Random Man says check out this link . . .
http://www.stanford.edu/group/hopes/basics/braintut/ab0.html
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
"Build a Brain" tutorial
Random Man says check out this link . . .
http://www.stanford.edu/group/hopes/basics/braintut/ab0.html
Star Trek's a thesis
By Adam Morton
August 28, 2006
The Age
It's the PhD thesis that boldly goes where no thesis has gone before. Djoymi Baker watched 700 episodes - 624 hours without ads - of Star Trek and its spin-offs, dating from 1966 to 2005, in the name of research.
She analysed the series armed with an exhaustive knowledge of the characters and storylines of ancient mythology - from Homer's Odyssey down.
It may sound like torture for those with an aversion to William Shatner's campy theatrics but, six years and 90,000 words on, it has earned Dr Baker a coveted chancellor's prize for excellence at Melbourne University. And the respect of academics and Trekkies alike.
"I was interested in where myths turn up in less obvious forms, and there wasn't much work on the early years of television and its relation to myth," Dr Baker said.
Importantly, she was also a fan of the series.
"I don't think just because a study is serious and that I'm connecting Star Trek to a broader history of TV and ancient myths that it means there is not also a fun side - I can see the fun side as well."
Among the dark corners where Dr Baker's thesis - titled Broadcast Space: TV Culture, Myth and Star Trek - shines light is the changing link between the starship Enterprise's intergalactic adventures and the real world's space race.
Shatner's monologues were inspired by the visionary speeches of JFK, advocating greater exploration. Thirty years on, the roles were reversed, with astronauts from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration guest-starring on Star Trek spin-offs to promote their underfunded existence.
Since finishing her thesis last year, the 34-year-old has had a daughter and is turning her thesis into an academic text.
She's also writing an introductory piece for a Star Trek exhibition at the Victorian College of the Arts in October.
August 28, 2006
The Age
It's the PhD thesis that boldly goes where no thesis has gone before. Djoymi Baker watched 700 episodes - 624 hours without ads - of Star Trek and its spin-offs, dating from 1966 to 2005, in the name of research.
She analysed the series armed with an exhaustive knowledge of the characters and storylines of ancient mythology - from Homer's Odyssey down.
It may sound like torture for those with an aversion to William Shatner's campy theatrics but, six years and 90,000 words on, it has earned Dr Baker a coveted chancellor's prize for excellence at Melbourne University. And the respect of academics and Trekkies alike.
"I was interested in where myths turn up in less obvious forms, and there wasn't much work on the early years of television and its relation to myth," Dr Baker said.
Importantly, she was also a fan of the series.
"I don't think just because a study is serious and that I'm connecting Star Trek to a broader history of TV and ancient myths that it means there is not also a fun side - I can see the fun side as well."
Among the dark corners where Dr Baker's thesis - titled Broadcast Space: TV Culture, Myth and Star Trek - shines light is the changing link between the starship Enterprise's intergalactic adventures and the real world's space race.
Shatner's monologues were inspired by the visionary speeches of JFK, advocating greater exploration. Thirty years on, the roles were reversed, with astronauts from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration guest-starring on Star Trek spin-offs to promote their underfunded existence.
Since finishing her thesis last year, the 34-year-old has had a daughter and is turning her thesis into an academic text.
She's also writing an introductory piece for a Star Trek exhibition at the Victorian College of the Arts in October.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Scorpions into the Grand Final !!
Lining up the the Scorpions at the SCG this sunday
Leo Barry (back)
Brett Kirk (centre)
Darren Jolly (ruck)
Michael O'Loughlin (forward)
Barry Hall (forward)
With Jason Roe and Trent Hentschel out with leg injuries and Josh Kennedy out with a punctured lung it is not going to be easy for the Scorpions. Hopefully Chris Tarrant is back this week. Fingers crossed !!
Fantastic effort from Matthew Richardson on the weekend (189 points).
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Dark matter exists
By Robert Roy Britt
Monday, August 21, 2006
Scientists found proof of dark matter in galaxy cluster 1E0657-556
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
University of Arizona
New observations of a great big cosmic collision provide the best evidence yet that invisible and mysterious dark matter really does exist.
The collision, between two huge clusters of galaxies, is the "most energetic cosmic event, besides the Big Bang, that we know about," said Maxim Markevitch of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The impact split normal matter and dark matter apart, rendering the dark matter's gravitational presence observable.
Scientists announced the discovery today in a teleconference with reporters.
The normal matter in the cosmos -- atoms that make up stars, planets, air and life -- accounts for only a small fraction of what must exist, based on the fact that without an additional source of gravity, galaxies would fly apart and galaxy clusters could not hold together as they do.
Nobody knows where all that gravity comes from, so scientists say there must be some invisible stuff out there, which they call dark matter. Its presence is indirectly supported by many observations.
Given what's known, this is the makeup of the universe:
5 percent normal matter
25 percent dark matter
70 percent dark energy
Dark energy is an even more mysterious phenomenon, a force of some sort that beats out gravity and is causing the universe to expand at an ever-faster pace.
Some theorists have suggested that rather than invoking dark matter, perhaps existing ideas about gravity might be wrong. Maybe gravity is stronger on intergalactic scales than what is predicted by Newton and Einstein.
And all astronomers agree that dark matter is such an exotic idea as to border on the crazy.
"A universe that's dominated by dark stuff seems preposterous, so we wanted to test whether there were any basic flaws in our thinking," said Doug Clowe of the University of Arizona at Tucson, and leader of the study. "These results are direct proof that dark matter exists."
Splitting matter
Clowe and colleagues used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to study the galaxy cluster 1E0657-556, which contains a bullet-shaped cloud of superheated gas. X-rays show the shape was produced by cosmic winds created in a high-speed collision of two clusters of galaxies.
Other telescopes were used to locate and quantify the mass in the clusters. They actually measured the effect of gravitational lensing, in which gravity from the clusters distorts light from thousands of background galaxies, as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.
The dark matter is not seen, but its gravity has a predictable effect on the observations. The resulting blue color in a new image represents the gravity fields observed by noting how the light from each background galaxy is distorted.
Here's what the image reveals:
The hot gas -- normal matter -- was slowed by a drag force described as the cosmic equivalent of air resistance. But the dark matter was not slowed by this effect, presumably because it does not interact with normal matter, as theory had predicted.
So the normal matter and dark matter became separated.
"This proves in a simple and direct way that dark matter exists." Markevitch said in the teleconference.
Other theories must cope
The finding provides further evidence that standard Newtonian gravity, which keeps planets in orbit around the sun, is the glue that makes things stick on the largest scales, too.
It is still possible there is some modification of gravity going on, but these findings make it less necessary to have such theories, said Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the study. "No matter what you do [in devising new theories] you're going to have to believe in dark matter."
"We've closed this loophole about gravity, and we've come closer than ever to seeing this invisible matter," Clowe said. "This is the first time we've had a direct detection of dark matter" in which you can't explain the results with any altered-gravity theory, he said.
The findings will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Monday, August 21, 2006
Scientists found proof of dark matter in galaxy cluster 1E0657-556
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
University of Arizona
New observations of a great big cosmic collision provide the best evidence yet that invisible and mysterious dark matter really does exist.
The collision, between two huge clusters of galaxies, is the "most energetic cosmic event, besides the Big Bang, that we know about," said Maxim Markevitch of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The impact split normal matter and dark matter apart, rendering the dark matter's gravitational presence observable.
Scientists announced the discovery today in a teleconference with reporters.
The normal matter in the cosmos -- atoms that make up stars, planets, air and life -- accounts for only a small fraction of what must exist, based on the fact that without an additional source of gravity, galaxies would fly apart and galaxy clusters could not hold together as they do.
Nobody knows where all that gravity comes from, so scientists say there must be some invisible stuff out there, which they call dark matter. Its presence is indirectly supported by many observations.
Given what's known, this is the makeup of the universe:
5 percent normal matter
25 percent dark matter
70 percent dark energy
Dark energy is an even more mysterious phenomenon, a force of some sort that beats out gravity and is causing the universe to expand at an ever-faster pace.
Some theorists have suggested that rather than invoking dark matter, perhaps existing ideas about gravity might be wrong. Maybe gravity is stronger on intergalactic scales than what is predicted by Newton and Einstein.
And all astronomers agree that dark matter is such an exotic idea as to border on the crazy.
"A universe that's dominated by dark stuff seems preposterous, so we wanted to test whether there were any basic flaws in our thinking," said Doug Clowe of the University of Arizona at Tucson, and leader of the study. "These results are direct proof that dark matter exists."
Splitting matter
Clowe and colleagues used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to study the galaxy cluster 1E0657-556, which contains a bullet-shaped cloud of superheated gas. X-rays show the shape was produced by cosmic winds created in a high-speed collision of two clusters of galaxies.
Other telescopes were used to locate and quantify the mass in the clusters. They actually measured the effect of gravitational lensing, in which gravity from the clusters distorts light from thousands of background galaxies, as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.
The dark matter is not seen, but its gravity has a predictable effect on the observations. The resulting blue color in a new image represents the gravity fields observed by noting how the light from each background galaxy is distorted.
Here's what the image reveals:
The hot gas -- normal matter -- was slowed by a drag force described as the cosmic equivalent of air resistance. But the dark matter was not slowed by this effect, presumably because it does not interact with normal matter, as theory had predicted.
So the normal matter and dark matter became separated.
"This proves in a simple and direct way that dark matter exists." Markevitch said in the teleconference.
Other theories must cope
The finding provides further evidence that standard Newtonian gravity, which keeps planets in orbit around the sun, is the glue that makes things stick on the largest scales, too.
It is still possible there is some modification of gravity going on, but these findings make it less necessary to have such theories, said Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the study. "No matter what you do [in devising new theories] you're going to have to believe in dark matter."
"We've closed this loophole about gravity, and we've come closer than ever to seeing this invisible matter," Clowe said. "This is the first time we've had a direct detection of dark matter" in which you can't explain the results with any altered-gravity theory, he said.
The findings will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Monday, August 21, 2006
Good win for the Scorpions
Sydney_Scorpions def Happy Hermits to move into the 2nd Prelim. Final against The Rock Bottoms this coming weekend.
With Tarrant back, the Scorpions are at full strength (hopefully).
Can they take down the UN Peacekeepers in the Grand Final ?
Will need a better game from Hall and Gehrig for starters.
Fingers Crossed.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Abbott lashes out at scientists
August 20, 2006
Scientists are "peddling" hopes of medical breakthroughs without convincing evidence that expanding stem cell research will deliver, Health Minister Tony Abbott says.
Mr Abbott, who is strongly opposed to therapeutic cloning, today lashed out at "evangelical" scientists, accusing them of giving false hopes to sufferers of crippling diseases just to get "a leg up" in their research.
The comments were some of Mr Abbott's strongest on the issue as MPs and senators head towards a conscience vote on overturning the four year ban on therapeutic cloning - the creation of embryos to produce stem cells.
Labor's health spokeswoman Julia Gillard today called for calm and accused the minister of misleading the public.
Mr Abbott's language, she said, "is calculated in my view to misinform the public and to misrepresent this debate".
"I think Tony Abbott as health minister has actually got an obligation to keep the debate calm and keep it focussed on the facts," Ms Gillard told the Ten Network.
"Instead he believes it's his job to run in with the most inflammatory language he can think of.
"No one in federal parliament is advocating human cloning, that is the complete reproduction of human beings."
But the pro-life minister, a devout Catholic, said politicians were being asked to cross a bridge too far.
"People are asking us to cross a very serious ethical bridge for no good reason because there is no strong evidence that this kind of research is actually going to produce the massive breakthroughs that people are claiming," Mr Abbott told ABC television.
"I think what we are seeing at the moment is a lot of peddling of hope, but no great evidence that these new and radical research techniques are actually going to produce the breakthroughs that some of the more evangelical scientists are claiming for them."
Mr Abbott said MPs and senators needed to explain what had changed since parliament voted in 2002 not to allow therapeutic cloning.
He made it clear that he did not trust scientists to steer the debate, saying they would want "a little bit more human cloning in a few years' time".
"Even potential human life needs to be treated with great respect and we shouldn't be willy-nilly creating potential human life just to satisfy the urges of the scientific community," Mr Abbott said.
Two senators are preparing private members' bills intended to end the ban on therapeutic cloning - Australian Democrat Natasha Stott Despoja and Liberal Kay Patterson, a former health minister.
Senator Patterson plans to base the bill on the findings of the expert Lockhart review, which recommended the Government allow scientists to conduct embryonic stem cell research.
Present laws restrict research to spare IVF embryos.
Mr Abbott said he believed a large number of MPs and senators remained undecided on the issue, but acknowledged the influence of the Lockhart report.
"I certainly think the Lockhart review has had an impact on people but I think that the more people think about this the more concerned they will be about just where this might be leading," he said.
Cabinet rejected the Lockhart review's recommendation in June, but Prime Minister John Howard last week bowed to backbench pressure and promised his MPs a conscience vote should any legislation come to parliament.
AAP
Scientists are "peddling" hopes of medical breakthroughs without convincing evidence that expanding stem cell research will deliver, Health Minister Tony Abbott says.
Mr Abbott, who is strongly opposed to therapeutic cloning, today lashed out at "evangelical" scientists, accusing them of giving false hopes to sufferers of crippling diseases just to get "a leg up" in their research.
The comments were some of Mr Abbott's strongest on the issue as MPs and senators head towards a conscience vote on overturning the four year ban on therapeutic cloning - the creation of embryos to produce stem cells.
Labor's health spokeswoman Julia Gillard today called for calm and accused the minister of misleading the public.
Mr Abbott's language, she said, "is calculated in my view to misinform the public and to misrepresent this debate".
"I think Tony Abbott as health minister has actually got an obligation to keep the debate calm and keep it focussed on the facts," Ms Gillard told the Ten Network.
"Instead he believes it's his job to run in with the most inflammatory language he can think of.
"No one in federal parliament is advocating human cloning, that is the complete reproduction of human beings."
But the pro-life minister, a devout Catholic, said politicians were being asked to cross a bridge too far.
"People are asking us to cross a very serious ethical bridge for no good reason because there is no strong evidence that this kind of research is actually going to produce the massive breakthroughs that people are claiming," Mr Abbott told ABC television.
"I think what we are seeing at the moment is a lot of peddling of hope, but no great evidence that these new and radical research techniques are actually going to produce the breakthroughs that some of the more evangelical scientists are claiming for them."
Mr Abbott said MPs and senators needed to explain what had changed since parliament voted in 2002 not to allow therapeutic cloning.
He made it clear that he did not trust scientists to steer the debate, saying they would want "a little bit more human cloning in a few years' time".
"Even potential human life needs to be treated with great respect and we shouldn't be willy-nilly creating potential human life just to satisfy the urges of the scientific community," Mr Abbott said.
Two senators are preparing private members' bills intended to end the ban on therapeutic cloning - Australian Democrat Natasha Stott Despoja and Liberal Kay Patterson, a former health minister.
Senator Patterson plans to base the bill on the findings of the expert Lockhart review, which recommended the Government allow scientists to conduct embryonic stem cell research.
Present laws restrict research to spare IVF embryos.
Mr Abbott said he believed a large number of MPs and senators remained undecided on the issue, but acknowledged the influence of the Lockhart report.
"I certainly think the Lockhart review has had an impact on people but I think that the more people think about this the more concerned they will be about just where this might be leading," he said.
Cabinet rejected the Lockhart review's recommendation in June, but Prime Minister John Howard last week bowed to backbench pressure and promised his MPs a conscience vote should any legislation come to parliament.
AAP
Carl Sagan - smarter than Asimov
Carl Sagan married three times:
1) the famous biologist, Lynn Margulis (mother of Dorion Sagan and Jeremy Sagan) in 1957
2) artist Linda Salzman (mother of Nick Sagan) in 1968
3) author Ann Druyan (mother of Sasha and Sam) in 1981, to whom he remained married until his death.
Isaac Asimov described Sagan as one of the only two people he ever met who were just plain smarter than Asimov himself.
The other was computer scientist and expert on artifical intelligence, Marvin Minsky.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
World water demand will double by 2050
By Robin Pash
August 16, 2006
AAP
WORLD demand for water will double by 2050, with a third of the globe's population already facing shortages of the precious resource, an international expert has warned.
That will also send the cost of the "blue gold" through the roof, but it is unlikely to match the pricing spiral experienced by crude oil.
Dr Frank Rijsberman, a Dutch scientist who heads the eminent International Water Management Institute, said about 2.5 billion people – most of them in Asia – already faced scarcity of water.
He delivered a daunting assessment of the world's current and future water needs to the Crawford Fund's annual development conference in Canberra today.
But he also said there was plenty of water in the world – how it was managed would be the key to meeting demand.
"The point is, water scarcity is a choice. You're not necessarily water scarce because there is no rain," he told the conference.
"You're water scarce because you're doing something with the water, such as growing food and exporting it."
In another paper delivered to the conference, the International Food Policy Research Institute warned that failure to change current trends in water policy and investment would strip 350 million tonnes from the world's annual food production by 2025.
The figure is more than the entire grain crop in the United States.
Dr Rijsberman said the total amount of water needed for the world would double between now and 2050.
That would likely lead to big price rises – at least double, possibly treble current levels.
But the increases were unlikely to match oil prices, currently approaching $US80 a barrel.
Dr Rijsberman highlighted huge differences in the global pricing of water, saying "designer" products like Perrier bottled water already topped the price of oil.
Bottom-end prices for Australian wine, he noted, were currently cheaper than domestic water, as the wine industry experienced an oversupply.
For domestic use, Australians currently paid between $1 and $2 per cubic metre for water.
But prices were already much higher in many developed nations, such as Germany, which paid about $10 per cubic metre for its domestic water.
With water a big issue in the current Queensland election campaign, Dr Rijsberman said the resource would become an increasingly significant factor in the rise and fall of governments.
State election results in India, for example, were frequently determined by water and energy prices, he said.
Residents of the drought-stricken Queensland city of Toowoomba recently voted against including recycled effluent in the drinking water supply – the first poll of its kind in Australia.
Recycling was inevitable, Dr Rijsberman said, but there was no rush to include it in drinking stocks.
Using waste water for purposes like irrigating crops should be a higher priority, he said.
"Probably the people of Toowoomba are right. You don't have to drink it," Dr Rijsberman said.
"There are a lot of other things you can do before you start drinking it, but that we'll have to recycle it is pretty obvious."
August 16, 2006
AAP
WORLD demand for water will double by 2050, with a third of the globe's population already facing shortages of the precious resource, an international expert has warned.
That will also send the cost of the "blue gold" through the roof, but it is unlikely to match the pricing spiral experienced by crude oil.
Dr Frank Rijsberman, a Dutch scientist who heads the eminent International Water Management Institute, said about 2.5 billion people – most of them in Asia – already faced scarcity of water.
He delivered a daunting assessment of the world's current and future water needs to the Crawford Fund's annual development conference in Canberra today.
But he also said there was plenty of water in the world – how it was managed would be the key to meeting demand.
"The point is, water scarcity is a choice. You're not necessarily water scarce because there is no rain," he told the conference.
"You're water scarce because you're doing something with the water, such as growing food and exporting it."
In another paper delivered to the conference, the International Food Policy Research Institute warned that failure to change current trends in water policy and investment would strip 350 million tonnes from the world's annual food production by 2025.
The figure is more than the entire grain crop in the United States.
Dr Rijsberman said the total amount of water needed for the world would double between now and 2050.
That would likely lead to big price rises – at least double, possibly treble current levels.
But the increases were unlikely to match oil prices, currently approaching $US80 a barrel.
Dr Rijsberman highlighted huge differences in the global pricing of water, saying "designer" products like Perrier bottled water already topped the price of oil.
Bottom-end prices for Australian wine, he noted, were currently cheaper than domestic water, as the wine industry experienced an oversupply.
For domestic use, Australians currently paid between $1 and $2 per cubic metre for water.
But prices were already much higher in many developed nations, such as Germany, which paid about $10 per cubic metre for its domestic water.
With water a big issue in the current Queensland election campaign, Dr Rijsberman said the resource would become an increasingly significant factor in the rise and fall of governments.
State election results in India, for example, were frequently determined by water and energy prices, he said.
Residents of the drought-stricken Queensland city of Toowoomba recently voted against including recycled effluent in the drinking water supply – the first poll of its kind in Australia.
Recycling was inevitable, Dr Rijsberman said, but there was no rush to include it in drinking stocks.
Using waste water for purposes like irrigating crops should be a higher priority, he said.
"Probably the people of Toowoomba are right. You don't have to drink it," Dr Rijsberman said.
"There are a lot of other things you can do before you start drinking it, but that we'll have to recycle it is pretty obvious."
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Orangutangs look for love online
August 17, 2006
Single male (red hair, long arms, interests include hanging in trees and grooming) seeks female for long-distance relationship and possibility of meeting up in future to help save species.
Zookeepers in the Netherlands are planning to hook up Dutch and Indonesian orangutans over the Internet and believe the link could at some stage be used as an online dating service where apes could get to know one another and keepers could work out whether they would be compatible mates.
First things first: A romantic dinner for two.
"We are going to set up an Internet connection between Indonesia and Apeldoorn so that the apes can see each other and, by means of pressing a button, be able to give one another food, for example," said Anouk Ballot, a spokeswoman for the Apenheul ape park in the central Dutch city of Apeldoorn.
She said the chance of two orangutans actually mating as a result of the online interaction was small due to the problem of transporting them between the Netherlands and Indonesia. "But I wouldn't rule it out completely," she told The Associated Press.
Ballot said the primary aim of the computer link between Apenheul and an orangutan center on the Indonesian part of Borneo was to raise public awareness of the apes and their plight.
Activists say that the spread of palm oil plantations, coupled with logging, especially on Malaysian and Indonesian territories on Borneo island, is threatening animals such as wild orangutans with extinction by chewing up their native jungle habitat.
Ballot said that, in the past, captive orangutans separated by a wall have communicated with one another via a mirror placed in front of the two enclosures. Using Web cams and computer screens is an extension of that, she said.
She stressed that only orangutans who show a natural interest and aptitude will take part. The Apenheul park has 13 orangutans among its collection of apes.
There is still work to be done to set up the Internet connection. "We need to find ape-proof cables and screens," Ballot said, adding that the zoo hopes to have the orangutans online by the end of this year or early 2007.
So next time you run into someone in a chatroom and think "what a baboon," think twice: it just might be.
AP
Boy tied to tree for nine years for biting dogs
August 16, 2006
Authorities in Indian state of West Bengal rescued a 15-year-old boy tied to a tree for nine years because he used to bite dogs and goats besides gnawing on the feet of relatives and neighbours, officials said today.
Rahul Amin Dhali was just six when he first bit a dog in Biramnagar village, 60km north of Kolkata, the state capital, they said.
A few days later he tasted the flesh of a family member.
"We chose to ignore the issue since he was just a child but it turned worse with every passing day," Rahman Dhali, the boy's father, told Reuters.
Rahul later wandered off in the village and bit a goat grazing in a field before nibbling at the paws of the neighbour's pet dog, leaving Rahman, a poor farmer, flummoxed.
When neighbours' complaints increased, the Dhalis chained their son by the wrist to a tree in front of their house, where the boy has since been taught to read.
"We found him tied to a tree with a long chain near a pond and he seemed very sick to us," said Sushanata Dutta, a senior government official who organised Monday's rescue mission after being told of Rahul's condition by village health workers.
"Dhali had the habit of nibbling at his hands and feet when he failed to lure dogs and cats for a bite," Dutta added.
Doctors said the boy was suffering from a serious neurological disorder and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Kolkata for treatment.
"Everyone was scared about Dhali because they thought he was a demon possessed with evil powers, but actually he should be fine with several months of treatment," Ranadip Ghosh Roy, one of the doctors treating Rahul, said.
Reuters
Authorities in Indian state of West Bengal rescued a 15-year-old boy tied to a tree for nine years because he used to bite dogs and goats besides gnawing on the feet of relatives and neighbours, officials said today.
Rahul Amin Dhali was just six when he first bit a dog in Biramnagar village, 60km north of Kolkata, the state capital, they said.
A few days later he tasted the flesh of a family member.
"We chose to ignore the issue since he was just a child but it turned worse with every passing day," Rahman Dhali, the boy's father, told Reuters.
Rahul later wandered off in the village and bit a goat grazing in a field before nibbling at the paws of the neighbour's pet dog, leaving Rahman, a poor farmer, flummoxed.
When neighbours' complaints increased, the Dhalis chained their son by the wrist to a tree in front of their house, where the boy has since been taught to read.
"We found him tied to a tree with a long chain near a pond and he seemed very sick to us," said Sushanata Dutta, a senior government official who organised Monday's rescue mission after being told of Rahul's condition by village health workers.
"Dhali had the habit of nibbling at his hands and feet when he failed to lure dogs and cats for a bite," Dutta added.
Doctors said the boy was suffering from a serious neurological disorder and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Kolkata for treatment.
"Everyone was scared about Dhali because they thought he was a demon possessed with evil powers, but actually he should be fine with several months of treatment," Ranadip Ghosh Roy, one of the doctors treating Rahul, said.
Reuters
Don't eat toadfish !!
Angler dies after eating toadfishAugust 15, 2006
A man has died in north Queensland after eating what is believed to be a poisonous toadfish.
The 45-year-old Fijian man caught the fish off a jetty near Bowen on Sunday, police said.
He filleted and cooked the fish on a barbecue on Sunday afternoon before collapsing on the beachfront.
An ambulance took him to Bowen Hospital but, attempts to revive him failed.
Two other men with him at the barbecue survived.
It was not known how much of the fish, if any, they had eaten.
A post-mortem examination is due to be conducted today.
AAP
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Art Neuro's new track
http://www.icompositions.com/music/song.php?sid=43405
"The gal in the pickie is Kate Beckinsale who in my opinion looks like she has been lobotomised; or perhaps she's just had the mother of all orgasms and can't string a coherent sentence together as a result. I guess that too would be a kind of miracle of love. Or she was on drugs during the photo shoot, but I kind of like the way she looks totally stunned"
Art
Remote Control People
11 August 2006
UNSW
Pic: Dr Fitzpatrick steering a man by remote
UNSW researchers have proven it is possible to steer people accurately by remote control as they walk.The research, which has just been published in Current Biology, could eventually be used to diagnose balance disorders and help treat motion sickness or vertigo.
Until now the technique, which uses electrodes placed just behind peoples’ ears and stimulates their nerves, has led people to lose their balance.
What Drs Richard Fitzpatrick and Jane Butler from the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute (POWMRI) did differently was ask the volunteers to walk with the head in specific pre-calculated positions, facing either downwards or slightly upwards.
While blindfolded, the five female and five male subjects were able to be steered in different directions without affecting their balance. The control was accurate enough to allow them to be steered around the paths and obstacles in Sydney’s Botanical Gardens for extended periods.
The researchers found that with a subject’s head in another position, the same stimulus caused the person to lean in one direction or another but did not steer their walking.
The stimulus affects the semicircular canals, which are small receptors in the inner ear that detect head rotation. These are part of the vestibular system that assists in orientation and balance.
“We were effectively introducing a small signal of vertigo but at subclinical levels. Vertigo is the symptom of spinning that comes from the rotational receptors” said Dr Fitzpatrick.
“We have shown that the brain can effectively break down this signal and that it uses it to control steering and balance.”
The findings support fossil evidence of an evolutionary change in the human semicircular ear canals during the development of upright posture. Collaborating with them in their research and an author on the paper is Dr Brian Day from Institute of Neurology at University College London.
UNSW
Poor Nic !
Nic Fosdike in the hands of trainers after hitting his head on the MCG turf after a bumb from Shannon Motlop
Mark Thompson (Geelong Coach)
Look who we saw at the MCG . . .
Just turning round to ask Random Man's advice on what Geelong should do . . .
Maybe a new coach ??? lol
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Abraham Maslow
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a theory in psychology that Abraham Maslow proposed in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation, which he subsequently extended.
His theory contends that as humans meet 'basic needs', they seek to satisfy successively 'higher needs' that occupy a set hierarchy.
Maslow studied exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Adams, Elanore Roosevelt, and Fredrick Douglas rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy." (Motivation and Personality, 1987)
From Wikipedia
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