Fox Pauses Production on Bollywood Film ‘Bang Bang’ After Star's Brain Surgery

Fox Star Studios is suspending shooting of Bang Bang, its Bollywood remake of the Tom Cruise starrer Knight and Day, after the film’s lead, Hrithik Roshan, underwent emergency brain surgery Sunday.

India media have been reporting that Roshan, one of India’s biggest stars, suffered a blow to the head while shooting stunts for Bang Bang in Phuket, Thailand two months ago (chronic subdural haematoma is often caused by a head injury that results in bleeding in the membrane surrounding the brain). But neither the actor nor the studio has confirmed the cause of his injury.

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Roshan’s father, director Rakesh Roshan, was quoted widely in the Indian media as saying the surgery was a complete success and that his son would be discharged in a matter of days. The 39-year-old actor will need several weeks to recover, however, so a planned late July European shoot for Bang Bang has been postponed, according to leading local newspaper the Times of India.

"Hrithik's health and well-being is our top priority now. So, the shoot of the third schedule of Bang Bang has been moved forward," a spokesperson from Fox Star Studios told the Times.

The project is a joint production backed by Star TV and Twentieth Century Fox.

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Roshan, well known for his lead roles in the Bollywood blockbusters Jodhaa Akbar and the superhero franchise Krrish, was reportedly set to begin work on postproduction and promotion for Krrish 3, written, produced and directed by his father and due out Nov. 3. According to the Times, there has been no change to the release schedule of that project.

Shortly before his surgery, the actor posted on his Facebook page: “We all know that we create a life of joy using the power of our mind. I’ve had the privilege of creating wonders with this amazing gift given to us called the brain. Occasionally, one must look within and realize its value. It gives us the power to see, hear, touch, smell and taste, it allows us to conquer fear and create courage to do things we never imagined. Maybe it's time for me to feel the power literally. I am going to go through brain surgery on Sunday and want you to know that I am going in with absolute power to recover fast. My thanks to all of you for using the power of your mind to contribute to my life. Love you all.”

Twitter: @sajilpl

Intel explores brain scanning to make roads safer

Researchers at Intel are hoping a little insight into the way drivers think as they hurtle down the highway can be harnessed to make roads safer.

The company is using a brain scanning technique called functional near infrared spectroscopy to attempt to differentiate between those times when a driver is focused on the road ahead and when his or her thoughts are occupied with other things.

"We're trying to understand people better, what they're thinking, what they're feeling," said Paul Crawford, a senior research scientist at Intel Labs who is working on the project at the company's Silicon Valley research center. He said the research builds on the sizeable amount of work that has already been done on how people interact with computers and machines such as cars.

"We want to understand cognitive workload, how hard someone is having to work to do something," he said.

In a demonstration in San Francisco on Tuesday, the company showed how it is measuring the brain activity of a driver sitting at a simulator. The driver is navigating a virtual Formula One car around a racetrack at 50 miles per hour in one test, and at more than 250 mph in another test.

(See video of the demonstration on YouTube.)

Infrared sensors fitted to a cap over the driver's head sensed activity in the outermost 2 centimeters of the driver's brain. By measuring differences between the two drives, researchers start to be able to tell the difference between intense concentration -- when the race car is being driven at top speed -- and the much-reduced amount needed at lower speeds.

"When you're driving, sometimes you're looking at the road and paying attention, and sometimes you're looking at the road and you're not paying attention. There are some subtle differences there that I hope, and I hypothesize, we can tease out," said Crawford.

That information could one day be fed into a car's computer, which might make adjustments to the environmental controls to keep the driver more alert, or give more or less control to safety features such as automatic braking or lane control.

"With that information, we can say 'maybe they need some additional stimulation, maybe we [change the radio station], maybe we dial up or down the amount of control, maybe we pull you off the car in front of you a little bit," he said.

Road-related injuries are the eighth-leading cause of death in the world and the number-one killer of people between 15 and 29 years of age, according to the World Health Organization. Road accidents killed about 1.24 million people in 2010, the latest year for which global figures are available.

Intel's research is initially focused on cars, but it goes beyond the highway.

"We're leading with cars because it's a well-controlled area that we can do some laboratory research around," said Crawford. "A lot of us get paid to work with our brains, and we want it to be as efficient as possible, so there's all sorts of enterprise-level applications of this, and some consumer-level applications."

At the San Francisco event, Intel also showed a second research project that could help cut road accidents.

That work, being done with the National Taiwan University, seeks to provide vehicle-to-vehicle communications using something already found on many vehicles: LED brake lights.

The researchers are using a laptop computer to modulate the light from the rear lights so it can carry data about the state of the vehicle.

Intel's demonstration used a pair of scooters, which are ubiquitous on the streets of Taiwan. The rear LED light of the front scooter carried an alert each time the brakes were applied or the turn indicators were switched on or off. In motion, the system can also transmit the current speed of the scooter.

A rider on a rear scooter would see an alert on his or her dashboard when the scooter in front is slowing down, speeding up, turning or stopping. In the demo, the modulated light signals were received by a camera mounted on the front of the bike and were displayed via a phone app.

The idea, said Hao Min Lin, a Ph.D. student at the National Taiwan University and one of the team working on the project, is that the extra information would give riders a fraction of a second more time to react. By knowing the scooter in front is slowing, for example, riders would be able to begin adjusting their speed before the brake lights come on.