A quadrocopter is an aircraft that is lifted and propelled by four rotors. Zurich’s Flying Machine Arena hosted a quadrocopter tennis match, involving a human-robot volley, a doubles match and an impressive robot-to-robot juggling act. The robots were outfitted with tennis rackets, allowing them to fly toward the ball and return a human’s serve.
Continue reading… “Robotic Swiss Quadrocopters Playing Tennis”
For the first time, scientists have recorded activity from hundreds of single cells in the human brain during a seizure. The research, published this week in Nature Neuroscience, is part of a growing movement to employ new technologies to study brain processes at the single-cell level, which until recently has been impossible to do in living humans.
In an epileptic seizure, the normally orderly activity of neurons goes haywire. The abnormal amounts of electricity that get discharged can be temporarily disabling. Scientists typically monitor human seizures using electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures electrical activity across millions of neurons at a time, an approach that has revealed much about the overall patterns of activity in seizures. But researchers hope that by studying single cells, they’ll learn how seizures spread…
Continue reading… “An Up-Close View of Seizures”
While Facebook marketing is on the rise among small businesses, many are still struggling to master the basics.
“Many people have difficulty with just the basic Page set up,” says social media marketing consultant Nicole Krug. “For example, I still see people setting up their business as a profile page instead of a business Page. I have other clients who jumped into Groups when they came out and have divided their fan base.”
Here are five more common Facebook marketing mistakes to avoid…
Continue reading… “Top 5 Facebook Marketing Mistakes Small Businesses Make”
Somewhere between yesterday afternoon and last night, Instagram hit 3 million users after only six months of existence. To put that into perspective, that’s like 1% of the population of the US using a service that currently only fully exists on a iPhone…
Continue reading… “A New Entertainment Platform Called Instagram”
What good is all those fancy chemistry lab equipments if you can’t benefit humanity, say by improving our cocktails? Analytic chemist Neil Da Costa decided to dissect the chemistry behind making the perfect Bloody Mary:
With gas and liquid chromatography, Da Costa isolated the wide variety of compounds that give the bloody mary its unique flavor. The drink covers much of the taste spectrum: sweet, salty, sour and umami — the savory taste of glutamic acid.
Many earlier cloaking systems turned objects invisible only under wavelengths of light that the human eye can’t see. Others could conceal only microscopic objects. But a new system, developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Centre, works in visible light and can hide objects big enough to see with the naked eye.
The cloak is made from two pieces of calcite crystal stuck together in a certain configuration.
Calcite is highly anisotropic, which means that light coming from one side will exit at a different angle than light entering from another side. By using two different pieces of calcite, the researchers were able to bend light around a solid object placed between the crystals. Whatever is put under this gap, it looks from the outside like it is not there.
VIA The Presurfer
Pop icon Lady Gaga will launch a line of meat-based clothing this Fall using food waste. The line will be a “contemporary interpretation of her stage outfits,” according to the Haus of Gaga.
Exactly what that means remains unclear but I suggest you don’t wear the clothing camping (or store them in a bear box if you do). Unlike her infamous meat dress, the line will actually be…clothing. And unlike her meat dress, it comes PeTA-approved. Yes, PeTA approved!
Continue reading… “Lady Gaga Launches Fashion Line Made from Discarded Meat”
Remember the drug smugglers’ submarine that was captured by Ecuadoran police last year? The 75-foot boat was capable of shipping about 9 tons of cocaine. Jim Popkin of Wired wrote a detailed look at its design after reading a report by the US Navy:
The hull, they discovered, was made from a costly and exotic mixture of Kevlar and carbon fiber, tough enough to withstand modest ocean pressures but difficult to trace at sea. Like a classic German U-boat, the drug-running submarine uses diesel engines on the surface and battery-powered electric motors when submerged. With a crew of four to six, it has a maximum operational range of 6,800 nautical miles on the surface and can go 10 days without refueling. Packed with 249 lead-acid batteries, the behemoth can also travel silently underwater for up to 18 hours before recharging…
The First Fuel Cell-Powered Black Cab
It may not look much different than your average black cab on the outside (decals aside), but it’s quite a different story under the hood of this taxi, which has just been deemed road legal in the UK. Developed by Intelligent Energy, the cab actually includes both a fuel cell with a 30 kW net output and a 14 kWh lithium polymer battery pack, which combined promise to provide enough juice for a full day of operation — along with a top speed of 81 MPH and acceleration from zero to sixty in fourteen seconds. Londoners won’t be seeing them everywhere just yet, however, as the company only expects the first fleet to be ready sometime next year in time for the 2012 Olympics.
Continue reading… “UK’s First Fuel Cell-Powered Black Cab Hits the Streets of London”
3D entertainment will never be the same again if one of the latest projects of researchers from the Osaka University, a 360 degree fog display, goes into mass production.
The 3D image is created with the help of 3 projectors that are focused on the fog display. One of the Japanese researchers got this idea after seeing a fog display in an entertainment park, so it is not a mistake to assume that inspiration may come in the strangest places. Each of the 3 projectors shows the object (in this particular case, a rabbit) from a different angle. As a result, the 3D effect is created and the imaged can be watched from multiple points of view. Directionality is the result of the fact that light gets dispersed by fog…
Continue reading… “360-Degree Fog Display”
Google is making a big new push into social with a feature called “+1” that is similar in purpose to the Facebook “Like” button, but integrated directly into the world’s biggest search engine.
Starting Wednesday, users who opt into the +1 button experiment (and soon everyone else) in Google Labs will start seeing a +1 icon next to each link in Google search results…
Continue reading… “Google’s Answer to the Facebook “Like” Button: The “+1””
In the world of business, there are great corporate executives, then there are great entrepreneurs. What sets them apart from each other?
University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business professor Saras Sarasvathy tested some of America’s best minds in business and found that entrepreneurs think differently than corporate execs…
Continue reading… “How Great Entrepreneurs Think”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.