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Invention Will Delight Taste Buds

July 28, 2008 by Rich

Virginia Tech students are known for their inventions, and the latest one may have you going bananas.

Most of us love chocolate and crave a banana split from time to time. So why not combine the two?

“We thought it would be fun to play with bananas and chocolate,” says Sabrina Hannah.
Some Food Science and Technology students have invented something called banana splitters. They are made up of frozen bite-sized slices of banana filled with frozen yogurt and then covered in chocolate. It’s hard to believe no one has thought of this before.
“We found that surprising, too,” says Kevin Holland. “There’s a frozen chocolate banana out there covered in chocolate, but no one ever thought to put the frozen yogurt in the banana.”
Making the banana splitters isn’t as easy as it sounds. The students had to find a liquid solution to prevent the bananas from going brown. They also tested it for safety and shelf life. But what many of you want to know is, does it taste good?
“We conducted a consumer test and the response was excellent,” says Annie Aigster.
The novelties are not on the market right now but they have received a patent. All they need now is a marketer

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novelty
Something new and unusual; an innovation

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Created by Daniel Rozen this incredible wooden mirror is made up of 830 tiny wood each controlled by a small motor. A camera gathers light and shape data and sends it to a computer which then shifts the panels to create the image in front of the device. The can’t provide a detailed image but still it’s pretty cool to see and hear those little wooden pieces move and mimic everything you do

What a strange mirror is

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Heckling parrot banned from karaoke club

Wednesday, July 30, 2008
A talkative parrot has been banned from a karaoke club after he kept interrupting performers with cries of: 'Get him off!'

Squawky talky: Joe Stafford and Maxie were both barred

Maxie, a yellow-crowned Amazon parrot, was kicked out of the Brighton pier club with his owner Joe Stafford, who takes the bird with him wherever he goes.
Staff said the squawking critic, who auditioned for Pirates Of The Caribbean, was barred 'for safety' under a no animals policy.
Mr Stafford, from Chelsea, west London, said: 'I can't believe they banned him from the pier. He just wanted to enjoy the karaoke
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Heckle
To try to embarrass and annoy (someone speaking or performing in public) by questions, gibes, or objections; badger
squawk
a. To utter a harsh scream; screech
b. Informal To complain or protest noisily or peevishly

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How to find the perfect mate in the frog chorus

by JOEL TAYLOR - Wednesday, July 30, 2008
It is something a lot of men would love to be able to do - tune in and out of the constant natter of women.

A concave-eared torrent frog: la la la, can't hear you

But one species of frog can do just that - block out the calls of members of the opposite --- until he hears one he likes the sound of.
The concave-eared torrent frog has an easy time finding a mate despite living by fast-flowing mountain streams which are louder than most nightclubs
'Humans pretty much have to shout at one another to be heard here,' said researcher Dr Albert Feng.
'But the frog doesn't shout, instead it sings like a bird either in audible chirp-like frequencies or by emitting very high-pitched ultrasonic sounds.
'Then it simply singles out a female frog which it likes.'
The frogs, which live in Huangshan Hot Springs, central China, are able to open and close the Eustachian tubes inside the ear, which in other animals remain constantly open.
'We said, "Woah, this is bizarre",' added Dr Feng, from the University of Illinois, in the US.
The system is already being used as a model for 'intelligent' hearing aids

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Meet the £40,000 virtual rocking horse

Thursday, July 31, 2008
The makers of this virtual horse hope they are on to a racing certainty.

Called a Ridemaster Pro, it combines a mechanical horse with sensors and a screen, enabling riders to trot, canter or carry out tricky manoeuvres.
'You don't need a dressage arena because it's not going anywhere,' said the gadget's makers, Racewood Simulators

'You can put it in a small room or a shed.' But it does not come cheap - £40,000 a system
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trot
of a horse) to go at a gait between a walk and a run, in which the legs move in diagonal pairs, but not quite simultaneously, so that when the movement is slow one foot at least is always on the ground, and when fast all four feet are momentarily off the ground at once

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Giant crocs once swam in Channel

by MILES ERWIN - Thursday, July 31, 2008
If you go for a dip in the Channel these days, the worst thing you face is raw sewage or being hit by a ferry.

A crocodile. Not swimming in the English Channel.

But 50million years ago, it was more the threat of giant crocodiles, great white sharks and sea snakes that would have preyed on your mind.
In those times, the area between Paris and London was a tropical lagoon teeming with the most diverse marine life on the planet, say Natural History Museum researchers

Our shallow waters were more akin to the seas around Indonesia or Thailand today, with their hot and humid weather, too. The only creatures missing would be mammals such as whales and dolphins, which were only just evolving, said the museum's palaeontologist, Dr Jon Todd.
The discovery followed a study, published in the journal Science, of how tropical hotspots move around the planet in line with the shifting of tectonic plates. Sadly, much like any decent weather, the warmth moved on.
The sticky climate changed completely over the next 30million years as the plates moved and built mountains in the Middle East.
European waters were isolated from the warmth of the Indian ocean and the heat moved to the more familiar location of south-east Asia.
Fossils at the museum proved a critical piece of the puzzle, said fellow palaeontologist Dr Ken Johnson.
'They allowed us to map out the changing geographical spread of tropical biodiversity as the hotspot hopped around the world,' he said
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lagoon
an area of shallow water separated from the sea by low sandy dunes
palaeontologist
a specialist in paleontology
paleontology
the science of the forms of life existing in former geologic periods, as represented by their fossils

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Fat N.J. cat's origins uncovered: He was abandoned




AP Photo: In this photo provided by Disney-ABC Domestic Television, host Regis Philbin pets Powder, a 44-pound...
Thu Jul 31, 8:46 PM ET


BLACKWOOD, N.J. - A 44-pound cat found lumbering around New Jersey was abandoned by a woman who said her home was foreclosed, an animal shelter official said Thursday
The porky white cat found Saturday became a local media sensation and was dubbed "Princess Chunk". But the animal is really a male whose name is Powder.
Jennifer Anderch, director of the Camden County Animal Shelter, said Thursday that the cat's owner came forward to describe the animal's background.
Anderch said she's received hundreds of calls from people seeking to adopt Powder.
The cat appeared Thursday on "Live With Regis and Kelly." A veterinarian on the show examined it and determine he was indeed a male.
The largest cat on record weighed 46 pounds, 15 ounces. That cat, who lived in Australia, died in the 1980s. The Guinness World Records has since dropped the category, fearing cat owners might harm their animals in an attempt to break the record.

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Meet Evie the balled eagle

Monday, August 4, 2008

Fetch boy

They are one of the most majestic creatures on the planet – but even eagles love a game of fetch, if Evie is anything to go by.
The white-tailed sea eagle, who has a 2.5m (8ft) wingspan, swoops to grab tennis balls from the water, then brings them back to her owner George Hedges. She can even catch them in mid-air.
'One day, by sheer accident, Evie saw a ball on the lawn and grabbed it. Now it's her toy,' said Mr Hedges, a falconry expert

'When she fetches it, her reward is a piece of fish like mackerel or trout, a day-old chick or a piece of meat like rabbit.'
White-tailed sea eagles were wiped out in Britain in 1918 but, after a long conservation drive, at least 36 breeding pairs can be found in the wilds of west Scotland alone.

Here's your ball back

But Evie, who lives under Mr Hedges' wing with 18 other birds at his falconry in Dartmoor, Devon, is far removed from such conservation worries. She is much more concerned about where her next ball game is coming from
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wingspan
The linear distance between the extremities of an airfoil
swoop
To move in a sudden sweep: The bird swooped down on its prey
falconry
the art of training hawks to hunt

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Beached Seal zooms in on Klum's bum

Monday, August 4, 2008


Singer Seal manages to beach himself in the perfect position to get a close range snap of his wife's rear end, as the pair holiday together with their family.
German supermodel Heidi Klum was happy to give her novice paparazzo hubby a helpful pointer in which direction to point his lens as she posed on the sun-drenched beach with her fish net.
Nearby sunbathers were allowed to witness the couple's photography class on the shores of Porto Cervo in Sardinia as they attempt to fill the holiday album
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paparazzo
a freelance photographer, esp. one who takes candid pictures of celebrities for publication
drench
Word History: Drink and drench mean quite different things today, but in fact they share similar origins, and, historically, similar meanings. Drink comes from a prehistoric Germanic verb *drinkan, from the Germanic root *drink- meaning "drink." Another form of this root, *drank-, could be combined with a suffix *-jan that was used to form causative verbs, in this case *drankjan, "to cause to drink." The descendant of the simple verb *drinkan in Old English was drincan (virtually unchanged), while the causative verb *drankjan was affected by certain sound shifts and became Old English drencan, pronounced (drěnchŏn), and, in Middle and Modern English, drench. In Middle English drench came to mean "to drown," a sense now obsolete; the sense "to steep, soak in liquid" and the current modern sense "to make thoroughly wet" developed by early Modern English times. Drink and drench are not the only such pairs in English, where one verb comes from a prehistoric Germanic causative; some others include sit and set ("to cause to sit"), lie and lay ("to cause to lie"), and fall and fell ("cause to fall").

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Rolling Stallone gathers Kate Moss

Monday, August 4, 2008

Sly words: Kate looks extremely interested in Stallone's wise words
We'd love to know what Rocky legend Sly Stallone has said to make Kate Moss look so interested! He rolled into party island Ibiza with his family, where he and Moss enjoyed the sun and a cheeky smoke.
As Sly, 62, sucked on a whopping cigar, Moss puffed on two cigarettes as she enjoyed lunch on the beach with Stallone and his wife Jennifer Flavin, 39
And as if this wasn't enough she couldn't put the ciggies down as she joined her showbiz buddies on a yacht to continue with her nicotine session.
With a fag in one hand, another one in her mouth and holding a bottle of wine Moss ditched her supermodel prowess to for partying.

Borat: Moss smokes two ciggies as she chats to Borat look-a-likes

The group were kept entertained as they soaked up the sun with a continuous supply of cigarettes and alcohol.
The 34-year-old has been hanging out in Ibiza where she has been letting her hair down on the party island.
She has been holidaying with her mother Linda and seven-year-old daughter Lila Grace and a group of -male pals on a yacht moored off the island of Formentera
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prowess
a. exceptional or superior ability, skill, or strength: his prowess as a public speaker
b.a valiant or daring deed