Mobile robots break traditions

QC Bot - Standard Model
Putting people first: Safety, efficiency, and the autonomous workplace

Originally published in InTech Magazine

By Daniel Theobald

A new wave of automation is building, and it will affect (almost) everything. Robotic technology was once limited to operating behind light curtains, cages, and doors. Now, mobile robots are breaking away from these traditional confines to appear in dynamic, peopled environments like offices, health-care facilities, classrooms, factory floors, agriculture, and distribution centers.

The convergence of better sensors, actuators, computation, and algorithms has reached a crucial threshold, bringing advanced robotics out of the lab and driving significant industry investment into these new technologies. Combined with increased global competition and cost reduction pressure, it is driving the start of the “Automation Age,” the most influential period of technological advancement since the invention of the steam engine.

Investment in robotics promises handsome dividends for decades to come, and may well determine the next global superpowers. Automation is the key to onshoring much of the U.S. manufacturing base lost in the past several decades, as well as presenting new opportunities in such industries as apparel manufacturing, food distribution and service, and entertainment. To establish a global economic leadership position will require a commitment to invest in automation technologies if the country is to capitalize on these benefits.

Automation is an ideal tool for performing the dull, dirty, and dangerous—shifting humans to greater value-adding activities. New technologies like advanced sensing and flexible manipulation are making robots safer and more efficient in interacting with humans. Meanwhile, interoperability and resource optimization are preparing workplaces for close collaboration of humans and robots as well as lights-out automation.

Safety through advanced sensing

Mobile robots that operate safely in close proximity and in cooperation with humans need several layers of sensing, planning, and motion control. Advanced sensing gives robots the ability to build accurate three-dimensional models of their surroundings and then reason about their environment beyond just distinguishing obstacles from free space. This level of understanding was superfluous when robots were in cages, but is critical for them to be effective coworkers with humans.

For example, modern robots can distinguish between a human and an inanimate object, understand the difference between the two, and take the appropriate action. The equipment is not just sensing the surroundings; it is making sense of its environment. When a robot comes into contact with a human, compliant actuation and tactile sensing allows it to move in a safe manner that avoids injury and minimizes any force of impact. Understanding and making sense of its environment is a key enabler to plan tasks and motions that are predictable and acceptable to human coworkers.

These inherently safe systems stand in stark contrast to industrial robot arms of the past that were trained for a specific function. They had, perhaps, one sensor that knew when something had entered its space and shut down the whole system.

Sensorized equipment

The same advance sensing that gives a robot its autonomous capabilities can first be used for basic safety monitoring aboard equipment already used by human operators. By “sensorizing” a piece of industrial equipment for safety, all sectors can prevent injury, damage, and delays, and save billions of dollars annually.

Sensorizing industrial equipment for safety implicitly includes computing capabilities to process the sensor data. The processing power already available can provide more capabilities than just operational aids and awareness; features can be introduced to make it more fully autonomous. For example, a robot begins as a safety-enabled operator-controlled unit—much like a car today is outfitted with forward collision avoidance and side-view assist. All its sensors are enabled and collecting data, but its ability to “act” on its environment is limited to alerting the human operator or bringing the vehicle to a safe stop.

For example, a forklift that is fitted with sensors for safety could perceive a human in its path and come to a full stop before the operator can even react, potentially curbing the 110,000 annual major forklift accidents that are responsible for one in six workplace deaths. The National Safety Council estimated that the total cost of wage and productivity losses from safety-related death and injury was $188.9 billion in 2011. With the cost savings from reduced accidents through a safety-enabled sensorized forklift, businesses can fund additional features toward full autonomy.

Machine perception

Advanced algorithms allow robots to identify humans in various poses even with just monocular cameras, and therefore enable advanced safety features. Adding this information as an overlay to existing rear view or other assistive camera systems available for industrial equipment is a simple first step. Making the same information available to a safety system installed on the equipment can do even better by removing the need for the operator to continually interpret a marked-up video feed or other interface.

That augmented safety system could be configured to audibly alert the operator of the presence of humans in the vicinity, and also limit the equipment’s velocity in directions that bring it close to detected pedestrians. The simple presence of a pedestrian near industrial equipment is not necessarily cause for concern. Much depends on what that person is doing, where the person is looking, and whether or not he or she is aware of the machine close by. Understanding a person’s activity and gaze from sensor data can help to determine what kind of warning or action is appropriate.

In addition to sensing a human coworker’s gaze and pose, a robot can take direction from nonverbal cues. This is particularly helpful in noisy environments. For example, by recognizing air marshalling gestures, a pedestrian can command or interact with a piece of automated equipment, whether the person is actively involved in the robot’s activity or pursuing an unrelated activity that happens to bring him or her close to the machine.

Flexible manipulation

Being able to effectively manipulate objects in semistructured environments gives robots the dexterity and agility to not only work alongside humans more efficiently, but to match or exceed them in skill and speed. In the past, for robot arms to be effective, the work piece had to be precisely fixtured to millimeter accuracy. This was because the arms usually did not actively sense the work piece, and instead carried out blind motions based on prerecorded paths. The new sensing and computing allows much of the costly fixturing to go away and enables robot arms to provide value in new areas.

One benefit of this trend is that it allows robots to weigh less. For robots to achieve blind motion submillimeter accuracy over a large workspace, they needed to beexceptionally rigid. Any flexibility in the arm would lead to a lack of accuracy. This is why traditional arms generally weighed 100 times more than objects they were able to lift. Rigidity requires bulk.

In contrast, the human arm can lift about 10 times its own weight. When you “close the loop” with vision sensors, the bulk can go away, and with it much of the cost as well. Lightweight, low-precision arms coupled with advanced visions systems are being successfully applied in many areas. Taking the next step of effectively combining autonomous mobility and manipulation will allow a new range of applications that only humans could previously perform.

Achieving efficient operations

Enabled by machine vision, safe and nimble next-generation robots must integrate with their surroundings and their coworkers. In the same way that consumers expect their PCs to run third-party software and to connect to the Internet, robots must be able to work with other machines and with people in their environment.

Unlike a pallet truck or a conveyor belt, robots have added intelligence that, when connected to other things in a dynamic environment, creates enormous potential for efficiency and cost savings. If your robots cannot interoperate, their value is ultimately limited. To maximize return on investment (ROI) through automation requires a multidisciplinary approach to integrate with other hardware and software systems in your facility through open interfaces and standard protocols. These systems include other robots from the same or third-party vendors, facility doors and elevators, and fire systems, as well as asset tracking, order fulfillment, or warehouse management software.

To that end, it is important to find a partner who will bring an interoperable automation ecosystem to the table, not just a single robotic product that operates independently. This approach allows for quick ROI by plugging specific robots into critical-path activities, but also lays the groundwork for fully autonomous lights-out operations and long-range ROI through complete system integration.

Resource optimization

Vecna’s QC Bot navigates corridors and warehouses autonomously, removing the burden of manual transport.

When imagining robots, humans, and facility infrastructure as part of the same system, organizations must also manage it as such, especially in environments where robots navigate in peopled spaces and often share responsibility with people. A mission optimization planner improves system efficiency by employing the unique strengths of both humans and robots through resource management.

The ultimate goal of the mission optimization planner is to sort and process all tasks in the shortest time and with the fewest resources possible, while ensuring that priorities are properly handled. Mission optimization planners actively control workflow rates, allowing humans and robots to work together safely and at maximum efficiency.

A mission optimization planner will also autonomously assign on-demand tasks to either robot or human based on resource availability and the urgency of the task. If a bottleneck starts to occur that cannot be buffered autonomously, the system can immediately inform supervisors and recommend reallocation of staff to address the issue. Mission optimization planners provide the strategic advantage of a single backbone to meet a large variety of needs, including multiple disparate autonomous platforms working together seamlessly with humans within a facility.

The autonomous workplace

What does all of this mean? With advanced sensing, mobility, manipulation, interoperability, and resource optimization, robots will take on more activities traditionally performed by humans. Many interpret this trend as a threat to the human worker. And it is if we do not start to change our ways of thinking.

I would like to see robots make it possible for us to accomplish more than just getting ahead of the Joneses or outcompeting others in the global marketplace. Robotics should allow us to raise the standard of living for everyone on this planet and allow us to pursue the arts and sciences to a greater degree than ever before. If we are to enable this social structure, we need to start figuring it out now.

I say let the robots do the dirty, dull, and dangerous, and let humans enjoy the life they have worked so hard to build since the invention of the steam engine.


Tuesday , December 6 2016
Home / News / World / Queen Elizabeth to make rare public speech

Queen Elizabeth to make rare public speech

London: Queen Elizabeth is expected to make a rare public speech thanking her British and Commonwealth subjects for 63 years of support when she becomes the counrty’s longest-reigning monarch on September 9.

She will speak at the conclusion of her journey aboard a steam train and is likely to pay tribute to her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria, whose record reign she will overtake, The Telegraph reported.

The Queen, 89, will board a train at Edinburgh Waverley Station pulled by the steam locomotive Union of South Africa for the two-hour journey.

It will stop at Newtongrange in Midlothian, where the Queen will unveil a plaque, before reaching Tweedbank, where the Queen will officially open the Borders Railway, the longest domestic railway line to be built in Britain in over a century.

The queen has also given permission for 24-hour news TV cameras to broadcast live from the garden of Buckingham Palace for the first time on Wednesday.

Queen Elizabeth assumed the throne on February 6, 1952.


Rotate 3D Objects
Bottom of the Page

Constrain the rotation of 3D objects and subobjects to an axis.

After you select the objects and subobjects that you want to rotate, the gizmo is located at the center of the selection set. This location is indicated by the center box (or base grip) of the gizmo. It sets the base point for the movement and temporarily changes the position of the UCS while you rotate the selected objects.

You then rotate the objects freely by dragging outside the gizmo. You can also specify an axis about which to constrain the rotation.

If you want to realign the center of rotation, you can relocate the gizmo by using the Relocate Gizmo option on the shortcut menu.

Constrain the Rotation to an Axis

You can constrain the rotation to a specified axis. As you move the cursor over the rotation paths on the 3D rotate gizmo, a vector line representing the axis of rotation is displayed. Specify an axis of rotation by clicking the rotation path when it turns yellow.

When you drag the cursor, the selected objects and subobjects rotate about the base point along the specified axis. The gizmo displays the degree of rotation from the original position of the object as the object moves. You can click or enter a value to specify the angle of the rotation.

To rotate objects in 3D space along a specified axis
Quick Reference
System Variables


How to Transfer Stock in My S Corporation

by John Cromwell

Step 1

Determine if the S-Corp has a valid shareholders’ agreement. A common way for S-Corps to restrict who can purchase their shares is through a shareholders’ agreement. This contract is generally created when the S-Corp forms and is signed by the current shareholders. This agreement will identify to whom you can and cannot sell your shares.

Step 2

Establish the sale price for the stock. If a shareholders’ agreement is in place, it may define how much you can charge for your shares. If there is no agreement, you will need to determine the value of the business and divide that amount by the number of outstanding shares. There are many different business valuation methods, such as adding up the total value of the business’s assets; determining the current value of all of the business’s future income; or comparing the S-Corp’s value to other businesses that have an established market value. You will probably need to negotiate with your prospective buyer and agree on a valuation method.

Step 3

Determine if the stock purchaser is permitted to own S-Corp stock. If there is no shareholders’ agreement in place, you will need to check to ensure the buyer can own S-Corp stock. Only individuals who are citizens or resident aliens, certain trusts and estates may own S-Corp stock. Partnerships and corporations may not own S-Corp stock.

Step 4

Draft a sales agreement. The sales agreement should identify the parties to the transaction, how much stock will be sold and the price per share. In addition, the sales agreement should require the person buying the stock to agree to comply with the S-Corp’s bylaws and shareholder agreements.

Step 5

Execute the exchange of stock and cash. Both you and the buyer should sign the agreement. Keep a copy of the agreement with your tax documents for the year.

Step 6

Request a final K-1, which is the form a corporation sends shareholders disclosing their share of the company's income for the year. As a former shareholder, you are still responsible for including your share of the S-Corp’s income and losses on your personal tax return for the period of time when you owned the stock. The S-Corp is responsible for providing you with a copy of your final K-1 detailing that information. Check to make sure the “Final K-1” box is checked on the form.


Crytek, the developers of online shooter Warface, probably wish they'd never asked. Polling users across the world what they wanted to see in terms of female soldier design, the results are...well. See for yourself.

What you're looking at here is some optional downloadable content for Russian players of the game. In an interview with Wired, Crytek's Joshua Howard tries to explain the motivation behind the designs, tries to ally them with the game's otherwise "authentic" approach to military hardware, and in the end comes across as a man caught between a rock and a bad decision.

He goes on to talk about how Chinese players gave similar responses, which were "also somewhat unrealistic as compared to the males but differently than the Russians...You look at the Chinese models and they're also disproportionate but in a way that's more... Chinese? I don't even know what language to use for that but they're different."

That's about the point in the interview where it's clear Crytek should have either thought this process through, or not given any interviews to Western press about it.

The game's not even out in the West yet, so it's not clear how Crytek will be tailoring the content for American and European tastes, or even offering it at all.


Rejection Method Experiment

Distribution graph

This applet simulates values from a random variable with a specified continuous special distribution using the rejection method. The probability density function \(f\) of the selected distribution is shown in both graphs. In the left graph, a bounding rectangle is also shown. On each run,a random point \((X, Y)\) is generated which is uniformly distributed on the bounding rectangular region. If \(Y \le f(X)\), the point is accepted and \(X\) is the simulated value. If \(Y \gt f(X)\), the point is rejected. On each run, the values of \(X\) and \(Y\) are recorded, and the value of a Boolean variable \(R\) which takes the value 1 if the point is accepted and 0 if the point is rejected. As the experiment runs, the empirical density and moments of the simulated distribution are shown in the right graph and recorded in the right table. The distribution table on the right also records \(N\), the number of accepted points. The following distributions can be chosen with the selection box:


How to do advocacy

There are various ways to do advocacy. Here are some suggestions, depending on your context:

For development organisations: Advocacy (ROOTS 1&2)

For grassroots development workers: Speaking out (Footsteps 45)

For communities: Seeking justice for all (PILLARS Guide)

For churches: The strategic role of the church in advocacy

Sometimes, it's wise to do advocacy using a specific technique. Examples include:


IF you’d asked the majority of ICT supporters a few months ago their feelings towards the coming campaign, trepidation would be a recurring theme.

Last season, the football was slow, dull and lifeless, where it seemed like passing the ball sideways and backwards was more important than scoring goals.

The pinnacle of this was the regular “pass around the defence” tactic which would inevitably lead to attracting opposition pressure and lead to a final pass back to the keeper who would thump it up the park.

Many fans would also have said that the chances of a top six finish this year were slim and Yogi would be lucky to survive the season. Changed days indeed.

ICT have had a sensational start. The football has mostly been great to watch. The fans are happy, we’re scoring goals, keeping clean sheets and the players look fitter than they have for years. If Hughes can keep this up, history may well be made.

When I say that, I don’t mean another top six finish. I mean qualifying for Europe for the first time ever and possibly even a major trophy.

As mentioned in previous articles, all the team lacks is another striker but I’m led to believe that Hughes really is searching but will only sign one if they can win a place in the starting eleven and keep it.

Another major talking point recently is the case of Graeme Shinnie. How this guy doesn’t even seem to be being considered for Scotland is unfathomable. And it’s not the first time we’ve had this occurrence.

Craig Dargo was a great striker for us and there was talk of him getting a call-up, but it never came. Another example is Mark Brown. Some people might forget what a good keeper he was for ICT before he left for Celtic and became a Premiership journeyman. He deserved a call-up too, but it never came.

It’s always more difficult for players at the “unglamourous clubs”. At the time of his Scotland call-up, Callum MacGregor had made three appearances for Celtic after a season at Notts County.

He’s undoubtedly a good player, but what’s he done that Shinnie or Gary Mackay-Steven or Stevie May haven’t? The answer of course, is play for one of the Old Firm. This favouritism is unfair and possibly even detrimental to the Scotland team overall.


Politics Podcast

ABC Radio National

News & Politics

Between The Lines - 2015-02-12

February 12th, 2015

Episode 197 of 1761 episodes

Despite surviving a crucial party room vote, leadership speculation continues to haunt Tony Abbott, as it did with his Labor predecessors. Why is Australia so quick to ditch its political leaders? Does this suggest a deeper problem with the state of our democracy? Distinguished intellectual, Francis Fukuyama, argues the politics and institutions of the Western world are in decay. Also in this episode of Between the Lines, host Tom Switzer reflects on the lessons of the 70 year old Yalta agreement, one of the most controversial diplomatic conferences in modern history.

Featured Podcast


The Angel of Mediation
Sean Cubitt

In Simon Biggs' online, multimedia and installation work over the last decade and more, questions about the kind of human that exists and will exist, and about how they will relate together, have peppered a diverse invention of art practice. Because, even if the phonograph, the photograph and the telegraph already had redefined the global processes of empire, trade and exile by the 1870s, and though electricity, cinema and the car had begun that acceleration and fragmentation of experience that has remained the hallmark of the modern world by the beginning of the century, the processes of accelerated modernity have now taken us beyond a certain horizon from which it might still have been possible to look back at a Nature untouched by human activity. Our ecology is no longer nature's: it is ours. Our destiny is no longer that of a natural species, and our sense of who we are and what we are feeling is cut off from the wellsprings of instinctual life. Instead, we inhabit our own world, sensitive, a little, to our responsibilities, hungry now for the shocks of the modern that have powered our emotional lives since the 19th century invention of advertising. Invention and diversity: the rules of capitalist trade, but also a not unreasonable summary of Darwinian evolution's tactical route to survival and escape.  The new media artist works with the tools of evolution as they now exist for a wholly artificial species.

Moving into one of Biggs' spaces, you are always aware of the flexibility of the dimensions, the permeability of the materials. Statistically we tend nowadays to live in cities, more than houses: we live in mobile spaces like buses and cars, in streets and malls as much as in rooms, our eyes illuminated by street lamps and TV screens, passing walls of glass as much as concrete and wood. And all over the surfaces, penetrating the solidity and layering in palimpsests of neon and billboards, the city has become a legible space. Of course, cities are immense and immensely social, products of a billion accidents of policy, greed, whimsy and error. You cannot ask of a city what it is 'about', and to some extent it is difficult to ask it where it is, or what it looks like. Cities are never finished, and any boundary tends to be confounded by the constant toing and froing across it. A city, today, is a variable space through which vast numbers of processes travel on their paths, transports of technical, financial, juridical, political, physical and human material. Flexible and permeable, the city gives us a sense of Biggs' spatial ambition.

Biggs has worked directly in big urban spaces with interactive projections that do much more than challenge the hegemonic claim of advertising to the city's walls. They also take the logic of the billboard and move it a step further, making their art out of the interplay between the physical presence of the wall and the immateriality of light and sound. His ceiling-projected work Heaven in the cathedral at Osnabruck traces histories of that dialectical play of light and monumental masonry back into the Gothic period of European art, but his installations in the UK have more often turned towards the future, most literally in the wonderful Document first shown in the portico of the new British Library building on London's Euston Road, where the figures of elderly dancers respond to the gestures and movements of onlookers. This respect for age, as a destination we can hope for, and for dance as a habitation of space, pair sup with the scale of the UK's premier copyright library, receptacle of the nearest thing there is to the totality of human knowledge.

If there is a competitor for the title of total knowledge accumulator, it is the internet. The net now holds as much knowledge as a hundred lifetimes could hope to amass, just in the public areas, let alone in the guarded citadels of government and corporate databases.  Here Biggs' Great Wall of China, with its sentence-generating engine, performs an allegory out of Kafka's short story of the making of meaning in the space of infinite data. The net realises the urban sprawl in every desktop, the same human geography of constant building and tearing down, of frauds and freak shows, of gossip and sublime discourse. Of course it houses too its ateliers and museums, but Biggs' net piece, like almost all the best web art, speaks, if obliquely, about the net itself, its functions, its capacities, its techniques and its unpredictably creative ecology. The net, as anyone who has surfed it more than once will recognise, is in a period of extravagant growth, defining the spaces it moves into, creating them out of nothing. Here at last is a spatial expansion without colonialism or ecological catastrophe, and more than that, a space that can redefine what we understand by human space.

When Einstein began the long slow haul into the quantum world, light achieved a kind of materiality only dimly perceived in Newton's Optics, an energy equatable mathematically with matter, and whose activities, especially that spatial attribute of speed, could also, as universal constant, reset the parameters of the space-time relationship. Curved space, four dimensional space, the space that melds into non-existence at the limits of scientific cosmology or quantum theory: how much of our century has been spent assimilating the concepts of relativity, as living metaphors, into the cultural life of peoples?

In more familiar mode, light is that illumination which defines the perceptual dimensions of place, for contemporary culture perhaps more so than any other  sense. Sound informs us, but we are less informed by its reverberations or its deadness than we are by vision, even knowing, as we have since Goethe and Helmholtz, that the eye is as much a source of vision as a receiver of it. Now Biggs' installations offer us that most intimate of lights, the light which, in Rembrandt's portraits, bathes the model -- son, wife, artist -- in vision. In Biggs' work there appears a vision which belongs to no other period of history, that could only emerge in the age of the panoptic, surveillance society, the age of the end of privacy. Now we are bare, and we have become visual creatures, whose clothes and body language, internal organs, everything, have become the food of a new publicity. What light will illuminate that nude skin but the electronic fall of pixels in a dimensionless space, looped around the recreation of the body, not as representation, but as object, in the sense computer programmers have of the object, as self-organising programme capable of working with other software objects in virtual environments and, in Biggs' case, with the tactile world beyond.

In these projections, light falling on the wall illuminates us too, brings us into the field of the visible, inscribes us into the work, and its space, chiming against the pealing of the real in  subtle harmonies. Not only the virtual space of the screen suddenly unfolds into vertiginous openness onto an endless potential space: we too are confronted with the fall into the light, the phenomenological realisation that as we see, so we are seen. The looping taped figures describing their circuit of behaviours in shifting patterns, the harmonies, again, the dancers in the dance, embrace the movement of another space and double it, as recording doubled, at a stroke, the number of sounds in the world. Our movement, the motion in us of space and time, is written into this artifice, this vista of a supernatural, where gravity and direction are in question, and the lonely solipsism of European culture finds its escape, nested inside itself like a Russian doll.

Bloody programmers: never giving the rest of the universe a glimpse. This time, the word 'object' is visited on us in an entirely new meaning, without reference to the old.  When you say, perhaps, that bodies have become objects, you might be making a feminist statement. Feminists first understood the cultural upshot of the separation of mind and body philosophised by Descartes and embodied in modern medicine, the whole of modern culture for that matter. As the mind ascended from mere beauty, a physical delight in the physical world, towards the high mountains of the sublime, where nature ended and God began, beyond words, as pure mentality, so, at the same time, the body was ejected down through the level of ugliness, the physical repulsion of physical things, into the level of disgust, abjection, the chaotic materials beyond the order of reason. Of course, beauty and ugliness are socially defined, and what one society or culture lusts after, another finds jejune or barbarous. But that is exactly what is precious about them: that they are social, and do not seek some ultimate, ideal and godlike stance from which to judge the world from beyond its boundaries. The mind and the body: sublimity and disgust: the true story of reason is the damnation of the flesh (and women would bear the brunt, tied by their oppression to the weary cycles of pregnancy and ignorance).

There is no going back.  Just as we cannot return to the instinctual life, to untutored seeing, or to the old private sphere, we cannot condemn ourselves to nostalgic yearnings for an integrated body and mind. Again, the new media arts work in the futurology of the material life. The fact is that the mind now is a distinct function, severed more and more from the bodily sensations that assail us. Experience is as difficult a category of thought as it is possible to imagine. And in the opposite direction, thinking feels increasingly irrelevant to the onrush of sensation, the extremities of sex, sport, spectacle. That separation is engineered into the very technologies of film and television, technologies of distance, of the objective viewer, of the representation.

What object-oriented programs offer is a way of speaking in, through, with, the division of mind and body without falling into the fruitless dialectics of representation and its objects. To represent is necessarily to falsify: that is the core belief of poststructuralism and deconstruction. But what Biggs undertakes is not an attempt at reconciling the seer and the seen, but to attract both into the same space, a space where what is important is not the production of bodies or representations as objects for the viewer, but where both the viewer and what she views are subjects, circling each other in anticipation of a communication which, though it may never come, can be hoped for. That hope creates a future into which it is possible to evolve.

The only future worth travelling into is the one you have not foreseen. If we already knew where we were going, there would be no point going there. Corporate culture is about planning the future, making the conditions under which the future will be the same as the present, only more so.  Artistic culture is about creating the conditions for a future that is different, unimaginable, unadministrable. Making those conditions, opening those grounds of possibility, is also the shape of language which, as contemporary linguistics argue forcibly, is a device for producing endlessly different sentences. The same language Chaucer used to describe 'This worlde, which that men say is round' at the dawn of the 15th century is available to us, to say things that we cannot yet believe, which are not yet true, but which will be.  Biggs' text-generating devices are celebrations of that boundless generosity of language, the splendid cornucopia of recursivity.

We have to think about language less as a clumsy sort of picturing, and more as a mode of mathematics. Just as there is no end to the combination of our little rows of numbers and symbols, just as we have discovered, in this little tool for administering contracts an oceanic beauty of symmetries and patterning, not only unexpected but utterly unforeseeable and still profoundly mysterious, so in language we have an engine that, like a programmer's object, interacts with the world, but also enters into the world on its own terms, according to its own rules, with its own agendas. There really is no reason why  the obscure if elegant equations of an Einstein or a Mandelbrot should have any bearing on the conduct of atoms billions of light years away. And yet they do. That is the mystery. Math is a wonderful tool for describing the universe. Language is equally wonderful for describing, not the world, but relationships we have with it, and through it, with each other. Language is the first interaction, the commonest, in some ways the most precious. Language is the tool through which, in speech, in writing, we live the material union of mind and body, and live it socially.

The angels that have inhabited some of Biggs' most impressive recent works, those towering messengers, are suddenly frequent in contemporary art, not least in the monumental video installations of Bill Viola. The angel, let us say, is the essential allegorical figure, the creature who, as the Word of God, has never existed outside the world of imagery, and is always a relation to some other thing which the angel is. The angel is the perfect androgyne, the perfect figure for a transfigured humanity, not least because it does not exist. Its very whimsy is a tribute to the theology of hope.  The angel always comes to speak, to bring words, to deliver messages, perhaps to bring the unspoken, the unspeakable, to bring images for poetry like Yeats' visions, or models for architects, saints and dreaming biologists. In the angel we can aspire to a further conception of art, as visual language, but only when language, visual or verbal, is understood as a kind of mathematical process, a mathesis in which the making of visions is the making of relationships with others, much more than an attempt to colonise the world by describing it.

Resistance is futile. To resist is to recognise the domination of the powerful: to make that power  your only interest is to devote yourself to its service. The rhetoric of cultural studies is full of subversion, as if there were nothing left to do but refuse the crumbs of comfort from power's table. Art is a practice of making new, of making other, the relationships between people which are now the entirety of our world. If it is true that those relationships have become technologised to the point at which mind and body no longer meet, and everyone is looking out for number one in a hyperreal whirligig of unreal simulations, then that is still more reason to work at the most intensive level of the media, their role as mediators, not between things, but between people. This is what the interactive artist does most rigorously, unpacking and slowing down the interface between people and their machines. Sheer speed elides human relations in favour of relations between things -- data, bytes, information, commodities, corporations, regulations.  Penetrating that hardcoded channel to release its potential is a work for angels.

At a certain moment, the art historians say, art gave up the task of depicting reality in order to work at the level of art itself: paintings about painting, films about film. It matched a certain belief in the primacy of technology: the medium is the message, in MacLuhan master-phrase. Biggs' asserts a new aesthetic, one still embroiled in that ground, but discovering fruitful ways of mulching down the old as compost for the new: what is important is neither the information content, nor the medium in and of itself, but this process of mediation, in which, in our evolving technosphere, we may take control of the conditions under which we can relate to one another and our sisters, the machines.


Emotional Differences with Men and Woman

Love, Self

Understanding some of the emotional differences with men and woman

You may wonder how you became so emotionally different from your mate. If we start at the beginning, God created all embryos to begin life “female” in nature with the fetus starting out very similar in all areas of the brain and body.  The brain was created with two sides that have separate functions that work together with a massive intertwining of nerve fibers allowing both sides to function beautifully together.  Approximately, the seventh week of pregnancy a strong dose of the hormone, testosterone, covers the male fetus to masculinize the body.  This hormonal covering actually damages the brain and alters how it functions. (Men, this information is dangerous if left in the wrong hands!) The nerve fibers that connect the two sides of the brain become damaged, making the flow of information from one side to the other, less efficient.

Although testosterone can be blamed for men thinking longer about what he believes and the delay in a response when there is some emotional content to the issue, men still have the ability to think and feel.  It just it takes longer for the message to transfer from one side of the brain to the other. (Men, this information could wipe out our “excuse” strategy.) In comparison, a woman maintains the original brain functioning and is able to more effectively utilize both sides of the brain and respond more quickly to feelings and information with feeling content.

Now ladies, don’t go telling everyone you finally found the secret why your husband is the way he is; there is more to the story.  Testosterone may give some answers for the difference in responding, but you probably would say, “When he wants something (like sex), he doesn’t have a problem responding quickly.” (Actually, he may respond too quickly.)  Although hormone change is a core reason why men and women relate differently to the world, the difference should not be used as an excuse for men to remain unemotional.

The emotionally minded person (often the women) would comment to the rational man, “Why are you making such a fuss over that new truck?  Why don’t you make a fuss over me?”  Women don’t understand why a man has more emotion about the things in life than with people. This sends confusing messages, only building disappointment when the emotional mate does not get the love he or she expects.  Similar to Jennifer’s reaction to her husband Brad, I often hear women with heartbreaking stories about their insensitive partner giving a deaf ear, insults, or joking remarks, after the woman expresses feelings.  It becomes disappointing and hurtful to the emotional mate when feelings are not as important or accepted compared to other areas of the partner’s life. This scenario happens more in the emotionless relationship than people are willing to admit, believing they are destined to live that way.

Women deal with life first by relating emotionally and socially.  This is why Jennifer’s heart was crushed when the neighbor made an unkind comment about the recipe she had shared a week earlier.  Jennifer’s sharing of the recipe was a form of connecting, reaching out, and sharing part of her.  However, if the recipe was rejected, Jennifer felt rejected. This is one of the biggest differences between men and women. The man interprets giving the recipe not as a relationship but simply as the giving of information.  Jennifer interpreted the information as sharing part of her life.  Once a woman talks or cries out what she feels, she becomes more logical.  The man needs to help the woman work through the situation by letting her cry and talk out how she feels about the situation.  Then she will be able to move closer to the logical part.

God actually knew what He was doing when he created man and woman to function very differently.  The saying “opposites attract” is truer than you may give credit.  Women were created with a greater ability to perceive what is happening around them (intuition) and the ability to accurately identify needs, desires, wants, and displeasures in order to increase control over the stresses of life.  Men were created with a greater ability to be effectively practical and develop a sense of trust to build security and safety with those around them.  Men tend to have a greater ability to logically relate with people and things, providing a great strength to initiate rational thinking to accurately understand the reasons why situations happen.

You need those opposites to function more effectively and efficiently together.  For example, when there is a decision to be made, the emotional attributes of one partner and the logical attributes of the other should work together for a more balanced decision.  You do not want to make a decision solely based on emotions and later regret the decision.  For the same reason, you do not want to make a decision based solely on logic without considering the personal effects of that decision.  The attributes of each partner should complement each other, creating a well-functioning union.

Seek professional counseling with a counselor that has experience dealing with the emotional differences of men and women.  Get a copy of my book, When Your Mate Has Emotionally Checked Out for more details of what to do.  You can go to my web site for more resources and my email to contact me at talkwithcraig@juno.com or receive counseling if you are able to come to our clinic at Masterpeace Counseling in Tecumseh, Michigan.

Excerpt from the book:

Expert advice

It seems like you can't do anything right.

Explore YourTango


The human brain is hugely interconnected but three major components can be identified: the cerebrum, the cerebellum and the brain stem.

The brainstem which includes the medulla, the pons and the midbrain, controls breathing, digestion, heart rate and other autonomic processes, as well as connecting the brain with the spinal cord and the rest of the body.

The cerebellum plays an important role in balance, motor control, but is also involved in some cognitive functions such as attention, language, emotional functions (such as regulating fear and pleasure responses) and in the processing of procedural memories.

The cerebrum (or forebrain), which makes up 75% of the brain by volume and 85% by weight, is divided by a large groove, known as the longitudinal fissure, into two distinct hemispheres. The left and right hemispheres ("left" and "right" refer to the owner's point of view, not an outside viewer's) are linked by a large bundle of nerve fibres called the corpus callosum, and also by other smaller connections called commissures.

Most of the important elements of the cerebrum, are split into symmetrical pairs in the left and right hemispheres. Thus, we often speak of the temporal lobes, hippocampi, etc (in the plural), although this website generally follows the convention of speaking of the temporal lobe, hippocampus, etc (in the singular), which should therefore be taken to mean both sides, within both hemispheres. The two hemispheres look similar, but are slightly different in structure and perform different functions. The right hemisphere generally controls the left side of the body, and vice versa, although popular notions that logic, creativity, etc, are restricted to the left or right hemispheres are largely simplistic and unfounded.

Lobes of the cerebral cortex
Picture from Wikipedia (

The cerebrum is covered by a sheet of neural tissue known as the cerebral cortex (or neocortex), which envelops other brain organs such as the thalamus(which evolved to help relay information from the brain stem and spinal cord to the cerebral cortex) and the hypothalamus and pituitary gland (which control visceral functions, body temperature and behavioural responses such as feeding, drinking, sexual response, aggression and pleasure). The cerebral cortex itself is only 2 - 4 mm thick, and contains six distinct but interconnected layers. It is intricately grooved and folded into the familiar convoluted pattern of folds, or gyri, allowing a large surface area (typically almost 2m2) to fit within the confines of the skull. Consequently, more than two-thirds of the cerebral cortex is buried in the grooves, or sulci.

pituitary glands
brain stem
corpus collosum


Nov 29

Films and photographs have an amazing power – they are able to transcend boundaries of language and knowledge – and are one of the most important tools that conservation organisations have to communicate with the public. This is why we are creating our own films and photographs, working with the best filmmakers and photographers to tell the amazing stories of the world’s conservation organisations and the species they work with.

Our most recent film was made with award-winning production company Five Films and kindly narrated by stand-up comedian Sarah Millican. It tells the story of Save Vietnam’s Wildlife, an amazing conservation organisation who rescue and rehabilitate wildlife. In the film, a group of pangolins that have been rescued from wildlife traffickers are cared for by the SVT staff, before being taken back to the forest to be released. Watch it here:

pango copy

Pangolins are in trouble. They are the world’s most trafficked mammal, and are also an animal that most people haven’t heard of. If people don’t know about an issue, they are won’t care about it, so sharing this film and your knowledge of these amazing animals is one of the best things you can do to help save them.

Earlier in the year we worked with wildlife photographer Sam Hobson to tell the story of the gannet nesting colony on Grassholm Island. Due to the position of the island and the currents surrounding it, the island has become extremely polluted with washed-up plastic. Gannets are frequently caught in the fishing line, packaging and other plastic items that they nest on, often leading to their demise. Due to gannets having nest fidelity, clearing the litter is not an option as this would disturb the breeding habits of the colony, which could affect the entire population.

Our recent photo story with Sam Hobson. telling the story of a polluted gannet nesting islandFortunately, the gannets have some superheroes in the shape of a team of RSPB volunteers who visit the island during the breeding season and attempt to cut as many individuals free as they can. Risking life and limb, the dedication of these volunteers is extremely admirable and the telling of their story generated conversation and raised awareness throughout the UK, hopefully leading to people thinking twice before disposing of their plastic litter irresponsibly.

We would love to help even more conservation organisations and endangered species get their stories heard by creating more films and photographs that reach as many people as possible. Please help us to do this by donating to Wildscreen this #GivingTuesday.

Thank you!

May 31

Filmmakers Jennene and Dave Riggs have been filming and editing wildlife documentaries for over 17 years, and have worked with a vast array of species in their careers, from dangerous sharks, orcas and crocodiles to gentle dugongs and bandicoots. The pair are currently working on a new documentary about one of the most endangered bird species in the world, the western ground parrot. We caught up with Jennene who told us all about the species and how filming is going.

Secrets at Sunrise TITLE -®Riggs Australia copy 2

Secrets at Sunrise promo image with western ground parrot. Credit: Riggs Australia

What is your newest film about?

I’m currently producing a documentary called ‘Secrets at Sunrise’ which is the story of the amazing work that a team of people are doing on the south coast of Western Australia to save some of our most endangered native species from the onslaught of feral animals that predate them, and a whole suite of other threats to their survival. The focus of the film, and perhaps the most vulnerable of all these creatures is the western ground parrot which is Critically Endangered and only found in one location.

Why did you choose the western ground parrot as the topic of your film?

The dire situation with the western ground parrot is symbolic of the global issue of species extinctions and how we are losing so many animals and plants every year. We are in the middle of the sixth great extinction and it’s important to raise awareness of this and get people thinking about their own impact on our natural world.

I first heard about the western ground parrot when I was producing a documentary in 2013 on the incredible biodiversity and natural history of the south coast of WA called ‘Remote & Rugged’. During my research for that film I became aware of the wonderful work that volunteers from the community and staff from the Western Australia Department of Parks & Wildlife are doing to save the parrot from extinction, so I organised to go out on one of their field trips and film a sequence to include in the film.

On this first field trip I saw just how determined these people are and was so impressed by their dedication to saving this critically endangered bird. I could see a remarkable story unfolding, one of camaraderie and friendship despite the challenges of working with this incredibly rare bird in such an isolated location.

WGP recovery team -®Jennene Riggs

Western ground parrot recovery team. Credit: Jennene Riggs

Why is the western ground parrot so endangered?

The western ground parrot was never prolific in numbers, but it used to be quite widespread in its range – on the coastal plain from north of Perth to east of Esperance on the south coast (a distance spanning over 1000km) but since European settlement there are a number of things that have caused its decline.

Historically throughout their heathland habitat there was a lot of land clearing for development and agriculture, resulting in a loss of suitable places for them to live. Then much of their remaining habitat has been damaged by wildfire, which further reduced suitable habitat and exposed the surviving populations to predation by feral cats and foxes. There were thought to be only around 140 individuals left, although that was before a devastating series of wildfires tore through their habitat in October and November 2015.

What does the future look like for this endangered bird species?

There is hope! Several years ago some parrots were taken into captivity and these birds have now been transferred to the Perth Zoo. Specialist staff there are working to try and encourage them to breed, and if they’re successful, this could form the basis of a captive breeding program which might enable the reintroduction of western ground parrots into areas they’ve disappeared from in the wild.

Can you tell us more about the film?

My main character in the story is a strong female leader – Sarah Comer – the regional ecologist at Department of Parks and Wildlife. She’s amazing…a dynamic and tireless optimist, determined to see this species and its environment survive and thrive.

There are lots of challenges in filming Secrets at Sunrise – obviously our main subject is an extremely rare bird, so straight up that presents an issue. Coupled with that they are also very shy and secretive. Many of the researchers have stories of how they’d been working on western ground parrots for five or ten years before they actually saw one! Imagine that!!

Because of this, the best way to survey their numbers and monitor them is to listen out for their calls when they move from their nighttime roost to their daytime feeding ground (and vice versa). Their ‘peak calling hours’ are an hour before sunrise and an hour after sunset, which means you have to adopt their very unsociable hours.

Jennene Riggs and Anne Morcombe filming

Jennene Riggs and Anne Morcombe filming. Credit: Sarah Comer

Then there are the conditions of the location too. Cape Arid is very remote, a couple of hours drive from Esperance (which itself is an eight hour drive from Perth – the states capital city). The tracks they drive along to get to the birds are rough, bumpy, boggy bush tracks.

Jennene walking along one of the tracks to filming location. Credit: Riggs Australia

Depending of what time of year a survey is, you’ve also got environmental challenges. Obviously in summer it can get scorching hot, and there’s no relief to be had sitting in your tent, its even hotter in there. The flies can get pretty friendly then. You get to about day four of no shower out there, and then things start to get a bit on the nose.

On the opposite scale of that is camping in winter. It’s freezing! Your nose won’t stop dripping while you’re doing the mornings listening surveys and it feels like frostbite’s about to claim your fingers and ears. One trip I filmed we had a thunder and lightning storm centered right over the top of us, and a torrential downpour turned the campsite into a swamp.

It sounds very challenging! What has been your favourite part of filming so far?

Despite all the challenges, I love being out there and feeling so connected with nature. The bond between the researchers is amazing as well. They’ve been doing this together for many years now and they get volunteers from all over Australia and the world coming back year after year to participate and help survey the wildlife because it’s such a special and important thing to be a part of.

As part of the story I’ve also been filming the team conduct ongoing surveys of other species inhabiting the area, and this is secretly the best part of the job because you get these incredibly gorgeous creatures like honey possums, bandicoots, dunnarts, ash grey mice, burrowing frogs, legless lizards, all sorts of invertebrates, and probably least favorite of all but most prolific are bush rats… and to be honest, as far as rats go, they’re pretty cute.

Ash grey mouse. Credit: Jennene Riggs

Ash grey mouse. Credit: Jennene Riggs

The main outcome I’m hoping for with this film is to show how special and valuable our wildlife, national parks and remaining tracts of native bush are, and the lengths that some people will go to in preserving that biodiversity. Some people might think that losing one species from the environment is not such a big deal, but it is. Everything in nature has its place and when something is taken out of that equation it has a flow-on effect. Who’d want to live in a world with no pandas and orangutans, or clean rivers and air, or beautiful heathland with western ground parrots hiding amongst it? Not me!

I’m lucky to have had the support of the Friends of the Western Ground Parrot, who are just as determined as I am that this film is made and broadcast to as wide an audience as possible. They’re a not-for-profit entirely devoted to raising awareness of the wgp and raising funds to help continued efforts to save it from extinction. It’s been fantastic working with them, and inspiring to see their tireless dedication to the cause.

I’d like to think filming is nearly complete, but this story is constantly evolving so we’ll just have to see what happens!

Watch the trailer for Secrets at Sunrise

Like Secrets at Sunrise on Facebook

Discover more parrot species on Arkive

May 23

Alexander Rukhaia – Magnificent migrants: safeguarding birds-of-prey in the Batumi Flyway

Alexander founded SABUKO, an NGO in Georgia which protects migrating birds of prey in the Batumi Flyway. Traditionally, individuals migrating over this passage would be at risk of being hunted, but Alexander and his organisation have worked with local people to stop this from happening and, as a result, turning the area into a thriving birdwatching destination.

To find out more about Alexander’s work, visit the Whitley Awards website

Discover more about SABUKO

May 20

It’s our 13th birthday! People who are superstitious will mostly say that 13 is an unlucky number, although others believe 13 to be lucky. We don’t know what to believe but we thought we would celebrate our birthday by looking at 12 (rather than 13, just in case) strange superstitions that include members of the animal and plant kingdom!

Certain quantities of magpies mean different things to a superstitious person, and there is even a rhyme to remind them of the fate they may face: one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a story never to be told.

If a superstitious person sees a solo magpie, there are many ways they can overcome the sorrow they may face, some salute the bird, some flap their arms like wings and make a ‘caw’ sound, and others say, “Good morning Mr Magpie. How is your lady wife today?” The reason for this superstition is due to magpies mating for life; therefore a single individual may have lost its mate, or could just be collecting nesting material or food for their nestlings. We thought we should include a picture of two magpies to spread joy and good fortune on our birthday!

Bats are believed to be harbingers of death and misfortune in many cultures, although in China and Poland they are thought to be a sign of a happy and long life. There are many ancient myths which say different things about bats, including them being trapped souls or witches in disguise. Some people believe that bats drink human blood, but cases of this are extremely rare. Hematophagous (blood-eating) bats, such as the common vampire bat, usually feed on cattle or horses.

Although it is in fact a Lemur species on Arkive, the strange-looking aye-aye was initially identified as a rodent. Some local Malagasy people believe that if an aye-aye points its middle finger at you, then you will die, and this species is regularly persecuted due to this superstition. The function of the enlarged middle finger of this primate is actually to tap on trees to find hollow areas where insects may be, and to extract any prey items that it finds inside.

Mistletoe is a parasitic plant which is shrouded by myth and legend. This plant is a commonly seen decoration at Christmas time, and if a person passes underneath a hung piece of mistletoe, they must kiss the person on the other side or they will remain single for another year. Ancient superstitions state that mistletoe can cure any disease and it was considered sacred and magical. Once mistletoe touches the ground, however, ancient cultures believed it to be bad luck rather than good.

The elder is the focus of a rich wealth of folklore, and has many magical associations. The name ‘elder’ derives from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘aeld’, meaning fire. This may have arisen from the practice of using the hollow stems of the elder as bellows to encourage fires. It was, however, extremely bad luck to burn elder wood; if this happened the Devil was said to appear, explaining another local name ‘Devil’s wood’. Conversely it was said to keep the Devil away if planted close to a house. Some of these old superstitions linger today; many modern hedge-cutters refuse to attack an elder for fear of bad luck.

African golden cat

Both wild and domestic cats are the subject of much superstition in many areas of the world, and the African golden cat is no exception. Pygmy tribes in Cameroon carry the tail of the African golden cat when hunting elephants to ensure good fortune, and the skin is used in some areas during circumcision rituals.

Black cats

We bet that these black cats (black leopard morphs) don’t cross people’s paths very much, but domestic black cats certainly do, and this is considered to be very unlucky by some people. Black cats have as much to do with good as they do with bad luck to superstitious people and it is said that if a couple see a black cat on their wedding day then they will definitely have a happy marriage.

Strangely, many years ago, sailors would keep black cats on their ship as a good luck charm, although they would never say the word ‘cat’ as this was considered to be bad luck.

Forest owlet

The forest owlet faces a serious threat as a result of local superstitions. Its eggs are collected by tribes to bring luck in gambling and the animal itself is killed since owls are locally renowned to feed on human souls. Additionally, killing a young forest owlet is widely considered to boost fertility.

In old English folklore, if “rabbit, rabbit, rabbit” is the first thing you say on the first day of the month, you will have good luck for the rest of the month, and carrying a rabbit’s foot is also considered to be a good luck charm. They are also considered to be bad luck; however, and in ancient times, people would spit over their left shoulder if they came across a wild rabbit. Rabbits are another animal which are believed to be witches in disguise – those must be some very cute witches!

Striped hyaena

One of the greatest threats to the Near Threatened striped hyaena is the misconceptions and superstitions of humans. Believed to be responsible for killing livestock, robbing graves and the disappearance of small children, the striped hyaena is severely persecuted through baiting, tracking and trapping. In the past, some governments have paid bounties for every hyaena killed, and certain governments still organise killings of wolves and striped hyaenas in places where carnivores are thought to be responsible for child disappearances.

Frogs and toads

Frogs and toads have many superstitions that surround them, such as that touching the bumpy skin of a toad can give you warts, and touching a frog can make you infertile, but these are not true. Warts are caused by a virus that is only transferred by skin on skin contact between humans and touching a frog is not known to affect your fertility. Despite these amphibians being seen as bad luck in these respects, some people actually see them as good luck and consider a frog coming into your house as being lucky. The poor Titicaca water frog is Critically Endangered due to overcollection, as people blend individuals to make a juice that can supposedly cure any ailment. We might stick to OJ!

Black beetles

Black beetles such as the super-rare ground beetle were once referred to as ‘deathwatch beetles’, and if one were to crawl across your shoe or be found within a wall, it was considered to be a sign of impending death. The good news is that you could prevent this from happening by moving the beetle safely outside. Seems like a no-brainer to us!

Are there any superstitions that we have missed from your area of the world? Please share them with us!

Apr 25

Well done to everyone who took part in our #GuessThePenguin quiz for World Penguin Day. You all have great identification skills when it comes to these very handsome creatures!

We can now reveal the answers to the mystery penguins we posted on social media, but we didn’t want to ruin it for those who didn’t see it and still wanted to play the quiz, so we’ve revealed the answers at the bottom of this blog. Can you guess the penguin species just from looking at a photo?

1) CLUE: I live in a very surprising place where you may not know that penguins exist

2) CLUE: this penguin is named after the wife of the explorer who discovered it

3) CLUE: this penguin is named after a distinctive characteristic below its bill

4) CLUE: this is the largest penguin species in the world, reaching heights of over 1m and weighing up to 40kgs

5) CLUE: this amazing penguin can dive to depths of over 170 metres and is the fastest known diving bird, reaching speeds of up to 36 kilometers an hour in the water

6) CLUE: this is the smallest penguin in the world, weighing a maximum of 1kg and only growing up to 40cm tall

7) CLUE: this penguin was discovered during an expedition that took place in 1519

8) CLUE: this penguin is not named after a type of pasta, although it is commonly mistaken for the penguin that sounds like it is!

9) CLUE: look into the eyes of this penguin and you might just guess its name!

…and the answers are:

1) African

2) Adelie

3) Chinstrap

4) Emperor

5) Gentoo

6) Little

7) Magellanic

8) Royal

9) Yellow-eyed

How many did you guess correctly?

Discover more penguin species on Arkive

If you work for a conservation organisation that works with penguins or any other species, you can access hundreds of images by joining the Wildscreen Exchange

Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram to get your daily dose of the natural world

Email updates

Preferred frequency:

Arkive twitter

Twitter: ARKive


BCB ‘Go Live’’ with NETteller omnichannel solution

Bermuda commercial bank is focussed on providing customised services with a seamless user experience to their private and corporate customers, whilst achieving further growth in international markets through an omnichannel delivery approach.

NETinfo is pleased to be a part of their journey and offer continuous support in helping the bank to achieve their goals.


Was Saturn's oddball satellite system formed by catastrophic impacts between much larger moons?

  • New research suggests gas giant once had a system of large moons that collided to form it's idiosyncratic satellite system

Saturn's middle-sized moons could have been spawned by cataclysmic impacts during a period of turbulence in which it's much larger moon Titan was formed, scientists believe.

The half-dozen smaller satellites of the gas giant, which are dwarfed by Titan, are among the oddities of the outer solar system, with astronomers baffled as to how they were formed.

But now two researchers propose the Saturn system's smaller moons are the remnants of a series of collisions between a family of major satellites comparable to the four large moons of Jupiter.

'We think that the giant planets got their satellites kind of like the Sun got its planets, growing like miniature solar systems and ending with a stage of final collisions,' said Professor Erik Asphaug of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Earth is thought to have undergone a similar kind of giant impact, in which our planet gained the last ten per cent of its mass and spawned the Moon.

'Our model explains the diversity of these ice-rich moons and the evidence for their very active geology and dynamics,' he said. 'It also explains a puzzling fact about Titan, in that a giant impact would give it a high orbital eccentricity.'

Beautiful: As well as it's plethora of moons of various sizes, Saturn also has orbital rings made up of lumps of rock and dust

Working with Andreas Reufer of the University of Bern, Switzerland, Professor Asphaug used computer simulations to study the giant impact scenario.

They found that mergers of satellites the size of the Jupiter's moons can liberate ice-rich spiral arms, mostly from the outer layers of the smaller of the colliding moons. Gravitational clumping of the spiral arms then leads to the formation of clumps with sizes and compositions that resemble Saturn's middle-sized moons.

New pictures of the surface of Titan taken by Nasa's Cassini spacecraft show what looks like a giant hot cross bun rising out of the mysterious moon's crust.

Steam from baking often causes the top of bread to lift and crack and scientists think some similar process involving heat may be at play on Saturn's largest moon.

Researchers believe the Titan cross, which is about 40 miles (70km) long, is the result of fractures caused by uplift from below, possibly the result of rising magma.

'The "hot cross bun" is a type of feature we have not seen before on Titan, showing that Titan keeps surprising us even after eight years of observations from Cassini,' said Rosaly Lopes, a Cassini radar team scientist.

The image showing the bun-like mound was obtained on May 22, 2012, by Cassini’s radar instrument.

'These satellite collisions are a regime that is not very well understood, so the modelling opens up new possibilities in general for planet formation,' Professor Reufer said.

The proposed mergers might have occurred as the final act in the process of satellite formation. Alternatively, Saturn may have had a stable system of Galilean-like satellites that was later disrupted by the possibly chaotic migration of the giant planets, as described in the popular 'Nice model' of the solar system. A late origin has the advantage of explaining some of the most striking features of the Saturn system.

'What makes the Saturn system so beautiful and unique could be its youth,' Professor Asphaug said.

'While we don't have a preferred timeframe for this origin scenario to play out, it could have happened recently if something came along to destabilize the Saturn system, triggering the collisional mergers that formed Titan. This "something" could have been the close passage of a marauding Uranus and Neptune, which is part of the Nice  model.'

'So it's testable. These little moons could provide the clues telling us what happened, and when.'


Standalone CD players perform oversampling and some more error correction. Further, if the error is too big to be corrected, it will perform “error hiding”. That means that the player will hide the error in a way that it is not audible to the common listener. These additional techniques are not implemented in the CD-ROM drives, thus the uncorrected data is given back.


Osteoporosis Tests and Diagnosis

What Is Osteoporosis?

Osteoporosis is a condition that occurs when a person experiences significant loss of bone density. This leads bones to becoming more fragile and prone to fracture. The word “osteoporosis” means “porous bone.”

The condition commonly affects older adults and can cause height loss over time.

What Are the Steps to an Osteoporosis Diagnosis?

Diagnosing osteoporosis typically requires several steps to make a definitive diagnosis. A doctor will thoroughly evaluate your risk for osteoporosis as well as fracture risk. Steps for diagnosing osteoporosis include the following.

Taking a Medical History

A doctor will ask questions related to osteoporosis risk factors. A family history of osteoporosis increases your risk. Lifestyle factors, including diet, physical activity, drinking habits, and smoking habits can also impact your risk. A doctor will also review medical conditions you have and medications you may have taken. Symptoms of osteoporosis that your doctor will likely ask you about include any bone fractures that occurred, a personal history of back pain, a loss of height over time, or a stooped posture.

Performing a Physical Exam

A doctor will measure a person’s height without shoes and compare this to previous measurements. Height loss can indicate osteoporosis. Your doctor may ask if you have difficulty rising from a sitting position without using your arms to push yourself up.  They may also perform blood tests to evaluate your levels of vitamin D, as well as some other blood tests to determine the overall metabolic activity of your bones. Metabolic activity may be increased in the case of osteoporosis.

Undergoing a Bone Density Test

If a doctor determines that you are at risk for osteoporosis, you may undergo a bone density test. A common example is a dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan. This painless, rapid test uses X-ray images to measure bone density and fracture risk.

Performing Blood and Urine Testing

Medical conditions can cause bone loss. This includes parathyroid and thyroid malfunctioning. A doctor may perform blood and urine testing to rule this out. Examples include testing calcium levels, thyroid function and testosterone levels in men.

How Does a Bone Mineral Density Test Work?

According to the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), a DEXA scan is the standard for measuring how the density of a person’s bones and their risk for osteoporosis. This painless test uses X-rays to measure bone density.

A radiation technologist performs a DEXA scan using a central or peripheral device. A central device is more commonly used in a hospital or doctor’s office. The person lies on a table while a scanner is used to measure hip and spine bone density.

A peripheral device is more commonly used at mobile health fairs or pharmacies. Doctors call peripheral tests “screening tests.” The device is smaller and box-like. You can place a foot or arm in the scanner to measure bone mass.

According to the RSNA, the test takes anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes to perform. Doctors may also perform an additional test known as a lateral vertebral assessment (LVA). Since back pain is both a frequent symptom of vertebral fractures from osteoporosis and a common symptom in general, LVA has been assessed to determine whether it can help doctors differentiate osteoporosis from non-specific back pain. This test uses DEXA machinery to help determine if someone already has spinal fractures. The overall clinical utility of this test in the diagnosis and management of osteoporosis remains controversial.

DEXA imaging results include two scores: a T score and a Z score. The T score compares a person’s bone mass with a young adult’s of the same gender. According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, the scores are the following.

  • greater than -1: normal
  • -1 to -2.5: low bone mass (called osteopenia, a potential precursor condition to osteoporosis)
  • less than -2.5: typically indicates osteoporosis

A Z score compares a person’s bone mineral density to that of people their same age, gender, and overall body type. If your Z score is below -2, something other than normal aging may be responsible for your declining bone mineral density and prompt further testing.

These diagnostic tests don’t mean you will definitely experience osteoporosis or a bone fracture. Instead, they assist your doctor in assessing your risk. They also cue a doctor that further treatment may be needed and should be discussed.

What Are the Risks of Osteoporosis Diagnostic Tests?

A DEXA is not expected to cause pain. However, it does involve some minor radiation exposure. According to the RSNA, the exposure is one-tenth that of a traditional X-ray.

Women who could potentially be pregnant may be advised against the test. If there is indication of a high osteoporosis risk in a pregnant woman, she may want to consider discussing the pros and cons of DEXA testing with her doctor.

How Do I Prepare for Osteoporosis Diagnostic Tests?

You don’t have to eat a special diet or refrain from eating before a DEXA test. However, a doctor may recommend refraining from taking calcium supplements a day before the test.

A woman should also inform the X-ray technologist if there is any possibility she could be pregnant. A doctor may postpone the test until after the baby is delivered or recommend ways to minimize radiation exposure.

What Is the Outlook After an Osteoporosis Diagnosis?

Doctors use testing results to make treatment recommendations for people with osteopenia and osteoporosis. Some people may need to make lifestyle changes. Others may require medications.

According to the American College of Rheumatology, people with a low bone density score may also receive a fracture risk assessment (FRAX) score. This score predicts the likelihood a person will experience a bone break in the next decade. Doctors use FRAX scores and bone mineral density (BMD) test results to recommend treatments.

These scores don’t mean you will progress from osteopenia to osteoporosis or experience a fracture. Instead, they encourage prevention methods. Examples include:

  • fall prevention measures
  • increasing dietary calcium
  • taking medications
  • refraining from smoking

Read This Next

The Fight to Become My Parents’ Caregiver
The Stranger Side Effects of Prednisone
Is Anger a Symptom of Depression?


Literary Notes: A kaleidoscope of memorable characters in Urdu novels | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)

Paksitan Press Foundtion

Literary Notes: A kaleidoscope of memorable characters in Urdu novels

Pakistan Press Foundation

Urdu novel has come of age. Beginning with Moulvi Nazir Ahmed Dehlvi’s Mirat-ul-aroos (1869), this long journey has taken about 145 years.

But the impact of English novel on the development of Urdu novel cannot be denied and our earliest novelists were indeed much influenced by English literature and English novel. Nazir Ahmed Dehlvi, often dubbed as the pioneer of the novel genre in Urdu, was definitely inspired by the English novel. In fact his Taubat-un-Nusooh (1873) is based on Daniel Defoe’s The family instructor, though Nazir Ahmed has made many changes in the plot. Pandit Ratan Nath Sarshar’s Fasana-i-Azad (1878) has a plot based on the theme from Cervantes’ Don Quixote. His comic character Khauji has a striking resemblance with Cervantes’ character Sancho Panza.

The next generation of Urdu novelists too had a tendency to rely on the English novels for plots and characters. Sultan Hyder Josh (1886-1953), a popular Urdu fiction writer of the first half of the 20th century, for instance, has adapted many themes from the English literature. His novella Havaee is a reflection of Earnest Hemingway’s A farewell to arms. His novel Naqsh-o-naqqaash was inspired by Somerset Maugham’s The moon and the six pence. His article ‘Iblees’ is more or less a plagiarised Urdu version of Marie Corelli’s article ‘Sorrows of Satan’.

Zafar Umer is considered the pioneer of Urdu’s detective fiction and his Neeli chhatri (1916) is dubbed as Urdu’s first detective novel. But it was a modified translation of one of Maurice Leblanc’s novels. Only when Munshi Teerath Ram Ferozpuri translated the same work under the title Shahi khazana, it dawned on readers that Neeli chhatri was a mere translation.

Krishan Chandr’s Ulta darakht has a plot with the basic idea of a city built underground, a theme taken from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in the wonderland. Even Qurrat-ul-Ain Hyder’s Aag ka darya is said to have been inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Similar claims were made about Ahsan Farooqi’s novel Sangam. Ismat Chughtai’s novel Ziddi too was an altered version of Hajra, an English novel by a Turkish woman writer Adalat Khanam, which is apparently a penname.

Imtiaz Ali Taj had mentioned that he took the idea of Chachcha Chhakkan from Jerome K. Jerome’s character Uncle Podger in his Three man in a boat. Mohammed Khalid Akhter had admitted that he was much influenced by English literature and his novel Bees sau giyara, or 2011, written in 1950, was inspired by George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and his character Chachcha Abdul Baqi was influenced by P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves. But many never admitted to such borrowings, though their plagiarism was somehow discovered later on.

But it is not that the whole world of Urdu novel is built on plagiarised themes and borrowed ideas from the west. In the early 20th century, Urdu novel discovered its own world of themes and characters to portray. With Prem Chand giving a realistic touch to it in the early 20th century and a little later the progressive writers’ movement insisting on portraying the teeming millions, Urdu novel began depicting the common characters found in our society, as real as life itself. Ever since then, we have come across some Urdu novels that meticulously and artfully paint some characters and make them come alive.

Today we may scoff at some idealistic, one-sided characterisation by Nazir Ahmed but his role in developing Urdu novel can never be forgotten. The latter-day Urdu novelists too have learnt a lot from the west, because English novels are known for their remarkable and unforgettable characters, be it Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy or present-day novelists. Characterisation plays a vital part in a novel. But some feel that plot is more important. Dr Mumtaz Ahmed Khan has summed up the debate in the foreword to his new book Urdu novel:

kirdaron ka hairat kada’ with a concrete example: “life is the eternal truth and plot is the blood that circulates in its veins. But what makes these veins? Characters”. He thinks plot and characters are two pillars on which the whole structure of fiction rests and removing any one of these pillars will make the whole structure come tumbling down.

Dr Mumtaz Ahmed Khan is editor of Qaumi zaban. He is a critic and researcher. He has been working on Urdu novel since long. Having penned three books before this one on different aspects of Urdu novel, Dr Khan has a penchant for recording the history and characteristics of Urdu novel. The characterisation of some landmark Urdu novels such as Umrao Jan Ada, Kai chaand thei sar-i-aasmaan, Aag ka darya, Terhi lakeer, Gardish-i-rang-i-chaman, Firdous-i-bareen, Chakivara mein visaal, and Alipur ka Aily has been discussed in the book. A connoisseur of Urdu novel, Dr Khan has pinpointed unique and memorable characters of some Urdu novels with quotations from the original texts. The variation in Urdu novel’s characterisation makes one wonder. It proves that Urdu novel has indeed come of age.

Karachi’s Fazlee Sons has just published the book.


Ossie Davis

Ossie Davis was a american Film & Television actor, director, playwright, author, poet and civil rights activist. He was married to Ruby Dee from 1945 until his death in 2005. He stared in films like Steven King's 'The Stand', the 1998 remake of 'Dr. Doolittle' and the cult classic 'Bubba Ho-tep'. Ossie was 6' 3" tall. his widow, Ruby Dee passed away June 11th 2014.

Known For