Researchers at the University of Maryland were able pull away color and chemicals from a block of wood to leave it impressively see-through. The result is a material that is both stronger and more insulating than glass, with better biodegradability than plastic. “We were very surprised by how transparent it could go,” said Liangbing Hu, who wrote about the project in Advanced Materials.
via < … Read More → "Scientists made see-through wood that’s stronger than glass"

THE PROMISE OF virtual reality is that it can transport you to places you’d prefer not to go: the tops of the highest mountains, for instance, or the mosh pit of Norwegian party metal concert. Then there are the impossible places, like the roiling vents at the bottom of the deepest oceans, where crushing pressures and … Read More → "Only robots can visit deep-sea vents. Now you can—in glorious VR!"

Suppose that you had to build a tiny spring, antenna or other structure for use in a microelectronic device such as a biomedical implant… how might you go about doing it? Well, a new 3D printing technique developed at Harvard University would certainly make the process easier. It allows people to essentially draw minuscule metal items in mid-air.

Created at Harvard’ … Read More → "Harvard tech allows for mid-air 3D printing of metal structures"

After binge reading romance novels for the past few months, Google’s neural network is suddenly turning into the kid from English Lit 101 class. The reading assignment was part of Google’s plan to help the app sound more conversational, but the follow-up assignment to take what it learned and write some poetry turned out a little more sophomoric.

As Wired reports, … Read More → "Google’s neural network is now writing sappy poetry"

The key to uncovering America’s ancient past lies underwater. In the waning centuries of the last Ice Age, many of the favorite hunting grounds and camps of early Americans were flooded with waters unlocked from the melting polar ice. But now, thanks to SCUBA-diving archaeologists, a clear picture is emerging of the peoples who came to the Americas by boat—thousands of years before the Clovis … Read More → "Underwater discovery reveals 14,550 year-old Florida mastodon hunters"

The latest hotshot lawyer at the law firm BakerHostetler never passed the bar exam or even attended law school. But the firm still trusts their newest hire, ROSS, to help with its bankruptcy practice. That’s because ROSS isn’t a flesh-and-blood lawyer at all—rather, it is the world’s first artificially intelligent attorney.

FuturismRead More → "Real law firm hires ‘Artificially Intelligent Attorney’ robot"

The moon has set
And the Pleiades;
It is midnight,
The time is going by,
And I sleep alone.
(trans. Henry Thornton Wharton, 1887)

Cuntz and his co-author, Levent Gurdemir, used the software of the UT-Arlington planetarium, where Gurdemir serves as director, to recreate the night sky of ancient Greece for 570 B.C. They found … Read More → "Scientists used the stars to confirm when a famous Sapphic poem was written"

It’s estimated that just 10 percent of the global need for organ donation is being met. In Japan, where only 300 out of 14,000 people on a waiting list will receive a transplant, things look even more dismal than they do in most developed countries. Japanese children waiting for a donation face their own list … Read More → "Old toys get new parts to teach kids about organ donation"

Imagine this: you accidentally swallowed a battery (!), and to get it out, you need to take a pill that turns into a robot. Researchers from MIT, the University of Sheffield and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed a new kind of origami robot that transforms into a microsurgeon inside your stomach. They squished the accordion-like robot made of dried pig … Read More → "MIT’s tiny robot operates on your stomach from the inside"

Norwegian wildlife artist Esther van Hulsen, in partnership with Jørn Hurum of the Natural History Museum in Oslo, created a stunning illustration of a 95-million year old octopus using a well-preserved fossil as her guide and its own astonishingly viable ink as her medium.

… Read More → "Illustration of a 95 million year old octopus drawn with its own preserved ink"