PETMAN - First Wallking Robot With Human Gait

Boston Dynamics are again on the cutting edge on the technology. Apparently they developed the first robot with human-like gait. The most surprising thing to me was the engine, which sounds like something with internal combustion. They are managing to integrate side by side the near impossible human-like gait with fairly not high technological combustion engine. It looks like BigDog, with which apparently share same technology.

Source: Boston Dynamics

Wingsuit flying

Another item in my list of hobbies for when I'll be rich.
From Wikipedia: "Wingsuit flying is the sport of flying the human body through the air using a special jumpsuit, called a wingsuit, that shapes the human body into an airfoil which can create lift. The wingsuit creates the airfoil shape with fabric sewn between the legs and under the arms. It is also known by the public as a birdman suit or squirrel suit.

A wingsuit can be flown from any point that provides sufficient altitude to glide through the air, such as skydiving aircraft or BASE jumping exit points.

The wingsuit flier wears parachute equipment designed for skydiving or BASE jumping. The flier will deploy the parachute at a planned altitude and unzip the arm wings, if necessary, so he/she can reach up to the control toggles and fly to a normal parachute landing."

"[The]amount of lift and drag although most wingsuits have a 2 to 1 ratio. This means that for every foot they drop, they go 2 feet forward." Also "glide ratios of 2.5:1 are commonplace" and "A typical skydiver's terminal velocity in belly to earth orientation ranges from 110 to 140 mph (180–225 km/h). A wingsuit can reduce these speeds dramatically. An instantaneous velocity of -25 mph (-40 km/h) has been recorded." Here is not clear what exactly is the maximum speed along the main vector of movement, if it is 40km/h should be reasonable to think that will be developed way to safe landing without parachute. However there are attempts to sort this problem out.

Source: Wikipedia, Video demonstration off, around, and over cliffs in Norway

Largest Athropod - part II

(Photo and article courtesy of Dick Allen)

Just I thought I sorted out this problem and this one pop up. It was caught 1926 in Maine and had weight of 23.36kg (51.5pound) and total length of 1.28m (50.5in) or 83.8cm (33in) nose to tail. Amazing beast.

Sources: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

See more: The American lobster - largest arthropod recorded

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 :).

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

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.

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

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.

Wild Boar chasing Leopard

Sometimes the prey chase the predator.

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.

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.

DNA Extraction Home Experiment

DNA Extraction in the kitchen. Something like introduction in Biohacking.

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.

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.

SDS - Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis

This is something related to mu current hobby. I found really good explanation how the SDS-Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) works.

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

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

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.