Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology recently set about creating what might aptly be described as a baby Decepticon — a small, semi-autonomous robot vehicle that purposely engages in deceptive behavior to achieve its ends (in this case, winning a game of hide and seek). Worried? You needn't be! The project also seeks to examine "the ethical ramifications of creating robot's [sic] capable of deception." Phew!
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Every explosive loving, thrill seeking, roller coaster junkie's childhood dream: the jet powered merry-go-round. This steam punk inspired machine is brought to you by Brooklyn-based arts collective The Madagascar Institute. More images below the video.
PopSci has compiled an amazing list of 30 college labs that would tempt anybody to re-enroll. If you know any high school juniors or prospective grad students, pass this along. They just might reconsider their initial choices.
Once there was Spin the Bottle. Then there was the embarrassing adult version of Spin the Bottle—on Wii. And then there was artist Hye Yeon Nam, who decided to skip all pretenses and go straight for the spit-swapping, no foreplay necessary. Hye Yeon Nam devised a method for controlling a bowling video game by French kissing. It works like this: "One person has a magnet on his/her tongue and the other person wears the headset. While they kiss, the person who has the magnet on his/her tongue, c...
Wireless contracts and phone-buying programs continue to become more and more confusing. As if you didn't have enough to worry about with regards to the rising costs of services and the elimination of contracts with mobile providers, Verizon Wireless will soon institute a new charge that puts the grub in "money-grubbing." Sadly, this isn't one of those April's Fools pranks that are running rampant on the web today. Starting next week, the largest mobile phone provider in the United States wil...
Transverse wave motion is the beautiful rippling effect that occurs when a moving wave causes oscillations that travel perpendicular to the direction of energy transferred. (For example, via Wikipedia: "If a transverse wave is moving in the positive x-direction, its oscillations are in up and down directions that lie in the y–z plane.")
From the Huffington Post: Billionaire Republican Meg Whitman reported Monday that she has spent more than $99 million in her quest to become California's governor, while Democrat Jerry Brown is saving money for what could become the most expensive gubernatorial contest in American history.
Here's another latest in robotics: researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) have developed a robot that flips pancakes. The most interesting aspect of the project is the use of kinesthetic teaching, in which the user "trains" the robot by example. The user grasps the robot's limb, and guides it through the motions the user would like it to adopt. This bot takes about 50 trials to get it, but in the end succeeds. Previously, I Want a Robo-Chef in My Kitchen.
It's been almost a century since we've last seen Kid Icarus start in his own game! The result of Project Sora, Kid Icarus will be released for the Nintendo 3DS!
Via WonderHowTo World, Zine Fiends: "Looking for a good source of information on how to pick a lock?
GOOD, a Los Angeles-based magazine focused on doing good in the world, along with LAUSD, The USDA People’s Garden Initiative, The Environmental Media Association, The National Gardening Association, The Urban & Environmental Policy Institute, The California School Garden Network, and Mia Lehrer & Associates, is sponsoring a contest for people to help design a garden for a LAUSD school. GOOD will help build the winning garden design, and they'd like your participation, too.
Nick Cave is the Willy Wonka genius behind the extraordinarily imaginative "soundsuits" pictured below.
Election day is less than two weeks away and the political rhetoric is at an all time high. From the constant political commercials to the endless cable news coverage, it's hard to escape the noise. And nothing is worse than your social media sanctuaries being invaded by some clown's personal political insights.
Hell, yeah! Play with your food. This android hand is the brainchild of a collaboration including Robo250, the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, the Mattress Factory and MAYA Design, Inc.
Obama's inauguration may have been Tuesday, but why not party to the weekend. Here's a lesson in the Napoleonic art of Champagne sabrage.
This week, California, like a growing portion of America is now 'handsfree'. As of July 1st, mobile phone use in cars became prohibited without the use of a headset.
The Equipment The Jackass Crew climb inside a bunch of different human-size hamster balls, just like the Aussies use in zorbing.
All you LARPers out there, watch and see how you can make a blue boffer sword for LARPing. This weapon passes all weapons specs as of Ragnarok XXI War Council for Eryndor.
When you're just a child, there's nothing better than a clown and a few balloon animals to make your birthday party one to remember. There's just something unforgettable about experiencing a balloon twisting in action—the contortion of the balloon, that rubber smell, and the inevitable high-pitched squeakiness that fills the room until a bunny or giraffe appears.
Medicine, like the internet, is serious business. So when the text that appears on the labels of our medicine bottles makes about as much sense as an epileptic in a rave club, we can't help but take pause. Follow us on a journey of prescriptions and misdescriptions!
Flying orbs. At first, you might think of the Tall Man and his army of flying sentinel spheres, equipped with zombie brains and a mini-arsenal of saw blades, drill bits and shooting lasers. But these flying orbs weren't conceived from the evil mind of a superhuman mortician—they were designed by Fumiyuki Sato, a researcher at the Japanese Defense Ministry's Technical Research and Development Institute—for something other than deadly deeds.
Being a Southern Californian, I typically miss out on the incredible springtime bloom of flowering trees in the East. But not this year. By some stroke of luck, I was in Boston early last week, and witnessed the most spectacular trees and foliage at their prime—lilac, magnolias, crabapples, dogwood, and many more.
The Telegraph reports that a team of researchers lead by Dr. Sang-Woo Kim of the Institute of Nanotechnology at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul have developed a method for converting the energy from sound into electricity. They've applied the research to the charging of mobile phones, and while you don't have to yell with all the emotion and fear exhibited above by Drew Barrymore in Scream, it sounds like the more energy the better. Dr. Sang-Woo Kim says:
Have you ever felt the desire to reach out and touch a galaxy? Or "feel" those stunning nebulas and planets you see in Hubble photos? As alluring as it sounds, it's safe to say the odds of your whim coming true are nonexistent. You'd have to travel about 6 earth years and spend millions of dollars building your own personal spacecraft to get close enough to actually wave your hand through one of Saturn's rings. But in an attempt to help the blind "see" what they're missing, some semblance of ...
DIY is a far-reaching term—though culturally it tends to refer to hacks, mods, crafts and constructions, its meaning can also extend to the ongoing trials and tribulations of the evolution of mankind: astonishing developments in technology, desperate acts of self-preservation or as in today's topic, discoveries in science that truly move the needle.
Oleg Mavromati's latest project, Ally/Foe, allows online voters the chance to electrocute the Russian artist at a mere fifty cents a pop. From November 7th to November 13th, viewers of Mavromati's livestream can pay to vote “innocent” or “guilty.” 100 guilty votes result in the artist voluntarily shocking himself in front of the camera, live, with his homemade electrocution machine.
Remember Willy Wonka's magical gum? Wonka promised the flavors of tomato soup, roast beef, baked potato, blueberry pie and ice cream. As the avid gum lover Violet Beauregarde tested it out, she exclaimed: “It’s hot and creamy, I can actually feel? it running down my throat!” Um, yum... I think. Good news. Wonka's three course chewing gum is finally a reality-in-the-works. Scientists at the Institute of Food Research (IFR) have been developing recent advances in nanotechnology, which could pot...
What feature would we most like to see in the robots of tomorrow? Why, the ability to interact with human beings without crushing them to death, of course. Happily, thanks to a new pressure-sensitive synthetic skin technology, the dream is within reach:
Androgynous. Stumpy. Creepy. The horror movie robot, created by the notorious Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, is projected to be available for around $8,000 later this year.
Love folk art but could do without the folk? Prepare to have your heart stolen by a self-folding origami automaton.
The Illusion Contest of the Year recently announced their top ten finalists, and the overwhelming crowd and jury favorite is Impossible Motion: Magnet-like Slopes by Koukichi Sugihara of the Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences in Japan.
Space is tight (not to mention expensive) in Hong Kong. What's the solution? Architect Gary Chang has come up with an ingenious design: a small, 344 sq. ft. "accordion" apartment that can transform into 24 different rooms, simply by employing the use of sliding panels and walls. Via the New York Times,
Nissan said Thursday it will add automatic emergency braking (AEB) capabilities to one million models of its cars and trucks in the US by 2018. But the Japanese carmaker largely remains an exception among mainstream automakers by offering the system as standard.
Welcome back to the two-part series of Ten foods to eat for clear, acne-free skin. Check out part 1 here.
Levon Helm... The longtime drummer for The Band , Levon Helm wore many musical hats throughout his long career, including multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, singer, impressario, studio owner, studio engineer and producer. He grew up working on a farm in Arkansas; his first instrument was guitar, which he began playing at ag eight, but after seeing the F.S. Walcott Rabbits Foot Minstrels, he decided to ...
If you found the world renown Body Worlds exhibition gnarly and perverse, perhaps you'll find this latest parade of plastination a little less so—considering we don't share the same DNA as these specimens of jerky-in-the-name-of-science. The Koerperwelten der Tiere—or Animal Body Worlds–doesn't showcase preserved corporal matter, but rather 20 odd plastinated mammals, currently on display at the Cologne Zoo in Cologne, Germany.
In my early life I was deeply impacted by the work of physician and psychoanalyst John C. Lilly. I still have my dog-eared copies of The Mind of the Dolphin (1967) and Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer (1968). Lilly's work, with dolphins and the development of the sensory deprivation tank, has formed the basis of movies, music and television productions.
Children under the age of 13 possess insight that can blow the minds of their elders, but not the wherewithal to make important life choices for themselves. This is exactly why there are strict rules against marketing cigarettes to them. In 2000, a law went into effect called the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act that institutes similar consumer protections for our youth's online identities, prohibiting companies from soliciting personal information from children under 13 years of age ...
Video games and art have somewhat of a sticky relationship. Many video games have large teams of talented artists doing amazingly creative work, and yet the art community is only just beginning to utilize video games as art (sometimes). Perhaps if video games were shown not just as a medium of expression, but as a means of creating great art as well, the art community would be forced to consider it differently. The third part in the Hacked Kinect series will focus on the artistic possibilitie...
