Skier and snow artist Simon Beck stomps around in the snow for 11 hours or more to make each of his beautiful fractal snow art masterpieces. He has to walk around 25 or 30 miles to stamp a design of about 100 meters square, using only his two snowshoes. It began as a form of exercise, and has become far more.
via Boing Boing

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Vietnamese gentleman Thái Ng?c claims that ever since he suffered a terrible fever in 1973, he hasn’t slept a wink. There’s also Ines Fernandez who says she’s been awake for decades. Of course, these curious individuals and others with similar stories may actually be suffering from a very strange sleep disorder called sleep state misperception (SSM) in which the individuals think they were up all … Read More → "The people who reportedly never sleep. Ever."

Researchers at the American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medicine took DNA and RNA from both living and preserved bedbugs. They retrieved samples from a bedbug population first collected in 1973 (and since maintained by the museum), as well as from more than 1,400 locations in New York City, including every subway station.

What they found was that gene expression changes after a bedbug has its first blood … Read More → "Bedbug genome decoded in hopes of destroying the tiny blood suckers"

The Museum of English Rural Life in Reading, UK has many artifacts from a much older, lost Britain. Among them is a 155-year old mousetrap. The appropriately-named Perpetual Mouse Trap by Colin Pullinger & Sons goes by the tagline “will last a lifetime.”

In fact, it will last several lifetimes. The Assistant Curator recently found a dead mouse in the unbaited trap. < … Read More → "Antique mousetrap in a museum catches a mouse"

Scientists at Utah State University have figured out how to make the perfect skipping stones. The secret was making sure they were made out of a material that had much more give than stone.

Inspired by a toy called the Water Bouncing Ball, the USU team, led by the Splash Lab’s Tadd Truscott, collaborated with the Naval Undersea Warfare … Read More → "Scientists made the perfect skipping stone and skipped it across their lab"

Babies may be able to see image details that are invisible or imperceptible to adults. According to a recent study from Japanese scientists Jiale Yang, So Kanazawa, Masami K. Yamaguchi, and Isamu Motoyoshi, three- and four-month-old infants may view certain images differently because they lack perceptual constancy. That means they can see small image differences that are invisible to adults because of changes in lighting conditions.

… Read More → "Infants can see image differences that adults cannot, study finds"

Although they’re still far from being common, 3D-printed metal bicycle frames do now exist. Usually they’re made using a sintering process, in which a laser is utilized to selectively melt steel powder, building it up in successive layers. Now, however, a team of students at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands has taken another approach – they’ve created the world’s first … Read More → "Robotic welding arm used to 3D print a stainless steel bike"

Six passengers took an unusual ride last week. The shuttle bus they were on had no one behind the wheel. That short trial run along a lake in the Dutch town of Wageningen marked the first time such a self-driving vehicle had appeared on public roads in the Netherlands.

The WePod autonomous vehicle is an electric, driverless shuttle bus that could hit … Read More → "Driverless Dutch bus takes passengers on public test"

The people who burst from bed as the sun rises to cheerily tackle their to-do list—while others sluggishly rouse and fumble with coffee makers—may have a few DNA tweaks in common.

Scanning the genetic blueprints of more than 89,000 people, researchers found that those who self-identify as “morning people” tended to have … Read More → "Don’t hate perky morning people: It might be their DNA’s fault"

A team of British scientists has been approved to use “gene editing” techniques on human embryos, in the hope that it will better our understanding of early human life. A group at the Francis Crick Institute in London wants to research newly fertilised eggs and how they develop in the first seven days — from a single cell to a blastocyst with roughly 250 cells. Using gene manipulation, the researchers want to glean new insights about … Read More → "UK scientists get permission to ‘gene edit’ human embryos"