Art Museums regularly push the boundaries in terms of architecture, but Beijing architecture studio MAD has gone one step further by designing an artificial island to form the Pingtan Art Museum. Dominated by three concrete mounds, the museum will feature exhibit halls and public spaces and be linked to Pingtan Island by an undulating pier.
via Gizmag

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This working Lego microscope was built by Carl Merriman, a Lego artist who’s been building for over 27 years. It’s sleek, functional and even though you couldn’t use it to study Ebola or the T-Virus, it’s still a pretty sweet piece of kit.

The build … Read More → "This LEGO microscope actually works"

Anagramatron is a bot written by developer Colin Rothfels that finds and retweets Twitter anagrams. Rothfels has also made an Anagramatron Tumblr blog that embeds the anagrammatic tweets alongside one another.
via Laughing Squid

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Researchers at Northwestern Medicine have successfully transplanted insulin-producing cells across species lines — removing cells from rats and implanting them in mice — without using drugs to prevent rejection of the foreign cells. While the transplant may seem like a small victory — mice and rats are pretty similar, after all — it marks a significant step forward in interspecies transplants that could one day save human lives by … Read More → "First successful interspecies cell transplants could pave the way for future pig-to-human transplants"

The life-sized Game of Life will be held from 20 July to 16 September on Yoron Island located just North of Okinawa. The impetus for this plan was the fact that the island is shaped like that hilly part of the game board where the spinner sits.

Throughout these summer months, players will be given a map showing the game squares and an allotment of fake money like that used in the game. The players will … Read More → "Life-sized game of LIFE"

What if you could see how people felt by looking at a former Olympics venue? In June, artist Jennifer Wen Ma and lighting designer Zheng Jianwei turned the “Water Cube,” used for swimming events in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, into an art project based on Sina Weibo and the I Ching. Nature and Man in Rhapsody of Light at the Water Cube, as … Read More → "Artist turns Beijing’s Water Cube into a massive emoji-based mood ring (video)"

Although Homer Simpson’s brother’s Baby Translator may still only be a whimsical concept, Rhode Island scientists have developed something that could prove to be even more valuable. Researchers at Brown University teamed up with faculty at Women & Infants Hospital, to create a computer tool that may find use detecting neurological or developmental problems in infants, by analyzing their cries.

The software starts by breaking recordings of baby cries … Read More → "Scientists developing a baby cry analyzer"

When Todd Reichert settles into the pilot seat of the helicopter he helped build, there are no fancy electronic switches to flip, there’s no fuel tank to fill and certainly no computer to configure before take off.

What allows the 31-year-old to defy gravity is sheer human power, delivered to the craft’s four rotors through the bicycle pedals he steadily pumps throughout … Read More → "Canadian team nabs top prize for human-powered helicopter"

The landing site of NASA’s Apollo missions may be transformed into a popular tourist destination, if a new bill in Congress is ratified. Two democratic congresswomen are seeking designate a national park on the moon, protecting abandoned Apollo artifacts, such as the landing … Read More → "Apollo mission sites could become a lunar national park"

DARPA has revealed the completed ATLAS humanoid robot, which is to star in the upcoming DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) – and it cuts a striking figure. Designed by Boston Dynamics (the guys behind the BigDog,Cheetah, and LS3 quadrupeds), it’s being given to the top teams that recently competed in the Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC). Now those teams have less than six months to fine tune their software … Read More → "DARPA’s ATLAS humanoid robot gears up for disaster response (video)"