THE NEW GAME OF HUMAN LIFE

In this 1790 game, players moved through different stages of life, from infancy onward.Players moved backward or forward on the game board according to the moral character of the square they landed on. Landing on the “drunkard” square sent a player back, while landing on “The Assiduous Youth” sent a player forward. Landing on a career like “ … Read More → "Centuries-old board games"

For people in developing nations or rural locations, getting clean water may soon be as simple as opening a book … and ripping a page out. That’s the idea behind The Drinkable Book, developed by Carnegie Mellon University postdoc Theresa Dankovich. Each of its pages is made from a thick sheet of paper impregnated with silver and copper nanoparticles, that kill 99.9 percent of microbes in tainted water that’s filtered through it.

Dankovich began … Read More → "The Drinkable Book has water-purifying pages"

Doctors frequently check for early signs of brain conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s by looking at irregularities in your drawings, but it’s an imperfect art based largely on the doctor’s opinion. All too often, the only concrete signs show up by the time you’ve already been ravaged by the disease. MIT researchers might have a more effective way to catch these conditions early on, though. By using custom tracking software … Read More → "Digital pens help spot early signs of brain conditions"

An international team of biologists and geneticists reports that they have sequenced the first entire octopus genome. They published the genome of the California two-spot octopus this week in the journal Nature. 

Octopuses are particularly fascinating creatures to study at a genetic level because they’re so different from other animals—even from other cephalopods, … Read More → "First entire octopus genome sequenced"

Two-factor can keep your Gmail, iCloud and other accounts from getting hacked, but it’s unfortunately rather tedious to use. That’s why a team of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland has developed a tool called “Sound-Proof” to make the process less painful. Any app or program with Sound-Proof integrated can authenticate your logins by listening to ambient sounds. That’s it — you don’t need to pick up your phone, … Read More → "Two-factor system uses ambient sounds to verify your login"

The Fish Call, which is raising money on Kickstarter right now, was designed by father-son duo Jack and Jeff Danos. How does it corral your next catch? By faking fish out into think there’s a nearby feeding frenzy. Simply chuck the floating gizmo into the water, where it’ll vibrate and emit sounds of fish schooling to feed. Next thing … Read More → "This 3D-printed lure mimics fish sounds to attract your next catch"

“I think therefore I am.”

In 1637, when he published, The Discourse on Method, René Descartes unleashed a philosophical breakthrough, which later became a fundamental principle that much of modern philosophy now stands upon.

Nearly 400 years later, if a machine says these five powerful words, “I think … Read More → "Are you a thinking thing? Why debating machine consciousness matters"

What do stars sound like? Burak Ulas, an astronomer at the Izmir Turk College Planetarium in Turkey, has created an entire musical composition answering that question. 

Stars vibrate much like musical instruments, and in a paper posted to arXiv, Ulas plays the universe like a piano. He analyzed the … Read More → "A musical composition based on the vibrations of stars"

Like bubbles? Then you’ll love this 3D printed bubble blowing machine. It’s capable of blowing approximately 14,000 bubbles… per minute.

Designed and released on Thingiverse, the array of bubble orifices are 3D printed, as well as the gears and chain that rotate the belt of bubbles. The only thing not 3D printed is the 5 gallon bucket, some aluminum extrusion for mounting it rigidly, and the 50RPM motor that spins it around.< … Read More → "Blove 14,000 bubbles per minutes with this 3D printed contraption"