Thursday, January 8, 2015
Fifty Shades of Grey rated for 'graphic nudity' and 'unusual behaviour'
American teenagers will only be able to see the film if accompanied by an adult
Fifty Shades of Grey rated for 'graphic nudity' and 'unusual behaviour'
<script height="315px" width="560px" src="http://player.ooyala.com/iframe.js#ec=NtczhwcTpryUS6BQDFN_YL78463YV_AN&pbid=7dfd98005dba40baacc82277f292e522"></script>
Teenagers wanting to see Fifty Shades of Grey in America will have to take an open-minded adult with them - even if they were planning to attend the screening on its opening night, Valentine's Day.
Fifty Shades of Grey rated for 'graphic nudity' and 'unusual behaviour'
<script height="315px" width="560px" src="http://player.ooyala.com/iframe.js#ec=NtczhwcTpryUS6BQDFN_YL78463YV_AN&pbid=7dfd98005dba40baacc82277f292e522"></script>
Teenagers wanting to see Fifty Shades of Grey in America will have to take an open-minded adult with them - even if they were planning to attend the screening on its opening night, Valentine's Day.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has given Sam Taylor-Johnson's adaptation of EL James's raunchy romance novel an R rating, meaning that anyone under 17 will need to be accompanied by an adult.
According to Variety, this is due to the film's "strong sexual content including dialogue, some unusual behaviour and graphic nudity”, which sounds like a fairly chaste summary of the S&M practices described in James's Shades of Grey trilogy.
In the UK, the BBFC granted the film's trailers were granted a 15 rating in 2014.
The film's studio, Universal Pictures, pushed the release date of the film back to 14 February 2015 to inspire potential cinema-goers with romance. A spokesperson said at the time that the new date was preferable to the previous, would have been in August, saying: "we want to be able to take advantage of women who are invariably on vacation with their families during the month of August in Europe."
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Cicret Smart Bracelet brings a tablet to your skin
The mobile market is not immune to trends and fads, and sometimes they can run counter to established norms. At first users wanted the smallest phone on the market. In the prehistoric pre-smartphone era some phones were so small they were almost impossible to dial. Smartphones changed that trend, and initial small versions have given way to phablets. Once again, bigger has become better. Cicret looks to solve the problem for us all with the largest useable screen packed into the smallest device possible. It seems a bit counter-intuitive, but the design is genius.
The Cicret Smart Bracelet debuted on Indiegogo and just finished its round of funding. The Smart Bracelet looks like a simple bracelet but has an embedded memory card, processor, accelerometer, vibrator, USB port, Bluetooth functionality, and Wi-Fi. The most important components consist of a pico-projector and an array of 8 proximity sensors. The projector beams the screen down onto the users forearm, and the proximity sensors track fingers to allow device interaction. The video below is simply amazing.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Man Eaten Alive by Anaconda
Discovery's 'Eaten Alive' special airs on December 7th and will show Paul Rosolie being eaten alive by an anaconda. Rosolie spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the experience. Gillian Pensavalle (@GillianWithaG) has more.
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Bio-Electric-Hybrid-Aircraft concept aims to quietly rule the skies
The Faradair BEHA concept is intended to be one of the world’s quietest, most efficient and environmentally friendly aircraft ever created (Image: Faradair)
Touted as the world's first true hybrid aircraft, the Faradair BEHA (Bio-Electric-Hybrid-Aircraft) is a triple box-wing design concept that combines electric motors and a bio-diesel engine. Fitted with a range of energy conservation and recovery technologies, including solar panels on all flight surfaces and high-lift, low-speed flight capabilities, the BEHA is intended to be one of the world’s most environmentally friendly aircraft.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/projects/1421946/photo-main.jpg?1416186577

Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Snake Robots! Slithering Machines Could Aid Search-and-Rescue Efforts
One snake's ability to
shimmy up slippery sand dunes could inspire new technologies for robots that
could perform search and rescue missions, carry out inspections of hazardous
wastes and even explore ancient pyramids.
A new study looked at the
North American desert-dwelling sidewinder rattlesnake (Crotalus cerastes), a
creature better known for its venomous bite than its graceful movements. But
this snake can climb up sandy slopes without sliding back down to the bottom —
a feat that few snake species can accomplish.
Snakelike, or limbless, robots are
intriguing to scientists for several reasons. First, their lack of legs, wheels
or tracks means they don't often get stuck in ruts or held up by bumps in their
path. They could also be used to access areas that other bots can't get to, or
to explore places that aren't safe for humans. [Biomimicry: 7 Clever Technologies
Inspired by Nature]
sidewinder shimmy
sidewinder shimmy
To get a closer look at
their live study subjects, the researchers headed to Zoo Atlanta, where they
were able to examine six sidewinderrattlesnakes. They tested the snakes on a
specially designed inclined table covered with loosely packed sand.
Fifty-four trials were
conducted, with each of the six snakes slithering up the sandy table nine
times, three times each at varying degrees of steepness. As the snakes worked
their way up the makeshift sand dune, high-speed
cameras tracked their movements, taking note of exactly where their bodies came
into contact with the sand as they moved upward.
The researchers found that
sidewinder snakes live up to their name. The slithery creatures moved up the
sandy incline in a sideways motion, with their heads pointing toward the top of
the incline and the rest of their bodies moving horizontally up the slope. The
researchers then looked more carefully at how sidewinders carry out these
complex movements.
"The snakes tended to
increase the amount of body in contact with the surface at any instant in time
when they were sidewinding up the slope and the incline angle increased,"
said Daniel Goldman, co-author of the study and an associate professor of
biomechanics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Specifically,
the snakes doubled the amount of their bodies touching the sand when navigating
the slope, he added.

Credit: Nico Zevallos and Chaohui Gong
And the parts of the
snake's body that were touching the sand during the ascent never slipped back
down the slope because the creature applied the right amount of force in its movements, keeping the sand
under it from sliding, Goldman told Live Science.
Snake robots
To put their newfound
understanding of sidewinding to good use, Goldman and his colleagues got in
touch with Howie Choset, a professor at The Robotics Institute at Carnegie
Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Choset, who has been developing limbless
robots for years, already developed a snakelike bot that performs well both in the lab and
in real-life situations. However, his slithering machine has run into one
particular problem during field tests.
"These guys have been
making a robot sidewind for years over a wide diversity of substrates, but they
had a lot of trouble on sandy slopes," Goldman said.
To get the robot moving
over sandy dunes, the researchers applied what they now know about the
sidewinding rattlesnake's patterns of movement. They programmed the robot so
that more of its body would come into contact with the ground as it slides up
the slope. They also applied what they had learned about force, which enables
the robot to move its weight in such a way that it keeps moving upward over the
sand without rolling back down the slope.
Now that Choset's snake
robot can move over tough terrain, it'll be better equipped to handle the tasks
that it was built to tackle.
"Since these robots
have a narrow cross section and they're relatively smooth, they can fit into
places that people and machinery can't otherwise access," Choset told Live
Science.
For example, these
limbless robots could be used during search-and-rescue missions,
since the slithery machines can crawl into a collapsed building and search for
people trapped inside without disturbing the compromised structure. The snake
bot could also be sent into containers that may hold dangerous substances, such
as nuclear waste, to take samples and report back to hazmat specialists.
Choset also said these
robotic sidewinding abilities could come in handy on archaeological sites. For
instance, the robots could one day be used to explore the insides of pyramids
or tombs, he said.
The research represents a
key collaboration between biologists and roboticists, said Auke Ijspeert, head
of the Biorobotics Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at
Lausanne (EPFL), who was not involved in the new study.
"I think it’s a very
exciting project which managed to contribute to the two objectives of
biorobotics," Ijspeert told Live Science.
"On one hand, they
took inspiration from biology to design better control methods for the
robot," Ijspeert said. "By looking at how sidewinding takes place in
a snake, especially with slopes, they found out the strategy that the animal
uses and, when they tested it on the robot, it could really improve the
climbing capabilities of the robot."
The researchers also
achieved the second goal of biorobotics, he said, which is to use a robot as a
scientific tool. By testing the different speeds at which the robotic snake
could successfully climb up the sand, the researchers were able to pinpoint
exactly how fast real snakes make their way up these slippery slopes.
"It's a nice example
of how robots can help in biology and how biology can help in robotics."
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