A South American plant with a 10ft (3m) tall flower spike is about to bloom in a Surrey glasshouse for the first time since it was planted 15 years ago.
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) at Wisley said the Puya chilensis, a native of Chile, would bloom in the next few days and last about a week.
In the Andes it … Read More → "RHS ‘sheep-eating’ plant about to bloom in Surrey"
Tomás Saraceno‘s M.O. as an artist is to make you float—either on top of millions of yards of plastic, or inside of hexagonal sky pods, or on top of an inflatable balloons. His latest Jules Verne-tinged installation, which opened today, is no different.
Read More → "A space-inspired floating playground that puts visitors into orbit"
Humans have been harvesting silkworm cocoons to spin into textiles for millennia, but new technologies mean we’re continue to improve our techniques for making the luxurious thread. This week, for instance, researchers at Japan’s National Institute for Agrobiological Sciences announced that they have genetically engineered silkworms that produce red, orange, and green colored silks which glow beneath fluorescent light. Needless to say, the development could have huge … Read More → "Genetically engineered silkworms spin fluorescent glowing thread"
The inner workings of the human brain are still a fairly mysterious frontier despite all we’ve learned in recent decades, but a recently-completed initiative should provide a better map of what’s inside our heads than anything we’ve seen thus far. According toNature, scientists have successfully mapped the entirety of a human brain in 3D — a laborious … Read More → "New 3D map of the human brain offers 50 times more detail than previous reconstructions"
Though there’s much work to be done before miniature robots move exactly like insects, Harvard Microrobotics Lab is making strides with its latest prototypes. It recently demonstrated the Harvard Ambulatory MicroRobot (HAMR), a 4.4 cm (1.7 in) quadruped that scurries around at up to 8.4 body lengths per second.
via Gizmag
… Read More → "Harvard’s insect-sized HAMR robots bug out (video)"
The jaw-dropping photo series “Tultepec” by Thomas Prior documents the fireworks-fueled chaos of the 2013 National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico. The nine-day festival celebrates the main industry of Tultepec—handmade fireworks—through firework competitions, … Read More → "Incredible photos of the National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico"
Bruno Freire’s designs for the Brazilian furniture brand Oficina Polvo are inspired by the forms of the spider. They give a homey feel, don’t you think?
via Neatorama
Read More → "Spider furniture"
When you buy vegetables at the grocery store, they are usually still alive. When you lock your cabbage and carrots in the dark recess of the refrigerator vegetable drawer, they are still alive. They continue to metabolize while we wait to cook them.
Why should we care? Well, plants that are alive adjust to the conditions surrounding them. Researchers at Rice University have shown that some plants have circadian rhythms, adjusting their production … Read More → "Your vegetables’ nutritional content could be affected by jet lag"
Almost exactly a year ago, we posted about how Ashutosh Saxena’s lab at Cornell was teaching robots to use their “imaginations” to try to picture how a human would want a room organized. The research was successful, with algorithms that used hallucinated humans (which are the best sort of humans) to influence the placement of objects performing significantly better than other methods. Cool stuff indeed, and now comes the next step: labeling 3 … Read More → "Robots hallucinate humans to aid in object recognition (video)"
