At the 1939 World’s Fair, Westinghouse, which had an interest in robotics even a decade before, unveiled two robot prototypes: a humanoid named Elektro and a dog named Sparko.
Elektro was able to
walk, count and smoke cigarettes (which likely did not make his voice raspy, since he talked using a record player) while Sparko was able to sit up and bark. Take that, G.E.!
Sparko and Elektro. The big guy was 7 feet tall and weighed 300 lbs. No wonder science fiction was scary.
While the current radiation concerns in Japan are not on a par with atomic bombs, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki can provide some insight into what effects, if any, radiation might have on residents of Japan today.
A review article in the latest issue of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness (free to read - http://www.dmphp.org) looks at risk estimates and summarizes what has been learned from following the survivors for 63 years.
Depression erodes intimate relationships not just by making one person withdrawn, needy, or hostile, but also because it impairs a depressed person's ability to perceive the others' thoughts and feelings. It impairs what psychologists call "empathic accuracy" and that can exacerbate alienation, depression in a vicious cycle.
A clay tablet discovered Greece changes what is known about the origins of literacy in the western world, obviously a good thing, and, unfortunately, also about the origins of bureaucracy. Measuring 2 inches by 3 inches, the tablet fragment is the earliest known written record in Europe, dating back to between 1450 and 1350 B.C., 100-150 years before the tablets from the Petsas House at Mycenae.
RMS Titanic - Lessons From HistoryTitanic 100 FestivalBelfast's most famous creation, Titanic, will be commemorated in an extended annual festival from 31 March - 31 May 2011, which will include key dates of the ship's build.
http://www.belfastcity.gov.uk/titanic/
It is unlikely that anybody involved in the design, construction and operation of RMS Titanic ever claimed that she was unsinkable. But the rumor persists that the claim was made.
Green energy technologies like wind, solar and biomass presently constitute only 3.6% of fuel used to generate electricity in the U.S.
Energy expert Vaclav Smil calculates that achieving Al Gore's renewable energy goal in a decade would incur building costs and write-downs on the order of $4 trillion, note Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren at Forbes.
The disaster at the Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, is still unfolding. It is still not ensured that the reactors will stay under the partial control achieved. The media keep downplaying the problems, focusing on any good news it can make up: That electricity has been brought to all six reactors is “news” every day again for over a week now. The electricity, although brought in, is still neither connected to most of the reactor blocks, nor do you hear anybody asking what electricity is supposed to do with the broken equipment in those blocks.
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Time and space are joined at the hip. I mean this in a completely naked, having an amazing animal experience together kind of way. A review of the history of physics will support this scandalous claim.
[click or skip, the video is a reading of contents contained herein]
"Despite reports of concern from caregivers and some studies, there are limited data on population-based estimates and predictors of risk for wandering associated with ASD/DD." --ICD-9-CM Coordination and Maintenance Committee Meeting
Wandering is a real issue with real, present-day ramifications. While it's important to not dive into knee-jerk reactions every time the news provides us with another example of wandering incidents and deaths, it does put a real face on the issue. It isn't some hypothetical what-if; parents and caregivers are dealing with it right now.
Across the world, fewer people are buying the "I have a glandular disorder" excuse for obesity.
As the average waistline increases but the numbers of obese people skew that result, society is getting less tolerant of heavier folk - even in cultures where being big is considered better, according to a cross-cultural study of attitudes toward obesity to be published in the April issue of Current Anthropology.
The study didn't test what is driving the shift in attitude, but the researchers say that "newer forms of educational media, including global public health campaigns" may be playing a role.
