CarewsEyebrowDesigner Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Nah. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MakemineVanilla Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Ghost ship full of cannibal rats could be about to crash into Devon coast There are fears a ghost ship full of diseased cannibal rats could be about to crash into the coast of Devon or Cornwall. The abandoned Lyubov Orlova has been missing since it cut adrift while being towed from Canada nearly a year ago. Coastguards fear the 40-year-old liner has been driven across the Atlantic by high winds and is now close to the UK shore. Based on emergency beacons activated last year aboard the ship, it is feared the 40-year-old Yugoslavian liner registered to Russia could now crash into the shore of Devon, Cornwall, Ireland or Scotland. Those searching for the ship say there are likely to be thousands of disease-ridden rats on board with no source of food except each other, according to The Sun. Belgian-based searcher Pim de Rhoodes said: "She is floating around there somewhere. There will be a lot of rats and they eat each other." The 4,250-ton ship built to carry 110 passengers was impounded in Canada in 2010 after being deserted by her crew in a debt row. Two years later, she was towed to the Dominican Republic to be scrapped - but abandoned when she broke free. Nothing has been seen of the 300ft liner since the middle of last year, but she is believed to be heading this way. Here It is a sort of floating Galapagos and so it will be interesting to see how the fauna has evolved in its isolation. No doubt the rats will have evolved to eat more than just each other, maybe: seabird poop, MDF, wallpaper, asbestos, plastic and diesel oil. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post AVFCforever1991 Posted January 25, 2014 Popular Post Share Posted January 25, 2014 (edited) I've always suspected Canada were up to something. They're playing the long game. Just you wait. When the time is right, they'll strike. Edited January 25, 2014 by AVFCforever1991 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted January 28, 2014 VT Supporter Share Posted January 28, 2014 Man fights off shark, stitches up own leg, goes to the pub theguardian.com, Tuesday 28 January 2014 13.44 GMT A junior doctor has recounted how he fended off a shark attack and stitched up his own wound on the beach before enjoying a pint of beer at a nearby pub. James Grant was spearfishing with friends near Colac Bay at the base of New Zealand’s South Island on Saturday when he was attacked by what he believed was a sevengill shark. The 24-year-old was in about 2 metres (6ft) of murky water when he felt a tug on his leg, which he initially thought was a friend playing a trick on him. "I looked behind to see who it was and got a bit of a shock," he told Radio New Zealand. He didn't see the shark and had no idea how big it was, he said, adding that he thought it could have been about 20cm (8in) across the jaw. However, he felt no fear. "[i thought] bugger, now I have to try and get this thing off my leg," he said. He already had a knife in his hand and stabbed at the shark. "I am not sure how effective it was. I guess it let go so something must have happened. put a few nicks in it." He quickly made it on to rocks on the shore, where he took off the wetsuit – borrowed from a friend – and saw bites up to 5cm long. Grant gave himself stitches using a first aid kit he kept in his vehicle for pig hunts. He and his friends then went to the Colac Bay Tavern, where he was given a bandage because he was dripping blood on the floor. The stitching was finished off when he went to Invercargill hospital, where he was back at work on Monday. “It would have been great if I had killed it because there was a fishing competition on at the Colac Bay Tavern,” Grant told Stuff.co.nz. “I am pretty grateful to have my leg still,” he said. “When the stitches come out, I will be back in the water.” Guardian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drat01 Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 Won't somebody think of the poor rats? were they pie-rats? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8pints Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 were they pie-rats? No, they were pi-rats. They had to be clever to survive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drat01 Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 were they pie-rats? No, they were pi-rats. They had to be clever to survive. what a life Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8pints Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 what a life Yes indeed, Master. I call you Master because I see you as the pun Jedi Obi-wan to my Skywalker. Not for any Django Unchained/12 years a slave connotations. I only put Skywalker as I think most on this site see puns as an Anakin thing Whilst we see it as a Luke thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
choffer Posted January 30, 2014 VT Supporter Share Posted January 30, 2014 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8pints Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 ^ That type of thing happens a lot haha Seriously. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarewsEyebrowDesigner Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 Now there's an idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarewsEyebrowDesigner Posted February 5, 2014 Share Posted February 5, 2014 (edited) New Bionic Hand Gives Amputees a Sense of Touch Dennis Aabo Sørensen lost his left hand in a fireworks accident during a family holiday when he was in his mid-twenties. Last year, the 36-year old Danish man got a chance to test out a new prosthetic hand that connected to his nervous system and allowed him to grip and manipulate objects. Even more remarkably, he actually felt what he was touching for the first time in the 9 years since his accident, according to a report published today in Science Translational Medicine. The technology itself builds on decades of research, but the study may be the clearest demonstration yet of the importance of building sensory feedback into prosthetic devices to make them better able to perform the motions of everyday life. And in that sense it points to where the field of neural prosthetics is heading. Electrodes implanted in the stump of his amputated hand allowed Sørensen to make basic grasping motions with the hand. Scientists have made great progress with neural prostheses in recent years, and other teams have demonstrated similarly impressive feats with amputees and paralyzed people. What’s unusual about this new prosthesis is that it adds a sense of touch. Here’s how it works: Sensors in the artificial tendons that control the fingers track tension as the hand moves; they send that information to a nearby computer, which translates them into signals a person’s nervous system can understand. Then — and all this happens in real time as the hand is in use — the computer fires those translated signals to electrodes implanted in nerves in the subject’s upper arm, giving him a rudimentary sense of touch. Using this system allowed Sørensen to determine the shape of different objects and whether they were hard or soft — and adjust his grip accordingly. Imagine how useful this feedback would be to an amputee in real life: shaking hands, picking up fruit at the grocery store, performing tasks around the house. To prove that Sørensen was using tactile feedback from the hand, researchers blindfolded him and had him wear earphones while they tested his ability to feel and manipulate balls, cylinders, and other shapes. The sensory capabilities of the hand were developed by Silvestro Micera and colleagues at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland. Prosthetic limbs that deliver tactile feedback directly to the nervous system have been developed previously (as early as 1974), says Dustin Tyler, a biomedical engineer at Case Western Reserve University. Where the European study breaks new ground is in showing just how much the sensory feedback improves the patient’s performance. For those of us fortunate enough to have all our limbs, this feedback happens so automatically that we take it for granted. But without it, the nervous system can’t make the on-the-fly adjustments necessary to produce smooth, natural movements. “Going forward, sensory feedback is probably the most important thing,” Tyler said. “It’s what changes a prosthesis from a tool to a hand.” Edited February 5, 2014 by CarewsEyebrowDesigner Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villaajax Posted February 5, 2014 Share Posted February 5, 2014 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarewsEyebrowDesigner Posted February 5, 2014 Share Posted February 5, 2014 It'll be a while yet before robots can do that effectively, villajax, but don't lose hope. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villaajax Posted February 5, 2014 Share Posted February 5, 2014 It'll be a while yet before robots can do that effectively, villajax, but don't lose hope. Hey, I have two perfectly good arms. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyh29 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 This is what happens when Surrey opens up it's Borders to Northeners .... Before : 2 days later : full article here : 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Broken windows theory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villaajax Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 If you're stupid enough to drive into water that deep you deserve it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 If you're stupid enough to drive into water that deep you deserve it. Maybe they didn't know how deep it was? They might not know the area/road .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villaajax Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Quite clearly it is deep enough to ruin your engine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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