Yves Rossy The Swiss Jet Man-ENGLISH TEXT under ‘More info’

This one is from 2006

from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

‘Fusion Man,’ flies with a jet-powered single wing

Years ago, aviation enthusiast and inventor Yves Rossy dreamed of soaring through the sky like a bird.

In 2006 that dream took flight.

Known as Switzerland’s “Fusion Man,” Rossy in November 2006 became the first man in the world to fly with wings and four jet engines strapped to his body; on Wednesday he displayed that talent to the world.

YES!

The inaugural flight lasted six minutes in Bex, Switzerland, and included an emergency parachute programmed to automatically open if he were to black out, NBC11 reported at the time.

“The idea is to have fun, not to kill yourself,” Rossy said in the story.

In Internet videos, Rossy wears a white helmet with the words “Jet-Man” on the front, dives out of a plane, fires up his wings and propels through the atmosphere, leaving a trail of special-effects white smoke in his wake.

May 14, 2008: Yves Rossy, known as the ‘Fusion Man,’ thumbs up flying with a jet-powered single wing over the Alps in Bex, Switzerland.

World’s smallest helicopter to fly in da Vinci birthplace

The world’s smallest one-man helicopter will soon take flight in the birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci, who is credited with having first thought of a vertical-flight machine, its developer said.

The 75-kilogram (165-pound) helicopter will make a demonstration flight in the city of Vinci, near Florence, on May 25, according to Japanese developer Gennai Yanagisawa, 75.

“Since the concept of our helicopter came from Italy, I always wanted to take a flight in the birthplace of da Vinci,” Yanagisawa said.

“I feel like I’m greeting an ancestor. I hope da Vinci would be pleased,” Yanagisawa told AFP.

Yanagisawa said he went to Vinci in February and received the blessing of Mayor Dario Parrini.

The helicopter, named GEN H-4, has a set of two rotors turning in opposite directions and can fly at a maximum speed of 50 kilometres (31 miles) per hour.

Guinness World Records in February recognised it as the world’s smallest helicopter that can carry a person.

Renaissance genius da Vinci was born in Vinci in 1452 and spent the first several years of his life there.

His sketch, dated in 1493 and discovered in the 19th century, shows a vertical flight machine. As in the drawing, the GEN H-4 has no tail.

Yanagisawa runs a company in Matsumoto, north of Tokyo, selling the helicopter. He has sold five units in Japan and two to US customers.

The current model is priced at six million yen (58,250 dollars). - yahoo

Seriously cool.

Genetically modified human embryo stirs criticism

News that scientists have for the first time genetically altered a human embryo is drawing fire from some watchdog groups that say it’s a step toward creating “designer babies.”

But an author of the study says the work was focused on stem cells. He notes that the researchers used an abnormal embryo that could never have developed into a baby anyway.

“None of us wants to make designer babies,” said Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

The idea of designer babies is that someday, scientists may insert particular genes into embryos to produce babies with desired traits like intelligence or athletic ability. Some people find that notion repugnant, saying it turns children into designed objects, and would create an unequal society where some people are genetically enriched while others would be considered inferior.

The study appears to be the first report of genetically modifying a human embryo. It was presented last fall at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, but didn’t draw widespread public attention then. The result was reported over the weekend by The Sunday Times of London, which said British authorities highlighted the work in a recent report.

Rosenwaks and colleagues did the work with an embryo that had extra chromosomes, making it nonviable. Following a standard procedure used in animals, they inserted a gene that acts as a marker that can be easily followed over time. The embryo cells took up the gene, he said.

The goal was to see if a gene introduced into an abnormal embryo could be traced in stem cells that are harvested from the embryo, he said. Such work could help shed light on why abnormal embryos fail to develop, he said.

No stem cells were recovered from the human embryo, said Rosenwaks, noting that abnormal embryos frequently don’t develop well enough to produce them.

Marcy Darnovsky, associate executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, said the Cornell scientists were developing techniques that others might use to make genetically modified people, “and they’re doing it without any kind of public debate.”

A London-based group called Human Genetics Alert similarly criticized the work.

But Kathy Hudson, director of the Genetics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., said she’s not troubled by the work. She said the idea of successfully modifying babies by inserting genes remains a technically daunting challenge.

“We’re not even close to having that technology in hand to be able to do it right,” she said, and it would be ethically unacceptable to try it when it’s unsafe. - yahoo

The government has been doing these experiments underground secretly for years. Ethics means nothing when something can be labeled as important to national security. One plan is to get some really alien looking mutants so they can use a faked alien invasion to take over the world. Well, it was going to be faked, but the “aliens” they are making are real. Some think the research has taken on a life of its own. Branton probably knows the real story.

Divers find Caesar bust that may date to 46 B.C.

Divers trained in archaeology discovered a marble bust of an aging Caesar in the Rhone River that France’s Culture Ministry said Tuesday could be the oldest known.

The life-sized bust showing the Roman ruler with wrinkles and hollows in his face is tentatively dated to 46 B.C. Divers uncovered the Caesar bust and a collection of other finds in the Rhone near the town of Arles — founded by Caesar.

Among other items in the treasure trove of ancient objects is a 5.9 foot marble statue of Neptune, dated to the first decade of the third century after Christ.

Two smaller statues, both in bronze and measuring 27.5 inches each also were found, one of them, a satyr with his hands tied behind his back, “doubtless” originated in Hellenic Greece, the ministry said.

“Some (of the discoveries) are unique in Europe,” Culture Minister Christine Albanel said. The bust of Caesar is in a class by itself.

“This marble bust of the founder of the Roman city of Arles constitutes the most ancient representation known today of Caesar,” the ministry statement said, adding that it “undoubtedly” dates to the creation of Arles in 46 B.C.

Among other things, researchers are trying to uncover “in what context these statues were thrown into the river,” said Michel L’Hour, who heads the Department of Subaquatic Archaeological Research, whose divers made the discovery between September and October 2007.

The site “has barely been skimmed,” L’Hour told The Associated Press, adding that a new search operation will begin this summer.

He said the Arles region, in the Provence region of southern France, with its Roman beginnings, and the Rhone are “propitious” for discoveries. Albanel called the find “exceptional” and said that the Caesar bust is “the oldest representation known today” of the emperor.

Divers also found a huge marble statue of Neptune, dated from the third century. - yahoo

I’m seriously thinking about doing this just for the weirdness of having done it. How much would it cost to have a life-sized bust made of myself in white marble? I could put it on my piano. Statues.com was closed when I was writing this, but I left a message to ask for their price. Actually I’ve always wanted to have a house with white marble statues of Greek goddesses, or perhaps women I’ve dated. Hahah.

Update: This place will do it for $1200 if you send them photos of your head. Not sure if it’s life-sized or if the price includes shipping. Takes 4 to 6 months and you get to approve a clay model before they start carving in marble.

Then my plan is to have them hide a memory chip in the middle of my marble head with this entire web site, every picture I’ve taken, my music, etc.
By the way, someone should scan inside that Caesar bust… just in case.

Shrimp can see beyond the rainbow

A giant shrimp living on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef can see a world beyond the rainbow that is invisible to other animals, scientists said on Wednesday.

Mantis shrimps, dubbed “thumb splitters” by divers because of their vicious claws, have the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom, capable of seeing colours from the ultraviolet to the infrared, as well as detecting other subtle variations in light.

They view the world in up to 12 primary colours — four times as many as humans — and can measure six different kinds of light polarisation, Swiss and Australian researchers reported.

Polarisation is the direction of oscillation in light waves.

Just why Gonodactylus smithii needs this level of rarefied vision is unclear, although the researchers suspect it is to do with food and sex.

“Some of the animals they like to eat are transparent and quite hard to see in sea-water, except they’re packed full of polarising sugars. I suspect they light up like Christmas trees as far as these shrimp are concerned,” said Andrew White of the University of Queensland.

And the shrimps probably use tiny changes in colour and polarisation to send sexual signals between males and females, the researchers believe.

Their findings were published online in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE, at http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.0002190 - yahoo

I’d like to try some goggles that would allow me to see what these shrimp can see… but that’s not possible is it… I’d need new eyes and some new brain structures to really do it right. Biological hacking is not that advanced yet, but in 100 years, who knows. Kids might download the genetic code for this shrimp and modify their own code with it as a weekend project.

Sloth’s lazy image ‘a myth’

The sloth’s popular image as a lazy creature that sleeps for most of the day has been called into question.

Rather than snoozing for more than 16 hours a day, as observed in captivity, sloths in the wild doze for less than 10 hours, research suggests.

Scientists caught sloths living in the rainforest of Panama and fitted them with a device that monitors sleep.

The findings, published in a Royal Society journal, may help shed light on human sleep disorders, they say.

Lead researcher Niels Rattenborg, of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Starnberg, Germany, said the study demonstrated for the first time that it was possible to record sleep in a wild animal. -bbc

China, U.S. Space Junk: Lingering leftovers

There are still bits and pieces of debris zipping through space from that USA 193 intercept back in February of this year, as well as China’s anti-satellite test back in January 2007.

According to space debris expert, T.S. Kelso and his CelesTrak satellite tracking software, some 15 pieces of the busted up USA 193 spysat are still flittering around up there. When the successful intercept was reported, estimates were that all pieces would reenter within 40 days.

A recent analysis shows the last piece of clutter will decay about 100 days post-intercept, Kelso told me.

To generate accurate whereabouts of Earth orbiting debris, experts use data in the form of what’s tagged as Two-Line Elements, or TLEs.

“We still don’t have any way to predict when the piece still identified as USA 193 will decay, since we have never received any TLEs for it. It’s almost as if that orbit was still classified, which seems a bit odd. You would think TLEs for all pieces would be released,” Kelso noted.

Kelso explained that, with fewer pieces of USA 193 speeding about the Earth, there are only a half dozen or so close approaches a week to other spacecraft. “So it would appear that this threat is diminishing.”

Meanwhile, to put that in a bit of perspective, the Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) test back in January 2007 created so much heavenly havoc that there are 3,144 close approaches of leftover debris with other satellites over the next week, according to a recent analysis, Kelso said.

In a debris update, NASA information puts the known leftover flotsam from the USA 193 intercept at 12, as of May 12. Furthermore, a government estimate of the maximum lifetime of orbital debris from the intercept — made prior to the intercept — pegged the last piece of clutter to fall back to Earth this summer, longer than 100 days post-event.

Lastly, the number of debris still being tracked from the Chinese ASAT is about 2,700. Only 33 cataloged debris have reentered as of May 2nd, according to my government source. - livesci

LiveScience.com : How To Time-Travel!

from www.livescience.com posted with vodpod

Did animals predict China’s earthquake?

First, the water level in a pond inexplicably plunged. Then, thousands of toads appeared on streets in a nearby province. Finally, just hours before China’s worst earthquake in three decades, animals at a local zoo began acting strangely.

As bodies are pulled from the wreckage of Monday’s quake, Chinese online chat rooms and blogs are buzzing with a question: Why didn’t these natural signs alert the government that a disaster was coming?

“If the seismological bureau were professional enough they could have predicted the earthquake ten days earlier, when several thousand cubic meters of water disappeared within an hour in Hubei, but the bureau there dismissed it,” one commentator wrote. - msnbc