Childhood dreams give birth to giant robot

TOKYO: Like many Japanese, Kogoro Kurata grew up watching futuristic robots in movies and animation, wishing that he could bring them to life and pilot one himself. Unlike most other Japanese, he has actually done it. His 4-tonne, 4-meter (13 feet) tall Kuratas robot is a grey behemoth with a built-in pilot's seat and hand-held controller that allows an operator to flex its massive arms, move it up and down and drive it at a speed of up to 10 kph (6 mph). "The robots we saw in our generation were always big and always had people riding them, and I don't think they have much meaning in the real world," said Kurata, a 39-year-old artist. "But it really was my dream to ride in one of them, and I also think it's one kind of Japanese culture. I kept thinking that it's something that Japanese had to do." His prototype robot comes equipped with an operating system that also allows remote control from an iPhone as well as optional "guns" that shoot plastic bottles or BB pellets and are powered by a lock-and-load system fired by the pilot's smile. The robot, which took two years to pull together from concept to construction, also comes with a range of customized options from paint scheme to cup holders. It isn't cheap. The sticker price for the most basic model alone is around 110 million yen ($1.3 million). Kurata said while he has received thousands of inquiries about buying a robot, he's also received a large number of cancellations and declined to specify how many people have actually bought one. But that's not so important. "By my building this, I hope that it'll sort of be the trailblazer for people who can do more than myself to make different things," he said. "They might be able to make a society that uses robots in a way I can't even imagine. I expect more from the implications of building it than from the robot itself." REUTERS

Childhood dreams give birth to giant robot

 
COTONOU: Tomb raiders have dug up more than 100 graves at a cemetery in Benin since Saturday for what authorities suspect is a black-market trade in human organs and skulls for voodoo ritual fetishes.
The incident is the most serious case of grave-robbing in the West African state, the world capital of voodoo where most of the country's 9 million residents practice a benign form of the official religion.
Authorities in Dangbo, a village 10 km (6 miles) from the capital Porto-Novo, began an investigation after a mason working at the cemetery said he spotted several masked men digging up the graves, from which organs and skulls were removed.
"The desecration of graves is about money in this region," said Joseph Afaton, director of the cemetery. "It is for sacrifices, or for bewitching."
Body parts of humans and rare animals are prized by some people in central Africa for their supposed supernatural powers, and are used in occult ceremonies. Traffickers often obtain human remains from grave robbers, but a recent spate of killings has also been linked to the gruesome trade.
Authorities in Cameroon in September arrested five people suspected of trafficking human body parts after they were discovered at a checkpoint carrying a severed human head. (Reuters)

REUTERS

Gold Christmas tree for a mere $4.2 million in Tokyo

 
TOKYO: For those seeking a glow to their Christmas this year, a jewelry store in downtown Tokyo has just the answer: a pure gold revolving "tree" covered in Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse, Tinker Bell and Cinderella.
The tree-like ornament is made of 40 kg (88 pounds) of pure gold, standing about 2.4 meters (7.9 ft) high and 1.2 meters in diameter. It is decorated with pure gold plate silhouette cutouts of 50 popular Disney characters and draped with ribbons made of gold leaf.
The price tag? A mere 350 million yen ($4.2 million).
But the ornament is actually a deal, said Tomoko Ishibashi, in the marketing department of Tanaka Kikinzoku Jewelry, which runs the Ginza Tanaka jewelry store.
"Right now gold is over 4,400 yen per gram. We used pure gold and had an expert craftsman form each Disney character by hand," she said of the decoration, which took 10 craftsmen two months to complete.
The combination of gold and Disney characters had spectators mesmerized.
"It is very vivid and the gold is very pretty," said Takashi Miura, a 36-year-old jeweler. "The characters on it are also really cute and it really looks like a Christmas tree."
For those with less ready cash, the store offers a scaled-down version that features 20 Disney characters and stands 25 cm high for a mere 2 million yen ($243,000).
While nobody has yet made a down payment on the larger tree, the miniature has already found buyers, Ishibashi said. (Reuters)

4D scans show fetuses yawn in the womb

 
LONDON: Growing into a fully formed human being is a long process, and scientists have found that unborn babies not only hiccup, swallow and stretch in the womb, they yawn too.
Researchers who studied 4D scans of 15 healthy fetuses also said they think yawning is a developmental process which could potentially give doctors a new way to check on a baby's health.
While some scientists have previously suggested that fetuses yawn, others disagree and say it is nothing more than a developing baby opening and stretching its mouth.
But writing in the journal PLOS ONE on Wednesday, British researchers said their study was able to clearly distinguish yawning from "non-yawn mouth opening" based on how long the mouth was open.
The researchers did this by using 4D video footage to examine all the times when fetuses opened their mouths.
Nadja Reissland of Durham University's department of Psychology, who led the study, said the function and importance of yawning in fetuses is still unknown, but the findings suggest it may be linked to fetal development and could provide a further indication of the health of the unborn baby.
"Unlike us, fetuses do not yawn contagiously, nor do they yawn because they are sleepy," she said. "Instead, the frequency of yawning in the womb may be linked to the maturing of the brain early in gestation."
The study was carried out on eight female and seven male fetuses from 24 to 36 weeks gestation. The researchers found that yawning declined from 28 weeks and that there was no significant difference in how often boys and girls yawned. (Reuters)

Twitter unveils email sharing

 
SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter on Thursday introduced a new feature to the globally popular one-to-many text messaging service -- the ability to email "Tweets" directly from the message stream.
The new feature made its debut as the San Francisco-based firm rolled out improved applications for using the service on iPhones or smartphones powered by Google-backed Android software.
"You can retweet any (Twitter messages) to your Twitter followers, but sometimes you want to share with another group, like your college roommates or your parents or a friend who isn't yet on Twitter," engineer Stefan Filip said in a blog post.
"That's why we're introducing the ability to email a Tweet directly from twitter.com."
The feature will be rolled out to all users of Twitter -- which allows its members to post brief comments, links or pictures -- in the coming weeks, according to Filip.
Updates to Twitter applications for iPhone and Android were designed to improve search results and highlight photos, videos and news shared at the service. (AFP)