The Angolan government (CNIDAH) and the European Union present this year's Miss Landmine Angola. To find out more, please visit the official website.

Maid Without Tears
via http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/

Robots for Dentists

Robots laugh, solve puzzles and get dental treatment at Japanese exhibit

Wed Nov 28, 8:46 AM

By Hiroko Tabuchi, The Associated Press

TOKYO - A robot math whiz breezes through a Rubik's Cube, using metal hands to twist and turn the colourful toy. A panda robot uses sensors to detect when people are laughing, and joins in. A dentistry student peers into the mouth of a new patient - a humanoid practise robot with a complete set of pearly white teeth.

Japan showed off its cutting-edge robots Wednesday at the country's largest robotics convention, a dazzling display of the technologies that make it a world leader in both service and industrial robotics.

The dental training robot, dubbed Simroid for "simulator humanoid," has realistic skin, eyes, and a mouth fitted with replica teeth that trainees practise drilling on. A sensor fitted where the nerve endings would be raises the alert when dental students drill too close - triggering a yelp from the robot.

"Ow, that hurt!" a female robot squeaked, narrowing her eyes as a young dentist drilled on her replica teeth. "Now, I'm OK," she said as the dentist eased off.

"Our aim is to train dentists to worry about whether patients are comfortable, and not just focus on technical expertise," said Dr. Naotake Shibui of the Nippon Dental University in Tokyo, who collaborated with technicians at Kokoro Co. to develop the robot.

Researchers are still ironing out a few kinks - including perfecting a function that lets novices inject anesthetic into robot gums - before working on commercialization plans, Shibui said. He said a prototype has been used at the university since September.

Across the hall, Kawasaki Heavy Industries' Mr. Cube robot used built-in colour sensors and a pair of dexterous hands to solve a Rubik's Cube, then raised the completed puzzle in glee to show off to spectators.

Mr. Cube is no match for his human counterparts, taking up to five minutes to solve a typical puzzle while the human world record is 9.77 seconds.

Still, the sensors' ability to quickly detect and differentiate between colours is a breakthrough in industrial robotics, said Kawasaki engineer Masafumi Wada.

"We hope to employ this technology to robots working in factories, so they can distinguish parts by colour, as well as size and shape," Wada said. "That would make production lines much more versatile," he said.

The main focus of the 2007 International Robot Exhibition, which kicked off Wednesday in Tokyo, is on industrial robots like Mr. Cube.

Japan is an industrial robot powerhouse, with over 370,000 in use in 2005 - about 40 per cent of the global total, according to a recent report by Macquarie Bank.

There are 32 robots for every 1,000 Japanese manufacturing employees, the report said.

Japan has also led the way in personal robots, with big players like Honda Corp. and Sony Corp. to little-known startups launching robotic companions for the home.

Waseda University's furry, panda-shaped Tocco-chan robot, for example, is designed to relieve stress by helping people laugh.

A web camera connects to software that scans a person's face for smiles - and when it detects one, the robot joins in by giggling and wiggling its arms and legs.

"We all know laughing is good for your health. This robot helps you laugh, by laughing together with you," said Waseda research student Saiko Hirano, who developed Tocco-chan.

"I wanted to design a robot that helps people," she said. "But mostly, this robot is the product of a wild imagination."

I've already auctioned off the 27 hours of love...

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - A Chilean prostitute has auctioned 27 hours of sex to raise money for the country's largest charity during an annual fund-raising campaign.
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Maria Carolina became an overnight celebrity in the conservative Roman Catholic country, making news headlines and appearing on talk shows since she made her unusual donation to the televised charity event, which runs for 27 hours starting on Friday evening.

"I've already auctioned off the 27 hours of love," Maria Carolina told Reuters on Wednesday, saying she had raised about $4,000. "One of my clients already paid. It seemed like a good deed to him."

Adult prostitution is legal in Chile. Chile's two-day Teleton fundraiser is endorsed by television stars and aims to raise funds for poor, disabled children.

Speaking about Maria Carolina's unusual donation, campaign organizer Mario Kreutzberger said he would not encourage "immoral" activities, but said he would accept her pledge.

"Everyone can do what they want, but if someone tells me that they'll do something immoral ... I'm not going to encourage it," Kreutzberger, who as "Don Francisco" hosts the long-running "Sabado Gigante" program on the U.S. Spanish-language Univision network, told local media.

But Maria Carolina, who advertises her services on the Internet, defended her money-raising scheme.

"There are people who are going to be donating money that's a lot more questionable than mine," she said. "The only thing I did was publicize it."

(Reporting by Antonio de la Jara; writing by Lisa Yulkowski; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Twenty-first Century Wendy

Robot with soft hands chats, serves meal

Tue Nov 27, 9:39 AM

TOKYO (Reuters) - A pearly white robot that looks a little like E.T. boosted a man out of bed, chatted and helped prepare his breakfast with its deft hands in Tokyo Tuesday, in a further sign robots are becoming more like their human inventors.

Twendy-One, named as a 21st century edition of a previous robot, Wendy, has soft hands and fingers that gently grip, enough strength to support humans as they sit up and stand, and supple movements that respond to human touch.

It can pick up a loaf of bread without crushing it, serve toast and help lift people out of bed.

"It's the first robot in the world with this much system integration," said Shigeki Sugano, professor of mechanical engineering at Waseda University, who led the Twendy-One project (http://twendyone.com) and demonstrated the result on Tuesday.

"It's difficult to balance strength with flexibility."

The robot is a little shorter than an average Japanese woman at 1.5 m (5 ft), but heavy-set at 111 kg (245 lb). Its long arms and a face shaped like a giant squashed bean mean it resembles the alien movie character E.T.

Twendy-One has taken nearly seven years and a budget of several million dollars to pull together all the high-tech features, including the ability to speak and 241 pressure-sensors in each silicon-wrapped hand, into the soft and flexible robot.

The robot put toast on a plate and fetched ketchup from a fridge when asked, after greeting its patient for the demonstration with a robotic "good morning" and "bon appetit."

Sugano said he hoped to develop a commercially viable robot that could help the elderly and maybe work in offices by 2015 with a price tag of around $200,000.

But for now, it is still a work in progress. Twendy-One has just 15 minutes of battery life and its computer-laden back has a tendency to overheat after each use.

"The robot is so complicated that even for us, it's difficult to get it to move," Sugano said.

(Reporting by Yoko Kubota; Editing by Jerry Norton)

The Future of the Family

Sex and marriage with robots? It could happen
Robots soon will become more human-like in appearance, researcher says
By Charles Q. Choi
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience
updated 6:05 p.m. ET, Fri., Oct. 12, 2007

Humans could marry robots within the century. And consummate those vows.

"My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience. Levy recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it.

At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, "but once you have a story like 'I had sex with a robot, and it was great!' appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I'd expect many people to jump on the bandwagon," Levy said.

The idea of romance between humanity and our artistic and/or mechanical creations dates back to ancient times, with the Greek myth of the sculptor Pygmalion falling in love with the ivory statue he made named Galatea, to which the goddess Venus eventually granted life.

This notion persists in modern times. Not only has science fiction explored this idea, but 40 years ago, scientists noticed that students at times became unusually attracted to ELIZA, a computer program designed to ask questions and mimic a psychotherapist.

"There's a trend of robots becoming more human-like in appearance and coming more in contact with humans," Levy said. "At first robots were used impersonally, in factories where they helped build automobiles, for instance. Then they were used in offices to deliver mail, or to show visitors around museums, or in homes as vacuum cleaners, such as with the Roomba. Now you have robot toys, like Sony's Aibo robot dog, or Tickle Me Elmos, or digital pets like Tamagotchis."

In his thesis, "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners," Levy conjectures that robots will become so human-like in appearance, function and personality that many people will fall in love with them, have sex with them and even marry them.

"It may sound a little weird, but it isn't," Levy said. "Love and sex with robots are inevitable."

Sex with robots in 5 years
Levy argues that psychologists have identified roughly a dozen basic reasons why people fall in love, "and almost all of them could apply to human-robot relationships. For instance, one thing that prompts people to fall in love are similarities in personality and knowledge, and all of this is programmable. Another reason people are more likely to fall in love is if they know the other person likes them, and that's programmable too."

In 2006, Henrik Christensen, founder of the European Robotics Research Network, predicted that people will be having sex with robots within five years, and Levy thinks that's quite likely. There are companies that already sell realistic sex dolls, "and it's just a matter of adding some electronics to them to add some vibration," he said, or endowing the robots with a few audio responses. "That's fairly primitive in terms of robotics, but the technology is already there."

As software becomes more advanced and the relationship between humans and robots becomes more personal, marriage could result. "One hundred years ago, interracial marriage and same-sex marriages were illegal in the United States. Interracial marriage has been legal now for 50 years, and same-sex marriage is legal in some parts of the states," Levy said. "There has been this trend in marriage where each partner gets to make their own choice of who they want to be with."

"The question is not if this will happen, but when," Levy said. "I am convinced the answer is much earlier than you think."

When and where it'll happen
Levy predicts Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize human-robot marriage. "Massachusetts is more liberal than most other jurisdictions in the United States and has been at the forefront of same-sex marriage," Levy said. "There's also a lot of high-tech research there at places like MIT."

Although roboticist Ronald Arkin at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta does not think human-robot marriages will be legal anywhere by 2050, "anything's possible. And just because it's not legal doesn't mean people won't try it," he told LiveScience.

"Humans are very unusual creatures," Arkin said. "If you ask me if every human will want to marry a robot, my answer is probably not. But will there be a subset of people? There are people ready right now to marry sex toys."

The main benefit of human-robot marriage could be to make people who otherwise could not get married happier, "people who find it hard to form relationships, because they are extremely shy, or have psychological problems, or are just plain ugly or have unpleasant personalities," Levy said. "Of course, such people who completely give up the idea of forming relationships with other people are going to be few and far between, but they will be out there."

Ethical questions
The possibility of sex with robots could prove a mixed bag for humanity. For instance, robot sex could provide an outlet for criminal sexual urges. "If you have pedophiles and you let them use a robotic child, will that reduce the incidence of them abusing real children, or will it increase it?" Arkin asked. "I don't think anyone has the answers for that yet — that's where future research needs to be done."

Keeping a robot for sex could reduce human prostitution and the problems that come with it. However, "in a marriage or other relationship, one partner could be jealous or consider it infidelity if the other used a robot," Levy said. "But who knows, maybe some other relationships could welcome a robot. Instead of a woman saying, 'Darling, not tonight, I have a headache,' you could get 'Darling, I have a headache, why not use your robot?' "

Arkin noted that "if we allow robots to become a part of everyday life and bond with them, we'll have to ask questions about what's going to happen to our social fabric. How will they change humanity and civilization? I don't have any answers, but I think it's something we need to study. There's a real potential for intimacy here, where humans become psychologically and emotionally attached to these devices in ways we wouldn't to a vibrator."

Levy is currently writing a paper on the ethical treatment of robots. When it comes to sex and love with robots, "the ethical issues on how to treat them are something we'll have to consider very seriously, and they're very complicated issues," Levy said.

Levy successfully defended his thesis Oct. 11.
© 2007 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

Porn for Robots

Robot patrons line up to view the show in Sullivan's installation, currently showing at the Museum of Sex in Manhattan.

The Inorganic Dust of Life

ScienceDaily (Aug. 15, 2007) — Could extraterrestrial life be made of corkscrew-shaped particles of interstellar dust? Intriguing new evidence of life-like structures that form from inorganic substances in space have been revealed in the New Journal of Physics. The findings hint at the possibility that life beyond earth may not necessarily use carbon-based molecules as its building blocks. They also point to a possible new explanation for the origin of life on earth.

Life on earth is organic. It is composed of organic molecules, which are simply the compounds of carbon, excluding carbonates and carbon dioxide. The idea that particles of inorganic dust may take on a life of their own is nothing short of alien, going beyond the silicon-based life forms favoured by some science fiction stories.

Now, an international team has discovered that under the right conditions, particles of inorganic dust can become organised into helical structures. These structures can then interact with each other in ways that are usually associated with organic compounds and life itself.

V.N. Tsytovich of the General Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Science, in Moscow, working with colleagues there and at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany and the University of Sydney, Australia, has studied the behaviour of complex mixtures of inorganic materials in a plasma. Plasma is essentially the fourth state of matter beyond solid, liquid and gas, in which electrons are torn from atoms leaving behind a miasma of charged particles.

Until now, physicists assumed that there could be little organisation in such a cloud of particles. However, Tsytovich and his colleagues demonstrated, using a computer model of molecular dynamics, that particles in a plasma can undergo self-organization as electronic charges become separated and the plasma becomes polarized. This effect results in microscopic strands of solid particles that twist into corkscrew shapes, or helical structures. These helical strands are themselves electronically charged and are attracted to each other.

Quite bizarrely, not only do these helical strands interact in a counterintuitive way in which like can attract like, but they also undergo changes that are normally associated with biological molecules, such as DNA and proteins, say the researchers. They can, for instance, divide, or bifurcate, to form two copies of the original structure. These new structures can also interact to induce changes in their neighbours and they can even evolve into yet more structures as less stable ones break down, leaving behind only the fittest structures in the plasma.

So, could helical clusters formed from interstellar dust be somehow alive? "These complex, self-organized plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter," says Tsytovich, "they are autonomous, they reproduce and they evolve."

He adds that the plasma conditions needed to form these helical structures are common in outer space. However, plasmas can also form under more down to earth conditions such as the point of a lightning strike. The researchers hint that perhaps an inorganic form of life emerged on the primordial earth, which then acted as the template for the more familiar organic molecules we know today.

Adapted from materials provided by Institute of Physics.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/
070814150630.htm

The rather dour picture of Vladimir Putin, perhaps the world's most talented major politician (an entirely dubious honour, of course), links to a set of photos of world leaders in their younger years. Though not an entirely original exercise, one is reminded of a recent biography of Hitler which featured a photo of the dictator as a baby on the cover, it is still strangely fascinating.

Evolutionary Questions Before the Court Again

After reading the below article from the Guardian, I looked around and realized that cannibalism has actually become a hot topic among biologists lately.

THE family of a woman, allegedly killed and eaten by her boyfriend in Spain, are finally seeing her suspected murderer come to trial after a three-year wait.

This week Spanish authorities announced that Paul Durant, also wanted in England on armed robbery charges, is going to stand trial for the murder of Karen Durrell on November 3.

The body of the mother-of-two, who lived near Repton Park in Woodford Bridge, has never been found and the 47-year-old former convict allegedly confessed he ate her saying God delivered her to him.

On hearing of the trial, due to go ahead in Alicante, southeast Spain, Ms Durrell's sister Jackie Wood said: "Whilst as a family we are pleased that a trial date has been fixed, we don't see that the court case will bring us any closure.

"The only way we can feel more at peace and move on in our lives is through understanding what happened to Karen and being able to bring her back to this country to rest in peace.

"We remain extremely upset by what has happened to Karen."

Karen Durrell moved to Spain in January 2004 to start a new life but within weeks she was dead, the only trace of her left on bloodstained knives found in her flat in the holiday hotspot of Calpe near Benidorm.

Convicted armed robber and fugitive from justice Durant was arrested by the Spanish authorities in March 2004. He then wrote to a newspaper confessing he was a cannibal who had killed and eaten the 41-year-old from Emsworth Road after God sent her to him.

He wrote: "I believed God had delivered her to me and I was getting messages from the telly. After I killed her, I cut her body into small parts, eating what parts of her I found eatable. I finally disposed of what was left in small rubbish bags."

Investigators spent weeks searching in the rubbish bins around Ms Durrell's Spanish home but failed to find her body, only discovering a blood stained suitcase of hers.

Paul Durant escaped from British police custody while at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel following his arrest on suspicion of armed robbery in December 2003.

He has never formally confessed to the killing and eating of Karen Durrell.

10:00am Thursday 14th June 2007

By Sara Dixon

The topic was addressed a little more nakedly, and humorously by the Star in their article.
Both however failed to put it into its proper objective context.

It is difficult to see how filial cannibalism, the consumption of one’s own offspring, can be an adaptive evolutionary strategy. It is, however, common in many animals, and surprisingly is often coupled with parental care, according to a report published by Oxford University Zoologist Dr Michael Bonsall, and Hope Klug from the University of Florida, in this month’s American Naturalist.

Funded by the Royal Society and the National Science Foundation, “When to care for, abandon, or eat your offspring: the evolution of parental care and filial cannibalism,” highlights the potential importance of a range of factors in the evolution of filial cannibalism using a mathematical model of analysis. It is potentially affected by the ability to selectively consume lower quality offspring, preferences associated with mate choice, density-mediated survival, and population dynamics.

Professor Michael Bonsall, a Royal Society Research Fellow and University Lecturer in Mathematical Biology at Oxford University, said: ‘This sort of behaviour - cannibalising your offspring - is widespread amongst different animal groups. We show that there is not a single benefit to eating your offspring, and it depends on several factors and explanations.’

Caring females such as the bank vole, the house finch, and the wolf spider often consume their young, and both parents of the burying beetle are known to consume some of their offspring. Filial cannibalism has also been well documented in fish species with paternal care during the egg stage.

It was previously thought that energetic need alone is the primary factor leading to filial cannibalism, in that a caring parent gains energy and nutrients from consuming its offspring, which are then reinvested into future reproductive events. However, the researchers found that a reduction in brood size reduces anticipated competition and thus affects survival of the remaining offspring.

The ability to abandon or consume offspring during the course of parental care can actually help the evolution of parent care. An analysis of the evolutionary dynamics of offspring abandonment, filial cannibalism, and parental care illustrates that these behaviours have the potential to coexist.

Source: Oxford University
http://www.physorg.com/

And...

Speaker gives insight on cannibalism
By: Hannah Tomlin
Posted: 10/26/07
Many scientists have been studying cannibalism over the past century.

On Thursday, Oct. 25, the department of biological sciences, Phi Sigma, and The Herman Brockman Fund sponsored Dr. Chad Johnson, behavior ecologist and alumni of Illinois State University, who presented his speech, "The Behavior, Ecology and Evolution of Cannibalism (Sexual and Otherwise): Why can't spiders just get along?"

Scott Sakala, distinguished professor, said that Johnson "obtained his masters working in my lab in 1998."

He explained that Herman Brockman is a "professor emeritus in the department and the first professor in the University to be appointed distinguished professor." Sakala introduced Johnson.

"I couldn't be more pleased or honored to be invited back for a Brockman seminar," Johnson said. During his speech, Johnson explained the work he did to obtain his Ph. D at the University of Kentucky and the research he is performing now.

Johnson explained the concept of precopulatory sexual cannibalism, which he described as an intra-specific, inter-sexual predation of a mate before sperm transfer. "It's a poster child for sexual conflict," said Johnson.

He used North American fishing spiders for an example of a species that takes part in sexual cannibalism.

These large spiders are associated with an aquatic habitat.

The female spiders attack the males during the transfer of sperm.

Johnson said these spiders are, "One of the few species where we have frequent occurrences of sexual cannibalism."

In this type of spider, males can sometimes be 10 times smaller than females.

However, Darwin suggested that male dwarfism is a good thing, according to Johnson.

"If there is a risk that the female will attack you and you are small, she might not attack you, "Johnson said.

He explained that males are food as well as sperm, and if females are going to attack, they need to know which is more important beforehand.

"You can't have a lot of offspring and you can't have a big egg sack unless you feed well," Johnson said.

More recently, Johnson has been studying widow spiders. "Widow spiders are the most infamous spiders out there," Johnson said.

According to Johnson, these spiders populate in areas of vast urban growth and are infamous for the medical concerns that come with their bites.

A study performed by one of his first students, Kathryn Kitchen, called "The Effects of Kin Selection and Family on Juvenile Cannibalism in the Black Widow Spider", won an award.

The study showed that feeding the spiders makes them more likely to cannibalize.

Johnson said the study revealed "Babies eating their brothers and sisters and ones they weren't related to months before they were reproductively mature." © Copyright 2007 The Daily Vidette
http://media.www.dailyvidette.com/media/storage/paper420/news/2007/10/26/News/Speaker.Gives.Insight.On.Cannibalism-3058391.shtml

Oeconomic Unrest Over Failed Aphrodisiacs

Thousands protest over ant aphrodisiac scheme

Wed Nov 21, 10:58 AM

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - Thousands of people in northeastern China have protested on the streets and surrounded government offices demanding help recovering money from a get-rich-quick scheme to raise ants to make an aphrodisiac tonic.

Hundreds of anti-riot troops and police in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, were deployed to stop protesters reaching the provincial government and Communist Party headquarters, residents said on Wednesday.

The irate investors from across Liaoning, a rustbelt province striving to attract investment, have demonstrated in Shenyang since Monday and sporadic clashes with police have broken out, they said.

Several thousand protesters gathered near the provincial government offices on Wednesday, a resident told Reuters by telephone.

The investors -- many of them laid-off workers or farmers -- put their savings into Shenyang's Yilishen Group for a scheme in which they raised ants to provide ingredients for a health tonic promising an aphrodisiac boost.

For every 10,000 yuan ($1,350) they paid the company as "deposit," investors were promised a dividend of 3,250 yuan.

The tonic was promoted on television by Zhao Benshan, the country's best-known comic who specializes in playing innocent bumpkins with a northeastern twang.

But since October, the group has twice delayed payment of dividends, fuelling investor fears that it was on the brink of bankruptcy or that the government might have frozen its funds.

"We strongly demand the government offer a way out for Yilishen!" read a banner held by protesters as they marched along a Shenyang street. A photo of the banner was posted on Internet and blog sites.

China has seen rising protests from farmers and disgruntled workers as inequality and corruption stoke popular resentment

The unusual origin of this latest uproar was a reminder that even as China's economy booms, there are pitfalls that can spark discontent from citizens eager for a share of wealth.

Chinese media have said the scheme collected more than 10 billion yuan from hundreds of thousands of Liaoning residents.

USELESS RUSE?

Some local reports have said the ants were a useless ruse for an illegal scam, but the group has survived several probes in the past eight years and investors had previously received their dividends on time, protesters said.

As they looked for reassurance, panicked investors have turned their ire on the government.

"If Yilishen goes bankrupt, the government will be the chief culprit," said a message that appeared briefly on domestic Chinese Web sites before it was removed. "The government will be drinking our blood."

A Shenyang resident told Reuters that about 1,000 people had collected in front of the company's head office on Wednesday. Repeated calls to the office by Reuters went unanswered.

Investors said the group's good relations with the government and its commercials on state television had convinced them Yilishen was legitimate.

"It has been out there for eight years and the government has given the company and the manager so many honors. We thought there mustn't be any problem," investor Li Dechun told Reuters.

He said he had poured more than 200,000 yuan into the scheme.

A spokesman for the Liaoning provincial government said officials had been talking to the protesters, and the company's failure to pay dividends was not due to any government action.

"Most of the investors are from the lower class of society. Some have threatened to take more radical actions, such as blocking trains at the railway station," a local resident surnamed Cong told Reuters.

Online discussions about the protests and the ant scheme were quickly removed from Web sites, as were recent news reports about Yilishen. The Group's Web site was also shut, announcing "service unavailable."

Indeterminate Televisual Crimes of Passion

Spaniard suspected of slaying woman he proposed to on TV talk show

Wed Nov 21, 11:00 AM

By Daniel Woolls, The Associated Press

MADRID, Spain - A Spaniard who went on television to beg his estranged girlfriend to marry him - getting down on his knees, crying and offering an engagement ring, only to be rejected - is now a suspect in her stabbing death, officials said Wednesday.

Ricardo Navarro, 30, and his former partner, a Russian woman identified only as Svetlana, took part in a popular daytime talk show last week.

"I love you. You only live once, as you told me, and I want to spend mine with you," Navarro said on a program called Diario de Patricia on the network Antena 3.

"I want you to marry me. You are everything to me. Everything," Navarro said, his voice quavering.

The woman, also 30, was found with her throat cut four days later in the elevator of her apartment building in the eastern city of Alicante, and died on Monday. Her last name has not been released because it is court policy not to name victims of gender violence, said an official at the Superior Court of Justice of Valencia, which covers neighbouring Alicante.

Police arrested Navarro. He went before a judge Wednesday for a preliminary hearing. He has not been formally charged.

Antena 3 did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday.

Boomerang, the company that produces the program for Antena 3, said the televised meeting was arranged as a surprise - at Navarro's request - so he could try to make up with his girlfriend.

Program staffers, acting on their own, have tried to contact the woman's relatives in Russia. But Baldomero Limon, director of programming, said Boomerang sees no link between the show and her death and does not feel in any way responsible.

"There is no cause and effect relationship," Limon said, noting the killing was four days after the show.

The host of the program, Patricia Gaztanaga, began Tuesday's show by expressing sorrow for the victim and her family. The Russian woman leaves behind a small daughter from another relationship.

"None of us who take part in this program could imagine that something like this was going to happen," Gaztanaga said.

The "Jenny Jones Show" was involved in a somewhat similar incident in the 1990s in the United States.

In 1996, a U.S. jury convicted show guest Jonathan T. Schmitz of second-degree murder for shooting a man who had declared a homosexual attraction to him on television.

The Totalitarianism of Music

'Our age has witnessed the eruption of total music, anywhere between the North Pole and the South Pole you are forced to hear music, in the city or out in the country, on the high seas or in the desert, Reger said. People have been stuffed full of music every day for so long that they have long lost all feeling for music . . . People today, because they have nothing else left, suffer from a pathological music consumption, Reger said, this music consumption will be driven forward by the industry, which controls people today, to a point where everybody is destroyed; there is a lot of talk nowadays about waste and chemicals which have destroyed everything, but music destroys a lot more than waste and chemicals do, it is music that eventually will destroy absolutely everything totally, mark my words. The first thing to be destroyed by the music industry are people's auditory canals and next, as a logical consequence, the people themselves. . . . I can already see people totally destroyed by the music industry, Reger said, those masses of music-industry victims eventually populating the continents with their musical cadaverous stench. . . . The music industry will one day have the population on its conscience. . . . not just chemicals and waste, believe me. The music industry is the murderer of human beings, the music industry is the real mass murderer of humanity which, if the music industry continues on its present lines, will have no hope whatever within a few decades. . . .'

http://thomasbernhard.blogspot.com/

Sexual Ambivalence in the Americas

Three boys, 8 and 9, charged in rape of 11-year-old Atlanta-area girl

Mon Nov 19, 1:29 PM

By Shannon Mccaffrey, The Associated Press

ACWORTH, Ga. - Three boys, ages eight and nine, were being held Monday in a detention centre on charges of kidnapping and raping an 11-year-old girl near a suburban apartment complex, officials said.

The alleged attack happened Thursday and the girl's mother reported it to authorities Sunday, Acworth police Capt. Wayne Dennard said. "The victim said they were playing outdoors and the girl was forced into a wooded area where she was sexually assaulted, where one of the boys raped her," Dennard told The Associated Press.

The three boys - an eight-year-old and two nine-year-olds - were charged with rape, kidnapping, false imprisonment and sexual assault, Dennard said.

They were due in juvenile court Monday afternoon. Their names were being withheld because of their age.

Dennard would not comment further.

Acworth Police Chief Mike Wilkie said one of the boys was accused of threatening to hit the girl with a rock before the alleged assault.

Wilkie also said the investigation is "far from over," and investigators were looking into claims that after the alleged attack, the girl talked about it with her friends at a slumber party.

The father of the eight-year-old boy said his son had been falsely accused and had not had sex with the girl.

The sexual activity was consensual, and the girl accused her playmates only after her parents had learned she had sex, said the father, Brandon LeBlanc.

"There was no violence involved," LeBlanc said. "This is a clear case of a girl who didn't want to get in trouble with her parents."

"In order to save her hide, she tried to blame it on rape," he alleged

The girl's mother, however, told WGCL-TV in Atlanta: "They do need to be taught a lesson because if they do it to her, they could do it to somebody else. And who knows when they become teenagers what they can do to other girls."

The case involves children from a working class apartment complex on the northern outskirts of metro Atlanta.

LeBlanc said the kids all played together, biking or throwing a ball around in the apartment complex's parking lot.

He said his son is a third grader at a Baptist school who loves the Atlanta Falcons and is a batboy for his church's softball league.

Prosecutors had not received the case report from police Monday, nor had they decided whether to try the suspects as adults.

"That decision hasn't been made," said Kathy Watkins, a spokeswoman for the Cobb County District Attorney's office. She had no further comment.

Acworth, some 50 kilometres northwest of Atlanta along the shores of Lake Allatoona, is a town of about 17,000.

Acworth police said their department has never before investigated allegations of rape where all the parties were this young.

"This wouldn't be normal anywhere, but especially not Acworth," Dennard said.

Caste Revolt in India

Thieving monkeys 'out of control' in northeast India

Sat Nov 17, 12:12 PM

GUWAHATI, India (AFP) - Troupes of monkeys are out of control in India's northeast, stealing mobile phones and breaking into homes to steal soft drinks from refrigerators, lawmakers in the region have complained.

"Monkeys are wreaking havoc in my constituency by taking away mobile phones, toothpastes, sipping coke after opening the refrigerators," Hiren Das told Assam state's assembly.

He said the primates were "even slapping women who try to chase them".

"It is a cause of serious concern in my area, with more than 1,000 such simians turning aggressive by the day," fumed Goneswar Das, another legislator representing Raha in eastern Assam.

Assam's wildlife minister, Rockybul Hussain, said the state government has formed a panel to study the problem.

Because of shrinking forest cover, monkeys have increasingly moved into cities elsewhere in India as well.

Last week, around two dozen people were hurt after monkeys rampaged through a New Delhi neighbourhood.

Last month, the deputy mayor of Delhi died when he fell from his balcony after being attacked by monkeys.

Efforts to drive out the animals is complicated by the fact that devout Hindus view them as an incarnation of Hanuman, the monkey god who symbolises strength.

Cloning Your Ancestors

Researchers get stem cells from cloned monkeys

Wed Nov 14, 3:31 PM

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. researchers have cloned monkeys and used the resulting embryos to get embryonic stem cells, an important step towards being able to do the same thing in humans, they reported on Wednesday.

Shoukhrat Mitalipov and colleagues at Oregon Health & Science University said they used skin cells from monkeys to create cloned embryos, and then extracted embryonic stem cells from these days-old embryos.

This had only been done in mice before, they reported in the journal Nature. Mitalipov had given sketchy details of his work at a conference in Australia in June, but the work has now been independently verified by another team of experts.

They said their work shows it is possible, in principle, to clone humans and get stem cells from the embryos. "The efficiency is still low but I am quite sure that it will work in humans," Mitalipov told reporters in a telephone briefing.

Embryonic stem cells are the source of every cell, tissue and organ in the body. Scientists study them to understand the biology of disease and want to use them to transform medicine.

The idea would be to take a small piece of skin from a patient and grow tissue or even organ transplants perfectly matched to the patient.

But their use is controversial, with opponents saying it is wrong to use a human embryo in this way. President George W. Bush has repeatedly blocked legislation that would expand federal funding of such research.

OVERCOMING BARRIERS

Many species of animals have been cloned, and experts have taken stem cells from a variety of embryos, including human embryos. But it has been very difficult to both clone and then get embryonic stem cells from any animal.

Mitalipov's team overcame two barriers -- first cloning a primate, the group of mammals that includes monkeys, apes and humans, and then getting embryonic stem cells from the clone.

Mitalipov said the dyes used in cloning some animals apparently are toxic to primate cells.

They used somatic cell nuclear transfer, which involves taking the nucleus from an adult cell, in this case fibroblasts, a type of skin cell, taken from nine adult males.

Then an egg cell is hollowed out and the nucleus from the adult cell inserted. This programs the egg into behaving as if it had been fertilized and it can grow into a embryo.

It was not easy. The researchers used 304 eggs from 14 rhesus macaque monkeys and ended up with just two stem cell lines.

This means a lot more work before this would be useful for humans, they said -- especially given how hard human eggs are to come by.

Tests show the embryonic stem cells are truly pluripotent, Mitalipov said, meaning they can develop into any kind of cell found in the body.

"We have been able to develop them into heart cells," he said. They also grew nerve cells.

It was important to confirm the work. A rival journal, Science, was forced to withdraw papers published by South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk in 2004 and 2005 after his claims to have cloned a human embryo proved false.

Mitalipov said the team has tried, and failed, to produce cloned monkeys that could grow into live baby monkeys.

"We have a goal also of producing live monkeys using the somatic cell nuclear transfer technique," he said. "One reason is to generate genetically modified macaques that, for example, carry a specific disease that is a model of human disease."

His team will not try to clone humans, he said.

"However we hope the techniques we develop will be useful for other labs which are working ... with human eggs," he said.

(Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and Cynthia Osterman)

New Surveillance System for Parents

Occult Rituals of the Californian Peoples

Headless goats, chickens found on California beach

1 hour, 41 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two headless goats, three decapitated chickens, a beheaded rooster and a dove or possibly pigeon have been found on a scenic Southern California beach in the past week, puzzled police said on Thursday,

Police in Laguna Beach said they were unsure whether the seven animals had washed up on shore or been placed there. They are trying to figure out who was behind the decapitations, and why.

The headless goats were found inside a purple burlap sack on the sand a week ago. The other beheaded animals turned up in recent days.

"We are looking at all kinds of things -- Halloween prank stuff, kids or cold, ritualistic-type activities," Laguna Beach police Sgt. Jason Kravetz told the Los Angeles Times.

"They are wet. That means they are close to the surf line or they are washing up," he said. "It's something I haven't seen in my 18 years on the job."

Laguna Beach, which lies about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego, is an affluent seaside community which also provided the setting for the 2004 MTV teen reality show "Laguna Beach."

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant, editing by Mohammad Zargham)

When Science Fiction Was Written by Pornographers

Okay, the title is slightly misleading and there is still more than a little crossover between the genres, to whatever degree that one wishes to distinguish them (sci-fi is essentially the repressed version of the utopian porn so popular in the 17th and 18th Centuries). The above illustration is from 'Découverte Australe par un Homme Volant, ou Le Dédale Français' (Southern Discovery by a Flying Man, or The French Dedalus) , which is a book by the renowned pornographer, social thinker and enemy of De Sade, Restif de la Bretonne. Proof perhaps that ignorance and misunderstanding makes both science and sex far more charming.

New Horizons for Antisepsis

2 hours, 38 minutes ago

A controversial new treatment, which involves the transplantation of human waste, can treat cases of C. difficile infection. But only a handful of physicians in Canada undertake the messy procedure.

Clostridium difficile is a superbug that commonly spreads in hospital settings and has been linked to the deaths of at least 2,000 people in Quebec since 2003, as well as in other provinces.

Though C. difficile can be kept in check by good bacteria in the bowel, problems can arise when the superbug is treated by antibiotics such as vancomycin. The antibiotics sometimes wipe out the good bacteria but fail to completely kill the C. difficile - leaving enough of it that it later flourishes.

"If you wipe out the normal bacteria by taking an antibiotic, then this bug overgrows and it releases a toxin which causes severe diarrhea," Dr. Mike Silverman, an internal medicine specialist from Ajax, Ont., told CBC News.

According to him, the diarrhea can become chronic day after day and month after month. "It's painful, people can't get on with their lives ... and if doctors can't keep a patient hydrated and nourished, it can be deadly."

Calgary resident Dorothy Badry battled C. difficile for almost a year in 2004.

"You are going to the bathroom at least 40 times a day. And there is a lot of pain associated with that. Your skin starts to break down and the process is extremely painful."

During that time, Badry could not work and could not care for her disabled daughter. "I basically had to give up everything," she said.

Calgary doctor is one of few doing transplants

Fecal transplants have become the first-line treatment for chronic recurrent C. difficile in Scandinavia. As well, more and more doctors are using it in the United States.

Studies that been published show that more than 90 per cent of patients are cured through fecal transplants - most of them after just one treatment.

But only a handful of doctors in Canada are willing to undertake the unpleasant procedure which involves taking a healthy person's fecal matter and transplanting it into a person infected with C. difficile.

They cite sanitation reasons for their hesitation.

Calgary physician Dr. Tom Louie, head of infection control at Foothills Hospital, is one of the few physicians in Canada who treats patients with chronic C. difficile with fecal transplants, or fecal therapy. He has done 38 procedures to date.

The procedure involves getting a close relative of the patient, such as a sibling, to donate several days-worth of stool. Louie tests the stool for diseases such as hepatitis and HIV and then mixes it with saline to create liquid feces. He then administers the stool to the patient through a barium enema.

Louie said the technique allows good bacteria from the transplanted stool to reduce the number of C. difficile bacteria in the intestines and to restore normal intestinal function.

He said the process is fairly quick.

"It takes me about an hour and I leave it in there overnight. I'm hoping that some of these normal bugs will come and find a home, and when they find a home it will kick out the C. difficile."

'It cured me,' Toronto woman says

Marcia Munro, a Toronto resident, received a fecal transplant from her sister Wendy Sinukoff after suffering from C. difficile for 14 months several years ago.

"I had to collect stool samples for five days prior to our leaving Toronto, and I collected it in an ice cream container and kept it in the fridge," said Sinukoff.

She had to then fly the samples to Calgary so that Louie could transplant it into her sister - a process that involved getting the sample through airport security.

"My biggest fear was that my samples were not allowed to be frozen, so I had to take them as carry-on luggage in the airplane and I was terrified that I was going to be asked to have my luggage searched," she said.

Munro said the transplant was a success.

"It cured me. This procedure cured me and one of reasons I agreed to do this story - because it's difficult to talk about - is I know many people die from C. difficile and I want people to know there is hope when you have this illness."

Scatological Architecture I

Sun Nov 11, 1:26 AM

SEOUL (AFP) - A South Korean lawmaker and public hygiene activist on Sunday opened his 1.6 million dollar toilet-shaped showcase house designed to campaign for cleaner loos worldwide.

The two-storey home, complete with a nameplate reading "Mr. Toilet's House", is now ready to be occupied, according to owner Sim Jae-Duck.

Billed as the world's only toilet house, the 419-square-metre (4,508-sq-foot) concrete and glass structure rose on the site of Sim's former home in Suweon, 40 kilometres (24 miles) south of Seoul.

Sim, 74, who told AFP last month that his mother gave him birth in a bathroom, has actively campaigned for "clean and beautiful" toilets since his service as Suweon mayor from 1995-2002.

His campaign has since turned many of public restrooms nationwide into facilities boasting paintings, fresh flowers or even small gardens.

Sim's house was completed before the Korea Toilet Association, which he funds, holds a forum in Seoul later this month to launch the World Toilet Association to take his campaign worldwide.

Before Sim's family moves in, he plans to rent out the residence for 50,000 dollars a day -- with proceeds going towards providing poor countries with proper sanitary facilities.

In the centre of the house is a glass-walled bathroom which features a device producing mist to make sure users do not feel too exposed. The loo's lid is raised automatically and music is also turned on when people enter.

The house, which has a stream and small garden in front, is nicknamed in Korean "Haewoojae," meaning "a place of sanctuary where one can solve one's worries."

Sim says 2.6 billion people still live without toilets worldwide.

KissPhone

This KissPhone detects percussion speed, pressure, temperature, and sucking force of the lips, when you kiss it. An artificial mouth on the phone can reproduces same parameters to the kissphone receptor.
So
- Customer is able to...
...send or receive kiss from distance,
...leave or receive a kiss in answering machine,
...repeat the kiss saved on the phone or
...relay it to other people,
...download or upload kiss in the web
...receive kiss from a kiss bank as the one from Madonna or from an imaginary Hero !
- Company Captures Market because of distinctive concept and
And Keeps Market because of associated services and accessories.

http://www.proinvention.com/

Phantasies of an Endangered Species

You can check out the producer's official site here
or,
if you are brave enough,
you can see a clip over here.

Bulletproof Baby

The Changing Character of a Volcano

'Island' emerges in Indonesian volcano crater

Tue Nov 6, 7:28 AM

BLITAR, Indonesia (AFP) - An island that has emerged in the middle of the crater lake of Indonesia's Mount Kelut may have been effectively plugging the volcano but it could be dislodged, scientists warned Tuesday.

The peak in East Java, whose fertile slopes are populated by thousands of people, was put on high alert on October 16 but has not fully erupted, puzzling scientists who say it is impossible to predict what may happen next.

"The island was visually captured by our CCTV (closed-circuit television) on Sunday, with smoke now pluming up to one kilometre (half a mile) from it," volcanologist Saut Simatupang told AFP.

He estimated that the 100-metre (-yard) long island loomed 20 metres above the surface of the crater lake. The temperature of the lake has soared so high it has broken measuring instruments, he said.

"We still cannot determine whether (the island) is new product or old lava from the 1990 eruption that had solidified at the bottom of the crater lake," more or less acting as a cork, he said.

It appeared to have been pushed up Saturday night, when volcanologists mistakenly thought an eruption was occurring so they abandoned their posts.

Overnight, continuous tremors shuddered underneath Kelut, with dozens of puffs of steam or smoke shooting into the air, Simatupang said.

"We are not taking a chance yet to get closer to study the volcano, although we think it is mostly steam coming out," said Simatupang.

"This could go on or it could be that the volcano is keeping its energy for a bigger eruption."

The head of Indonesia's Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Agency, Surono, told President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that Kelut appeared to have altered its normal eruptive behaviour.

"There seems to be a change in the volcano's character, from historical explosive eruptions to an effusive or slow eruption," he said during a phone call broadcast on ElShinta radio.

"Is it possible that there will be an eruption (given the change), or can we still not have an accurate prediction?" Yudhoyono asked.

"There is a very small probability that there will be an explosive eruption, but I am still doing more evaluation with my colleagues," Surono replied.

Authorities have been trying to evacuate people living in a 10-kilometre danger zone around the volcano's peak but many have refused to leave or they return to their homes during daylight hours.

Residents said they were defying a police threat to jail them if they stayed.

"I'm not afraid... If they want to put me in jail, just go ahead," said Kandi, a 56-year-old clove farmer from Bladak village, eight kilometres from the peak.

The district police chief, Ibnu Istica, told AFP that police were telling people about a new law -- that has yet to come in effect -- under which people could be jailed for up to three years for refusing evacuation orders.

Since record-keeping began, Mount Kelut's eruptions have claimed more than 15,000 lives, including an estimated 10,000 in a catastrophic 1586 eruption. A 1919 eruption spewed heat clouds that killed 5,160 people.

Indonesia sits on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," where several continental plates collide, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity.

The Scatology of Shopping II

Pee&Poo, two taboo-breaking cuddly toys by Swedish designer Emma Megitt.

The idea of creating cuddly toys on the subject of pee and poo is not only truly unique, both historically and now, it's also neutral, and therefore widely applicable and acceptable, with regard to age, gender and nationality."

Emma says that to put it briefly, "People just like them; they seem to have a universal appeal."

http://shop.peeandpoo.com/shopfront.asp

Gerontocratic Tyranny on the Rise in Canada: Crackdown on Protests

Students flaunt election sign destruction on networking website Facebook

1 hour, 55 minutes ago

By The Canadian Press

SASKATOON - With just two days to go before voters head to the polls, a new "party" briefly appeared on the Saskatchewan political scene - but its leaders may have to answer to authorities.

A group called the New Saskatchewan Sign Kicking Party had its moment on the networking website Facebook.

It was described as a party for the youth of Saskatchewan who are upset that they can't run for office or vote "and for any kids that just enjoy kicking political party signs."

The site displayed photos and names of students kicking down election signs in Saskatoon.

But the site also received negative messages from other Internet users, including one person who told the students "hope your parents have deep pockets."

That's because removing election signs is a federal offence and the penalty is a fine up to $5,000 or up to two years in jail or both.

The Cult of Redemption in Modern Science

Girl born with four arms and four legs undergoes surgery in India

Tue Nov 6, 4:31 AM

By The Associated Press

BANGALORE, India - Doctors began operating Tuesday on a 2-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs in an extensive surgery that they hope will leave the girl with a normal body, a hospital official said.

The girl is joined to a "parasitic twin" that stopped developing in the mother's womb. The surviving fetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped fetus.

The girl, Lakshmi, is named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, and some in her village in the northern state of Bihar revere her.

"Everybody considers her a goddess at our village," said her father, Shambhu, who goes by one name. "All this expenditure has happened to make her normal. So far, everything is fine."

Others sought to make money from Lakshmi. Her parents kept her in hiding after a circus apparently tried to buy the girl, they said.

The complications for Lakshmi's surgery are myriad: The two spines are merged, she has four kidneys, entangled nerves, two stomach cavities and two chest cavities. She cannot stand up or walk.

"It's a big team effort of a lot of skilled surgeons who will be putting their heart and soul into solving the problem," said Dr. Sharan Patil, the lead surgeon in the operation. "It's going to take many, many hours on a continuous basis to operate on the baby. So, these issues definitely make it complex."

Patil put the risk of losing Lakshmi between 20 and 25 per cent.

Doctors at Sparsh Hospital in Bangalore, where Lakshmi is undergoing surgery, said she is popular among the medical staff and other patients.

"She's a very cute girl," Dr. Patil Mamatha said. "She's very playful and gets along well with others."

The hospital's foundation is paying for the operation because the girl's family could not afford the medical bills, Mamatha said.

A team of 30 doctors was participating in the surgery.

The Technology of Radical Seduction

ITN - 2 hours 6 minutes ago

Children living in Britain are being "groomed" by al-Qaeda to carry out terrorist attacks in the UK, the head of MI5 has warned.
(Advertisement)

Giving his first public speech since becoming director-general in April, Jonathan Evans said al-Qaeda is waging a "deliberate campaign" against the UK.

He said: "Terrorist attacks we have seen against the UK are not simply random plots by disparate and fragmented groups.

"The majority of these attacks, successful or otherwise, have taken place because al-Qaeda has a clear determination to mount terrorist attacks against the United Kingdom."

Mr Evans continued: "This remains the case today, and there is no sign of it reducing. As I speak, terrorists are methodically and intentionally targeting young people and children in this country.

"They are radicalising, indoctrinating and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism. This year, we have seen individuals as young as 15 and 16 implicated in terrorist-related activity."

Mr Evans said the security service is facing "the most immediate and acute peacetime threat" in its 98-year history.

He told the Society of Editors Conference in Manchester that the number of individuals in the UK identified as having links with terrorism had risen to at least 2,000 from 1,600 in 2006.

And he said MI5 suspects there could be a similar number again who they did not know about.

While in the past much of the planning had come from al-Qaeda's "core leadership" in the tribal areas of Pakistan, there are now signs that its representatives in Iraq are seeking to promote attacks outside that country while there is terrorist training and planning in Somalia directed against the UK.

Mr Evans also admitted the service is still having to divert resources to counter "unreconstructed attempts" by countries such as Russia and China at Cold War-style espionage.

He said: "It is a matter of some disappointment to me that I still have to devote significant amounts of equipment, money and staff to countering this threat.

"They are resources which I would far rather devote to countering the threat from international terrorism - a threat to the whole international community, not just the UK."

While MI5 had expanded since the September 11, 2001 attacks - and is expected to reach 4,000 staff by 2011 - he said there is a limit to what intelligence can achieve.

"We cannot know everything. There will be instances when individuals come to the notice of the Security Service or the police but then subsequently carry out acts of terrorism. This is inevitable," he said.

"Every decision to investigate someone entails a decision not to investigate someone else. Knowing of somebody is not the same as knowing all about somebody.

"And it would be perverse for my service to avoid knowing of somebody for fear of being held to blame if they later become involved in an attack.

"I think we should be very careful to bear this in mind when talking about so-called 'intelligence failures'."

Video Games for Psychogenic Engineering to Create Docile Agents

University Relations Office (URO)
Video game shown to cut cortisol

October 23, 2007
Playing social-intelligence game reduces stress hormone by 17 percent

A video game designed by McGill University researchers to help train people to change their perception of social threats and boost their self-confidence has now been shown to reduce the production of the stress-related hormone cortisol. The new findings appear in the October issue of the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“We already knew that it was possible to design games to allow people to practise new forms of social perception, but we were surprised by the impact this had when we took the games out of the lab and into the context of people’s stressful lives,” said McGill psychology professor Mark Baldwin.

Prof. Baldwin and his team – McGill PhD graduates Stéphane Dandeneau and Jodene Baccus and graduate student Maya Sakellaropoulo – have been developing a suite of video games that train players in social situations to focus more on positive feedback rather than being distracted and deterred by perceived social slights or criticisms. The games are based on the emerging science of social intelligence, which has found that a significant part of daily stress comes from our social perceptions of the world.

In a 2004 study of 56 students, a standard reaction-time test showed that the game, called the Matrix, helped people shift the way they processed social information. The researchers next conducted several studies to see whether the effects of the game would translate into lower stress levels in a high-pressure context.

In one of their recent studies, they recruited 23 employees of a Montreal-based call centre to play one of their games, which involves clicking on the one smiling face among many frowning faces on a screen as quickly as possible. Through repetitive playing, the game trains the mind to orient more toward positive aspects of social life, said Prof. Baldwin.

The call-centre employees did this each workday morning for a week. They filled out daily stress and self-esteem questionnaires and had their cortisol levels tested through saliva analysis on the final day of the experiment. These tests showed an average 17-percent reduction in cortisol production compared to a control group that played a similar game but without the smiling faces. The cortisol levels were tested by Jens Pruessner of the Montreal Neurological Institute’s McConnell Brain Imaging Centre and Douglas Hospital Research Centre, a co-author of the study.

“There are many possible applications for this kind of game,” said Prof. Baldwin, “from helping people cope with the social anxiety of public speaking or meeting new people, to helping athletes concentrate more on their game rather than worrying about performing poorly.”

The team’s ongoing research led to the creation of a spin-off company, MindHabits, whose MindHabits Trainer game recently won Telefilm Canada’s Great Canadian Video Game Competition. The distinction has earned the company $800,000 from Telefilm to be matched with private funding for a total of $1.3 million to support the commercialization of the game. The resulting product is scheduled for release this month and is available through the company’s website.

Conflicts in Occult Property Rites of the Americas

Polygamy leader says was "immoral" with sister

Wed Oct 31, 4:23 PM

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs, convicted of being an accomplice to rape, renounced his role as prophet while awaiting trial because he had been "immoral" with a sister and a daughter 30 years ago, according to a court document.

The newly released document showed that Jeffs, 51, made the statements in several conversations from his Utah jail with family and members of the breakaway Mormon sect earlier this year.

Jeffs, revered by followers as the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or FLDS, will be sentenced on November 20. He was convicted in August in Utah on two counts of being an accomplice to rape by forcing a 14-year-old sect member to marry her first cousin.

The trial riveted Utah, the Western state with a majority Mormon population, many who consider polygamy to be a thorn in the side of their faith. The FLDS, whose estimated 7,500 members live in an enclave along the Utah-Arizona border, is not part of the mainstream Mormon church, which has long renounced polygamy.

While in jail awaiting trial, Jeffs made a series of phone calls recorded by authorities in which he said he "had been immoral with a sister and a daughter" when he was 20 years old, a court document released on Tuesday showed. Jeffs did not elaborate on the nature of the conduct.

"He renounced his role as prophet, explaining that the Lord revealed to him that he was a wicked man and has not held the priesthood since he was 20 years old," the document said.

He later retracted his renouncement in another recorded telephone conversation after being treated for depression, according to the document. The audio and video recordings were not presented at Jeffs' trial on the grounds they would prejudice the jury.

Jeffs' word was considered God's will to his followers. Women were taught to be submissive and "keep sweet," while dissent led to exile and religious damnation, witnesses testified at the August trial.

Jeffs, who pleaded not guilty, had been on the run for 15 months and was on the FBI's most wanted list before being arrested in August 2006. After being sentenced in November to a possible 10 years in prison, he is expected to stand trial on similar charges in Arizona.

The Shifting Institutionalization of Pederasty II

Police hunt female Nebraska teacher, 25, on the run with male student, 13

2 hours, 17 minutes ago

By Oskar Garcia, The Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb. - Authorities were searching Thursday for a 13-year-old boy and a female middle school teacher believed to be on the run after police began investigating an alleged intimate relationship between them.

Kelsey Peterson, 25, a sixth-grade teacher and basketball coach at Lexington Middle School, was placed on administrative leave last week. A judge issued an arrest warrant Monday charging her with kidnapping, child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Authorities believed the two were travelling together in Peterson's car. Court documents said the boy was last seen Oct. 26.

"We're still focused on locating both of them, whether they're together or not," Dawson County Attorney Elizabeth Waterman said Thursday. "I think right now anything is possible."

The boy was a student at the school, but it was not clear if Peterson was his teacher.

Court documents showed authorities had recovered several e-mails and letters in which the two professed their affection for one another.

In letters, the boy called Peterson his "Baby Gurl," and said their relationship was "just not about the sex but that it was pretty good," according to court documents.

Court documents say Peterson's school-issued laptop contained letters to the student, including one from April saying she loved him, thought he loved her, was "100 per cent faithful" to him and would always be faithful.

Police said the boy contacted his family over the weekend and said the two were in Grand Island, Neb., about 135 kilometres east of Lexington, Neb., according to court documents.

Police also said they were apparently spotted Friday night at a Denver convenience store, then again Sunday in Ogallala, in western Nebraska near the northeast tip of Colorado.

Police on Thursday referred questions to Waterman, who would not say where police were focusing their search or comment on reports about where the pair were spotted.

A message left for Todd Chessmore, the school district's superintendent, by The Associated Press was not returned Thursday. A Lexington Middle School official referred questions to Chessmore.

Lexington, a farming and meatpacking town of about 10,000, is about 355 kilometres west of Omaha in central Nebraska.