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The Venus’ flower basket sea sponge uses extraordinarily strong spicules — strands of nested glass columns–to anchor itself against flowing currents.

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Instruments that measure the properties of light, known as spectrometers, are widely used in physical, chemical, and biological research. These devices are usually too large to be portable, but MIT scientists have now shown they can create spectrometers small enough to fit inside a smartphone camera, using tiny semiconductor nanoparticles called quantum dots.

Such devices could be used to diagnose diseases, especially skin conditions, or to detect environmental pollutants and food conditions, says Jie Bao, a former MIT postdoc and the lead author of a paper describing the quantum dot spectrometers in the July 2 issue of Nature.

Shelf-Pack Suitcase.

Rear-View Bike Radar.

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Chao Chen, a Master’s student in design at London’s Royal College of Art, was inspired by an ordinary pinecone he saw in Hyde Park. Pinecones close when wet, and Chen decided to see if he could mimic the movement for a class project.

…

He discovered that by layering a veneer, fabric, and a thin layer of film together he could make a material that reacted just like the pinecone to water: opening on sunny days, and curling in the presence of water.

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Blosom, the world’s tallest cow, was measured to be a full 6-foot-2 inches tall (190 cm) from hoof to withers when this photo was taken in early 2015.

Guinness officials had awarded the bovine beauty an official world record in August of 2014 while visiting her owner’s farm in Orangeville, Illinois, to verify that yes, a cow could really be that tall.

Gone, but not forgotten.

“Blosom was born to two normal-sized cows, and according to Patty, was even taller when she was eight years old,” wrote Rachel Swatman on guinessworldrecords.com. “Always friendly with her owners, Patty treated Blosom like any other household pet and loved nothing more than spending time with her out in the field.”

She’s a fool if she’s not trying to breed another one.

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I.e. Ex-Im Bank authorization expired. One less Crustian transnational slush fund down, hundreds left to go.

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Dude, take the hint.

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Doing jobs that Americans won’t do….

I wonder whether it speaks Spanish?

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Doing the jobs that Americans won’t do. (Probably for good reason.)

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With the debut of passenger elevators some 150 years ago, cities were forever changed. Freed from the tyranny of stairwells, architects built as high as they liked. That is, until they ran into another barrier: the weight of steel cables. A new elevator design from German company ThyssenKrupp may solve that problem by trading cables for tracks that employ magnetic levitation, or maglev. Unconstrained by a linear pulley system, the cars–to be tested in Germany next year–will travel higher and in new directions, moving horizontally and even diagonally. The system, called Multi, may help make possible buildings of unprecedented size and energy efficiency, like this conceptual Edison Tower. Patrick Bass, CEO of ThyssenKrupp North America, says supertall, power-producing skyscrapers could help accommodate booming urbanization.

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Back in 2009, Russian design house Art Lebedev introduced the dramatically titled Transparentius concept for improving road safety. It was remarkably simple: put a camera on the front of large, slow-moving trucks and connect it to video displays on the back, thereby informing trailing drivers whether it’s safe to overtake the big rig. That’s the exact same idea that Samsung is now pursuing with a new prototype truck. Making use of its abundance of outdoor displays, the Korean company has stitched together a video wall of four displays at the rear of the truck, which transmits video captured by a wireless camera at the front.

Great idea. How much is it going to cost?

I smell another government mandate that will cost consumers and benefit a big company.

Chcck it out.

Apparently I have the eyes of a dog. Who knew?

Amazingly Automated Sewing and Embroidery Machines.

Quick searing knife toasts bread as you slice it.

Millenium Falcon MultiTool.

Water Bottle Underwear.

Balancing Knife. This is really slick.

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The future is here, it’s just not evenly distribueed.

(Look for an appropriate government program to hit Congress any day now.)

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This could be huge.

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“I went into the drug store. I’d run out of razor blades and just had a really frustrating purchase experience,” Katz-Mayfield recalls. “They were locked in a case, which I found to be a little bit absurd. I was buying razor blades — not diamond jewelry. And I wound up spending over $20 for four razor blades and some shaving cream, and I didn’t have a good feeling as a consumer. I knew I was getting taken advantage of, and I didn’t really have any choice in the matter.”

…

Harry’s sells shaving kits, individual razors, and bottles of shaving cream. For $15, you can get a shaving kit complete with a five-blade razor, three replacement blades, and shaving cream. When you consider that just a razor and a couple replacement blades from Gillette will run you anywhere from $10 to $15, Harry’s kits look like a pretty good deal.

I use ’em, and I like ’em.

The Bat-Hook.

Protective Rain Hat. You first.

Outlet with USB power.

Cryptex Steampunk USB Drive.

Roccbox Portable Stone Bake Oven.

Clip-Together Furniture.

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Lee was attached to the precursor of the SAS, known as the Long range Desert Group (LRDG), in North Africa from 1941. He reportedly moved behind enemy lines, destroying Luftwaffe aircraft and fields, until he was seconded to the army and served with a Gurkha regiment.

“I was attached to the SAS from time to time but we are forbidden – former, present, or future – to discuss any specific operations. Let’s just say I was in Special Forces and leave it at that. People can read in to that what they like,” he said in 2011.

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Instead of tilting at windmills, how about living in one? The Dutch Windwheel is a giant proposed wind turbine for the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, which will feature apartments and hotel rooms along the outside of the structure.

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Liquids are great at absorbing bullets’ energy. Fired underwater, an AK-47 can only send a bullet a few feet forwards, while in the air the same bullets would easily fly over 1,000 feet. This is great news for secret agents looking to avoid henchmen by swimming underwater, but it’s impractical advice for anyone else unless they want to carry six-foot-thick tanks of water around themselves at all times. Fortunately, researchers have found liquids that work even better than water at stopping bullets. The latest, developed by Poland’s Military Institute of Armament Technology in Warsaw, is a new non-Newtonian Shear Thickening Fluid, and it might replace Kevlar in body armor of the future.

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Friction is all around us, working against the motion of tires on pavement, the scrawl of a pen across paper, and even the flow of proteins through the bloodstream. Whenever two surfaces come in contact, there is friction, except in very special cases where friction essentially vanishes — a phenomenon, known as “superlubricity,” in which surfaces simply slide over each other without resistance.

Now physicists at MIT have developed an experimental technique to simulate friction at the nanoscale. Using their technique, the researchers are able to directly observe individual atoms at the interface of two surfaces and manipulate their arrangement, tuning the amount of friction between the surfaces. By changing the spacing of atoms on one surface, they observed a point at which friction disappears.

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An artificial intelligence system has for the first time reverse-engineered the regeneration mechanism of planaria—the small worms whose extraordinary power to regrow body parts has made them a research model in human regenerative medicine. – See more at: http://now.tufts.edu/news-releases/planarian-regeneration-model-discovered-artificial-intelligence#sthash.vx4oaN4F.dpuf

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Dating from 1250, The Black Book of Carmarthen at the National Library of Wales is the earliest surviving medieval manuscript written solely in Welsh, and contains some of the earliest references to King Arthur and Merlin.

Despite its importance and decades of scholarly research, the work of a PhD student from the University of Cambridge has revealed tantalising new glimpses of verse, and some images, from the 750-year-old book.

Myriah Williams and her supervisor Professor Paul Russell from Cambridge’s Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, believe that a 16th century owner of the book, probably a man named Jaspar Gryffyth of Ruthin, summarily erased centuries’ worth of additional verse, doodles and marginalia which had been added to the manuscript as it changed hands throughout the years.

However, using a combination of ultraviolet light and photo editing software, the 16th century owner’s penchant for erasure has been partly reversed to reveal snatches of poetry which are previously unrecorded in the canon of Welsh verse. Currently, the texts are very fragmentary and in need of much more analysis, although they seem to be the continuation of a poem on the preceding page with a new poem added at the foot of the page.

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For the first time, experts recreate one of the 28 timber machines that hoisted wild animals into the Colosseum, where they were pitted against gladiators and each other

Read it. And watch the video.

Pantelligent.

Giant Wooden Dog House.

Three-Person Water Balloon Launcher.

Buzzwords-as-a-Service.

‘Room in a Box’ Cardboard Furniture Set.

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Research published in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology showed that the results from the app tests were as reliable as those from standard paper-based charts and illuminated vision boxes in an eye clinic.

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Suggestion: Don’t get in the way of a tank. Especially don’t get in the way of a British tank.

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A British trial brought “spectacular” results, with tumours shrinking or disappearing completely in half of inoperable skin cancer patients.

The findings came as a series of studies showed that the drugs, which use the body’s defences to combat the disease, were effective against some of the most deadly tumours, including those of the lung, bowel, liver and head.

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I’ve seen women from Barnard; I doubt that anyone will notice.

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We found, for all three major minority groups,   that the best places were neither the most liberal in their attitudes nor had the most generous welfare programs. Instead they were located primarily in regions that have experienced broad-based economic growth, have low housing costs, and limited regulation. In other words, no matter how much people like Bill de Blasio talk about the commitment to racial and class justice, the realities on the ground turn out to be quite different than he might imagine.

Reusable Cups & Saucers from Old Coffee Grounds.

Portable Air Pump.

Pizza Hut Australia To Launch Meat Pie Stuffed Crust Pie

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I assumed that the rooftop PV system would generate just enough power to fill annual domestic demand and that the surplus power generated in summer would be stored for re-use in the winter in Tesla batteries. The result was an across-the board generation cost of around $35/kWh. Clearly the Tesla battery storage option isn’t economically viable, or at least not under the scenario I chose.

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In the first study, researchers manipulated E. coli’s genes to make the bacteria reliably detect high glucose levels in urine–an indicator of diabetes. Once the glucose levels reach a certain threshold, the bacteria turn red. When the researchers tested these “bactosensors” in samples from 13 patients, the bacteria indicated problematically high glucose levels just as reliably as conventional urine dipsticks. The researchers hope that this same sort of bacterial genetic manipulation could help detect other diseases.

Progress! You can’t stop it.

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Hah.

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Under the direction of Latha Venkataraman, associate professor of applied physics at Columbia Engineering, researchers have designed a new technique to create a single-molecule diode, and, in doing so, they have developed molecular diodes that perform 50 times better than all prior designs. Venkataraman’s group is the first to develop a single-molecule diode that may have real-world technological applications for nanoscale devices. Their paper, “Single-Molecule Diodes with High On-Off Ratios through Environmental Control,” is published May 25 in Nature Nanotechnology.

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Solar energy is the future. The problem is, it’s been the future for a long time. And while progress has been made, using the sun as a primary source of power hasn’t really broken through.

One possible breakthrough, however, is becoming clearer—literally. The engineers at Ubiquitous Energy are developing solar panels that are completely transparent and as thin as a laminate. They can do this by creating see-through solar cells that absorb only the invisible parts of the solar spectrum—ultraviolet and infrared radiation.

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Don’t ever say we don’t have useful stuff here.

Portable Folding Kayak. Well, you never know when you might need one….

TGX Tactical Flask.

Electric Boot Dryer.

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New ball bearings developed by Coo Space solve that problem in an ingenious new way. Instead of forcing balls apart with a cage or retainer, Coo Space puts small divots in the track the balls roll over. These divots subtly speed up and slow down the balls just so, and the end result is balls that will never clash, even with no cage. That means 10 times less friction than traditional bearings and no need to ever lube them up. Win win!

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Henk Jonkers, a microbiologist at Delft University of Technology, is working on a concrete with built-in bacteria that can fill in cracks as they form.

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“I think microwaves have been a largely overlooked idea,” says Tim Langley of CarbonScape. “It’s a technology that we almost all have in our homes, but as a commercial heat source for anything other than perhaps drying food we haven’t really looked at it.”

Blenheim-based company CarbonScape is using microwaves to turn wood waste from forestry into high-value carbon products in what it says is a world first.

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Growing up in some places — especially liberal ones — makes people less likely to marry, new data shows.

Well, that’s encouraging.

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We age, in part, because the adult stem cells in our tissues are surrounded by chemicals that prevent them from replacing damaged cells. One of these chemicals is TGF-beta1, known to depress stem cell activity. A new study shows that a drug that blocks TGF-beta1, which is now being tested for its anticancer properties, makes brain and muscle tissue more youthful. This is a step toward a drug cocktail that could rejuvenate aging tissue.

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A phenomenon called superlubricity occurs when two perfectly flat surfaces with incompatible crystal structures slide past each other. It’s only been observed in extremely small samples, however, as larger surfaces have imperfections that tend to get stuck as they slide around.

Now, researchers have managed to create superlubricity in a large sample. They do so by getting graphene to wrap around nanoscopic diamonds, creating something akin to tiny ball bearings.

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The CRISPR-cas9 system makes gene editing in many organisms and cells — like our own egg, sperm or embryo — more efficient, accessible and simple than ever before. These groundbreaking capabilities have spawned discussions surrounding the ethics and applications of the new system, and have garnered significant attention around the world to ensure ethically correct usage.

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Here’s hoping. There is very little wrong with California that a rise in sea level of about 20 feet wouldn’t cure, although I’m hoping for 40.

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When wind hits a structure and flows over its surfaces the flow changes and generates a cyclical pattern of vortices at the tail end of the flow. This is known as the vortex shedding effect which creates something known as vorticity and that is what Vortex Bladeless uses to generate energy.

…

What the engineers at Vortex Bladeless are doing is embracing this effect instead of avoiding the aerodynamic instabilities to capitalize on the oscillation and therefore capture the energy. The mast is designed to oscillate in the wind (which is very different from Blowing in the Wind). As you can see in the picture above, this is not your usual wind turbine. It consists of a fixed mast, a power generator that has no moving parts which come into contact with each other and a semi-rigid fiberglass cylinder. The power generator is a system of magnetic coupling devices which means there are no gears needing lubrication and an overall system needing less maintenance.