It will not look like a standard robot - it will be desk-based with a robotic arm and cameras for eyes

How the human brain makes certain decisions are to be adapted to build a new robot which will think for itself.

Aberystwyth University academics are working on the machine which they hope will recognise objects and retrieve them using an arm and cameras for eyes.

However, it is unclear at present what it could be used for ultimately.

Scientists said they aimed to “unravel” how a part of the brain worked and would then use that information to develop the machine.

Led by Professor Mark Lee, the team from Aberystwyth is joined by academics from six other universities on the five-year project.

Financial backing worth some £1.9m has come from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council - Aberystwyth’s share is £470,000.

Most robots are programmed to make certain decisions, but are unable to think for themselves.

According to Prof Lee, the project’s purpose was to try to “unravel” the way in which the brain worked and to then build a robot that could “think” for itself.

Prof Lee will be working with other universities on the project

“Humans and animals adapt their actions according to what surrounds them, and are able to do several things at the same time and learn from their mistakes,” he said.

“With this project we hope to solve this problem of multi-tasking by using our knowledge of how the brain works.”

The robot would also be able to detect items, assess their significance and prioritise, focusing on the most important.

However, Prof Lee said that it would not look like a standard robot but be desk based with a robotic arm and cameras for eyes.

“All these capabilities will be combined within an overall control system that makes use of a central selection mechanism, just as we believe occurs in the brain,” he added.

“Our understanding of how the brain works is also key to the next stage which will involve teaching the robot how to react to things that change around it.

“For example, something which could potentially distract it from the task it has been set. It will also be able to learn from its mistakes just as humans do.

“Once the robot has been constructed we will then stand back and ask the question ‘what general features of the model gave it its ability to integrate its behaviours successfully?’

“By doing this we hope to be able to transfer our work into a wider range of robots designed for many different tasks.”

The full project team is made up of mathematicians, control engineers, computer modellers and neuroscientists from universities including Bristol, Sheffield, Oxford and Cambridge.

I’m taking a break from all that medicine-related mumbo-jumbo to talk about some weird stuff (again). I’m sure you all know what mammals are. Usually, members of a certain “class” of animals have things in common like egg-laying for birds or live birth for mammals. There are however some characteristics of some of the members that make them stand out. Here are some strange mammals and what makes them so.

Sloths - Sloths have a flat head, big eyes, a short snout, and tiny ears. They also have long legs and a stubby tail. But what makes them different from other mammals? Most mammals have seven cervical vertebrae. Two-toes sloths only have six and three-toes sloths have nine. What also makes them weird is their physical capabilities and behavior in general. Sloths can only move one and a half meter every 5 minutes. How slow is that? Also, they spend most of their lives hanging on a branch sleeping for 15-18 hours (although later studies say that they only sleep for around 10 or so hours). They go down only once a week to urinate and other “calls of nature”. Their young also cling to the mother’s fur but often fall off. The good thing is, they are rather tough and don’t die from falls. However, if a predator is waiting below, then there’s a good chance that the young will get eaten.

Platypus - The platypus is one strange creature. It is the only mammal that has webbed feet and a rubber snout which makes it look closer to a duck than anything than anything else. The webbed feet is folded back when walking on land and is more prominent on its front feet. Its jaw is also different from most mammals along with its jaw muscles. It’s movement is also different as its body is like a reptile that has the legs on the sides rather than underneath.

Bats - Bats are the only flight capable mammals with the forelimbs developed in to wings rather than legs or arms. They are similar to rodents so they are often called “flying mice”. They have poorly developed sight and track prey using a process called echolocation. Basically, they emit high-pitched sounds and listen to the echoes similar to the technology used in submarines. They use sonar to locate their prey instead of by locating them visually.

Armadillos - Armadillo is Spanish for “little armored one”. True to its name, the armadillo is a mammal with a bony armor shell which it uses for defense against predators. They are good diggers and use their sharp claws to dig for food and create dens. Like bats, they have poor vision. Their armor is formed by plates of dermal bone covered in relatively small, overlapping epidermal scales called scutes, which is composed of bone with a covering of horn. They have rigid shields over the shoulders and hips, with a number of bands separated by flexible skin covering the back and flanks.The armor covers the top of the head, the upper parts of the limbs, and the tail.

Whales - When I was younger, I thought dolphins and whales were fishes. They don’t have gills and breathe through their lungs which make them different from fishes. Although they look like fishes with flippers and tail fins, they have mammary glands (which makes them mammals) which they use to feed their young with milk. It is believed that whales, along with dolphins and porpoises, are descendants of land-walkers. Although it may be hard to believe, this weird mammal have been discovered to have hind-leg bones which serve no purpose and serve as an object of curiosity among scientists, making many believe that they have evolved from land-living mammals or would evolve into one. It would be scary to imagine whales walking on land though.

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Usually internet hosting is provided free of charge with the internet access plan . Firstly customer needs to analyse and specify the requirements of the application which he wants and then the hosting he wants to be done . There are many web hosts which provide Linux based web hosting service offering a wide range of different software .

The customer may want some other services in additional to this like : databases or multi-media services for streaming media , email for their business domain . The customer can chose linux as well as windows for its hosting platform . The customer still can choose from PHP, Perl, and Python but may also use ASP .Net or Classic ASP .

Once you get your hosting done , there are many options u can get it for website as today there are different companies which provide us with the hosting services but if u feel things are not working according to you then it’s the time for a new web host.

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Little Lakshmi Tatma had a life-saving operation to remove her headless conjoined twin in November year.

Families in her remote village in India believed she was the reincarnation of the eight limbed Hindu goddess of wealth and fortune Lakshmi.

Two-year-old Lakshmi Tatma takes her first steps after surgeons performed a life saving operation eight months ago to remover her parasitic twin

Worshipped: People came from far and wide to pay their respects to the little girl

Her parents were reluctant to agree to the operation for fear it would bring bad luck until doctors told them she would struggle to survive into her teens without it.

Now the brave youngster is learning to walk for the first time eight months after the successful 27-hour procedure.

In an extremely rare case, Lakshmi was joined at the spine to what is medically known a ‘parasitic twin’.

Lakshmi was joined to her parasitic twin at the pelvis, leaving her unable to walk

She could not use the twin’s arms and legs, but the conjoined body fed on hers for oxygen and nutrition.

Each body had one kidney, with the twin’s transplanted to Lakshmi during the operation.

Lakshmi, whose progress is being monitored by American television’s National Geographic Channel and ABC, now attends a school for disabled children.

She will need more surgery on her spine and on her feet, which were turned inwards.

Lakshmi’s parents initially believed the surgery would bring back luck, until doctors said she was unlikely to survive into adulthood without it

Families in Lakshmi’s remote Indian believed she was the reincarnation of the eight limbed Hindu goddess of wealth and fortune Lakshmi

According to a source plans are afoot to bring Ash and the ethereal Meryl Streep together in an American production of Chaos.

Says a source, “They ran the concept with Meryl and Ash and they were game .They need to Americanize the theme because Chaos was a very French movie. But yes, in principle Ash is on for this film.”

Another international project that Aishwarya has given the nod to is Roland Joffe’s Singularity with Brendan Fraser.

Speaking on Singularity Ash says, “I’ve asked them for the final draft of the script. Now the time factor has to be worked out. The time they want is devoted to Mani Sir (Ratnam)’s project.

New dates have to be worked out. There’re so many projects that I want to do but because of the dates or a delay I can’t. There’re only that number of assignments I can take on. I’ve never done more work that I can do. I never can.”

In the meanwhile Aishwarya gets ready to shoot for Shankar’s Robot and Mani Ratnam’s film with Abhishek.

Informs the actress, “There has been a little delay in Shankar’s Robot because of his writer Sujata’s death. That has delayed Robot a bit. All kinds of rumours have been floated about the project.

The dates situation does get tighter for me because I was supposed to shoot Robot now and Mani Sir’s film a little later during the year. We just have to work under a tighter schedule now.”

Most of us are not archaeologists or astronomers, anthropologists or astrologers. Yet the majority of what is written about one of the most exciting and relevant subjects of our day - the approaching Winter Solstice 2012 end-date of the Mayan Calendar - appears in words aimed at specialists and couched in language that can be hard to read. This article is written for the Everyday Earthling who may be hearing a lot about the Mayans, their calendars, hieroglyphs and mysterious temples scattered throughout the jungles of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras

Let us begin with some questions. Why is there so much talk about the “end of the Mayan calendar” and what does it mean? Is there something significant we should know about the Winter Solstice date of December 21, 2012? How were the Mayans able to track long periods of time and why would they want to? Why should we care about the Mayans today? Is there anything we can learn from them? I’ll begin by sharing how my own interest in the subject developed and go on from there.

I first learned about the Mayans in 1987 from Jose Arguelles’ book The Mayan Factor. It was during the months leading up to the event known as Harmonic Convergence that Arguelles, artist and visionary, introduced me to the 20 Mayan daysigns and the thirteen Mayan numbers - and to the wonderfully engaging and mysterious 260 day Mayan ceremonial calendar, called the Tzolkin (pronounced chol-kin). My pursuit of knowledge about pre-Columbian culture had begun.

A great deal of scientific and visionary research work has been done about the Mayans, so I started reading. I learned that the Mayans tracked cycles within cycles within cycles of time. Their calendar acted as a harmonic calibrator, linking and coordinating the earthly, lunar, solar and galactic seasons in an aesthetically simple and elegant manner. The provocative simplicity of the daysigns and the sheer harmony of the calendar drew me in. Then a landmark article by John Major Jenkins appeared in Mountain Astrologer magazine in 1994, revealing for the first time in our era the true meaning of the end-date.

Is there something significant we should know about the Winter Solstice date of December 21, 2012? Yes. On this day a rare astronomical and Mayan mythical event occurs. In astronomic terms, the Sun conjuncts the intersection of the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic. The Milky Way, as most of us know, extends in a general north-south direction in the night sky. The plane of the ecliptic is the track the Sun, Moon, planets and stars appear to travel in the sky, from east to west. It intersects the Milky Way at a 60 degree angle near the constellation Sagittarius.

The cosmic cross formed by the intersecting Milky Way and plane of the ecliptic was called the Sacred Tree by the Maya. The trunk of the tree, the Axis Mundi, is the Milky Way, and the main branch intersecting the tree is the plane of the ecliptic. Mythically, at sunrise on December 21, 2012, the Sun - our Father - rises to conjoin the center of the Sacred Tree, the World Tree, the Tree of Life..

This rare astronomical event, foretold in the Mayan creation story of the Hero Twins, and calculated empircally by them, will happen for many of us in our lifetime. The Sun has not conjoined the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic since some 25,800 years ago, long before the Mayans arrived on the scene and long before their predecessors the Olmecs arrived. What does this mean?

Due to a phenomenon called the precession of the equinoxes, caused by the Earth’s wobble that lasts almost 26,000 years, the apparent location of the Winter Solstice sunrise has been ever so slowly moving toward the Galactic Center. Precession may be understood by watching a spinning top. Over many revolutions the top will rise and dip on its axis, not unlike how the Earth does over an extremely long period of time. One complete rise and dip constitutes the cycle of precession.

The Mayans noticed the relative slippage of the positions of stars in the night sky over long periods of observation, indicative of precession, and foretold this great coming attraction. By using an invention called the Long Count, the Mayans fast-forwarded to anchor December 21, 2012 as the end of their Great Cycle and then counted backwards to decide where the calendar would begin. Thus the Great Cycle we are currently in began on August 11, 3114 B.C. But there’s more.

The Great Cycle, lasting 1,872,000 days and equivalent to 5,125.36 years, is but one fifth of the Great Great Cycle, known scientifically as the Great Year or the Platonic Year - the length of the precession of the equinoxes. To use a metaphor from the modern industrial world, on Winter Solstice A.D. 2012 it is as if the Giant Odometer of Humanity on Earth hits 100,000 miles and all the cycles big and small turn over to begin anew. The present world age will end and a new world age will begin.

Over a year’s time the Sun transits through the twelve houses of the zodiac. Many of us know this by what “Sun sign” is associated with our birthday. Upping the scale to the Platonic Year - the 26,000 year long cycle - we are shifting, astrologically, from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. The Mayan calendar does not really “end” in 2012, but rather, all the cycles turn over and start again, vibrating to a new era. It is as if humanity and the Earth will graduate in the eyes of the Father Sun and Grandmother Milky Way.

Why should we care about the Mayans today? Is there anything we can learn from them? The trees give us oxygen to breathe and help create the nourishing rains upon which we depend, sustaining life. We are missing these rains in places where the trees have been cut down or burned. Fires begin that nature can no longer extinguish. For the Mayans, trees were intermediaries between the physical and spiritual worlds, and absolutely essential to life. They believed that without the tree man could not survive and that “with the death of the last tree comes the death of the human race.”

The ancient carved stones and the stars themselves tell us we are on the brink of a new world age. There is no reason not to take a leap of faith into imagining what may be in store. We may trust that it is time for humanity to awaken into a true partnership with each other, with the Earth, and the Cosmos. By accepting this partnership we may claim our birthright and become Galactic Citizens who care for and sustain the planet, thus sustaining ourselves. This is clearly the challenge of our times. Yet, arriving just in time and on schedule is the Winter Solstice dawn on the day we may remember that we are truly Children of the World.

Amateur Shakespearologist John Hudson is not the first to question whether the actor William Shakespeare was actually the author of the body of work we’ve come to know as his, but Hudson is the first to suggest that the true author was a Jewish woman named Amelia Bassano Lanier.

Of Italian descent, Bassano lived in England as a Marrano and has heretofore been known only as the first woman to publish a book of poetry (”Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum” in 1611) and as a candidate for “the dark lady” referred to in the sonnets.

Hudson is the first to argue that she’s the true author of those sonnets.

He is so convinced of Bassano’s authorship that he formed a theater company, The Dark Lady Players, to bring out, through performance, the true meanings of the plays as, he argues, Bassano intended them.

The theory rests largely on the circumstances of Bassano’s life, which Hudson contends match, much better than William Shakespeare’s did, the content of “Shakespeare’s” work. But Hudson has also identified technical similarities between the language used in Bassano’s known poetry and that used in “Shakespeare’s” verse. And he has located clues in the text - recently noted Jewish allegories and the statistically significant appearance of Amelia Bassano Lanier’s various names in the plays - that he says point to her as the only convincing candidate for the author of Shakespeare’s work. (For more details, visit www.darkladyplayers.com.)

And Hudson’s no charlatan. Holding numerous degrees from various prestigious academic institutions, in a range of specialties from Shakespeare and dramaturgical theory to sociology and anthropology, Hudson has spent most of his career as a cognitive scientist, restructuring the communications industry and inventing new industry models - exactly what he is now doing with Shakespeare. So prepare to rethink everything you learned in your high-school English classes.

Rebecca Honig Friedman, who blogs at jewess.canonist.com, recently caught up with Hudson for a chat.

Rebecca Honig Friedman: In your mind, is this the hugest literary hoax ever pulled off or the worst example of a man stealing a woman’s glory?

John Hudson: I don’t think this is a hoax. It is a stratagem she used to get her work published, as many other women have done, by having their work published under a man’s name. In Elizabethan London, women could not write original literature at all, let alone plays, so this was her only option.

RHF: So do you consider it a triumph on Bassano’s part?

J.H.: The example I use is that of the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria. In order that his name might be known, the architect Sostratus had his name carved on the stone base, then covered over with a piece of plaster with a dedication to the king. In time the plaster fell away, revealing the architect’s name. Amelia’s strategy was to leave behind a preposterous case for William Shakespeare, which has now fallen away, revealing the true creator who is now at last visible.

RHF: How much knowledge of Jewish texts was Bassano likely to have as a Marrano and a woman?

J.H.: There was only one Talmud known in England, in the Westminster Cathedral library; however, talmudic teaching was also oral, so individual quotes could have been transmitted that way. There are several quotes from the Pirke Avot, which was available as a standalone volume in Latin, as was the Zohar.

There were women scholars at the time, including one who was a distant relative of the Bassanos: Donna Ana (Reyna) de Nasi continued her mother’s vision and support for Torah scholarship, and in her 50s set up a printing press at Belvedere Palace that published a dozen Hebrew books from 1592 to 1599, including an allegorical drama and a talmudic treatise.

RHF.: Why would Bassano have written sonnets about herself as “the dark lady”?

J.F.: The Sonnets have several voices, and the so-called dark lady sonnets are written to herself in the third person, describing a woman whose cheek is gray and whose breasts are dun.

RHF.: We are told that Shakespeare’s works are timeless. But your staging of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and the upcoming “As You Like It” puts a specific, time-bound spin on the plays. Are you not damaging their appeal - even their genius - in some way?

JH: Some directors anachronistically set the plays at the North Pole or in outer space or in a Mafia village. They therefore destroy and suppress the allusions that the plays contain and make them impossible to discern. I understand why directors who do not understand the plays might resort to such misleading devices. But they should do so no longer, and should use their staging to reveal what the author really meant.

RHF: Many actors seem to enjoy the fact that Shakespeare was an actor, too. Does the idea that Bassano has written the plays change that aspect of their appeal?

J.H.: All the world is a stage, and this was especially true at the Elizabethan court, where courtiers were constantly creating and performing meta-theatrical dramas to persuade the queen about various issues. This is where the author learned his or her highly developed sense of theater, and as a Marrano passing in a Christian society, she had to act every moment of her life.

RHF: Your theory adds a new layer to the manipulation of gender roles in Shakespeare’s plays, doesn’t it?

J.H.: Yes, the Shakespearean plays have more examples of women characters dressing up as men than in the whole of the English theater up to that point. Now we know why

While it is true that IPL is sucking most of the oxygen out of the market right now, the TRP rating fiasco has nothing to do with that. Big B simply lied.

Just to clarify. TRP is not an absolute measure like for example one inch or one cm is. It is therefore not universal nor portable. The measure is limited to the boundaries of its market and to the time period for which the calculation has been performed. In short, TRP ratings is a complicated dynamic calculation. It is valid ONLY for the market for which it was been calculated for. Also it is valid ONLY for the time period for which it has been calculated for. Overtime as the number of channels within a market changes and as the overall TV viewership changes, so does the implication of these ratings. Hence a score of 1 today is not the same as a score of 1 yesterday. Therefore we cannot use ratings from 3 years ago to compare ratings with shows running today.

Even after knowing the above, Big B wrongfully used TRP ratings to lie and to make it appear that his KBC had more viewership. Just so that you understand this, let me repeat, SRK’s KBC had more viewers than Big B’s KBC yet had a lower TRP (because over 3 + years all the factors had changed).

When Big B was caught, he responded by peeing in his pants See below.

Firstly, decide if a Blog is right for you by visiting Blogs. Go to Blogger, then use the search Blogs function. When you arrive at Blog Search beta, enter keywords related to your particular business niche. You must have passion about your specific niche in order to keep posting about it.

A tour of Blogs will open your mind to the number of different conversations about your niche and the variety of approaches to Blogs. You will notice that some Blogs have many posts about a specific subject. These “Bloggers” are excited about their subject and that is why they attract traffic. Some Blogs run like an open diary, and at this time, most don’t have anything to do with business or marketing.

The constant posting and reciprocal linking between Blogs are just two of many reasons why Blogs are successful “traffic magnets.” If you are in business, you may elect to have a Blog similar to those on Blogger or you might have a web host that already has this feature with your web site package. The Blog attached to a business website is really more of a “Corporate Blog” concept, but you can use this approach as a tool to draw much more traffic to your current web site.

You should discuss your options with all interested parties, your web master, and web designer. You don’t have to have an outside web designer or web master in order to start a Blog, but if you already have people in place, why not get an informed opinion.

Let us assume that you have chosen a path at this point. Gather any past articles that you have written about your business, modify them for keyword content, and start posting. The more often you post, the better it will be, and posting daily is optimum.

When you post articles, include the URL of your Blog. You might want to add a signature similar to this.

FREE (Your Business Niche) Report.

FREE (Your Business Niche) Newsletter.

Visit: (Your Blog)

FREE CONTENT: If you are a web master, blogger, e-zine, or Internet publisher, and can use quality content, please feel free to use my blog entries (articles) - Please be sure to reprint each article, as is, and please include the resources in the above paragraph. Thank you, (Your Name).

Every time someone posts one of your articles with your resource box, that’s one more link back to your Blog. If your articles or Blog entries are perceived as valuable, you are creating more traffic for yourself. Most of the web sites that post your articles will be from the same or a related niche. These become valuable links because their readers are already interested in your article topics.

You should also include your Blog URL at the bottom of all your Emails as a standard part of your signature with your name, address, telephone number, and other contact information. If you have room on your business card and stationary, please make room for your Blog URL.

Lastly, a content rich Blog is a great compliment to any Email marketing campaign. Unfortunately, reaching interested prospects and customers by Email is not what it used to be. Over aggressive spam filters throw out a good percentage of legitimate Email, but an interesting Blog will keep your customers and prospects coming back for more.