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How about that Global Warming, eh?

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Using a groundbreaking gene editing technique, University of California scientists have created a strain of mosquitoes capable of rapidly introducing malaria-blocking genes into a mosquito population through its progeny, ultimately eliminating the insects’ ability to transmit the disease to humans.

Wonder what pretext the eco-Nazis will use to bitch about: ‘Frankenbugs’?

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HAH!

Darth Vader Talking Cookie Jar.

Pocket Spectrometer.

Damaged Screw Remover.

Fever Scout.

Moonshine Maker.

Fake Freckles. I am not making this up.

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If, of course, you happen to be one of those. I certainly am.

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A little bit of history for your Thanksgiving delectation.

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Between the battle of Marengo and today, the so-called fifth taste, which is the subject of a book by Mouritsen and a Danish chef named Klavs Styrbaek, has come far. In 1908, a Japanese chemist, Kikunae Ikeda, first set out to analyze just what made seaweed broth — the dashi that forms the basis of much Japanese cooking — so delicious. In his laboratory at the University of Tokyo, Ikeda brewed 26 pounds of dried kombu seaweed into broth, and looked at each chemical component of the broth in turn. He was able to isolate about an ounce of one particular crystal that embodied the unique flavor of the dashi. The crystal was monosodium glutamate, and Ikeda’s coinage to denote its distinctive sapid taste, “umami,” stuck.

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Warning: Not in a good way.

Future holiday meals might not emerge steaming from an oven but from the heated platform of a 3D printer. The machines have already begun to make food more sustainable, more individualized, and more interesting.

“Today, food and software are very big, but very separate pieces of our lives,” says Hod Lipson, a 3D-printing pioneer at Columbia University. “There is a lot of potential in combining them.” Before long, printers might be a staple in every modern kitchen, like the microwave, or the stove before it.

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Researchers at Linköping University in Sweden have merged electronic circuitry with the vascular system of living plants for the very first time.

I find this vaguely disturbing.

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The latest Fox News poll of 1,000 registered voters is pretty stunning. To begin with, nearly every Republican tested beats Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. Marco Rubio does best at 50%-42%, but Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie also lead her. Carly Fiorina ties Hillary at 42%-42%.

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This is amazing stuff.

Identifying the materials used in medieval illuminated manuscripts gives us an insight into the techniques and skills of the scribes and illuminators, as well as the sometimes complex trade routes of the times. Also, knowing what materials are present gives modern day conservators information about the materials they may encounter. The challenge is to be able to identify materials on a delicate sheet of parchment, typically a folio of a bound manuscript that does not open readily, without contact, sampling or causing any damage. Ideally the technique should give an unequivocal identification of pigments with high spatial resolution and selectivity: a challenge indeed!

At Durham we have used Raman spectroscopy combined with hyperspectral imaging and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy to this end, and have embarked upon a study of the pigments used in manuscripts produced in the British Isles and northern Europe between the 7th and 15th centuries. By studying books of well-established provenance and time and place of origin we are building a map of pigment use, creating a valuable resource for conservators and historians. The changes in pigment choice and use reflect changes in technology transfer, e.g. as book production moved from the monastic to the secular, and of societal change, e.g. the changes in pigment use arising from the Norman conquest.

There are many areas of historical research where investigation of remnant artifacts is hampered, sometimes crippled, by the fact that actual physical samples of the things being analyzed can’t be used. This is a tremendous step forward.

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When Cutty Sark first hoisted her sails on the River Clyde in 1869, the Suez Canal had just opened and the British Raj was still in its infancy. The nippy tea clipper quickly became one of the world’s fastest ships, and has remained an object of universal fascination ever since.

Now, nearly 150 years later, a group of ship-lovers wants to recapture her glory days by building a replica. Cutty Sark 2 would sail the globe as a training vessel-cum-living museum, while carrying symbolic cargoes of tea and wool like her namesake, according to Vladimir Martus, a sailor and naval architect who is spearheading the project.

The Bamboo Spade.

An Alarm Clock That Slaps You in the Face. I am not making this up.

Apex Knife Sharpener. Dunno how it works, but it looks way cool.

Pizza Wrapping Paper.

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Yeah. That works.

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Instead of capturing energy via the circular motion of a propeller, the Vortex takes advantage of what’s known as vorticity, an aerodynamic effect that produces a pattern of spinning vortices. Vorticity has long been considered the enemy of architects and engineers, who actively try to design their way around these whirlpools of wind. And for good reason: With enough wind, vorticity can lead to an oscillating motion in structures, which, in some cases, like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, can cause their eventual collapse.

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Well. There it is.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

Think of it as evolution in action.

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Are you willing to have taller buildings and more market-rate housing in your neighborhood in order to get more affordable units?

City planners are proposing a policy that is asking neighborhoods across San Francisco to grapple with this question.

Called the Affordable Housing Bonus Program (AHBP), it combines recent legislation and legal decisions to argue for a compromise approach to more neighborhood development.

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SYDNEY—What do you do when a hot property-market has driven bricklayer salaries to nearly $100,000 a year in Australian cities like Sydney? Call in the robots.

When the price of labor goes up, automation becomes more cost-effective. Eventually the lines cross, and the robots are cheaper. Duh.

This is a lesson that the minimum-wage-bloviators never learn — possibly because none of them have to worry about only making minimum wage.

Fastbrick’s remote-controlled Hadrian robot—named after the Roman Wall built by the emperor Hadrian across the north of England in the second century A.D.—could eventually lay 1,000 bricks an hour. That compares with roughly 100 bricks an hour for an experienced human mason. A prototype version lays about 300, according to Mr. Pivac.

 

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A quarter of the century after the end of the Cold War, the only cannon that has actually fired in space finally comes to light.

Installed on the Almaz space station in 1970s, the R-23M Kartech was derived from a powerful aircraft weapon. The original 23-millimeter cannon was designed by Aron Rikhter for the Tupolev Tu-22 Blinder supersonic bomber. That gun is relatively well known. However, its space-based cousin had largely remained in obscurity.

Until now. This year, thanks to a Russian television show, the world got to see grainy footage of the space gun. Using that footage, we created the virtual model of the R-23M that you see above. Here’s the inside story:

Medicine-Dispensing Sippy Cups.

Star Wars Death Star Waffle Maker. You know you want one.

Keyboard Waffle Iron. You can find anything on the Internet. Awesomesauce not included.

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The 18-year-old was found dead in an SUV with “several bites” from a deadly monocle cobra on each arm, KVUE reports. The autopsy found that Thompson first had bites on his left shoulder, consistent with a right-handed person intentionally receiving a snakebite. The venom would have led to paralysis and death in as few as 30 minutes.

Seems like a self-correcting problem — if, indeed, it is a problem.

The teen loved reptiles and had a “history of suicidal ideation,” according to the medical report. He was found in the SUV with its door open and an empty cobra container, though the snake was gone. Animal control conducted a large-scale search until the snake was found dead by a road.

Perhaps we could ship a carton of cobras to Yale. Surely those special snowflakes do not wish to spend any more time in such a sexist/racist/homophobic/what-have-you world as this. I mean, we’d be doing them a favor.

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Sometimes the old ways are best.

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Carvana, a Phoenix-based online-car-buying startup that describes itself as the “Amazon of cars,” opened the vending machine Thursday in Nashville. The five-story glass building, which is equipped with three customer delivery bays, can store up to 20 cars. The vending machine is open Monday through Saturday and vehicle pickup is free for all Carvana customers. The company says it will subsidize $200 in airfare and arrange transportation from the Nashville airport for customers who live outside Tennessee, but who want to pick up their car at the vending machine.

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The historian A. Roger Ekirch has uncovered a pattern of references to “first sleep” and “second sleep,” or “morning sleep,” in sources from Homer and Plutarch to John Locke. Until the spread of artificial light in the 18th and 19th centuries, it turns out, our ancestors slept in two shifts of roughly four hours each, with a period of wakefulness in between. That interval was a peaceful time, a time for contemplation and reflection and maybe copulation. “Usually, people would retire between 9 and 10 o’clock only to stir past midnight to smoke a pipe, brew a tub of ale or even converse with a neighbor,” Ekirch wrote. “Others remained in bed to pray or make love.”

Or – dare I say it? – surf the web.

(Note the obligatory dig at ‘capitalism’ in the last paragraph — this article is in Slate, after all.)

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They probably lost the receipt and so can’t return it. Pity.

The original “flat-pack” church is known to date from the era of the Emperor Justinian, who ruled from around 482 – 565 AD and was a prolific builder in his efforts to regulate Christianity across his empire.

Under his rule, based at Constantinople, large stone-carrying ships laden with prefabricated marble church interiors were sent out from quarries around the Sea of Marmara to sites in Italy and North Africa.

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In a stunning discovery that overturns decades of textbook teaching, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have determined that the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist. That such vessels could have escaped detection when the lymphatic system has been so thoroughly mapped throughout the body is surprising on its own, but the true significance of the discovery lies in the effects it could have on the study and treatment of neurological diseases ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s disease to multiple sclerosis.

Read it. And watch the video.

Ah, but can it do yellow?

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The distance record for sniper kills has been broken again, this time by two Australian snipers in Afghanistan using M82A1 12.7mm (.50 caliber) rifles. In a coordinated shot at a Taliban leader 2,800 meters away the two snipers fired simultaneously and six seconds later the Taliban chieftain fell dead. It will never be known which of the two shots got him. The victim would not have heard the shot, the rifles were so far away and the bullet was travelling faster than the speed of sound. About two seconds later anyone with the dead Taliban man would have heard the two shots, but faintly as the shooters were nearly three kilometers (two miles) away.

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For the past three weeks, outdoor apparel maker The North Face and materials company Spiber have been touring a gold-colored parka across Japan. The prototype, called the “Moon Parka,” is a first—a coat whose outer shell is spun from synthetic spider silk.

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Cooking with vegetable oil releases toxic chemicals linked to cancer and even the degeneration of the brain, according to experts.

Lard, butter, coconut and olive oil are all better dietary choices, leading scientists have said – in advice which directly contradicts the NHS.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

The Sweet Home.

SALT gun.

NEMO Special Ops Drill.

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The hovalin is a functional acoustic violin that can be produced using most standard consumer 3d printers. The total cost of raw materials for the violin (4/4) is currently about $70. The hovalin was designed with Autodesk Fusion 360. Its shape and dimensions are inspired by the Stradivarius violin model.

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Innit has created a cooking system, built on machine learning and high-tech sensors, that can detect whatever it is you’re making for dinner and produce perfect results every time. And it doesn’t just cook chicken. We also had potatoes, gazpacho, and an apple tart, all equally delicious. For each food, it designs a cooking process optimized for your exact menu item. All you do is press play. Technically, I “cooked” our lunch: After the raw chicken went into the oven, I hit the play button, and voila.

Speed the day….

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Researchers at Cornell University found, for the majority of people, eating more portions of junk food made no difference to their waistlines.

So much for the ‘scientific consensus’.

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I have a list of suggestions for where to start….

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Hey, whadda ya know, Scotty, we have transparent aluminum after all.

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A team of European researchers have unveiled a scientific model showing that the Earth is likely to experience a “mini ice age” from 2030 to 2040 as a result of decreased solar activity.

Their findings will infuriate environmental campaigners who argue by 2030 we could be facing increased sea levels and flooding due to glacial melt at the poles.

However, at the National Astronomy Meeting in Wales, Northumbria University professor Valentina Zharkova said fluctuations an 11-year cycle of solar activity the sun goes through would be responsible for a freeze, the like of which has not been experienced since the 1600s.

From 1645 to 1715 global temperatures dropped due to low solar activity so much that the planet experienced a 70-year ice age known as Maunder Minimum which saw the River Thames in London completely frozen.

Global Warming? Never Mind….

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srael is offering for sale a laser weapon that can shoot down artillery and mortar shells as well as rockets and small UAVs. Called Iron Beam it has a range of 2,000 meters and is expected to enter service in Israel by the end of 2015. There is a lot of action on Israeli borders for a system like Iron Beam and it will soon become evident if Iron Beam is the first effective laser air defense weapon or not.

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The famous Irish stout is to become vegan friendly for the first time in its 256-year history, as the company halts the use of fish bladders in its brewing filters.

…

Isinglass has been used since the 19th Century and while large quantities of the agent are filtered out during the brewing process, there are still traces of fish bladders in the finished product.

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The eukaryote in question is called Dulse (Palmaria sp.) and, as explained Oregon State University, is already in demand as a tasty addition to various recipes. Boffins at the University had been experimenting with a new strain of the plant designed to boost growth of abalone, a delicious and expensive shellfish. Results were good: abalone grew faster on a diet of modified Dulse than they did on other foodstuffs.

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I’m still looking forward to New York being under water when the Antarctic ice sheet melts.

NASA schmasa, what do they know?

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In one of the great success stories of interspecies animal breeding, the coyote-wolf hybrid ‘coywolf’ can now count its numbers in the millions.

This new animal, which has emerged in the eastern part of North America over the last century or so, is better than both its predecessors.

At 25kg, it’s twice the size of a coyote; it has larger jaws and bigger muscles meaning it can take down deer; it’s equally adept at hunting in forests and open terrain.

It’s also got some dog in it, about a tenth. With 25 per cent wolf DNA, coyote is the dominant species, according to research by Javier Monzón from Stony Brook University in New York.

Clip-On Cap Light. For those normal people who still wear their cap with the bill in front.

Groundfridge.

Ember magic mug.

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Justice will out – in Texas, of course. You won’t read about such a thing in New York or California.

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Loud noise, trauma, infections, plain old aging—many things can destroy hair cells, the delicate sensors of balance and sound within the inner ear. And once these sensors are gone, that’s it; the delicate hair cells don’t grow back in humans, leading to hearing loss and problems with balance.

But scientists hope to find a way to regenerate these cells by examining how they develop in the first place. New research at Rockefeller University, in A. James Hudspeth’s Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience, has identified two genes pivotal to the production of hair cells in young mice, who, just like human babies, lose the ability to generate these sensors shortly after birth. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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This is a great decision but it’s just a step on the road to a more important one, if we can get it: The right for farmers to hack the software in their farm equipment.

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Except for the smells, of course.

Durham University and Durham Cathedral have teamed to digitally recreate a medieval monastic library. The Durham Priory Library Recreated project, which was officially launched today, will make available over 350 volumes of texts that once belonged to the priory in northern England.

The manuscripts and early printed texts, which date back to the sixth century, originally belonged to the Benedictine monks of Durham Priory until the dissolution of monasteries by Henry VIII from 1536-41. Fortunately, much of this collection remained at the Cathedral, and over the next five years they will be digitized and made freely available online.

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Most kids learn the grade school civics lesson about how a bill becomes a law. What those lessons usually neglect to show is how legislation today is often birthed on a lobbyist’s desk.

But even for expert researchers, journalists, and government transparency groups, tracing a bill’s lineage isn’t easy—especially at the state level. Last year alone, there were 70,000 state bills introduced in 50 states. It would take one person five weeks to even read them all. Groups that do track state legislation usually focus narrowly on a single topic, such as abortion, or perhaps a single lobby groups.

Computers can do much better. A prototype tool, presented in September at Bloomberg’s Data for Good Exchange 2015 conference, mines the Sunlight Foundation’s database of more than 500,000 bills and 200,000 resolutions for the 50 states from 2007 to 2015. It also compares them to 1,500 pieces of “model legislation” written by a few lobbying groups that made their work available, such as the conservative group ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and the liberal group the State Innovation Exchange (formerly called ALICE).

As Pooh would say, a useful pot to put things in.

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Cool. It’ll be back to the way it was when Vikings roamed the earth.

Wouldn’t that make a great T-shirt? “MAKE GREENLAND GREEN AGAIN. SUPPORT GLOBAL WARMING.”