For his latest project, robotics artist Neil Mendoza decided to leave the knives behind and instead created an incredible hamster-powered machine that draws pictures hamsters using Raspberry Pi technology.
via Laughing Squid</ … Read More → "An amazing hamster-powered machine that solely draws pictures of hamsters"

When programmers at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory set out to develop the flight software for the Apollo 11 space program in the mid-1960s, the necessary technology did not exist. They had to invent it. 

They came up with a new way to store computer programs, called “rope memory,” and created a special version of the assembly programming language. Assembly itself is obscure to many of today’s … Read More → "The code that took America to the moon was just published to GitHub, and it’s like a 1960s time capsule"

Houseplants have never been known as great conversationalists, but it’s possible we just can’t hear what they’re saying. Swiss company, Vivent SARL, is hoping to rectify that with its Phytl Signs device that picks up the tiny electrical signals emitted by plants and broadcasts them through a speaker. The ultimate goal is to translate what the plants are actually “saying.”
via Read More → "“Wearable” for plants to let you converse with a chrysanthemum"

Everyone who secretly thought that all novels have the same plot can feel vindicated by new research supporting that suspicion. Sort of.

Researchers from the Computational Story Lab at the University of Vermont in Burlington used sentiment analysis—or analysis of emotion in a string of words—to … Read More → "New data analysis suggests only six book plots exist"

A team of researchers, led by Sung-Jin Park and Professor Kevin Kit Parker at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, have found a way to meld bioinspiration with robotics and cybernetics with the creation of a fully controllable robotic ray that uses light-activated rat muscle cells to swim. Their research has just been published in … Read More → "A cyborg stingray made of rat muscles and gold"

Øyvind Berntsen added LEDs to the cells of his bookcase, then made them programmable. With them, he can display pixelated images in multiple colors.

Berntsen first used the setup to create a game of Snake which ended with a marriage proposal to his girlfriend, Nadia Tokerud…

… Read More → "Man turns bookcase into playable Tetris game"

“Men, bring out the sniffer locusts.” That’s something a bomb squad chief could say in the future, thanks to a team of engineers working to turn the insects into cyborgs that can be sent anywhere to sniff out explosives. It won’t be an easy feat — the researchers, who hail from the Washington University in St. Louis, will have to equip the insects with several pieces of technology. Good thing … Read More → "Cyborg locusts with tattooed wings can sniff out bombs"

Researchers in Norway built a 1mm wide Pac-Man board and populated it with single cell organisms.
via Boing Boing

… Read More → "Tiny Pac-Man game uses real single cell organisms"

Apple’s next software update for the the iPhone will make it easier for users to register as organ donors. The company is adding the new feature to its Health app, and will let users sign up to become organ, eye, and tissue donors “with just a few taps.” Registrations submitted on the iPhone will … Read More → "Apple will push for organ donor registration in iOS 10"

Jupiter got a little less lonely today as NASA’s Juno deep-space probe arrived after a five-year journey capped by a dramatic engine maneuver. The space agency’s Deep Space Network has confirmed that the unmanned spacecraft successfully initiated a 35-minute course correction burn at 8:18 pm EDT (Earth Receive Time) that placed it in orbit around the Solar System’s largest planet for a 20-month science … Read More → "Juno arrives at Jupiter after five-year voyage"