Hello from Earth! is a program by COSMOS, an Australian science magazine. Using the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, it will transmit Internet user-submitted messages to Gliese 581d, a potentially Earth-like planet approximately 20 light years away. You have until August 24th to submit your 160-character message. Registration is required.

What message would you send to this distant planet?

http://www.hellofromearth.net/gliese581d/home/index.htm via Geekologie

A recent study published in the journal Current Biology suggests that facial expressions may be culturally-bound, rather than universal:

University of Glasgow researchers enlisted 13 Western Caucasians and 13 East Asians. They had everyone examine pictures of expressive faces that were labeled according to a recognized western system called the Facial Action Coding System. The faces were purported to be happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry or neutral, and the participants categorized them as such. Turns out the East Asians were less likely to categorize the faces by Western standards.

By tracking the subject’s eye movements, researchers concluded that Westerners look at whole faces. But Easterners kept their focus mainly on the eye region. So while Westerners may use their whole faces to show that they’re elated, Easterners may express that feeling mainly around their eyes. Which means that facial expressions are not a universal language. That’s a fact that international travelers are sooner or later forced to face.

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Image by flickr user Psalinas used under creative commons license

(YouTube Link)

At the age of six, Miko Andres from the Philippines is thought to be the world's youngest competitive practical shooter. Practical shooting is a sport in which participants shoot rapidly at multiple targets around an obstacle course. His father says:

"As a growing, normal kid, Miko is also into other children's games. He enjoys the company of his schoolmates.

"Miko is very young but is determined to excel in the practical shooting sport," says Mike.

"He has been taught a lot of discipline and respect.

"Miko, I and his team coach, constantly talk about the dangers of the sport and we are always reminding him that he is in a 'big boys' game and that safety of of the utmost importance."

Link via Samizdata

Still in the concept stage, the Touch Color is a device that would allow visually impaired people to create two-dimensional art:

This innovative device comprises a Rainbow Picker in a form of a scroll wheel, which contains Braille dots that allows blind people to select a color from 24 available. After selecting a color, this device differentiates the colors by generating varied temperatures through LED bulbs. Then the user can paint on a thermal art board by using their fingers and the thermal-color display technology keeps the track of the lines and colors the blind artist is using.

There are more pictures and diagrams of this gadget at the link.

Link via GearFuse

Orange County Choppers, the New York-based custom motorcycle shop, is famous for its loud, raked-back choppers. The shop is also the scene of the TLC reality show American Chopper. Recently, OCC worked with Siemens to develop an electric motorcyle:

On Wednesday, Siemens, the electronics and electrical engineering global powerhouse, unveiled the Smart Chopper it commissioned from the renowned custom motorcycle outfit. Siemens claims the bike has a 60-mile range and a 100 mph top speed. An onboard charging unit can be plugged into any 110-volt socket to charge the bike in five hours, and Siemens says it’ll charge in as little as one hour when plugged into a higher-voltage station. A single-speed, clutch-less transmission delivers the power from a 27-hp electric motor.

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Astronomers with the Wide Area Search for Planets have discovered a planet, dubbed WASP-17, that is twice the size of Jupiter. That makes it the largest planet ever discovered. Unlike any other planet discovered so far, it orbits opposite to its star's direction of rotation. Astronomer David Anderson from Keele University:

"Newly formed solar systems can be violent places. Our own Moon is thought to have been created when a Mars-sized planet collided with the recently formed Earth and threw up a cloud of debris. A near collision during the early, violent stage of this planetary system could well have caused a gravitational slingshot, flinging WASP-17 into its backwards orbit."

But why is WASP-17 so big? The discovery team suggests that have been subjected to intense tides as it travelled in its strange and highly-elliptical orbit, causing it to become stretched and bloated.

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Ebay user tully712 made a go-cart modeled after the Batmobile in the movies Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. He's selling plans for it and a license to build it. The bidding currently stands at $29.88. More pictures and videos at the link.

Link via Oh Gizmo!

Remarkable talent, don't you think? Kieron Williamson of Norfolk, UK didn't draw anything a year ago, but now he's had first gallery exhibition:

Spurred on by images on the Internet and in art books - and the postcard-perfect outdoor studio that's all around him in Norfolk, on England's east coast, Kieron Williamson has churned out a succession of landscapes and village scenes that have critics decades older raising their eyebrows.

"I was the youngest in the class," recalled Kieron of his only formal training ever. "Everyone else were grownups." Asked whether that bothered him, he told Roth that during class, he simply "didn't think about 'em."

Link and link via J-Walk Blog

I can't find out much information about this bed -- just some pictures listed on a real estate site. Yup, it's for sale at $364,900. Comes with a house in Visalia, CA and a guarantee of perpetual virginity, like the AT-AT bed.

Link via Topless Robot

A rescue robot that picks up victims and takes them inside of itself. What could possibly go wrong?

The Robocue is operated by the Tokyo Fire Department and used to extract people from areas where rescue workers can't go safely. It then uses pincers to pull a person on to a conveyor belt and inside its protective walls. Video at the link.

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The Origami Crane Lamp is a chandelier by Michele Varian, a New York-based fashion designer and interior decorator. It measures 58" long is lit fluorescently.

Link via Nerd Approved

These shelves, inspired by the classic video game Donkey Kong, are the perfect place to store your valuable, fragile possessions.

Via CrunchGrear, which found it on a list of ten pieces of furniture inspired by video games. I think that this may be the original page for the Donkey Kong shelves, but it's written in German (?), so I'm not sure. Would any Neatoramanauts like to take a stab at translating it?

More awesome than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? I don't know yet, but the novel Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber looks promising. Here's a synopsis:

When the Imperial prison barge Purge–temporary home to five hundred of the galaxy’s most ruthless killers, rebels, scoundrels, and thieves–breaks down in a distant, uninhabited part of space, its only hope appears to lie with a Star Destroyer found drifting, derelict, and seemingly abandoned. But when a boarding party from the Purge is sent to scavenge for parts, only half of them come back–bringing with them a horrific disease so lethal that within hours nearly all aboard the Purge die in ways too hideous to imagine.

And death is only the beginning.

The Purge’s half-dozen survivors–two teenage brothers, a sadistic captain of the guards, a couple of rogue smugglers, and the chief medical officer, the lone woman on board–will do whatever it takes to stay alive. But nothing can prepare them for what lies waiting aboard the Star Destroyer amid its vast creaking emptiness that isn’t really empty at all. For the dead are rising: soulless, unstoppable, and unspeakably hungry.

Schreiber has a blog, where you can find pictures of his zombified Storm Troopers staggering around ComicCon, promoting his book.

http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/starwars/deathtroopers/ via Double Plus Undead

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This touching song by Daniel Strange and Kevin Umbricht describes the private lives of G.I. Joe characters when they're not busy fighting.  Featuring Cobra Commander dancing and starring Sgt. Slaughter as himself.

Via Topless Robot

A new generation of hearing aids will be able to block out background noise and let users directly jack into music:

On Friday Mr Hughes had tiny titanium screws drilled into bone behind each ear during a 90-minute operation under general anaesthetic. Once the wounds heal and the screws have fused with bone, abutments will be screwed into the implants, and the processors, about the size of a postage stamp, are clicked into place.

Older-style hearing aids amplify all sounds, making it almost impossible for wearers to hear conversations in noisy environments. They also interfere with frequencies used by mobile and fixed phones and often emit high-pitched whistling sounds. But the newer processors, costing about $6000 each, shut out background noise, giving users up to 25 per cent better hearing, and can be attached directly to MP3 music players or wireless headsets for talking on the phone, Cochlear's territory manager, Katrina Martin, said.

Link via Popular Science