- Well done, science. This is one of the rare days when you
not only accomplish something cool, but also something that is necessary and
impactful for the world. On this day, scientists have created and
successfully attached a bionic hand that allows the wearer to feel lifelike
sensations from their fingers. An international team comprised of robotics experts
from Italy, Switzerland and Germany crafted the hand and attached it to Dennis
Aabo, a Danish man who lost his left hand in a firework accident nearly a
decade ago. Aabo underwent surgery in Italy and had the artificial hand connected
to the nerves in his upper arm. He called his new hand “amazing” and in
post-surgery tests he was able to tell the shape and stiffness of objects he
picked up even when blindfolded. "It is the first time that an amputee has
had real-time touch sensation from a prosthetic device" said professor
Silvestro Micera from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne and Scuola
Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa. The hand itself was not the most advanced aspect of
the project; that would be the electronics and software that enabled it to give
sensory feedback to the brain. Micera and his team added sensors to the
artificial hand so it could detect and measure information about touch. The
research team used computer algorithms to transform the electrical signals they
emitted into an impulse that sensory nerves could interpret. With their
bio-hand completed, they brought Aabo to Rome and affixed four electrodes onto nerves
in the patient's upper arm. The electrodes were connected to the artificial
sensors in the fingers of the prosthetic hand, allowing touch and pressure
feedback to be sent direct to the brain. Aabo spent a month doing laboratory
tests to ensure that the electrodes were both connected to his new hand and
functioning properly………
- Stop feeding the effing birds, Long Islanders. It is
that difficult to understand or is your prototypical New York City arrogance
preventing you from seeing the blatantly obvious? Hempstead is the town in
question and large-scale bird feedings are the issue. The Hempstead Town
Board voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a law that targets property owners
who attract many birds with large amounts of food. Virtually everyone has that
one tool who lives near them and puts out copious amounts of food for the
birds, who then flock to the yard in question and make a mess of the
surrounding area with their lost feathers, droppings and general birdie filth.
Hempstead can thank the Sessler family for this new measure because the family
complained that the owner of the boat yard they live next door to was feeding
wheelbarrows filled with cornmeal to birds every day, sometimes several times a
day. Patriarch Jeremy Sessler led the charge and should be commended for his
effort. “There’s north of a couple of hundred birds — pigeons, geese, swans,” Sessler
said. His wife Lara cited the general squalor created by the birds and claimed the
animals have been running wild on her property and leaving behind all manner of
unseemly odors. “It’s filthy,” Lara Sessler said. “It’s all over our patio, our
furniture, our vehicles.” Neighbors from as far as several blocks away
confirmed the foul smell, but until Tuesday there was little that could be
done. In America’s biggest township, there was no law against feeding as many
birds as often as a person wanted. Now, residents are banned from feedings that
attract at least 10 birds on at least three days within a 15-day period.
Violators can be fined up to $1,000 per violation and while the fine should be
steeper and perhaps be part of a wider-reaching law also targeting casual bird
feeding, it’s a solid start………
- Speak the truth, @CRO31. New York Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie knows how NFL players think
(just like he knows how to father double-digit children by more than half-dozen
different women) and he knows that there is no way the league is going to keep
its players from smoking pot. The issue came to the forefront at the Super Bowl
because both participating teams hailed from states where ganja is legal for
recreational use and Seahawks coach Pete Carroll made waves by saying he agreed
with the notion the league should investigate medicinal marijuana to see if it
can help players. Commissioner Roger Goodell was non-committal when asked about
legalizing the hippie lettuce to help players cope with pain, but Cromartie
sees no such gray area. He is well-aware that medicinal marijuana is legal in
20 states, plus the District of Columbia. In the world of Cro, the NFL may as
well legalize Mary Jane because players are going to toke up anyhow. "We're
just going to do it anyway," Cromartie told. "They just need to let
it go. They need to go ahead and say, 'Y'all go ahead, smoke it, do what you
need to do.'" After someone close to him alerted him to the fact that
saying “we” are going to smoke herb anyhow suggested that he likes to get
baked, Cromartie took to Twitter to claim that he was intimating no such thing.
“The
interview that I did on the weed policy, I never said We're I said tht Players
will smoke anyway. I don't smoke so I don't care about it,” he tweeted. Uh-huh,
sure thing Cro. Guys with nearly a dozen children by almost that many different
women don’t typically come across as the sort of dudes who also like to burn
the hippie lettuce, so no worries there. Like his words or not, there is no
question he’s correct and not just because dozens of NFLers test positive for
marijuana every year. If dozens test positive, then assume the rest of the
potheads in the league are merely smart enough to game the system and only
smoke their stash after they have their one random annual test………..
- There is only one question to ask when Linkin Park poses
an Instagram teaser hinting at a new album: Is this one going to suck less than
the band’s previous two train wrecks of sonic awfulness? That question won't be
answered for a while, but frontman Mike Shinoda posted the picture along with a few comments on
how the new album is shaping up. He suggested it will be much different than
Linkin Park’s previous release, “Living Things,” which dropped in 2012. Along
with its predecessor, “Minutes to Midnight,” the album almost single-handedly
wrecked the image and style the band had crafted by sounding like an extended
electronic jam session instead of a hard-charging rap-rock hybrid. "As
most Linkin Park fans know, the sound of each album is usually quite different
from the last," Shinoda wrote. "The new album is no exception. But,
as usual, the album's sound twists and turns as it is created, so any attempt
at estimating what it sounds like today would be silly.” In truth, no one needs
to know what the album sounds like today. They merely need to know that it
won't sound like some clusterf*ck of bad electronic effects that will make them
wonder if they mistakenly brought the album of some crappy Euro-pop band that
was on the shelf next to Linkin Park at the record store. Shinoda went on to
say that the album is likely to take plenty of twists and turns before its
release, which does not have an official date yet. The band is slated to be one
of the headline acts for Download
Festival 2014 and perform their 2000 album “Hybrid Theory” in its entirety at
the event……
- Pedophiles of Macedonia, you’ve been warned. The
Mediterranean nation’s parliament has adopted a bill imposing chemical castration on repeat
offenders convicted of sexually abusing children, a move that should be
well-received by children’s rights groups….right? Or not. Immediately after the
new law was enacted, the country’s leading child protection group said that the
new measure is still too lenient. The Megjasi child protection group, which
pushed for castration on child sex offenders, wants the penalty to be mandatory
even for first-time offenders. As part of the new law, legislators voted to
make penalties harsher for convicted pedophiles, increasing the maximum
sentence from 15 years to life imprisonment and imposing chemical castration on
second-time offenders. The procedure will be imposed on their release from
prison, which seems like the wrong end of their sentence on which to carry out
the procedure. Additionally, the law introduces a minimum 15-year prison term
for severe sexual offenses against minors, while other sexual-related crimes
against children are punishable by between three and 10 years in prison. Any
first-time offender who voluntarily gets chemically neutered will be eligible
for a reduced sentence, which doesn’t seem like the best deal on the table.
Chemical castration involves regular injections that decrease the production of
testosterone and the injections can be administered over an extended period of
time. Megjasi head Dragi Zmijanac suggested that mandatory castration would “prevent
first time offenders repeating the crime," with is both factually and
literally accurate while also being a bit on the excessive side. Megjasi also
advocated for the tagging of released pedophiles with electronic bracelets,
like rare animals in the wild being tracked by scientists, but that too was
rejected by lawkmakers. How many pervs will be impacted by this new law?
According to the Macedonian Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, 23 people were
convicted of pedophilia in 2013. The ministry did not specify how many were
repeat offenders……..
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