Designed by a team led by Assistant Professor Yu Haoyong, the omni-directional platform supports the patient’s body weight as they walk across the floor, while also providing powered support for movements of their pelvis and trunk. Force sensors detect the direction in which the patient wishes to move, and respond by moving the walker with them in that direction.

It additionally incorporates a network of body-mounted sensors, that … Read More → "New robotic walker helps patients walk with a natural gait"

Using data made available from a Mythbusters trial, the folks at Vox have put together an informative video that compares the various ways that airlines board their planes, determines which method moves the fastest, and acknowledges why that method isn’t necessarily the best.

In theory, the fastest way to board is to line up at the gate by seat. But … Read More → "An informative video that determines the most efficient way to board an airplane"

Physicists at the University of Warwick created a new hard-to-eat pasta shape they call anelloni to demonstrate the complicated formations ring-shaped polymers can form when they intertwine.

Since anelloni highlights how polymers tangle together into dense formations by tangling pieces of pasta together into a lumpy noodle version … Read More → "Physicists invented a horrible new pasta shape, for science"

Róbert Berény (1887-1953) was an accomplished Hungarian painter famous in his homeland for his avant-garde innovations. One of his more important works, Sleeping Lady with Black Vase, disappeared in Hungary in the 1920s. More than 80 years later, an art historian rediscovered it in the background of the 1999 American children’s movie Stuart Little…

Barki wrote many emails … Read More → "Lost masterpiece found in the background of a 90s children’s movie"

The ability of biomolecules—and entire organisms—to survive space has implications for a number of scientific questions: whether molecules from space could have seeded life on Earth, or whether life could spread among the inner planets following impacts. It also has practical implications, in that it dictates how careful we need to be in sterilizing hardware we send to other planets.

Chance gave some biologists access to a … Read More → "DNA survives a ride into space—on the exterior of a rocket"

Ever wondered how many times a certain note gets played during the course of a song? Well this tool developed by Joey Cloud lets you visualize the number of times each note is played on a histogram—that happens to look exactly like the piano keyboard it represents.

Read More → "Visualizing the notes played in songs on a piano-turned-histogram"

As far as threequels go, Jackie Chan’s 1992 movie Police Story 3: Supercop has done pretty well for itself. It has a 7.3 rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 6.9 on IMDb. But those ratings have nothing to do with Northwestern University researchers’ decision to purchase three copies of the flick in Blu-ray for their lab. According to them, the film was just a means to an end — a random purchase that helped them discover that the etchings that cover Blu-ray discs can actually improve … Read More → "Researchers used Jackie Chan’s ‘Police Story 3: Supercop’ to improve solar cells"

Antarctic scientists have combined measurements provided by an underwater robot with existing satellite data to show that Antarctic sea ice may be thicker than previously thought. Their first-of-a-kind high-resolution 3D maps cover over 500,000 square meters (5.4 million sq ft) in the Weddell, Bellingshausen, and Wilkes Land sectors of Antarctica, and they reveal heavy deformation in all three near-coastal regions that produces mean sea-ice draft (thickness of the submerged part of the ice) far in … Read More → "Underwater robot provides first detailed, high-resolution 3D maps of Antarctic sea ice"

If Solitaire and Minesweeper have been stripped from all the computers at work but you’re still after a discreet way to kill a few minutes, you owe a debt of gratitude to Jeroen Domburg who successfully hacked a backlit Coolermaster QuickFire Rapid-I mechanical keyboard to play the classic game of Snake— … Read More → "Play a game of snake on this hacked backlit keyboard"

Ross Perot is a collector. He once bought a copy of the Magna Carta in 1984. But more intriguingly, he also bought and resurrected ENIAC, the world’s first electronic computer.

ENIAC stands for the “Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer” and was conceived of during World War II as a way … Read More → "How Ross Perot saved the world’s first electronic computer"