Steven Seagal emotion chart

Stretching crystals promises flexible colour displays

http://technology.newscientist.com/article...r-displays.html

Stretching crystals promises flexible colour displays
13:46 24 August 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Belle Dumé


The first full-colour display made from a single material could turn the market for flat and flexible displays on its head. Commercial screens based on the technology could be available on the high street in as little as two years, says the Canadian team who built the device.

The pixels in the device are made from photonic crystals similar in structure to the natural gemstone opal. Each crystal is made from silica microspheres in a repeating 3D pattern which blocks certain wavelengths of light, or colours, while reflecting others. Altering the colour of the pixel is simply a matter of changing the spacing between the microspheres, which is achieved by stretching the material...

Michael Jackson moves to India, and...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDKcevMFUCo

'Altruistic' chimps act for the benefit of others

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/e...-of-others.html

'Altruistic' chimps act for the benefit of others
16:59 25 June 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Nora Schultz



Chimps happily help out unrelated chimps and unfamiliar humans, even if it means exerting themselves for no reward, a new study shows.

True altruism – unselfish acts for another's benefit – was until recently considered uniquely human. Usually when animals cooperate, they either help relatives – thereby increasing chances of passing shared genes to the next generation – or they count on having favours returned in the future.

Now Felix Warneken and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have found that 12 out of 18 semi-wild chimpanzees went out of their way to help an unfamiliar human who was struggling to reach a stick...

Monkeys use 'baby talk' to sooth infants not mums

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1253...s-not-mums.html

Monkeys use 'baby talk' to sooth infants not mums
11:44 24 August 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi


Female rhesus macaques seem to use "baby talk" to get the attention of another monkey's infant

Baby talk

Female rhesus monkeys attract other mothers' newborns with a form of "baby talk" that serves a similar function to the high-pitched babbling sounds humans make around babies, a study suggests.

Some non-human primates, such as rhesus macaques and squirrel monkeys, make unusual sounds, particularly grunts and nasal whines known as "girneys", in the presence of infants of their own species. In 1989, a group of researchers from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Maryland, US, found evidence that squirrel monkey's use special sounds to interact with their young.

However, in the case of macaques, experts have previously speculated that these sounds may be meant to reassure a baby's mother that the infant will not be harmed. This is because female rhesus macaques are often aggressive and careless around infants that do not belong to them, and because the animals rarely make the sounds around their own young...