‘Alien Mysteries’ coming to US television

The Canadian UFO television series Alien Mysteries is coming to the United States. Alien Mysteries just debuted on Discovery Canada on March 3. But according to C21Media, the cable network Destination America (a Discovery-owned network) is bring the show to a U.S. audience.   Describing the show,

A recreation of an abduction case on Alien Mysteries. (Credit: Discovery Canada)

Discovery Canada’s website explains that Alien Mysteries is “a fantastically creative and imaginative new take on some of the most enduring UFO mysteries from the last 50  years. Each story is backed up by credible witnesses, investigative reports, and tangible evidence such as physical markings, photographs, radar reports, and videos.” Alien Mysteries premieres on Destination America in April. And, in the near future, the show will reportedly appear on various international channels owned by Discovery.Mac's UFO News: ‘Alien Mysteries’ coming to US television

Read More........→March 23, 2013

Audi to Exhibit Q3 Concepts and an e-Bike Prototype at the 2012 Wörthersee Tour

Carscoop: It is hard to believe, but somehow another year has rolled around since the last Wörthersee Tour. The VW Group meeting of all meetings that brings together fans of the Audi, VW, Seat and Skoda brands will be held for the 31st time at lake Wörthersee in the southern Austrian state of Carinthia from May 16 to19. At this year's event, Audi plans to display three conceptual versions of the Q3 compact crossover along with its e-bike Wörthersee prototype. Beginning with Audi's two-wheel proposal, the e-bike is a futuristic looking study sporting 26-inch wheels made from carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) that weigh only 600 grams (1.32 lbs) and an ultra-light carbon-fiber frame that tips the scales at an impressively low 1.600 grams (3.53 lbs). The bike can be driven by pedals, an electric motor producing up to 2.3 kW (3hp) and 250Nm, which is located at the lowest point on the frame, or a combination of both. A lithium-ion battery that weighs 5 kg (11.02 lbs) is housed in the frame. Its capacity is 530 Wh and can be fully recharged from a 230 V supply in two and a half hours. The entire bicycle, including the battery, weighs 21 kg (46.3 lbs). The rider can choose between five programs. Aside from the pedal-only 'Pure' mode, there is the 'Pedelec' mode where the rider is assisted by the electric motor allowing for speeds of up to 80 km/h (50 mph) for 50 to 70km (31-44 miles). There is also the pure electric 'eGrip' program and the 'Wheelie' mode where the electric motor assists the rider when the front wheel is in the air. Finally, there's the training mode, in which case, the electric motor kicks in to maintain a constant speed such as when riding into the wind or up a hill. Other highlights include the nine-speed hydraulically actuated gear shift, two disk brakes that are also applied hydraulically, and an on-board computer located in the frame top tube. Moving on to Audi's automotiveare  display, the three Q3 studies the Red Track, which we came to know as the Vail Concept at the 2012 Detroit Motor Show, and the 355hp Q3 RS and Jinlong Yufeng or ‘Golden Dragon in the Wind’ that were displayed at the 2012 Beijing Motor Show earlier this month. Audi will also bring 16 production models from the its current range such as the new A3, an S6 in a pearl effect Daytona Gray finish and an A1 quattro in Glacier White, metallic, along with the TT RS Light Show car, a series-production vehicle that was modified by five Audi apprentices over a period of three months. Source: Carscoop

Read More........→May 17, 2012

Higher-math skills entwined with lower-order magnitude sense

While many animals understand the concept of less and more, only humans can learn formal math.

By Carol Clark: The ability to learn complex, symbolic math is a uniquely human trait, but it is intricately connected to a primitive sense of magnitude that is shared by many animals, finds a study to be published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “Our results clearly show that uniquely human branches of mathematics interface with an evolutionarily primitive general magnitude system,” says lead authorStella Lourenco, a psychologist at Emory University. “We were able to show how variations in both advanced arithmetic and geometry skills specifically correlated with variations in our intuitive sense of magnitude.” Babies as young as six months can roughly distinguish between less and more, whether it’s for a number of objects, the size of objects, or the length of time they see the objects. This intuitive, non-verbal sense of magnitude, which may be innate, has also been demonstrated in non-human animals. When given a choice between a group of five bananas or two bananas, for example, monkeys will tend to take the bigger bunch. “It’s obviously of adaptive value for all animals to be able to discriminate between less and more,” Lourenco says. “The ability is widespread across the animal kingdom – fish, rodents and even insects show sensitivity to magnitude, such as the number of items in a set of objects.” Only humans, however, can learn formal math, including symbolic notations of number, quantitative concepts and computational operations. While the general magnitude system has been linked primarily to the brain’s intraparietal sulcus (IPS), higher math requires the use of more widely

The dot test shows variation in people's ability to intuit number and area.

distributed areas of the brain. For the PNAS study, the researchers wanted to build on work by others indicating that a lower-order sense of number is not just a separate function, but plays a role in the mental capacity for more complex math. The researchers recruited 65 undergraduate college students to participate in an experiment. To test their knack for estimating magnitude of numbers, participants were shown images of dots in two different colors, flashed for only 200 milliseconds on a computer screen. They then had to choose which color had the greater number of dots. Most people can quickly distinguish that a group of 10 dots is greater than a group of five, but some people have a finer-grained number sense that allows them to discriminate between 10 and nine dots. The participants were also shown dots of varying sizes and colors to test their ability to gauge magnitude of area. They then completed a battery of standardized math tests. The results showed that the more precise the participants’ abilities were at estimating the magnitude of a number, the better they scored in advanced arithmetic. The same correlation was found between precision at gauging magnitude of area and the geometry portion of the standardized math test. “By better understanding the psychological mechanisms underlying math abilities such as arithmetic and geometry, we hope to eventually inform how we come to learn symbolic math, and why some people are better at it than others,” says study co-author Justin Bonny, an Emory graduate student of psychology. “It may then be possible to develop early interventions for those who struggle with specific types of math.” U.S. teens lag in math skills compared to other industrialized countries. China ranked number one in math in 2010, the first year that the country participated in the Program for International Student Assessment, while the United States ranked number 31. “Falling behind in math is a huge problem,” Lourenco says, “given that we live in an increasingly technilogical society and a globally competitive world.”Source: eScienceCommons

Read More........→October 31, 2012