EDAG's Genesis: The 3D printed car of the future
posted by Larra Morris
Of all the technologies to have emerged from the digital renaissance, additive manufacturing (3D printing) has the potential to be the most disruptive. Yet another example of how the world of manufacturing will change will be displayed at the Geneva Motor Show this week when EDAG, the world’s largest independent engineering partner to the international mobility industry, displays an example of a printed automobile. The Genesis is more a conceptual sculpture than an automobile, but it will give you a taste of what the world's leading manufacturers might be producing a decade or two from now.
via Gizmag
Scientists revive largest virus yet from 30,000-year-old permafrost
posted by Larra Morris
Scientists have now identified yet another giant virus, this time using a technique that sounds like it's straight out of a sci-fi horror flick: they thawed some 30,000-year-old permafrost and allowed any viruses present to infect some cells. Fortunately, the cells were amoebas, and this virus is overwhelmingly unlikely to present a threat to human health. But the fact that viruses could apparently survive so many centuries in the Siberian permafrost does lead the authors to suggest that the melting Arctic may pose an emerging disease risk.
via Ars Technica
Sharks help scientists and themselves, by wearing cameras and swallowing sensors
posted by Laura Domela
Perhaps you've seen footage from National Geographic's "Crittercam," an underwater video camera that has been attached to animals such as sharks and whales. Well, scientists from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and the University of Tokyo have gone one better. Not only have they been putting cameras on sharks to see what they get up to, but they've also been slipping them ingestible sensors, to monitor their dietary habits. The data that they've gathered could help protect shark populations, and the overall health of the ocean.
The video camera packages also include an accelerometer, a data-logging computer, and a VHF transmitter. They're strapped onto the pectoral fins of sharks that are caught and released by the researchers, and they then proceed to record footage from the sharks' point of view as they travel through the sea. The packs automatically release themselves from the fish after a set amount of time, at which point they float to the surface to be located and retrieved via their radio signal.
via Gizmodo
Mission control desk
posted by Laura Domela
Some parents take the carrot approach to homework enforcement, others the stick.
This is the best carrot I’ve ever seen. Some world-class parenting skills are on display right here.
via Raspberry Pi
Thanks Scott!
Pickle chandelier uses enough power to light a city block
posted by Larra Morris
Yes, this is a super-charged chandelier constructed with 60 plain old, garden-variety pickles as bulbs. It crackles. It spits. It smells like burnt vinegar—and it uses enough power to illuminate a city block.
via Gizmodo
TSA agents demand bag-search to look for "Bitcoins"
posted by Laura Domela
Davi Barker was flying from Manchester, NH when, he says, he was stopped by two men who identified themselves as "managers" for the TSA, who claimed they had seen Bitcoins in his baggage ...
via Boing Boing
Revolutionary membrane can keep your heart beating perfectly forever
posted by Laura Domela
You're looking at a rabbit's heart beating outside the animal that once hosted it. It's alive, pumping blood on its own thanks to a revolutionary electronic membrane that may save your life by keeping your heart beating at a perfect rate.
The thin, circuit-lined stretchable membrane has been developed by scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Washington University in St. Louis and may arrive to human hearts in 10 to 15 years.
via Sploid/Gizmodo
The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon: when a thing you just found out about suddenly seems to crop up everywhere
posted by Laura Domela
Your friend told you about that obscure bluegrass-electro-punk band yesterday morning. That afternoon, you ran across one of their albums at a garage sale. Wait a minute—that’s them in that Doritos commercial, too! Coincidence … or conspiracy? More likely, you’re experiencing “frequency illusion,” somewhat better known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
via Pacific Standard
Tackle this 3D-printed spherical Rubik's Cube
posted by Larra Morris
If you've solved a Rubik's Cube so many times that it no longer offers you a challenge, maybe it's time to try a new shape? The Marusenko Sphere puts 54 spinning and sliding pieces into a globe-shaped puzzle that comes in five different levels of difficulty.
Designed and prototyped using a 3D printer so that the final version required no glue or small parts to assemble, the Marusenko puzzle features nine different directions of movement. And, to increase the difficulty, all that's needed is the addition of extra colors. So the two-toned version is actually the easiest—relatively speaking—while the hardest introduces eight different colors for you to grapple with.
via Gizmodo
Why people have so much trouble recognizing their own incompetence
posted by Laura Domela
How is it that the boldest criminals so often turn out to be the most clueless? James Blankenship was, it would seem, pretty sure of himself when he broke into a home outside Cleveland in broad daylight last summer. “I thought you could only be charged with burglary if you break in during the nighttime,” he reportedly told the police officers who arrested him.
Before laughing too hard, you should know there’s a bit of James Blankenship in all of us. That’s because we’re all susceptible to something called the Dunning-Kruger Effect when we venture outside our areas of expertise.
via Pacific Standard
