Well — you guys were right. As it turns out, it was actually a pair of animators who fooled the internet.

Not sure what we’re talking about? Last month, the [Kuka Robot Group] put out a highly polished video showing an industrial robot playing table tennis against the apparent world champion of the sport — it was extremely well done and entertaining to watch, but unfortunately… also … Read More → "The amazing ping pong robot was a fake"

We’ve always fancied owning our very own luxury GearCulture yacht, but now we’re thinking we want one of these instead. The Floating House sports a couple of stunning bedrooms, bathrooms, living room and a kitchen. Oh, and a mighty, mighty large pool out back. And front. It sure would be a swell place to have the office.
via Gear Culture

Read More → "The floating house"

When someone has chronic venous insufficiency, it means that because of faulty valves in their leg veins, oxygen-poor blood isn’t able to be pumped back to their heart. The George Washington University’s Dr. Narine Sarvazyan has created a possible solution, however – a beating “mini heart” that’s wrapped around the vein, to help push the blood through.

The mini heart takes the form of a cuff of rhythmically-contracting heart tissue, made … Read More → "“Mini hearts” on veins could be used to treat circulatory problems"

Seeing the infrared spectrum has a number of applications that go beyond the nighttime war games glamorized in adventure flicks. Doctors can use the wavelengths to monitor blood flow, and civil engineers can use them to identify heat or chemical leaks. And they may be able to do so without the clunky goggles seen on film.

Researchers at the University of Michigan, led by electrical engineer Zhaohui Zhong, have devised a way to capture … Read More → "Contact lenses with infrared vision? Ultra-thin graphene opens up the possibilities"

This is the first in a series of case studies on adventurers, athletes and historical men and women who pushed their limits and challenged the status quo in order to the impossible and do things no one had ever done before. Enjoy.

—

Ernest Shackleton was one of the main polar explorers of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. He led three expeditions … Read More → "Case study: Sir Ernest Shackleton and the Trans-Antarctic Expedition"

Anyone can build a castle with sand, but can you build a castle on sand? Artist and photographer Vik Muniz collaborated with MIT researcher Marcelo Coelho to engrave a castle onto a single granule of sand.

The process brilliantly combines both high and low tech in the history of imagemaking. … Read More → "These sand castles are actually castles carved on grains of sand"

Synthetic biology has come a long way in recent years. In the last two decades alone, scientists have been able to go from synthesizing the genome of a relatively small virus, Hepatitis C, to creating what researchers refer to as the “first synthetic cell” from a unicellular organism. Yet until recently, researchers had been incapable of constructing one of the most emblematic symbols of our own … Read More → "Scientists just took a major step toward making life from scratch"

This ingenious clock by Instructables member dodgey99 turns the knobs on an Etch A Sketch to write the time, then flips over to erase the markings and update.

First, he adapted a pre-existing body of code that used stepper motors to write random lines on an Etch A Sketch. He carefully rewrote this code so that it would not only compose specific lines, but reset the stylus on an analog device. Then … Read More → "This clock automatically writes the time on an Etch A Sketch"

Nobody knows what causes autism, a condition that varies so widely in severity that some people on the spectrum achieve enviable fame and success while others require lifelong assistance due to severe problems with communication, cognition, and behavior. Scientists have found countless clues, but so far they don’t quite add up. The genetics is complicated. The neuroscience is conflicted.

Now, a new study adds an intriguing, unexpected, and sure-to-be controversial finding … Read More → "An unexpected discovery in the brains of autistic children"