2012 – Page 10 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on August 29, 2012 by MOTW Admin

THE HOVER BIKE OF THE FUTURE AVAILABLE TODAY

The Aerofex hover vehicle looks a little familiar.

If we weren’t living in enough of ‘The World of the Future” as we’ve seen in novels, movies and television for your liking, it looks like someone has taken a step in the right direction… up.

Space.com writes:

A resurrected hover vehicle won’t fly through dense forests as effortlessly as the “Star Wars” speeder bikes from “Return of the Jedi,” but its intuitive controls could someday allow anyone to fly it without pilot training.

The aerial vehicle resembles ascience fiction flying bike with two ducted rotors instead of wheels, but originates from a design abandoned in the 1960s because of stability and rollover problems. Aerofex, a California-based firm, fixed the stability issue by creating a mechanical system — controlled by two control bars at knee-level — that allows the vehicle to respond to a human pilot’s leaning movements and natural sense of balance.

“Think of it as lowering the threshold of flight, down to the domain of ATV’s (all-terrain vehicles),” said Mark De Roche, an aerospace engineer and founder of Aerofex.

Such intuitive controls could allow physicians to fly future versions of the vehicle to visit rural patients in places without roads, or enable border patrol officers to go about their duties without pilot training. All of it happens mechanically without the need for electronics, let alone complicated artificial intelligence or flight software. [See Hover ‘Bike’ Fly (Video)]

“It essentially captures the translations between the two in three axis (pitch, roll and yaw), and activates the aerodynamic controls required to counter the movement — which lines the vehicle back up with the pilot,” De Roche told InnovationNewsDaily. “Since [the pilot’s] balancing movements are instinctive and constant, it plays out quite effortlessly to him.”

FOOTAGE OF THE CURIOSITY ROVER LANDING ON MARS IN HI-DEFINITION

The original, but quite shaky and hard to view, footage has been re-done in beautiful HD.

You have got to watch this:

The LA Times writes:

You may have seen video of Curiosity’s descent before, but you haven’t seen it like this — with the craters on Mars rendered in high definition, the contrast amped up, and the whole thing set to a string score by Kevin Macleod that helps heighten the grandeur, and also the loneliness, of the rover’s descent to the red planet.

(Never underestimate the importance of a soundtrack!)

Consider it the Mars Curiosity descent post-production video. It’s like the original, but better.

The video was put together by Dominic Muller, known on Reddit as Godd2, reports iO9.

On the video’s YouTube page Muller explains that he used an editing technique called frame interpolation, which allowed him to take the original choppy video released by NASA and smooth it out. He writes that it took him four straight days to put it together.

You can find a thorough and technical explanation of how Muller made this video on Reddit.

Or you can just watch this over and over again and think about how awesome Mars looks.

As one commenter wrote, “It’s weird that we’re looking at another world.”

MEET VENUS THE CHIMERA CAT WITH TWO FACES

Venus has a genetic condition that causes her face and eyes to be of different colors.

This is pretty cool! Due to a genetic condition called ‘Chimerism” Venus the cat has two complete different hair color and patterns perfectly split down the middle of her face and, due to another condition called heterochromia, she has two different colored eyes as well!

Here’s a video showing the beautiful cat just hanging out:

Daily Mail writes:

When there seems to be a new cute kitten gaining YouTube fame each week, it’s tough to stand out from the cat crowd.

But that’s certainly not a problem for Venus – the ‘two-faced’ cat who is the internet star du jour.

The feline’s face is perfectly divided in two – one half is jet black while the other is calico. And, as if this wasn’t enough, her eyes are different colours too – one is ice blue, the other is green.

Venus is known as a chimera cat because of her genetic composition and her different eye colours are caused by heterochromia.

Janus, the Roman god with two faces, would have perhaps been a more obvious deity to name the three-year-old cat after, even if she is a female.

Venus has several YouTube videos which have been seen about 154,000 times with thousands clicking the ‘like’ button.

Unsurprisingly, Venus now has her own Facebook page too where she has attracted more than 22,000 fans.

However, Venus is learning that world-wide fame has its downsides too as she has been unfavourably likened to Harvey Dent, Batman’s nemesis Two-Face.

Venus’ proud owner describes her lovingly as a ‘gentle’ and ‘perfect’ pet with a deceptively big appetite.

‘As tiny as she is she likes to pick the giant pieces of food from the dog food bowl rather than eat her cat food,’ the owner writes on Venus’ Facebook page.

Posted on August 26, 2012 by MOTW Admin

SILVER DISC SEEN FLYING OVER NEW YORK STATE

What could this be flying above Vestal, NY?

WBNG 12 ACTION NEWS Writes:

Vestal, NY (WBNG Binghamton) One viewer says he saw an unidentified flying object in the Southern Tier sky.

Brian Titus says he was at Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton, when he saw something rising behind a hill in Vestal.

In an email, Titus wrote, “It sat there for about ten seconds and then it shot up like a bullet and vanished.”

He says at least ten people saw it happen.

Minutes later when he was coming home, Titus saw the U.F.O. again.

During this second sighting, Titus snapped the picture.

Titus wrote, “I am so exited and freaked out at the same time.”

HAVE WE FOUND AMELIA EARHART’S PLANE WRECKAGE?

Researchers believe they've found the actual debris field from Amelia Earhart's legendary last flight.

The mystery of Amelia Earhart has intrigued the world ever since her disappearance on what would have been her record-breaking around-the-world flight in 1937.

Researchers, conspiracists, and just plain curious people from all over continue to investigate and could have possibly found her!

ABC News writes:

Forensic imaging specialists have found what looks like a wheel and other landing gear off the coast of Nikumaroro Island in the Pacific Ocean, right where analysts and archeologists think Amelia Earhart’s plane went down in 1937.

“We don’t know whether it’s her plane, but what we have is a debris field in a place where there should be a debris field if what we had put together based on the evidence that we had is correct,” said Ric Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which led the $2.2 million expedition last month.

During the trip, Gillespie said he was “bummed” because they didn’t see much in the coral reef from their standard video camera. The high definition camera footage couldn’t be viewed in real time, so they had to process it and send it over to forensic analyst Jeff Glickman before they could get any answers.

“On Tuesday afternoon, he calls me and says, ‘You know, there’s stuff here. It looks like manmade debris,” Gillespie said.

So Gillespie compared the logs to his maps and said, “Whoa. What he’s seeing is right where we reasoned things should be.”

Based on the last thing Earhart ever said over the radio, she was on a navigational line called 157337, which has two other islands along it other than Howard Island, which was where Earhart was aiming to land. Although the Navy began looking for her along the route initially, the idea was forgotten until two retired Navy officers approached Gillespie in 1988.

THERE WERE NOT ONE, BUT TWO UFOS THAT CRASHED IN ROSWELL

An Air Force Colonel has come forward to state there were in fact, 2 seperate crashes in Roswell, N.M.

As if the controversy and speculation around that fateful day in Roswell, New Mexico, retired Air Force Colonel Richard French is stirring things up a bit by saying that there were 2 seperate ufos recovered.

Huffington Post writes:

The 1947 UFO controversy of Roswell, N.M. is like a bad penny: It keeps turning up.

The legend, rehashed by conspiracy theorists in countless documentaries, revolves around allegations that an unusual object fell from the sky — an object so bizarre that the U.S. Air Force issued a press release that a flying saucer had crashed.

That story was quickly recanted, creating what would become one of the greatest urban legends in American history.

Until now, most debunkers doubted that there was even one crash. Now, in an exclusive interview, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Richard French told The Huffington Post that there were actually two crashes.

This revelation is especially remarkable considering that French was known in the past to debunk UFO stories.

“There were actually two crashes at Roswell, which most people don’t know,” French told HuffPost. “The first one was shot down by an experimental U.S. airplane that was flying out of White Sands, N.M., and it shot what was effectively an electronic pulse-type weapon that disabled and took away all the controls of the UFO, and that’s why it crashed.”

French — an Air Force pilot who was in Alamagordo, N.M., in 1947, being tested in an altitude chamber, an annual requirement for rated officers — was very specific in how the military allegedly brought down what he believes was a spacecraft from another world.

“When they hit it with that electromagnetic pulse — bingo! — there goes all their electronics and, consequently, the UFO was uncontrollable,” said French, who flew hundreds of combat missions in Korea and Southeast Asia, and who held several positions working for Military Intelligence.

Another retired officer doubts French’s story.

“No chance! Zero chance!” said Army Col. John Alexander, whose own top-secret clearance gave him access in the 1980s to official documents and UFO accounts. He created a top-level group of government officials and scientists who determined that, while UFOs are real, they couldn’t find evidence of an official cover-up.

MAN FINDS 10 YEAR OLD LOST FORK… IN HIS STOMACH

The fork had remained intact inside his stomach despite lying in a pool of stomach acid for a decade. - Caters News

Apparently one meal didn’t go quite the way Lee Gardner of Cudworth, England, instead of swallowing his food, he swallowed the utensil!

BBC News writes:

Doctors operating on a man who was taken to hospital with stomach pains discovered a 9in long plastic fork that he swallowed a decade ago.

Lee Gardner was taken to Barnsley Hospital when he started vomiting blood and having cramps.

He said he was told the fork, which he swallowed 10 years ago, would pass through his system naturally so he did not think to mention it to doctors.

Surgeon Hanis Shiwani said Mr Gardner was lucky there was not more damage.

Mr Gardner, from Cudworth, Barnsley, said: “I can’t believe it. I have never had any problems with my stomach except once a couple of years ago I remember thinking I felt like something had lodged when I bent over awkwardly.

“But the advice at the time was that it would just pass through my system, and as that was so many years before I really didn’t think it could be the fork.”

DNA TESTING TO DETERMINE THE ELEPHANT MAN’S AILMENT

The Elephant Man suffered from an unknown disease that scientist are now trying to name.

Joseph Merrick didn’t exactly have the most peaceful life, having been the now, and then, famous Elephant Man of London but, even in death he shall not rest peacefully for scientists plan on investigating his bones to determine just what caused his problems.

The Independent writes:

He was the thing of children’s nightmares, outcast by a Victorian society unable to comprehend his grotesque deformities, but was later immortalised in films and plays. Joseph Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man, is one of medical history’s enigmas: 122 years after his death, no one knows exactly what caused his extreme disfigurement. But scientists will attempt to solve the puzzle next month by extracting DNA from his bones for analysis.

Merrick came to the attention of the medical profession in the 1880s. Ever since, scientists have struggled to explain the huge growths that caused him to be first shunned and finally celebrated by society – by the end of his life his courage and humility had, at last, been recognised. Merrick became a folk hero for speaking up for others who were similarly afflicted.

It was initially thought that he suffered from Elephantiasis, a parasitic infection characterised by the thickening and enlargement of skin and tissue, hence his nickname.

Then, in 2001, some scientists suggested that Merrick had suffered from a rare disease called Proteus syndrome – a congenital disorder that causes skin overgrowth and abnormal bone development. But other experts questioned the diagnosis, saying that the way his disease manifested was not typical of that condition. It is hoped this latest research will finally prove conclusive.

Scientists will extract DNA from Merrick’s skeleton, which has been kept at the Royal London Hospital at Whitechapel, east London, since his death, aged 27, in 1890. Tests will then be carried out to see if it is possible to sequence Merrick’s genome thereby identifying any gene alteration. The already complex technique has been made harder by the fact that Merrick’s skeleton has been poorly preserved, and years of bleaching to keep it clean have degraded the remains.

Researchers hope that, by finally diagnosing his condition, they will be able to treat other sufferers.

Read more at independent.co.uk/news/science

Posted on August 16, 2012 by MOTW Admin

LARGEST PYTHON EVER FOUND IN FLORIDA EVERGLADES NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THERE

Giant Burmese Pythons have been taking over the Florida Everglades

Things are getting bad in the beautiful Everglades of Florida. They’re being over run by giant snakes that are non-native to the area… and they’re getting bigger.

This little lady was the most recent find, and the largest ever. Not to mention the 87 eggs she had in her.

Huffington Post writes:

There are some Florida records no one wants to see broken, but apparently the exotic snakes invading the Everglades weren’t informed.

Researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey captured a state record-breaking Burmese python that was not only a whopping 17 feet and 7 inches long, but carrying an also-record-breaking 87 eggs.

The massive gal weighed 164 pounds, according to staff at the University of Florida, who said the previous records for length and fertility were a measly 16.8 feet and 85 eggs.

“She was a beast!” USGS research ecologist Dr. Kristen Hart, whose team caught the snake, told HuffPost. “She was really impressive.”

The massive python was nearly a foot wide, said the Florida Museum of Natural History’s herpetology collection manager Dr. Kenneth Krysko (hear him describe her in the video in the slideshow below). The python was sent to the Gainesville museum so UF staff could perform a necropsy for research before mounting the body, which will eventually be returned to Everglades National Park. And then, presumably, there’s a party to be had.

“When you find something outside the known or expected range,” said FMNH’s Ichthyology collection manager Rob Robins, “it’s exciting.”

Hart said the huge python was initially spotted in March when a “judas snake” — a male python outfitted with a transmitter for tracking during mating season — led USGS biologists Thomas Selby and Brian Smith straight to her. Getting the snake from the brush to the office was no small feat, though the very fit Selby and Smith are roughly 6′ 5″ and 5′ 10″, respectively.

“She was tired from pulling against them, they were tired from wrestling her,” Hart said. “They were just exhausted but also excited: ‘You’re not gonna believe how big this snake is!'”

ANCIENT INK: SIBERIAN TATTOO THAT’S 2,500 YEARS OLD

Princess Ukok, preserved for 2,500 years, of ancient Russia had several intricate tattoos.

It seems that right now is far from the first time for humans to have tattoos come into fashion, it’s just taken a little bit time to come back around. Like, 2,5o0 years or so.

Daily Mail writes:

The astonishing 2,500 year old tattoos of a Siberian princess, and how they reveal little has changed in the way we decorate our bodies

Incredibly well preserved body found high in the Altai mountains, with two warriors buried close by for protections and six horses to ease the journey into the next life

Tattoos on left shoulder, including a deer with a griffon’s beak and a Capricorn’s antlers.

The intricate patterns of 2,500-year-old tattoos – some from the body of a Siberian ‘princess’ preserved in the permafrost – have been revealed in Russia.

The remarkable body art includes mythological creatures and experts say the elaborate drawings were a sign of age and status for the ancient nomadic Pazyryk people, described in the 5th century BC by the Greek historian Herodotus.

But scientist Natalia Polosmak – who discovered the remains of ice-clad ‘Princess Ukok’ high in the Altai Mountains – is also struck about how little has changed in more than two millennia.

‘I think we have not moved far from Pazyryks in how the tattoos are made,’ she told the Siberian Times ( SiberianTimes.com ).

‘It is still about a craving to make yourself as beautiful as possible.’

‘For example, about the British.

‘A lot of them go on holiday to Greece, and when I’ve been there I heard how Greeks were smiling and saying that a British man’s age can be easily understood by the number of tattoos on his body.

‘I’m talking the working class now.

‘And I noticed it, too.

‘The older a person, the more tattoos are on his body.’