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 Ash emissions from Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland were captures in images found online - Winds were blowing the ash accross Europe, causing international and local flights to remain grounded. All flights to and from Britain had been cancelled until today. Ashfall has been reported in Britain. Five million travelers are stranded, waiting for flights to resume. Some may be waiting for more than a week to find available seats. If flight disruptions continue into this week there will be a shortage of some food products in Britain, which normally come in by air from east Asia and Africa. The grounding of flights has already cost the British economy about £1 billion, with £230m losses for every day of further disruption. The initial eruption of Eyjafjallajokull volcano last month was basalt, while the new eruption under the glacier last week involved andesite.

Edit: New images & another spelling: Eyjafjallajökull

Eyjafjallajokull

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Even though Stan and Kyle have been friends for years, it doesn’t mean anything if Stan won’t “friend” him. Kyle “friended” the wrong person so now all his other friends are deserting him left and right. With his problem getting worse by the minute, Kyle turns to the one person who’s always been there for him.

South Park is an animated series featuring four boys who live in the Colorado town of South Park, which is beset by frequent odd occurrences. The show grew out of short film that Trey Parker and Matt Stone created called The Spirit of Christmas, and has become an award-winning show that is a unique blend of humor and satire. First air date: August 13, 1997 Original air time: Wednesday 10:00:00 pm (Eastern)

This week’s South Park is entitled “You’ve Got 0 Friends” and will deal exclusively with that special social phenomenon so dear to our hearts, Facebook. The episode will air on Wednesday and involves Kyle struggling to find friends on Facebook after friending the “wrong” friend. A preview clip, “I’ve Got Nobody” can be found on Youtube,

The last time South Park parodied an internet phenomenon it won an Emmy award for the episode. Titled “”Make Love, Not Warcraft” and parodying the popular online game, the episode garnered the South Park creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Performance. And if you haven’t seen it, please check it out for a good laugh (and a few groans).

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Introducing Translate for Animals (beta): Bridging the gap between animals and humans

Making the world’s information universally accessible is a key goal for Google. Language is one of our biggest challenges so we have targeted our efforts on removing language barriers between the species. We are excited to introduce Translate for Animals, an Android application which we hope will allow us to better understand our animal friends. We’ve always been a pet-friendly company at Google, and we hope that Translate for Animals encourages greater interaction and understanding between animal and human.

Translate for Animals is an application for Android phones that recognises and transcribes words and phrases that are common to a species, like cats for example. To develop Translate for Animals, we worked closely with many of the world’s top language synthesis teams, and with leaders in the field of animal cognitive linguistics, including senior fellows at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Take a tour of Translate for Animals!

• Step 1: How to begin

  On your Android phone, go to Android Market and search for “Translate for Animals” to download the app.

  

• Step 2. Opening the app

  Once the app is installed, touch the “Translate for Animals” app icon from the handset’s main menu to open it.

• Step 3: Selecting your animal to translate

  Once the app has opened touch the ‘translate from’ box. You will see a drop down menu open up. Choose from cat, dog, bird, rabbit, guinea pig, hamster, tortoise, horse, chicken, sheep, donkey, and pig.

  

• Step 4: Selecting your language

  Touch the ‘translate to’ box to open English as the choice of language.

  Only English is available currently.

  Note: We are currently working on this. You will soon be able to translate to most languages including Mongolian, Hindi, Cantonese, and Pig-Latin.

• Step 5: Recording your animal

  Make sure the animal you’d like to translate is calm and at-ease. Depending on the animal in question, you may wish to stroke or pet it as you bring the handset close to its mouth. Press the “Press to listen” button to record as it woofs, meows, neighs, oinks…

• Step 6: Processing the data

  Please be patient whilst the voice recognition software checks the recorded pet sounds against the millions of stored noises in the Animal Linguistic Database. This should only take a few seconds.

• Step 7: Transcribing the translation

  Once the data has been processed you will see an English transcript translation of what your animal has said. If you wish to hear it spoken press the speaker button to hear an audio version.

  Note: It is not Google’s responsibility if you are offended or disappointed by what your chosen animal may say. Also please note, we do not guarantee stimulating conversation.

• Step 8: Rewarding your pet

  Give your pet a treat to say thank you for the conversation and provide encouragment for all the ones you’ll have in the future. Good luck!

(Herbivores and omnivores are not known for their linguistic ability. Although it has been discovered that tortoises have expansive general knowledge.)

awesome

Source: http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/translateforanimals/tour.html

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