We've all heard of the power that red wine holds. It can help lower risks of heart disease, boost your brain power, and can even recharge your car battery. But last year, a group of Japanese physicists made headlines when they announced that they could induce superconductivity by soaking metals in red wine. But why red wine?
Lucid dreaming refers to the mental state when you are conscious of the fact that you are dreaming while you are dreaming. Though lucid dreaming is a rare occurrence for most people when they are sleeping, you can actually mentally train yourself during the waking hours and incorporate a number of techniques to increase your chances of achieving a lucid dreaming state.
Around the world, X-People (yes... there are X-Women, too) are under attack from an intolerant sapiencentric ruling class. Integration without equality is a farce. Autonomy is denied outright. Human prejudice cannot abide a mutant state. Human fear, born to hate, imposes itself on the life of every mutant.
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!
Creativity is a very important aspect of keeping a balanced mind. The more balanced your mind is, the more able it will be to perform the tasks you ask of it. And don’t think “creativity” has to be writing a novel or painting a masterpiece. The brain (and ‘spirit’) can benefit from simple and small adventures in non-linear thought and action.
The purpose of this article is to discuss how you can change your Windows 7 logon screen. This post will explain how to require a user to enter a username and password by default like the classic version of Windows.
eBooks are an amazing thing, especially with Amazon's Kindle. What's irrtating about eBooks as that you have an infinite selection of books at your fingertips, but they all cost so much! Well, as always, Null Byte has a trick up our sleeves for nabbing free ebooks from Google.
COLOSSUS n pl. COLOSSUSES or COLOSSI a gigantic statue 60 points (10 points without the bingo)
Get ready to rack your brains, because it's time for another Scrabble Challenge! I may have gone a little overboard on last week's challenge (there was over 25 anagrams to solve), so I'm slimming things down this week. This time, there's only one puzzle.
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.
It's an ambitious How-To project to say the least, or more specifically, an over-the-top political art installation by San Francisco artist Brian Goggin. You may have previously heard of Goggin for his "Defenestration" project—an installation of "frozen" furniture, being tossed mid-air from a San Francisco apartment building. But Goggin's latest project sounds significantly more challenging to execute, considering the elaborate game plan involved:
Apple's iPhone is considered one of the best smartphones in the world. Many cell phone makers have tried to take down the juggernaut, with some Android-based devices coming close, but in order to become an actual iPhone killer, something revolutionary needs to happen in the mobile world. And Human Media Lab (HML) may be the ones to make it happen.
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.
A recent Japanese study proposes a simpler, softer, more natural-feeling alternative to silicone breast implants: fat-derived stem cells. The cells are extracted from liposuctioned fat, and then injected into the patient to increase breast circumference. San Diego-based biotech company Cytori Therapeutics is currently waiting on FDA approval to start clinical trials.
PopSci's Gray Matter demonstrates again and again what the layman should absolutely Not Try at Home. Which is precisely what makes Gray's experiments so fun. Remember when the mad scientist fully submerged his hand in liquid nitrogen? Today's demonstration also plays with what is (quite reasonably) assumed to be extremely dangerous and painful: torching the human hand.
How can a small curtain cover a window three to four times its own size? With a motor and a robot brain, that's how!
Designed by a computer, milled by machines and assembled by a team of robots, Federico Díaz's Geometric Death Frequency 141 isn't necessarily the warmest work of art you'll see this year. But it is, nevertheless, quite a lot of fun to behold:
Every day of the week, WonderHowTo curators are hard at work, scouring the web for the greatest and most inspiring how-to videos. Every Friday, we'll highlight our favorite finds.
The 2010 National SCRABBLE Championship is almost here. Only a few days left now. And one resident from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina is ready to go.
When viewing Toronto based artist Evan Penny's work, Ron Mueck immediately comes to mind. The clear similarities include a representation which is completely photo-realistic, a playfulness with scale, and the mutually shared background in Hollywood SFX.
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.
Wow, naked + batman + tattoo/body painting = some pretty "out-there" art... Korean artist Kim Joon has been fascinated with tattoo culture ever since his days in the military as a young man. Since, he has taken his obsession into the fine arts realm, treating the human body like a blank canvas. Interestingly, his images are not created as one might expect. No physical painting of the models is actually involved.
Andrew Odewahn of O'Reilly Answers posts a HowTo on creating 3D(ish) images through simple processing. Odewahn employs the practice of stereoscopy (a technique for creating the illusion of depth in a 2D image):
My father recently suffered a stroke. Now in Neuro Rehab at Cedars Sinai, he is enduring daily physical therapy, recreational therapy and occupational therapy sessions to help improve his balance, mobility and fine motor skills. I was initially worried about how I could incorporate his current PT regime in his daily life after he's discharged. That was until I saw the devices he used in the PT gym. Despite their "medical device" designations, the high tech stuff is remarkably similar to what ...
SCRABBLE is taking the world by storm. It's everywhere. You can play it on Facebook, iPhone, iPod, Nintendo DS, PSP, mobile phones... you name it, it's there. And you can even gamble online, like with SCRABBLE Cubes on WorldWinner.
LEGO technic builder Sariel presents a mighty impressive weekend project: a motorized LEGO hand that emulates actual human movement. This feat of plastic engineering runs on a combination of electric motors and pneumatic valves.
Fight anxiety with food Most of us get exposed to anxiety and social problems that increase depression.
Humans aren't the only ones who get to take part in the festivities on Halloween. We give our pumpkins human faces and dress up our pets, so why not include toys and stuffed animals in the fun?
What should you do when you're confronted with a mind-numbingly boring task that simply needs to be done?
Are you in a bad funk today? Treat yourself to a bar of dark chocolate. Or jump on a trampoline. Or get a nice plate of leafy greens at your neighborhood salad bar.
The connection between self-control and glucose is not unique to humans. A bunch of trained dogs were divided into two groups. One group was instructed to sit and stay for 10 minutes. Dogs in the other group could run around and do whatever they wanted.
Constructive social interaction depends upon recognizing those one is interacting with. Not surprisingly, then, we have a section of our cortex devoted to facial recognition. But we're not the only ones.
When that midday fatigue starts hitting you, sometimes the best solution is to just give in to sleep and nap it off. But how long should you sleep? Nap for too long and you often wake up feeling even worse than before, and it could be hours before you finally feel fully awake. Australian researchers conducted a study that back up this idea. They found that not only is a very short nap perfectly fine for recharging your brain, but that longer sleep sessions can cause a period of impaired alert...
OK, first thing's first: need to get this insane picture out of the way. I think this might classify as horror movie creepy.
There's a HowTo behind everything, including the astounding, just released 3-D Avatar. Reviews across the board agree with one thing: the film is visually breathtaking. PopSci explains the technology behind the filmmaking.
Austrian composer Peter Ablinger has created a "speaking" piano. Ablinger digitized a child's voice reciting the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court to "play" on the piano via MIDI sequencer. Apparently, the computer is connected to the piano, which analyzes the human speech, and then converts it to key-tapping.
WTF. If you're going to mark yourself for life... ...why not venture into the absurd. Weird Al, Brangelina's kid, In-N-Out, Gollum and Google all get human real estate. If only we had the courage. This video will either induce inspiration or horror. WTF. If you're going to mark yourself for life...
There are very few legends in this world. When it comes to beatboxing, Doug E Fresh is the O.G. legend. Below is an old school video of Fresh with Slick Rick performing 'La Di Da Di' in New York. At 3:52 Fresh goes off the hook, so be patient. There are very few legends in this world.
The art of persuasion (or subtle emotional manipulation, depending on how you're looking at it) does not necessarily have to be an evil thing.
Nothing like one bad apple in human form to put a damper on the rest of your day. Thankfully, you have the power to implement a number of strategies to keep the Negative Nancys and Debbie Downers of the world from completely ruining your good mood and high spirits.
