In nature, trees pull vast amounts of water from their roots up to their leaves hundreds of feet above the ground through capillary action, but now scientists at the University of Rochester have created a simple slab of metal that lifts liquid using the same principle—but does so at a speed that would make nature [...]

It’s hard to miss the huge eye of a squid. But now it appears that certain squids can detect light through an organ other than their eyes as well.

Scientists have managed to induce cells from pigs to transform into pluripotent stem cells – cells that, like embryonic stem cells, are capable of developing into any type of cell in the body.

As the closest planet to the sun, Mercury is scorching hot, with daytime temperatures of more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit (approximately 450 degrees Celsius). It is also the smallest rocky planet, so its gravity is weak, only about 38 percent of Earth’s.

Dr. Todd Siler speaking at  the Night with a Futurist about Future of Innovation
June’s Night with a Futurist saw Todd Siler discussing the future of innovation. Siler believes that the key constraints to innovation lie in the limitations individuals place around their thinking and creativity added to the subsequent inability to communicate ideas effectively to [...]

 Lettuces are grown in a sterile environment at Ozu Corporation’s plant factory in Japan – without being exposed to the air outside
 They look more like the brightly lit shelves of a chemists shop than the rows of a vegetable garden.  But according to their creators, these perfect looking vegetables could be the future of food.

This satellite image shows white Antarctic ice stained brown by Emperor penguin guano  
Satellite images have picked up giant red-brown stains on the pristine white sea ice, indicating the presence of thousands of penguins.
It meant that researchers for the British Antarctic Survey were able to locate every colony on the continent for the first time ever.

Squidolin Inventor and Visionary Carlos Mendez

“I love the sound of the violin,” explains Carlos Mendez. “Since I was a kid, I wanted to learn how to play it. But born in a poor country such as Nicaragua, my parents couldn’t afford lessons.”
It was this childhood affection for the stringed instrument that encouraged the young industrial designer [...]

Who needs a body these days anyway?

 
Researchers at the North Carolina State University has developed a machine that can keep a heart beating outside the body. The potential medical benefit is huge, though for whatever reason I kept on thinking about Dr. Frankenstein:
“Researchers can obtain pig hearts from a pork processing facility and use the [...]

Notice how amazingly similar the product looks to the photo on the can…

 
The folks over at Now That’s Nifty Blogspot have assembled a colorful and quite disquieting array of canned meat (and meat-like) products from around the world. All cultures around the world eat canned meat because it is an easy and safe way to preserve it. [...]