Video: Doctors Stunned as Brain-Computer Interface Allows Quadriplegic Woman to Feed Herself

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A woman who is paralysed from the neck down has stunned doctors with her extraordinary skill at using a robotic arm that is controlled by her thoughts alone.

The 52-year-old patient, called Jan, lost the use of her limbs more than 10 years ago to a degenerative disease that damaged her spinal cord. The disruption to her nervous system was the equivalent to having a broken neck.

But in training sessions at the University of Pittsburgh, doctors found she quickly learned to make fluid movements with the brain-controlled robotic arm, reaching levels of performance never seen before.

Doctors recruited the woman to test a robotic arm that is controlled by a new kind of computer program that translates the natural brain activity used to move our limbs into commands to move the robotic arm.

The design is intended to make the robotic arm more intuitive for patients to use. Instead of having to think where to move the arm, a patient can simply focus on the goal, such as “pick up the ball”. Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Stray Dogs Being Taught to Drive in New Zealand

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In a world already full of road hogs this is perhaps the last thing you want to see in the rear view mirror.

Animal experts are teaching dogs how to drive.

Astonishingly, it took three mutts just eight weeks to master the basics in wooden carts.

Porter, a 10 month old beardie cross, is one of three dogs being trained to drive a specially converted Mini in a stunt for the New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Monty, an 18 month old Giant Schnauzer cross in one of the specially built training cars built to get the dogs used to the controls of the specially modified mini. Ginnie, a one year old Beardie Whippet Cross is the third driver in the group.

The three dogs will drive a modified Mini in which they sit on their haunches in the driver’s seat with their paws on the steering wheel. Their feet go on extension levers which had been attached to the accelerator and the brake whilst their paw will rest on the gearstick.

They then graduated to a modified Mini in which they sat on their haunches in the driver’s seat with their paws on the steering wheel. Their feet go on extension levers which are attached to the accelerator and the brake while their paw rests on the gearstick. Read more from this story HERE.

NASA Responds To “Dec 21st End Of World” Scare

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Dec. 21, 2012, won’t be the end of the world as some have claimed. However, NASA says that “it will be another winter solstice”. The organization made the post on its website as a response to a popular Mayan conspiracy theory which states that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21st 2012.

In the “Beyond 2012: Why the World Won’t End’ section, the space agency answers frequently asked questions and removes all doubt from the minds of readers using science and logic.

Questions like ‘Does the Mayan calendar end on December 2012?’, Could planets align in a way that impacts Earth?’ and Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012?’, have been answered on the website.

NASA simply states that the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012 and that December 22nd is the start of another long-count period.

Read more from this story HERE.

Principal Forces Boys to Hold Hands as Punishment for Fighting

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The idea of public humiliation as an appropriate punishment is certainly a controversial topic.

A couple of Westwood High School Warriors were humbled after a fight, and pictures of the high school boys holding hands as punishment and covering their heads are all over Facebook.

One of those young men is 14-year-old Charles Crockett, who admitted to ditching classes at the Mesa school Thursday because he said everyone was still teasing him about it. He said the ordeal started in P.E. class Wednesday.

“I told him to hit me and he hit me and we all started fighting,” Charles said. The freshman said he and a sophomore named Julio were sent to Principal Tim Richard’s office, where he gave the boys a clear choice. “The principal told us options and so we picked holding hands instead of getting suspended,” Crockett said.

The two locked palms for about an hour in the middle of campus during lunch while the entire student body witnessed their humiliation.

Read more from this story HERE.

Father Uses “Personal Drone” To Follow His Son to School

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A genius dad invented something to make dad life easier: a flying, camera-equipped quadrocopter that could follow his kids to the school bus stop. That’s right, a personal drone for his kids. Genius, I say. Genius!

Paul Wallich, the guy who cooked up the flying drone, used to walk his grade school son 400 meters down a hill to the bus stop. But he was always curious to make a drone with a camera follow his son so he could watch the trip from his computer. So he did it. And it’s a lot easier than you think.

Wallich simply bought a quadrocopter kit and attached a smartphone with a video chatting app enabled. The tricky part was to have the drone follow his kid.

Read more from this story HERE.

Catholic Church Sets Up Exorcist Hotline in Response to Skyrocketing Possessions

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The Catholic Church has established an exorcist hotline in Milan, its biggest diocese, to cope with demand. Monsignor Angelo Mascheroni, the diocese’s chief exorcist since 1995, said the curia had also appointed twice as many exorcists to cope with a doubling in the number of requests for help over 15 years.

“We get many requests for names, addresses and phone numbers; that’s why we’ve set up a switchboard in the curia from Monday to Friday from 2:30 pm to 5 pm,” he told the chiesadimilano website.

“People in need can call and will be able to find a priest in the same area who doesn’t have to travel too far.” And to that end, the number of demon-busting priests on call has increased from six to 12.

The Monsignor said he knew of one exorcist who had been seeing up to 120 people a day. “But with so little time per client he was only able to offer a quick blessing. That’s not enough,” he said. ”There should be two to four appointments a day, no more, otherwise it’s too much.”

It’s not clear why the number of suspected possessions has risen so sharply. But Monsignor Mascheroni said that part of the increase might be explained by the rising numbers of parents having difficulty controlling disobedient teenagers.

Read more from from this story HERE.

Dog Day Afternoon! The Great Dane Caught on Camera Doing Cannonballs in Owner’s Pool

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What do dogs get up to when their owners are at work?

They have a pool party of course. Well, this particular pet does anyway.

An amusing video has captured a Great Dane having a great time tumbling down a waterslide into its owner’s swimming pool, supposedly while they’re out for the day.

The footage, uploaded on Pawnation.com this week, is doing the rounds online, with dog lovers fawning over the pooch’s impressive party trick.

The huge black animal is seen on the tape bounding down the slippery slide, which is carved out of what look to be rocks on the side of the pool.

The canine then lands with a gigantic splash in the middle of the water.

Read more from this story HERE.

Verdict: Loving Husband Turned Into Homosexual Addict by Parkinson’s Drug

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A Parkinson’s sufferer has won a six figure pay-out against a drug giant after his medication turned him into a ‘gay sex and gambling addict’.

Didier Jambart had been a well respected man, an upstanding member of the community in Nantes, western France, and a loving father and husband. But within two years of taking the drug Requip he was so addicted to both his vices he sold his children’s toys to raise money and advertised himself on the internet for sex. He has now been given £160,000 in damages after a court in Rennes, France, upheld his claims.

The ground-breaking ruling was made yesterday by the appeal court, which awarded the damages to Mr Jambart from GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharmaceuticals giant.

With his wife Christine beside him, Mr Jambart, 52, broke down in tears as judges upheld his claim that his life had become ‘hell’ after he started taking Requip, a drug made by GSK. He told reporters ‘this is a great day’ after the court threw out the firm’s appeal against an earlier ruling to award him 117,000 euros. The court increased the level of damages to 197,468.83 euros after finding that there was ‘serious, precise and corroborated’ evidence to blame his transformation on Requip.

Read more from this story HERE.

Belgian Discovers His Wife Used To Be a Man After 19 Years

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photo credit: huntingtontheatreco

The man, only named as Jan, married Monica, his family’s former au pair in a previous marriage, in 1993 despite legal difficulties raised by the Belgian immigration authorities.

But it was only in recent weeks that he discovered that his wife had originally been a man and had undergone a sex change.

“I feel I’ve been assaulted,” he told the Het Nieuwsblad newspaper.

“I brought her to Belgium. That was not easy. The Belgian courts had serious doubts about the authenticity of her birth and her identity papers, but eventually they accepted it anyway. I thought she was an attractive woman, all woman. She had no male traits.”

Jan, 64, said that he and his wife had decided not to have children because he had two by his previous marriage and she fooled him by pretending to menstruate, using sanitary towels, “to conceal the truth”.

Read more from this story HERE.

Canadian Man Arrested After Telling Children ‘Santa Doesn’t Exist’

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In Kingston, it’s not the Grinch but a 24-year-old man who police say stole Christmas.

As Christmas-themed floats slowly rolled down Princess St. during Kingston’s annual Santa Claus parade, an intoxicated man shouted blasphemous lies to shocked children: Santa doesn’t exist.

The man, whose gelled hair “looked like a set of devil horns protruding from his head,” was reported to Kingston police, Const. Steve Koopman said.

Police arrested a 24-year-old man around 6 p.m.

“It was pretty despicable that someone, during this time of the year, would tell kids Santa isn’t real — which of course we would argue,” Koopman said.

Read more from this story HERE.