Featured Invention at the Colorado Inventor Showcase 2009
The Steam Viper was invented by 15 year old Philip Hartman from Loveland, CO. The Steam Viper will be the very first windshield cleaning/deicing wiper system to utilize the power of steam.
 

The Irish accent has beaten its French counterpart as the world’s sexiest.
Men with an Emerald Isle brogue came top in a poll of 5,000 women worldwide, while the French accent only came fourth, just ahead of Australian.
Italian was second. In third place was the Scottish burr. English was sixth and Swedish was seventh, with Spanish, [...]

DARPA is holding a competition to find ten large weather balloons. Winner gets $40,000!

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad [...]

A pet shop worker has set a new world record after stuffing 16 Madagascar hissing cockroaches – each more than 6cm long – into his mouth.
Sean Murphy, of Lansing, Michigan, US, shattered the old Guinness World Records score of 11 to secure the new mark.

Image: Anne Cavanagh and Dave McCarthy
The Wellcome Image Awards are given annually for achievement in scientific imagery. The 2009 winners were announced this week in London. Among those winners was the above image showing:
…the synthetic polymers used to coat a drug, either to target the release of the drug in a specific part of the [...]

Simply amazing
Master juggler Michael Moschen performs his incredibly famous, jaw-dropping piece where three balls and a triangle become a musical and visual work of art. (2nd video after the jump)

Researchers from Kitasato University in Tokyo have been awarded this year’s Ig Nobel Biology Prize for demonstrating a method to reduce kitchen waste by more than 90% by using bacteria derived from Giant Panda excrement.  Professor Fumiaki Taguchi, who shares the prize with fellow researchers Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei (both from the Kitasato University [...]

The Cocoon, which would ‘grow’ its own meals, won the Electrolux competition
A controversial cooker that ‘grows’ meat and fish by heating animal cells in your kitchen claimed first prize in the Electrolux design competition.The invention, called Cocoon, could develop food with the make-up and nutrients of real meat. (Pics and video)
 

The latest version of the T5000 biosensor from Ibis Biosciences
Medical detective work may have just gotten a lot easier.
Just how difficult it is gets highlighted every time an infectious disease sweeps the globe, as the new strain of swine flu did earlier this year. Current methods of testing for disease-causing microbes are pretty effective at [...]

Fame on four wheels

A century old record has been broken after Inspiration, a twin-finned car that looks like a prop from Thunderbirds, achieved an average speed of 139.84mph on two runs over a measured mile, at Edwards Air Force Base, California. That may not sound fast when a car has already broken the sound barrier, [...]

For the 2nd year running, the winner is Chicago
Sinking property values, high unemployment and prices, and poor environments add to the pressure felt by residents in these metros.
Few enjoy their commute. Just ask Stephen Dinwiddie, M.D., a psychiatrist at the University of Chicago.
“I think anybody who, like I do, commutes on the Kennedy on a [...]

Ddalgi now works for Edward D Jones.

A five-year-old parrot in South Korea has proved smarter than human investors in a stock investment contest. Ddalgi (Korean for strawberry), from Papua New Guinea, finished third in the six-week contest which ended on Wednesday, said Paxnet, an online stock market information provider. The bird competed with 10 stock [...]

The Urban Mole
It’s 2020, and cities are so overcrowded that it’s impossible to deliver packages. UPS trucks have nowhere to double-park, and obnoxious bike messengers can’t even ride on pedestrian-jammed sidewalks. How, then, can important parcels reach their destinations in a squalid megalopolis of the future?
 

So small yet already incredible!
Yes, it is a commercial for Evian Water, but a very funny and amazing one that will go down in the history books for its style and ingenuity. Second video after the jump.

Fun at 1600 meters!

A tightrope walker in China has broken a world record after crossing a wire suspended 1,607 meters above sea level.
As if that isn’t hairraising enough, this video also captures the moment Ahdili Wuxiuer broke a second world record by climbing over his pupil Saddar in the middle of the wire.
(video after jump…)

Overall Winner: The Swimming City — András Gyõrfi
The Seasteading Institute, committed to the ongoing development of ocean communities, has just announced the winners of their first annual design content. Could people really end up living in these hypothetical off-shore communities? (Pics)

Papst Steals The Ugly Show

 
The World’s Ugliest dog contest has been decided … and the result ain’t pretty! Congrats to Pabst, a boxer-mix shelter dog who won the 21st annual World’s Ugliest Dog Contest at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California.
 
From the official website:
As the crowd chanted “Pabst, Pabst,” the celebrity judges deliberated between the [...]

 
Berkeley physicist Charles Townes, who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for invention of the laser
The red supergiant star Betelgeuse, the bright reddish star in the constellation Orion, has steadily shrunk over the past 15 years, according to University of California, Berkeley, researchers.

European researchers in robotics, psychology and cognitive sciences have developed a robot that can predict the intentions of its human partner. This ability to anticipate (or question) actions could make human-robot interactions more natural.

 
Neurobiology Of Musicality Related To Intrinsic Attachment Behavior
Music is social communication between individuals — humming of lullabies attach infant to parent and singing or playing music adds croup cohesion.The neurobiology of music perception and production is likely to be related to the pathways affecting intrinsic attachment behavior, suggests a recent Finnish study. The study gives [...]

 
Not exactly the latest fashion…. but brilliant!
Light switches, TV remote controls and even house keys could become a thing of the past thanks to brain-computer interface (BCI) technology being developed in Europe that lets users perform everyday tasks with thoughts alone.

Ice Bear Hybrid Air Conditioning System 
Ice Energy, a leading provider of distributed energy storage and smart grid solutions for optimizing energy system efficiency, has been awarded the Silver prize in the 22nd Excellence in Design Awards competition for its Ice Bear energy storage system. Sponsored by Appliance Design Magazine, the award honors creative and technically savvy [...]

Wind-It
Metropolis Magazine officially announced the winner of their 2009 Next Generation prize! Titled Wind-it, the brilliant project aims to give our existing energy grid a much needed boost by installing wind turbines in ailing electrical transmission towers. The project is designed for France, but creators Nicola Delon, Julien Choppin, and Raphael Menard believe it could [...]

What a ham
We have a wiener! Saints pick mascot
Slumhog Millionaire takes an honored place among his predecessors — including Boarack Ohama and Notorious P.I.G. — as mascot for the St. Paul Saints.
Slumhog Millionaire

Welcome the thrifty new cocky talker phone

It is perhaps the world’s cheapest mobile phone. It is the latest offering from Hugo Chavez’s socialist revolution. And its name is derived from a slang word for penis. Behold the VERGATORIO!
Venezuela’s president launched the handset on his TV show with a Mother’s Day call to his mum and predicted [...]