Check Out (Fan Made) High Resolution Views Of Star Trek’s New USS Kelvin

So far the best fan work on the Kelvin (by far) has been done by Tobias Richter who is a Trek fan and veteran CG artist. Richter runs the The Light Works graphics studio in Cologne, Germany, which does visual effects for games, TV and film. He has done some DVD covers for Paramount and some work for Star Trek magazine, but he is not affiliated with the new Star Trek movie and tells TrekMovie.com he just “liked the design of the Kelvin from the new Star Trek trailer a lot.” So he created his own detailed CG model of the ship based on the information that is available at the moment (the trailer and the wallpapers), and here is what he came up with…pretty impressive. Check out his HD animations and super high resolution desktop images below.

via Check Out (Fan Made) High Resolution Views Of Star Trek’s New USS Kelvin | TrekMovie.com.

Beautiful.  I used one of Tobias Richter’s screen savers. Here is the Kelvin ship from the new Star Trek movie trailer:

Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009

Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009

• #1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation
• # 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA
• # 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business
• # 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?
• # 5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets
• # 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
• # 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking
• # 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly
• #9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify
• # 10 APA Complicit in CIA Torture
• # 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror
• # 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind
• # 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq
• # 14 Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste
• # 15 Worldwide Slavery
• # 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights
• # 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights
• # 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers
• # 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction
• # 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record
• # 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option
• # 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid
• # 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs
• # 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror
• # 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer

via Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009 | Project Censored.

Robots are narrowing the gap with humans

Robots are gaining on us humans.

Thanks to exponential increases in computer power — which is roughly doubling every two years — robots are getting smarter, more capable, more like flesh-and-blood people.

Matching human skills and intelligence, however, is an enormously difficult — perhaps impossible — challenge.

Nevertheless, robots guided by their own computer “brains” now can pick up and peel bananas, land jumbo jets, steer cars through city traffic, search human DNA for cancer genes, play soccer or the violin, find earthquake victims or explore craters on Mars.

At a “Robobusiness” conference in Boston last week, companies demonstrated a robot firefighter, gardener, receptionist, tour guide and security guard.

You name it, a high-tech wizard somewhere is trying to make a robot do it.

A Japanese housekeeping robot can move chairs, sweep the floor, load a tray of dirty dishes in a dishwasher and put dirty clothes in a washing machine.

Intel, the worldwide computer-chip maker, headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., has developed a self-controlled mobile robot called Herb, the Home Exploring Robotic Butler. Herb can recognize faces and carry out generalized commands such as “please clean this mess,” according to Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer.

In a talk last year titled “Crossing the Chasm Between Humans and Machines: the Next 40 Years,” the widely respected Rattner lent some credibility to the often-ridiculed effort to make machines as smart as people.

“The industry has taken much greater strides than anyone ever imagined 40 years ago,” Rattner said. It’s conceivable, he added, that “machines could even overtake humans in their ability to reason in the not-so-distant future.”

via Robots are narrowing the gap with humans | McClatchy.

India’s ‘holy powder’ finally reveals its centuries-old secret

Scientists in Michigan are reporting discovery of the secret behind the fabled healing power of the main ingredient in turmeric — a spice revered in India as “holy powder.” Their study on the ingredient, curcumin, appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

In the study, Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy and colleagues point out that turmeric has been used for centuries in folk medicine to treat wounds, infections, and other health problems. Although modern scientific research on the spice has burgeoned in recent years, scientists until now did not know exactly how curcumin works inside the body.

Using a high-tech instrument termed solid-state NMR spectroscopy, the scientists discovered that molecules of curcumin act like a biochemical disciplinarian. They insert themselves into cell membranes and make the membranes more stable and orderly in a way that increases cells’ resistance to infection by disease-causing microbes.

More information: “Determining the Effects of Lipophillic Drugs on Membrane Structure by Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy — the Case of the Antioxidant Curcumin,” Journal of the American Chemical Society.

via India’s ‘holy powder’ finally reveals its centuries-old secret.

Human Brains Make Their Own ‘Marijuana’

U.S. and Brazilian scientists have discovered that the brain manufactures proteins that act like marijuana at specific receptors in the brain itself. …

Scientists made their discovery by first extracting several small proteins, called peptides, from the brains of mice and determining their amino acid sequence. The extracted proteins were then compared with another peptide previously known to bind to, but not activate, the receptor (THC) affected by marijuana. Out of the extracted proteins, several not only bound to the brain’s THC receptors, but activated them as well.

“The War on Drugs has hit very close to home,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “Last year, scientists found that our skin makes its own marijuana-like substance. Now, we see that our brain has been making proteins that act directly on the marijuana receptors in our head. The next step is for scientists to come up with new medicines that eliminate the nasty side of pot—a better joint, so to speak.”

via Human Brains Make Their Own ‘Marijuana’.

Mass. lake with 45-letter name has spelling errors

Officials have agreed to correct spelling errors in road signs pointing to a central Massachusetts lake with a 45-letter name. Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg in Webster has one of the world’s longest place names. It’s been spelled many different ways over the years. Some locals have given up and simply call it Lake Webster.

But after researching historical spelling combinations, the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester said local Chamber of Commerce officials agreed that some signs were wrong. There was an “o” at letter 20 where a “u” should have been, and an “h” at letter 38 where an “n” should go.

There are many stories and legends about the origin of the Indian name. One popular myth — later debunked — holds that the name translates roughly to ‘You fish on your side, I fish on my side, and nobody fish in the middle.’

via Mass. lake with 45-letter name has spelling errors.

Halifax bus driver fired in seal incident commits suicide: wife

A Halifax bus driver who was fired last week for clubbing a fake seal at an anti-sealing protest committed suicide over the weekend, his wife said Monday.

Dann Little was fired by Halifax Metro Transit on Friday over the March 14 incident, Andrea Little said.

Little, who jumped out of his bus and used a stick to beat a toy seal being used as a prop by anti-seal hunt protesters as they prepared to take part at an international day of action on Spring Garden Road, thought he’d only be suspended without pay for a month, Little’s wife said.

Little didn’t know why he did what he did, she said, adding “and that’s when I have to say my husband snapped.”

The 55-year-old had been suffering silently. He had been on anti-depressants for two years and was diagnosed recently with a clogged artery in his brain — health issues he never mentioned to Metro Transit, his wife said.

via Halifax bus driver fired in seal incident commits suicide: wife.

Karma works in strange ways.

Every cloud really DOES have a silver lining: Scientists find gloomy days are good for brain

Next time you find yourself drenched in an unexpected downpour, look on the bright side – it’ll be a memorable experience.

While wet weather may make us feel gloomy, it sharpens the memory and improves our recall, psychologists say.

But those who feel in a good mood because it’s a sunny day are able to remember less well, according to memory tests carried out by Australian researchers.

Professor Joe Forgas, who led the research, said: ‘It seems counter-intuitive but a little bit of sadness is a good thing.

‘People performed much better on our memory test when the weather was unpleasant and they were in a slightly negative mood. On bright sunny days, when they were more likely to be happy and carefree, they flunked it.’

via Every cloud really DOES have a silver lining: Scientists find gloomy days are good for brain | Mail Online.

Nazi ’super cows’ shipped to Devon farm

Their meat will not be reaching the Sunday lunch table any time soon and nobody would dare get close enough to try to milk them. But a herd of “super cows” descended from animals bred in Nazi Germany is making an impressive sight on a farm in the south-west of England.

The “Heck” cattle were designed by brothers Heinz and Lutz Heck in an attempt to recreate the extinct European wild ox, the aurochs, an important beast in German mythology.

Only a few survived after the second world war, but farmer and conservationist Derek Gow has imported 13 of the animals from Belgium to Broadwoodwidger, on the Devon-Cornwall border, where they have joined a growing collection of beavers, polecats and water voles.

Rather than allowing his Heck cattle to be hunted, as some of the Nazi leaders wanted to do, Gow will be offering photographers the chance to take pictures of the animals.

He also hopes to begin his own breeding programme because he believes the Heck cattle may one day have an important conservation role to play, taking the place of the aurochs in the cycle of life.

Gow said his Heck cattle were much shorter than the aurochs but they did retain the muscular build, deep brown complexion and shaggy, coffee-coloured fringe.

Only one of his herd was dangerous. “I’m standing 2ft away from her at the moment. If I was any closer she’d try to kill me. The others are just a bit nervous and jumpy.”

via Nazi ’super cows’ shipped to Devon farm | UK news | guardian.co.uk.

‘Quiet Sun’ baffling astronomers

The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.

There are no sunspots, very few solar flares – and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time.

The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting.

The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period.

Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.

According to Prof Louise Hara of University College London, it is unclear why this is happening or when the Sun is likely to become more active again.

“There’s no sign of us coming out of it yet,” she told BBC News.

“At the moment, there are scientific papers coming out suggesting that we’ll be going into a normal period of activity soon.

“Others are suggesting we’ll be going into another minimum period – this is a big scientific debate at the moment.”

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | ‘Quiet Sun’ baffling astronomers.