Australian Bushfires

A man looks at the melted metal of alloy wheels from his burnt out vehicles after a bushfire swept through his property on February 9, 2009 in Bendigo, 160 km from Melbourne, Australia.

Click the image to see more images from Boston Globe's The Big Picture.


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What happens when a cow is struck by lightning?

Probably you never saw a cow after a lightning strike, right?

This is the image of the cow that almost was turned into an instant barbecue but survived the experience (although with some wounds - the image at the end of the post can be shocking for some people).


The incident happened weeks ago in Australia. According to experts, probably the electricity from a lightning strike entered the front set of legs and exit out the back legs, leaving those marks on the animal.



Via news.au

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Angry Teacher Rips Student’s Cheek Off

On December 18th, 2008, a 10 year-old 5th grader named Chao Qun Zheng went to his elementary school in HeNan, China.

When his teacher, Guo, found out that young Zheng had not completed his homework, she flipped out. She ripped and twisted the boy's cheeks with both her hands and then she lifted me off the ground.

The image above doesn't depicts Zheng's teacher - I just put this one to give you the opportunity to be prepared to see the boy with with his cheek rebuilt (after the jump).



The teacher held the boy up until one of his cheeks actually ripped off and the boy was bleeding profusely.

Without hesitation the teacher reached down and picked up Zheng’s cheek skin, put it on his face, and instructed the boy go home immediately.

When the parents saw Zheng, they immediately took him to the hospital where it took 52 stitches to have his cheek sewn back on.

Zheng’s father has reported the case to the police and is expected to press for damages.

Fonte: Weird Asia News e Sinovision

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Happy New Year

After 15 days on the beach (and off line) it's time to get back to normality...

So long Ocean, tchau sunbathing all day long, adieu margaritas and caipirinhas on the beach, hasta la vista waking up in the morning with this view from my bedroom's balcony (click to enlarge).

Little by little (after all this is the first "real" week of the year) we are getting back on track.

I wish you all a fantastic 2009!

(p.s.: this beautiful picture was taken in Ilhabela, an island on the north shore of São Paulo, Brasil)


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Happy Holidays!

Dear friends,

I'll be on vacation until January 04... and I won't be able to post regularly.

So... Happy Holidays!

See you in 2009!

Cheers,

Roger



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2008 in pictures

Boston Globe's "The Big Picture" is publishing a series of three posts with the most amazing pictures of the year. As always all of their pictures are stunningly interesting.

This is the LINK for the first part.

Take a look. It worth it...



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Weekly roundup

In case you missed something here's another chance: this week's favorite posts...

A nuke in your city

Nerves of steel

A wine with Peace of Mind

Bollywood and condoms

Chinese 'classical poem' was brothel ad

Kafka (or the luckiest cockroach in the World)

Why arabs prefer to ride camels?

Does this girl EVER close her mouth?

Underwater interactive panoramas



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Scientists extract images directly from the brain

Researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor, it was announced on December 11.

According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people’s dreams while they sleep.


The scientists were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person by analyzing changes in their cerebral blood flow. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, the researchers first mapped the blood flow changes that occurred in the cerebral visual cortex as subjects viewed various images held in front of their eyes. Subjects were shown 400 random 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images for a period of 12 seconds each. While the fMRI machine monitored the changes in brain activity, a computer crunched the data and learned to associate the various changes in brain activity with the different image designs.

Then, when the test subjects were shown a completely new set of images, such as the letters N-E-U-R-O-N, the system was able to reconstruct and display what the test subjects were viewing based solely on their brain activity.

For now, the system is only able to reproduce simple black-and-white images. But Dr. Kang Cheng, a researcher from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, suggests that improving the measurement accuracy will make it possible to reproduce images in color.

“These results are a breakthrough in terms of understanding brain activity,” says Dr. Cheng. “In as little as 10 years, advances in this field of research may make it possible to read a person’s thoughts with some degree of accuracy.”

The researchers suggest a future version of this technology could be applied in the fields of art and design — particularly if it becomes possible to quickly and accurately access images existing inside an artist’s head. The technology might also lead to new treatments for conditions such as psychiatric disorders involving hallucinations, by providing doctors a direct window into the mind of the patient.

ATR chief researcher Yukiyasu Kamitani says, “This technology can also be applied to senses other than vision. In the future, it may also become possible to read feelings and complicated emotional states.”

The research results appear in the December 11 issue of US science journal Neuron.


Source pink tentacle

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Google: top searches 2008

Google announced the top searched terms within 2008 for 34 countries, as long as these global fastest-rising queries:

1. sarah palin
2. beijing 2008
3. facebook login
4. tuenti
5. heath ledger
6. obama
7. nasza klasa
8. wer kennt wen
9. euro 2008
10. jonas brothers

Social networks comprised four out of the top 10 global fastest-rising queries (facebook, tuenti, asza klasa e wer kennt wen), while the U.S. election held everyone's interest around the globe.

After the jump, the top Brazilian queries.



In Brazil:

Maiores Subidas (Fastest Rising)

1. orkut
2. jogos
3. download
4. fotos
5. youtube
6. videos
7. musicas
8. musica
9. msn
10. globo

Mais Pesquisados (Most Popular)

1. jogos de meninas
2. naruto
3. you tube
4. claro
5. youtube
6. jogos
7. jogo
8. esporte
9. tradutor
10. o dia

Google-related

1. google maps
2. tradutor
3. google earth
4. orkut
5. google videos
6. google talk
7. youtube
8. chrome
9. gmail
10. google toolbar

Futebol (Soccer)

1. sao paulo futebol
2. santos
3. futebol ao vivo
4. futebol feminino
5. palmeiras
6. flamengo
7. futebol americano
8. federação paulista
9. corinthians
10. campeonato brasileiro

Elections 2008

1. resultado
2. vereadores
3. candidatos
4. apuração
5. eleição municipal
6. eleição para prefeito
7. obama
8. lei seca
9. tribunal superior eleitoral
10. lula

Celebrities

1. juliana paes
2. juliana knust
3. malu mader
4. dudu azevedo
5. britney spears
6. amy winehouse
7. deborah seco
8. vanessa hudgens
9. sabrina sato
10. michael buble

Via google zeitgeist

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Time travel: an explosion first seen in 1572 is being watched again

Astronomers at the Subaru Telescope went back in time and observed light from a “new star” that originally was seen on 11 November 1572 by astronomer Tycho Brahe and others. What Brahe observed as a bright star in the constellation Cassiopeia, outshining even Venus, was actually a rare supernova event where the violent death of a star sends out an extremely bright outburst of energy. He studied the brightness and color of the “new star” until March 1572 when it faded from view. The remains of this milestone event are seen today as Tycho’s supernova remnant (picture above).

A team of international astronomers recently completed a study at Subaru that focused on ‘light echos’ from Tycho’s supernova to determine its origin and exact type, and relate that information to what we see from its remnant today. A ‘light echo’ is light from the original supernova event that bounces off dust particles in surrounding interstellar clouds and reaches Earth many years after the direct light passes by; in this case, 436 years ago.



This same team used similar methods to uncover the origin of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A in 2007. Lead project astronomer at Subaru, Dr. Tomonori Usuda, said “using light echoes in supernova remnants is time-travelling in a way, in that it allows us to go back hundreds of years to observe the first light from a supernova event. We got to relive a significant historical moment and see it as famed astronomer Tycho Brahe did hundreds of years ago. More importantly, we get to see how a supernova in our own galaxy behaves from its origin.”

The view of the light echoes from Tycho’s supernova. The optical light arrived at Earth in 1572 (sky blue arrow). Optical light was scattered by dust cloud around the supernova arrived in 2008 (yellow arrows). Since the emitting regions were apparently shifted from 23 August 2008 to September 24, the optical lights were confirmed as light echoes.

On 24 September 2008, using the Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS) instrument at Subaru, the light echoes were broken apart into the signatures of atoms (spectra) present when Supernova 1572 exploded, bearing all the information about the nature of the original blast. The results showed clear absorption of once-ionized silicon and absence of the hydrogen H-alpha emission. The findings were very typical of a Type Ia supernova observed at maximum brightness of its outburst.

During the study, the astronomers tested theories of the explosion mechanism and the nature of the supernova progenitor. For Type Ia supernovae, a white dwarf star in a close binary system is the typical source, and as the gas of the companion star accumulates onto the white dwarf, the white dwarf is progressively compressed, and eventually sets off a runaway nuclear reaction inside that eventually leads to a cataclysmic supernova outburst. However, as Type Ia supernovae with luminosity brighter/fainter than standard ones have been reported recently, the understanding of the supernova outburst mechanism has come under debate. In order to explain the diversity of the Type Ia supernovae, the Subaru team studied the outburst mechanisms in detail.

What they discovered is that Supernova 1572 shows indications of an aspherical/nonsymmetrical explosion, which, in turn, puts limits on explosion models for future studies. In addition, follow-up comparisons with template spectra of Type Ia supernovae found outside our Galaxy shows that Tycho's supernova belongs to the majority class of Normal Type Ia, and, as such, is now the first confirmed and precisely classified supernova in our galaxy. This finding is significant because Type Ia supernovae are the primary source of heavy elements in the Universe, and play an important role as cosmological distance indicators, serving as ‘standard candles’ because the level of the luminosity is always the same for this type of supernova.

This observational study at Subaru established how light echoes can be used in a spectroscopic manner to study supernovae outburst that occurred hundreds of years ago. The light echoes, when observed at different position angles from the source, enabled the team to look at the supernova in a three dimensional view. For the future, this 3D aspect will accelerate the study of the outburst mechanism of supernova based on their spatial structure, which, to date, has been impossible with distant supernovae in galaxies outside the Milky Way.

Fonte: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

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Pictures of Canadian Meteorite

Fragments of the huge meteorite that lit up the skies across Alberta and Saskatchewan have been found near the border city of Lloydminster, University of Calgary scientists say.

The area where the meteroite fragments were found is called Buzzard Coulee, about 40 kilometers from the town of Lloydminster, on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border.

There, around a frozen pond, numerous small rocks and pebbles could be seen that the scientists said were from the meteorite. No large chunks were spotted, yet.



Fonte cbc.ca


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LIFE photo archive now on Google

LIFE and Google teamed to put online the entire image archive of the magazine - one of the largest and most amazing collections of professional photography on the web.

Ninety-seven percent of the collection, which stretches from 1860 to today, has never been seen by the public.

This is the LINK .

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Man arrested for releasing worms on train to scare women

I love Japanese crime. The cases are always so minor... and strangely sexual. One of the most recent arrests for one of these "crimes" involves a strange pervert and a backpack full of 3,600 worms.


Manabu Mizuta is 35-years-old and probably has some kind of ladies scared of worms fetish. Maybe that's why he packed his backpack full of worms and headed for the nearest express train. On the Keihan line in Osaka prefecture, he would move close to women on the train and dump out a canister of beetle larvae.

He said, "I wanted to see women get scared and shake their legs.''

Awesome.

Apparently Mizuta had a good run, as local police were on alert due to 18 similar reported cases in the same month. Sadly, it all came to an end as he was arrested by a patrolling police officer on duty. The officer stopped him on the spot in mid dump of a canister of nearly 200 worms. He never got the chance to release his full 3,600 worm payload.

Via japanator

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Spectacular conjunction

This story ends with the best sky show of the year - a spectacular three-way conjunction of Venus, Jupiter and the crescent Moon.

On Nov. 29th the two planets will be less than 3 degrees apart and you'll think to yourself "surely it can't get any better than this."

And then it will. On Nov. 30th a slender 10% crescent Moon leaps up from the horizon to join the show. The delicate crescent hovering just below Venus-Jupiter will have cameras clicking around the world.

Dec. 1st (sky map, above) is the best night of all. The now-15% crescent Moon moves in closer to form an isosceles triangle with Venus and Jupiter as opposing vertices. The three brightest objects in the night sky will be gathered so tightly together, you can hide them all behind your thumb held at arm's length.

The celestial triangle will be visible from all parts of the world, even from light-polluted cities. People in New York and Hong Kong will see it just as clearly as astronomers watching from remote mountaintops. Only cloudy weather or a midnight sun (sorry Antarctica!) can spoil the show.

Although you can see the triangle with naked eyes--indeed, you can't miss it—a small telescope will make the evening even more enjoyable. In one quick triangular sweep, you can see the moons and cloud-belts of Jupiter, the gibbous phase of Venus (69% full), and craters and mountains on the Moon. It's a Grand Tour you won't soon forget.

Finally, look up from the eyepiece and run your eyes across the Moon. Do you see a ghostly image of the full Moon inside the bright horns of the crescent? That's called "Earthshine" or sometimes "the da Vinci glow" because Leonardo da Vinci was the first person to explain it: Sunlight hits Earth and ricochets to the Moon, casting a sheen of light across the dark lunar terrain.

Via NASA



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Meteor over Canada

Beautiful meteor exploding over Alberta, Canada, on November 20.

The fireball was filmed by a police car dashboard camera (first video) and a security camera (second video).

The fireball was attributed to a re-entering piece of rocket from a Soyuz launch on November 14th, but it appears that any rocket debris left over from Soyuz is still being tracked in space and has not re-entered. The Saskatchewan fireball is therefore assumed to be a naturally occurring meteoroid, possibly as large as a grapefruit car.

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Billions of particles of anti-matter created in laboratory

According to a press release issued this week by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, announcing the production of 'billions of particles of anti-matter':

"Take a gold sample the size of the head of a push pin, shoot a laser through it, and suddenly more than 100 billion particles of anti-matter appear. The anti-matter, also known as positrons, shoots out of the target in a cone-shaped plasma 'jet.'

This new ability to create a large number of positrons in a small laboratory opens the door to several fresh avenues of anti-matter research, including an understanding of the physics underlying various astrophysical phenomena such as black holes and gamma ray bursts."

The press release doesn't characterize the laser used in this experiment, but according to the guys at slashdot it may have been this one.



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Back in business

Back to normality... After 3 days out (and this time by my fault - nothing to do with Blogger).

Mea culpa... Mea maxima culpa. Sorry!

Tomorrow we shall have nine new posts, as usual.



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It's raining Porsches

A collision between two trains at the city of Dillenburg, Germany, created a shower of Porsches: a cargo train rear-ended a train carrying 106 Porsches - and 18 of them were thrown away. Estimated damages: €1 million, or about $1.28 million.

Click to enlarge:

Via jalopnik




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Meet Captain Fantastic

A teenager has changed his name to Captain Fantastic Faster Than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine Hulk And The Flash Combined.

The record-breaking name, now thought to be the world's longest, was the idea of music graduate George Garratt, 19.

He changed his name by deed poll online for £10 last week.

Captain Fantastic said: "I wanted to be unique.

"I decided upon a theme of superheroes."

Captain Fantastic joins a number of people with unusually long names, including Rhoshandiatellyneshiaunneveshenk Koyaanisquatsiuth Williams, a girl born in Texas in 1984.

The teenager, from Glastonbury, Somerset, added that while he thought the new name was "crazy", his grandmother was no longer speaking to him.

Last month in Italy, a couple was banned from naming their son Friday - Venerdi - because the name could expose him to ridicule.

Named after the manservant of Daniel Defoe's famous novel Robinson Crusoe, the court ordered the boy's name be changed to Gregorio, named after the saint's day on which he was born.

In February, a judge in New Zealand made a young girl a ward of court so she could change her name from Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii.

Other banned names include Sex Fruit, Keenan Got Lucy and Yeah Detroit.

In New Zealand again, last year a couple was banned from naming their baby 4Real, so they chose Superman instead.

Fonte: telegraph



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Fear of being buried alive? Try this...

Mr. Freud de Melo, from the city of Hidrolandia (Brazil) is so afraid of being buried alive that he made "buried alive-proof" tomb - equipped with food, water, television and a ventilation system.

In this very special tomb there's also a communication system - plastic cones attached to hoses that runs through the walls - to let outside people know that he was buried alive, if such thing happens to him.

He's gripped by a rare condition called taphephobia, the fear of being buried alive. "I have awful, awful nightmares of trying to dig myself out from underground," says Mr. de Melo, whose physician father named him, presciently, for the pioneer of dream analysis.

Via the wall street journal


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Hubble is back in business

The European Space Agency has just released this information: the Hubble Space Telescope is working properly again and already sent a fantastic snapshot (above - click to enlarge).

Just a couple of days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147.

The pair Arp 147 lies in the constellation of Cetus (Whale), and in this image both galaxies are in a beautiful alignment.

Via esa




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English and Portuguese

Hi there,

Just pointing out: this version of Zootropole is currently under construction. That's why some features are not working properly (the search box, for instance, is getting results from the parent site zootropole.com.br, which is written in Portuguese).

The posts that were written in Portuguese in the last 3 months (and there's more than 700) will be translated to English in a timely manner, but all the new posts are being made in both languages (at least 9 new posts a day).

In the next few days you will be able to follow us at social sites in English too - so please get back here to check out the news. And of course you are more than welcome to browse the Portuguese version - I'm sure that you will find something interesting there, even if not in your language.

That's it - see you tomorrow!



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P.J. Clarke's Sao Paulo

Pictures (clockwise): community table under a 19th century stained glass; P.J. Sao Paulo (detail); headquarters: NYC. Pictures from Veja São Paulo.

Today, tuesday 28, precisely at 9:16pm (kabbalistic reasons) a New York City icon will open its doors in Sao Paulo - P.J.Clarke's. The official opening to the public will occur at november 7th - and until then the restaurant will perform a soft opening operation, to work on the details.

If you already went to NY you probably know what I am talking about: some of the world's best burgers are made at that 3rd Ave @ 55th St restaurant. At least in my opinion.

Ok, ok... to be fair, there are extremely good burgers down there (Burger Joint, JG Melon, Rare B&G, etc) - but the food/ambiance combo from P.J. can't be beaten. The pub-like atmosphere is unique. And they remain opened until very late (they do it there - I don't know how it's going to be here).

I usually don't make recommendations, but this time I can't help myself: go there. If you don't know their Manhattan flagship restaurant you have to try this one. And if you already are a P.J. Clarke's fan, the good news are that the menu here will be quite the same.

Fingers crossed to see if they are going to serve Sam Adams here. But I think this would be too much to ask for. Or not...?

P.J. Clarke's São Paulo: Rua Doutor Mario Ferraz, 568 - Itaim Bibi - São Paulo.




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Google Earth for iPhone

A version of Google Earth for iPhone has just been released. Since it has multi-touch capabilities, it's easier and funnier than the original.

The better part? The observation perspective is controlled by the accelerometers - and then you can tilt the image just moving the screen...

See below the new version at work. Then grab it with iTunes.

Via gizmodo


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German scientists think LEDs are the new Botox

If a new German study about wrinkle reduction is correct, the use of Botox will soon be a thing from the past. This study reveals that the intense visible light from light emitting diodes (LEDs - those miniature lights used in an array of products, from TV remote controls to traffic lights) applied daily for several weeks resulted in rejuvenated skin, with reduced wrinkle levels and increased resiliency.

And its not from any special LEDs either; its the same ones that are used in all the products that you use daily. Only these ones need to be high intensity ones.

Apparently the light penetrates the molecular structure of a layer of water on elastin (the protein that provides elasticity to the skin), allowing the skin to regain its elasticity - and so reducing the wrinkles.

Via engadget



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