To which I remind that while we felt the same surges at the same age, we were at least confined to smaller and safer venues, were more controlled by responsible adults around us….at least most of us were and a few still are. We were given enough rope to hang ourselves, yes, but thankfully that rope was a lot shorter before the globe became so accessible and small and this is what you have, so God Bless America (and forgive me, because it’s also hard to prosecute a senior citizen pressed into a senior moment with a failing brain - at least I can claim that):
Teenagers, social media, and terrorism: a threat level hard to assess
]]>Authorities are leaning more toward zero tolerance of teenagers who fling around online threats about acts of violence or terrorism. As a result, what might have once merited a slap on the wrist may today result in criminal charges. ——continues at link
Fast-paced and tight story with very contrasting minds from the very disciplined ‘military-protect’ to the ego-broken mind of a psychopath mixed with ordinary characters with lovable principles. It’s easy to see this is an ongoing series saga! Well written! Am waiting for the next installment! VERY fast read! It’s designed for the Kindle but I could easily see this as an adult graphic novel.
]]>]]>Robotic insect: World’s smallest flying robot takes off
Scientists in the US have created a robot the size of a fly that is able to perform the agile manoeuvres of the ubiquitous insects.
This “robo-fly”, built from carbon fibre, weighs a fraction of a gram and has super-fast electronic “muscles” to power its wings.
Its Harvard University developers say tiny robots like theirs may eventually be used in rescue operations.
It could, for example, navigate through tiny spaces in collapsed buildings.
The development is reported in the journal Science.
Dr Kevin Ma from Harvard University and his team, led by Dr Robert Wood, say they have made the world’s smallest flying robot.
It also has the fly-like agility that allows the insects to evade even the swiftest of human efforts to swat them.
This comes largely from very precise wing movements.
By constantly adjusting the effect of lift and thrust acting on its body at an incredibly high speed, the insect’s (and the robot’s) wings enable it to hover, or to perform sudden evasive manoeuvres.
And just like a real fly, the robot’s thin, flexible wings beat approximately 120 times every second.
The researchers achieved this wing speed with special substance called piezoelectric material, which contracts every time a voltage is applied to it.
By very rapidly switching the voltage on and off, the scientists were able to make this material behave like just like the tiny muscles that makes a fly’s wings beat so fast.
“We get it to contract and relax, like biological muscle,” said Dr Ma.
The main goal of this research was to understand how insect flight works, rather than to build a useful robot.
He added though that there could be many uses for such a diminutive flying vehicle.
“We could envision these robots being used for search-and-rescue operations to search for human survivors under collapsed buildings or [in] other hazardous environments,” he said.
“They [could] be used for environmental monitoring, to be dispersed into a habitat to sense trace chemicals or other factors.
Dr Ma even suggested that the robots could behave like many real insects and assist with the pollination of crops, “to function as the now-struggling honeybee populations do in supporting agriculture around the world”.
The current model of robo-fly is tethered to a small, off-board power source but Dr Ma says the next step will be to miniaturise the other bits of technology that will be needed to create a “fully wireless flying robot”.
“It will be a few more years before full integration is possible,” he said.
“Until then, this research project continues to be very captivating work because of its similarity to natural insects. It is a demonstration of how far human engineering ingenuity has reached, to be mimicking natural systems.”
Dr Jon Dyhr, a biologist from the University of Washington who also studies insect flight, said these flying robots were “impressive feats of engineering”.
“The physics of flight at such small scales is relatively poorly understood which makes designing small flying systems very difficult,” he told BBC News, adding that biological systems provided “critical insights into designing our own artificial flyers”.
]]>Missing Pennsylvania woman reappears 11 years later in Florida Keys
A Pennsylvania woman who mysteriously disappeared 11 years ago has resurfaced in Florida, saying that she just walked out on her family, her life and her problems.
Brenda Heist, 54, turned herself in to authorities in Key Largo, Florida, on Friday, informing them that she thought she might be wanted in another county.
The responding officer checked her name and saw that she was listed as “missing and possibly deceased” from Lititz, Pennsylvania, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office in Florida.
Authorities in Monroe County immediately contacted the Lititz Borough Police, informing them that Heist was in their custody.
After exchanging pictures and details, Detective Sgt. John Schofield confirmed that it was indeed the Brenda Heist he had been searching for since 2002. He met with her in Florida two days later.
“She left just on a split-second whim and decided to just leave, and turn her back on her family and on her life, and pursue a life with these homeless people to hitchhike down to Florida,” Schofield told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Thursday.
Heist disappeared February 2002, after last being seen dropping off her children at school.
She was going through a divorce from Lee Heist and was applying for housing assistance so that she could get her own apartment.
She worked as a bookkeeper for a car dealer and hoped to receive some financial aid.
However, her request was denied, Schofield said earlier.
“She was very upset, she was sitting in a park crying, thinking about how she would raise her children, feeling sorry for herself,” he said.
It wasn’t long before she was approached by two males and a female who asked her what was wrong. After she told them what had happened, they invited her to hitchhike with them down to Florida.
“At a whim, she decided at that very moment, she would go along with them,” Schofield said.
Schofield spoke to Heist at length, and she explained where she had been for the past 11 years.
“She was very emotional; she hung her head; she’s ashamed. She was crying when I met with her. She knows what she did was completely wrong, but all that while, she’d never made one effort to call or contact her family at all,” Schofield said.
For the first two years, he said, she was homeless.
She lived under bridges, eating food thrown out by restaurants after they closed.
For the next seven years, she lived in a camper with a man she had met. They made money as day laborers, cleaning boats and doing other odd jobs for which they didn’t have to show ID and were paid in cash.
After that relationship soured, Schofield said, she lived on the street again for another two years.
“Everything seemed to be going against her while she was on the street. She was just worn out and at the end of her rope. She didn’t want to continue on with her secret life down there,” Schofield said.
Meanwhile, her family remained in Pennsylvania, searching for answers.
“I remember my children calling me and saying that mom wasn’t home,” Lee Heist told CNN. “I thought she just got tied up somewhere.”
He was at work at the time and planned to head to his mother’s birthday party afterward.
When his two children called a second time, this time after dark, he decided to return home.
“I went to the house and there wasn’t anything out of place. Everything was right where it was supposed to be. I waited and waited. Around 8 o’clock or so, I called the police,” he said.
An exhaustive investigation followed. For months, local, state and federal investigators interviewed dozens of family members, friends, neighbors and co-workers to no avail, said the Lititz Borough police news release.
Four days after she disappeared, Brenda Heist’s car was found legally parked in a parking spot in a nearby city.
There was no damage to the car, but it was parked near a bus station.
When police scoured bus and airline schedules, they couldn’t find any bookings for Brenda Heist, according to case details provided by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.
*** continued below ***
View the movie here: http://youtu.be/oSCX78-8-q0
News article about the making of the movie here
]]>Set to a playful musical track, the movie represents a unique way to convey science outside the research community.
“Moving atoms is one thing; you can do that with the wave of your hand,” said Andreas Heinrich, principal investigator from IBM Research.
“Capturing, positioning and shaping atoms to create an original motion picture on the atomic level is a precise science and entirely novel.”
In order to make the movie, the atoms were moved with a scanning tunnelling microscope.
A passenger aircraft had a narrow miss with an unidentified object over Glasgow, a report has revealed.
The Airbus A320 was making its final approach to Glasgow Airport on 2 December when an object passed about 300ft underneath it.
The pilot of the aircraft said the risk of collision with the object, which did not show up on radar, had been “high”.
Sounds like it might be a microlight/glider.
]]>Video here.
I don’t normally watch sport but this just happened to catch my eye.
]]>]]>Desperate for another child, mother forces daughter to inseminate herself
A woman desperate to have a fourth child forced her adopted teenage daughter to artificially inseminate herself with semen purchased over the Internet so she could have the baby.
The woman devised the plan after her efforts to adopt another daughter were thwarted. In addition to the victim, the woman also has two other younger adopted daughters.
The astonishing revelations appear in documents released this week by a British court. The previously secret child welfare judgment from March 2012 was only published after the conclusion of the mother’s criminal trial.
The woman was sentenced to five years in prison for child cruelty, British media reported.
The mother came up with the self-insemination plan when her oldest daughter was 13.
“There were six series of attempts over two years,” Judge Peter Jackson said in the documents. “She became pregnant at the age of 14, but miscarried, and ultimately became pregnant ... at the age of 16.”
The mother spent 2,420 euros ($3,165) to purchase donor sperm from the Cryos sperm bank in Denmark.
The court documents say she provided forged documents to get the semen.
While the daughter said she didn’t want to have a baby, she ultimately gave in because she loves her mother.
“My mum is a very determined person and she does her best not to let anything get in her way if she wants it,” the daughter said, according to the court.
The story they agreed on was this: The daughter would say she had met and had sex with an Australian boy, who was briefly visiting the United Kingdom.
Despite all the planning, the mother’s scheme began to unravel at the hospital after the birth of the baby.
Midwives said she was aggressive in trying to make sure the baby didn’t bond with her daughter.
“We don’t want any of that attachment thing,” the mother said, according to the midwives after breastfeeding was suggested. “Is there much point to that, I will be the one giving him the bottle.”
While hospital notes said the plan was for the daughter to relinquish the baby to her mother, the midwives became suspicious that something was going on as she became increasingly “pushy and insensitive.”
They also heard the woman apologize to her daughter for putting her through so much.
They finally reported the mother’s behavior after she tried to remove the child from the baby ward.
It was the concerns raised by the midwives that led to the investigation.
“Their willingness to stand up for them (the daughter that had the baby and two other siblings) changed everything,” the judge said.