At an age when some people are struggling with their own memories (and many others are just plain dead) neuroscientist Brenda Milner does an amazing job of explaining her contributions to our understanding of how memory works. Milner is one of the researchers who worked with H.M., the famous patient who lost his ability to form new memories after undergoing brain surgery.
via Boing Boing

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… Read More → "Could an app replicate the placebo effect? (video)"

Makr Shakr will be serving cocktails to delegates at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco this week.

It consists of three robotic arms which mimic the actions of a bartender from shaking a martini to slicing a lemon.

The robots are linked to an app which allows users to create their own cocktails from scratch…

The team behind the project hope to create a “bottom-up bar culture”, allowing … Read More → "Robot bartender serves up crowd-sourced cocktails"

The Smithsonian’s been a fan of 3D scanning and printing for some time, but now it’s decided to use lasers to preserve its entire collection for future generations.

Vince Rossi and Adam Metallo lead the project, which will see a team work through a prioritized list of 14 million objects——from artworks … Read More → "How the smithsonian is 3D-scanning its entire collection (video)"

Sure, your pet hamster’s amazing leg strength may someday power a house, but can it beat you in a race? A pair of Chicago-based artists might be able to help you solve this mystery. The duo recently hooked up a homemade tachometer to a hamster’s exercise wheel and mapped the data to a treadmill’s motor. The fur ball’s RPMs are transferred in real time, which gives it the … Read More → "Hamster wheel used to control human-sized treadmill (video)"

Bloomberg is reporting on a 14-year-old student in Colorado who found herself presenting data to the Heart Rhythm Society meeting in Denver this week. Gianna Chien’s study of the effects of an iPad 2 on implanted cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) is making some waves among the medical community because it appears to demonstrate that in a statistically significant number of cases, close proximity to an iPad 2 can disable someone’s … Read More → "Tablets can interfere with implanted defibrillators, stop hearts"

The reason mad scientists are pictured in film in labs with interconnected beakers and machinery that does incomprehensible things is because that’s the way labs looked at one time. io9 has a collection of pictures of the laboratories where huge scientific and engineering breakthroughs occurred, from Edison (top) and Tesla (bottom) to the development of cellophane and computers.
via Neatorama</ … Read More → "Incredible pictures of early science labs"

More than a decade after the attacks on the World Trade Center brought down an iconic architectural symbol of New York City, a new structure has finally been completed to take its place. This weekend the final spire was placed atop the 2013 version of the World Trade Center and the stunning new view of the cityscape was captured via a GoPro camera.

According to building officials, the new World … Read More → "Video: view from the top of new World Trade Center via GoPro"

… Read More → "Astronaut Chris Hadfield performs David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” on the ISS"

Invisibility cloaks have been around in various forms since 2006, when the first cloak based on optical metamaterials was demonstrated. The design of cloaking devices has come a long way in the past seven years, as illustrated by a simple, yet highly effective, radar cloak developed by Duke University Professor Yaroslav Urzhumov, that can be made using a hobby-level 3D printer.
via Read More → "Make your own invisibility cloak with a 3D printer"