Body piercings have been used to control wheelchairs and computers in a move scientists believe could transform the way people interact with the world after paralysis.
The movement of a tiny magnet in a tongue piercing is detected by sensors and converted into commands, which can control a range of devices.
The US team said it was harnessing the tongue’s “amazing” deftness.
via < … Read More → "Body piercing controls wheelchair"
How do you get people to respect your personal space while on the train? I find that having angry arguments with imaginary people tends to do the trick. But it does take work. If you’d rather take a passive approach, you can wear Siew Ming Cheng’s Spike Away vest.
Ms. Cheng made it in college for a class project. Her task was to invent a “chindogu”—a … Read More → "Spike vest protects your personal space on commuter trains"
2. THE FORGETTING OF THE INGREDIENT
Oh no! I forgot to put the evaporated milk in the pumpkin pie! As the authors of the Thanksgiving study state, “since there is no written liturgy to insure exact replication each year, sometimes things are forgotten.” In the ritual pattern, the forgetting is followed by lamentation, reassurance, acceptance, and the restoration of comfortable stability. It reinforces the themes of abundance (we’ve got plenty even if not everything works … Read More → "7 overlooked Thanksgiving rituals, according to sociologists"
Spears feel very much like a human weapon of war—so it’s surprising to find out that, in fact, the stone-tipped projectiles pre-date our species by a bewildering 85,000 years.
A team of archaeologists from University of California at Berkeley have uncovered remains of the oldest known stone-tipped throwing spears, and … Read More → "Stone-tipped spears pre-date the human race"
Four people have been arrested in Georgia for attempting to use a drone to drop illegal tobacco into a prison yard, controlling the six-propeller mini-copter from some woods nearby. “They had binoculars and stuff evidently so they could watch it,” Sheriff Josh Hilton told WALB News.
via The Verge</ … Read More → "Four arrested for using a drone to deliver contraband to inmates"
Ever accidentally lose a dollar? Then you count what’s in your war chest, realize it’s a dollar short, and kick yourself for being careless? Well, a British IT worker knows what that feels like—except times 7.5 million.
James Howells did a really smart thing back in 2009 and started … Read More → "Some fool threw away a hard drive with $7.5 million of Bitcoin on in"
What really sucks about losing your phone—besides losing the phone—is that you also lose a whole bunch of your data. But to help ease that pain, a iPhone thief in China copied down a list of all his victim’s contacts (by hand!) and returned it to its rightful owner. All 1,000 of them.
via Read More → "Considerate iPhone thief returns handwritten list of stolen contacts"
The scientists say that the dinosaur was likely about 3-years-old when it died. The fossilized remains are so well preserved that they are shedding light on what caused the dinosaurs death millions of years ago. The dino belonged to a species known as Chasmosaurus belli, which is related to the Triceratops. The dino was horned and frill-headed.
via Slash Gear</ … Read More → "Baby dinosaur skeleton is so intact scientists can tell how it died"
They’re supposed to be the most sterile spots on Earth: space agency “clean rooms,” where engineers prepare vessels for launch, are rigorously washed, scrubbed, and heated to eradicate microbes. So ESA scientists were surprised when, in 2009, they discovered within a clean room an unusual bacteria only seen once before — two years earlier and 2,500 miles away inside a NASA clean room at the Kennedy … Read More → "Bizarre new bacteria discovered in space agency ‘clean rooms’"
