DARPA test artificial arm that gives ma his sense of touch back

Any of us that saw the 1980 sci-fi movie “The Empire Strikes Back” will remember at the end of the movie we see Luke Skywalker aboard the medical ship getting his hand replaced with a realistic looking prosthetic. We were all amazed at how Luke could feel the pain of the needle as it poked each finger of the artificial hand. We wondered how long it would be before actual artificial limbs would be able to restore the sensation of touch? Apparently the answer to that question is 35 years.

Now, 35 years after that movie, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) has created such an artificial arm that can restore the sense of touch. The arm was successfully tested earlier this month allowing the recipient to feel the sensation of touch after a spinal cord injury he suffered a decade ago.

“We’ve completed the circuit,” Justin Sanchez, Darpa program manager, said in announcing the most recent results of the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program earlier this month at a conference in St. Louis, according to a press release from the agency.

The arm, that was developed at John Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, works by a sending electronic impulses through an array of sensors that are connected directly to the brain. Those signals are then sent through the spinal cord to the artificial limb. The process created by the sensor array mimics the same electronic pulses sent through a healthy nervous systems.

“Prosthetic limbs that can be controlled by thoughts are showing great promise, but without feedback from signals traveling back to the brain it can be difficult to achieve the level of control needed to perform precise movements,” he said. “By wiring a sense of touch from a mechanical hand directly into the brain, this work shows the potential for seamless bio-technological restoration of near-natural function.”

After successfully attaching the arm they tested it much the same way that the robot medics test Luke Sywalker's hand back in that 1980 movie.
“At one point, instead of pressing one finger, the team decided to press two without telling him,” said Sanchez, who oversees the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program. “He responded in jest asking whether somebody was trying to play a trick on him. That is when we knew that the feelings he was perceiving through the robotic hand were near-natural.”

5 things you didn't know about Damon Wayans

Damon Wayans has been entertaining us as a stand-up comic, writer, actor, and producer for over 30 years. He started his career in the early 1980's but it was when him and his brothers created the show “In Living Color” that Damon Wayans was thrust into the spotlight. It was on that show that Mr. Wayans was free to show his comic talents with characters like “Homey D. Clown, Head Detective, Handi-man, Reverend Ed Cash, and more. After that show ended he went on to star in several movies and television shows that he usually co-wrote with his brothers.

Eddie Murphy gave him his big break

Damon Wayans had already had a good stand-up career going but it was in 1984 that he had his first big break. That year Eddie Murphy gave him a small role in the movie “Beverly Hills Cop”. In the movie Mr. Wayans played a worker at the Beverly Hills hotel that lets Eddie Murphy's character Axel Foley have a few bananas, off of a food cart, that Detective Foley used to stick in the tail pipe of the police officers sent to drive him out of town.

He has a company that creates apps

After going to a tech show and getting several business cards Mr. Wayans saw a need for an app. He formed a company with some developers to create “Flick dat” as a way to create business cards, that can have embedded video, and share thm on your smartphones. His company also has an app called “Diddeo” that turns your smartphone into a editing studio.

He has four children and one grandchild

Damon Wayans has four children from his 16 year marriage to Lisa Thorner that ended in 2000. Two sons, Damn Jr. and Michael, and two daughters, Cara Mia and Kyla. As of 2014 Mr. Wayans is also a grandfather to Ava Marie Jean the daughter of Michael and his girlfriend Vanessa.

He was diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes

In 2013 Mr. Wayans was diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes. After the diagnosis he was forced to cancel some of his tour dates when he was told not to fly. Since the diagnosis he has also had to make some other changes to his life. One of those changes was beginning a paleo diet to reduce his sugar intake. “No fruit, alcohol, soda, cake,” he says. He was off insulin within a month.

“I honestly don’t know if (my doctors) were impressed,” Wayans says. “I was at the hospital, and they said, ‘Don’t worry about nothing. You can still eat whatever you want, just take your insulin.’ I’m from the streets of New York. I know a drug deal when I hear one.”

In 2010 he became in author

In 2010 he wrote a fictional novel about a woman who's life is changed for the better when the Red-Hat Society, a real women's organization, come to her aide. The book has several good reviews including one by a lady of the real Red-Hat Society.

The U.S Air Force set to launch drones from AC-130

Flying above cloud cover to remain hidden from the enemy and being able to detect those target has always posed a problem military pilots. To resolve the problem the United States Air Force told their Special Operations Command to come up with a solution. The answer was small, portable drone that could be deployed from the AC-130 gunship.

“Right now today, in many cases, we’re giving the cover of weather to the enemy,” he said during a briefing with reporters this week at the Air and Space Conference near Washington, D.C. “The enemy is maneuvering, massing against an objective often times because of the weather. We need to take that away.”
The gunship will deploy the drone through their 8-inch diameter launch tubes. The drones wings will then unfold so the drones can fly below the cloud cover. The drones will fly a pre-programmed grid pattern. Then, once the enemy targets are located the drones will then transmit the coordinates back to the AC-130.

“It’s tethered — not physically tethered, electronically tethered to the gunship,” Heithold said. “Now I’m seeing below the deck, feeding coordinates.”

He added, “Once I’ve got the coordinates, it directly feeds it into my fire control system. I can shoot. I can put a small diameter bomb on those coordinates … I can shoot a 105mm [cannon] at a set of coordinates — which I can do today, I just can’t see where they go. So I put a sensor below the deck [and can] adjust fire. It’s like boring your rifle.”

Drones have been used in several different ways by our military forces. They have used as aerial and ground intelligence gathering mission. Foot soldier have used mini drone to scope out buildings before going inside. Sometimes drones have been used in areas deemed to dangerous for troops. There have been the infamous seek & destroy drones we have heard about that took out several insurgents. This is the first time that drones have been used as extensions of an aircraft's sensors. 

Georgia honors Otis Redding

On the evening of September 18,2015 at 7:00 p m EST the city of Gary, Georgia will honor Otis Redding. They will unveil a 7 foot x 7 foot banner that will be displayed on the corner of Highway 129 & Highway 11. The marker that looks like a giant album will have an interactive panel where fans can stop and hear some of the songs and see photos of the late R & B singer/songwriter.

The unveiling will be part the city's spoons & tunes festival. The festival is catered by local restaurants and features local bands. This year the Redding family will attendance as tribute is paid to the cities favorite son.

“My father loved Jones County just as we do,” said Redding’s daughter, Karla Redding-Andrews. “We work in Macon, but when we leave Macon, we are so ready. We’re ready to get back to what we call ‘God’s country.’ ’’

Mr. Redding was born in the small town , in Georgia, on September 9, 1941. He then became one the biggest names in Rhythm & Blues in the 1960's. He was best known for his hit “Dock of the Bay” that was released after his death in 1967. In his short career he had 6 albums and another 5 that were released after death.

In 1967 he was named vocalist of the year before a plane crash tragically shortened Mr. Redding's career. Since that time he has had several honors. Among those honors was being inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and the Songwriter Hall of Fame. He has also been honored by the United States Post Office when they released a commemorative stamp in the mid 1990's.

Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman announces more layoffs

Last year, Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman announced a two year plan to layoff 50,000 employees and split the company in two. After the first round of the layoffs Ms. Whitman said that even more layoffs might be on the way. Those more layoffs she hinted at back then become a reality on Tuesday when Ms. Whitman announced 25,000 – 30,000 additional layoffs would be needed in their restructuring.

HP CEO Meg Whitman said the latest job cuts will "enable a more competitive, sustainable cost structure" for the new company.

Hewlett-Packard hired Ms. Whitman in 2011 to turn around the struggling company. Upon her hiring she went to work on a plan of action that would once bring the company to the promonant level they enjoyed for much of their almost 8 decade history. A little over three years since her hiring she announced that plan that her & her staff had been working on.

"We've done a significant amount of work over the past few years to take costs out and simplify processes and these final actions will eliminate the need for any future corporate restructuring," Chief Executive Meg Whitman said.

Ms. Whitman will retain control of the business software & cloud storage parts of the business. That part of the business will be renamed Hewlett-Packard Enterprises. The PC &mobile devices along with printing will become the second business called HP Inc that current Vice President Dion Weisler will become CEO.

Before Hewlett-Packard Ms. Whitman spent 10 years as the CEO of Ebay, the online auction site, before leaving in 2008. She then became a candidate in the 2010 California gubernatorial race where she lost to former governor Jerry Brown.

Other articles on this topic:

• http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/15/investing/hp-job-cuts-hewlett-packard/
• http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/hp-says-it-will-cut-25000-jobs/ar-AAekL2A?ocid=ansmsnmoney11
• http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/16/restructuring-needed-because-market-is-changing-so-rapidly-hps-whitman.html

5 things you didn't know about Steve Allen

In his 50+ year career Steve Allen has been a writer, composer, actor, radio & television personality, and author. After just a few years in radio Mr. Allen made the jump to television. In 1953 pioneered a new format of show when he created “The Tonight Show” as a local late night variety/talk show in New York. The following year he went national with the show that has become the standard for late night television. He left the “The Tonight Show” in 1957 but went on hosting more shows of his own. He was semi-regulator panelist of the game show “What's my line” in the 1950's & 1960's. Mr. Allen also appeared on several television shows into the 1990's.

He had a brief stint in the military

Depending on the source, Steve Allen either enlist or was drafted into the United States Army in 1943. Either way his job as a radio DJ was cut short as he reported for basic training. After training he was stationed at Camp Robert in California with thousand of other infantry men waiting for deployment overseas. Mr. Allen never went overseas though when frequent asthma attack cut his military career short. He was given a medical discharge after 5 months.

He was a wrestling announcer

In 1949 Steve Allen was hired to be a wrestling announcer on television. At the time that he was hired there were not formal names for the different holds in professional wrestling. So, Mr. Allen would make up names for the moves and some of the names he came up with are still used to this day.

He was a prolific songwriter

Steve Allen has written thousands of songs in his career. Most of the songs he wrote have been lost to history. Some of his song have been sung by the likes of Judy Garland, Perry Como and Mel Torme. One of his songs, “The Gravy Waltz”, won a Grammy Award in 1964 for “best original Jazz composition”.

He authored several books
Mr. Allen has authored or co-authored over 50 books. Most of the books are comedy-based but he also wrote about religion, education, and a few other subjects. 9 of his books where mysteries that were co-authored by ghostwriters, Robert Sheldon and then Robert Westbrook.

He died shortly after a car accident

In 2000 Steve Allen was driving to his sons house when he was hit by a car backing out of a driveway. He didn't appear to be injure'd and went on to his destination. Shortly after arriving at his son's house he said he was tired and went to lay down. His son eventually went to check on him to ind him dead of what appeared to be a heart-attack. In an autopsy later it turned out that he had died from internal bleeding as a result of a ruptured blood vessel that he sustained in the car accident.

The Amazon Fire phone finally sells out

It was looking as though it would not happen but earlier this week Amazon finally sold the last of their Fire smartphones. When the smartphones first came out, in June of 2014, it quickly became a top seller for the Seattle-based company It was not long thou before the sales started to dry up and Amazon slashed the price. After that it was looking as though Amazon would be stuck with a warehouse full of the smartphones.

"We don’t plan to replenish stock at this time," said Kinley Pearsall, a spokeswoman for Seattle-based Amazon. "We will continue to support our Fire phone customers."

From this statement from Amazon and a similar one by AT&T, along with an article by the Wall Street Journal, the possibility of a new version of the smartphone is looking rather bleak. According to the article the Seattle-based company laid of several engineers at their Lab126, where the Fire phone was developed. Along with the layoffs the company also announced they would be suspending many of their planned projects. The second generation of Fire smartphone was include among those projects and there is no indication it will be started up again anytime in the near future.

When Amazon first came out with their Kindle Fire tablet it started people asking if there would be a smartphone to follow. Unlike the mini-tablet market, the smartphone market was already heavily saturated. So, to make their smartphone stand out Amazon loaded it with unique features that did not exactly go over as planned. There was the 3D perspective that looked spectacular but was not a feature that anyone was clamoring to have in a phone. The fact that Amazon has their own variant of the android operating system did not thrill many users. Many of the other features; size, display, cameras, processor, and battery; were average or just above. Possibly the biggest problem with the smartphone was that Amazon tried pulling the same move Apple did with their smartphone years earlier and limit it to just one carrier.

Other articles on this topic:

• http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/09/09/amazon_stopped_selling_the_fire_phone_because_no_one_wanted_to_buy_it.html
• http://www.geekwire.com/2015/amazon-finally-stops-selling-the-fire-phone/
• http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/9/9292695/amazon-fire-phone-sales-end

5 things you didn't know about Red Buttons

For over 70 years Red Buttons, real name Aaron Chwatt, was a stand-up comic, actor, song writer, and singer. He started his career by entering talent shows during the great depression winning as much as $5 dollars. He went on to have a successful career in Vaudeville, Broadway, movies, television, and nightclubs. He was one of the early pioneers of television when “The Red Buttons Show” premiered in 1952. He is best known for his “never got a dinner” routines that he would perform during celebrity roasts.

Outside of all the laughs there are several things about Red Buttons that most people don't know. Here are just five of those items:

He was a singing waiter

One of Aaron Chwatt's first jobs was working in a tavern in the Bronx, New York. There was employed as a singing waiter and had to wear a uniform with big buttons on it. One day the owner of the tavern started calling him Red Buttons for his red hair and the shinny red buttons on the uniform.

He was drafted in 1943

Midway through World War II the United States Air Corp came calling o Mr. Buttons to due his part. He was put to work doing what he does best. He was cast in the Broadway play “Winged Victory”. After the play he was shipped off to Europe where he joined fellow actor Mickey Rooney in France to entertain the troops in Europe. Mr. Buttons was also among the first troops to enter Berlin.

He won three awards for one movie role

In 1957 Mr. Buttons co-starred in the movie “Sayonara”. His role of airman Joe Kelly garnered him a BAFTA (British academy of film and television arts) award, an Oscar, and a Golden Globe for best supporting actor.

He was married three time

Red Buttons married his first wife, Roxanne Arien, in 1940 not long after he started working the burlesque circuit. The marriage only lasted 2 years and was annulled. His next marriage came a couple of years after the war when, in 1947, he married Helayna McNorton. That marriage lasted for over a decade when they divorced in 1962. A year after that divorce he married for the third time and that marriage, to Alica Prats, would last for almost four decades until her death in 2001.

He died at the age of 87

Red Buttons had high blood pressure for years. On July 13, 2006 his high blood pressure became fatal when he was found dead at his California home. According to his publicist the cause was Vascular disease.    

The Seattle Seahawks win their pre-season finally

As the old saying goes “we saved the best for last”. The Seattle Seahawks lived up to that saying as they had their best game of the pre-season as they beat the Oakland Raiders 31-21. The game showed plenty of promise for the regular season. The game had several bright spots in it tonight.

For the week leading up to the game assistant coach Tom Cable stated that the offensive line was the best one that he had coached in his tenure in Seattle. That seems like a bold statement to make when your team has gone to two straight Superbowls and deep into the playoffs the year before that. After seeing the way they played in tonight's game it looked as thought the statement was a good call on his part. Even though the starting offensive line didn't stay in the game they didn't show the holes or commit the penalties that plagued the team in the last 3 years.

Russell Wilson was only in the game for 2 plays but looked as though he was in good form as he threw a long bomb to rookie sensation Tyler Lockett. Lockett caught the pass on the run and went 63 yards for an early touchdown. The touchdown was Tyler Lockett's third touchdown of over 60 yards in the pre-season. The previous 2 came on a punt return last weekend and a kickoff return the week before that.

On the defense one of the big stars was rookie Frank Clark who played most of the game and racked up 15 tackles. In the first half of the game he caused a fumble that Justin Hill was able to recover in the end zone for a touchdown. The rest of the defense also did a stellar job as they kept the Raiders to only 27 yards rushing.  

5 things you didn't know about Paul Lynde

For over 30 years Paul Lynde was one of the biggest names in comedy. He started his career in the late 1940's as a stand-up and went on to do Broadway, Movies, and television. He was a highly sought after guest on talk, variety, and game shows and appeared in numerous sitcom during the 1960's & 1970's. He was best know though as the wise-cracking, practical-joker uncle on “Bewitched”, center square on “Hollywood Squares”, and Templeton the Rat in “Charlotte's Web”.

The laughter that Paul Lynde gave us was just part of the man. The following are 5 facts that most people didn't know about him:

Was a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity

Paul Lynde joined the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity when he was attending Northwestern University where he was studying drama. Like many fraternal organizations their activities are secretive. According to the official charter the objective of the fraternity is to promote good fellowship and social virtues.

He had some runs with the law

In the mid 1970's Paul Lynde was faced with a couple of failed shows. His drinking was also getting worse by that time and co-workers were starting to complain about being a problem. Despite those problems he was still a weekly guest of “The Donny & Marie Show”. That came to an end for him as well when he was arrested outside of a gay bar in Utah for obstruct an officer in an investigation. It was not the first run in with the law but this latest one cost him that job.

He was a guest weatherman in Ohio

By the late 1970's Paul Lynde's troubles had brought his career to only a trickle of what it use to be just a few years early. So, in 1979 he jumped at the chance to guest host as a weatherman in Toledo, Ohio. The results were one funny weather spot as he would make some of the quips that made him such a hit in the past.

He died from a heart-attack

Paul Lynde died in 1982 at the age of 55. On the surface his death was straight forward that he was discovered in bed where he had a massive heart-attack. Like most celebrity deaths there is some controversy on some of the circumstances leading up to his death. Where drugs & alcohol the cause of the heart-attack? Was he alone at the time? Along with a few other unanswered questions.

He is still influencing people

Over 30 years after his death, Paul Lynde is still influencing people in Hollywood. There are several cartoon artist that do an impression of him for the voice of their characters. One such example is the alien character in the animated series “American Dad”.