Bai Ling pleaded guilty Wednesday to disturbing the peace in a case stemming from her arrest at LAX for stealing two Star magazines and a package of batteries, totaling $16.22.

Although she was formally charged with petty theft Monday, prosecutors agreed to let Bai plead to the alternative charge, said L.A. City Attorney rep Frank Mateljan.

The actress was ordered to pay a fine and penalties totaling $700.

“What happened was an innocent mistake on my part and I am confident that the truth will be told since I never had any intention of taking items without paying for them,” she wrote on her Web site Monday.

Bai, 37, has appeared in The Crow and Anna and the King among other film and TV roles.

Tell me what you see.

On second thought, don’t: A computer will soon be able to do it, simply by analyzing the activity of your brain.

That’s the promise of a decoding system unveiled this week in Nature by neuroscientists from the University of California at Berkeley.

The scientists used a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine — a real-time brain scanner — to record the mental activity of a person looking at thousands of random pictures: people, animals, landscapes, objects, the stuff of everyday visual life. With those recordings the researchers built a computational model for predicting the mental patterns elicited by looking at any other photograph. When tested with neurological readouts generated by a different set of pictures, the decoder passed with flying colors, identifying the images seen with unprecedented accuracy.

“No one that I know would ever have guessed our decoder would do this well,” study co-author Jack Gallant said.

As the decoder is refined, it could be used to explore the phenomenon of visual attention — concentration on one part of a complicated scene — and then to illuminate the dimly understood intricacies of the mind’s eyes.

“One day it may even be possible to reconstruct the visual content of dreams,” Gallant said.

After that, the decoding model could be harnessed for more visionary purposes: early warning systems for neurological diseases or interfaces that allow paralyzed people to engage with the world.

Other uses may not be so noble, such as marketing campaigns crafted for maximum mental penetration or invasions of mental privacy mounted in the name of fighting terrorism and crime.

Those technologies remain decades away, but researchers say it’s not too soon to think about them, especially if research progresses at the pace set by this study.

Earlier decoders could only tell whether someone looked at a general type of image — at a dog, for example — but couldn’t identify more specific photos, such as a small dog eating a bone. They’ve also been incapable of predicting what thought patterns an image would provoke.

The Berkeley model overcame both those limitations.

“It’s quite tedious to measure every possible thought you might encounter, then measure the brain activity for that,” said John-Dylan Haynes, a Max Planck Institute neuroscientist who was not involved in the study. “This is a big step forward.”

Future steps involve expanding the decoder beyond its current focus on the brain’s primary visual cortex, which represents general forms but doesn’t handle the more complicated optical information processed in other parts of the brain.

More detail is also required, as the brain scanners used for the study measure blood flow caused by neural activity at a relatively coarse resolution of two cubic millimeters.

A higher-resolution, fully reconstructive decoder could help researchers chart the incredibly complex processes underlying visual perception. Gallant also hopes it could be used to detect early symptoms of neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Eventually, Haynes said, the Berkeley model could be harnessed for something akin to mind reading.

“We want not only to decode people’s perceptions, but also high-level mental states: people’s intentions, their plans,” Haynes said.

But Gallant warned of technological malfeasance. In the courtroom, mental readouts could have the same problems as eyewitness testimony, which is often unreliable and biased even though witnesses believe they’re telling the truth.

The allure of reading minds to prove innocence or guilt, Haynes said, could override concerns about mental privacy — an ethically ambiguous conflict. More obviously dubious is the possible use of mind-reading machines by marketers.

“There’s some things we can do, and some we can’t,” Haynes said. “Some things are very easy, and others are not. But it’s vital to think about the ethics now.”

In Hollywood, the math is never simple.

Worldwide box-office revenue rose to record levels last year, the studios’ main trade group said Wednesday — but a closer look at the numbers suggests a murkier picture of movie industry strength.

Movie ticket sales climbed to $9.6 billion in the U.S. and Canada and $26.7 billion globally, both logging 5% increases that demonstrated a “healthy” industry, said Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Assn. of America.

The report tends to downplay the actual cost of making movies, however, along with currency fluctuations that benefited Hollywood because of the free-falling U.S. dollar.

For major studios, the average cost of producing and marketing a movie grew 6% to a record $106.6 million, the MPAA said. But that number — based on a survey of trade group members such as Walt Disney Co., 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures — reflects only the $70.8 million the MPAA said studios spent on a typical production and the $35.9 million they shelled out to advertise it and make prints.

Not considered was the tens of millions of dollars that outside partners such as Relativity Media, Legendary Pictures and Dune Capital Management spent to co-finance dozens of big movies, including last year’s “300″ and “American Gangster.” Studios are turning to partners such as hedge funds and banking firms to share in many of their productions, a strategy that limits their risk but also their potential profits.

Billions have poured into Hollywood since 2004, with all of the big studios and several of the smaller ones taking on partners for at least a portion of their films.

The MPAA has continued to tally only the investments by the studios, a calculation that analysts say glosses over the true expense of making movies.

rocker Scott Weiland pleaded innocent on Wednesday to driving under the influence of drugs, a charge stemming from his November arrest on a Los Angeles freeway onramp.The 40-year-old singer for the band Velvet Revolver was not in court but entered his plea to the misdemeanor charge through a defense attorney.

Weiland is free on $40,000 bail and was due back in court for a pretrial hearing on April 4.

If convicted he faces up to one year in jail because he has a prior conviction for driving under the influence, a spokesman for the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office said.

Weiland, who first gained fame as lead singer for Stone Temple Pilots, was stopped by police on November 21 while driving onto the Hollywood Freeway. He was taken into custody after refusing to take a sobriety test.

Actor and dancer Patrick Swayze, star of such hit films as “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost,” has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer but is responding well to treatment, his publicist said on Wednesday.The 55-year-old performer was working during his treatments, publicist Annett Wolf said, dismissing reports in the tabloid media that portrayed him in grave condition with only weeks to live.

Wolf issued a written statement from his physician, Dr. George Fisher that said: “Patrick has a very limited amount of disease and he appears to be responding well to treatment.”

“All of the reports stating the timeframe of his prognosis and his physical side effects are absolutely untrue,” Fisher said in the statement. “We are considerably more optimistic.”

Wolf said Swayze deeply appreciated the “outpouring of support and concern” he has received from the public.

Though Swayze has had dozens of film, TV and stage roles, he is best known for starring as dance instructor Johnny Castle opposite Jennifer Grey’s character, infatuated teenager Frances “Baby” Houseman, in “Dirty Dancing.”

The film, which centers on an unlikely romance between the pair at a 1960s resort in the Catskills of New York, defied expectations to become a massive hit, earning both actors Golden Globe Award nominations.

Swayze performed the song “She’s Like the Wind” for the movie’s soundtrack and his signature line, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner,” has become a pop culture staple.