Jellyfish born in space? Yes, NASA sent jellyfish into space aboard the space shuttle missions, and studied their development and behavior. The jellies that developed in low-gravity orbit had trouble adjusting when they landed on earth. The problem seems to lie with learning to tell up from down…

Compared to normal, earth-born jellyfish, the space-born jellies had trouble moving around. Their
gravity-sensing organs developed normally, but the creatures may have missed … Read More → "Space-born jellyfish struggle on earth"

… Read More → "Australian company to use drones to deliver textbooks"

Bats are climbing inside curled leaves and using them to amplify sound, marking the first time an animal has been observed using a tool to increase its vocalization range. A recent study has shown that Spix’s disk-winged bat uses the shape of the leaves to boost the sound of both incoming and outgoing calls.

… Read More → "Tiny bats use leaves as megaphones to call home"

Seattle is considering the idea of using waste heat from data centers to heat itself, funnelling energy from gigantic server rooms into a new district heating system to keep people warm.

The idea is to give the now-ageing technology of district heating—where heat is generated centrally and then distributed to buildings—a modern shot in the arm. According to The Economist, city authorities are in talks with … Read More → "Seattle wants to heat itself using waste heat from data centers"

Kickstarter has become the Internet’s prime vector for Cinderella stories, catapulting pet projects to fame and burying would-be entrepreneurs in more logistics and minutiae than they were ready to handle. There are many different degrees of success on Kickstarter, but when broken down to a binary yes/no score, a group of scientists have found that they can predict with reasonable confidence whether a project will succeed or fail … Read More → "Statistical models can predict a Kickstarter’s success within 4 hours"

Ocean sensors designed to detect tsunamis, spot drug-running submarines and monitor pollution could soon transmit their warnings to mobile devices through a deep-sea version of the Internet. The U.S. National Science Foundation is backing an effort to make a shared standard for wireless underwater communication that can link far-flung networks of existing ocean sensors.
via Read More → "Deep-sea internet could send tsunami warnings to smartphones"

Ditching traditional aluminum horse shoes for lighter, 3D-printed replacements could lead to improved race day performance. That’s according to scientists (and one horse trainer) in Australia, who recently scanned the hooves of one local race horse, and then used 3D modeling software to create a perfectly-sized shoe. From there, it took less than 24 hours to have four titanium shoes printed and ready for the horse.
via Read More → "3D-printed titanium horse shoes could lead to faster race times"

Food is so personal and subjective that we’re always talking about it in vague and imprecise ways. But one of the many amazing things you can with big-ish data is give precise questions to answers that always seemed so subjective. Take, for instance, the question of bacon. Everything is always better with bacon, right? But if so, how much? And are any foods actually worse with … Read More → "Math proves bacon is a miracle food"

It’s really hard to make a movie on the internet. Not one that uses the internet to, say, raise money or distribute a film. No, what’s difficult is making a movie where more of the action takes place on the internet instead of IRL. Take, for example </ … Read More → "The Fifth Estate proves how hard it is to make a movie about the Internet"

3D printers are a dime-a-dozen these days, but every so often something special comes along. Like this thing: an industrial printer made by Arburg that can create products containing both hard and soft parts at the same time.

Called Freeformer, the device uses a technique called Plastic Freeforming to take 3D CAD data and make parts out of liquid plastic, without … Read More → "This 3D printer can produce hard and soft parts simultaneously"