Bug's eye inspires hemispherical digital camera

May 1, 2013 ? Inspired by the complex fly eye, an interdisciplinary team led by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University has developed a hemispherical digital camera with nearly 200 tiny lenses, delivering exceptionally wide-angle field of view and sharp images.

Humans capture pictures using the two lenses of our relatively flat eyes, while a top-of-the-line SLR camera has just one flat lens. The new camera -- a rounded half bubble, similar to a bulging fly eye -- has 180 microlenses mounted on it, allowing it to take pictures across nearly 180 degrees. Only a camera shaped like a bug's eye can do this.

With this wide-angle field of view, the new technology could be used in future surveillance devices or for imaging in endoscopic procedures. The researchers say it would be simple enough to combine two of the hemispheres they've demonstrated to get a 360-degree view.

Details of the bio-inspired camera, which required experts in optics, electronics, fabrication, and modeling and design theory, will be published in the May 2 issue of the journal Nature.

"What we have, in a sense, is many small eyes on one big eye," said Northwestern's Yonggang Huang, a senior author of the paper. "Each small eye, composed of a microlens and a microscale photodetector, is a separate imaging system, but when they are all taken together, the camera can take a clear picture, with just one snap, of nearly 180 degrees.

"The interface of different fields generates interesting new devices that never existed before," he said. Huang is the Joseph Cummings Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Huang's lab was responsible for the modeling and design theory for the project, which took the whole team three years to complete.

The digital camera is just the latest innovation in a long and fruitful collaboration between two engineers -- Huang and John A. Rogers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign -- that has developed stretchable electronics and various devices using the technology, including an earlier digital camera, advanced surgical tools and health/wellness monitors.

Their electronics, which can bend, twist and stretch without breaking, were well suited to the challenge of developing a hemispherical camera.

"Full 180-degree fields of view with zero aberrations can only be accomplished with image sensors that adopt hemispherical layouts -- much different than the planar CCD chips found in commercial cameras," said Rogers, a Swanlund Chair Professor, of the new camera.

"When implemented with large arrays of microlenses, each of which couples to an individual photodiode, this type of hemispherical design provides unmatched field of view and other powerful capabilities in imaging," he said. "Nature has developed and refined these concepts over the course of billions of years of evolution."

Eyes in arthropods use compound designs, in which arrays of smaller eyes act together to provide image perception. Each small eye, known as an ommatidium, consists of a corneal lens, a crystalline cone and a light-sensitive organ at the base. The entire system is configured to provide exceptional properties in imaging, many of which lie beyond the reach of existing human-made cameras.

The 180 microlenses of Roger and Huang's camera is comparable to the eye of fire ants and bark beetles, but less than the fly eye, which has thousands of small eyes.

"Existing camera imaging technology is flat, and we made a system that is curvilinear," Huang said. "Making a stretchable array of photodetectors was easy -- that's what we do. The difficult part was making a hemispherical lens. We needed to make sure the lens experienced as little strain as possible when stretched."

The researchers developed new ideas in materials and fabrication strategies allowing construction of artificial ommatidia in large, interconnected arrays in hemispherical layouts. Building such systems represents a daunting task, as all established camera technologies rely on bulk glass lenses and detectors constructed on the planar surfaces of silicon wafers which cannot be bent or flexed, much less formed into a hemispherical shape.

"A critical feature of our fly eye cameras is they incorporate integrated microlenses, photodetectors and electronics on hemispherically curved surfaces," said Jianliang Xiao, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at University of Colorado Boulder and coauthor of the study. "To realize this outcome, we used soft, rubbery optics bonded to detectors/electronics in mesh layouts that can be stretched and deformed, reversibly and without damage."

Xiao is a former doctoral student of Huang's at Northwestern who then went on to work as a postdoctoral researcher in Rogers' lab at Illinois.

The fabrication starts with electronics, detectors and lens arrays formed on flat surfaces using advanced techniques adapted from the semiconductor industry, Xiao said. The lens sheet -- made from a polymer material similar to a contact lens -- and the electronics/detectors are then aligned and bonded together. Pneumatic pressure deforms the resulting system into the desired hemispherical shape, in a process much like blowing up a balloon, but with precision engineering control.

The individual electronic detectors and microlenses are coupled together to avoid any relative motion during this deformation process. Here, the spaces between these artificial ommatidia can stretch to allow transformation in geometry from planar to hemispherical. The electrical interconnections are thin and narrow, in filamentary serpentine shapes; they deform as tiny springs during the stretching process.

According to the researchers, each microlens produces a small image of an object with a form dictated by the parameters of the lens and the viewing angle. An individual detector responds only if a portion of the image formed by the associated microlens overlaps the active area. The detectors stimulated in this way produce a sampled image of the object that can then be reconstructed using models of the optics.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Northwestern University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Young Min Song, Yizhu Xie, Viktor Malyarchuk, Jianliang Xiao, Inhwa Jung, Ki-Joong Choi, Zhuangjian Liu, Hyunsung Park, Chaofeng Lu, Rak-Hwan Kim, Rui Li, Kenneth B. Crozier, Yonggang Huang, John A. Rogers. Digital cameras with designs inspired by the arthropod eye. Nature, 2013; 497 (7447): 95 DOI: 10.1038/nature12083

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/technology/~3/QXb8So27k0o/130501131947.htm

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2 workers removed from Saudi-owned residence

McLEAN, Va. (AP) ? Immigration officials have removed two domestic workers from a northern Virginia home owned by the government of Saudi Arabia as part of an investigation into a report of human trafficking.

Agents went to the home in McLean on Tuesday night, Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Brandon Montgomery said Thursday. Fairfax County police were called in to help.

Montgomery said the investigation is in the early stages. The two women who were removed from the home are from the Philippines, Montgomery said, but there has been no formal determination that they needed to be rescued.

Officials received a tip that alleged two workers were being held in circumstances that amounted to human trafficking, said John Torres, ICE's special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in the Washington field office. But he declined in an interview Thursday to discuss the case in more detail.

ICE is investigating whether there may be other potential victims connected to the home, Torres said. He wouldn't discuss the specific allegations but said that generally in cases of domestic workers, ICE prioritizes those involving allegations of workers being held against their will or threats of violence against workers or their families.

According to real estate records, the Virginia home is owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Armed Forces Office. A representative of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia could not be reached for comment Thursday. A guard at the gated home, near the CIA headquarters in Langley, waved off a request to speak to residents there Thursday morning.

At a press briefing Thursday, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said that the agency was aware of the case but that ICE is taking the lead on the investigation. He referred questions there.

Ventrell declined to answer specific questions about whether diplomatic immunity had been invoked. Countries traditionally grant immunity to foreign diplomats to receive reciprocal treatment for their own diplomats and to ensure open lines of communication. Ventrell said that in general, the State Department honors its treaty obligations that provide for immunity while expecting diplomats to observe and respect U.S. laws.

Trafficking cases have been a priority in recent years for the Justice Department, which reports that it has brought an average of 24 cases alleging forced labor in each of the past three fiscal years ? nearly twice as many as the prior period.

Recent cases have involved an Italian government worker at the consulate in San Francisco who was prosecuted in 2011 for keeping a Brazilian woman as an involuntary servant. The same year, a naval officer from the United Arab Emirates was acquitted at a federal trial in Providence, R.I., on charges that he had kept a Filipino woman as an unpaid servant.

Tiffany Williams, an anti-trafficking campaign coordinator for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, works specifically on the issue of diplomats exploiting domestic workers. She said such exploitation can be a particular problem in the diplomatic community because officials know they hold immunity, and it is difficult to punish them.

Generally, though, she said the underlying issue is no different than in cases involving the community at large: The power dynamic is tilted heavily toward the employer. Domestic workers' visas are tied to employment with a particular household, so quitting or standing up to abuse runs the risk of deportation. For domestic workers who live in the home, leaving a job also can mean homelessness, Williams said.

Torres said trafficking cases involving domestic workers are a particular problem in the Washington area, in part because of the presence of a large diplomatic corps and cultural differences ? some countries consider it acceptable to treat workers more harshly than is allowed in the U.S.

To be proactive, Torres said ICE works with nonprofit groups and provides brochures and information to all incoming diplomats who want to bring domestic help from other countries.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/2-workers-removed-saudi-owned-va-residence-153701708.html

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Obama, Mexican president talk economy, security

MEXICO CITY (AP) ? President Barack Obama sought on Thursday to tamp down a potential rift with Mexico over a dramatic shift in the cross-border fight against drug trafficking and organized crime, acceding that Mexicans had the right to determine how best to tackle the violence that has plagued their country.

Since taking office in December, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has moved to end the widespread access that U.S. security agencies have had in Mexico to tackle the violence that affects both sides of the border. It's a departure from the strategy employed by his predecessor, Felipe Calderon, which was praised by the U.S. but reviled by many Mexicans.

Obama said the shifting security relationship would not hurt cooperation between the neighboring nations.

"I agreed to continue our close cooperation on security, even as the nature of that cooperation will evolve," Obama said during a joint news conference at Mexico's grand National Palace. "It is obviously up to the Mexican people to determine their security structures and how it engages with the other nations ? including the United States."

Pena Nieto as well downplayed the notion that the new, more centralized arrangement would damage its security partnership with the United States. He said Obama agreed during their private meeting earlier in the day to "cooperate on the basis of mutual respect" to promote an efficient and effective strategy.

Obama arrived in Mexico Thursday afternoon for a three-day trip that will also include a stop in Costa Rica. Domestic issues followed the president south of the border, with Obama facing questions in his exchange with reporters about the potential escalation of the U.S. role in Syria, a controversy over contraception access for teenage girls, and the delicate debate on Capitol Hill on an immigration overhaul.

The latter issue is being closely watched in Mexico, given the large number of Mexicans who have emigrated to the U.S. both legally and illegally. More than half of the 11 million people in the U.S. illegally are Mexican, according to the Pew Research Center.

For Obama, the immigration debate is rife with potential political pitfalls. While he views an overhaul of the nation's patchwork immigration laws as a legacy-building issue, he's been forced to keep a low-profile role in the debate to avoid scaring off wary Republicans.

In an effort to court those GOP lawmakers, the draft bill being debated on Capitol Hill focuses heavily on securing the border with Mexico, and makes doing so a pre-condition for a pathway to citizenship for those in the U.S. illegally. But Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, one of the bill's architects, said Thursday that unless the border security measures are made even tougher, the legislation will face tough odds not only in the GOP-controlled House but also in the Democratic-led Senate.

The president acknowledged there were some areas along the 2,000-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico where security needs to be tightened. But he gently chided Rubio and other Republicans for putting up obstacles that would derail final legislation.

"I suspect that the final legislation will not contain everything I want. It won't contain everything that Republican leaders want, either," Obama said. He added that "what I'm not going to do is to go along with something where we're looking for an excuse not to do it as opposed to a way to do it."

Despite the intense interest in the immigration debate among Mexicans, Pena Nieto carefully avoided injecting himself in the issue. While he commended the U.S. for tackling the challenge, he said the congressional debate "is a domestic affair."

The new Mexican leader was purposely seeking to avoid the perceived missteps of former Mexican President Vicente Fox, who irked conservatives in the U.S. by lobbying for an immigration overhaul in 2001.

Pena Nieto's election brought Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, back to power after a decade on the sidelines. The security changes are emblematic of the party's preference for centralized political and bureaucratic control.

The arrangement means all contact for U.S. law enforcement will now go through a "single door," according to Mexico's federal Interior Ministry, the agency that controls security and domestic policy. Under the previous policy, FBI, CIA, DEA and border patrol agents had direct access to units of Mexico's Federal Police, army and navy. U.S. agents worked side by side with those Mexican units in the fight against drug cartels, including the U.S.-backed strategy of killing or arresting top kingpins.

Obama lauded his Mexican counterpart for launching bold reforms during his first months in office, not only on security but also the economy. Both leaders have said they want to refocus the U.S.-Mexico relationship on trade and the economy, not the drug wars and immigration issues that have dominated the partnership in recent years.

In a nod to that effort, Obama and Pena Nieto announced a new partnership for closer cooperation between top officials in both countries. Vice President Joe Biden will also participate in that process, Obama said.

Already the economic relationship between the two countries is robust, with Mexico accounting for $500 billion in U.S. trade in 2011 and ranking as the second-largest export market for U.S. goods. A stronger Mexican economy would result in even more trade and job growth on both sides of the border, Obama aides say.

On Friday, Obama will speak to an audience of Mexican students before heading to Costa Rica for talks with Central American leaders. His meetings there are expected to focus on bolstering regional economic cooperation, as well as security issues.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-mexican-president-talk-economy-security-222300325.html

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Starving Virginia settlers turned to cannibalism in 1609- study

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Settlers at Virginia's Jamestown Colony resorted to cannibalism to survive the harsh winter of 1609, dismembering and consuming a 14-year-old English girl, the U.S. Smithsonian Institution reported on Wednesday.

This is the first direct evidence of cannibalism at Jamestown, the oldest permanent English colony in the Americas, according to the Washington-based museum and research complex.

A recent excavation at the historic site revealed not just the remains of dogs, cats and horses eaten by settlers during the cold "Starving Time" of that year, but also the bones of a girl known to researchers simply as "Jane."

Jane probably was part of a relatively prosperous household, possibly a gentleman's daughter or maidservant, said Smithsonian forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley, who analyzed her bones after they were found by Preservation Virginia, a private non-profit group.

Her back molars had not yet erupted, putting her age around 14 years, and there was a lot of nitrogen in her bones, indicating she ate a meat-rich English diet, Owsley said in a telephone interview.

It is not known whether Jane was killed or died of natural causes. The Smithsonian said there is no evidence of murder.

After her death, in a year when many Jamestown colonists starved, Jane's body was hacked apart by a butcher or butchers who barely knew what they were doing. She may have been chosen because others in her household were already dead and there was no one to bury her, Owsley said.

UNSKILLED CHOPPING

"There was very clear post-mortem dismemberment that involved chops to the forehead, chops to the back of the head that cracked the skull open," the scientist said.

"A puncture to the left side of the head was used to essentially lever and open the ... head to remove the brain. There are cuts all over the face and on the mandible, inside as well as out."

By 1609, Owsley said, the settlement was effectively operating under siege, with many of the male colonists killed by hostile Native Americans after venturing out.

Those who remained inside Jamestown's confines were often women, children and the sick. Those who dismembered Jane might well have been women, he said.

The cuts were "very tentative, hesitant," Owsley said. "This is not someone who's skilled in terms of kitchen work or butchery, and yet they know, out of sheer need, that this is what they have to do."

The brain, tongue, cheeks and leg muscles appear to have been eaten, with the brain probably consumed first because it decomposes soon after death, the Smithsonian said in an online announcement.

Scholars have speculated that extreme drought, hostile relations with the local Powhatan Confederacy and a lost supply ship made the Jamestown colonists desperate enough to eat humans. Writings had suggested it, but no hard physical evidence existed until now.

William Kelso, lead archaeologist on the project, and his team discovered the girl's remains last summer.

"We found a deposit of refuse that contained butchered horse and dog bones," Kelso said. "That was only done in times of extreme hunger. As we excavated, we found human teeth and then a partial human skull."

(Reporting by Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Xavier Briand)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/starving-virginia-settlers-turned-cannibalism-1609-study-214816892.html

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CPR 'hands-only' guidelines may not be best for rural areas

May 1, 2013 ? Hands-only CPR (CPR without mouth-to-mouth resuscitation), may not be the best method for rural or remote areas or for anyone who has to wait more than a few minutes for an ambulance, a new study suggests.

New guidelines released by the American Heart Association in 2010 permit the use of simpler hand-only or compression-only CPR in some cases instead of conventional CPR. If ambulances come quickly, experts believe that instructing people to just "push hard, push fast" saves more lives.

But a literature review by Dr. Aaron Orkin found little evidence to support those guidelines outside of urban settings or in communities with no 911 services. His findings were published in the Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine.

Of the 10 studies on saving lives with hands-only CPR he reviewed, only one included rural populations and people who had to wait longer than 15 minutes for an ambulance. Some of those studies showed that people who waited longer for ambulances to arrive had a better chance of surviving if mouth-to-mouth breathing was performed as well as chest compressions.

"Urban studies can't always be applied outside big cities," said Dr. Orkin, a physician and graduate student affiliated with the University of Toronto, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and Rescu, a St. Michael's Hospital research team dedicated to improving out-of-hospital resuscitation.

"Rural communities might need different CPR recommendations to urban settings," he said.

Dr. Orkin said he study suggests that "push hard, push fast" might be better refined to "push hard, push fast, if you're downtown."

One in five Canadians and nearly half of the world's population live in rural areas. Even in the most developed and densely populated cities, people can wait longer than 10 or 15 minutes for ambulance services

"If someone is unresponsive, doing any kind of CPR is clearly better than doing nothing," said Dr. Orkin. "But shouldn't CPR guidelines serve everybody, not just people who live a few minutes from an ambulance dispatch station or hospital?

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by St. Michael's Hospital. The original article was written by Leslie Shepherd.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Aaron Orkin. Push hard, push fast, if you're downtown: A citation review of urban-centrism in American and European basic life support guidelines. Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine, 2013; 21 (1): 32 DOI: 10.1186/1757-7241-21-32

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/zXeJNMgK7g8/130501101300.htm

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King Boxer, Master of the Flying Guillotine and Other Awesome ...

by Raymond Horwitz
Movie-review excerpts originally by Dr. Craid D. Reid
Still image of Sonny Chiba from The Street Fighter movie trailer by New Line Cinema ? Today

With the summer blockbuster season just around the corner and everyone?s bandwidth being eaten alive by trailers, previews, excerpts, clips and parodies thereof for a long list of science-fiction and superhero action-adventure movies, we at BlackBeltMag.com thought it might be fun to take a look in the ?waaaaay back? machine when studios ? especially smaller ones ? put out a trailer that was shown before feature presentations at the local drive-in.

And, of course, we specialize in ? you guessed it! ? martial arts here at BlackBeltMag.com. So we were stoked to stumble upon a collection of awesome trailers for four martial arts movies assembled by a fellow martial arts fan and YouTube user.* The films in his trailers collection include:

• Master of the Flying Guillotine
• The Street Fighter (featuring the legendary Sonny Chiba)
• King Boxer (also known as Five Fingers of Death)
• Fist of Fury (also known as The Chinese Connection)

*Please note this is a third-party collection of movie trailers and, as such, it may disappear at any time.

YOUTUBE TRAILER COLLECTION: MARTIAL ARTS MOVIES OF THE 1970s
Master of the Flying Guillotine | The Street Fighter | King Boxer | Fist of Fury

BRUCE LEE? is a registered trademark of Bruce Lee Enterprises, LLC. The Bruce Lee name, image, likeness and all related indicia are intellectual property of Bruce Lee Enterprises, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Visit brucelee.com for more information.

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To contextualize the importance of the four film trailers presented, we fortunately have access to one of the world?s foremost authorities on the subject of martial arts movies: Dr. Craig D. Reid, author of the epic 288-page full-color reference book, The Ultimate Guide to Martial Arts Movies of the 1970s: 500+ Films Loaded With Action, Weapons and Warriors ? which features in-depth write-ups for each of the martial arts movies featured in the above trailer collection ? and more than 496 more martial arts movies, ranging from the world-famous to the amazingly obscure.

The following are adapted (and often condensed) excerpts from Dr. Reid?s Ultimate Guide to Martial Arts Movies of the 1970s write-ups for the aforementioned films ? Master of the Flying Guillotine, The Street Fighter, King Boxer, and Fist of Fury ? featured in the trailer collection.

MARTIAL ARTS MOVIES OF THE 1970s
Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976)

Master of the Flying Guillotine, directed by Jimmy Wong Yu, notably has a large cast of martial arts superstars. Jimmy Wong Yu was a martial director?s martial artist. In several of his directed films, there is a large cast of kung fu actors prominently featured, and they all do different kinds of martial arts. Wong Yu gave the actors in Master of the Flying Guillotine the opportunity to flaunt their skills and show audiences the diversity and novelty of their martial ways.

Take the beginning of Master of the Flying Guillotine, for example: It jumps off with 12 fights that run for 12 minutes and features 18 different styles of martial arts. I also want to point out that none of the fights feature Wong Yu, which clearly demonstrates that a Jimmy Wong Yu movie is not all about him.

In this film, when the blind anti-Ming assassin Fung Sheng Wu Chi (Jin Gang) hears that a one-armed fighter killed his two disciples, he leaves his mountain retreat and vows to avenge his students. Shaving his head and disguising himself as a lama Buddhist monk, Fung arms himself with the deadly and scary flying guillotine. He vows to kill every one-armed fighter he meets.

This movie has the best cinematic musical shtick for a villain, one that?s foreboding and dangerous-sounding. It?s a short piece called Super 16 by the band Neu. It should rank right up there with Darth Vader?s theme from Star Wars.

MARTIAL ARTS MOVIES OF THE 1970s
The Street Fighter (1974)

The neat thing about watching Japanese karate films after watching a ton of Chinese kung fu films is that for once the Japanese are the good guys. So instead of trying to kill the Chinese or destroy their martial arts schools, they are destroying the evil Yakuza.

Enter Sonny Chiba, who gave Japanese karate films a different kind of fist of fury. Sonny Chiba brought Japanese karate center stage by sacrificing flair and artistry for more violence and brutality in the form of anti-hero Tsurugi Takuma the street fighter, aka Terry Tsurugi in the English dub.

In this first installment of the Street Fighter trilogy, the movie opens with Tsurugi breaking karate killer Tateki Shikenbaru, aka Junjoe (Masashi Ishibashi), out of prison. However, because Tateki?s brother and sister can?t completely pay for his services, Tsurugi launches one of the siblings out a four-story window. He sells the other sib as a sex slave to the inscrutable Enter the Dragon ?Han? look-alike Rakuda Zhang.

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When The Street Fighter hit the American shores, kung fu film fans assumed Sonny Chiba would be a Japanese Bruce Lee. From the get-go, it was evident Sonny Chiba?s character was not like Lee, such as when Tsurugi breaks Tateki out of prison or when Tsurugi hissingly grunts using heavy sanchin-style breathing (to strengthen ki) to subdue Tateki. So even though Sonny Chiba?s performance was filled with over-the-top, perhaps Lee-inspired facial grimaces, Sonny Chiba was much more demonstrative than Lee. Certainly his sanchin and shorinji kenpo-inspired ultra-contorted finger and fist postures kept things from even remotely resembling a Lee film.

But what really cemented this film?s cult status was its X rating, for extreme violence ? which included a castration, a violent layrnx removal and a head collapsing under a hammerfist.

MARTIAL ARTS MOVIES OF THE 1970s
King Boxer (also known as Five Fingers of Death)

In King Boxer, Chao Chi-hao (Lo Lieh) is sent to learn kung fu from Shen Chin-pei (Fang Mian) by his injured master, Sung Wu-yang (Gu Wen-zong). Sung hopes that Shen can enter an upcoming martial arts tournament and defeat the local martial arts school run by the malicious Ming Dung-shen (Tien Fung), who also hires martial artist thugs like Japanese samurai mercenaries and the horrific headbutter Chen Lung (Kim Kee-joo) to do his evil deeds whenever he needs one done.

Upon Chao?s arrival at Shen?s school, Shen?s star pupil shows his superiority by beating up Chao, which just makes Chao train harder. When Chen begins to butt heads with Shen and his students, Chao sticks his head into the mix and defends the honor of the school. Moved by Chao?s bravery, Master Sung chooses Chao to learn his most prized secret kung fu skill, the Iron Palm. This makes Han Lung jealous, causing him to conspire with the rival school headed by Ming, to break Chao?s hands and spirit. As Chao goes into seclusion, heals and then learns the Iron Palm in preparation for the martial arts tournament, Shen is killed by Ming?s minions.

Watching King Boxer back in the early ?70s, I remember often hearing ?brother? and ?sister? and then seeing those two characters fall in love and hug in slow motion, not knowing these are terms used to identify kung fu school relationships rather than personal ones. Then there was the moral lesson that kung fu should be used for righteous purposes and not for hurting, which is the sort of message imparted in David Carradine?s TV show Kung Fu. Most of us also never realized how much animosity and distrust there was between the Chinese and Japanese, but that message was underlined when Bruce Lee?s Fist of Fury came to town. (Note: There were a lot of Chinese films that carried an anti-Japanese message, but King Boxer and Fist of Fury were the first two to bring the message stateside via film).

MARTIAL ARTS MOVIES OF THE 1970s
Fist of Fury (also known as The Chinese Connection)

Read Dr. Reid?s full review of Fist of Fury here!

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Source: http://www.blackbeltmag.com/daily/martial-arts-entertainment/martial-art-movies/king-boxer-master-of-the-flying-guillotine-and-other-awesome-1970s-martial-arts-movie-trailers/

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