Sharon Standifird served in the Gulf War. She’s climbed mountains.

So how hard could it be to get her kids to show a little respect?

Her teens, you see, tended to do what teens do. So when she called them on their cell phones, their natural instinct was to press “ignore.”

What’s a mom to do? Get mad? … Read More → "Mom creates app so kids can’t ignore her calls"

Los Angeles is getting super-serious about what surely must be a terrible citywide epidemic of loud parties and noisy dogs. The City Council’s Public Safety and Personnel and Welfare and Animal Services Committees have recommended approval of a new pilot program, called Administrative Citation Enforcement, that would let police officers hand out tickets and hefty fines—$250 for the first offense, $500 the second time around, and $1,000 for third-timers—to people who commit “ … Read More → "Los Angeles moves to begin fining people for loud parties and barking dogs"

Annoying noise—what the automotive industry calls “buzz, squeak, and rattle” (BSR)—is the leading cause of customer complaints about new cars. Eliminating noise during the design and prototyping phase can pay big dividends…but locating transient, intermittent, ill-defined sounds like BSR or cricket chirps can be exasperatingly difficult.
via IEEE Spectrum</ … Read More → "A “sound camera” zeroes in on buzz, squeak, and rattle"

“I’m sorry. Our intentions were good.”

Ethan Zuckerman was a designer and programmer for the early web-hosting serviceTripod.com when a car company freaked out. The unspecified manufacturer had bought a banner ad on a page that “celebrated anal sex,” and was not too pleased at the association of its brand with sexual … Read More → "The man who created the first pop-up ad says ‘sorry’"

Sure, you’re smart enough to know that “New Study Finds Humans Shouldn’t Spend More Than 5 Consecutive Hours Together” is a headline from well-known satirical publication The Onion. But not everyone is, which could lead to some misdirected — and embarrassing — outrage. That could be a thing of the past, however, as Facebook is currently testing a “Satire” tag that’ll … Read More → "Facebook is testing a ‘satire’ tag to help you figure out what’s real and what’s not"

3D printers are a technology with tons of potential applications, we just have to dream them up. Polish 3D printer manufacturer Omni3D decided to dream big with its wind power project. The team hopes to create an easily portable wind turbine that can pump out up to 300 watts of energy. Not enough power to keep your home running, but … Read More → "How a 3D-printed wind turbine could power your gadgets"

I have more botox in me than any ten people,” Dr. Seth Matarasso told me in an exam room this February.

He is a reality-show producer’s idea of a cosmetic surgeon—his demeanor brash, his bone structure preposterous. Over the course of … Read More → "The brutal ageism of tech"

Olek is an artist noted for her bold and public use of yarn. She practices extreme crocheting by covering entire rooms, statues, and even a 4-car train with yarn. Recently, Olek took her crocheting passion to new depths at the Underwater Museum of Art, which is located off the coast of Yucatan. She coated two bomb-like sculptures in yarn (or, you could say, she yarn bombed them) in order bring … Read More → "Underwater crocheting"

When Harvard roboticists first introduced their Kilobots in 2011, they’d only made 25 of them. When we next saw the robots in 2013, they’d made 100. Now the researchers have built one thousand of them. That’s a whole kilo of Kilobots, and probably the most robots that have ever been in the same place at the same time, ever.
via Read More → "A thousand kilobits self-sssemble into complex shapes"

The search for more efficient tests of pharmaceuticals without animal models is taking a stride forward, with a new technology being developed in the US called Organs-on-Chips. The new miniature platform and software, which mimic the mechanical and molecular characteristics of human organs, were developed by bioengineers from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

The device, about the size of a small computer memory stick, is created using microchip-manufacturing techniques. … Read More → "Organs-on-Chips emulate human organs, could replace animals in tests"