Inspiration 365 Days!

The tireless tongue already controls taste and speech, helps kiss and swallow and fights germs. Now scientists hope to add one more ability to the mouthy muscle, and turn it into a computer control pad.

Georgia Tech researchers believe a magnetic, tongue-powered system could transform a disabled person’s mouth into a virtual computer, teeth into a keyboard - and tongue into the key that manipulates it all.

“You could have full control over your environment by just being able to move your tongue,” said Maysam Ghovanloo, a Georgia Tech assistant professor who leads the team’s research.

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A Filipino scientist says he has created a new composite building board made of chicken feathers that could be a major breakthrough for the construction industry in Asia.

The new material would be resistant to the region’s armies of termites, and could also solve a major environment problem in the Philippines by providing a way to dispose of millions of kilos of waste feathers each year.

The research done by University of the Philippines professor Menandro Acda is being heralded as economically and environmentally sound.

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Limbe Wildlife Centre caretaker Jonathan Kang, who overcame a lack of formal education growing up in his native Cameroon to become one of Africa’s top primate experts, has recently been selected as a Disney Conservation Hero. The programme rewards the dedication of individuals who, often at the risk of personal safety, work tirelessly to save animals, protect habitat and educate surrounding communities.

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Lowered into the sea by a team of local scuba divers, Mr Vittorio Innocente mounted the bike at a depth of 92ft (28m) and rode along a 360ft (110m) long underwater slope, dodging mud pools and rocky outcrops.

Continuing his descent, Mr Innocente, 62, smashed his own previous world record of 197ft (60m) which he set three years ago.

The Milan-born Italian set the new record in the waters of Portofino’s maritime marine reserve, at midday on Monday.

He took nine minutes of deep sea pedalling to reach the 213ft (65m) mark.

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When her beagle, Rocco, squeezed himself under the backyard gate and disappeared into the streets of Queens, 5-year-old Natalie Villacis refused to believe - as her parents reluctantly told her - that she would never see the puppy again.

That was in 2003.

Last weekend, Rocco came home - after being found in Georgia.

The prodigal pooch turned up in a shelter 850 miles away in Hinesville, and by a combination of chance and chip - the one embedded in his back - was reunited with Natalie, now 11, and her family.

Welcoming new twins into the world is always a momentous event.

But twins Ryan and Leo Gerth had an extra surprise for their parents—they were born with different colored skin: black and white. Doctors say it is an extremely rare occurrence, but it is possible if genes combine in a certain way. Experts say pairs of black and white twins are so rare they only occur in one in a MILLION births.

The twin boys, Ryan and Leo, born in Germany’s town of Lichtenberg, are the offspring of a mixed-race couple. Born to a Ghanaian mother and a German father, Ryan is white and Leo is black. Mum, Florence, 35, hails from Ghana in western Africa and dad, Stephan, 40, from Potsdam in Germany.

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Nikolay Sazhin almost knocked out his opponent with a blow to the chin in the second round. But he had to take the queen to win the match.

In front of 1,000 cheering fans one recent Saturday night, Sazhin moved his bishop to go in for the kill and won the world championship of chess boxing, a weird hybrid sport that combines as many as five rounds of pugilism with a game of chess.

The combatants switch back and forth between boxing and chess — repeatedly putting their gloves on and taking them off, so that they can move the pieces around the board without clumsily knocking them over — in a sort of brains-and-brawn biathlon.

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Using his trusty BB gun to help him return to Earth, a 48-year-old gas station owner flew a lawn chair rigged with helium-filled balloons more than 200 miles across the Oregon desert Saturday, landing in a field in Idaho.

Kent Couch created a sensation in the tiny farming community of Cambridge, Idaho, where he touched down safely in a pasture and was soon greeted by dozens of people who gave him drinks of water, local plumber Mark Hetz said.

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Abba quartet at Mamma Mia showing

The four members of pop group Abba have attended the Swedish premiere of Mamma Mia, the film which features 22 of their songs.

Several thousand fans cheered as Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Faltskog walked down the red carpet in Stockholm.

Lyngstad and Faltskog also embraced Meryl Streep, one of the movie’s stars.

The group had not met up since the original Mamma Mia musical opened in Sweden in February 2005, Lyngstad said.

Items confiscated from delinquent taxpayers - from brand-name lingerie to a model locomotive - are turning into a gold mine for cash-strapped local governments, who are auctioning them on the Internet.

In fiscal 2007, final auction prices for such items totalled nearly 4.68 billion yen (S$60 million), according to Yahoo Japan, which runs a special auction site for seized items and other government assets, the Asahi Shimbun reported.

That tidy sum is 100 times more than what similar auctions fetched in fiscal year 2004, when Yahoo Japan started the service.