Thanks to a new Google Chrome feature, if you click on a site that auto-plays music or maybe a video ad, you can at least silence it quickly. If you download the Chrome 32 beta release, you’ll see indicators on tabs that are playing audio. Likewise, it also lets you know which tabs are using your webcam, or streaming to your TV over Chromecast.
via Engadget

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In Keyfleas, little lights follow your fingers around a keyboard like a swarm of fleas, and can create the sensation that something is nipping at your fingers.

Developed by Miles Peyton at Carnegie Mellon, Keyfleas uses interactive projection to map the “fleas” and follow hand motions across the keyboard. Based on Chris Sugrue’s light bugs, Keyfleas& … Read More → "Keyfleas don’t actually bite while you type"

You’d be hard pressed to find a tech company who hasn’t jumped into the wearable tech space. Some make a big splash with game changers like Google Glass, or they come more quietly like Microsoft and Intel. But they are coming – even car manufacturer Nissan introduced a smartwatch. And why shouldn’t they? The potential is huge. ABI Research estimates the global market for wearables in health and fitness alone … Read More → "Wearable tech: It’s not a device, it’s a system"

… Read More → "This car stops working when you’re not paying attention"

A recently discovered G tridens fruitfly that has evolved a to have images of detailed, ant-like insects on each wing, complete with six legs, a thorax, antennae and a tapered abdomen. The fly uses the images defensively, waving them back and forth when threatened to create the illusion of massing ants. Many G Tridens varieties bear elaborate wing markings, but this one, discovered in Oman, is very striking. 
… Read More → "Fruitfly evolved pictures of ants on its wings"

Tuesday, Nov. 12 2013, a robot will ring the closing bell for the NASDAQ stock exchange celebrating a brand new robotics industry ETF (a mutual fund that is traded on a stock exchange). The ETF, ticker symbol ROBO, is predicated on an index licensed from Robo-Stox LLC. . . The first time the NASDAQ bell has been rung by a robot.
via Robots Dreams

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 “Is ‘Huh?’ a universal word? Conversational infrastructure and the convergent evolution of linguistic items is a new paper in PLoS One by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The authors propose that “Huh” is a word, and that convergent evolution has driven multiple, unrelated languages to produce it. The key findings summary shows just how special and interesting this is: “Huh” is not innate (other primates don’t say it), but the circumstances of its use (needing to quickly and briefly prompt another speaker to repeat herself) are … Read More → "“Huh” is the universal word"

Azarkant—a 3D short by Andrey Klimov—doesn’t have much of a plot, but it’s delicious computer generated eye candy for lovers of spaceships, robots, dead cosmonauts andHaloesque things in general.

via Gizmodo/Sploid

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3D printing has the ability to create almost anything, from customized figurines to bionic ears and even other 3D printers. Recently, one San Diego-based startup discovered it can even generate a slice of a functioning, long-lasting liver by printing layers of living cells.

By harnessing the liver’s natural ability to regenerate itself, researchers at Organovo were able to create a piece of liver that was able … Read More → "3D-printed liver slices are able to function normally for 40 days"

A team led by neurobiologist Dr. Miguel Nicolelis started by observing the activity of almost 500 neurons in both cerebral hemispheres of the animals’ brains. One of the monkeys then learned to use its own hands on physical joysticks, to move the arms of an avatar monkey on a computer screen. Whenever that avatar successfully performed a specific bimanual motor task (putting its hands on targets that would pop up), the real monkey would receive a … Read More → "Monkeys control arms of avatar using their mind"