If You See One of These Starting to Smoke.... RUN !!!!
"Here are some photos of what happens when transmission failures occur in windmills. To date no gear oil has been invented to withstand the pressures produced within these transmissions. Most recently, the government gave Dow-Corning a big grant to work on it. Previously, many others had tried and failed."
"According to the legend, the Island of St. Giulio was dominated by a big serpent that destroyed everything. But when St. Giulio, that had the power to command over the waves, the storms, the wild animals and the human beings, arrived near the lake , waving his hand he chased away the dangerous menacing animal.
He reached the Island journeying over the water on his cloack guided by his staff. The big reptile disappeared and St. Giulio, tired and near to his death, thought that the island was the right place to build his hundredth and last church dedicated to the Holy Apostles."
The Picture of Dorian Gray from Thomas Beg on Vimeo
"The only novel written by Oscar Wilde, his 1890 work The Picture of Dorian Gray is regarded as a classic work of gothic literature. Its strong Faustian themed storyline tells of a young and beautiful upper class man. Basil Hallward, a painter, creates a portrait of the good looking aristocrat. Dorian sees it unveiled and whimsically announces that he would sell his soul so the portrait could grow old rather than he. The wish, as you might expect, is fulfilled.
This is an 8 Minute adaptation of Picture of Dorian Gray. It represents Thomas Beg’s 15 week Major Project at UCA Rochester as part of his CG Arts and Animation degree. It is exceptionally well done, retaining the gothic eeriness of the original as well as ably pulling the story in to eight minutes."
"Single-celled slime molds demonstrate the ability to memorize and anticipate repeated events, a team of Japanese researchers reported in January. The study [pdf] clearly shows “a primitive version of brain function” in an organism with no brain at all.
In their experiment, biophysicist Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Hokkaido University and colleagues manipulated the environment of Physarum slime-mold amoebas (near right). As the cells crawled across an agar plate, the researchers subjected them to cold, dry conditions for the first 10 minutes of every hour. During these cool spells, the cells slowed down their motion. After three cold snaps the scientists stopped changing the temperature and humidity and watched to see whether the amoebas had learned the pattern. Sure enough, many of the cells throttled back right on the hour in anticipation of another bout of cold weather. When conditions stayed stable for a while, the slime-mold amoebas gave up on their hourly braking, but when another single jolt of cold was applied, they resumed the behavior and correctly recalled the 60-minute interval. The amoebas were also able to respond to other intervals, ranging from 30 to 90 minutes.
The scientists point out that catching on to temporal patterns is no mean feat, even for humans. For a single cell to show such a learning ability is impressive, though Nakagaki admits he was not entirely surprised by the results. After working with the slime mold for years, he had a hunch that “Physarum could be cleverer than expected.” The findings of what lone cells are capable of “might be a chance to reconsider what intelligence is,” he says."
"From deafening monkey howls to snapping crustacean claws, animals use powerful sounds to do everything from claim territory to stun prey.
"There’s such an enormous range of abilities and loudness in animals, it's very easy to get swept up by it all. I just love this stuff," said bioacoustician Christopher Clark of Cornell University.
While every animal sound is amazing in its own right, the result of millions of years of evolution, Clark and other researchers have a few favorites. In this gallery we review the best, and look at the physics that produce them."
"Jones' process involves collecting thousands of photographs - professional and amateur, new and old, print and digital - from every Web-based source imaginable. She then organizes them in a variety of ways. She creates videos and "snap-motion reanimations" (that is, re-creating a event, such as a sunset or a flying bird, or inventing a "new reality," such as a spinning car fire or floating snowball) that illustrate motion and narrative, and she deconstructs single images by erasing them of context and reducing them to a particular shape." San Francisco Chronicle
