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Vampier
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From time to time I have mentioned that bodies have been found that had strange rituals performed upon them, because the people that lived in the time that these bodies were buried thought that they were vampires and didn't want them returning to earth. A body had been found in Venice, Italy and what was very strange about it was it was buried with a very large brick in its mouth. An anthropologist from the University of Florence said that this discovery supported the theory that there was a medieval belief in vampires. I guess this goes right along with stakes through the heart and nails in the head. It must have been hard to live in times where you had to be scared of so many things. It is thought that an exorcism was performed and that this would have been the first time that we have ever discovered that an exorcism was conducted on a vampire, or should I say supposed vampire? The skeleton was from the time of the plague that struck in 1576.

A new robot has been developed and it was programed to develop like a child. The inventor says, “Sometimes it does what you want it to, and sometimes it doesn’t,”. Great just what we all need, an entity that does what it wants, even when you tell it not to. This sounds more like my dog. The robot has a living brain because it is composed of rat neurons. The neurons were nourished and connected to circuit boards. It is one of the first robots with a biological brain that can move around. The inventor has stated that the more sensory devices are connected to the robot, the more aware of its surroundings it will become. Speaking of robots, another robot is being developed that will be able to fuel itself by eating biomass. In other words it will fuel itself by eating things like plants. It has been given the name of Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot or EATR for short. Lets hope that someday it doesn't decide to eat people.

A very powerful scientific computer program has been developed that can discover new scientific principles on its own. The very first day it was put into operation it discovered physics. Physics took the human race hundreds of years to discover. The creators of the program have stated that one of the problems that exist for science today is the huge amounts of data that has to be sifted through before science can move forward in certain disciplines. He went on to also say that we just don't know how things work. The program will look for regularities in these massive amounts of data and it is hoped that new scientific techniques and theories will be discovered this way.

Robot
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Shades of the robot revolution. A new software program has been put into effect in Britain. It will allow factory robots to do their own designing. Yes you heard me correctly, robots can now design things. We are talking about machines being able to conduct science and then put the results into effect. The only things that humans will be needed for is to bring supplies to the system when needed. Are we putting ourselves out of business, are robots the next evolutionary step on this planet, will this event be remembered as the beginning of the end for the human race? Once robotic vehicles are perfected, we already have them, then we won't be needed at all. This has been extended to an artificially intelligent Adam and Eve who have been put in charge of a cyber genetics laboratory. I don't know exactly what they are doing, but it seems that they are improving their race. Is this a smart way to proceed?

Scientists are now perfecting a better lithium-ion battery. So far a start-up company named SEEO Inc. is claiming that it has improved this battery by making one that will not only last longer, but it will be cheaper, safer and lighter. The new Li-ion batteries were created in collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley, and with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Until now, lithium-ion batteries were considered dangerous when used in cars, but this battery is said to change all that. The lithium-ion batteries that we are familiar with are based on lithium cobalt oxide electrodes and liquid electrolytes. If they are overcharged, they can go on fire or explode. This battery eliminates this danger. So how were the new batteries made safer? The liquid electrolytes were replaced with a solid polymer electrolyte that is not flammable and this also increases the life span of the batteries. Batteries of the same weight as the original ones are said to provide 50 percent more power and have a much greater life span.

Barcode
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It has been found that the lowly barcode can not only store prices, but can store almost anything. Researchers are working on a way for multimedia data to be stored in a barcode that could be retrieved This might be the data for a photo for example. You would read the data into a cell phone and the photo it represents would become visible. The way the phone would read the barcode is by taking a photo of it. The software inside the phone would decode it into the picture. The inventors say that the potential for this is enormous. One use that has been suggested is that the barcode be used to describe meat at the supermarket. Does this mean we would have to carry our cell phones there and take photos of all the meat we are interested in? I don't think I like this idea. Hey have you ever heard of a label?

It is now being suggested that President Obama is going to link NASA and the Pentagon. The idea being that what technologies are perfected in the military ranks can be given to NASA to benefit civilian space flight. This does hold out a lot of hope, but being a realist I can't help but feel that the military will never transfer the really good stuff to NASA. They just want to keep their secrets and short of someone going through the military agencies and exposing everything, they will keep most of their secrets. The reason for these new ideas is that this government is afraid that China will outstrip us in space. This worry is fostered by the fact that China is graduating about 600,000 engineers a year while the US is graduating about 70,000. One has to add the fact that India is graduating about 350,000 engineers per year. It is estimated that by 2010 Asia will have 90 percent of the world's Ph.D physical scientists and engineers and most will be Chinese.