Reseachers at Harvard University have developed a way to 3D-print a cellular composite with record lightness and stiffness using an epoxy resin. This marks the first time that epoxy is used for 3D-printing, and the advance could lead to the development of new lightweight architectures for more efficient wind turbines, faster cars, and lighter airplanes.
via Gizmodo

< … Read More → "3D-printed composite is lighter than wood and stiffer than concrete"

That massive computer in the latest season of Mad Men is the real thing.

The machine that takes up a whole room in the fictional 1960s ad agency at the heart of the critically acclaimed TV series—and leads ad man Michael Ginsberg to chop off his own nipple—is one of the most important systems in the short history of computing. It’s an IBM System/360, … Read More → "Tech time warp of the week: 50 years ago, IBM unleashed the room-sized iPhone"

Graffiti may be ephemeral, but then there’s Google Street View with its all-seeing camera. Inspired by Google’s recent to move to let users go back in time in Street View, Brian Foo at the New York Public Library Labs thought he could make us look at street graffiti from a new perspective—through time.

< … Read More → "This nifty tool turns Google Street View into a graffiti time machine"

Paintings don’t come much smaller than the micro paintings created by artist Hasan Kale. Hasan has painted delicate scenes on the side of cactus spines, butterfly wings and seashells, but this time around he’s adding his oh-so precise strokework to itty-bitty bits of food.

Hasan paints stormy seascapes on dried banana slices, fits the pyramids and sphinx on the side of a coffee bean, and even finds room for a … Read More → "Amazingly detailed miniature paintings on food"

Pepper the robot looks like a robot, thanks to an almost-anime design. What then, of Kodomoroid (above, center) and Otonaroid (right)? Both androids have found employment at Japan’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, as part of its new “Android: What is human?” exhibit. Kodomoroid (“child android”) can recite news (and weather) reports from around the world in a variety of voices and languages. Meanwhile, Otonaroid (“adult android”) is steered by a human … Read More → "Meet the multilingual robot newscaster with a very human face"

Google is kicking off a Project Ara module developer challenge, offering a $100k bounty for atypical smartphone possibilities while it itself works on a new, super-speed 3D printer to create customized production modules. The challenge, announced at Google IO today, asks developers to come up with a working module for a future Project Ara phone that does something not possible with a current smartphone, and sees Google itself throw out some … Read More → "Project Ara gets serious: Dev challenge, 50x speed 3D printer, more"

Daydreaming about being an astronaut just got a whole lot easier.

NASA is now live-streaming views of Earth from space captured by four commercial high-definition video cameras that were installed on the exterior of the International Space Station last month. The project, known as the High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment, aims to test how cameras … Read More → "NASA now streaming live HD camera views of Earth from space"

There’s good news if you’re a broke University of South Florida student who’d like to take an $1,195 DJI Phantom 2 Vision UAV for a spin: you can now sign one out from the library. Before you start preparing some kind of water balloon-dropping scheme, however, there are a few caveats. First off, all use will be supervised by library staff and you’ll have to … Read More → "University library starts ‘drone loan’ program for students"

Many robots today are able to follow verbal instructions. However, the robot first has to be programmed with software code that allows it to respond to those instructions in some predetermined way, and that software must be added to every time the robot’s task list is enhanced. Wouldn’t it be easier if we could just avoid all that messy fiddling about with software and talk to a machine as we would a human … Read More → "“Tell me Dave” robot learns simply by people talking to it"

When the new fulton center transit hub opened in Lower Manhattan in late June, it connected nine subway lines and four stations. (Eventually it’ll also link to New Jersey’s PATH system.) And thanks to some brilliant design work, the $1.4 billion project also connected parts of the deep, dark system to natural daylight for the first time.

The light enters through a 53-foot skylight. Then it … Read More → "Parts of NY’s subway will soon see daylight for the first time ever"