Ogden, Utah-based Graeme Abraham, owner of the Etsy store GreenCüb, has repurposed a collection of recognizable video game controllers as useful desk organizers (Nintendo 64, GameCube, Read More → "Video game controllers repurposed as useful desk organizers"

Pulling off a successful mission will require profound feats of technology and science. Among them? Figuring out how to prevent astronauts confined to a cramped, isolated capsule for several years from coming to blows. “When a bad day happens, it isn’t so easy to address in space,” says Douglas Vakoch, PhD, a clinical psychologist and senior scientist at the SETI Institute. “It’s inherently difficult, psychologically, to make sure astronauts are able to handle this.”

NASA is conducting its own research on the issue. Last week, the agency handed out a $1.3 million … Read More → "How to prevent an astronaut bloodbath on Mars"

Since bipedal robots took their first steps, the majority has been designed with the same basic joint/actuator configuration in their legs. This design, based on a simplified human leg, uses just six motors (three for the hip, one for the knee, and two for the ankle), and though it proved successful, it has also shown several limitations over the last 25 years. Now researchers at the Humanoid Robotics Institute at Waseda University (the birthplace of the first … Read More → "Designing a more human-like lower leg for biped robots"

Lumigrids is a simple, clever and above all useful concept that aims to improve the safety of cycling at night. The device is an LED projector that fits on the handlebars of your bicycle, projecting a square grid onto the ground before you. By looking at the changes and abnormalities in the grid, the cyclist is able to easily pick out potholes and other obstacles, helping them to avoid potential crashes and falls.

The team … Read More → "Lumigrids – the LED projector that keeps cyclists out of potholes"

Nearly one in three commercial honeybee colonies in the United States died or disappeared last winter, an unsustainable decline that threatens the nation’s food supply.

Multiple factors — pesticides, fungicides, parasites, viruses and malnutrition — are believed to cause the losses, which were officially announced today by a consortium of academic researchers, beekeepers and Department of Agriculture scientists.

“We’re getting closer and closer to … Read More → "One-third of U.S. honeybee colonies died last winter, threatening food supply"

“When we explain it to people we get a lot of doubt,” Matt Parker says of Lumarca, his volumetric display installation, which renders graphics in 3D and has been in the works for several years. What puts that doubt in people’s heads is not necessarily how brilliant it looks, but instead how it works — Lumarca is composed of little more than a computer, a projector, and some string. Projected images … Read More → "Practical magic: Lumarca is a mesmerizing 3D sculpture made of string and light (video)"

When someone has a heart attack, it’s crucial that they receive treatment as soon as possible. Emergency medical technicians, however, are limited in how detailed of an on-the-spot diagnosis they can make of a patient’s condition. This means that actual treatment often has to wait until they get the patient to a hospital. That could be changing, however, as a scientist with GE Global Research is now looking into the use of & … Read More → "Microbubbles could image the heart and deliver anti-clotting drugs simultaneously"

In 1979, [Nolan Bushnell] released Asteroids to the world. Now, he’s playing the game again, only this time with the help of a laser projector and a Kinect that turns anyone sitting on a stool – in this case [Nolan] himself – into everyone’s favorite vector spaceship. It’s a project for Steam Carnival, a project by [Brent Bushnell] and [Eric Gradman] that hopes … Read More → "Human Asteroids makes you a vector triangle ship (video)"

There’s a branch of robotics research that doesn’t necessarily believe that future automatons have to be filled with pistons, gears, and motors. Working to closely emulate Mother Nature’s more squishy creations, these robots would be made entirely from soft materials, like UC Berkeley’s new hydrogel that reacts and moves when blasted with a laser.
via Gizmodo

Russian scientists have announced the recovery of well-preserved woolly mammoth blood and tissue from a 10,000-year-old female carcass found on the New Siberian Islands off the coast of Siberia. The Russian scientists and their partners from the South Korean Sooam Biotech Research Foundation hope to use the blood and tissue to clone a woolly mammoth. The Russian team was astonished to find the blood in a liquid … Read More → "Russian scientists recover well-preserved woolly mammoth blood and tissue in Siberia"