Brainwashing soldiers
Blu, an Italian street artist, is no stranger to controversy. You may remember his mural at the MOCA that was taken down. It was in an area of downtown that neighbors a Veterans Affairs hospital and a war memorial to Japanese American soldiers, the provocative anti-war piece showed coffins draped with dollar bills instead of flags. (Pics)
Continue reading… “‘Brainwashing Soldiers’ mural by Italian street artist Blu”
Micro projectors for maximum viewing pleasure.
Sharing pictures of your kids used to be easy—whip out the wallet-sized photos and pass. Now, you pull out your phone and squint. With these new millimeter-cubed projector lenses, squinting, like wallet photos, may become a thing of the past…
Continue reading… “Projector lenses the size of pencil lead are big news for smartphones”
Powerful but oh so small!
Your watch battery isn’t small. This battery is small. At six times thinner than a bacterium, Rice University’s new battery is 60,000 times smaller than a AAA battery…
Continue reading… “The world’s smallest battery is six times thinner than a bacterium”
Messages from the fridge…
Photographer Mark Menjivar traveled the states for 3 years for his “You Are What You Eat” project, meeting people and documenting their lives from a surprisingly interesting viewpoint -their refrigerators. Could you tell the picture above belonged to a bartender who goes to sleep at 8 AM and wakes up a 4 PM every day?
A chemical found in bear bile could help heart attack sufferers.
There may be a ray of hope for millions of heart patients worldwide. Scientists have claimed that a chemical, also found in bear bile, may help the recovery of people who have had a heart attack.
Continue reading… “Bear bile could aid heart attack patients”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC2TTslf_YM&hd=1[/youtube]
At the Tokyo Institute of Technology researchers with the Hasegawa Group have created a robot that is capable of applying learned concepts to perform new tasks. The Self-Organizing Incremental Neural Network (SOINN) uses a type of self-replicating neural technology. The research team has released a video demonstrating the robot’s ability to understand it’s environment and to carry out instructions that it previously didn’t know how to do.
Continue reading… “Researchers create robot that can learn, think and act by itself”
Professor Manos Tentzeris displays an inkjet-printed rectifying antenna used to convert microwave energy to DC power.
Researchers have found a way to capture and harness energy transmitted by such sources as radio and television transmitters, cell phone networks and satellite communications systems. By getting this ambient energy from the air around us, the technique could provide a new way to power networks of wireless sensors, microprocessors and communications chips.
ISP speeds throughout a day
The FCC has collected data for the first time showing real-world speeds that Americans receive from their Internet providers. And the news is pretty good! Or, perhaps the news is pretty bad!
Continue reading… “FCC measures actual internet speed and finds FiOS comes out on top”
The ‘electronic tongue’ may have a commercial use and could eventually replace the teams of experts needed in each bodega.
Spanish scientists have developed an “electronic tongue” that promises to rival the work of the traditional sommelier and identify different grades of the Spanish sparkling wine, cava. The electronic device has been developed by the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) and uses electronic sensory systems with “advanced mathematical procedures” to analyse different varieties of the Catalan alternative to champagne according to taste.
Have you heard of these money laundering cases?
Money laundering is the process by which illegally obtained cash is made to appear as if it has been obtained by legal means. The funds are moved into valid accounts or businesses in order to hide or disguise the financial trail that leads back to the criminal activity. In 1996, it was estimated that between 2 and 5 percent of the world’s gross domestic product consisted of laundered money…
Continue reading… “10 most notorious money laundering cases of the 20th century”
July was REALLY hot in a lot of places.
With July just behind us the National Weather Service confirms what you probably already knew: It was really seriously totally sweatily hot over the majority of the United States. In fact there were 2,676 tied or broken heat records across the nation, doubling last year’s stats. All told about 60 people died from the heat last month…
Continue reading… “July 2011 Heat Records Double Those Of Last Year”
Have we been approaching cancer from the wrong perspective?
According to a new scientific paper, cancer might actually be a newly evolved species of parasite based on the fact that the cells depend on their hosts for food, but otherwise act independently and to the detriment of their host…