It seems like Washington and the big automakers in Detroit have gone electrification crazy. Everyone is working on the electrification of the automobile industry with more hybrids and pure electric vehicles being researched and produced all around the world. The push for electrification is to save drivers at the pump, help the environment, and to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

</ … Read More → "Ford invests in electrification big time"

Scientists recently recorded footage of a never-before-seen defense mechanism deployed by a small species of deep-sea squid: When threatened, the squid attacks its predator and then pulls away, breaking off the tip of its own arm and leaving it behind as a distraction. The arm continues to glow and twitch, creating a diversion and enabling the squid to escape.

But this squid isn’t the only creature with a bizarre way of defending itself. Here are several other ways animals try to save their own lives, or the lives of their comrades.
… Read More → "Seven insane animal defense mechanisms"

Composite photo of the Perseids meteor shower. Photo by David Kingham.

via Kottke

Physicists working on the Large Hadron Collider have been a bit of a loose end since discovering the Higgs particle, so they’ve broken the man-made temperature record for fun. And science.

The ALICE heavy-ion experiment, a sister project to the more-famous ATLAS and CMS experiments, collided lead ions to create — for just a split second — a quark-gluon plasma with a heat of around 9.9 trillion degrees Fahrenheit.
via Wired

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Many people in Japan are still recovering from the tragic earthquake and tsunami that killed so many and left a nuclear power plant in Fukushima leaking radiation into the environment. It’s hard to look past the human toll that this tragedy took on families in affected areas of Japan, but the leaking radiation from the nuclear power plant has profound implications for the environment. Scientists have announced that they have found an increase in mutations among butterflies collected around Fukushima.

via Slash … Read More → "Severe mutations discovered in butterflies around Fukushima"

If you thought your OTA update took too long, how about four days? That’s how long the Curiosity “brain transplant” took, and is now finally complete. This now means that the main computers have switched over from landing mode, to surface mode — and thus we hope — meaning the rover’s good to go.
via Engadget</ … Read More → "Curiosity survives brain transplant, prepares for first drive"

If you shop at thrift stores, then you already know that there are many great deals available to help you deck out your home, or some affordable outfits, but for some people, minor thrift store purchases have left them with some major profits.

The Declaration of Independence: $477,650

Michael Sparks visited a thrift store near his home one day to purchase a few items for his house. He ended up buying a candleholder, some salt and pepper shakers and what he thought was a reprint of the Declaration of Independence priced at $2.48.

< … Read More → "Five fortunes found at thrift shops"

Few brands in the sports car world evoke as much lust in car guys and gals as the name Ferrari. Ferrari has made the North American debut of a car it claims to be the fastest Ferrari ever built at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. The car is the Ferrari F12berlinetta. Considering some of the epic sports cars the Ferrari has built over the years, calling this the fastest ever is a huge claim.< … Read More → "Ferrari F12berlinetta makes North American debut at Pebble Beach"

It’s not often that something can be beautiful as well as useful at the same time—but New York City-based artist and scientist Andreco has proven that theory wrong.

On the side of a five-story apartment building in Bologna, he has painted a 59-foot mural—in the shape that represents a tree, crystal and egg—that is capable of cleaning air. 

Instead of using traditional paint, Andreco used a kind of photochemical paint that is able to reduce the nitrogen monoxide in the … Read More → "Scientist paints a pollution-fighting mural that literally helps to clean air"

It’s entirely possible that you’ve never heard of Siggraph. It’s a fairly specialized conference held by the Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques.

What that means is that it’s all about cool ways of messing with computers and electronics, and the dedicated Emerging Technologies space is stuffed full of some of the weirdest computer interfaces that we’ve ever experienced.
via Read More → "Glimpses of the future at Siggraph’s Emerging Technologies exhibit"