^Have you no shame?

Water desalination is the way to go. About 95% of the water on this planet is saltwater. Of the less than 5% freshwater, most of it is unavailable for consumption (polar ice caps etc). The problem is that water desalination is at the moment far too expensive an endeavor to interest most private corporations. And short-sighted government administrations won't embark on costly public works if they will be out of office when it's time to reap the rewards. Somalia could easily be selling water to other African nations, much less suffering droughts ourselves!

Ms DD, I'm afraid the pun police will be here pretty shortly to cut us both down to size! You're a broken record Rudy. Change the cajilad already.

As long as he's not short-tempered, and doesn't constantly fall short of achieving his goals, and I guess not short on cash, and he simply must look good in shorts, and hopefully doesn't call women "shorty", not to mention he can't short-circuit at every little irritation, and... Alright, I guess I'll cut it short before you all start looking down on me

Is the key here the software interface? This seems to be another application of machine learning. This is how robots will take over. Sure, at first the commands will go unidirectionally, from you to the machine, but soon enough the software will decide it would be far more efficient if it tweaks your thinking here and there. Before you know it, that arm you installed to hold the groceries while you fish out your keys will be suggesting that maybe you should cut back on all the carbohydrates and not buy so much bread

^Well, their 61% success rate beats anything we've been able to achieve.

The breakthrough isn't in how clever monkeys are. Even if a genius did it it would be remarkable. The monkey isn't using his hand to move the robotic arm. The arm is hooked up directly to his brain, and somehow he is directing the tiny electric currents that neurons fire (to control our muscles, to think, etc) to manipulate the robotic arm. ------------------------------------------ Researchers report that monkeys fed themselves using robotic arms controlled mentally—no joystick required. The findings, reported today in Nature, suggest that patients with neuromuscular disorders, spinal cord injuries or lost limbs may one day be able to use their own brain power to operate prosthetics to carry out routine tasks. "This is the first reported demonstration of the use of [brain–machine interface] technology by subjects to perform a practical behavioral act," John Kalaska, a physiologist at the University of Montreal, wrote in an editorial accompanying the study. "It represents the current state of the art in the development of neuroprosthetic controllers for complex armlike robots that could one day...help patients perform many everyday tasks such as eating, drinking from a glass or using a tool." Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) placed two rhesus monkeys in a chair with their arms lightly strapped down to the armrests (and effectively immobilized) while a small grid with 100 electrodes in it was connected to 100 nerve cells, or neurons, in their primary motor cortex, a brain region associated with motion. The sensor grid picked up the neural activity and relayed it to a computer that controlled the prosthetic arm situated near the animal's left shoulder. In an initial "training phase," researchers moved the prosthetic arm using the computer controls so that it moved in front of the monkey, reached out and snagged a treat—a strawberry, grape or marshmallow—dangling on a hook as the animal looked on. The neurons in their primary motor cortex responded to the movements of the arm. According to study co-author and Pitt neurophysiologist Andrew Schwartz, different nerve cells would perk up in response to different directions of movements. For example, some would activate when the arm reached upward for food, others would activate when the arm moved back toward the animals' mouths. After matching neurons to different directions of movement and feeding the information into an algorithm in the software that actually moved the arm, the control was turned over to the immobilized monkey. The monkeys, seeing the treat and wanting to indulge, were able to will the prosthetic—consisting of a shoulder that moved in three directions, an elbow that moved up and down and a clawlike hand that opened and closed—to respond. The electrodes in their brains would then measure activity from certain neurons and send the information to the computer—where it would match corresponding nerve cells with the direction of movement—and the robotic hand would maneuver accordingly. "The animals used the device in a very natural way, making smooth, coordinated movements that look pretty natural," says Schwartz. "They were reaching for small pieces of food in a very precise way." In fact, the monkeys were successful at grabbing and eating the food nearly 61 percent of the time, he says. Schwartz says that he had hoped they would have a better success rate, but noted that the results compared favorably to similar studies where both monkeys and humans move objects in virtual environments. Kalaska says that although the new work is encouraging, there are hurdles to overcome before humans can use so-called neuroprosthetic limbs. A major challenge is to design more durable electrodes because the current crop degrade within weeks of implantation. Another limitation: current prosthetics cannot control the force with which they grip things, which means that a glass, for instance, might be shattered when handled. Schwartz says the team now plans to research ways to build more accurate prosthetic, with a wrist joint and a more humanlike hand. Link

One of these would come in handy while doing the grocery shopping. Video

^I don't get what being a broke student has to do with putting an expiry date on a marriage. You have enough money to get married but not enough to stay married?

Don't impose your totalitarian spelling rules on us you elitist

Ibti, I second your rant about Sex and the City. I just do not get the appeal. Instead of watching it, you can enjoy this nice summary here.

So what, those of us without curtains are completely off the radar? Take your bourgeois home-decorating standards somewhere else Naden! Northerner, I think 'astound' is to 'flabbergast' what 'odd' is to 'freak'.

Now I finally know what flabbergasted means.

LOL. A classic case of crossed signals. LayZie is thinking of class in the income tax bracket sense, like most North Americans, while Ngonge's British thinking is it has to do with breeding/parentage and whether you have ever gone fox-hunting

Yes, but how is it 16% of the respondents smoke when only 10-11% of men and women smoke? Are there respondents of neither gender? Anyway, I find it very surprising that men and women smoke at the same rate, considering what a huge taboo it used to be.

Interesting. I was reading an article about how tobacco companies are now marketing to youth in the developing world. Altogether, 15.8% of the respondents reported having smoked cigarettes (10.3% among males, and 11.1% among females). Those numbers don't make sense.

"Middle class": Manager at a KFC franchise, 2.4 children, two cars, a mortgage and two weeks a year at a time-share on the coast. Blech. <--Working class all the way

^Lucky you

LOL. My cousin did once tell me that BMW stands for "Be My Wife".

LOL. So what's the input here? The pressure from the stream? I think the women's games will have a lot of cheating, since the contestants will be in stalls. Nothing to stop an unscrupulous competitor from sneaking in a squirt bottle Imagine two guys at a restaurant with their wives or girlfriends. Guy 1: I gotta use the men's room. Guy 2: Me too. Let's go! They hurry off, looking just a little too eager. Women: :confused:

If I was him, I would act hurt that she went to get it appraised. She obviously doesn't trust him, really he was just testing HER and it is she who failed. Turn the tables ku dheh ninka

Stoic, how about "numberka kala dhufo"? 9 isku dhufo = 81 81 kala dhufo = 9 It sounds silly though.

^And no wonder :eek: Today I bought asparagus. I'm not sure why.

Speaking of nonverbal communication Ngonge, I assume you wrote that tirade with tongue firmly in cheek? Serenity WASN'T talking about discussions on medicine or physics, she WAS talking about more casual exchanges. And yes, even within technical writing grammar and usage does change, albeit slowly. I've just been reading Darwin's "Descent of Man", and trust me, English has evolved Maybe the confounding problem here is that we are all taking about different things. For me, "hey how r u?" is grammatically correct, while "hey how is u?" is grammatically incorrect but still within normal usage for, say, teens, but I would turn my nose up at an adult who used it without any irony. But if Serenity got a message that said "hay how is u?" then her ire is understandable. That's just inexcusable.

^It's nothing like that is it? *Changes summer plans*