Gilani calls back Hina to brief parliamentarians

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has called back Hina from the United States to brief the parliamentarians over the situation.

Hina Rabbani Khar, who is visiting to the US, addressed General Assembly of United Nations on September 23.

Earler, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani had to participate in the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly but he cancelled his visit due to heavy floods in Sindh.

Space Technology Run Australia’s Mining Miracle

DAMPIER : The heavy clank of machinery rings out across a seemingly deserted Outback mine site as an invisible satellite signal fires Rio Tinto’s production line into motion.

Massive stackers and reclaimers begin the task of sifting through rust-coloured piles of rich iron ore, readying them for the rail journey hundreds of kilometres from mine to port.

It’s an industrious scene — with hardly a living being in sight.

“People frequently ask whether we have anyone working here at all,” one miner at Rio’s Dampier operations told AFP.

“Due to automation and stuff most people are pretty well tucked away from the heat. There’s not a lot of manual workers.”

Automation has long been a part of the mining industry, but advances in satellite, motion-sensor technology and robotics have made the stuff of science fiction a fact of everyday life.

Machines which scoop the ore, dump it on a conveyor belt and hose it down are now controlled from the air-conditioned comfort of Rio Tinto’s Perth operations centre, 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) away from the arid mine pit.

Hundreds of specially trained operators who once directed machines from on-site offices watch and direct the action from afar using satellite technology, with surveillance cameras feeding into some 440 monitors.

Once fully operational — currently scheduled for June — the operations centre will allow all of Rio’s rail, mine and port systems to be coordinated from one place.

Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto is one of the world’s biggest mining companies, with aluminium, copper, diamonds, gold and iron ore among its major products.

“Process plants have long been managed from a console — it’s just as if this task is now performed with a much, much longer extension cord,” Rio said in its latest innovations update.

“But never before, on anything like this scale, has the huge number of tasks been accomplished in full view and full knowledge of everyone else involved.”

The operations centre in Perth is central to Rio’s “Mine of the Future” programme, which aims for driverless trucks and trains, and sensor-fitted “smart drills” that can be operated remotely.

Since December 2008 it has been trialling automation technologies at a test site called “A-Pit”, where robotic trucks with artificial intelligence “learn” the layout of the mine and use sensors to sense and avoid obstacles.

Australian government scientists are working closely with the mining industry, drawing inspiration from space exploration to troubleshoot, explains researcher Ian Gipps.

“It sounds crazy but quite a few of the problems in space and in remote mining can be similar,” said Gipps, from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

“You don’t necessarily want to have people there… so a lot of exploration on planets requires automated and remote operating systems, particularly automated.”

Current research was focusing on the use of robots fixed with radar and light-spectrum technology to detect and gauge the quality of minerals, he added. It could be available in as little as two years.

“We want to be able to put sensors on machines that can look at the (rock) face and say, ‘the ore’s on one half of the face and not the other half of the face and the ore’s of a particular grade’,” Gipps said.

“You can’t just take a sample and send it off to a lab and get it back in 24 hours or 48 hours and say, ‘ok, we want to mine that area’. We want to know that within a couple of seconds of being there,” said Gipps.

The shift to automation is not without its challenges — chief among them securing vast satellite networks against cyber-attacks — but Gipps said it was critical to addressing chronic labour shortages.

“If the industry wants to keep on advancing then it has to make employment more attractive,” he said.

In the cyclone-prone and brutally hot Pilbara, the “A-Pit” trial is due to finish later this year. Its findings will form the basis for an operations-wide rollout of remote and driverless technologies.

Chief executive Tom Albanese hopes to position Rio as the world’s most technologically advanced mining company, describing it as key to the company’s ambitions to boost annual iron ore production above 600 million tonnes.

“Rio Tinto is changing the face of mining,” he said at the Mine of the Future’s 2008 launch.

But will humans ever be removed entirely from the equation? Gipps is sceptical.

“A lot of the challenge is getting machines to understand what’s happening around them,” he said. “It’s remarkable how clever a human is in doing that.”

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Space Technology Run Australia’s Mining Miracle was first posted on March 29, 2010 at 12:54 pm.
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Voyage to the bottom of the sea

Voyage to the bottom of the sea, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is a 1960s American Science Fiction television series based on the 1961 film of the same name. Both were created by Irwin Allen, which enabled the movie’s sets, costumes, props, special effects models, and sometimes footage, to be used in the production of the television series. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was the first of Irwin Allen’s four science fiction television series. The show’s main theme was underwater adventure.

Voyage was broadcast on ABC from September 14, 1964 to March 31, 1968, and was the decade’s longest-running American science fiction television series with continuing characters. The 110 episodes produced included 32 shot in black and white (1964–65), and 78 filmed in color (1965–68). The first two seasons took place in the then future of the 1970s. The final two seasons took place in the 1980s. The show starred Richard Basehart and David Hedison.

Cast
* Richard Basehart as Admiral Harriman Nelson
* David Hedison as Commander Lee Crane
* Bob Dowdell as Lieutenant Commander Chip Morton
* Henry Kulky as Chief “Curly” Jones (1st Season)
* Terry Becker as Chief Sharkey (2nd–4th Seasons)
* Del Monroe as Kowalski
* Arch Whiting as Sparks
* Paul Trinka as Patterson
* Allan Hunt as Riley (2nd Season)
* Richard Bull as the Doctor
* Wayne Heffley as Seaview Doctor (2nd Season 1965-66, 3 episodes)
* Paul Carr as Casey Clark (1st Season, Recurring afterwards only in stock footage scenes)

Source – wikipedia

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Voyage to the bottom of the sea was first posted on November 15, 2009 at 8:35 pm.

Voyage to the bottom of the sea

Voyage to the bottom of the sea, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is a 1960s American Science Fiction television series based on the 1961 film of the same name. Both were created by Irwin Allen, which enabled the movie’s sets, costumes, props, special effects models, and sometimes footage, to be used in the production of the television series. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was the first of Irwin Allen’s four science fiction television series. The show’s main theme was underwater adventure.

Voyage was broadcast on ABC from September 14, 1964 to March 31, 1968, and was the decade’s longest-running American science fiction television series with continuing characters. The 110 episodes produced included 32 shot in black and white (1964–65), and 78 filmed in color (1965–68). The first two seasons took place in the then future of the 1970s. The final two seasons took place in the 1980s. The show starred Richard Basehart and David Hedison.

Cast
* Richard Basehart as Admiral Harriman Nelson
* David Hedison as Commander Lee Crane
* Bob Dowdell as Lieutenant Commander Chip Morton
* Henry Kulky as Chief “Curly” Jones (1st Season)
* Terry Becker as Chief Sharkey (2nd–4th Seasons)
* Del Monroe as Kowalski
* Arch Whiting as Sparks
* Paul Trinka as Patterson
* Allan Hunt as Riley (2nd Season)
* Richard Bull as the Doctor
* Wayne Heffley as Seaview Doctor (2nd Season 1965-66, 3 episodes)
* Paul Carr as Casey Clark (1st Season, Recurring afterwards only in stock footage scenes)

Source – wikipedia

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Voyage to the bottom of the sea was first posted on November 15, 2009 at 8:35 pm.

Rebecca Romijn Husband

Model and actress, Rebecca Romijn, has told InStyle magazine in an interview for this months cover story that becoming a mother has made.

Rebecca Romijn Husband, Ugly Betty star Romijn and her husband, Jerry O’Connell, became parents to twins Charlie Tamara Tulip and Dolly Rebecca Rose.

Posing with her new twin daughters, she told the magazine:

“I feel as sexy as I have ever felt,”

“I’m a jeans size up from where I usually am, but there’s nothing about it that freaks me out — I’ve always said that sexy is having a really strong sense of yourself and never taking yourself too seriously.”

Showing off her post-pregnancy curves, she said that having kids has made her feel whole.

“All I want to do is stare into my babies’ eyes nonstop!” said Romijn.

The actress also spoke about how Jerry was a great father to the girls:

“He’s got endless amounts of energy, and he’s having such a blast with these girls,”

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Rebecca Romijn Husband was first posted on October 19, 2009 at 9:55 am.

Megan Fox Crowned Queen of the Geeks

LOS ANGELES: Megan Fox Crowned Queen of the Geeks,  Transformers beauty Megan Fox is the official queen of science fiction after fans voted her best actress of science fiction in the 2009 Spike TV Scream festival.

The main event, held Saturday at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, honors the best in science fiction, horror, fantasy and comic book inspired movies and television programs.

Fox received his award for his role in summer blockbuster Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the film also getting an award for special effects and Isabel Lucas receives a trophy for best new actress for her role as a seductive way , changing robot.

Twilight vampire movie won four awards – best fantasy film, best new actress for Taylor Lautner and the best fantasy players for stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.

Bloodsucking proved popular at the ceremony, with the hit television series True Blood landing four trophies to the best television, best villain and best actor and actress of horror, Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin.

Stars like Tobey Maguire, Jessica Alba, Kate Bosworth, Harrison Ford, Justin Long and Christina Ricci was on hand to present the awards.

Pirates of the Caribbean actor Johnny Depp made his father on the screen, the Rolling Stones rocker Keith Richards, with the Rock Immortal Award.

Accepting the award, Richards said: “I liked the living legend, he was fine, but even better is immortal.”

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Megan Fox Crowned Queen of the Geeks was first posted on October 19, 2009 at 12:13 pm.