10:00 PM CST, TONIGHT: It’s that time of the week… time to ease into your favorite chair, sit back and relax as we explore the sublime world of the strange, the odd, and the unusual. It’s time once again for… The Shadow Hour.
Tonight’s guest, Austin reader Diane Parma, joins us again to talk astrology. While Diane is not a full time astrologer, she has long used astrological information as part of her work. She’ll talk to us about different perspectives on astrology and how it connects to the other tools that hse uses. If you’ve been curious about astrology, this will be a great place to begin.
As always, you can listen right here with our blogtalkradio widget! You can listen to past broadcasts at any time, or tune in tonight (Wednesday, July 6th) at 10pm Central for the live broadcast. See you in the shadows…
Ready to go: The Terrafugia Transition has finally been declared road legal, and it could be in U.S. garages as early as next year. It was first developed in 2009, but has faced years of hold-ups
It’s been cleared to take to the skies for more than a year – but that’s not much use when you’re supposed to be able to drive it, too.
But now the flying car has at least been declared officially road legal.
It means the Terrafugia Transition could be in U.S. garages as early as next autumn, after two years of delays.
It may not be the world’s first flying car, but its makers say it is the first to have wings that fold up automatically at the push of a button.
It costs $200,000 – about the same price as a Ferrari – and can be reserved online for what Terrafugia describes as a ‘modest’ $10,000 deposit.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has officially announced the Transition, called a ‘roadable aircraft’ by its makers, can now be legally driven on America’s roads.
It granted the vehicle special dispensations, which allow it to use airplane-style plastic windows instead of the safety glass usually used in cars, as it would be too heavy.
Innovative: The Transition 'roadable aircraft' costs $200,000, and can be reserved for a $10,000 depositReady for lift-off: It takes just 30 seconds for the Transition to convert from a car into a plane
The polycarbonate windscreens can withstand the impact of birds, so they won’t fracture.
The administration has also granted Terrafugia permission to use heavier-grade tyres, which are not normally allowed on multi-purpose vehicles.
It’s the second hurdle the Transition had to overcome before it could go on sale, after the Federal Aviation Administration ruled last year it could fly with its current weight, 110lbs over the normal legal limit for light sport aircraft category.
Terrafugia had originally hoped to deliver its first production vehicles as early as this year, but after problems with suppliers it has had to delay the release date to late 2012.
A 25-foot-long giant squid is splayed out on a tarp after it was picked up by a fishing crew over the weekend.
By Nidhi Subbaraman
Florida fishermen snared a real-life sea monster over the weekend: a giant squid measuring 25 feet in length.
“It’s really, really, really rare to get giant squids because they’re so huge, and live so deep,” John Slapcinsky, a collection manager at the Florida Museum of Natural History, told me. For museum workers and scientists who specialize in giant squids, this specimen is quite the catch.
University of Florida researcher Roger Portell injects preservative into the giant squid.
The animal was bobbing in the water when the fisherman chanced upon it on Sunday. They hauled it onto their boat, put it on ice, and brought it to shore. There, they alerted the Florida Fish and Wildlife conservation commission, who called in the Florida Museum of Natural History.
“I thought we definitely need to bring it in, because no one’s going to believe us if we don’t,” Robert Benz, one of the original squid finders, said in a press release. “I didn’t want to leave it out there and just let the sharks eat it.”
Somewhere along the way, the squid died.
It’s now been relocated to the Florida Museum of Natural History, where Slapcinsky and his colleagues are preserving the massive invertebrate. “Soft bodied squids spoil easily,” Slapcinsky told me.
The squid will be put through quite the regimen over the next month, and will be injected with and bathed in a cocktail of preservatives. These will kill the bacteria in the body of the squid and firm up the soft tissue of the animal, Slapcinsky explained.
A tentacle coils out from the dead squid's body. Studying the creature and sequencing its DNA should help scientists determine how various breeds of deep-sea squid are related.
Because they’re so rarely observed in the wild, or found dead (they get eaten pretty quickly), there’s a lot that scientists don’t know about the behavior of the enormous animals, like how they reproduce or what they eat. Also, a debate continues about whether giant squids make up a single species, or several, and Slapcisnky hopes that DNA analysis of this new squid will have some answers.
It’s not yet clear if the squid will make it into a museum exhibit, Slapcinsky says — the museum may not have the right equipment or the space to show off the spineless specimen. But it will be available for squid researchers to visit, to take a closer look.
(Reuters) – If Aubrey de Grey’s predictions are right, the first person who will live to see their 150th birthday has already been born. And the first person to live for 1,000 years could be less than 20 years younger.
A biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation dedicated to longevity research, de Grey reckons that within his own lifetime doctors could have all the tools they need to “cure” aging — banishing diseases that come with it and extending life indefinitely.
“I’d say we have a 50/50 chance of bringing aging under what I’d call a decisive level of medical control within the next 25 years or so,” de Grey said in an interview before delivering a lecture at Britain’s Royal Institution academy of science.
“And what I mean by decisive is the same sort of medical control that we have over most infectious diseases today.”
De Grey sees a time when people will go to their doctors for regular “maintenance,” which by then will include gene therapies, stem cell therapies, immune stimulation and a range of other advanced medical techniques to keep them in good shape.
De Grey lives near Cambridge University where he won his doctorate in 2000 and is chief scientific officer of the non-profit California-based SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Foundation, which he co-founded in 2009.
He describes aging as the lifelong accumulation of various types of molecular and cellular damage throughout the body.
“The idea is to engage in what you might call preventative geriatrics, where you go in to periodically repair that molecular and cellular damage before it gets to the level of abundance that is pathogenic,” he explained.
CHALLENGE
Exactly how far and how fast life expectancy will increase in the future is a subject of some debate, but the trend is clear. An average of three months is being added to life expectancy every year at the moment and experts estimate there could be a million centenarians across the world by 2030.
To date, the world’s longest-living person on record lived to 122 and in Japan alone there were more than 44,000 centenarians in 2010.
Some researchers say, however, that the trend toward longer lifespan may falter due to an epidemic of obesity now spilling over from rich nations into the developing world.
10:00 PM CST, TONIGHT: Have you ever had a psychic event? Been a witness to a UFO encounter, or maybe even been abducted? Ever seen a strange creature you couldn’t explain? Do you have a ghost story you’d like to share?
Tonight, join host Chris Walden of the weekly live radio program “The Shadow Hour” for a special open-line call-in show. Chris will review this week’s “Shadow News” while callers share their stories. That call in number is (347) 826-9662 or call toll-free at (877) 867-0829.
Now you can listen right here with our blogtalkradio widget! You can listen to past broadcasts at any time, or tune in tonight (Wednesday, June 29th) at 10pm Central for the live broadcast. See you in the shadows…
Move over, Bigfoot — Nessie’s back! Glad to see our old friend is making headlines again. It was starting to seem like Sasquatch had been hogging all the spotlight lately.
FOYERS shop and cafe owner Jan Hargreaves and her husband Simon believe they caught a glimpse of Loch Ness’s most elusive resident — Nessie.
It was while taking a break on the store’s front decking — looking out to the loch — when Mrs Hargreaves and kitchen worker Graham Baine spotted an unusual figure cutting a strange shape through the water.
“We were standing looking out and saw something that looked bizarre,” said Mrs Hargreaves.
“I said to my husband to come and have a look.
“We stand here all the time and look out and we see boats and kayaks but it didn’t look like anything we have seen here before.”
Despite the unidentified creature being quite a distance from their vantage point, 51-year-old Mrs Hargreaves said it had a long neck which was too long to be that of a seal and it was black in appearance.
“It went under the water and disappeared for probably 30 to 40 seconds and then came back up again,” said Mrs Hargreaves.
“It was around for a good four to five minutes. It was just so strange.”
Keen to stress she is not seeking publicity, Mrs Hargreaves does firmly believe what she saw was the Loch Ness Monster.
“It was so exciting,” she declared.
Since August last year, The Waterfall Cafe and Foyers Stores with post office, opposite the village’s famous Falls of Foyers, has been run by Mr and Mrs Hargreaves.
Nessie hunter Steve Feltham, who lives in a former mobile library turned research centre on Dores beach, said he heard about the possible sighting when he popped into the store last week and believes because it was from residents rather than tourists, it is more credible.
“I’m excited by the fact it was locals who had seen it,” said Mr Feltham.
“It’s quite a distance from the shop to the water and they watch everything that goes on there.
“For them to be impressed then there is a possibility it could have been Nessie.”
What particularly excited Mr Feltham was that it was from the exact same vantage point where Tim Binsdale shot the best footage of the legendary creature back in 1960.
We’ve seen our fair share of Iron Man suits in the past, but this is the first time that we see the “pre” Iron Man suit from the Iron Man series (the one tony stark made on the cave)
The suit was made by 25 year old Wang Xiao kang, he became a huge fan of the series after the movie came out in 2008. He works at ZTE the huge Multi National Telecommunications company out of China. He spent nearly 3,000 yuan (about $460) and spent 3 months in construction time until he finally finished the realistic Iron man Suit.
Wang Xiao, claims that he’s not very good with DIY equipment, and he started to learn how to do just about everything from Google searches, he found forums that talked about props, and he began to search for behind the scenes of the iron man movies to learn how they did the parts.
Something isn't quite right with this picture. What's that floating above the soundboard? (Courtesy Karen Hanlon)
People at a wedding reception at the Newman Wine Vaults in St. John’s believe they caught an image of an uninvited and otherworldly guest.
Newlyweds Matt White and Danielle Hann said one of their friends was shocked by the digital image she took at the June 18 event.
“Karen [Hanlon] was staring at this camera and she came running out with the camera saying, ‘Look what I just took! Look what I just took! There’s somebody in the picture,” said White.
On the right-hand side of the photograph, some see a figure that seems to be wearing a white top and floating in the air.
“Somehow it’s not as creepy in the daylight,” said White.
But it still makes Hann uneasy.
“I don’t know, it’s still creepy,” she said.
St. John’s folklorist Dale Jarvis said it might be explained away as a reflection or a light flare, but he added that the Newman Wine Vaults does have a haunting history.
“It is one of those places that continually generates new ghost stories. So, this is part of that tradition for the space,” said Jarvis, who has collected many St. John’s ghost stories.
Jarvis is the organizer of the city’s “haunted hike” – a tour of the downtown area that recounts many of the stories he has been told.
The Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage website said the history of the wine vault is unclear.
It’s believed to have been built in the early 19th century, and was used by the English mercantile firm Newman and Company to age port wine from Portugal in St. John’s – a tradition that began in the late 17th century and continued until the late 19th century.
World first: Ecci's creators say it is the most advanced robot ever created with tendons, muscles, bones, a brain and the visual capability of a human
It looks like a stripped-down version of Star Wars character C-3PO.
But this robot is science fact not fiction – and one of the most advanced in the world.
Ecci, as it has been named, is the first ever robot to have ‘muscles’ and ‘tendons’, as well as the ‘bones’ they help move. All made of a specially developed plastic.
And most advanced of all, it also has a brain with the ability to correct its mistakes – a trait previously only seen in humans.
Developed by a team of scientists at the University of Zurich, Ecci, is short for Eccerobot. Ecce in Latin means Lo or Behold.
The robot uses a series of electric motors to move the joints the tendons are connected to.
And a computer built into the brain of Ecci allows him to learn from his mistakes.
If, for example, a movement is causing him to stumble or drop something – the information is studied and analysed to avoid making the same mistake next time.
Learning from its mistakes: The robot has a brain that allows it to analyse data if a movement causes it to stumble or drop something - thereby ensuring it does not happen again
The creation also has the same vision capacity of humans too, despite only having one cyclops style eye.
The scientists now hope their creation will usher in a whole new generation for robots – and could aid development of artificial limbs.
Well, I just finished watching the live broadcast of the press conference today revealing the supposed Bigfoot evidence found by Sanger Paranormal, and I’ve got to say I was less than impressed.
Here are the photos they released today. They are said to show the face and hand/knuckle prints of a Bigfoot that supposedly was peering into the windows of one of the investigators’ vehicles.
