Discover, October 21 2010.
3D printers are beloved by geeks the world over. Enter the Lego 3D printer: it’s not only MADE of Legos, but it also PRINTS with Legos. With only a few tweaks, this LegoBot could even take over the world print copies of itself, maker Will Gorman told Wired:
“There is a recursiveness to this whole thing,” says Gorman.
“I love the idea of self-assembly and the Star Trek replicator and I love Legos,” he says. “I wanted to bring those two worlds together.” Read More >
Discover, October 21 2010.
In a great convergence of old and new, Google and the Israel Antiquities Authority are teaming up to digitize the millennia-old Dead Sea Scrolls. The scrolls are the oldest known surviving biblical texts, created between 150 BC and 79 AD. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and include nearly every book of the Old Testament (except the Book of Esther), and several other religious texts.
The scrolls have been tightly guarded because of their delicate nature. Only two scholars are allowed to study the scrolls at a time, which are held in a room where temperature, light, and humidity are all carefully controlled. Public access to the writings will change how they are studied. Read More >
Discover, October 21 2010.
A new approach to electrophoresis is giving researchers more control over how they play with small particles.
Electrophoresis is the movement of particles in solution under a current–a phenomenon that can be exploited for use in everything from ePaper to DNA separating gels. Instead of using a normal fluid to conduct current, researchers led by Oleg Lavrentovich tried using liquid crystals as their conductive fluid. Read More >
Discover, October 21 2010.
A small town in Ontario has come down with a bad case of technophobia. The majority (88 percent) of an Ontario school’s parent group (which has 210 members) voted that they want the wireless Internet at their children’s school shut off, the group said in a press release:
“After learning the whole story about how risky WiFi is, parents voted to protect their children’s health and plug the computers back in with hardwires,” said Andrew Couper, a member of the elected School Council…. “This is something every school council across Canada should be questioning.” Read More >
Discover, October 19 2010.
A few weeks ago we posted a NCBI ROFL story about the transplantation of a set of lungs that caused the recipient to catch the donor’s peanut allergy. While this case isn’t new, its seemingly coincidental and ironic circumstances left us with some lingering questions–plus at least one of you accused us of posting an urban legend.
So we went straight to the source, Imran Khalid, the doctor who treated the patient. “This case was as surprising to us as to anyone else,” Khalid said. “The seriousness of the issue led us to write it up and send it to a medical journal to share it with other people.” Read More >
Discover, October 19 2010.
A new drug seems to be able to reverse normal age-related memory decline in old mice–like a face-lift for neurons, bringing them back to their younger days. The results of the experimental treatment, which works by blocking certain stress hormones, were published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
“What’s most surprising is that even short-term inhibition was able to reverse memory loss in old mice,” says Jonathan Seckl, a professor of molecular medicine who was involved in the research. “I don’t think people had realized this was so reversible. It takes [the animals] back to being relatively young.” Read More >
Discover, October 19 2010.
Flexible materials technology may just bring the next wave of trendy to the markets, in the form of glowing tattoos and T- shirts. Or the hot new tech could be used for its intended purpose: monitoring medical conditions.
This flexible light-emitting diode (LED) array uses many already existing materials and techniques to create a nano-sized, flexible patch of light. A team lead by John Rogers developed the array as a medical device; it could be implanted to serve as a readout for monitoring internal body conditions, like blood oxygenation or glucose levels, or it could turn on light-activated drugs. Read More >
Discover, October 18 2010.
The world’s first robot pop star, aka Divabot, made her debut last week at the Digital Contents Expo. Tech News Daily’s take on her:
The warbling robot, with the Star Wars-esque designation HRP-4C, stands at about five feet, two inches (1.58 meters) tall. It has the appearance of a young Japanese girl, although one admittedly wearing a RoboCop suit minus the helmet. Read More >
Discover, October 18 2010.
New bone evidence suggests that Tyrannosaurus rex was not only a scavenger but also a cannibal. While researchers frequently find evidence of bites on bone fossils, Nicholas Longrich was surprised to find big, predator-sized tooth marks on T. rex bones–because the T. rex was the only large carnivore in the area, and therefore the only dinosaur who could have left those marks.
“These animals were some of the largest terrestrial carnivores of all time, and the way they approached eating was fundamentally different from modern species,” Longrich added. “There’s a big mystery around what and how they ate, and this research helps to uncover one piece of the puzzle.” Read More >
Discover, October 15 2010.
What would you do with a spare $640,000? John Graham-Cunning would build a steam-powered computer invented in the 1830s. And instead of waiting around for this mysterious spare money to show up, he’s started soliciting donations. The plan: Raise the money by January 2011, build the analytical engine from Charles Babbage’s original design, then donate the machine to a museum. Graham-Cunning knows this idea sounds crazy, but it won’t deter him, as he wrote in an article for the O’Reilly Radar:
It might seem a folly to want to build a gigantic, relatively puny computer at great expense 170 years after its invention. But the message of a completed Analytical Engine is very clear: it’s possible to be 100 years ahead of your own time. Read More >