In a remarkable feat of X-Acto knife wizardry, Canadian artist Myriam Dion painstakingly cut intricate lace-like designs into newspapers for her series “Lace Newspapers.”
via Laughing Squid

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Scentee wants to expand your smartphone horizons and add smell to the senses your phone already stimulates. The plug-in accessory attaches to headphone socket on both iPhones and Android smartphones and, when told to by the companion app, releases a burst of fragrance, paired with a customizable LED light. It’s ridiculous, but that’s very much part of the Japan-made accessory’s charm. The most important factor here is arguably the range of scents available, … Read More → "Why have normal smartphone notifications when you can use the smell of bacon?"

Eric Klarenbeek has designed a 3D-printed chair that’s made with living fungus. Created in conjunction with the University of Wageningen for Dutch Design Week 2013, the chair concept is made by mixing water, powdered straw, and mycelium, the threadlike vegetative part of fungus. That mixture is then coated with a thin layer of bioplastic, and as the mixture dries and the mycelium grows, it creates what’s … Read More → "This twisted 3D-printed chair is made of fungus"

Bicycles are a common form of everyday transportation in the Netherlands, so it’s no surprise that this architectural delight can be found there between the cities of Eindhoven and Veldhoven. How can a large number of bicyclists cross a highway without having to stop for cars? With this suspended roundabout designed by IPV Delft.

The Hovenring, as it’s called, is a ring of bike paths about 236 feet … Read More → "A suspended bicycle roundabout over a highway"

I’m mystified and somewhat bemused as to why this is suddenly news – must have been a slow day at the farm. I knew about gold and other precious metals being found in trace amounts in plant matter 20 years ago, when I was studying for my geology degree (before I became a elec engineer).

The field is called biogeochemistry, and a related field is called geobotany. A lot of the work was done in Australia and elsewhere in the 60’s and 70’s. However using these methods for prospecting was eventually dropped because you needed specially skilled field … Read More → "I’m mystified and somewhat bemus"

It sounds like the setup for an episode of “The X-Files.” A satellite records evidence of a mysterious cluster of lights in the Atlantic ocean, far from human civilization. Could … Read More → "NASA explains mysterious ocean lights seen by satellite"

A few months after being discharged from the hospital, in May 2011, Shillcox saw a news report announcing that researchers had for the first time enabled a paralyzed person to stand on his own. Neuroscientist Susan Harkema at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky, used electrical stimulation to “awaken” the man’s lower spinal cord, and on the first day of the experiments he stood up, able to support all of his … Read More → "Spinal stimulation gets paralyzed patients moving"

Amazon has gained initial approval for its plan to build a huge greenhouse in the middle of Seattle. The proposal has three transparent domes intersecting to form a five-story complex that will contain offices, dining areas, and retail stores. It’s nestled between the three buildings that make up the company’s giant new campus,; a trio of towers all taller than 70 stories.

< … Read More → "Amazon’s giant biodome approved for the streets of Seattle"

Until recently, bipedal robots have sometimes had to take interesting approaches to imitate human walking because they lack our first points of contact with the road: heels and toes. The latest breakthrough from Texas A&M’s Amber Lab robotics team may have fixed that, though. An approximation of those foot bones grants the robo-Manziel the pivot-points necessary … Read More → "AMBER robot walks on human-like feet"

Habraken figured there had to be a more scientific way to design the ultimate chair. “I wondered if I could breed the perfect chair, like we try to breed the perfect thoroughbred,” he says. His most recent project, Chairgenics, is an investigation into what would happen if you took the best features of the world’s most iconic chairs and blended them together … Read More → "Designer uses algorithm to genetically breed … chairs"