While this turntable can’t play “Dark Side of the Moon”, it certainly can tell you which way it’s facing! This project by Yingjie Bei and Yifan Hu uses an Arduino to position a turntable and associated light source in such a way that the moon replica mounted on the turntable will be illuminated to demonstrate the current moon phase.
via < … Read More → "Arduino-powered turntable plays moon phases"

How do you end a marriage to someone who’s purposefully avoiding your divorce papers? Try Facebook. A Manhattan Supreme Court judge has ruled that a New York woman can serve her divorce summons by messaging her soon to be ex-husband on Facebook. He’ll get the notifications once a week on the social network for three weeks, and it’s splitsville if he either acknowledges a message or refuses to respond.

The ruling could set an … Read More → "Judge says you can serve divorce papers through Facebook"

Many decades ago, paleontologists similarly decided that there wasn’t enough evidence to support the existence of the beloved Brontosaurus. Instead, they said that the noble thunder lizard was just an Apatosaurus. Poof.

But mourn the Brontosaurus no longer! A team of heroes may have rescued it from paleontological purgatory. By cross-referencing the digitized bones from hundreds of long-necked cousins, a team of … Read More → "Scientists say it’s time to reinstate the brontosaurus"

It’s only three feet wide, clinging to a sheer cliff. Three hundred feet below lies a rocky gorge and the Guadalhorce River. Its 1.9 miles provide stunning views of southern Spain’s natural beauty. The El Caminito del Rey, once called “the world’s most dangerous path,” has been in disrepair for nearly a hundred years. But on March 28, coinciding … Read More → "The world’s most dangerous trail reopens this week"

The military has become increasingly dependent on Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for accurate and precise positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) in a wide variety of operational environments — from tactical vehicles to GPS-guided missiles.

However, as military operations are increasingly carried out in areas where GPS is denied, unreliable or not accessible, military use of GPS has evolved from being a strategic advantage to a vulnerability. Many environments in which the military operates & … Read More → "After GPS: The future of navigation"

Researchers at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) have created the world’s first fullyimplantable micro-pacemaker for unborn children with congenial complete heart blocks. The medical journal, Heart Rhythm, revealed that the US Food & Drug Administration has designated the micro-pacemaker as a device for humanitarian use.

The … Read More → "Doctors create micro-pacemaker to treat unborn baby with heart blockage"

Wouldn’t it be great if we can use phones to 3D scan every day objects for printing? A research team from Caltech has designed a cheap and tiny camera chip that could make that happen. Even better, the team claims it can take 3D scans so precise, it could lead to “replica[s] accurate to within microns of the original object[s].” The silicon chip called nanophotonic coherent imager (NCI) is less than a millimeter … Read More → "Caltech wants to equip phones with built-in 3D scanners"

Yamaha is popularly known for producing two types of consumer goods: motorcycles and musical instruments. In an experiment called AH A MAY (Yamaha spelled backwards), the company switched design teams from its motorcycle and musical instrument divisions. Now the musical instrument designers were tasked with coming up with a motorcycle and the motorcycle engineers had to build a new type of musical instrument.

One of the musical instruments that resulted from this switch … Read More → "Full body drum kit designed by Yamaha’s motorcycle engineers"

Apple Watch and Android Wear is cool and everything, but the best wrist wearables are often made from Arduino boards and some tinkering, much like this super great Enigma watch.

Although known notoriously as the uncrackable cryptography tool used by Germany during World War II, the Enigma Machine was eventually undone by the father of artificial … Read More → "An Alan Turing fan made an Enigma machine for your wrist"

Volcanoes are often painted as harbingers of destruction—and for good reason. But sometimes, they can help life survive, by feeding energy-starved ecosystems elemental carbon.

That’s exactly what researchers now think happened 252 million years ago, when the Earth was rocked by the& … Read More → "Volcanic eruptions may have helped some life forms survive an apocalypse"