I can't stop looking at the extraordinary photos by Tomas Shahan, an Oregon-based artist and microphotographer who creates amazing portraits of arthropods, including these awesome jumping spiders. His beautiful monsters don't make me run in fear, but make me smile (knowing they are tiny, that is.) In fact, some of their faces are hilarious.
    
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Every once in a while we get a tip for a project that really, really, really blows our minds. This is one of them.
It looks like a basic catamaran with a few extra bells and whistles — except it is so much more than that. You’re looking at a fully Autonomous Surface Vehicle, complete with a piggybacking 6-rotor UAV. It’s decked out in cameras, sonar sensors, laser rangefinders, high accuracy GPS-RTK tracking, an IMU, oh, and did we mention the autonomous 6-rotor UAV capable of taking off and landing on it?
It all started out as a simple experiment within ECHORD (the European Clearing House for Open Robotics Development), and since then it has become a fully funded project at UNINOVA, a Centre of Technology and Systems in Portugal.
The purpose of the mind-blowing robot team is to collect data of river environments — think of it as Google Maps 2.0 — which is almost an understatement for what it is capable of.
You seriously have to watch the video after the break.
You're looking at Ozobranchus jantseanus, a little leech found in East Asia. It doesn't look much, but it has a very special skill indeed: it can survive for up to 24 hours immersed in liquid nitrogen.
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This is a game changer, folks. Whereas mining stem cells has been either an ethical quandary or a months-long affair, scientist can now turn any old blood cells into stem cells in just 30 seconds—by dipping them in acid.
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An engine this small should, by conventional logic, not be this powerful. But, somehow, it is. And at this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans, Nissan plans to see just how well its under-sized, over-powered hybrid engine prototype handles auto racings's most grueling challenge.
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Being shot into space puts spacecraft under extreme stress—but did you know that the sound of the rocket launch can damage a craft? Inside the Large European Acoustic Facility, engineers recreate the incredible noise of a launch to make sure satellites can survive it. According to the ESA, "no human could survive" the sound.
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One of the most exciting findings in cancer research is the ability to identify cancerous cells by the volatile odor molecules they give off. Diagnostic machines, scalpels, and even specially trained dogs have been used to identify cancer this way. We can add fruit flies to that list now: scientists have bred a strain whose antennae glow when they smell cancer.
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It's not as big or convoluted as Lego R2-D2, but this motorized astromech by Vimal Patel is really cool. Check it out in action:
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Visualizing the internet is almost as difficult as ignoring trolls, but that didn't stop Jay Jason Simons from having a damn good try. The result is this beautiful and insanely detailed map.
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Images: Xi Chen/Columbia University
A new electric generator has a modest and unexpected energy source: A small strip of latex rubber coated with bacterial spores.
The contraption makes use of the harmless soil bacterium Bacillus subtilis, which has a neat survival trick. When nutrients are scarce, it turns itself into a tough little spore that can withstand heat, desiccation, chemical assaults, radiation, and anything else the world can throw at it. These spores respond to changes in humidity. When the air dries they shrivel up like grapes turning into raisins; when the air is moist they plump up again. Researchers from Harvard's Wyss Institute and several other universities realized they could harness that physical movement, and could make an actuator to generate electricity.
In the experiment, published this week in Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers slathered one side of a sheet of rubber with the bacterial spores. When the sheet dried it curled up, much like a leaf does after it falls from a tree. Increasing the humidity caused the sheet to straighten out again. Researcher Ozgur Sahin then built a humidity driven generator out of Legos, in which the spore-coated rubber acts as a cantilever that flips back and forth, driving a rotating magnet to produce electricity.
Such a device, properly scaled up, could use the natural evaporation of water to generate useful amounts of clean electricity, the researchers say.
Images and video: Xi Chen/Columbia University
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Graph databases have generate more interest in the last few years. After blogging a bit about Neo4j, I’ve now started kicking the tires with Titan. Specifically, given the Scala work I’ve been doing recently, I thought it appropriate to factor in some of the data into Titan, since it fit nicely. Additionally, it makes a change from Neo4j. Further, Titan has some interesting performance data available as food for thought.
Praise is one of those things you want to lavish on your children. After all, the world will be indifferent enough. Someone should be in their corner. In fact, praise is a wonderful thing. You just want to watch how you do it.
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There is a road that connects the Northern to the Southern Cross but you have to be at the right place and time to see it. The road, as pictured above, is actually the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy; the right place, in this case, is dark Laguna Cejar in Salar de Atacama of Northern Chile; and the right time was in early October, just after sunset.
You can follow APOD on Twitter, too.
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Etsy seller Makeitgoodpdx has a sweet line of glowing textiles, including several pieces of glow-in-the-dark astronomical underwear, like the panties shown above. There's also a men's version.
Glow in the Dark Solar System Underwear Womens (via Seanan McGuire) 
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If you're planning on sticking around for longer—a lot longer—than a standard human lifespan, you'll need a watch that keeps time on the galactic level. Van Cleef & Arpels' new Complication Poétique Midnight Planétarium will certainly fit the bill. Instead of hands denoting the hours and minutes, it incorporates six of our solar system's planets rotating a tiny version of the sun in real time.
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Cooking is rarely about using perfectly precise portions—so Umbra designed this clever spice rack with a set of six cylindrical containers, each with its own adjustable ring that lets you shake out as much seasoning as you need. Or, you can simply remove the cap to grab a tried-and-true pinch of whatever spice the recipe calls for.
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Above is a close-up of what developers call a "superlens," a device that can focus low-energy magnetic waves over a distance. The result? Wireless power generation over nearly one foot of air between transmitter and receiver.
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Not interested in buying a Steam Machine this year, but still want a tiny gaming PC? Never fear -- CyberPowerPC has just released the Zeus Mini, its latest take on a conventional small computer with full-sized performance. The system is just 4.4 ...
This is one of the coolest buildings I've seen in a long time: a structure designed to turn everyone into Spider-man by allowing people to climb all over its interior and exterior. It kind of feels like a glitch in the Matrix: a computer-generated mountain that needs more polygons and some textures.
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According to reports (and confirmed by the internet company itself), Google has bought Deepmind: a relatively small AI company from London. Re/code broke the news, stating that Google had sunk $400 million into the purchase -- a figure that the ...
Cold fusion is a theoretical (and highly doubtful) reaction that makes huge amounts of energy. Last year, the inventor claimed his Energy Catalyzer fusion device could produce electricity at 1% the cost of coal. This week, a North Carolina company bought the rights to the tech. Did they get bamboozled?
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If you're looking for a deal on airfare, common wisdom is to book early and be flexible with your dates. While flexibility is good, the advance part may cost you money. Peter Greenberg, CBS News' travel editor, shared some of his tips to save money and avoid costly mistakes when booking airfare.
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Pacemakers and other electronic implants are a pain to keep running -- patients need surgery to replace batteries, and body-powered generators aren't currently strong enough to charge these devices. They may be far more practical in the future, ...
, but the stuff on the left hand side is just another way of writing 1^3+2^3+3^3 +4^3+ . . .)Whilst on the plane back from NY recently I began to ponder about the aggregation pattern and akka. Luckily, it would appear that Jamie Allen, followed by a few other bloggers have a solution that is well documented – the aggregator trait.
So, if I use the actorSelection to fire off messages to a group of identical actors e.g. algo’s or some such thing;
context.actorSelection("../<Parent>/*") ! <message>
I need to use the expect rather than the expectOnce to process the replies
context.actorSelection("../<Parent>/*") ! <message>
expect {
case <response> =>
...
collectAllResponse()
}
In the Akka aggregator pattern documentation, there is a results.size check to known when you have all the response messages (or timeout), since you originally knew how many you had sent. How do I know how many messages the actorSelection sent?
It's much easier for a telescope to see deep into the universe when it doesn't have to peer through the Earth's atmosphere, but getting them into space is expensive. There is a much cheaper solution, though, as researchers have actually found a way to make incredibly light mirrors using lasers and polystyrene—aka styrofoam—beads.
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Most of us only pay attention to time when it's causing headaches, but the same can't be said of a team of researchers working out of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Led by National Institute of Standards and Technology fellow Jun Ye, they've ...
You may not have come across DJI before, but this brand is no stranger in the world of hobbyist drones. Even production studios use the company's gear for aerial videography, but that involves a lot more money than the average consumer can stomach -- ...