Pretend for a moment that you are Google’s search engine. Someone types the word “dresses” and hits enter. What will be the very first result?
Sheep Are More Intelligent Than Previously Thought – They Can Even Make ‘Executive Decisions’
Sheep can remember faces and have long memories.
Sheep aren’t as stupid as previously thought, according to researchers. Never considered particularly intelligent, sheep are actually so smart they make ‘executive decisions’ and have long memories, remembering friends for two years.
Amazing Slow-Motion Video Shot 2,564 Frames per Second with a Phantom Flex Camera
Tom Guilmette was playing around and testing out the Phantom Flex camera in his hotel room.
Ever wanted to see flowing water slowed down to the point of transforming into a series of airborne droplets? This video has that. And more. A chap by the name of Tom Guilmette got to work with a Vision Research Phantom Flex camera recently, and, being the true geek that he is, he put together a video composition of staggering slow-motion footage. (Video)
A 33 Foot Touchscreen Built Using Off-The-Shelf Hardware and Public Domain Software
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlWFtF06RFo&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
The University of Groningen in the Netherlands made this 32.8 ft. by 9.2 ft. touchscreen interface from six expensive cameras… and some “cheap” infrared emitters, 1000 LEDs, some old computers that were sitting around, and some free software.
The result is a positively enormous curved screen with a resolution of 4900 by 1700 that can track 100 different touches at a time… and that’s just at optimum speeds. Latency is between 30 and 50 ms.
Anyone up for a game of Pong?
Book Uses Colored Thread Between Pages To Make Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks on paper.
Maria Fischer’s “Traumgedanken” book is a collection of “literary, philosophical, psychological and scientifical texts” about dreams. The book uses threads pierced through the pages and affixed to other pages to make physical hyperlinks between ideas.
Flypaper Clock Eats Flies, Uses Their Bodies for Energy
Carcasses Create Energy For Clock
Design student James Auger was inspired by carnivorous plants to make a clock that is powered by converting the bodies of dead insects into electricity. A roll of flypaper catches the flies, which are in turn scraped off and dumped into a fuel cell…
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64-Year Old Man First to Cross the Atlantic in a Kayak Nonstop
Kayaking to the beat of a different paddle.
Aleksander Doba, 64, crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Dakar, Senegal to Acaraú, Brazil in almost a hundred days. He’s the first person to do so nonstop:
After 98 days, 23 hours, 42 minutes at sea, Doba and his custom 23-foot-long, 39-inch-wide human-powered kayak landed at Acaraú, a city on Brazil’s northeast coast. The trip covered some 3,320 miles in all, and Doba became only the fourth known person to accomplish such a feat, and the very first to do it nonstop…
Continue reading… “64-Year Old Man First to Cross the Atlantic in a Kayak Nonstop”
Wireless Industry Planning a Future Without Cell Phone Towers
Wireless industry is looking into smaller antennas, some tiny enough to hold in a hand.
As cell phones have spread, so have large cell towers — those unsightly stalks of steel topped by transmitters and other electronics that sprouted across the country over the last decade.
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Information Age Overload – Every Day Average Person Produces Six Newspapers Worth of Information
We receive 5 times more information today than we did in 1986.
If you think that you are suffering from information overload then you may be right – a new study shows everyone is bombarded by the equivalent of 174 newspapers of data a day. The growth in the internet, 24-hour television and mobile phones means that we now receive five times as much information every day as we did in 1986.
Astronauts Could One Day Reach Mars by Riding Asteroids
In 2005, Japan’s unmanned Hayabusa spacecraft (illustration) successfully landed on an asteroid.
Getting to Mars is going to involve building a huge spacecraft and loading it up with tons of fuel and radiation shielding. Unless, that is, we could just tag along with a spacecraft that’s already headed in that direction, like an asteroid.
Continue reading… “Astronauts Could One Day Reach Mars by Riding Asteroids”
Leaderless Ants Create Super Efficient Transport Networks
Argentine ants connect three nests in an empty arena via the shortest possible network.
Ants are able to connect multiple sites in the shortest possible way, and in doing so, create efficient transport networks, according to a University of Sydney study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. The research also revealed the process by which the ants solve network design problems without the help of a leader.
Continue reading… “Leaderless Ants Create Super Efficient Transport Networks”
