A pliable, multi-purpose acoustic sensor has been developed by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder (UC Boulder) and Northwestern University (NU) that can be worn like a Band-Aid on the skin to monitor the heart and recognize spoken words. The researchers believe that the device could one day be used to monitor a wide range of bodily functions, while also allowing the wearer to control robots … Read More → "Wearable sensor detects heartbeat and allows voice control of remote devices"

“Oh brave new world that has such people in it,” says Miranda at the end of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

She is referring to the humans but magic is at the heart of the play and at the Royal Shakespeare Company theatre in the bard’s birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon, technology is playing a big role in bringing that to life.

< … Read More → "Shakespeare’s Tempest gets mixed reality makeover"

WITH THE PUSH of a button, 300 drones ascend from a ground station and float over a nearby lake. You can’t see them at first—it’s well after sundown—but you can hear them falling into formation. The music starts, the drones light up, and the choreography begins. This isn’t just the latest Disney World attraction. It’s … Read More → "Disney’s latest attraction? 300 drones flying in formation"

Researchers in the Netherlands have successfully tested a brain implant that allows a patient with late-stage Lou Gehrig’s disease to spell messages at the rate of two letters per minute. 

The new system was tested on Hanneke De Bruijne, a 58-year-old woman in the late stages of Lou Gehrig’s disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ( … Read More → "Brain implant allows paralyzed woman to spell out messages with her mind"

James Plakovic composes lots of scores that take the form of a composer, an object, or in this case, a map of the world. Set in 2/4 time signature with 32 bars, the piece does a pretty accurate job of depicting a standard Mercator projection that starts and ends with Asia.
via Boing Boing</ … Read More → "World map as a musical score"

A team of biologists has just named three new salamanders in the genus Thorius; the tiniest tailed tetrapods known to science. Smaller than a matchstick, these creatures are as strange as they are adorable, their miniaturized anatomy pushing the boundaries of what natural selection can produce. Tragically, all three species appear to be edging toward extinction.
via Read More → "Scientists just discovered three adorably tiny new salamanders"

German sculptor Daniel Kühn created the “Light & Cigarette Machine,” which plays Candide while lighting and extending a cigarette; it was later owned by Leonard Bernstein, and was auctioned off to a German collector after his death.
via Boing Boing

… Read More → "Leonard Bernstein once owned this amazing cigarette-lighting Rube Goldberg machine"

Some gadgets are so straightforward they barely need explaining, but here we go anyway: these are a pair of motion-sensitive sensors that you slip onto a pair of drumsticks and that let you play a virtual drum kit anywhere you like. It’s called the Freedrum (get it?) and each unit pairs via Bluetooth to … Read More → "This gadget makes air-drumming sound like the real thing"

A developer named Brian Kane has hacked his Alexa to speak through the avatar of a wall-mounted Big Mouth Billy Bass. It’s not clear exactly how he did it, but it’s probably related to the Alexa API — opened in April just after the release … Read More → "Man hacks Alexa into singing fish robot, terror ensues"

Halloween might be over, but for some of us there’s still another pumpkin-centric holiday right around the corner to give us an excuse to build projects out of various gourds. During a challenge at a local event, [Michael] came up with a virtual cornucopia of uses for all of the squashes he had on hand and built a touch-sensitive piano with all of them.</ … Read More → "Harpsi-gourd gets you into Thanksgiving spirit"