Cornell Researchers Create Online Simulator to Map Zombie Outbreak for Real Medical Purposes

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zombie outbreakWhile tools like shotguns, baseball bats and flame throwers might prove invaluable during the zombie apocalypse, there’s another tool — which takes a more cerebral approach to the problem — that might also come in handy. Infection-mapping tool Zombietown USA lets you chart the spread of the zombie outbreak and know exactly where you should flee to last the longest when the brain eaters start taking over the US. You can even adjust sliders to account for different variables, so your escape route can be the most efficient possible.

Though Zombietown USA seems like a gag, it actually grew out of hard science. As we reported earlier, a group of researchers at Cornell University, inspired by the book “World War Z” by Max Brooks, modeled the way in which a zombie outbreak might spread and determined your best bet was to run for the hills.

Zombietown USA grew out of their research and accompanies a paper graduate students Matt Bierbaum, Alex Alemi and several of their peers recently submitted to arXiv, an online depository for physics papers. The paper, “You Can Run, You Can Hide: The Epidemiology and Statistical Mechanics of Zombies,” uses zombies as a basis to model any disease, including ones that might actually strike.

“We wanted to study zombies using many of the scientific tools used for actual disease, albeit in a fun context,” Bierbaum, told me. “We hope in this way to introduce the real methods and science behind diseases to a broader audience and show the fun in science.”

“Zombies, while maybe not a ‘real’ disease, is a unique model of diseases compared to those that are traditionally studied,” Bierbaum said. “In standard disease models as well as zombies, an infection takes place when there is contact between an infected host and a healthy one — someone sneezing on someone else, or a zombie biting a healthy human. In standard disease models, infected individuals recover when they get better on their own. A zombie, however, only recovers when it is actively killed (canonically, by destroying the brain).” (Read more from “Cornell Researchers Create Online Simulator to Map Zombie Outbreak” HERE)

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Rise of Artificial Intelligence is Already Creating Real Robot Romance

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Lego heartConvincing people to have a romantic relationship with a computer might be easier than it sounds. At this year’s SXSW in Austin, Texas, a chatbot on Tinder convinced a number of users that she was a cute 25-year-old woman eager to strike up a romantic relationship. Too bad “Ava” turned out to be just an Instagram account for a character in an upcoming film (“Ex Machina”) about the implications for romance in the era of artificial intelligence.

In many ways, “Ava” was playing a simplified form of Alan Turing’s famous “imitation game” by trying to convince human conversational partners that it was human — or at least human enough to get Tinder users to watch a trailer for a movie. In one conversational exchange captured by AdWeek, Ava used a typical chatbot tactic — keeping a human off-balance by asking questions you wouldn’t expect from a computer (“Have you ever been in love?” and “What makes you human?”) — to convince male, techie-hipsters at SXSW that she was a real woman.

We’ve already seen evidence that carrying on a relationship with a bot is easier than it sounds. Consider the Invisible Boyfriend (and Invisible Girlfriend) experience, which really started as a clever way to use technology to cover up a lack of a romantic significant other. It turns out the experience was so addictive that people started to fall for the Invisible Boyfriend bot — even when they knew the whole relationship was made up — and paid for — from the beginning.

In an era when teens rely so much on text messages to launch, maintain and end relationships, it’s perhaps no surprise that a bot experience such as Invisible Boyfriend or Ava could take off. If you think about the typical teen romance carried out via text message these days, it’s essentially a chatbot experience powered by a really powerful computer — the human brain. The witty reply, the shared insider lingo between two lovers, the concerned text from a lover demanding a rapid reply — this could all be simulated by an artificially intelligent chatbot.

No wonder AI thought leader Ray Kurzweil has suggested that a real-life human-AI romance might be possible in as little as 15 years. In his review of the 2013 Spike Jonze film “Her” (in which the character played by Joaquin Phoenix carries on a romantic relationship with a disembodied operating system called “Samantha”), Kurzweil said he expected similar types of advances by the year 2029: “Samantha herself I would place at 2029, when the leap to human-level AI would be reasonably believable.” (Read more from “Rise of Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Attitudes on Robot Romance” HERE)

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Dr. Pepper: The Doctor Of Choice For A 104-Year-Old Woman [+video]

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d pepperA Fort Worth woman is celebrating her 104th year of life. “Well at 103 I didn’t think I’d make it, but I’m still perking along.”

At 104 years old, Elizabeth Sullivan says she doesn’t need the advice of real doctors. So she keeps another doctor close by.

“People try to give me coffee for breakfast. Well, I’d rather have a Dr. Pepper.” Sullivan fell in love with the soft drink’s trademark “23 flavors” when she was in her 60’s. “I started drinking them about 40 years ago. Three a day.

Every doctor that sees me says they’ll kill you, but they die and I don’t. So there must be a mistake somewhere.”
For her birthday she got a very big surprise. A beautiful cake shaped like what else, Dr. Pepper.

Commenting on her special day she said, “When you live to be 104 and still can talk to nice people, you deserve some Dr. Pepper, but I never expected this.” (Read more from “Dr. Pepper: The Doctor Of Choice For A 104-Year-Old Woman [+video]” HERE)

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Notorious KKK Grand Wizard Who Vanished in 1984 Resurfaces In a Completely Unexpected Place

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A former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who now lives in Belize, alongside the very race of people he fought to segregate, has told Daily Mail Online: ‘I don’t hate blacks… Ain’t that something?’

Breaking his 30-year silence Bill Wilkinson – once the most powerful white supremacist in the world – hit back at claims he is a racist.

Speaking from the sun-drenched hotel resort he owns and where Daily Mail Online tracked him down, Wilkinson said: ‘Don’t call me racist, I don’t hate blacks.

Photo Credit: Daily Mail

‘I never have hated blacks, I still don’t hate blacks, I don’t hate anyone.’

But in a baffling contradiction Wilkinson added that he had not ‘changed’ since his KKK days. (Read more from “Notorious KKK Grand Wizard Who Vanished in 1984 Resurfaces In a Completely Unexpected Place [+video]” HERE)

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EPA Wants to Monitor How Long Hotel Guests Spend in the Shower

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants hotels to monitor how much time its guests spend in the shower.

The agency is spending $15,000 to create a wireless system that will track how much water a hotel guest uses to get them to “modify their behavior.”

“Hotels consume a significant amount of water in the U.S. and around the world,” an EPA grant to the University of Tulsa reads. “Most hotels do not monitor individual guest water usage and as a result, millions of gallons of potable water are wasted every year by hotel guests.”

“The proposed work aims to develop a novel low cost wireless device for monitoring water use from hotel guest room showers,” it said. “This device will be designed to fit most new and existing hotel shower fixtures and will wirelessly transmit hotel guest water usage data to a central hotel accounting system.”

The funding is going toward creating a prototype and market analysis for the device. The goal of the project is to change the behavior of Americans when they stay at hotels. (Read more from “EPA Wants to Monitor How Long Hotel Guests Spend in the Shower” HERE)

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Thousands of Snow Geese Fall Dead from Sky in Idaho

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Avian cholera is suspected in the deaths of at least 2,000 snow geese that fell dead from the sky in Idaho while migrating to nesting grounds on the northern coast of Alaska, wildlife managers said Monday.

Dozens of Idaho Department of Fish and Game workers and volunteers at the weekend retrieved and incinerated carcasses of snow geese found near bodies of water and a wildlife management area in the eastern part of the state, said agency spokesman Gregg Losinski.

Avian cholera is believed to be the culprit in the deaths mostly because of the way the birds died, he said.

“Basically, they just fell out of the sky,” said Losinski.

He said biologists were awaiting results from a state wildlife lab to confirm the birds died of the highly contagious disease, which is caused by bacteria that can survive in soil and water for up to four months. (Read more from “Thousands of Snow Geese Fall Dead from Sky in Idaho” HERE)

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Watch: President Obama Reads Mean Tweets About Himself on Jimmy Kimmel Live

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President Obama appeared as a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live and spoke about Ferguson, Area 51, and other such talk show silliness.

But the clear highlight of his appearance was when he took part in Kimmel’s recurring bit in which Celebrities read mean tweets about themselves.

The tweets made fun of the President’s gray hair, his general terribleness, and the “Thanks, Obama!” meme. (Read more from “Watch: President Obama Reads Mean Tweets About Himself on Jimmy Kimmel Live” HERE)

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Woman Gets Terrifying Surprise When She Notices Something Odd about Her Banana

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Maria Layton, 43, mum of Siri, aged six and Phoebe aged three, made the frightening discovery after opening the bag of bananas bought from Tesco.

The Tesco bananas were exported from Costa Rica – home of the world’s most dangerous spider – the Brazilian Wandering Spider aka Banana Spiders whose Greek name means “murderess” . . .

Maria, of Westbury-on-Trym, said:” My husband bought the bananas from Tesco. They had been in the house a whole day before I ripped the bag open.

“Siri asked for a banana. The first banana had a funny bit on it, so I got another one for her and that was when I found the massive spider cocoon.”

“There was spider web on the other bananas too. I was so scared – I don’t like spiders at the best of times, but have read about Brazilan Wandering Spiders – and was very frightened about the potential threat to my family.” (Read more from “Woman Gets Terrifying Surprise When She Notices Something Odd about Her Banana” HERE)

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Amazing Baby Speaks at 7 Weeks Old [+video]

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Irish couple Toni and Paul McCann were shocked when their 7-week-old baby boy spoke for the first time.

Mrs. McCann was filming her son Cillian when he spoke for the first time. She reported that he had attempted to communicate for some time before finally uttering the word “hello.”

“I’d read that babies communicate from a young age and to give them space to answer when you talk to them,” Mrs. McCann told the News Letter. “That’s what I was doing that day and because he was so alert and making such good eye contact I decided to video him.”

Cillian can be seen attempting to talk as he moves his mouth in the video. After several attempts, he finally verbalizes his first word. (Read more from “Amazing Baby Speaks at 7 Weeks Old [+video]” HERE)

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Watch: Furious Cat Swipes Owner After She Uses This Translation App

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If you like the idea of having a conversation with your pet cat then you better look away now.

Flam, a cat in Nashville, Tennessee, may well be the first of its kind to have had a conversation with a human being.

But sadly, as documented on video, the little chat didn’t go down that well with the feline.

In the clip is Penny Adams, a professional photographer who volunteers her time at the Cat Shoppe Rescue centre.

Sitting on the floor, she announces to the camera that she is holding a cat-to-human language translator on her phone. (Read more from “Watch: Furious Cat Swipes Owner After She Uses This Translation App” HERE)

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