Online April Fools Day Jokes
More information: Last year story: Google Chrome Goes 3D iCade – iPad Arcade Cabinet Take this one from ThinkGeek, regarding the iCad, designed to work with the iPad. This interesting device allows you to plug in the iPad and instantly play games on your desktop. ThinkGeek offers some of the specs:The docking cradle uses a standard 30 pin connector to link the iPad to the professional-grade arcade controls. Once the iPad is in place, launch the iCade App (available free in the App Store April 3rd) and it’s game on! We didn’t want to take any chances you’d run out of juice during your favorite game, so we included a 10w USB power adapter so you can charge the iPad through any electrical outlet. Now you’re all set to make an uninterrupted run on the Dig Dug World Record! It’s a great joke, and once people click on the price to buy it, the message appears.Google, as usual, has its own jokes. It’s changed its name to Topeka (as in Kansas) for the day, and is offering other jokes. In Britain, Google U.K. is “offering” a beta version for a Translate for Animals application:Translate for Animals is an application for Android phones that recognises and transcribes words and phrases that are common to a species, like cats for example. To develop Translate for Animals, we worked closely with many of the world’s top language synthesis teams, and with leaders in the field of animal cognitive linguistics, including senior fellows at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Google Maps Just Got OCCA These are some great jokes. Enjoy your April Fools’ Day! © 2010 PhysOrg.com (PhysOrg.com) — Every year, on April 1, you have to be careful of what you read on the Web. Everyone is putting up April Fools’ Day jokes.
Explore further For Google Australia, it’s OCCA’d maps that offer special Aussie directions:OCCA greatly reduces the latency between a user’s thought and ability to pinpoint information; a boon for local users who’d have Buckleys makin’ sense of American English.Aussies around the country can stand tall; OCCA’d Maps are a world-first that promise to take Google Maps to the Back of Bourke and beyond. Apple pushes back shipping of new iPad pre-orders Citation: Online April Fools’ Day Jokes (2010, April 1) retrieved 18 August 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2010-04-online-april-day.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
Holodesk prototype puts life in computers w video
A Holodesk video shows the user looking down on a pane of glass at virtual but very realistic-looking balls and other shaped objects. His hands are positioned underneath the glass and they move in such a way that you think the user is actually moving real objects around. He scoops real balls into cups, or so it seems. The video as a whole is a deft rendering of how the virtual and real meet. While Holodesk is not the only 3-D interaction experiment out there, observers say it stands away from the pack, with its use of optical devices called beam-splitters and a graphic processing algorithm, in providing a life-like experience. Holodesk is one of the latest innovations within the Sensors and Devices Group (working with technologies such as sensors, flexible electronics, and novel displays)at Microsoft Research. The latter, since its establishment in 1991, has become a large and active software research organization.Microsoft Research joins today’s research hotbeds looking at enhancing interactive computing environments. The name of the game is creating clever ways to enable the user to cross that magical bridge between reality and the virtual. Meantime, Microsoft itself is reportedly working on all fronts on innovations that involve the “natural user interface,” or in software developer parlance, the NUI. A NUI is supported by technology that frees up users to carry out relatively natural movements or gestures that control and manipulate on-screen content. As such, the NUI is elevated as one of the next big things in human-machine interactions.As for possible applications for Holodesk, easy assumptions might place it squarely in gaming but its potential may also one day surface in design and research. In this wider sense, the Holodesk debut is one more idea from Microsoft Research that suggests a bright NUI future. Explore further Holodesk does its magic with the help of an optical see-through display plus Kinect camera. The illusion is that the user is directly touching and maneuvering 3-D graphics. According to the project notes, a virtual image of a 3-D scene is rendered through a half-silvered mirror and spatially aligned with the real world for the viewer. Citation: Holodesk prototype puts life in computers (w/ video) (2011, October 20) retrieved 18 August 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2011-10-holodesk-prototype-life-video.html More information: via Microsoft blog © 2011 PhysOrg.com Microsoft shows off 3D and NUI technology (w/ Video) This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only. (PhysOrg.com) — A research project at Microsoft Research Cambridge has brought forth a prototype called Holodesk, which lets you manipulate virtual objects with your hand. You literally “get your hands on” the virtual display. According to the official description from its creators, there is at work a “novel real-time algorithm for representing hands and other physical objects” allowing physically realistic interaction between real and virtual 3-D objects.
Engineers unleash carseat identifier that reads your rear end
Explore further The car-seat team led by Associate Professor Shigeomi Koshimizu wants to commercialize their work as an anti-theft product in two to three years if automakers agree to collaborate. The Institute began working on the seat idea last year.The bucket seat’s lower section is lined with pressure sensors. Pressure is measured on a scale from 0 to 256. A total of 360 sensors in the seat send their information to a laptop, which aggregates the information, generates the key data and produces a precise map of the seated person. As the process suggests, the device is targeted for use as a personal identifier and is being promoted as a useful option to having to use more familiar biometric techniques. The researchers have discussed advantages to this seat identifier.They say that traditional biometric techniques such as iris scanners and fingerprint readers cause stress to people undergoing identity checks, while the simple act of getting seated carries less psychological baggage. Their other point is that other technologies such as fingerprint scanning can be compromised when sensor surfaces are unclean, or when there is poor lighting as in iris scanning, contaminating results.Koshimizu sees the possibilities of this device being used beyond auto-theft identity protection to a device for security identification in office settings, where users log on to their PCs as they sit down. Their work at the institute is yet another indicator that sensors are in focus in many areas of today’s research. Sensor vendors are quick to remind everyone that sensors will be around us everywhere, in the home to remind residents to take medicine and turn things on and off, to parking meters transmitting data, to sensors in transport.Car sensor technologies are being developed that bridge varied car scenarios from driver only to vehicles providing dual driver/self-driving modes to self-driving cars. Research efforts are resulting in sensors that tell the driver there are obstacles ahead along with a range of sophisticated sensors envisioned for robotic cars on tomorrow’s highways. (PhysOrg.com) — Cars of the future may use the driver’s rear end as identity protection, through a system developed at Japan’s Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology. A report surfaced earlier this month that researchers there developed a system that can recognize a person by the backside when the person takes a seat. The system performs a precise measurement of the person’s posterior, its contours and the way the person applies pressure on the seat. The developers say that in lab tests, the system was able to recognize people with 98 percent accuracy. Citation: Engineers unleash car-seat identifier that reads your rear end (2011, December 25) retrieved 18 August 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2011-12-unleash-car-seat-rear.html © 2011 PhysOrg.com Magnetic Sensor That Brooks No Interference This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
Science journal offers up essays on 8 mysteries in astronomy
Journal information: Science Dark matter could provide heat for starless planets Adrian Cho is up first with an essay describing the hotly debated topic of Dark Energy, the reason behind why everything in the universe is scattering away from everything else faster than it used to be, or really should be. Equally vexing is that models and equations suggest that whatever the mysterious energy is, it appears to make up 73% of everything that exists, and still it can’t be seen, or even measured.Tied closely to dark energy is Dark Matter, the stuff that most in the field agrees is there, yet can’t really explain in any meaningful way. Adrian Cho authors this second in the series and highlights the fact that dark matter is merely a term for describing whatever it is that holds everything in the universe together. He argues that unlike dark energy, scientists stand a reasonably good chance of one day actually detecting a particle of the stuff, which would of course prove that it really does exist.In the third essay, Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, asks, Where are the Missing Baryons? Right now, they can’t be found of course, hence the question. Baryons are particles that make up regular matter, but for some reason when adding up dark energy, dark matter and then leaving the rest to baryons, researchers can’t come up with a number that equals 100% of everything that is supposed to exist. Hence the mystery.Also by Bhattacharjee is an essay that asks the simple question, How do Stars Explode? After a lot of research over a lot of years, researchers still don’t really understand what goes on with a star when it explodes in what is known as a supernova. They’re still working on the conditions that lead up to one.Edwin Cartlidge then takes up the question of What Reionized the Universe? Put another way, what caused stripping off of electrons from atoms in the few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang?In the next essay, Daniel Clery wants to know What’s the Source of the Most Energetic Cosmic Rays? We’re bombarded with them every day, yet researchers can’t agree on where they come from.Richard A. Kerr follows that by wondering Why Is the Solar System So Bizarre? Did our solar system form the way it did by following logical steps, or was it all just chaos and chance? Nobody really knows.And Finally, Kerr concludes the series by asking Why Is the Sun’s Corona So Hot? Or hotter than it is internally? Those that study the sun still really don’t know, but really wish they did. (Phys.org) — Because astronomy and astrophysics are still so much a mixture of theory, conjecture and generally difficult to measure phenomenon, at least as compared with many of the other sciences, one of the most highly respected science journals, Science, has chosen to run a series of articles detailing eight of what it deems the most compelling questions currently vexing those who study the cosmos; each written by someone uniquely qualified to delve into the subject matter at hand. Citation: Science journal offers up essays on 8 mysteries in astronomy (2012, June 1) retrieved 18 August 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2012-06-science-journal-essays-mysteries-astronomy.html
© 2012 Phys.Org Explore further This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
This engine is set to Roar
A grunge rock band from the city are raring to go and very serious about their brand of music. Millennium Post catches up with the lead vocalist, Parikshit aka Sonic about their band and what lies ahead.Bull engine started out as ‘Plague of Bishop’ in 2006, what brought together the electrifying trio?It was back in 2006, during my engineering days that we started out as a band. Those days, it was all about youth festivals and college shows while we researched through the mechanical books. We were a different set of people then. Also Read – ‘Playing Jojo was emotionally exhausting’So, who all form up the existing band?Its me, Parikshit aka Sonic at guitar/vocals, Rambo on Drums/Back Vocals and Akshit on Bass Guitar/Back vocals. I am a technical consultant by the day and a vocalist by the evening.You are acclaimed as a grunge/rock band heavily influenced by Nirvana and Metallica? Who is your personal favourite?On a personal front, I wanted to be like Kurt Cobain, the American singer and songwriter. I wanted to get on stage, deliver like him and write lyrics the way he did. That’s how I wanted to portray feelings through music.And what’s in store for your fans in the coming months?Well, we are working towards the release of our first album Theory of Rock. Its going to have a lot of alternative and punk rock for our folks. Hopefully it will be out by the fall of 2013.
Russian ballet Swan Lake now comes to Kolkata
Kolkata: Forty-five artistes from the Royal Russian Ballet will stage the iconic ballet ‘Swan Lake’ in the city from April 12 to April 14, after performing in other cities of the country. The production of the current edition of ‘Swan Lake’, has been choreographed by Vladimir Troschenko and directed by Anatoly Kazatsky, both veteran ballet artistes.’Swan Lake’ is a ballet having a 140-year old history and its central plot originates from Russian folk tales. Also Read – Heavy rain hits traffic, flightsIt is about Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer s curse and how she breaks the curse with the power of love.’Swan Lake’ is performed on the classical compositions written by Russian composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It was composed in 1875 76 The ballet had previously held 36 shows in Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad with the last phase of the tour being Kolkata.The show will be brought by Navrasa Duende, a leading production house and there will be four shows between April 12 and April 14.Dinesh Singh from Navrasa Duende said, “We can clearly feel the buzz among audiences regarding the maiden performance of Swan Lake ballet in Kolkata. The response from the audiences across the country has been unprecedented, especially for a niche performing art like ballet.”
Endangered fishing cats give birth at Alipore Zoo after years
Kolkata: The Alipore Zoological Garden has finally managed to increase the number of fishing cats in the zoo after many years. The zoo authorities are upbeat about the increase in population of the animal as fishing cat is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.”The fishing cat is the state animal of Bengal. But its population is threatened with the wetlands in the state declining severely in the last decade. So, we have decided to increase the population of the animal in the zoo. We had two pairs of fishing cats here. Now, they have given birth to three babies which means that the population have gone up from four to seven,” said Asis Kumar Samanta, director of Alipore Zoo. Also Read – Heavy rain hits traffic, flights”We found out that the pairs were not mating while they were in public view. So, we decided to try out something different and kept them hidden for a period of one year. This yielded fruits and they gave birth to three babies,” a senior zoo official said.The babies which were kept away along with the adult females for another period of six months have been brought in public view recently and the visitors are really excited. “We have plans to set them free in the open, once there is a further rise in their population,” Samanta said. Also Read – Speeding Jaguar crashes into Merc, 2 B’deshi bystanders killedThe fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus) is a medium-sized wild cat of South and Southeast Asia that live foremost in the vicinity of wetlands, along rivers, streams, oxbow lakes, in swamps and mangroves and lives on fishes. “The state government in the last few years have taken some steps in conservation of wetlands but there have been incidents when people have netted these animals and killed them. There is still a lack of awareness among people about this animal species, which is endangered and hardly attack any human being ” a senior zoo official said.
Over 95 Bengal residents steer clear of veg food Survey
Kolkata: Has the over dependence of people on meat indirectly helped unholy people to thrive on the business of carcass meat in the state? A nationwide survey conducted by the Office of Registrar General and Census Commissioner states that around 98.55 percent of total population in Bengal is non-vegetarian, which is the second highest in the country after Telangana. Meanwhile, many believe that this huge demand of meat across various markets in the state might have prompted some people to run a parallel business of trading carcass meat, which is allegedly collected from dumping grounds, stored in cold storages and later delivered to various restaurants and hotels in the state. Also Read – Heavy rain hits traffic, flightsAccording to the sample registration system (SRS) baseline survey 2014 released by the registrar general of India, around 98.7 percent of male and 98.4 percent of female in Bengal are non-vegetarians. This means only 1.3 percent of the total male population in the state is vegetarian while figure stands at 1.6 in case of females. Bengal ranks second in the list of states, in regard to the prevalence of non-vegetarianism among the population aged 15 years or above, as published in the report. The data shows that around 71 percent of Indians over the age of 15 are non-vegetarians.The percentage of non-vegetarians across the country has, however, has dropped from 75 Also Read – Speeding Jaguar crashes into Merc, 2 B’deshi bystanders killedpercent in 2004. The survey says that Telangana has the highest number of non-vegetarians with 98.8 percent men and 98.6 percent women enjoying meat, fish and eggs, marginally higher than Bengal. Other states with a high non-vegetarian population include Andhra Pradesh (98.25%), Odisha (97.35%) and Kerala (97%). Vegetarianism, as it is often interpreted as a practice in the country, encouraged or imposed by ideologies of religion and caste, is basically a food habit. Many people think that a life without meat would be boring, unhealthy, and damaging to your body. However, it is debatable. Rajasthan tops the list when it comes to vegetarianism. Around 73.2 percent men and 76.6 percent women in Rajasthan are vegetarians. Haryana follows next with 68.5 percent men and 70 percent women depending on vegetarian diets. Whereas in Punjab, around 65.5 percent of the male population and 68 percent of the female population eat vegetarian food. Ever since the carcass meat row has come to light, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) and police conducted raids at various places and seized a huge amount of rotten meat. The selling of various items of meat has dipped considerably since the incident took place. Sudesh Poddar, President of Hotel and Restaurant Association of Eastern India said: “We have issued directives to the restaurant owners to buy meat from reputed suppliers having trade and Food Safety and Standards Authority of India license. We have also asked hoteliers and restaurant owners to get the meat tested at a private laboratory. The situation is gradually improving.”
State provides new limb to 8yearold of Halderpara
Kolkata: The state government has made arrangements to provide an artificial left limb to eight-year-old Poulami Halder of Halderpara in Harao, North 24 Parganas, who lost her hand in a bomb explosion on April 20. “The government has borne the entire expense of her treatment at RG Kar Medical College hospital and an artificial limb has been fitted. The government has given full support to the girl’s family. Her mother Deepali Halder has been provided with a job in a Integrated Child Development Scheme centre,” said state Food minister Jyotipriya Mallick, who is also the North 24-Parganas district president of Trinamool Congress. The government will also bear the entire expense for her future education. On April 20, during her daily task of plucking flower, assuming it to be a toy, Poulami picked up a bomb that exploded when it fell on the ground.
North South Korea begin family reunion talks
The discussions at the border truce village of Panmunjom are the product of an agreement the two Koreas reached two weeks ago to end a dangerous military standoff and reduce cross-border tensions.But given North Korea’s past record of manipulating the reunion issue for leverage over the South, there is no guarantee the planned event –only the second in five years – will go ahead.Monday’s talks were expected to focus on confirming a date and venue for the event, with the most likely outcome a reunion at the North’s Mount Kumgang resort sometime in early October. Also Read – Nine hurt in accident at fireworks show in French resortMillions of people were separated during the 1950-53 conflict that sealed the division between the two Koreas. Most died without having a chance to see or hear from their families on the other side of the border, across which all civilian communication is banned.About 66,000 South Koreans — many of them in their 80s or 90s — are on the waiting list for an eventual reunion, but only several hundred can be chosen each time. The reunion programme began in earnest after a historic North-South summit in 2000, and was initially an annual event. Also Read – Pakistan Army ‘fully prepared’ to face any challenge: Army spokesmanBut strained cross-border relations have allowed only one reunion in the past five years, with several being cancelled at the last moment by North Korea. For the last reunion in February 2014, a computer was used to randomly select 500 candidates, after taking age and family background into account.That number was reduced to 200 after interviews and medical exams, and the two Koreas drew up a final list of 100 each after checking if relatives were still alive on the other side.For the lucky ones who do take part, the reunions are hugely emotional –almost traumatic – affairs, with many of the elderly participants breaking down and sobbing as they cling to each other.
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