Tuesday 27 December 2011

DIRECT TV Christmas Monster Ad


Very funny foreign Direct TV ad, featuring all  your favourite horror characters :)

Tuesday 20 December 2011

Nano-Engineered Bioconstructs Perform Photosynthesis Faster Than Nature Does



Cyanobacteria Synechococcus PCC 7002, a type of cyanobacteria. Wikimedia Commons
Scientists have been trying for a while now to recreate the process of photosynthesis, using sunlight and water to spark chemical reactions. Now a team from Penn State University has done one better, producing an engineered biological system that can produce a hydrogen biofuel twice as fast as nature.
The system uses a molecular wire to facilitate fast movement of electrons between light-capturing enzymes, which are used to split water into molecular oxygen and hydrogen. It could someday serve as a fast and reliable way to derive hydrogen for use in fuel cells.
Researchers led by Carolyn Lubner at Penn State worked with a cyanobacterium calledSynechococcus and another bacterium,Clostridium acetobutylicum. In nature, photosynthetic organisms use light-capturing enzymes nicknamed Photosystem I and II, which absorb light and excite electrons to a higher energy state. Another enzyme called FNR then uses these electrons to produce an energy-storage molecule. This molecule is used to make sugars to keep the organism alive, and that's your basic photosynthesis process.
Lubner et al replaced the FNR enzyme with a hydrogenase enzyme, which combines electrons with hydrogen ions to make molecular hydrogen (instead of a sugar-producing system). Then they used this enzyme to stitch together iron-based terminals of a Photosystem I enzyme from each of the bacteria. This stitch served as a molecular wire, easily and quickly transferring electrons. The researchers doped it with vitamin C, which served as the electron feedstock.
The result was a high-throughput hydrogen-producing system — electron flow was more than twice as high as the bacteria’s individual rates, the authors say. It produced hydrogen molecules for several hours, as long as it had vitamin C to use. The system is easily adaptable to other enzyme terminals and other bacteria, the authors say. As such, it could be used to produce a wide range of potential biofuels.

Night of the Living Dead: Resurrection




North Bank Entertainment, the UK production company behind Ruggero Deodato's forthcoming The House on the Edge of the Park Part II, Independent Moving Pictures and Mad Science Films have released the first trailer for Night of the Living Dead: Resurrection, a British version of the 1968 horror classic.

The film is the debut feature of director James Plumb, with the script co-written by James Plumb and Andrew Jones. It was shot on location in Carmarthenshire, Swansea and Cardiff in South Wales, UK.

"In 2012 the deceased have risen from their graves with only one instinct: to feed on the living. As academics speculate on the scientific cause of the phenomena, theologians point to the Armageddon foretold in the Book of Revelation. As the cities are overrun and civilization crumbles, a family take refuge from the undead army in an isolated farmhouse in West Wales. But the greatest threat is already among them."

Wednesday 7 December 2011

The Munsters are back!




This will NOT be a remake of the original 1964 series that starred Fred Gwynne, Al Lewis and Yvonne De Carlo as a family of friendly monsters have misadventures never quite realizing why people react to them so strangely.

The modern take will instead be strange hybrid of the popular comedy "Modern Family" and HBO's "True Blood". While the series will be dark there will be a lot of heart and comedic elements. While I'm a huge fan of Bryan Fuller's "Dead Like Me", his "Pushing Daisies" never grabbed my attention, and frankly neither were any good at character development. The follow, though, gives me some series hope. There are a lot of interesting people moving into 1313 Mockingbird Lane...

The pilot episode, which is to be directed by Bryan Singer - who also was behind the camera for the "House" pilot, Superman Returns and X-Men - will focus on 10-year-old Eddie Munster who is unaware that he's a werewolf, and that his family is composed of terrifying creatures. The madness begins when a baby bear attacks a scouting trip, only it turns out that this "bear" is actually Eddie transformed into a werewolf. Eddie is unaware of his metamorphosis and it forces the family to move in order to protect the family secret. The coming of age story gets weirder as he fights against his family when he learns of a shocker: they're a family of flesh-eaters!

A few other random character notes: Lily Munster has an eating disorder and eats suicide victims. Grandpa Munster is a 600-year-old shapeshifter, and Marilyn Munster was adopted when her mother tried to eat her as a baby.

THE THREE STOOGES!


This could be extremely stupid, or highly entertaining!