BRUTAL TORTURE

FLAYING

In one version of the Flaying Torture, the victim’s arms were tied to a pole above his head while his feet were tied below. His body was now completely exposed and the torturer, with the help of a small knife, peeled off the victim’s skin slowly. In most cases, the torturer peeled off his facial skin first, slowly working his way down to the victim’s feet. Most victims died before the torturer even reached their waist.

5300 YEAR OLD BODY FOUND

Scientists have found 19 living relatives of Ötzi the Iceman who was found frozen in the Alps
Scientists in Austria have found 19 living descendants of a prehistoric iceman whose 5,300-year-old body was found frozen in the Alps.
Researchers from the Institute of Legal Medicine at Innsbruck Medical University took DNA samples from blood donors in Tyrol in the west of the country.
They managed to match a particular genetic mutation with that of Ötzi, whose body was discovered back in 1991.

Experts now believe that the same mutation might also be found in the nearby rgions of Engadine in Switzerland and the South Tyrol region of Italy.
According to the BBC, Walther Parson from the university, said: 'We have already found Swiss and Italian partners so that we can pursue our research.'
DNA from around 3,700 blood donors were analysed and the men were also asked to provide information on their ancestry.
None of the donors have been informed that they are distantly related to Ötzi.
Since the body was found frozen under the Alps two decades ago, scientists have conducted experiments to learn how he came to be buried between the Austrian and Italian borders more than 5,300 years ago.

A hole in his collarbone suggested he was killed by an arrow, then a brain scan concluded he died from a fall.
But research earlier this year, from the European Academy of Bolzano/Bozen (EURAC) in Germany, discovered he suffered brain damage likely caused by a blow to the head.
In 2001, scientists from Austria's Innsbruck University scanned Ötzi using a CAT scan.
They found dark spots at the back of the iceman mummy's cerebrum and concluded he may have died from a head injury.
It was suggested that falling, after being hit by the arrow, or while climbing, may have caused this head injury.

The mummy was found in September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps, hence the name Ötzi, near the Similaun Mountain and Hauslabjoch on the border between Austria and Italy.
Scientists estimate he was aged around 45, was 5ft 5" tall and weighed about 7.9st when he died.

SCREEN X TECHNOLOGY WITH 270 DEGREE VIEW

A new format that gives movie-goers a panoramic 270 degree view will be rolled out by South Korea's biggest cinema chain this month, using the walls of theatres as additional screens.

Screen X, developed by cinema chain CJ CGV, was on show at the Busan International Film Festival last week in the premiere of a 30-minute spy thriller "The X" , directed by Kim Jee-Woon , a film
commissioned to showcase the expanded three-screen format.

Kim, who directed this year's Arnold Schwarzenegger action adventure "The Last Stand" , said the technology brought a more immersive experience to the cinema.
He likened it to a "horizontal" version of IMAX, a format that offers greater size and resolution than conventional film.      

 

Screen X requires filmmakers to use three cameras to shoot the same scene simultaneously from different angles to create the wider "surround" effect.
"The space in front of you is filled up completely," said Kim. "It provides a new depth for viewers."

"The X" showed off the capabilities of the format in a chase sequence and a dream sequence that seemed to envelop the cinema. Audiences at Busan watching "The X" seemed at first confused whether to look left, right or straight ahead before settling in to the experience.

"It was really fun. I personally don't like 3D or 4D films but this made me feel like I was inside the film," 19-year-old student Jung Gwang-Soo said.

CJ CGV, which also has interests in China, Hong Kong and the United States, has been testing the technology on advertisements, but has remained tight-lipped on installation costs — reportedly between $139,300 and $185,800 per screening room, according to Dow Jones Newswires.
Installation will not be without logistical challenges, given that the effect is lessened in seats positioned to the sides of the cinema.

By the end of October the system will be available in 31 cinemas around South Korea in readiness for a series of planned featurelength productions to be rolled out over the next 12 months.

While Kim said he was excited to be able to explore the possibilities of the new technology — and freely admitted he was more concerned with effects than plot in his first production with it — other directors showcased technology they believe allows the audience to focus more on the stories they are telling. The Israeli-French production "Ana Arabia" , which looks at life in a Jewish-Arabic community, was one of a number of new films screening in Busan that used advanced steadycameras to enable directors to shoot in one single take.

In "Ana Arabia's" case, that was for 74 constant minutes while the Iranian film "Fish & Cat" managed to a single take of 134 minutes. "Ana Arabia's" veteran director Amos Gitai said the technology helped filmmakers engage with their audiences through providing a sense of intimacy not available when using multiple cameras and edits.

AMAZING PHENOMENON

The Silver Lining, The Spider Webs!

An unexpected side-effect of the flooding in parts of Pakistan has been that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising flood waters. Because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water has taken so long to recede, many trees have become cocooned in spiders webs. People in this part of Sindh have never seen this phenome...non before but, they also report that there are now far fewer mosquitoes than they would expect, given the amount of stagnant, standing water that is around. It is thought that the mosquitoes are getting caught in the spiders web, thus, reducing the risk of malaria, which would be one blessing for the people of Sindh, facing so many other hardships after the floods.

CHENNAI DOCTORS REMOVE INFECTED KIDNEY FROM NAVAL BUTTON

A team of doctors from the urology department at the Madras Medical Mission (MMM) has removed a cancerous kidney of a patient through the belly button.

Since the patient was anaemic, doctors had to come up with a way to minimise blood loss. The solution was a laparoendoscopic single site surgery (LESS), which is minimally invasive. While the usual surgical procedure leaves a big scar and takes longer time to heal, LESS decreases pain, blood loss and shortens the recovery period without a scar. 

The 45-year-old patient from Kerala approached doctors at MMM two weeks ago with signs of renal failure. The patient was put on dialysis and just when he was being prepped for a renal transplant, doctors detected a cancerous mass in his right kidney.

Dr Abraham Kurien, chief of urology, said, "Normally we do a laparoscopic surgery which involves multiple incisions. But since the patient was anaemic we decided to do a minimally invasive procedure. LESS was performed a week ago."

The doctors used the regular equipment used to perform a laparoscopy, but instead of making multiple entries, they inserted all the equipment through his belly button. "We used the grasper and held on to the kidney and disconnected it from the other organs. Then we used a clipper to clip the blood vessels and placed the kidney in a specimen retrieval bag and pulled it out through his naval," said the doctor. The kidney measuring 5cm and the mass was taken out as a whole and not broken as the tissue was cancerous and it had to be sent for pathological tests.

Conventionally doctors do open surgeries which leave bigger incisions through which they used their hands to pull the kidney out. Advancement in technology has made it less invasive, making the patient's stay in the hospital shorter. "This procedure has great cosmetic value as it leaves no scar and the patient can leave in two days. Since the same equipment is used as in a regular laparoscopy surgery, the cost of the procedure is the same but the benefits are much higher," said Dr Kurien.

The doctor pointed out that a laparoscopic procedure provides magnified vision so the accuracy level is much higher and there is minimized muscle damage. Additionally, the technique also has no limitations in bending, kneeling or stooping after recovery, compared to the multi-incision method.

TURING BODY INTO AN AUTHENTICATION DEVICE

Why not turn your entire body into an authentication device? After demonstrating the authentication tattoo, Dugan continued, “And that’s something that you wear, but you could also imagine including authentication in just your daily habits. So, I take a vitamin every morning. What if I could take vitamin authentication?”

“This pill has a small chip inside of it with a switch. It also has what amounts to an inside-out potato battery. When you swallow it, the acids in your stomach serve as the electrolyte and power it up. And the switch goes on and off, and it creates an 18-bit ECG-like signal in your body and essentially your entire body becomes your authentication token.”

“That becomes my first superpower,” Dugan continued. “I really want this superpower. It means that my arms are like wires, my hands are like alligator clips. When I touch my phone, my computer, my door, my car, I’m authenticated in.”
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CLOCK THAT MEASURES AGING IN HUMAN DNA FOUND

In a step towards unraveling the mystery of aging, a US scientist has discovered a human body clock tucked away in body's DNA. It measures the age of cells, tissues and organs.

Steve Hovarth of the University of California, Los Angeles found that different parts of the body were aging at different speeds - some faster, others slower. Significantly, diseased organs showed ages many years in ahead of the rest of the normal body. Hovarth's study is reported in the scientific journal Genome Biology on Monday.

Read whole story 

LUNAR LASER COMMUNICATION DEMONSTRATION

WASHINGTON: Nasa's gen-next laser communication system has made history using a pulsed laser beam to transmit data over the 384,633 kilometres between the Moon and Earth.


The data transmission was accomplished at a record-breaking download rate of 622 megabits per second (Mbps) - six times faster than radio communications from the Moon.

Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) is Nasa's first system for two-way communication using a laser instead of radio waves.

It has also demonstrated an error-free data upload rate of 20 Mbps transmitted from the primary ground station in New Mexico to the spacecraft currently orbiting the Moon.

"LLCD is the first step on our roadmap toward building the next generation of space communication capability," said Badri Younes, Nasa's deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation (SCaN) in Washington.

Since NASA first ventured into space, it has relied on radio frequency (RF) communication. However, RF is reaching its limit as demand for more data capacity continues to increase.

The development and deployment of laser communications will enable NASA to extend communication capabilities such as increased image resolution and 3-D video transmission from deep space.

LLCD is a short-duration experiment and the precursor to NASA's long-duration demonstration, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD).

LADEE is a 100-day robotic mission to provide data that will help Nasa determine whether dust caused the mysterious glow astronauts observed on the lunar horizon during several Apollo missions. It also will explore the Moon's atmosphere

JET PACK

Jet pack , usually worn on the back in sci-fi, that use jets of escaping gases (or in some cases liquid water) to allow a single user to fly. TAM is the first and only company in the world that produces a complete package of a custom designed Rocket Belt using the most advanced technology and aerospace materials with the special distillation machine to produce your own rocket grade fuel hydrogen peroxide. (Via TAM)

TELEPORTATION

Teleportation has been successful on smaller objects according to a Study.
“We were able to perform a quantum teleportation experiment for the first time ever outside a university laboratory,” said Rupert Ursin, a researcher at the Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Vienna in Austria.

In q-Teleportation it is the quantum states of the objects that are destroyed and recreated, and not the objects themselves. Therefore, q-Teleportation cannot teleport animate or inanimate matter (or energy) in its physical entirety. The device thus creates a replica of an original thing  at a new position and the original thing ceased to exist once the replicas were created. (via National Geographic.)

LIGHTSABER

And we thought they were just sci-fi! 

The lightsaber consists of a polished metal hilt which projects a blade of energy (plasma) about one meter long. The lightsaber’s blade cuts through most substances without resistance. It leaves cauterized wounds in flesh, but can be deflected by another lightsaber’s blade, or an energy shield or wall.

HowStuffWorks has a detailed tutorial on how to create a lightsaber. It also verifies that lightsabers have been sold on ebay. There are some more theoretical explanations on the existence of light-saber technology, however we couldn’t actually discover more details about the actual product in existence. We still added it to the list because we wanted it to be real so bad.

After all who wouldn’t want to see lightsaber battles as part of Olympics?

NEUTRON STAR

Neutron stars are ancient remnants of stars that have reached the end of their evolutionary journey through space and time.

These interesting objects are born from once-large stars that grew to four to eight times the size of our own sun before exploding in catastrophic supernovae. After such an explosion blows a star's outer layers into space, the core remains—but it no longer produces nuclear fusion. With no outward pressure from fusion to counterbalance gravity's inward pull, the star condenses and collapses in upon itself.
Despite their small diameters—about 12.5 miles (20 kilometers)—neutron stars boast nearly 1.5 times the mass of our sun, and are thus incredibly dense.

Just a sugar cube of neutron star matter would weigh about one hundred million tons on Earth.

A neutron star's almost incomprehensible density causes protons and electrons to combine into neutrons—the process that gives such stars their name. The composition of their cores is unknown, but they may consist of a neutron superfluid or some unknown state of matter.
Neutron stars pack an extremely strong gravitational pull, much greater than Earth's. This gravitational strength is particularly impressive because of the stars' small size.

When they are formed, neutron stars rotate in space. As they compress and shrink, this spinning speeds up because of the conservation of angular momentum—the same principle that causes a spinning skater to speed up when she pulls in her arms.

ARGUMENT SUGGESTED AOLLO 11 NEVER LANDED ON MOON

Argument 1: The American Flag is Flapping in the video, as though there is a breeze blowing through the airless, low gravity surface of the moon.

Argument 2: In one of the most Famous photos of the 1969 moon Landing video,
both Neil Armstrong and the Eagle lunar lander are reflected in Buzz Aldrin's
visor, prompting the argument that the landing was faked because while only two astronauts flew the mission,
both are visible in the picture. The question is, who took the picture?

Argument 3: If the Astronauts were in space, walking around on the moon, taking pictures, then where are all the stars? The astronauts didn't even make mention of stars during the 15 minute footage. With front row seats to the spectacular sights of space, wouldn't they have even mentioned stars, let alone take pictures of them?

Argument 4: One of the most convincing arguments in public opinion. The lunar lander, the Eagle
is photographed undisturbed on the surface on the moon. The picture was reportedly taken only a
few hours after the 1969 moon landing. Questions arise because the module is shown sitting on a relatively flat surfaceof what looks to be undisturbed lunar soil. So where is the crater? Shouldn't the lander's descent have been accompanied by a large dust cloud strong enough to have caused some kind of indentation in the surface?


Argument 5: A mission picture shows astronaut Buzz Aldrin standing on the foot pad of the Eagle's ladder.
His knees are bent which would suggest he is about to jump to the next rung. Conspiracy theorists point out that
Aldrin is seen in the Lander's shadow, yet he remains clearly visible. In addition to many strange looking shadow
pictures, some shadows don't seem to be parallel to each other. In addition, some objects which should be 'shadowed'
appear well lit, prompting the suggestion that the light was coming from multiple light sources, such as studio lights.

Argument 6: The telling Boot. This theory surrounds an image of Buzz Aldrin's boot as he lifts his foot to record an image for studying the moon's soil properties. Pictures from the Apollo mission show several well defined boot prints made on the lunar surface. Too defined, according to some sceptics who state the astronauts' boot prints are a bit too well defined and clear. They were imprinted in a bone dry world, for a print to be as well formed as those photographed on the Apollo mission, the imprinted material could have only been wet sand or something similar.

Argument 7: Not a very strong argument, but an argument none the less.
When Armstrong and Aldrin departed from their July 1969 mission, they left behind part of the Eagle,
the U.S. flag, and along with a few instruments and several mementos. Among them a seismometer
that is depicted in of the Mission photos as Aldrin adjusts the piece of equipment.
Skeptics argue that with today's technology and that of telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope
capable of peering into vastly distant parts of the universe, scientists should definitely be able to see the
these still on the moon, yet no sightings have yet been made, or at least reported - not even by NASA.

Argument 8: In an image of Buzz Aldrin setting up a foil sheet for collecting solar pictures near the eagles,
strange patterns of light appear in the upper left part of the photo. According to Conspiracy theorists, this is strong evidence of a 'studio' hoax as those unexplained reflections
come from studio lights on a production set.

Li Fi

Chinese scientists have successfully developed a 

new cheaper way of getting connected to internet by using signals sent through light bulbs instead of radio frequencies as in Wi-Fi, a move expected to radically change process of online connectivity.

Four computers can be connected to internet through onewatt LED bulb using light as a carrier instead of traditional radio frequencies, as in Wi-Fi, said Chi Nan, an information technology professor with Shanghai's Fudan University.

Under the new discovery dubbed as 'Li-Fi', a light bulb with embedded microchips can produce data rates as fast as 150 megabits per second, which is speedier than the average broadband connection in China, said Chi, who leads a Li-Fi research team including scientists from the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The term Li-Fi was coined by Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh in the UK and refers to a type of visible light communication technology that delivers a networked, mobile, high-speed communication solution in a similar manner as Wi-Fi .

With Li-Fi cost-effective as well as efficient, netizens should be excited to view 10 sample Li-Fi kits that will be on display at the China International Industry Fair that will kick off on November 5 in Shanghai. The current wireless signal transmission equipment is expensive and low in efficiency, Chi said.

"As for cell phones, millions of base stations have been established around the world to strengthen the signal but most of the energy is consumed on their cooling systems," she said. "The energy utilisation rate is only 5 per cent," state-run Xinhua news agency quoted her as saying.

Li-Fi was touted as a boon to China netizen community, the highest in the world with about 600 million connections . Compared with base stations, the number of light bulbs that can be used is practically limitless.

Meanwhile, Chinese people are replacing the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs with LED light bulbs at a fast pace. "Wherever there is an LED light bulb, there is an Internet signal. Turn off the light and there is no signal," Chi said. However, there is still a long way to go to make Li-Fi a commercial success.

"If the light is blocked, then the signal will be cut off," Chi said. More importantly, according to the scientist, the development of a series of key related pieces of technology, including light communication controls as well as microchip design and manufacturing, is still in an experimental period.

WORST RAPE CASE

Junko Furuta

The crime:
In November of 1988, Boy A (then 18), Boy B (Jo Kamisaku, then 17, Kamisaku was a new family name he took after being released from prison), Boy C (then 16) and Boy D (then 17) from Tokyo abducted and held Furuta, a second year high school (grade 11) student from Saitama Prefecture in Misato, for 44 days. They kept her captive in the house owned by the parents of Boy C.

To forestall a manhunt, Boy A coerced Furuta into calling her own parents and telling them that she had run away from home, but was with "a friend" and was not in danger. He also browbeat her into posing as one of the boys' girlfriends when the parents of the house where she was held were around, but when it became clear that the parents would not call the police, he dropped this pretext. Furuta tried to escape several times, begging the parents more than once to help her, but they did nothing, apparently out of fear that Boy A would hurt them. Boy A was at the time a low-level yakuza leader and had bragged that he could use his connections to kill anyone who interfered.

According to their statements at their trial, the four of them raped her, beat her, introduced foreign objects including an iron rod into her vagina, made her drink her own urine and was fed cockroaches, inserted fireworks into her anus, and set them off, forced Furuta to masturbate, cut her nipple with pliers, dropped dumbbells onto her stomach, and burned her with cigarettes and lighters. (One of the burnings was punishment for attempting to call the police.) At one point her injuries were so severe that according to one of the boys it took more than an hour for her to crawl downstairs to use the bathroom. They also related that "possibly a hundred different people" knew that Furuta had been imprisoned there, but it is not clear if this means they visited the house at different times while she was imprisoned there, or themselves either raped or abused her. When the boys refused to let her leave, she begged them on several occasions to "kill her and get it over with".

The day niagara froze ,1911.

TIME STOPS AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

According to Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, the speed of light can never change—it’s always stuck at approximately 300,000,000 meters/second, no matter who’s observing it. This in itself is incredible enough, given that nothing can move faster than light, but it’s still very theoretical.

The really cool part of Special Relativity is an idea called time dilation, which states that the faster you go, the slower time passes for you relative to your surroundings. Seriously—if you go take a ride in your car for an hour, you will have aged ever-so-slightly less than if you had just sat at home on the computer. The extra nanoseconds you get out of it might not be worth the price of gas, but hey, it’s an option.
Of course, time can only slow down so much, and the formula works out so that if you’re moving at the speed of light, time isn’t moving at all.

Now, before you go out and try some get-immortal-quick scheme, just note that moving at the speed of light isn’t actually possible, unless you happen to be made of light. Technically speaking, moving that fast would require an infinite amount of energy.

THE MAN WHO NEVER SLEEPS

Sixty-four-year-old Thai Ngoc, known as Hai Ngoc, said he could not sleep at night after getting a fever in 1973, and has counted infinite numbers of sheep during more than 11,700 consecutive sleepless nights.

"I don't know whether the insomnia has impacted my health or not. But I'm still healthy and can farm normally like others,"

Ngoc said. Proving his health, the elderly resident of Que Trung commune, Que Son district said he can carry two 50kg bags of fertilizer down 4km of road to return home every day. His wife said, "My husband used to sleep well, but these days, even liquor cannot put him down."

She said when Ngoc went to Da Nang for a medical examination, doctors gave him a clean bill of health, except a minor decline in liver function. Ngoc currently lives on his 5ha farm at the foot of a mountain busy with farming and taking care of pigs and chickens all day. His six children live at their house in Que Trung. Ngoc often does extra farm work or guards his farm at night to prevent theft, saying he used three months of sleepless nights to dig two large ponds to raise fish.

THE TORTURE KING

Tim Cridland doesn't seem to feel pain like the rest of people. He astounded everyone by pushing needles into his arms without flinching and he now performs a terrifying act for audiences all over America.

Scientific tests have shown that Tim can tolerate much higher levels of pain than are humanly possible. He explains that, by using mind over matter, he is able to push skewers through his body and put up with extreme heat and cold unharmed - but to do this safely he has extensively studied human anatomy, because puncturing an artery could be fatal.

GOOGLE GLASS

Google Glass (styled "GLΛSS") is a wearable computer with an optical head-mounted display (OHMD) that is being developed by Google in the Project Glass research and development project,with a mission of producing a mass-market ubiquitous computer.

Google Glass displays information in a smartphone-like hands-free format,that can communicate with the Internet via natural language voice commands.
 
While the frames do not currently have lenses fitted to them, Google is considering partnerships with sunglass retailers such as Ray-Ban or Warby Parker, and may also open retail stores to allow customers to try on the device.The Explorer Edition cannot be used by people who wear prescription glasses, but Google has confirmed that Glass will eventually work with frames and lenses that match the wearer's prescription; the glasses will be modular and therefore possibly attachable to normal prescription glasses.

Glass is being developed by Google X,which has worked on other futuristic technologies such as driverless cars. The project was announced on Google+ by Project Glass lead Babak Parviz, an electrical engineer who has also worked on putting displays into contact lenses; Steve Lee, a product manager and "geolocation specialist"; and Sebastian Thrun, who developed Udacity as well as worked on the autonomous car project. Google has patented the design of Project Glass. Thad Starner, an augmented reality expert, is a technical lead/manager on the project.

For more: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass

THE ONLY SINGLE CASE OF IMMORTAL CELLS

There is only one known case of a person having immortal cells (cells that can divide indefinitely outside of the human body, defying the Hayflick Limit) and that is of a woman named Henrietta Lacks.


In 1951, 31 year old Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer, which she died from within the year. Unknown to her and her family (i.e. without informed consent) a surgeon took a tissue sample from her tumor that was passed on to a Dr. George Gey. A scientist for the John Hopkins University Tissue Culture Laboratory, Gey propagated Lacks’ tissue sample into an immortal cell line – the HeLa cell line (pictured above). The cells from Lacks’ tumour have an active version of the telomerase enzyme (telomerase is the mechanism by which cells age or are aged) and proliferate abnormally fast. On the day of Henrietta Lacks’ death, Dr. Gey announced to the world that a new age in medical research had begun – one that might provide a cure for cancer.

HeLa cells were utilised in 1954 by Jonas Salk to develop the cure for polio. Since then they’ve been used in researching cancer, AIDS, the effects of radiation and toxic substances, and for mapping genes, among other things.

Today, the HeLa cells are so common in laboratories that they contaminate many other cell cultures and have rendered some biological studies invalid through their presence. There are also more HeLa cells alive today than when Henrietta Lacks was alive – they outweigh her physical mass by many times. Tragically, Lacks was never told of the immensely valuable contribution her cells made to science and her family was not informed until many years later that her cells were being used for research purposes (a 1990 court ruling later verified Lacks’ hospital as the owner of her discarded tissue and cells).

I highly recommend reading this story for a better picture of Henrietta Lacks’ life and the consequences of her cancer.

JET MAN

Inventor and former Swiss Air Force fighter pilot, Yves Rossy, jumped from a plane over Calais, France and flew 200 mph crossing the English Channel in 13 minutes before landing in Dover, England.

Earlier this year he unfol ded the wings on his back and flew 186 mph (300 kilometers) above the Swiss Alps.

Using four small jet engines attached to his carbon wings, he climbed at 200 ft per minute before executing a series of stunts for a crowd of reporters watching from a mountain top.

The spectacular demonstration was the first public revelation of his latest invention, which he spent five years developing.

"It is absolute freedom" says Rossy.
The inventor says his 120 lb Jetman suit will eventually be available to the public but it's still a few years away.
The flight over the English Channel was his second public demonstration. He is planning his next flight through the Grand Canyon.
Yves Rossy has completed his flight over the Grand Canyon. He jumped out of a helicopter at 2,440 metres (8,000 feet) and soared over the Canyon at 330 km (205 mph) for eight minutes before deploying his parachute.

"My first flight in the US is sure to be one of the most memorable experiences in my life, not only for the sheer beauty of the Grand Canyon but the honor to fly in sacred Native American lands," said Rossy.

SINGLE WHEEL BIKE

This wild new motorcycle, invented by 19-year-old Ben J. Poss Gulak, is among the latest inventions to capture attention.

Debuting at the National Motorcycle Show in Toronto, the "Uno" uses gyro technology for balance and acceleration. It's a battery charged machine that accelerates by leaning forward and slowing down by leaning backwards.The Uno weighs approximately 129 pounds (58 kg.) and has a top speed of 25 mph (40 klms).

Since featuring Ben's invention, he has continued to develop and progress with his innovative product.

He won second place in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, and first prize in Popular Science's Invention Awards. Ben also appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and on the popular invention television show "Dragon's Den" where he received 1.25 million dollars from investors.

Gulak continues to develop and commercialize his invention while studying engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The latest prototype, known as the Uno 3, can automatically transform itself from a uno-dicycle into a conventional looking motorcycle, which allows for greater acceleration, speed and stability.

Ben shares this advice for inventors, "When you have an idea, it's easy to get discouraged. There are so many people who will tell you that you're wasting your time. The biggest thing is to not let people get you down. If you really believe in something - keep going after it because there is always a way and you can make your dreams come true."

BOY WHO CAN SEE IN COMPLETE DARKNESS

A young boy from China, who was born with extremely bright, shining blue eyes, has doctors baffled by his ability to see in complete darkness.

Nong Youhui of Dahua, China, has eyes that reflect neon green when light is shined directly on them like those of a Siamese cat, which can also see very well in the dark.
Doctors have studied Nong’s eyes ever since his dad took him to the hospital when he was an infant, concerned about his beaming blue irises.

“They told me he would grow out of it and that his eyes would stop glowing and turn black like most Chinese people but they never did”, his Dad said.

Though Nong can play outside like a regular child, he experiences discomfort in very bright sunlight.
To test just how well Nong can see in the dark, a Chinese journalist gave him a written questionnaire to complete in a pitch black room. Nong was able to read and write perfectly in this environment. He can see as clearly in the dark as most people can during the day.
According to the World Record Academy, Nong is the first human to display perfect sight in the dark.

THE HUMAN TREE

Epidermodysplasia verruciformis is an extremely rare disorder that makes people prone to widespread human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. This infection causes scaly macules and papules (cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas) to grow on the hands, feet, and even face. 

These skin “eruptions” appear as wart-like lesions — and even wood-like and horn-like growths — with reddish-brown pigmented plaques. Typically, the skin tumors start to emerge in people between the age of 20 and 40, and the growths tend to appear on areas exposed to the sun. Also called Lewandowsky-Lutz dysplasia, there is no known cure, though treatments to scale back the growths are possible.

The disorder was brought to the public’s attention in November 2007 when a video of a 34-year-old Indonesian man named Dede Koswara appeared on the internet. In 2008, he underwent surgery to have 13 pounds (6 kg) of the warts removed. After the lesions and horns were extracted from his hands, head, torso, and feet, his hands were grafted with new skin. In all, about 95% of the warts were removed.

PROGERIA

This genetic disorder is as rare as it is severe. The classic form of the disease, called Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria, causes accelerated aging.

Most children who have progeria essentially die of age-related diseases around the age of 13, but some can live into their 20s. Death is typically caused by a heart attack or stroke. It affects as few as one per eight million live births.

The disease is caused by a mutation in the LMNA gene, a protein that provides support to the cell nucleus. Other symptoms of progeria include rigid (sclerotic) skin, full body baldness (alopecia), bone abnormalities, growth impairment, and a characteristic “sculptured” nasal tip.

Progeria is of great interest to gerontologists who hope connect genetic factors to the aging process. Image: HBO.

LONELY PLANET WITHOUT A STAR

An international team of astronomers have accidentally found a ‘never before seen’ planet ‘floating’ without orbiting a star, some 80 light years away from earth. It is a mere 12 million years old, a newborn in space terms.

The planet, now known as PSO J318.5-22 has a mass roughly six times that of Jupiter and was formed only 12 million years ago. While that sounds ancient, in planetary terms it is considered a mere infant. 
Its most unique aspect is its similar mass, color, and energy output to directly imaged planets, the press release on the university’s website says.

“PSO J318.5-22 is not orbiting a star so it will be much easier for us to study. It is going to provide a wonderful view into the inner workings of gas-giant planets like Jupiter shortly after their birth,” Niall Deacon of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, and a co-author of the study, said.

THE DOOR TO HELL

The Door to Hell is a natural gas field in Derweze (also spelled Darvaza, meaning "gate"), Ahal Province, Turkmenistan. The Door to Hell is noted for its natural gas fire which has been burning continuously since it was lit by Soviet petrochemical scientists in 1971, fed by the rich natural gas deposits in the area. The pungent smell of burning sulfur pervades the area for some distance.

The site was identified by Soviet scientists in 1971 It was thought to be a substantial oil field site. The scientists set up a drilling rig and camp near by, and started drilling operations to assess the quantity of gas reserve available at the site. As the Soviets were pleased with the success of finding the gas resources, they started storing the gas. The ground beneath the drilling rig and camp collapsed into a wide crater and disappeared. No lives were lost in the incident. However, large quantities of methane gas were released, creating an environmental problem and posing a potential danger to the people of the nearby villages. 
 

 Fearing the release of further poisonous gases from the cavern, the scientists decided to burn it off. They thought that it would be safer to burn it than to extract it from underground through expensive methods. Environmentally, gas firing is the next best solution when the circumstances are such that it cannot be extracted for use. Methane gas released into the atmosphere is also a dangerous greenhouse gas whose potential for global warming is much higher than that of the carbon dioxide created when it burns.At that time, expectations were that the gas would burn within days, but it is still burning, more than four decades after it was set on fire^.

50 YEARS OF PREGNANCY

This story might sound unbelievable to you, but it is true!!

 

In less than 300 cases like these have been noted in the last 400 years of medical literature.In the year 1955 in a small village outside Casablanca a young girl, Zahra Aboutalib went into labour. Forty-eight hours later of agonising labour pain, the baby was still unborn, so the young Zahra was rushed to the hospital. However, after watching a young woman die with labour pain on the operating table, Zahra fled the hospital in panic, convinced she would suffer the same fate.

Days of excruciating pain followed after than and then the pains suddenly stopped. The young Zahra, believed in the local myth of the ‘sleeping baby', so put the pregnancy out of her mind. This made her believe that baby would be born at a later date. However, the time of her delivery never happened and many decade passed where in which Zahra adopted three children and became a grandmother at the age of 75. 

 

The misery never stopped there. Her pains returned! There were several doctors who could not explain the reason for these uncanny pains. But there was one doctor who felt that Zahra's swollen stomach indicated an ovarian tumour where on the result of the scan was quite shocking! The mass inside Zahra's stomach was a calcified baby. Unable to be born, the baby had developed outside the womb and fused with Zahra's internal organs, which had died. The specific term for this case is called 'Lithopedion' which is better known as a stone baby. This rare phenomenon occurs mostly when a fetus dies during an abdominal pregnancy where it is too large to be reabsorbed by the body, and calcifies on the outside, shielding the mother's body from the dead tissue of the baby and thus preventing infection. 

 

The baby to protect itself from infection from this foreign body, the baby's body developed a layer of hard calcified material around it where it hardened over the years. The operation which was successful to remove the calcified foetus was a tricky one. The reason being that it was a delicate surgery since over the decades it had fused with both Zahra's abdominal wall and the internal organs. Sources say that this situation being so dangerous could have led to the death of Zahra along with the child because it would have caused massive internal bleeding killing both of them. But she was lucky. There are around 300 cases of this specific syndrome reported, but Zahra's calcified baby spent the longest time in the womb. Zahra who gave birth nearly 50 years later was known to have given birth to a 'mummy baby'.

GOOGLE LOON

Project Loon is a research and development project being developed by Google with the mission of providing Internet access to rural and remote areas. The project uses high-altitude balloons placed in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 20 km (12 mi) to create an aerial wireless network with up to 3G-like speeds.Because of the project's seemingly outlandish mission goals, Google dubbed it "Project Loon".

The balloons are maneuvered by adjusting their altitude to float to a wind layer after identifying the wind layer with the desired speed and direction using wind data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Users of the service connect to the balloon network using a special Internet antenna attached to their building. The signal travels through the balloon network from balloon to balloon, then to a ground-based station connected to an Internet service provider (ISP), then onto the global Internet. The system aims to bring Internet access to remote and rural areas poorly served by existing provisions, and to improve communication during natural disasters to affected regions.Key people involved in the project include Rich DeVaul, chief technical architect, who is also an expert on wearable technology; Mike Cassidy, a project leader; and Cyrus Behroozi, a networking and telecommunication lead.

ACCIDENTAL CREATION OF DYNAMITE

Studying explosives isn't for the lighthearted.

Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist and engineer, learned this the hard way. In efforts to stabilize nitroglycerin, an explosive liquid, Nobel and laboratory workers experienced several accidents -- one of which ultimately proved fatal. An explosion in Stockholm, Sweden, left Nobel's younger brother and a few others dead in 1864.

No one knew how exactly this accident affected Nobel, but most suspect it further pushed him to find a solution to safely store explosive materials. With this new knowledge of the instability of nitroglycerin, Nobel continually tested methods to detonate and store explosives.

Some say that Nobel discovered the key to stabilizing the substance through another accident.
While transporting nitroglycerin, Nobel noticed that one of the cans accidentally broke open and leaked. He discovered that the material in which the cans were packed -- a sedimentary rock mixture called kieselguhr -- absorbed the liquid perfectly [source: Brunswig]. Since nitroglycerin is most dangerous to handle in its liquid form, the incident led Nobel to explore kieselguhr as a stabilizer for explosives.

Ingeniously, Nobel developed a formula that allowed the explosive to be mixed with kieselguhr without hindering its power. He patented his product in 1867, naming it dynamite, which revolutionized construction practices and the creation of explosives.

PENCIL MAKER

U.S. businesses use about 21 million tons (19 million metric tons) of paper every year -- 175 pounds of paper for each American, according to the Clean Air Council. This has led to office recycling programs, "please think before you print" e-mail signatures and printers that offer double-sided printing. Now a trio of Chinese inventors hopes to add another device to the cubicle environment: the P&P Office Waste Paper Processor, which turns paper destined for recycling into pencils. The machine, looking a bit like a three-hole punch crossed with an electric pencil sharpener, was a finalist in the 2010 Lite-On Awards, an international competition that seeks to stimulate and nurture innovation.

Here's how the pencil-making gadget works: You insert wastepaper into a feed slot. The machine draws the paper in, rolls and compresses it, and then inserts a piece of lead from a storage chamber located in the top of the device. A small amount of glue is added before -- voilà -- a pencil slides out from a hole on the side. It's not clear how many pieces of paper form a single pencil, but you figure the average office worker could generate a decent supply of pencils in a month.

And that seems to be the biggest drawback to the pencil-producing gadget. How many No. 2 pencils can an office really use, given that most workers take notes on their tablet PCs or laptops? And how much glue and lead core do you need to buy to keep up with the overflowing paper recycle bin? Too much, we would suspect, which is why you may never see this gadget in your office supplies catalog

20 AMAZING THINGS ABOUT LEONARDO VINCI

1 Leonardo was the love child of Caterina, a peasant, and Ser Piero, a lawyer and landlord. He was homeschooled and lacked a formal education in Greek and Latin.

2 He was an accomplished lyre player. When he was first presented at the Milanese court, it was as a musician, not an artist or inventor.

3 Leonardo narrowly beat a sodomy rap—possibly involving one of his male models—brought against him by Florentine officials.

4 Mona Lisa theory #1: Her smile means she was secretly pregnant.

5 Theory #2: She was amused by the musicians and clowns who entertained her while Leonardo painted her. (Another theory says the Mona Lisa is a portrait of Leonardo himself, slyly disguised. But you'd heard that one before, hadn't you?)

6 Columbia University art historian James Beck retorts, "As sure as the moon is not made of green cheese, this is not da Vinci in drag."

7 Then again, unusual for a painter, Leonardo left no definitive image of himself.

8 Of course, that was before she saw the picture: Researchers at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Illinois used face-recognition software to determine that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful, and 2% angry.

9 Bill Gates bought the Codex Leicester in 1995 for $30 million. This manuscript, the only one not held in Europe, includes da Vinci's studies on hydraulics and the movement of water.

10 And Leonardo loved water: He developed plans for floating snowshoes, a breathing device for underwater exploration, a life preserver, and a diving bell that could attack ships from below. In case one had to.

11 Leonardo was the first to explain why the sky is blue. (It's because of the way air scatters light.)

12 And he figured out why the entire moon is dimly visible when it is a thin crescent. Its nightside is lit by light reflected from Earth, which appears 50 times brighter from the moon than the full moon appears here.

13 An ambidextrous, paranoid dyslexic, Leonardo could draw forward with one hand while writing backward with the other, producing a mirror-image script that others found difficult to read—which was exactly the point.

14 The Louvre recently spent $5.5 million rehanging the Mona Lisa inside a display case set into a wall, six feet behind a wooden barrier.

15 In August 2003, da Vinci's Madonna of the Yarnwinder, valued at $65 million, was stolen from Drumlanrig Castle in Scotland by two men posing as tourists. They escaped in a Volkswagen Golf.

16 Leonardo designed an armored car, a scythed chariot, a pile driver, a revolving crane, a pulley, a lagoon dredge, and a flying ship.

17 In December 2000, skydiver Adrian Nicholas landed in South Africa using a parachute built from one of Leonardo's designs.

18 I wonder what happens if . . . After dissecting cadavers, Leonardo replaced the muscles with strings to see how they worked.

19 Sometimes he could be such a dick: He was a big fan of puns and word games, and Folio 44 of his Codex Arundel contains a long list of playful synonyms for penis.

20 He crushed intelligent design before anyone even thought of it: His studies of river erosion convinced him that the Earth is much older than the Bible implies, and he argued that falling sea levels—not Noah's Flood—left marine fossils on mountains.