Muscular dystrophy gives Nick Torrance added challenges at Pickney Community High School in Pickney, Michigan. But opening his locker is no longer one of them, thanks to the mechanical ingenuity of fellow students Micah Stuhldreher and Wyatt Smrcka. Nick can now wave his hand over a sensor on his wheelchair whenever he needs to open or close his locker:

They were told to tear off a locker door and figure out a way to … Read More → "High school students build robotic locker opener for disabled student"

Is it possible to measure people’s levels of happiness based on the online data they produce? The team behind Hedonometer thinks so. Conceived by Peter Dodds and Chris Danforth at the University of Vermont’s Computational Story Lab, the software powering the platform, which recently went live, not only measures human happiness but does it in real time, too.

To perform the task, the Hedonometer uses people’s online expressions on … Read More → "Hedonometer reads tweets to gauge social happiness"

In a quirky new experiment, researchers at Yale University found that simply showing people what their anxious brains look like was enough to help those subjects lessen their anxiety. The participants in the study even learned how to control activity in a certain brain region after just two sessions of watching real-time brain imaging feedback.
via Gizmodo

Read More → "Watching your brain freak out on a scanner calms you down"

3D scanners can clone architecture, objects, and even your own face. But what about the natural world? What would happen if you trained a scanner on a misty night or a dense forest?

Matthew Shaw and William Trossell, a pair of British architects who specialize in generating 3D data, are finding out. Shaw … Read More → "Here’s what happens when you 3D scan mist, ice, and smoke"

The deck of the bridge is comprised of five separate steel beams. When the bridge needs to be raised, these are lifted one at a time, each to a lesser height than the one before it, creating an instantly familiar fanned effect. Though the first beam raises to an angle of 80 degrees, the last only needs to clear a height of 5.5 meters (18 feet) over the middle of the canal. The lifting mechanism is powered by hydraulics, with the … Read More → "London footbridge to raise like a Japanese fan (video)"

Here’s something that you never really run across eBay or Craigslist: the real Air Force One airplane. As in the freaking flying aircraft that has freaking transported freaking Presidents of the freaking United States of America in the freaking air. Let’s buy this thing, people!
via gizmodo

< … Read More → "You can buy the president’s real Air Force One airplane"

High above the Earth, astronauts aboard the International Space Station are playing with fire — very carefully. By lighting controlled fires and watching them burn, the Expedition 35 team is learning how to prevent accidental blazes from breaking out aboard the station and other spacecraft — a nightmare scenario that could put not only lives, but the very future of human spaceflight at risk. “We can certainly make things not flammable on Earth, but … Read More → "Burn notice: NASA discovers that fireproof materials ignite in space"

Robots that make maps tend to be highly reliant on vision of one sort or another, whether it’s a camera image or something off the end of the visible spectrum like a laser scanner. This is understandable: humans are adapted to use vision, so we understand it pretty well, and we can get a lot of useful information out of a visual image. Animals, on the other hand, take advantage of a … Read More → "Shrewbot uses whiskers to map its environment (video)"

Just like other parts of the body, the retina needs oxygen in order to survive. If it doesn’t receive enough – should its blood supply be restricted, for instance – permanent blindness can result. Therefore, the sooner that doctors know if a patient’s retina is receiving insufficient oxygen, the better the chances that they can take action in time. Soon, they may be able to use tiny injectable robots to get them … Read More → "Tiny robots in the eye may save patients’ sight"

We’ve previously featured artist Dave Cole’s knitting work here at Neatorama. This sculpture, which he completed last year, began with an 11-ton steamroller. He stripped it apart and turned it into a functional music box. When activated, it plays the national anthem of the United States.
via Neatorama

… Read More → "Steamroller music box plays “The Star-Spangled Banner” (video)"