Death-Defying Wallenda Daredevil Crosses Colorado River Near Grand Canyon 1/4 Mile up on Tightrope

Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Aerialist Nik Wallenda completed a tightrope walk that took him a quarter mile over the Little Colorado River Gorge in northeastern Arizona on Sunday.

Wallenda performed the stunt on a 2-inch-thick steel cable, 1,500 feet above the river on the Navajo Nation near the Grand Canyon. He took just more than 22 minutes, pausing and crouching twice as winds whipped around him and the rope swayed.

“Thank you Lord. Thank you for calming that cable, God,” he said about 13 minutes into the walk.

Wallenda didn’t wear a harness and stepped slowly and steady throughout, murmuring prayers to Jesus almost constantly along the way. He jogged and hopped the last few steps…

Winds blowing across the gorge had been expected to be around 30 mph. Wallenda told Discovery after the walk that the winds were at times “unpredictable” and that dust had accumulated on his contact lenses.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Daily Smart Pill that Can Remember All Your Passwords: Tablets Can Transmit Personal Details to Devices as They Pass Through Body

Photo Credit: Alamy

Photo Credit: Alamy

For forgetful types, it promises to be a new wonder pill.

But far from boosting the memory, the tiny swallowable capsules contain a minute chip that transmits an individual’s personal details.

Electronic devices will be able to read the unique signal, ending the need for passwords and paper forms of ID, such as passports – and freeing users from such mundane tasks as recalling countless codes and security answers.

Already approved by the both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European regulators, the ingestible sensor is powered by a battery using the acid in the wearer’s stomach.

Each pill is designed to move through the body at the normal process of digestion, and according to engineers working on the device, it can be taken every day for up to a month.

Read more from this story HERE.

Google Glass Has Now Been Used During Surgery

Photo Credit: webpronews

Photo Credit: webpronews

Here’s one of the many firsts we’ll no doubt be hearing about regarding Google Glass as more and more people get their hands on the device. A doctor, Rafael Grossmann, MD, FACS, used Google Glass to record a procedure in which he inserted a feeding tube into a patient. This was streamed via Hangout.

Dr. Grossman, who is in Google’s Glass Explorer program, blogged about the experience, saying, “By performing and documenting this event, I wanted to show that this device and its platform, are certainly intuitive tools that have a great potential in Healthcare, and specifically for surgery, could allow better intra-operative consultations, surgical mentoring and potentiate remote medical education, in a very simple way.”

“The patient involved needed a feeding tube (Gastrostomy) and we chose to placed it endoscopically, with a procedure called PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy,” he writes. “You can Google that to learn more…). Being the first time, I wanted to do this during a simple and commonly performed procedure, to make sure that my full attention was not diverted from taking excellent care of the patient.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Doctors Report Major Progress Toward ‘Artificial Pancreas’

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Doctors are reporting a major step toward an “artificial pancreas,” a device that would constantly monitor blood sugar in people with diabetes and automatically supply insulin as needed.

A key component of such a system — an insulin pump programmed to shut down if blood-sugar dips too low while people are sleeping — worked as intended in a three-month study of 247 patients.

This “smart pump,” made by Minneapolis-based Medtronic Inc., is already sold in Europe, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is reviewing it now. Whether it also can be programmed to mimic a real pancreas and constantly adjust insulin based on continuous readings from a blood-sugar monitor requires more testing, but doctors say the new study suggests that’s a realistic goal.

“This is the first step in the development of the artificial pancreas,” said Dr. Richard Bergenstal, diabetes chief at Park Nicollet, a large clinic in St. Louis Park, Minn. “Before we said it’s a dream. We have the first part of it now and I really think it will be developed.”

He led the company-sponsored study and gave results Saturday at an American Diabetes Association conference in Chicago. They also were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Read more from this story HERE.

Robot Bird Mimics Flight of Actual Bird, May be Used for Surveillance (+videos)

Several weeks ago, Professor SK Gupta of the University of Maryland finally had a breakthrough in design on a robot bird that he and his students had been working on for eight years. The end result is a flying robot that is almost indistinguishable from a bird.

Professor Gupta explains:

Our new robot is based on a fundamentally new design concept. We call it Robo Raven. It features programmable wings that can be controlled independently. We can now program any desired motion patterns for the wings. This allows us to try new in-flight aerobatics that would have not been possible before. For example, we can now dive and roll.

The new design uses two actuators that can be synchronized electronically to achieve motion coordination between the two wings. The use of two actuators required a bigger battery and an on-board micro controller. All of this makes our robotic bird overweight. So how do we get Robo Raven to “diet” and lose weight? We used advanced manufacturing processes such as 3D printing and laser cutting to create lightweight polymer parts to reduce the weight. However, this alone was not sufficient. We needed three other tricks to get Robo Raven to fly. First, we programmed wing motion profiles that ensured that wings maintain the optimal velocity during the flap cycle to achieve the right balance between the lift and the thrust. Second, we developed a method to measure aerodynamic forces generated during the flapping cycle. This enabled us to quickly evaluate many different wing designs to select the best one. Finally, we had to perform system level optimization to make sure that all components worked well as an integrated system.

Robo Raven will enable us to explore new in-flight aerobatics. It will also allow us to more faithfully reproduce observed bird flights using robotic birds. I hope that this robotic bird will also inspire more people to choose “bird making” as their hobby!

Robotic birds (i.e., flapping wing micro air vehicles) are expected to offer advances in many different applications such as agriculture, surveillance, and environmental monitoring. Robo Raven is just the beginning. Many exciting developments lie ahead. The exotic bird that you might spot in your next trip to Hawaii might actually be a robot!

Angler Gets Jail Time for Cheating at Fishing Tournament

Photo Credit: parkrapidsenterprise

Photo Credit: parkrapidsenterprise

A Long Prairie angler long suspected of cheating at fishing tournaments was given seven days in jail Monday for cheating at the Park Rapids American Legion Community Fishing Derby this winter.

Alfred “Tom” Mead, 72, pled guilty to a felony charge of Theft By Swindle May 20, for sneaking a previously caught fish into the tournament Feb. 2. He has two prior gaming convictions and a decade-long trail of suspicion about his tournament winnings.

“Your conduct had a major impact on these things (fishing tournaments),” Judge Robert Tiffany scolded him. “I hope you realize the seriousness of your conduct.”Cheating, the judge said. “takes the enjoyment and joy out of it for those who bring their kids” and honest participants.

Mead is to report to the Hubbard County jail in one week.

He will be on probation for four years, during which he is barred from the Legion Club, was fined $200 and ordered to pay a $75 public defender co-payment.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ivy League School Department is (Intentionally) Run by Felons

Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

In the hallowed halls of Columbia University, a nest of ex-cons — who have served time for murder, attempted murder, robbery and assault — hold court on their unique brand of social justice for admiring students enrolled in the school’s social work program, a FoxNews.com investigation has found.

The ex-cons work for or with the Criminal Justice Initiative (CJI), co-founded in 2009 by former Weather Underground operative and Columbia adjunct professor Kathy Boudin, who pleaded guilty to felony murder for her role in an infamous 1981 armed robbery that left two police officers and a security guard dead. And while that case was well-publicized, the group is hardly upfront about the “practical experience” of Boudin and others associated with the CJI.

A description on the program’s website says it is “situated inside” Columbia, and a part of the school’s “Social Intervention Group,” a research center within the Columbia University School of Social Work. It lists among its goals helping to forge a solution for “a central social crisis of our time, mass incarceration.” The program holds events and conducts research as part of “an interdisciplinary project built around a model of community collaboration” that “seeks to increase the number of skilled practitioners, policy-makers and researchers who can advance the fields of re-entry and incarceration across all disciplines.”

But students and parents who shell out more than $43,000 in annual tuition and fees might be hard-pressed to uncover the fact that former inmates are running the CJI. Outside of a vague reference to Boudin and Cheryl Wilkins being “part of a community of people who have returned from prison,” there is no information about their criminal pasts. Boudin’s school directory bio, for example, makes no mention of her time in prison. Several other CJI faculty, program members and associates have similarly disturbing backgrounds.

Read more from this story HERE.

Teacher Charged After Students Pierce Ear, Stomach in Class

Photo Credit: Carl Bednorz

Photo Credit: Carl Bednorz

April Beard, a high school teacher in Pennsylvania, allegedly allowed a student to pierce Beard’s ear and then another student’s stomach — in class.

Beard, 34, was charged with endangering the welfare of children and corruption of minors, police said. Court records show she also was charged with body piercing of a minor.

According to Carroll Township Police, on April 16, Beard took a “handful” of students into a project room, and left the rest of the students in the classroom. Chief Sean Kapfhammer said a student with a piercing kit was then allowed to pierce Beard’s left ear three times and then pierce another student’s belly button.

Police said Beard paid the student $20 and gave her a homemade necklace as payment for the piercings. Beard then told the students, “What just happen(ed) here does not leave the room,” according to charging documents.

Read more from this story HERE.

Animal Smuggling Ring Busted with 213 Bear Paws

bear-pawsChinese customs officials have made a grisly discovery of 213 bear paws being smuggled in from Russia…

The horrific discovery came when officials checked the wheels of a van in Inner Mongolia.

Customs officials are said to have become suspicious by two Russian men acting strangely.

And when they scanned the vehicle they found the paws – thought to have come from brown bears – stuffed in the wheels and spare tires…

“The demand is huge because more people can afford them and the country has the tradition to treat bear paw as a rare ingredient for cuisine or as an expensive present,” [an official with Animals Asia Foundation] said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Dog Pushes Owner in Wheelchair Through Flooded Russian Street

Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

Earlier this month, central Europe faced some of the worst flooding in a decade. Several western Russian cities were hit hard, too.

In a clip posted on YouTube this past week, one resident of a Russian community uploaded a video of the severe flooding in his community.

As he was taping, his camera caught a disabled man, in his wheelchair, being pushed through the flood waters by his dog.

The amazing footage is shown below: