Technology
A young man in Angelholm, in the South of Sweden, has been arrested after apparently trying to create a nuclear reactor in his kitchen.
The young man's story appears in Helsingsborgs Dagblad, a Swedish language local paper in the area.
The 31-year-old tells the paper that he was able to buy radioactive waste from foreign companies and picked apart the components in a smoke detector (apparently older smoke detector contain nuclear material). He believes he spent between $5,000 and $6,000 on the project in total.
It was only later when the young man contacted Sweden's nuclear power agency that he realized his project was illegal. Police came to his apartment and confiscated the material. The young man was arrested but later released.
He told HD:
I've always been interested in nuclear physics and particle physics. I have read many books about it and wanted to see if it worked. I just thought of it as an experiment.
A little further digging finds some more information on the web - the young man had kept a blog that detailed his efforts. The blog, titled "Richard's Reactor", begins:
My project is to build a working nuclear reactor. Not to gain electricity, just for fun and to see if it's possible to split atoms at home.
One post shows the results of one of "Richard's" attempts:
A meltdown on my cooker!!!
As politicians in Maryland ponder the question of gay marriage, a group of activists from Protect Marriage Maryland try to persuade them that gay love will inevitably lead to the worst possible outcome. That's right: Marriage between humans and artificial intelligence. Listen to the evidence!
At a meeting with politicians about gay marriage, this Star Trek fan explains how if we "set the precedent" of marriage between any two people who love each other, it could open the door for people to marry androids like Data. The guy has obviously thought a lot about this, since he knows about Data's whole "gaining emotions" plot arc.
What's great about this guy is that he's like a Protect Marriage activist from the future, come to warn us about the growing human-robot love problem. And I think he's right. Gay marriage leads to robot marriage - which is exactly what I'm hoping for. Bender would understand.
Playing video games before bedtime may give people an unusual level of awareness and control in their dreams, LiveScience has learned.
Dreams and video games both represent alternate realities, according to Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada. But she pointed out that dreams arise biologically from the human mind, while video games are technologically driven by computers and gaming consoles.
"If you're spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it's practice," said Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada. "Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams."
David Muir who decided to look up his road when the Internet site went live this week.
The website provides a detailed view of every street in the country, using images captured by a special 360 degree camera mounted on top of a car.
But anyone logging on to Whitehall Road in West Bromwich are likely to find a shadow looming in the skies.
Look upwards and there appears to be a giant pair of pliers about to strike a chimney of one of the homes in the terraced street.
Rudy Heeman, who lives in the South Island city of Nelson, requisitioned a gas bottle from the family barbecue, parts from his wife's car, and the control lever from his daughter's motor scooter for his creation.
Looking like a conventional hovercraft but with the addition of detachable wings, the vehicle cruises at 56mph when flying, has a range of more than 140 miles, and reaches a height of about 10 feet.
It is powered by a 1.8-litre engine.
On the www.trademe.co.nz auction website the sale has already received more than 100,000 hits, has shot past the reserve price of NZ$20,000 (£9,300), and has attracted a long string of questions from viewers.
Mr Heeman, who has been building hovercrafts as a hobby in his back yard for more than 13 years, said this is his first flying model.
He says on the website: "It has been called all sorts of things, including aircraft, aeroplane, hovercraft and flying boat.
"It is in fact a WIG [a wing in ground effect] in the form of a hovercraft
"This machine is fast and furious, it roars like a lion and is not for the faint-hearted. It is adrenalin-pumping and exciting.
