Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

(I wanna know if John Leeson is going to voice K-9, I met him at a Phoenix Dr. Who convention. Nice guy. According to IMDB, he's still around, and I was quite pleasantly surprised to see he appeared on 'Allo 'Allo.)

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=1&id=35801

Who's K9 Gets Own Show

The BBC reported that the children's TV channel Jetix Europe is developing a show spun off of the hit Doctor Who series, centered on K9, the Doctor's trusty robot dog. K-9 Adventures will feature an updated version of K9 and will mix live action and computer animation.

Jetix Europe is joining forces with former Doctor Who designer Paul Tams and K9 co-creator Bob Baker for the 26-episode series. Baker co-wrote the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit feature film.

K9 first appeared on Doctor Who between 1977 and 1981 and returns for an episode airing April 29 of BBC1's new Doctor Who revival. K9 also appeared in a 1981 one-off show, K9 and Company, and the 1983 special The Five Doctors.

Meanwhile, the BBC announced that it has added new cast members to its own Doctor Who spinoff series, Torchwood, joining star John Barrowman as Capt. Jack Harkness.

Burn Gorman (Bleak House) will play Torchwood's resident medic, Owen Harper. Eve Myles will play Gwen Cooper. Naoko Mori will reprise her role as Toshiko Sato, a scientist who first appeared in the Who episode "Aliens of London." Filming on Torchwood begins in Cardiff next month, and the series will hit British TV screens later this year.

QUICK! Open a MySpace account! :-)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20060428/hl_hsn/fullsociallivesmayprotectagainstalzheimers

Full Social Lives May Protect Against Alzheimer's

FRIDAY, April 28 (HealthDay News) -- Social networks -- such as having close friends and staying in contact with family members -- help protect against the damaging effects of Alzheimer's disease, a new U.S. study finds.

"Many elderly people who have the tangles and plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease don't clinically experience cognitive impairment or dementia," Dr. David A. Bennett of the Rush University Medical Center's Alzheimer's Disease Center, Chicago, said in a prepared statement. "Our findings suggest that social networks are related to something that offers a 'protective reserve' capacity that spares them the clinical manifestations of Alzheimer's disease," he said.

The study included 89 elderly people without known dementia taking part in the Rush Memory and Aging Project. While they were alive, each provided information about their social networks and underwent 21 cognitive performance tests each year. After they died, their brains were analyzed.

The larger a person's social network, the less effect the tangles and plaques had on their cognitive test scores. This protective effect was noted across different kinds of cognitive abilities but was most evident for semantic memory, which contains knowledge about the world and is involved in language and other uniquely human cognitive processes.

The study currently appears online in The Lancet Neurology and is expected to be published in the May print issue of the journal.

"Identifying factors associated with the ability to tolerate the pathology of Alzheimer's has important implications for disease prevention," Bennett said. "Previous studies suggest one factor is education. Now we know that healthy and frequent interactions with friends and family have a positive impact as well," he added.


Interesting. I've read other reports that exercise also slows down mental degradation, something as simple as brisk walking. They took two groups of older people, did cognative tests on both. One group did stretching exercises daily, the other did brisk walking and other light cardio-vascular exercise. At the end of the test, they re-took the cognative tests. The group that only did stretching exercises had no improvement and loss, the group that did the cardio maintained and improved.

Well, I haven't seen better. These guys are good, they've got some serious talent going!

http://videosift.com/story.php?id=630

I had some problems playing this. If you also have problems, mute your sound, set it to play, come back in 10 minutes (asuming you have a high-speed connection). It should be fully buffered at that point.