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Thursday, May 3, 2012
Miley Cyrus or Demi Lovato: The Next X Factor Judge?!?
With Britney Spears already on board, might Simon Cowell be giving up all notions of The X Factor as a singing competition?
It's hard not to think the producer is simply aiming to rake in the ratings, considering the latest name reportedly on the table to join season two as a judge: Miley Cyrus.
Simply put, “there have been talks with Miley,” an X Factor insider tells Celebuzz, a rumor backed up by E! News.
Both outlets also report that Fergie, Avril Lavigne and Demi Lovato are in the running to join Cowell, Spears and L.A. Reid on the panel. A decision will need to come within a month or so, in order for auditions to begin and The X Factor to premiere season two in September.
What do you think of Miley Cyrus as a judge? Would she be a good choice?
UPDATE: The Hollywood Reporter now claims Lovato is the one to beat and is in "final negotiations" for the gig.
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Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Microsoft granted patent for wearable EMG device
Those muscle spasms? They're now good for something. Okay, so Microsoft's just-granted patent for a wearable EMG device doesn't really thrive off of involuntary twitching and such, but it does use your movements to control your smartphone, notebook and other gadgets. The "Wearable Electromyography-Based Controller," which we first glimpsed back in 2010, uses sensors to interpret the electrical signals generated by a user's muscles, and then communicates with the wearer's computer via a wireless (or wired) connection. Redmond envisions the wearable device in various incarnations: as an armband equipped with sensors, a shirt, eyeglasses and even nodes attached directly to the user's body. In the armband example, motion control could be used to interact with a PMP while the user is jogging. No matter the setup, a calibration process allows the system to locate specific sensors and collect information based on specific gestures or movements, which means playing Guitar Hero with only an air guitar may someday be a reality after all.
Continue reading Microsoft granted patent for wearable EMG device
Microsoft granted patent for wearable EMG device originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 May 2012 01:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The Wanted Move On From Christina And Take Aim At Britney Spears
Siva Kaneswaran says the band was not allowed to look at Britney Spears backstage at a Manchester show.
By Gil Kaufman
The Wanted
Photo: Getty Images
If you're having trouble keeping the latest wave of British boy bands straight, just remember this one simple trick: The Wanted are the ones who talk tons of smack.
After tearing into "The Voice" coach Christina Aguilera by calling her a "total bitch" last week, and then kind of apologizing , the boys turned their verbal cannons on another ex-Mouseketeer.
Sitting down for another radio interview in New York on Monday (their people should really consider keeping the boys off N.Y. radio, just sayin'), the lads opened up about a rather unpleasant interaction with Britney Spears' security team in November.
They said they were personally invited to open Brit's show in Manchester and by all accounts the hook-up went swimmingly, with a cute photo op and a follow-up tweet from Spears in which she wrote, "So the boys from @thewantedmusic came to my Wembley show & we hung out backstage! Love them!"
But member Tom Parker revealed that, "We signed a confidentiality thing that we should never say anything about what happened, but let's tell it anyway." That prompted Siva Kaneswaran to open up the legal Pandora's box and spill, "I was in the hallway with my tour manager. Basically we were looking with a laptop, trying to get WiFi ... facing the middle of the hallway. [Britney's] bouncers came down with her and told us to face the wall."
"As Miss Spears is walking through," added Parker. "We're like come on!" But, since they are nice boys, Kaneswaran said, "We turned around and I faced a wall for about 10 seconds until she got really far away."
They didn't wait long to walk this one back a bit, though. Jay McGuiness quickly followed-up with another patented Wanted semi-apology, explaining, "But honestly when we actually met her person to person, she was so down to earth. You can tell she's a total Southern girl and Nathan [Sykes], when he was a kid, won a singing competition. She was one of the judges or something. And she gave him a kiss, it was one of his first kisses as a kid. So he got to meet her again and support her."
Last week, when MTV News' Sway spoke to the boys they were in a similarly feisty mood, with Parker claiming that Justin Bieber had smacked Kaneswaran in his crown jewels when they performed with the "Boyfriend" singer. "He [Kaneswaran] came up to me in the dressing room and said, 'Why's he picking on me?'" Parker joked.
As for Spears, at the time, Sykes said, "She's lovely as well. We haven't really met people who aren't very nice and Britney was just very, very nice. She was kind of what you'd expect her to be, very happy and American." And, Parker said, even though her bodyguards were kind of scary, Britney, he said, had "lovely teeth."
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More flood warnings after wettest April
Parts of Britain were on "high alert" for floods again Tuesday after a night of torrential downpours as Met Office figures showed April was the wettest on record.
The Environment Agency (EA) had 33 flood warnings and 139 flood alerts -- where flooding is expected or possible respectively -- in place after overnight storms brought more than 20mm (0.8in) of rain to some areas, particularly in the south west.
That represents approaching a third of the regular monthly average of 69.6mm.
Officials are keeping a close eye on water levels as flood defences hold back muddy water from over 25,000 homes, the EA said.
Many rivers were already at bursting point and more heavy rain is forecast for Tuesday.
The Met Office said early figures showed that April was the wettest since records began in 1910, even before Monday night's downpours.
By April 29, rainfall for the month had reached 121.8mm, beating the previous record of 120.3mm set in 2000.
Liscombe in Somerset had the most rainfall, at 273.8mm.
The EA remains on "high alert" for flooding, particularly in Somerset, Dorset and Devon, which experienced some of the heaviest rain overnight.
The northwest of England is the only region unaffected by the warnings.
"River flows are high after this weekend's rainfall and we are keeping a close watch on river levels as well as checking defences and clearing any potential blockages to reduce the risk of flooding," an EA spokesman said.
The warnings comes after a 52-year-old man and his dog drowned when their car attempted to cross a flooded ford in Hampshire on Monday.
The man's 54-year-old wife, who was driving, was hospitalised suffering from shock following the incident.
Meanwhile around 1,000 people had to be evacuated from a caravan park in Great Billing, Northampton.
Organisers also cancelled this year's prestigious Badminton Horse Trials in Gloucestershire, which had been due to start Friday, saying there was "no chance" of the ground drying in time for the event.
Among the places worst hit by the rains are Taunton, in Somerset, and Tewkesbury, in Gloucestershire, which was devastated by floods in 2007.
The Met Office forecast more outbreaks of rain Tuesday morning, with brighter and drier weather by the afternoon.
A Met Office spokesman said: "Outbreaks of rain, heavy and possibly thundery, are likely to affect southern England and the southern half of Wales, during Tuesday.
"The public should be aware that, following recent heavy rainfall, further localised flooding is possible, with parts of Devon, Dorset and Somerset looking especially vulnerable. There will also be difficult driving conditions at times."
Despite the rains, much of the country is still facing drought conditions which the EA said could increase the risk of flash floods.
The dry, hard-packed soil caused by drought makes it harder for rain to be absorbed.
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Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Ireland's Aran Islands: Old maps and dead clams help solve coastal boulder mystery
ScienceDaily (Apr. 30, 2012) ? Perched atop the sheer coastal cliffs of Ireland's Aran Islands, ridges of giant boulders have puzzled geologists for years. What forces could have torn these rocks from the cliff edges high above sea level and deposited them far inland?
While some researchers contend that only a tsunami could push these stones, new research in The Journal of Geology finds that plain old ocean waves, with the help of some strong storms, did the job.
And they're still doing it.
The three tiny Aran Islands are just off the western coast of Ireland. The elongated rock ridges form a collar along extended stretches of the islands' Atlantic coasts. The sizes of the boulders in the formations range "from merely impressive to mind-bogglingly stupendous," writes Dr. R?nadh Cox, who led the research with her Williams College students. One block the team studied weighs an estimated 78 tons, yet was still cut free from its position 36 feet above sea level and shoved further inland.
Armed with equations that model the forces generated by waves, some researchers have concluded that no ordinary ocean waves could muster the force necessary to move the largest of the boulders this high above the ocean surface and so far inland. The math suggests the rocks in the ridges could only have been put there by a tsunami.
The equations tell one story. The islands' residents tell another. According to some locals, enormous rocks have moved in their lifetimes, despite the fact that there hasn't been a tsunami to hit the islands since 1755.
"Unless you have little green men from mars doing this on the quiet, it must be storm waves," Cox said.
While the anecdotes from residents are interesting, Cox and her team went in search of more concrete evidence. The clincher came when the team compared modern high-altitude photos of the coastline to set of meticulous maps surveyed in 1839. The 19th century surveyors, who Cox describes as "possibly the most anal men on the planet," carefully mapped not only the boulder ridges, but all of the criss-crossing stone walls that farmers built between fields. The researchers digitized the maps and overlaid them on the modern images, using the walls to line the two up accurately.
"Not only did they map every wall, they did it right. The maps aren't even off by even a meter."
The overlay of the new photos with the old maps shows definitively that sections of the ridges have moved substantially since 1839 -- nearly 100 years after the most recent tsunami. Some sections moved inland at an average rate of nearly 10 feet per decade. In some places, the ridge had run over and demolished field walls noted on the old maps.
Other lines of evidence corroborate residents' accounts of recent movement. When the boulders were ripped from the bedrock, tiny clams that live in cracks and crevices sometimes came along for the ride. Using radiocarbon dating, Cox and her team found that some of the rocks have been pulled from the coastline within the last 60 years. What's more, the researchers have been photographing sections of the ridge during each field season since 2006, and they've documented movement from year to year.
So what of the equations that point to tsunami as the only possible earth mover?
"We've eliminated tsunami and I think we can rule out little green men," Cox said. "What that says is our equations aren't good enough."
Cox thinks the characteristics of the Aran Island shoreline are throwing off the calculations. The Aran cliffs rise nearly vertically out of the Atlantic, leaving very deep water close to the shore. As waves slam into the sheer cliff, that water is abruptly deflected back out toward the oncoming waves. This backflow may amplify subsequent waves. The result is an occasional storm wave that is much larger than one would expect.
"In this kind of environment these would be less rare," Cox said. "You only need a couple of them to move these rocks around. The radiocarbon data show that not only are some boulders moving in recent years, but also that some of them have been in the ridges for hundreds and even a couple of thousand years. Accumulated activity of rare large-wave events over that time could certainly build these structures"
Cox plans to add a physicist to her research team in the near future to try to shed some light on the wave dynamics on the islands, but it's clear from the evidence the team has already gathered that storm waves can do more than some researchers thought.
Following the devastating Indonesian tsunami in 2004, there has been renewed interest in learning about how a tsunami can change the landscape. Cox's findings have important implications for that research.
"There's a tendency to attribute the movement of large objects to tsunami," she said. "We're saying hold the phone. Big boulders are getting moved by storm waves."
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Chicago Press Journals, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- R?nadh Cox, Danielle B. Zentner, Brian J. Kirchner, and Mea S. Cook. Boulder Ridges on the Aran Islands (Ireland): Recent Movements Caused by Storm Waves, Not Tsunami. The Journal of Geology, 120:3 (May 2012)
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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Brit Morin Engages $1.25M From Marissa Mayer, Aileen Lee, Founders Fund And More To Launch Her First App, Weduary
Brit Morin, the Martha Stewart of tech, is today announcing a $1.25 million seed round for her technology and content company Brit. The list of investors is actually pretty sympatico with "the next generation of lifestyle" branding of Brit & Co, with fashion-heavy Index Ventures, tech fashionista Marissa Mayer, KCPB's Aileen Lee, Tina Sharkey and Seth Goldstein, Kevin Colleran, Annabel Teal, General Catalyst Partners, Founders Fund Angel and DMGT all going in. In addition to the funding the company is also launching its first app, Weduary, which lets tech-savvy couples build their own attractive and dynamic wedding websites. The Facebook app, which users can try for free, lets prospective brides and grooms build a custom wedding website in four steps, leveraging the Facebook social graph to make it easy to import photos from Facebook, invite guests, coordinate registry details and other event RSVPs.whitney houston casket photo match play championship the national enquirer marie colvin cm punk cm punk lint
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