Thursday, May 28, 2009

Exoskeleton from Lockheed Martin


The name of this thing is Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC™). It is powered exoskeleton and should help soldiers, fire-fighters and etc. There are several similar project and I'll post something about them soon. For now it looks like not bad approximation to the creation of true Iron Man :).

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Smartest animal


This is really difficult question. There've been several attempts to order the smartest animals, but always there is big controversy. The firs problem is to define the meaning of the word "smart" or "intelligent", we can say for our propose that this is what we, the humans use to do, inventing tools, learning things, finding relations, speech, art and etc. In my personal opinion most valuable is the creating of things (tools) without previous (or at least not similar) experience. So far probably one of the smartest animals out there is the rook (Corvus frugilegus), and the reason is this article. I'll bet on them instead of the New Caledonian crows because, they have not instincts and previous experience of using and making hooks and pins.

The big question is how to distinguish the intelligence, conscience and thinking, what is the particular quality unique for the humans, where finishes the animal (or machine in the case of robots and programs) and begins the human, if very smart animal is more intelligent then human (child, old, mental disable) will this make the animal human and the human animal. I'll keep looking for answers.

See more: BBC (best of the articles with 3 short videos for illustration), Daily Mail, Science Daily

Saturday, May 23, 2009

KOBIAN: Emotional Humanoid Robot


Here is the next step toward true humanoid robot (I mean indistinguishable without proper examination. It was presented by Atsuo Takanishi (Takanishi Laboratory), research organization NEDO and Japanese-Italian project RoboCasa.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

The American lobster - largest arthropod recorded


An American lobster (Homarus americanus) is probably the heaviest specimen of arthropod ever recorded. According to the Guinness World Records, the largest lobster was caught 1977 in Nova Scotia, Canada, and weighed 20.15 kg (44.4 lb). It measured in estimation around 1.07 m (3.9 ft) along the body. On the picture is supposed to be this specimen, I can't find the origin of the photo, but it was said in several websites to be Nova Scotia's lobster.

Source: Wikipedia

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Honda Develops Brain-Machine Interface Technology


Honda, ATR and Shimadzu jointly develop brain-machine interface technology enabling control of a robot by human thought alone. Exciting future we will have.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Super Mouse


Genetic engineers created faster, slimmer, stronger, longer living and interestingly more aggressive mouse. I am curious to know if somebody works out already how to apply this to humans.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Most poisonous plant


Seems that the Oleander (Nerium oleander) is probably the most poisonous plant. In Wikipedia we will see that around 0.5 mg per kilogram of body weight is lethal to many animals or more poisonous than once common rat poison Strychnine

Sources: HowStuffWorks, Wikipedia

How Stuff Works

How stuff works is very useful site. One can learn a lot of curious and useful things.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

HRP-4C Gynoid



HRP-4C is a humanoid robot. In my opinion this robot is interesting with the overall design recreating human appearance. Probably something like that, but with a little improvement in the hardware and the artificial intelligence can be used like companion or sex toy. On second thought, probably there is no need of too much improvements, apparently people are satisfied to use just rubber dolls.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Boston Dynamics BigDog Robot



This is BigDog - a dynamically stable quadruped robot. It is powered by simple gasoline engine. Impressive to look how it regain balance just like an animal.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Belgian UFO wave

The Belgian UFO wave refers to a series of sightings of triangular UFOs in Belgium, which lasted from November 29, 1989 to April 1990.
The Belgian UFO wave peaked with the events of the night of 30/31 March 1990. On that night unknown objects were tracked on radar, photographed, and were sighted by an estimated 13,500 people on the ground - 2,600 of whom filed written statements describing in detail what they had seen. Following the incident the Belgian air force released a report detailing the events of that night.

After some researches my conclusion is that there are too much serious witnesses in this case and it is probably true.

Source: WIkipedia

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Python vs tiger


This is real (so I believe) fight between young bengal tiger and probably reticulated python (Python reticulatus). The python is at least 6-7 m (this mean about 20 feet, but in the article is said to be 25 or 30 feet, that mean near 10 m, but on other hand I've seen pictures of 8 m python and it seem somewhat bigger). The result is apparently draw. Here is an explanation what exactly happen and how this movie is filmed by Frank Buck (November, 1932).

Source: Modernmechanix

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

The world's largest rat

The Gambian Pouch Rat is the largest rat in the world according many sources. The true is that it is rather the biggest rat-like creature, because the nutria is double in size and that rat is not true rat. He can grow up to 3 or 4 kg. The creature on the picture is may be him smaller cousin - the Emin's rat, I am don't sure. Here we have also funny video where we can see how smart they can be.


Source: Altpet

Largest aircraft


The world's largest aircraft is Antonov An-225 Mriya. Maximum gross weight 640 tonnes. Lenght 84 m and wingspan 88.4 m.

Little Mammoth's Mother


Mainly for Russian speakers. Old good Russian animated cartoon. There really were good artists years ago.

Bear Power


The Grizzly bear is really very strong. The bear was only playing with the man, but if they fight the man would not have a chance. I am look forward for real fight man vs bear.

Tiger VS Crocodile


Tiger VS Crocodile
It is small part but is likely winner to be the tiger.