the pair avoid getting too close to people, they will wander happily around the yard.

Billy isn't the only one looking out for the monkey. He has other siblings who help protect Kiko from hungry neighbouring village dogs, who have tried to turn the little monkey into a breakfast snack.

Otters holding hands

YouTube - Otters holding hands

Vancouver Aquarium: two sea otters float around, napping, holding hands.

Bionic feet

Invention: Bionic feet





Motors that mimic the way human muscles work are revolutionizing the development of prosthetic limbs. Among the leaders in this area is the Biomechatronics Lab at MIT in Cambridge, US.

Researchers from the lab have now patented a bionic foot and ankle that attempts to match the biomechanical behavior of a normal human foot throughout the walking cycle and over a variety of terrain.

The limb consists of an artificial shin and foot connected via a powered, rotating ankle joint. A motor within the ankle varies factors such as the angle of the foot, the stiffness of the joint and the force absorbed and released during each step. This allows the limb to match the performance of a human foot when walking on a flat surface and even when climbing or descending stairs.

The prosthetic feet should feel more natural to a wearer and should also adapt to different terrain, such as a flight of stairs, without requiring extra effort.

Robo-Monkey?

Monkey Controls Robotic Arm With Mind. Beware Of Robot Monkeys.

"The monkey in the video has a chip in its brain that controls a robotic arm. He uses the arm to feed himself a piece of yellow food. Probably a banana."

Another step closer to SkyNet

Robot Gains Self Awareness In Lab

A new robot has been developed at Meiji University in Japan that can tell the difference between its own image in a mirror, and an identical robot mimicking it -- an ability known as "mirror image cognition." This "SELF AWARENESS" is the first created in a robot. The research is being headed by Junichi Takeno, the same guy who built a robot named Kansei designed to exhibit artificial consciousness.

A new beginning

Since I haven't posted to this blog in over a year, I am altering the way I publish. It's always been a link dump but I was adding my own thoughts to each article. Now I will just be dumping links and articles without commenting on them. (Except for the times when I do.)

Go.

Los Angeles Times: Science Quickens Its Steps

Los Angeles Times: Science Quickens Its Steps

Unlike the dead-weighted and immutable arms, feet and knees offered to veterans of the Vietnam War, the best prosthetic knees currently available rely on artificial intelligence to anticipate the user's movements. One knee, expected to become available in a few months, will even mimic lost muscle activity by powering ankle and leg amputees up stairs, or up from a sitting position.

But that's just the beginning. Advances in robotics, electronics and tissue engineering ultimately could create ways to lengthen damaged limbs, grow new cartilage, skin and bone, and permanently affix a prosthesis to the body. Some researchers are even designing a so-called biohybrid limb — a prosthesis that can be controlled by the user's thoughts.

The biohybrid limb is designed to reduce the amount of effort needed to move the limb and thus limit falls, increase feelings of security and improve self-image. The user of such a leg could spring from the sofa to catch a baby who is about to tumble from a highchair.

In short, researchers predict, it would be as good as a natural human limb

"A decade or two ago we imagined a neural interface, but it was science fiction," said Hugh Herr, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who lost his feet at age 17 to frostbite during mountain climbing. "But now these things are pretty close to being realized in the laboratory."

Even worse than the Phantom Menace!

starwarsholidayspecial.com is "everything you always wanted (or didn't want) to know about" the Star Wars Holiday Special.

Happy Life Day!

Senate says "Ethics, Schmethics"

You gotta be fucking kidding me.

Congress Ethics Office Rejected

A Senate panel says monitoring by an independent outside agency is unnecessary.

A key Senate committee Thursday rejected a proposal to create a new agency to oversee congressional ethics, dealing a major blow to efforts to give outsiders at least some authority to police lawmakers' conduct.

The plan to set up an independent Office of Public Integrity was derailed by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — despite its sponsorship by the panel's chairwoman, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, and the ranking Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

The measure's 11-5 defeat underscored the growing resistance on Capitol Hill to overhauls advocated by government watchdog groups and some lawmakers after recent political scandals. Rather than significantly rewrite their rules for conduct, most members of Congress appear to favor more extensive reporting requirements — mostly for lobbyists.

The defeat of the ethics office proposal sparked sharp criticism.

"We are really disappointed," said Mary Boyle, spokeswoman for the citizens' lobbying group Common Cause. "For Congress to produce any kind of credible reform, they need an enforcement mechanism."

The proposal called for an office, independent of the existing House and Senate ethics committees, that could initiate investigations of lawmakers. The office staff was to have been led by a director hired by congressional leaders; its findings would have been turned over to the congressional ethics panels, whose members would then have decided on any penalties.

In Thursday's debate, several senators balked at ceding even limited oversight to an outside agency.

"There is no need to reinvent the wheel," said Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), who led opposition to the proposal. "The Office of Public Integrity is a solution in search of a problem."

Voinovich is chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, as well as a member of the domestic security panel.

Congress Ethics Office Rejected

You gotta be fucking kidding me. From the Los Angeles Times

A Senate panel says monitoring by an independent outside agency is unnecessary.

A key Senate committee Thursday rejected a proposal to create a new agency to oversee congressional ethics, dealing a major blow to efforts to give outsiders at least some authority to police lawmakers' conduct.

The plan to set up an independent Office of Public Integrity was derailed by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — despite its sponsorship by the panel's chairwoman, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, and the ranking Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

The measure's 11-5 defeat underscored the growing resistance on Capitol Hill to overhauls advocated by government watchdog groups and some lawmakers after recent political scandals. Rather than significantly rewrite their rules for conduct, most members of Congress appear to favor more extensive reporting requirements — mostly for lobbyists.

The defeat of the ethics office proposal sparked sharp criticism.

"We are really disappointed," said Mary Boyle, spokeswoman for the citizens' lobbying group Common Cause. "For Congress to produce any kind of credible reform, they need an enforcement mechanism."

The proposal called for an office, independent of the existing House and Senate ethics committees, that could initiate investigations of lawmakers. The office staff was to have been led by a director hired by congressional leaders; its findings would have been turned over to the congressional ethics panels, whose members would then have decided on any penalties.

In Thursday's debate, several senators balked at ceding even limited oversight to an outside agency.

"There is no need to reinvent the wheel," said Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), who led opposition to the proposal. "The Office of Public Integrity is a solution in search of a problem."

Voinovich is chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, as well as a member of the domestic security panel.

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Legal Affairs (The Ayes of Texas)

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Legal Affairs (The Ayes of Texas)

Representative Tim Moore sponsored a resolution in the Texas House of Representatives in Austin, Texas calling on the House to commend Albert de Salvo for his unselfish service to "his country, his state and his community." The resolution stated that "this compassionate gentleman's dedication and devotion to his work has enabled the weak and the lonely throughout the nation to achieve and maintain a new degree of concern for their future. He has been officially recognized by the state of Massachusetts for his noted activities and unconventional techniques involving population control and applied psychology." The resolution was passed unanimously. Representative Moore then revealed that he had only tabled the motion to show how the legislature passes bills and resolutions often without reading them or understanding what they say. Albert de Salvo was the Boston Strangler.
...
The resolution read, in part:
This compassionate gentleman's dedication and devotion to his work has enabled the weak and the lonely throughout the nation to achieve and maintain a new degree of concern for their future. He has been officially recognized by the state of Massachusetts for his noted activities and unconventional techniques involving population control and applied psychology.

The joke, of course, was that Albert de Salvo was more commonly known as the Boston Strangler, assumed to be responsible for the murders of thirteen women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964. (Technically, de Salvo was never convicted or put on trial for any of those killings — he was sentenced to life in prison for sexual assaults on several other women and confessed to the thirteen murders as well. He was stabbed to death in prison in 1973, and whether he actually committed the murders he confessed to has been a subject of controversy ever since.) As he expected, Rep. Moore saw his resolution passed unanimously; he then withdrew it and explained that he had only offered the motion to demonstrate a point. (A bit of sardonic humor offered at the time claimed that perhaps Moore was wrong: maybe the legislators had been paying
attention.)

Defense Tech: Army Wants Synthetic Gills

Defense Tech: Army Wants Synthetic Gills

The Army recently handed Case Western Reserve University and Waltham, MA’s Infoscitex Corp. a joint contract to start investigating a “Microfabricated Biomimetic Artificial Gill System… based on the subdividing regions of clef, filament, and lamellae found in natural fish gills.” In the first phase of the program, “gas exchange units will be designed and demonstrated for rapid, efficient extract of oxygen from surrounding water.”

“An advanced breathing apparatus that mimics the efficiency, simplicity, and durability of the gill-swim bladder found in fish could greatly improve human maneuverability and sustainability in both aquatic and high altitude settings,” the contract announcement reminds us. Sure could.

Weekly World News' parallel universe

PARALLEL UNIVERSE DISCOVERED
. . . Where Bill Clinton Is A Celibate Priest!

"I've created a device I call the Multi-Dimensional Revealer (MDR). Using a combination of sound and light at high frequencies, directed through a prism at certain intervals, I can open a small hole into the dimension that sits right beside our own on the universal roulette wheel."

We asked Dr. Ternet for a demonstration.

"You will be forced to change preconceived ideas about people and events," he warned.

We watched, astounded, as Dr. Ternet carefully chose latitudes and longitudes on the neighboring Earth -- called Earth B -- and showed us shocking sights:

•Bill Clinton was a celibate priest.
•George Bush was a college professor.
•A balding Donald Trump worked as a cashier in a pet shop.
•Paris Hilton ran a soup kitchen in the Third World.
•Britney Spears was a singer.

Among some of the political and cultural differences we saw on Earth B:
•The new Star Wars movie was good.
•Marijuana was legal but coffee was not.
•Iraq was our 51st state.
•Mexico possessed weapons of mass destruction.
•Weekly World News was on every library shelf and quoted on evening news programs.

Blasephemy!

The Flying Spaghetti Monster will be pissed!

Still Evolving, Human Genes Tell New Story - New York Times

Providing the strongest evidence yet that humans are still evolving, researchers have detected some 700 regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection, a principal force of evolution, within the last 5,000 to 15,000 years.

The genes that show this evolutionary change include some responsible for the senses of taste and smell, digestion, bone structure, skin color and brain function.

Many of these instances of selection may reflect the pressures that came to bear as people abandoned their hunting and gathering way of life for settlement and agriculture, a transition well under way in Europe and East Asia some 5,000 years ago.

Under natural selection, beneficial genes become more common in a population as their owners have more progeny.

Three populations were studied, Africans, East Asians and Europeans. In each, a mostly different set of genes had been favored by natural selection. The selected genes, which affect skin color, hair texture and bone structure, may underlie the present-day differences in racial appearance.

Flying cars are almost here!

MIT STUDENT WINS PRESTIGIOUS AWARD
FOR FLYING CAR AND OTHER INNOVATIONS

Carl Dietrich sees life’s irritations not as realities to tolerate, but as sources of inspiration. The 28-year-old winner of this year’s $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize has recently found inspiration in America’s congested highways and major airports.

The Ph.D. candidate in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Aeronautics and Astronautics program received the prestigious award for a portfolio of novel inventions, including a new Personal Air Vehicle; a desktop-sized fusion reactor; and a lower-cost rocket engine.
...
Dietrich’s most recent invention is a Personal Air Vehicle concept he calls Transition. It is a flying car that relies on the nation’s thousands of underutilized public-access airports to provide a practical transportation alternative to travelers whose trips range between 100 and 500 miles.

“If you were taking a trip between 100 and 500 miles right now, chances are you’d probably drive unless you were going between two airport hubs,” Dietrich said. “Driving is fine, but it can take you half a day to reach your destination, and you are subject to unpredictable traffic. Commercial airlines are effective for trips over 500 miles, but…they don’t really attack the short-hop market very well. Personal Air Vehicles open up a lot of possibilities in freedom to get around. They offer convenience and flexibility to fit the traveler’s schedule.”

Dietrich’s Transition can be driven on any surface road and requires only a sport pilot’s license to fly. The SUV-sized vehicle can be stored in most home garages and has folding wings that enable it to operate both on the ground and in the air. It can carry two people with their bags up to 500 miles on a single tank of premium unleaded gasoline.

The Transition also offers modern safety features including an electronic center of gravity calculator (important for weight distribution in flying mode), GPS navigation unit, front and rear crumple zones, airbags, and patent-pending deformable aerodynamic bumpers. Since the driver’s visibility is impaired when the wings are folded up, a tiny camera system embedded in the vertical tails provides direct views of blind spots.

Televangelist Robertson Ousted from Religious Group

Televangelist Robertson Ousted from Religious Group

Pat Robertson, arguably the nation's foremost televangelist, has been dumped from the board of directors of the National Religious Broadcasters Assn. In a surprise vote -- the organization once named him Christian Broadcaster of the Year -- Robertson failed to receive enough votes for re-election to the board. In an interview with the Washington Post, NRB President Frank Wright said that "there was broad dismay with some of Pat's comments and a feeling they were not helpful to Christian broadcasters in general." In January, Robertson said on his 700 Club broadcast, which airs on the ABC Family Channel, that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was an act of God meted out to punish him for advocating a pull-out from the Gaza Strip. Last August, he called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Robertson's daily audience for the 700 Club averages 800,000.

sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads

Not quite...

Defense Tech: Sharks = Spies?

The U.S. military already trains dolphins to hunt for mines. But why draft Flipper, when you can get Jaws, instead?

That's the thinking, I guess, behind the Pentagon's decision to fund research into brain implants that could one day lead to sharks becoming "'stealth spies,' capable of gliding undetected through the ocean."

At first, the implants are being used to "steer" spiny dogfish, New Scientist notes.

As the dogfish swims about, the researchers beam a radio signal from a laptop to an antenna attached to the fish... Electrodes [inside the fish's head] then stimulate either the right or left of the olfactory centre, the area of the brain dedicated to smell. The fish flicks round to the corresponding side in response to the signal, as if it has caught a whiff of an interesting smell: the stronger the signal, the more sharply it turns.

Boston University biologist Jelle Atema plans to use the implants to study how sharks track chemical trails. We know that sharks have an extremely acute sense of smell, but exactly how the animals deploy that sense in the wild has so far been a matter of conjecture. Neural implants could change all that.

U.S. Is Reducing Safety Penalties for Mine Flaws - New York Times

U.S. Is Reducing Safety Penalties for Mine Flaws - New York Times

In its drive to foster a more cooperative relationship with mining companies, the Bush administration has decreased major fines for safety violations since 2001, and in nearly half the cases, it has not collected the fines, according to a data analysis by The New York Times.

Federal records also show that in the last two years the federal mine safety agency has failed to hand over any delinquent cases to the Treasury Department for further collection efforts, as is supposed to occur after 180 days.

With the deaths of 24 miners in accidents in 2006, the enforcement record of the Mine Safety and Health Administration has come under sharp scrutiny, and the agency is likely to face tough questions about its performance at a Senate oversight hearing on Thursday.

"The Bush administration ushered in this desire to develop cooperative ties between regulators and the mining industry," said Tony Oppegard, a top official at the agency in the Clinton administration. "Safety has certainly suffered as a result."
...
"Most fines are so small that they are seen not as deterrents but as the cost of doing business," said Wes Addington, a lawyer with the Appalachian Citizens Law Center in Prestonsburg, Ky., which handles mine safety cases. Using federal records, Mr. Addington released a study in January indicating that since 1995 nearly a third of the active underground mines in Kentucky had failed to pay their fines.

"Operators know that it's cheaper to pay the fine than to fix the problem," Mr. Addington said. "But they also know the cheapest of all routes is to not pay at all. It's pretty galling."

Larry Williams, who now lives in Craigsville, 50 miles east of Charleston, knows this frustration well. In 2002, he was working with a fellow miner, Gary Martin, in a deep mine near Rupert, 25 miles south of here, when the roof collapsed on them. Mr. Martin died instantly, and Mr. Williams was trapped for more than four hours under several thousand pounds of rock that crushed his pelvis and both legs.
...
In this case, federal investigators found that the regulations were not followed. The operators were fined $165,000. Those fines have not been paid, even though the mine owner, Midland Trail Resources, which did not reply to requests for comment, remains in business, according to state records.

"It makes me mad," said Mr. Williams, 50, who is paralyzed through much of his right side. "One dead and another man's life ruined, and they pay nothing? It just doesn't make sense."

Bush Policies Are Weakening National Guard, Governors Say - New York Times

Bush Policies Are Weakening National Guard, Governors Say - New York Times

Governors of both parties said Sunday that Bush administration policies were stripping the National Guard of equipment and personnel needed to respond to hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, forest fires and other emergencies.

Tens of thousands of National Guard members have been sent to Iraq, along with much of the equipment needed to deal with natural disasters and terrorist threats in the United States, the governors said here at the winter meeting of the National Governors Association.

The National Guard, which traces its roots to the colonial militia, has a dual federal-state role. Governors normally command the Guard in their states, but Guard members deployed overseas in support of a federal mission are under the control of the president.

The governors said they would present their concerns to President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Monday. In a preview of their message, all 50 governors signed a letter to the president opposing any cuts in the size of the National Guard.

"Unfortunately," the letter said, "when our National Guard men and women return from being deployed in foreign theaters, much of their equipment remains behind." The governors said the White House must immediately re-equip Guard units "to carry out their homeland security and domestic disaster duties."

Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, a Republican and chairman of the governors association, said: "The National Guard plays an incredibly valuable role in the states. What we are concerned about, as governors, is that when our troops are deployed for long periods of time, and their equipment goes with them but does not come back, the troops are very strained, and they no longer have the equipment they were trained to use."

Nearly one-third of the American ground forces in Iraq are members of the Army National Guard.
...
Since 2003, the report said, the Army National Guard has left more than 64,000 pieces of equipment, valued at more than $1.2 billion, in Iraq. The Army has not kept track of most of this equipment and has no firm plans to replace it, the report said.
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"The Army cannot account for over half the equipment that Army National Guard units have left overseas," Mr. Walker said. "And it has not developed replacement plans for the equipment, as Defense Department policy requires."

New Scientist It's better to green your diet than your car - News

New Scientist It's better to green your diet than your car - News

THINKING of helping the planet by buying an eco-friendly car? You could do more by going vegan, say Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin of the University of Chicago.

They compared the amount of fossil fuel needed to cultivate and process various foods, including running agricultural machinery, providing food for livestock and irrigating crops. They also factored in emissions of methane and nitrous oxide produced by cows, sheep and manure treatment.

The typical US diet, about 28 per cent of which comes from animal sources, generates the equivalent of nearly 1.5 tonnes more carbon dioxide per person per year than a vegan diet with the same number of calories, say the researchers, who presented their results at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco last week.

By comparison, the difference in annual emissions between driving a typical saloon car and a hybrid car, which runs off a rechargeable battery and gasoline, is just over 1 tonne. If you don't want to go vegan, choosing less-processed animal products and poultry instead of red meat can help reduce the greenhouse load.