Here are some pretty awesome animatronics, which have been used in movies or commercials. These guy do this stuff for a living, and you can sure tell they're good at their work. Enjoy!

What can I say? I think that the footage speaks for itself. Steve-O, the popular character from Jackass, must've been on drugs or something. I just can't understand what was he thinking?!

The latest game from the popular franchise Grand Theft Auto is about to hit the streets. With GTA IV we can expect impressive graphics, immersive gameplay, and a new lead character. Let's hope that this sequel will live up to its name!

An action packed World of Warcraft awesome Music Video. What's special about this? Well this mage kicks the heck out of everything he encouters...

Small robots that walk on water like insects? The kitchen table, the walls of a room or the arms of an armchair that are self-cleaning? Two phenomena that Xiao Cheng Zeng, a professor of chemistry at University of Nebraska in Lincoln (USA), considers possible in the near future, and based on the same characteristic: super hidrofobia. Thanks to the computational performance of the super computer of the Riken Institute in Japan, the researcher is able to reproduce the conditions that give the area the property is to "roll" away the drops of water. In nature this phenomenon is observed on the bristles of caterpillars or on lotus flowers, and allows insects that often are seen on ponds slip skate on water. As the authors of the study reported the caterpillars or insects skaters get the super hydrophobia surface through a "two-tier" surface which means a waxy base on which there are microscopic structures like hair, often covered in turn by smaller "hair". These gradients decrease the surface area in contact with the drop of water. The result is that the drop rolls instead of sliding, as it would be a hydrophobic surface.

The new devices can operate at 30 degrees above zero, rather than less than 70. This is the characteristic of the new generation of semiconductors, researched at the Italian Institute for the Physics of Matter (INFM-CNR), and in the Ludwig Maximilian University in Monaco of Bavaria and the ETH Zurich (the study). Today there are two ways to record information on a medium: the electronic format, in which the binary language is the passage of electrons (the transistors) and magnetic (MRAM memory), more recently, in which the binary language is given by state of magnetization. To communicate these two systems could boost significantly the computational schemes, pending the distant quantum computer. Doubling the processing power and memory of a chip while maintaining the size, without the need to go in nano-scale (a scale, that is, a billionth of a meter) are just two of the technology that promises magnetic semiconductors suggest a near future. These devices were made over ten years ago, but so far required temperatures far below zero to work. The problem now seems outdated as the known semiconductors gallium arsenide containing traces of manganese, a metal which has ferromagnetic properties at around 200 degrees below zero. To increase the temperature threshold, above which the ferromagnetic behavior disappears, the researchers deposited on a semiconductor film of iron - metal known for its magnetic properties - the thickness of a few nanometers. Iron and manganese interacted so effectively that the new material, has a ferromagnetic behavior up to 30 degrees above zero, a jump of over a hundred degrees above the starting temperature. This result is a technological response parallel to that of the race to miniaturization and the research was selected the American Physical Society as one of the most important published in Physical Review Letters

A highly resistant and self lubricating material has been discovered, thanks to the formation of an oxide surface that captures the water vapor Hard as diamond and slippery as a sheet of ice. The secret of the extraordinary characteristics of Bam, a special alloy-ceramics produced by blending a mix of boron, aluminum and magnesium (AlMgB14) with titanium boride (TiB2), was unveiled by researchers of Ames Laboratory, in Iowa (Usa ), who had accidentally discovered it a decade ago. In 1999, researchers tried to obtain a substance capable of generating electricity if overheated, when, unexpectedly, found in the hands a league owned by the exceptional and seemingly inexplicable. The Bam is tough, despite possessing a complex structure, asymmetrical and not compact. Moreover, says Alan Russel of Iowa University, it is inherently slippery. One characteristic that, according to researchers, could be due to the formation on the surface of boron oxide, which can attract water molecules present in the air.

By comparing DNA of healthy and cancerous tissue of a single person, there were discovered eight new mutations linked to the disease. The study in Nature The complete genome of a person suffering from cancer was decoded for the first time. The comparison between the DNA of normal and cancerous tissue of a woman suffering from acute myeloid leukemia (AML) has identified ten mutations in the genome of cancer cells, including eight so far unknown, which would be linked to the disease. Researchers of the Washington University School of Medicine (USA), coordinated by Richard K. Wilson, presented their findings in Nature. Scientists have taken a sample of tissue from normal skin and a tumor tissue from bone marrow to a patient suffering from AML - cancer that affects the bone marrow cells that produce red blood cells. Subsequently they have decoded the DNA of the two tissues, comparing all three billion bases of which the genomes were composed, to go back to differences in disease characteristics of the individual. There were ten mutations identified, two already known, eight first ever linked to the disease. Of those, three were found in genes that normally can block the growth of tumors (for example in Ptprt, the tyrosine phosphatase gene, often altered in colon cancer). Four changes instead involved genes regulate the molecular pathways that promote tumor development - particularly in a family of genes, usually expressed in embryonic stem cells, which could stimulate cell renewal. A final disturbing deterioration instead of transporting drugs into the cell. According to scientists, these mutations have occurred one after another, each adding something new to the tumor.

An enzyme that can rewind the DNA at points where the two propellers should remain separate, even fatal, causing disturbances. The cause of some serious diseases, such as the rare immune-dysplasia of bone Schimke is a protein able to settle the two propellers of DNA at points in which they should remain separate and thus induce the expression of genes that would otherwise be idle. Under normal circumstances the DNA presents a series of "bubbles", namely the segments in which there is space between them and raggomitolate. The unusual alignment of the two parallel strips, led by newly discovered protein, called Harp (HEPA-related protein), reactivates the expression of genes in these traits, which may in this way to start even occurrence of very serious diseases. The enzyme is and was discovered by James Kadonaga and Timur Yusufzai, two biologists at the University of San Diego (California) authors whose research results were published in Science. Just as a zip, the enzyme flows on the tape of DNA tangles the lines and welding to the two separate entities, thereby according the traits of nucleic acid that ordinarily are designed to remain inactive. Exactly the opposite of what another enzyme, the "elicasi", which has the role to unwind the DNA during replication of the molecule, being essential for life. The protein discovery is only the first of an entire class of enzymes candidates to be the basis of occurrence of disorders characterized by cardiac or kidney malfunction, with even fatal effects on children.

A new technique, developed in the laboratories of the Foundation San Raffaele Biomedical Park, facilitates the process of regeneration of muscle tissue. Stem cells, modified at the level of genes, could permit the recovery of tissue degenerated from Duchenne muscular dystrophy (Dmd), even when the disease is in an advanced stage. This is a further step towards developing a therapy, which is being developed for some years by researchers of the Foundation San Raffaele Biomedical Park of Castel Romano, coordinated by Giulio Cossu, University of Milan. The research, published in Nature Medicine, was conducted by Cesare Gargioli and Marcello Coletta, along with Fabrizio de Grandis and Stefano Cannata at the Roman Tor Vergata. From previous studies and experiments on animal models it is known that mesangioblasti, stem cells normally associated with blood vessels, are able to spread easily and merge with and into the muscle tissue regenerating it (cell therapy). In advanced stages, however, this treatment had so far proven ineffective because of difficulties to penetrate between the muscle fibers. The degeneration, in fact, is accompanied by a process of inflammation followed by scarring tissue that impedes the provision of blood (and thus oxygen) to the muscles. Therefore, the muscle fibers are replaced with fatty tissue. To overcome the obstacle, the researchers genetically modified cells derived from the tendons (fibroblasts) so as to make them express the protein metalloproteasi 9 (Mmp9), a molecule that can degrade collagen that accumulates between fibres degeneration.

The asymmetry of the skull of flatfish is the result of a progressive adaptation of the species. A study in Nature The bizarre anatomy of flatfish had surprised even Charles Darwin, which had not managed to find an explanation for the asymmetry of their skull. All adult in this family - including the sole, turbot, halibut - in fact, have both eyes on the top of the head. But in fossils of fish of their progenitors, this feature was absent. The mystery of the asimmetric skull is now being revealed by a study carried out by Matt Friedman, a researcher at the Committee on Evolutionary Biology and the University of Chicago and State Department of Geology at the Field Museum and published in Nature: in the Eocene era, about 50 million years ago, there were fish with intermediate characteristics. The U.S. researcher says it is enough to review the collections of fossils preserved in museums in some European countries (Italy, France, Austria, United Kingdom) to be able to find two kinds primitive - Amphistium, described for the first time more than 200 years ago, and the Heteronectes, unknown until now - in which the eye migration is partial. "We discovered thus an intermediate stage of development of these species," said Friedman, "showing that the asymmetry of the head of the fish we know today is the result of a gradual natural evolution."

It was finally demonstrated how atoms arrange themselves inside the materials. This opens new possibilities for designing ultraresistant objects. Glass is a material called 'amorphous', whose atoms that is, are not disposed in a regular type structures crystal. The substance is not considered a solid but, rather, a liquid with very high viscosity. An international research team, led by Paddy Royall University of Bristol (Great Britain), in collaboration with Japanese and Australian scholars, is now able to demonstrate that during the solidification particles have in-shaped structures that prevent the icosahedron formation of crystals. Unlike solid crystalline form, in which the atoms are fixed to one another by chemical bonds into regular geometric structures, glass appears' solid 'just because the movement of each particle is physically prevented by the presence of other neighbouring atoms. The particles, that is, hinder each other. It was thus finally confirmed, with a simulation test, a 50 years old theory that explains many of the characteristics of this material and that could allow us to build, for example, non-crystalline metals much more resistant than traditional ones.

A study conducted by an Italian and published on Pnas shows that healthy cells, if required to "diet", have an increased resistance to stress caused by the drugs compared with those ill. Fasting can be a weapon against the heavy effects of chemotherapy. Just as the fight against cancer concentrates its efforts on the so-called magic bullets, drugs capable of selectively target diseased cells from laboratories of the University of Southern California shows a new paradigm: protect healthy cells and then go furiously only against those sick . A team led by biologist Italian Valter Longo, which involved the United States laboratories and the hospital Gaslini of Genoa, has discovered a kind of magic screen that healthy cells (as a result of caloric restriction) have as a defense against chemotherapy. The results of the study appeared on Pnas Early Edition (here a link to the video.)

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have been able to associate a brain activation pattern to the memory of an image. According to a study in Nature. Reading the thoughts of other people is not yet possible, but scientists are working on it. One tool developed by Jack L. Gallant and collaborators at the University of Berkeley (California) is able to recognize an image that a person has just seen through his brain activity. Two of the authors of the study published in Nature - Kendrick Kay and Thomas Naselaris - were submitted in person by observing the experiment at random photographs from a group of 120 during brain scans using functional magnetic resonance (fMri). The results of fMri, combined with a mathematical model, have served to associate the images neuronal activity that a person has just had before our eyes.