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A super-hard metal has been made in the laboratory by melting together titanium and gold.

The alloy is the hardest known metallic substance compatible with living tissues, say US physicists.

The material is four times harder than pure titanium and has applications in making longer-lasting medical implants, they say.

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SOCOM is ordering Toyota and Ford SUVs and trucks, with options to improve their armor and add-on other features that turn the civilian vehicles into covert military machines. Known collectively as “technicals,” civilian vehicles converted for war use are so common there’s even a Twitter account documenting them under the name “Toyota Wars.”

George Forman five-portion family grill.

Clear padlock for lock pick practice.

Sutcase attachment for your butt.

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The first human trial of cells that have been tweaked by the genome-editing technique CRISPR will begin in China in August, Nature reports. The group will take white blood cells, which are part of the immune system, from people with a type of lung cancer and edit them using the CRISPR technology so they hunt cancer. Then, the lab-altered cells will be infused back into the patients.

The approach is similar to another trial in the U.S., which will test edited immune cells in several kinds of cancer. Trials with modified white blood cells, called T cells, have been run before. But scientists haven’t used the CRISPR technique to make the edits, relying instead on a virus to insert the sequences into the cells’ DNA. CRISPR, which is essentially a genetic copy-and-paste tool — makes modifying the cells at certain spots easier. That means the scientists can make the cells grow and multiply more rapidly, in addition to inserting instructions to kill cancer on sight.

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The Polar Ocean Challenge is taking a two month journey that will see them go from Bristol, Alaska, to Norway, then to Russia through the North East passage, back to Alaska through the North West passage, to Greenland and then ultimately back to Bristol. Their objective, as laid out by their website, was to demonstrate “that the Arctic sea ice coverage shrinks back so far now in the summer months that sea that was permanently locked up now can allow passage through.”

There has been one small hiccup thus-far though: they are currently stuck in Murmansk, Russia because there is too much ice blocking the North East passage the team said didn’t exist in summer months, according to Real Climate Science.

Oops.

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Never underestimate the POWER of PORK.

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In Berlin, a robot has been given tongs and access to a hot grill, and taught to cook sausage.

Just like any of us in the summer months, it locates empty spaces on the grill and places bratwursts as needed, eyes them and turns them to ensure even crisping of the skin, and plates them when they’re done, with a waggle of its moustachioed tablet face.

The machine, created by nonprofit research center FZI, cooked and served 200 sausages at an event this month.

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A new study of chickens overturns the popular assumption that evolution is only visible over long time scales. By studying individual chickens that were part of a long-term pedigree, the scientists led by Professor Greger Larson at Oxford University’s Research Laboratory for Archaeology, found two mutations that had occurred in the mitochondrial genomes of the birds in only 50 years. For a long time scientists have believed that the rate of change in the mitochondrial genome was never faster than about 2% per million years. The identification of these mutations shows that the rate of evolution in this pedigree is in fact 15 times faster. In addition, by determining the genetic sequences along the pedigree, the team also discovered a single instance of mitochondrial DNA being passed down from a father. This is a surprising discovery, showing that so-called ‘paternal leakage’ is not as rare as previously believed.

Remember that next time you read a news article that mentions mitochondrial-DNA mutation dating or asserts that ‘mitochondria only come from the mother’.

Pepper Spray Gun.

Vegetable Spiralizer.

Collapsible Electric Kettle.

Portable Grill with chainmail ‘fire hammock’.

Clip-on fan for your armpit.

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Don’t you hate it when that happens?

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I’ll bet you haven’t spent a lot of time wondering about the complexity of cow ancestry, have you?

I’m not sayin’ it’s important. But I’m not sayin’ it ain’t, either.

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Hopefully the American military is working on this as well.

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Canadian “Star Trek” fans have been paying tribute to the late Leonard Nimoy through “Spocking,” or drawing in the character’s sharp eyebrows, bowl-shaped hair and pointy ears on look-a-like former Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier, who’s featured on the $5 bill.

I am not making this up. But I can’t really blame them.

Readyman Hostage Escape Survival Credit Card.

Bagel Smart Tape Measure.

Umbrella Hat. They look goofy but in the rain they prove their worth.

AutoMicroFarm.

Himalayan Salt Therapy Dome. Hey, it might work….

The Clever Cutter.

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Imagine what happens if the connectors fail.

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Archaeologists excavating a Roman-era synagogue at the site of Huqoq, Israel, have uncovered two new panels of a mosaic floor with instantly identifiable subjects—Noah’s ark, and the parting of the Red Sea during the Israelite exodus from Egypt.

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DreamstimeThe Rystad Energy consultancy has just released its new calculations of global oil reserves and estimates that the U.S. may harbor as much 264 billion barrels of oil compared to Saudi Arabia’s 212 billion barrels. Overall, world oil reserves exceed 2 trillion barrels. At current production rates, this is enough oil to supply the world for 70 years.

Feel free to look up ‘Peak Oil’ if you’re in the mood for some idle amusement.

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Two studies, examining the diets of over 23,000 adults, found pasta consumption was associated with a lower prevalence of obesity and a healthy body mass index (BMI).

The research, published in the journal Nutrition and Diabetes, concluded pasta consumption was associated with the healthy Mediterranean diet.

A Mediterranean diet, rich in vegetables, fruit, fish, olive oil and whole grains, has been associated with better overall health, a lower risk of heart attacks and strokes and protection against Alzheimer’s disease.

Well. There it is.

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The retailer built a reputation and hit $100 billion in annual revenue by offering deals. The first thing a potential customer saw was a bargain: how much an item was reduced from its list price.

Now, in many cases, Amazon has dropped any mention of a list price. There is just one price. Take it or leave it.

The new approach comes as discounts both online and offline have become the subject of dozens of consumer lawsuits for being much less than they seem. It is also occurring while Amazon is in the middle of an ambitious multiyear shift from a store selling one product at a time to a full-fledged ecosystem. Amazon wants to be so deeply embedded in a customer’s life that buying happens as naturally as breathing, and nearly as often.

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What if damaged teeth could heal themselves? That’s the inspiration behind a new project from Harvard and the University of Nottingham to create stem cell stimulating fillings.

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Maybe now the Animals Rights fascists will STFU.

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24-year-old Miriam Cepeda is part of an unlikely group: young, Latina women who support Donald Trump for president.

Cepeda doesn’t just support Trump privately — she actually campaigns for him at the University of Texas in Rio Grande Valley and in the community, not far from where Trump has vowed to build his wall along the South Texas border.

Although she is the daughter of an undocumented immigrant, Cepeda told CNN she strongly agrees with Trump’s immigration and border security policies.

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In 2012, secretive robotics startup Momentum Machines debuted a machine that could crank out 400 made-to-order hamburgers in an hour. It’s fully autonomous, meaning the robot can slice toppings, grill a patty, and assemble and bag the burger without any help from humans. The internet flipped out.

Years of relative silence ensued, but in January, Hoodline’s Brittany Hopkins learned that the San Francisco-based startup had applied for a building permit to convert a ground-floor retail space in the SoMa neighborhood into a restaurant.

Bad news for ‘undocumented’ workers.

According to the job posting, Momentum Machines is looking for a self-motivated, conscientious applicant to take on the role of “restaurant generalist” at the restaurant.

It describes the ideal candidate as “autonomous,” which seems about right since future robotic coworkers will also be quite autonomous.

Note: One candidate. One.

In 2012, Momentum Machines created a prototype machine that allowed every part of a burger to be customized, from cook time, condiments, and thickness of patties, depending on the day’s menu.

And it doesn’t even have to speak (or understand) Spanish.

The prototype could replace two to three full-time line cooks, saving a fast-food restaurant up to $90,000 a year in training, salaries, and overhead costs, tech blog Xconomy reported after catching a live demo.

Thank you, minimum-wage increase. These robots wouldn’t have been economically viable without you.

Marshmallow crossbow.

Whopper ‘air freshener’.

Golchi modular bottle.

Magnetic shoe laces. I am not making this up.

The beard hat.

Omnidirectional wheels.

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Think of it as evolution in action.

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The world’s largest viking ship has arrived in North America after crossing the North Atlantic Ocean on a journey from its homeport in Haugesund, Norway.

The Viking ship, named Draken Harald Hårfagre, set sail from Norway with its approximately 32 crew members in late April and made stops in Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, Canada, before making its way through the Saint Lawrence Seaway to Toronto for the Tall Ships Challenge Great Lakes 2016 festival this weekend.

Future stops for the Viking ship include Chicago, Green Bay and Duluth, before heading through the New York canals to U.S. east coast with stops in New York City and finally Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut in October.

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We have the technology.

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Walk down Seventh Avenue in downtown Seattle and you can’t miss them: three gigantic spheres resembling melted-together Milk Duds rising in the shadow of Amazon’s new 500-foot-tall office tower. The architectural oddity has already become a tourist attraction and social media phenomenon. Passersby snap photographs and watch construction crews attach glass panes to the steel frames. Images stream through Instagram and Twitter.

When they open in 2018, the 100-foot-tall orbs—Amazon calls them Biospheres—will host more than 300 plant species from around the world, creating what the company sees as the workplace of the future. Amazonians will be able to break from their daily labors to walk amid the greenery along suspension bridges and climb into meeting spaces resembling bird nests perched in mature trees, where the company expects them to brainstorm—and perhaps even invent the next billion-dollar opportunity.

Amazon’s new headquarters was designed to project a forward-thinking company eager to help employees be more productive, creative and happy by providing a connection to nature. But the most trend-setting and appealing feature of the new complex is most likely its location: plopped between glass and steel high-rises on a busy street in downtown Seattle where food trucks are abundant, apartments are within walking distance and Happy Hour greets employees at quitting time.

I think they just got tired of the rain.

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Chemists at the University at Albany, SUNY, have described a new method for quickly but accurately determining a person’s age range based only on a blood sample. The test could one day be used to help narrow down suspects in a crime scene investigation as easily as getting results from a glucose or pregnancy test.

CaraBoat – A Trailerable Houseboat.

Sweepovac.

PizzaDome.

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A former IT expert who was previously responsible for Hillary Clinton’s private email server answered virtually no questions during a roughly 90-minute deposition as part of an open records lawsuit this week.

Aside from stating his name and saying three times that he understood procedural rules of the sworn-oath interview, Bryan Pagliano declined to say a single word other than to plead his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

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The Type 093B “Shang” nuclear attack submarine is quiet, fast and the first Chinese combat submarine to be able to fire vertically launched cruise missiles. The United States Defense Department believes that three Type 093B SSNs were launched in 2015, and may enter service later this year. The original two Type 093 SSNs, launched nearly 15 years ago, were plagued by noisy reactors and propulsion systems, especially at high speeds, which limited their combat utility by making them highly detectable to enemy anti-submarine efforts. The Type 093B, in contrast, uses advances in Chinese metallurgy and reactor design to make a more quiet submarine. Experts place its stealthiness between that of the USN Los Angeles Flight I and Flight III SSNs.

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Thirty-five years ago, McLaren revolutionized both motorsports and the car world at large. Drawing on lessons learned from aerospace, McLaren introduced the first Formula 1 racer with a carbon-fiber-composite (CFC) tub in place of a bonded and riveted sheet-aluminum structure. The success of that venture in turn enabled the aptly named McLaren F1 sports car, which had a molded CFC monocoque serving as its passenger cabin and structural core.

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It’s in National Geographic so it must be true.

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I’m glad somebody is.

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One of the largest and most interesting medieval cookbooks is the The Book of Dishes, written in 10th-century Baghdad by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq. His work covers a wide number of topics, from good table manners to the health benefits of all types of foods and drinks. There are over 600 recipes in this text, ranging from honey beer to ribs. Here are ten medieval cooking tips from al-Warraq.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Hammaka Trailer Hitch Stand.

Weed Killing Steamer. Actually, the most efficient way of getting rid of weeds is inviting a bunch of herbalists over to graze.

Spiky Massage Balls. No, it’s not what you think.

3M Sanding Sponge. One of the most useful tools ever invented.

Bellini Kitchen Master.

Duralex glassware.

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An amazing story.

Barnaby is still kicking herself for not bringing her gun into the bush, calling it a “huge mistake.”

“Don’t do what I did. Don’t go without your gun,” she says. “Anything can happen.

“If I had had that gun, it would’ve been a very short situation.”

Don’t tell that to Obama.

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And who could blame them? The government, of course, wants them defenseless.

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English three-word phrases. How cool is that?

The new system is devised by a British startup called What3Words, which has assigned a three-word phrase to every point on the globe. The system is designed to solve the an often-ignored problem of 75% of the earth’s population, an estimated 4 billion people, who have no address for mailing purposes, making it difficult to open a bank account, get a delivery, or be reached in an emergency. In What3Words’ system, the idea is that a series of words is easier to remember than the strings of number that make up GPS coordinates. Each unique phrase corresponds to a specific 9-square-meter spot on the map.

For example, the White House, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, becomes sulk.held.raves; the Tokyo Tower is located at fans.helpless.collects; and the Stade de France is at reporter.smoked.received.

Mongolians will be the first to use the system for government mail delivery, but organizations including the United Nations, courier companies, and mapping firms like Navmii already use What3Words’ system.

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Bog butter is just that: butter made from cow’s milk that’s been buried in a bog, though, after thousands of years, it often has the consistency of cheese.

It’s actually not that uncommon of a find for turf cutters in Ireland, either. As Smithsonian magazine noted, a 3000-year-old, one-metre wide barrel stuffed with 35kg of bog butter was found in 2009. Even more shocking, turf cutters found a 5000-year-old wooden “keg” containing 45kg of the butter in 2013.

People have actually been stumbling upon bog butter for at least two centuries. In the 1892 edition of The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Reverend James O’Laverty recounts finding a lump “which still retains the marks of the hand and fingers of the ancient dame who pressed it into its present shape,” and which he noted “tastes somewhat like cheese.”

Cue Irish jokes.

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Prescriptions for the cholesterol-reducing drugs statins are a waste of time, a group of experts have said in controversial new research which claims cholesterol does not cause heart disease in the elderly.

An international team of scientists reviewed 19 previous studies, involving 68,000 people, and said they found no link between high levels of LDL cholesterol, the so-called “bad cholesterol”, and heart disease in the over-60s.

The study, published in the BMJ Open Journal, found that 92 per cent of people over 60-years-old with high cholesterol lived as long as, or longer than those with low cholesterol levels. In the remaining 8 per cent, no association was found.

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Sure, gene therapy has been tried before. What’s different is that Spark’s therapy so far appears to work well every time—a consistency that’s eluded previous efforts. “Right now this looks very close to being as good as it gets,” says Edward Tuddenham, a hematologist at University College London, who led a competing study and consults with some of Spark’s rivals.

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Laser technology has been used by archaeologists in Cambodia to reveal multiple vast medieval cities buried under the tropical forest floor – some of them believed to be larger than the country’s capital Phnom Penh.

Researchers believe the metropolises are between 900 and 1,400 years old and lie not far from Angkor Wat, an ancient temple complex in north east Cambodia.

Motion Sickness Relief Band.  I have no idea whether it actually works, but if it does, that would be awesome.

Collapsible Pet Exercise Pen. I suspect it would also work for small children.

Mobile Phone Night Light.

Hurom Masticating Slow Juicer. Ye who need this sort of thing know who you are.

EasiSpread self-heating butter knife.

Oxo Good Grip Wooden Spoons. These look very handy.

‘Toolbox’ that folds out into a barbecue.

Hodor Door Stopper. Well, it actually is useful.

46 household things you can do with a muffin tin.

Motorized ice cream cone.

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A radical treatment that wipes out and then regenerates the immune system can halt progression of aggressive multiple sclerosis and even reverse its symptoms, research has shown.

Scientists in Canada described results from a trial involving 24 patients with a highly active, relapsing form of the autoimmune disease as “very exciting”.

But at the same time they warned that the procedure was risky, and only likely to benefit a certain proportion of patients still in early stages of the illness.

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As part of a long-running project called CarbFix, researchers injected emissions from an Icelandic power plant deep into rock formations. The gas reacted with the basalt rocks, forming carbonate, a material similar to limestone. Once turned into carbonate, the carbon can’t leak back out into the environment.

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A man who had more than 26 cancer tumours in his abdomen is now free of disease thanks to immunotherapy.

…

Despite more chemotherapy, all treatments failed and two years ago, Mr Chettle was told the cancer had spread to his bones. Cancerous spots were also still on his liver.

…

Within two or three months of enrolling in the trial, Mr Chettle’s symptoms began to ease off. “I was able to turn my neck again,” he said. By the time his daughter’s wedding took place a few months later, he was able to walk her down the aisle.

Mr Chettle, who receives the drug as a 30-minute infusion every two weeks, has now been on the trial for almost two years and has experienced a complete response to the treatment.

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Stonehenge was originally a mass tomb in Wales before being transported to its current location on Wiltshire, scientists now claim.

Speaking at Hay Festival, archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson from University College London (UCL) said the 5,000-year-old monument originated 140 miles away in the Preseli mountains in west Wales.

Archaelogy teams from UCL and the University of Leicester were able to find the West Wales quarries that produced the spotted dolerite bluestones and the ryolite bluestones that make up the monument.

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On offer in a Swiss referendum this Sunday: a guaranteed monthly income for every adult, paid for by the government.

What could go wrong? Oh, let me count the ways….

But Gfs.bern, a Swiss firm monitoring voter opinions, projected that only 22 percent voted yes for “free money” on Sunday, based on a partial count of ballots. Most Swiss vote in advance by mail, so most ballots have already been counted, according to Agence France-Presse.

The reason for the opposition isn’t what you’d expect, either. Most aren’t worried that a universal basic income would disincentivize workers from finding jobs or turn Switzerland into a Marxist dystopia. The fear is that $2,500 a month would make the country too attractive to economic migrants.

Would that Obama would get the same clue. You can’t have generous public benefits and open borders — As Mrs Thatcher famously said, eventually you run out of other people’s money.

The Swiss have already rejected initiatives that would have increased the minimum wage and extended the minimum paid holiday time from four to six weeks.

The Swiss are basically sensible people.