'Sushi cats:' The (weird) new trend in Japan

A bizarre new ad campaign brings new meaning to the word "catfish" and is causing a buzz in Japan.


The Tange & Nakimushi Peanuts company has created a range of prints featuring cats resting on sushi rolls, calling them "Sushi cats," or Neko-Sushi in Japanese.
While some of the cats look somewhat cute posing on sticky rice, others appear terrified and some are just downright strange.
But that hasn't stopped them from gaining a cult-like following in Japan and elsewhere around the world.
The cats already have their own Facebook page, along with postcards and photos (only available in Japan) and a mobile game app you can download, according to The Daily Mail.
The company even put together a tongue-in-cheek video titled "The History Of Sushi Cats Explained," suggesting the cats have been around for centuries and can even be found in early cave paintings.

Read more: http://www.kcra.com/news/national/sushi-cats-the-weird-new-trend-in-japan/-/11797450/20173078/-/r3ne49/-/index.html#ixzz2TY3PkFNZ

Oz Politican Attacked By Kangaroo While Jogging

Shane Rattenbury said he was out running in a suburb of the capital Canberra when he suddenly came up against an eastern grey kangaroo grazing on a front lawn.
"We both got a nasty fright, and of course when kangaroos are startled, they lash out," the 41-year-old said.
"As the kangaroo sought to escape, it landed on me, and its claws dug into my leg."
Mr Rattenbury tweeted his encounter along with a picture of his bloodied legs, saying: "Mugged by a kangaroo! And this was in the suburbs, had not even got to the nature park!"
The politician said the 1.4 metre (4ft 7ins) tall kangaroo knocked him to the pavement, the claws of its powerful hind legs drawing blood with two scratches to his left leg. His right leg was painfully bruised by the pavement.
Moments later, a passer-by noticed Mr Rattenbury was injured and drove him home.

MP Shane Rattenbury injured his left leg in the attack

His mother heard of her son's plight on a radio news bulletin and took him to a walk-in clinic, where a nurse cleaned his wounds and gave him a tetanus shot.
"The nurse who treated me had treated someone before who had been scratched by a kangaroo and ended up with a very bad infection," Mr Rattenbury said. "So she was quite keen to give it a good clean-out."
Mr Rattenbury limped into the Australian Capital Territory state parliament a few minutes before Thursday's session began and more than three hours after his painful brush with nature.
He was bemused that many people seemed more concerned about the kangaroo's welfare than his.
"I can assure people that the kangaroo is fine," he said. "It was last seen hopping off into the distance quite comfortably."
Kangaroos are among Australia's most loved native species. A kangaroo and an emu feature on the nation's coat of arms. But kangaroos are so numerous around Canberra that the ACT government maintains a controversial culling program to contain them.
Mr Rattenbury, who is a member of the environmentally focused Greens party, said he accepts the scientific evidence that kangaroo numbers have to be controlled around Canberra. Thursday's close encounter did not change that.
"Without a predator, kangaroos have increased their abundance and have a detrimental impact on the rest of the ecosystem," he said. "The Greens have not opposed that cull."
He added: "I really enjoy seeing kangaroos and we're very lucky in Canberra to have them as part of our neighbourhoods, but I usually prefer to keep them at a bit more of a distance than this."
Kangaroos rarely harm people, although in 2009 one jumped through a bedroom window of a Canberra home late at night and terrorised a family before a householder wrestled it out the front door.
Wildlife veterinarian Karen Vickers said more kangaroos were likely to venture deeper into Canberra suburbs in search of watered lawns to feed in the drier months ahead and that people should be wary.
"It sounds like they startled each other and Shane came off worse," she told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio. "They're really not out to get us."
The attack clearly did not cause Mr Rattenbury to lose his sense of humour. He added later on twitter: "I believe the roo is fine - escaped the scene quickly, but did fail to get my watch or wallet for those who were wondering ..."

SOURCE : http://news.sky.com/story/1092053/oz-politican-attacked-by-kangaroo-while-jogging

Monkeys can do math according to new study

Ursala, a baboon at the Seneca Park Zoo, likes a good cup of treats when University of Rochester researchers offer her a snack.
In fact, when they recently gave Ursala the choice between two small cups of peanut mix, and the difference in amounts was clear, she was likely to point at the cup with the larger quantity.
"Humans are not the only animals that think about quantities," said Jessica Cantlon, an assistant professor of brain and cognitive science at UR heading up a research team working with baboons at the zoo.
Cantlon's work, published in the recent issue of the online journal, Frontiers in Comparative Psychology, involved Ursala and seven other of the zoo's baboons. It showed that the baboons acted in the same way that a 3-year-old child does learning numbers.
Baboons, like young children, create inexact representations of numbers in their mind - something akin to making more-or-less comparisons - of what's in each of the two cups put before them. When the difference in the number of peanuts in each cup was large, the baboons were more likely to point to the cup with more peanuts.
The study is one of the ways Cantlon has examined how humans learn math and what similarities they have with non-human primates such as baboons. It comes on the heels of another study done by Cantlon that incorporated a 20-minute segment of Sesame Street, featuring Big Bird, the Count and Elmo working with numbers.
Cantlon, 37, who came to UR from Duke University in 2009, is described as a rising superstar in her field by professor Gregory DeAngelis, chairman of the brain and cognitive science department at UR.
"She has identified the big questions - the origin of the brain's ability to do math," said DeAngelis, who added that Cantlon is also adept at figuring out what experiments are needed to answer various questions.
Adding up her work
Cantlon could figure out new ways to help young children experiencing difficulty in math with her work, said DeAngelis.
The promise of Cantlon's research has been recognized by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which recently selected her as one of 126 scientists chosen as 2013 fellows.
Since the baboons do math in ways similar to that of a young child and are not harmed by the research, they provide Cantlon with another avenue of exploring brain development.
"I feel the baboons enjoyed participating because they chose to participate," said Kelly Hughes, a post-doctoral associate at UR who worked with Cantlon on the research. "We'd always set up the same way. They'd come and check if we were there, and if we were, they'd sit and wait for us to begin testing."
In another study underway, baboons are shown an image of an object on a computer touchscreen. The screen is then cleared and two new images appear, with one of them matching the shape of the first image.
Early returns suggest that the two baboons in this study are likely to select the image that has shape similar to the first image shown. "Some people think that's a special feature of being human and learning language. What we have seen in our studies of baboons is that baboons go with shape," Cantlon said.
Human powers
While sharing traits with humans, baboons also have limits on what they can do, so don't expect one to scribble E=mc2. "The real difference is that they can't count to a precise number and tell you that's exactly five," said Cantlon. "It always has to be relative to something."
In Cantlon's Sesame Street study, according to e! Science News, an online publication, 27 children between the ages of 4 and 11, and 20 adults watched the same segment of Sesame Street. The use of MRI scans permitted researchers to measure blood flow to the part of the brain that processes numbers while they watched. The children then took a standardized IQ test.
"We were able to show that their neural activity while they were watching Sesame Street is related to how well they performed on a math test," Cantlon explained.
Cantlon cautions that there is no simple way to determine why a child might be having difficulty with math. "Our job is to try to understand how the brain develops mathematical skills," she said.

SOURCE : http://www.ksdk.com/news/watercooler/article/380438/71/Monkeys-can-do-math-according-to-new-study

Police: Doc Attacked Girlfriend Over Facebook Post

Authorities say a plastic surgeon in Miami attacked his girlfriend for several hours over a Facebook posting, forcing her head into a toilet and stuffing a rag in the woman's mouth at one point.
Police say 41-year-old Orlando Llorente was charged Wednesday with kidnapping and attempted murder.
According to police, Llorente grabbed the 36-year-old woman by the hair on April 21, took her into the bathroom and stuck her head in the toilet. Authorities say he also forced her into the bathtub, stuffed a rag in her mouth and poured water over her face.
Police didn't say what was in the Facebook posting.
Llorente's attorney, Marcos Beaton, told several Miami TV stations that his client surrendered voluntarily to police and wants to clear his name. He says the allegations against Llorente are false.

SOURCE : http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/police-doc-attacked-girlfriend-facebook-post-19141332#.UYujsEo4rFw

Zoologger: The moth with the highest-pitched hearing

Sharp-eared ultrasound detector (Image: Nigel Cattlin/FLPA)

Zoologger is our weekly column highlighting extraordinary animals – and occasionally other organisms – from around the world

Species: Galleria mellonella
Habitat: Pretty much everywhere – humans have inadvertently spread them by moving around the beehives they infest

The greater wax moth is flapping gently through the dark, looking for a mate, when it suddenly hears a high-pitched click. The sound is well outside the range of human hearing, but the moth has no problem picking it up. It swerves to the right – and escapes the jaws of a predatory bat by inches.

Greater wax moths have hearing like no other animal we know of. They can hear sounds that are so high-pitched that no known bat can produce them.

In the evolutionary race for survival, this moth has a head start.

Put simply, greater wax moths are a pest. Their larvae often live inside honeybee nests, where they survive on a diet of little more than beeswax. They have a particular taste for the brood combs where the bee larvae live, and can quickly trash the nest.

Adult moths only leave the hive to mate. Males gather on nearby trees and, shortly after sunset, begin making calls to females, at frequencies above the range of human hearing.

Higher-pitched still are the calls of their predators: bats. While the male moth's calls range from 90,000 to 95,000 hertz, bats echolocate using sounds often closer to 110,000 Hz.

Evolution has pushed moths to keep up, so although they can't produce calls in the same range as bats, they can hear them coming. One North American moth can hear sounds up to 150,000 Hz – good, but not good enough to escape all bats, whose calls can reach 212,000 Hz.

SOURCE : http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23501-zoologger-the-moth-with-the-highestpitched-hearing.html

Porn Sites Get More Visitors Each Month Than Netflix, Amazon And Twitter Combined

The Internet is for porn. We all know that, but until now we may not have realized to what extent porn dominated the Internet. According to this infographic by new porn website Paint Bottle, porn takes up a huge percentage of Internet bandwidth. In fact, 30 percent of all data transferred across the Internet is porn. YouPorn, one of the larger video porn sites, streams six times the bandwidth as Hulu.

SOURCE : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/03/internet-porn-stats_n_3187682.html

Terrafugia's next flying car envisioned as tilt-rotor

Even though its first flying car is still at least two years away, a Massachusetts aerospace firm has unveiled a new design for a future product after that, one more akin to a helicopter than a plane.
Like its winged Transition flying car, its first product that is now scheduled for delivery in 2015, Terrafugia's TF-X would drive like a car on the ground, then take to the air like a plane. But instead of requiring drivers to find a runway, they could merely head to the local helipad -- or a parking lot -- and take off using tilt-rotor technology.
The car would lift off nearly vertically using propellers on its stubby wings. The props would then rotate from a vertical to a horizontal position for regular flight. It's the same kind of technology that is found in the Marines' V-22 Osprey, a transport now in common use, though it got off to rocky start with a series of accidents during development. Plans are for it to use a "plug-in hybrid electric" powerplant.
"We felt this was our time to share our vision of the future," says Richard Gersh, vice president of business development for Terrafugia, based in Woburn, Mass. Though the new flying car design isn't likely to take off for another decade, "if you don't start today, it won't happen."
Already, Terrafugia has gotten further than a raft of others either dreaming or designing a vehicle that can be both driven on streets and flown from airports. The Transition, a car with wings that fold into its sides, has gone through two design phases and is about to go through another. The current prototype now has 50 hours of flight time and "quite a bit of driving on the ground," Gersh says.
But even though the company says it has more than 100 orders and has pushed back delivery dates, he says another generation is in the works to make further improvements before any can be delivered. Complicating the process: The driveable plane has to meet the stringent safety requirements for both an aircraft and a car.
The Transition still has a price tag of $279,000.
Observers say the new craft appears to incorporate lessons from Terrafugia's participation in a Defense Department project to develop a flying Army jeep a couple of years ago. The tilt-rotor concept will be complicated because of both the added cost of creating such a craft and dealing with the takeoff noise, says John Brown, editor of the Roadable Times, which keeps tabs on the quest to build a flying car. While the idea might easily be written off as pie-in-the-sky, he says Terrafugia can't be written off.
"I would caution anyone from saying this is science fiction," Brown says. "They have a track record of doing what they say. We need to take this seriously."
Likewise, Paul Moller, whose Moller International has worked for years to bring a flying car to production, says he knows the difficulties of building the new design, but that Terrafugia is a "pretty impressive" company that might be able to pull it off.
But Gersh says breakthroughs in both materials and technology make the concept possible. Carbon-fiber for the skin is both lighter and stronger than metals. Engines are becoming more compact and powerful. The TF-X is the "next logical progression" and the company's engineers -- it has 22 employees, about half of whom are engineers -- will be able to turn to its development as they finish up work on the Transition.
"You've got to be looking forward," he says.

SOURCE : http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/05/06/flying-car-terrafugia/2139381/

N.C. teen mom banned from holding baby son in high school yearbook photo

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A North Carolina high school banned this student mom from holding her baby son in her yearbook photo over fears it would promote teen pregnancy.

A North Carolina high school banned a student mom from holding her baby son in her yearbook photo over fears it would promote teen pregnancy.
Teachers at Wheatmore High School said a picture of Caitlin Tiller, 17, holding 1-year-old son Leland would sent the wrong message to other pupils.
RELATED: TEEN STARTS PETITION AFTER SCHOOL ALLEGEDLY BANS PHOTO OF HER AND HER GIRLFRIEND FROM YEARBOOK
And so they refused to print the picture in the yearbook.
This was despite the fact that staff asked students to bring along items to help make their photos more personal.
RELATED: STUDENT IN CANADA EXPOSES HIMSELF IN YEARBOOK

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Teachers at Wheatmore High School said a photo of Caitlin Tiller, 17, holding 1-year-old son Leland would sent the wrong message.

Tiller, who gave birth to Leland in April of her junior year, thought he would be the perfect prop.
She said he inspired her to graduate early to then go on to college — and that she was proud of her decision to have him and continue her studies.
RELATED: CANADIAN MAN GETS APOLOGY 42 YEARS AFTER GAY SLUR PUBLISHED BESIDE HIM IN YEARBOOK
"He helped me get to where I am today. I wouldn't be the person I am today without him," she told WGHP.
But last month she was told the picture had been removed from the book. And so Tiller said she would rather her space run blank than have a photo without her son.
"She took responsibility. They should be proud students are willing to stay in school graduate and make something of themselves and not try and hide it,” her mom Karen Morgan said.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/yearbook-bans-pic-teen-mom-baby-son-article-1.1334177#ixzz2SJz81eZp

Lye attack victim reveals her newly-transplanted face

This photo combination shows Carmen Blandin Tarleton, who suffered chemical burns over 80 per cent of her body when her estranged husband doused her with lye in June 2007. The undated photo at left, provided by the Blandin family, shows Tarleton before the attack. The center photo, provided by Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, shows Tarleton in July 2011. The photo at right shows Tarleton on Wednesday, May 1, 2013, after her successful face transplant in February. (AP Photo)

BOSTON -- A woman revealed her new face Wednesday, six years after her ex-husband disfigured her by dousing her with industrial-strength lye, and said she went through "what some may call hell" but has found a way to be happy.
Carmen Blandin Tarleton had face transplant surgery at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital in February and spoke publicly for the first time at a news conference at the hospital Wednesday.
"I'm now in a better place, mentally and emotionally, than I ever could have imagined six years ago," said Tarleton, a former transplant nurse. "I want to share my experience with others, so they may find that strength inside themselves to escape their own pain."

In 2007, the 44-year-old mother of two was attacked by her then-husband, Herbert Rodgers, who believed she was seeing another man. Police say he went to the house looking for that man, then went into a fury directed toward Tarleton, striking her with a bat and pouring lye from a squeeze bottle onto her face.
When police arrived, Tarleton was trying to crawl to a shower to wash away the chemical. It already had distorted her face.
In 2009, Rodgers pleaded guilty to maiming Tarleton in exchange for a prison sentence of at least 30 years.
"I learned that ... forgiveness doesn't condone anything he did and it's not about him -- it's about forgiving him, it's forgiving myself, it's allowing myself to move forward and not getting stuck in the tragedy of that night," said Tarleton, who has undergone 55 surgeries during the past five years.
During the face transplant surgery, more than 30 surgeons, anesthesiologists and nurses worked for more than 15 hours to replace her skin, muscles, tendons and nerves, the hospital said.
The face donor was a Williamstown, Massachusetts, woman named Cheryl Denelli Righter who died of a sudden stroke, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Righter's daughter, Marinda, told Tarleton on Wednesday that she looked beautiful, adding she was certain her mother had somehow picked Tarleton. "They are both mothers, they are both survivors, they are both beacons of light," she said.
Righter said that after meeting Tarleton for the first time Tuesday, she felt overjoyed for the first time in a long time.
"I get to feel my mother's skin again, I get to see my mother's freckles, and through you, I get to see my mother live on," she said before going to Tarleton to hug and kiss her again. "This is truly a blessing."
Tarleton is legally blind and read her remarks from a tablet. She thanked Righter's family for what she called "a tremendous gift" that's greatly alleviated the physical pain she'd felt daily.
She referred to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing and said the city is "facing the challenges of pain and forgiveness."
"There is a lot to learn and take from horrific events that happen," Tarleton said. "I want others to know that they need not give up on feeling (like) themselves when tragedy strikes, but instead they can make a choice to find the good and allow that to help them heal."
Tarleton described how it feels to touch and wash her face since her transplant.
She said she still doesn't have full sensation on her new face, but she is experiencing tingling in certain areas. As all that tissue starts to settle, she feels the sensation change almost every week, she said.
The tingling and other sensations are triggered by the regrowth of nerves that were connected during transplant surgery, said Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, the lead surgeon for the face transplant and the director of Plastic Surgery Transplantation at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
"Carmen will be able to feel her face, and gradually, close to what we feel (on) our faces," he said.
"I have been on this incredible journey for the last six years and receiving this wonderful gift ends this chapter of my life," Tarleton said. "What a great way to move forward with what life has for me now."

Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/lye-attack-victim-reveals-her-newly-transplanted-face-1.1263269#ixzz2S8c8hJCm