Drum Pants are a wireless peripheral device invented by Tyler Freeman. They consist of electronic components including Arduino controllers that are wrapped in strips of cloth. Tie those strips around your legs, arms or chest. To play an instrument, just tap the sensor and a mobile device, such as a smartphone, will play the sound.
via Neatorama

When a patient in Germany stumped his doctors with a strange combination of severe symptoms including heart failure, vision and hearing loss, acid reflux, and enlarged lymph nodes, Dr. Juergen Schaefer was called in to lend his expertise. Turns out the doc isn’t only gainfully employed solving medical mysteries at the Center for Undiagnosed Diseases just outside Frankfurt — he’s also a fan of the  … Read More → "‘House’ episode helps doctor diagnose rare cobalt poisoning"

A team of archaeologists has discovered a crucial clue to human ancestry in a set of 800,000-year-old footprints left in a beachside sediment bed in England. The prints offer an important look into early human habitation in northern Europe, with height estimates suggesting the prints were left by a shorter, smaller-brained human ancestor known asHomo Antecessor. The … Read More → "Archaeologists discover 800,000-year-old footprints on an English beach"

…“Crime Jazz,” the two-volume soundtrack collection from Rhinofeaturing ominous, jazzy theme music from 1950s TV shows and movies…
via Boing Boing

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[Markus] has been teaching his daughter about animals using a big old animal encyclopedia. A few days ago, they stumbled upon the chameleon, and when he tried to explain its camouflage abilities, she didn’t quite understand. So he decided to make her a pet color-changing chameleon robot. The best part is he built it during her nap!

It’s a fairly simple circuit consisting of an Arduino Uno, a … Read More → "Robot chameleon teaches little girl about camouflage"

Everybody gets the gist of the Winter Olympics. Skiing, hockey, figure skating, various sled races—we’re all familiar with the classics. But did you know that dogs once competed in the Winter Olympics? Have you heard of the sport that’s a cross between hockey and soccer? The Olympics used to be weird, man.

Read More → "The most unusual sports in Olympics history"

Later this year, an auction house in Austria is putting up a vintage Hasselblad 500 EL Data Camera, which it claims was used during an Apollo Moon mission and is the only such camera to be brought back to Earth.

Before you start counting out your penny jar, though, you should really read Robert Pearlman’s analysis of the … Read More → "Moon camera up for auction may or may not have been to the Moon"

What’s the difference between a chicken and a theropod dinosaur? First off, we have chickens, but all the dinosaurs are dead. But if we make a chicken more like a dinosaur, we can study how theropods (like T. rex and Velociraptor) may have moved. A team of researchers from the Universidad de Chile and the University of Illinois at Chicago put artificial tails, resembling toilet … Read More → "Chickens with heavy tails walk like dinosaurs"

An age of inexpensive wearable devices that track our every move, and having plenty of places to post that information publicly has resulted in a perfect mix of data that shows where people are exercising. Nathan Yau over at Flowing Data has done just that, taking public running logs from RunKeeper and stacking them up … Read More → "Data project shows popular running routes in 22 cities"

It seems like snoring has become more of an epidemic than any of us have realized. At CES, Sleep Number revealed its IQ bed that lets bedmates silence a snoring partner. Butnow there’s a pillow that can stop a deafening snorer all by itself.

Using a built-in microphone with adjustable sensitivity, … Read More → "Snore sensing pillow automatically nudges you to roll over"