Stephen Hawking Uses CG to Bring Aliens to Life
heraldsun - They aren't just any aliens - they are extraterrestrial life as only one of the universe's best brains could envisage them.
Stephen Hawking has taken advantage of the latest computer graphics to display his versions of ET, based on hard science, for a new documentary series, Into The Universe.
Picture gallery: Hawking's aliens come to life
The British theoretical physicist, trapped in a body paralysed by motor neurone disease, and author of the best seller A Brief History of Time, spent three years to finish the series, which airs this weekend on the Discovery Channel.
The 68-year-old suggests in the first episode that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist.
He points out the universe has 100 billion galaxies, each with hundreds of millions of stars, and that in such a huge place Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.
"To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," he said. "The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."
Among the theoretical aliens are terrestrial herbivores and carnivores, lizard-like predators with limb membranes that allow them to glide using venom-loaded stingers to bring down a two-legged herbivore that has a huge vacuum snout to suck up food.
Such land-based aliens would probably feed and move in ways similar to animals on Earth.
Prof Hawking also came up with a squid-like creature that could feed on the bottom of the salty ocean thought to exist below the icy crust of Jupiter's moon Europa.
Life on planets where the average temperatures are below -150C would require organic components and physiologies radically different than those found on terrestrial planets largely dependent on liquid water.
**********
Eye Telescope Implant Approved by FDA
cbc - A U.S. regulator has approved the use of a small telescope that can be implanted in one eye to help some patients suffering a loss of vision.
Two versions of the implantable miniature telescope can replace the natural lens and provide an image that is magnified by 2.2 or 2.7 times, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday.
The telescope magnifies and projects images onto a healthy portion of the retina, but can be used in one eye only; the other eye is needed for peripheral vision.
The device could help some patients suffering from end-stage age-related macular degeneration, a disease related to aging that is a leading cause of vision loss for people over 60.
The telescope is intended for patients 75 and older with severe to profound vision impairment caused by blind spots, the FDA said. Because the brain must merge the views from two eyes into a single image, patients will need rehabilitation after the surgery to make it work, the FDA said.
A clinical test of the telescope involving 219 patients found that 75 per cent had their vision improve from severe or profound impairment to moderate impairment.
Due to the size of the device, implantation can cause other problems, including the need for a corneal transplant, the FDA warned.
The agency and manufacturer VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies Inc. of Saratoga, Calif., agreed to create detailed labelling to communicate the risks.
And as a condition of approval, VisionCare must conduct two studies, following up existing patients and beginning a study of 770 new patients, the FDA said.
The telescope costs $15,000 US, VisionCare said.
**********
Death by Condiment
news.com.au - Six workers drowned after falling into a giant vat of tomato sauce at a factory in India, the Indian Express reported.
The horrifying incident unfolded Wednesday evening when a female worker slipped and fell into the 6m deep tank.
As five colleagues dived in to grab her they were all overcome by fumes given off from fermenting vegetables and drowned, the newspaper said.
Two more workers were in a hospital following the tragic incident at the Akansha Food Products unit in Lucknow, in the Uttar Pradesh region of northeastern India.
Investigators say the woman, named as Usha, was scooping up fermented vegetables from the vat when she slipped off her ladder and plunged into the raw material used to make the sauce.
“When the woman fell in, the other workers jumped in to help her,” said Rajiv Krishna, Lucknow's Senior Superintendent of Police.
The factory owner was taken into custody, the Indian Express said.
**********
Fish Can Talk...Also Listen
telegraph - Far from being a place of deep silence, the underwater world is abuzz with the sound of fish sweet-talking the opposite sex, warning others of danger, giving directions, and general background chatter.
Predators may even hunt out prey by intercepting fish talk, researcher Shahriman Ghazali of Auckland University said.
"All fish can hear but not all can make sound -- pops and other sounds made by vibrating their swim bladder, a muscle they can contract," he said.
Mr Ghazali, who is presenting a paper on his research to fellow marine scientists in Wellington this week, hopes to decipher the contexts for different types of communication.
"This is the next step. We are 99 per cent sure they are fish sounds.
"Now we want to find out what the sounds mean," he told the New Zealand Herald.
The main reasons appear to be attracting mates, scaring off predators, and orientating themselves around reefs, he said.
He placed groups of fish into tanks in a laboratory, gave them a few weeks to settle in, and monitored them using an underwater microphone and instruments that detect water movement.
It emerged that gurnard are among the most talkative, making distinctive grunts and keeping up a pattern of chatter throughout the day.
Cod, on the other hand, stay mostly silent, except while spawning when they become very vocal.
"The hypothesis is that they are using the sound as a synchronisation so that the male and female release their eggs at the same time for fertilisation," Mr Ghazali said.
"Outside spawning season, you won't hear a sound from them."
Fish known as bigeyes produce a popping sound, which appears to operate as a sort of Morse code.
Mr Ghazali debunked a commonly held belief that crayfish in New Zealand waters make a similar popping sound when divers approach.
"I didn't get any sound from any of them," he said.
He also advised pet owners who tap the bowls of goldfish not to hold their breath for a reply.
"Goldfish have excellent hearing but they don't make any sound whatsoever," he said.
NOTE: I must have had some dumb and/or deaf fish because they never listened to me. Though, I'm positive that the corals heard me...Lon
Fortean / Oddball News - 7/10/2010
