Scientists in the UK are working on a new crop of seeds rich with essential Omega-3 fatty acids that could be a sustainable alternative to getting them from wild salmon. Omega-3s are vital for our health and while you can get shorter-chain fatty acids from nuts and seeds, the long-chain Omega-3 forms are only found in a marine environment, ie salmon fish oil. But with fish stocks dwindling, the ocean becoming more polluted and an increase in population, we need a more viable source of this essential nutrient. With a little help from genetic engineering, the scientists have made a form of flax that contains the critical fatty acids.

Read the rest of Scientists Genetically Engineer Omega-3 Rich Seeds as an Alternative to Wild Fish Oils

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Post tags: Camelina sativa, dietary nutrients, false flax, fish oil, Flax, flax seeds, genetically engineered, genetically modified, GMO, green design, Johnathan Napier, long-chain fatty acids, omega-3, omega-3 fatty acids, Rothamsted Research, salmon, seeds, sustainable design, sustainable fish, sustainable food

En un proyecto ubicado justo en la línea del Ecuador, la cantidad de luz solar que pasará a través de las ventanas del edificio es un factor muy importante. ¿Cómo controla un arquitecto la cantidad de calor radiante -que entra en este punto con la misma intensidad por todos sus lados-, sin perder la visibilidad del paisaje urbano?

Para responder a esto, los arquitectos de REX Architecture han diseñado su nuevo rascacielos en Kuala Lumpur, Malasia, con una capa textil retráctil, fabricada de teflón PTFE, que permite proteger el interior durante las horas de mayor radiación solar y abrirse a las vistas cuando la intensidad baja.

Revisa como funciona esta innovadora piel plegable, a continuación.

El rascacielos llamado “Equator Tower” se configura en base a una planta cuadrada simple y tiene 380 metros de altura (80 pisos), los que serán ocupados por oficinas, auditorios, restaurantes y tiendas. Sus fachadas están compuestas de grandes ventanales de triple capa.

Para maximizar la eficiencia energética en respuesta a la exposición solar de 4 lados, su piel exterior está cubierta de PTFE -reforzada con fibra de vidrio-, y tiene un 85 % de opacidad, con una cierta transparencia para permitir el ingreso de luz a las oficinas, sin perder los puntos de vista difusos.

El velo es de color plata en el exterior para rechazar el calor y negro en el interior para mejorar la legibilidad visual del paisaje urbano. La piel está segmentada en 4,2 millones de tejas para permitir la circulación de aire y la facilidad de retracción, que se produce a través de un sistema de cables que se extienden a lo largo de tres secciones diferentes de la torre.

Vía Complex

Architects: Marina Rubina
Location: Princeton, NJ 08542, USA
Year: 2012
Photographs: Halkin Todd Mason

Interior Design: Marina Rubina, Architect in collaboration with GMLM Design Giedre Miller
Landscape Architects: Quercus Studio Jeff Charlesworth in collaboration with Lawrence Landscapes, Inc Nanci Angle, Senior Manager and Horticulturalist

From the architect. Winner of 2012 Merrit Award for Built Residential Project
(New Jersey chapter of the American Institute of Architects)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Quarry Street is located in the heart of Princeton, a 5-minute walk to Princeton University campus, public library, Art Council, shops, restaurants, and train station.  This new contemporary house fits well into the closely-knit John Witherspoon neighborhood: it is positioned close to the street maintaining a consistent urban street frontage.  The horizontal siding in the front picks up on the horizontal siding typical of the surrounding houses, while the alternating siding sizes, vertical siding, and large panels on other sides accentuate the playful and sculptural volumes of the house.  The cantilevered car port fits with the tradition of side driveways.  The front steps, porch and a large kitchen widow facing the street are well suited for conversing and waving to neighbors.

The house was an experiment in providing high quality sustainable residential development affordably. It was fabricated at a modular factory in less than a month, installed on site in one day, finished completely in about a third of the time it would take to build on-site. The modular manufacturers have perfected fabrication techniques to allow production of standard houses efficiently and at incredible speed. The Quarry Street House utilizes these best practices, but pushes the design to the next level: no need to standardize the design as long as standard fabrication methods are used.

Modular fabrication allows for minimal construction waste and easily achieves a tight exterior envelope. A high efficiency HVAC system and solar shading for large expanses of glass provide for minimal utility bills. Going beyond the stereotypical modular construction, the use of cantilevers makes for a more efficient structural system and creates porches and solar shading. The low slope roof is designed for green roof installation. This house is Energy Star Rated and is in the process of receiving its LEED Gold certification.

The Quarry Street House is designed to accommodate the current needs of a young family and provide for future changes.  It consists of about 2,000 sq.ft main house and a 500 sq.ft. studio suite.  The ground floor accommodates the living, dining, kitchen spaces and a home office.  Second floor bedrooms open to a play loft for the family’s two young boys that in the future could serve as their study space. The central sculptural stair takes advantage of the shift between the modules set at an angle and dynamically engages the double story living room and loft above. The separate studio suite could serve a variety of functions from a residence for a visiting family member, an au pair suite, or a small business office.

The house and studio are oriented in opposite directions for privacy, but merge to shape and shade the outdoor space. The backyard is landscaped to function as an outdoor room that allows the intimate interior spaces to expand visually and physically with large operable glazing.

From: http://deeperdesign.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/is-iron-man-made-of-lego/

I was re-watching Iron Man recently and noticed something interesting. During Iron Man’s first “boot up sequence”, in the “terrorist” caves of Nowhereistan, some butchered C code is displayed on a faked up laptop screen.

The code displayed on screen, although missing some syntactically important characters such as semi-colons, is actual valid C source code. So valid in fact that I wondered where it came from.

Read the original post to find out the Iron Man/LEGO connection.

Arquitectos: ch+qs arquitectos
Ubicación: Berrocal, Segovia, España
Architecto A Cargo: Josemaria de Churtichaga, Cayetana de La Quadra-Salcedo
Área: 150.0 m2
Año Proyecto: 2011
Fotografías: FG + SG

Colaborador: Nathanael Lopez
Constructor: Pablo Campoverde

Descripción de los arquitectos. Amarillo

Este es un paisaje humanizado de prados, tapias, fresnos, arroyos, un paisaje de pequeña escala, de mínimos, casi doméstico y donde todo, absolutamente todo ocurre con acentos amarillos. En primavera asoman amarillas todas las flores. En verano amarillo el cereal, la cosecha, amarillo es el calor castellano.

El otoño solo llega aquí en el amarillo de los fresnos; millones de hojas diminutas que mueren en un persistente y reseco amarillo. En invierno el amarillo insiste en refulgentes fogonazos de líquenes amarillos sobre los troncos grises de los fresnos. Y amarillas son aquí las máquinas, amarillos los mojones, amarillo todo.

En este paisaje compramos un prado hace 15 años, y después de 12 años de contemplación amarilla, decidimos construir allí una casa, un refugio, un trocito de paisaje como un marco, un pequeño umbral habitado con dos miradas a este y oeste.

Al oeste, una mirada cercana de rocas, musgos, zarzas y fresnos centenarios. Y a este, el amanecer lejano sobre el escorzo de la sierra amarillenta. Esa doble mirada y el cuerpo terminaron de dibujar la casa. 

Todo es pequeño, todo es breve, todo tiene una escala diminuta. Desde fuera la mirada resbala por encima de la casa:

El ojo solo se detiene en una puerta amarilla que guarda el umbral, y una chimenea amarilla que lo calienta, lo demás, es invisible.

Y al sentarse, al detenerse en el umbral, la casa desaparece y prosigue el mundo en amarillo

Want!

There are certain items that don't lend themselves to being hung on hooks, like towels, scarves and winter hats; mine like to stay on the hook for the first 30 seconds, but later I'll return to find them on the floor--which led to my dogs destroying my favorite rabbit-fur head-heater, which I purchased in Sweden. Sigh.

Ironically, the solution to this also comes from Sweden. Homeware manufacturer Linden Sweden sells the Clever Hook you see pictured above. It's tough to understand how it works by looking at a still photo, so watch this short vid:

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Many American cities have this problem, but it's most obvious in sprawling Los Angeles: When you're trapped in bumper-to-bumper on the 405, you look around and observe the brutal 1:1 ratio of cars to drivers, as far as the eye can see. The absurdity of lone humans each ensconced in their own two-ton rectangle of steel, and the space each person's vehicle consumes relative to the drivers' size, is difficult to find unremarkable. Four wheels, one driver, and from one to five empty seats.

That's how it's turned out, but in the 1950s German engineer Carl Jurisch had a different vision. According to the Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum, Jurisch "became convinced that the future of transportation lay in a personal single-seat vehicle" and so, using a motorcycle sidecar as his starting point, he designed his single-occupancy Motoplan.

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For a few years I’ve thought about how one might design a game where the architecture was the central character. I’m particularly fond of temples, palaces, mosques, monasteries and other buildings which combine exquisite artistry with a potential for exploration and mystery. The main problem was how to make an interactive experience out of this.

Is it any wonder that “joy” is her middle name?! Australian artist Amy Joy Watson creates the most beautiful sculptures… beautiful sculptures with balloons!!! Now, to be clear, she does make pieces that don’t have balloons in them – things like giant geometric bows, and “rainbow machines”… but for me, yep, it’s all about these candy-colored, helium-filled lovelies! Stunning, impeccably made, and so full of JOY!

Set in one of the most impressive natural environments we've ever seen, this diminutive A-frame by Giovanni Pesamosca Architects sits high among the Italian portion of the Alps. Built in memory of prolific hiker Luca Vuerich, the little abode provides shelter for those trekking along a famed trail. Its pointed shape comes from a triangular truss structure, reminiscent of mountain crests. Constructed from medium-tone wood and prefab outer sheets, the refuge is a warm-toned beacon for hardcore travelers among the grey gargantuan mounds of nature. The cabin accommodates groups of up to nine hikers in comfort, with built-in bunks and a reminder of human comforts out in the wilderness.

The construction of the cabin was a feat in itself, requiring airlifts of supplies and a precisely-measured level base for the floor. A team of builders, many of whom knew Vuerich personally, hiked or were flown to the crest of the cabin's ridge, where they completed the entire building process in less than a single day. Because of its remoteness, the A-frame's design is conscious of the inability to maintain it constantly, and uses smart and long-lasting construction and architecture methods to keep it in good shape for decades to come. Over those coming decades, it will play host to many of the world's premier hikers and most fearless adventurers seeking the supreme awe of nature in the Italian Alps.

The colors of the wooden cabin contrast significantly with those of the harsh mountain rocks around it, creating a warm oasis of rest for hikers on the trail.

The triangular frame of the house mimics the pointing crests of the surrounding Italian Alps, overlooking a vast array of slopes and valley below.

Despite its dark tones, the structure doesn't draw too much attention to itself. Its colors make it an easy-to-spot endpoint for the day's trek, but its small size keeps it from competing with the mountains themselves for attention. The A-Frame is meant as a rest stop, not an attraction.

The cabin is situated in a well-planned spot where it crests the local slope but still pales in comparison to the giants nearby. In addition, the ridge it rests on is fairly flat on top, making it easier to construct the little dwelling.

The top of the cabin's ridge is along the path of a fairly well-known hiking trail, providing expansive views for countless miles around.

The cabin is mounted on six short concrete pillars, keeping it level and allowing it to have a minimal impact on the landscape. Water also drains easily down the roof and beneath the structure, mitigating many long-term maintenance concerns.

Assembled on the mountaintop in a single day, this place of respite sleeps up to nine people within its walls, protected from the harsh elements.

The likeness of Luca Vuerich, to whose memory the cabin is dedicated, adorns the well-sealed front door.

Inside, quarters are tight and efficient. A central hallways spans between shelf-style bunks and storage along each steeply-sloping wall. The interior wood is finished well and the flooring is of the same larch variety seen commonly in homes. It's purely meant as a camp, so no cooking or bathroom facilities are present.

Most major structural pieces of the house were manufactured on the ground and lifted by helicopter to the build site. Many tools and machines, such as the concrete mixer seen above, were airlifted as well.

With no helipad on the ridge, materials drops had to be efficient, calculated, and accurate.

The team of twelve which assembled the structure was made up of friends and family of Vuerich, with additional help from architecture and construction professionals.

The bulk of the cabin's weight comes from its three triangular beam trusses, one on each end and another in the center. All the panels of the walls/roof are draped around those trusses.

The sleeping bunks are part of the structure of the cabin, and were assembled before the outer cladding of the dwelling was. They are each built to accomodate plenty of weight from a hiker and their gear.

Two small windows at each vertical end of the cabin are the only sources of light.

Giovanni Pesamosca Architects

A wobbly orange kitten mews while enjoying neck scratches in this adorable Vine by Catie. Don’t fall over, little one!

GIF via LOL GIFS

via LOL GIFS, Daily Picks and Flicks

They look like fettuccine come to life — little flatworms that glide along riverbeds and perform miracles. Chop off their tails, they grow them back. Split them in half, they grow whole again. But chop off their heads, and not only do they grow new heads, but those new heads contain old memories! Whoa!

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Architects: WOW Architects | Warner Wong Design
Location: Arya Samaj Road, Gurgaon, Haryana, India
Design Team: Mr. Wong Chiu Man, James Tan, Juan Andres, Michelle Salvador
Area: 25,000 sqm
Year: 2013
Photographs: Courtesy of WOW Architects | Warner Wong Design

Facade Consultant: Axis Facade
Consultant: WOW Architects
Client: The Indian Hotels Company Limited
Cost: 40 million USD

From the architect. REDEFINING THE NATIVE

The hotel resides in the city of Gurgaon, often dubbed the ‘Face of New India’. Overlooked as a backward, rural community just a decade ago, Gurgaon has rapidly developed into an IT hub and home to many multinational companies, partly due to its proximity and connectivity to the national capital of New Delhi.

However, this rapid development has not been consistent nor coordinated throughout the urban environment. Indeed, this narrative is a familiar one for architects working in the developed world:the rapid economic growth and the accompanying urbanization has created a world of radical juxtapositions, where glistening contemporary architecture coexists with the poverty, non-existent infrastructure, and inhospitable physical environment.

Whereas the development in China is driven by a strong public sector, the virtual absence of coherent government planning and investment in India has created a free for-all environment where pockets of the New is stitched into the messy and chaotic urban fabric that is typical of modern India.

Our challenge, then, was to find an approach that, one, resonates with the classic Indian spatial experience and, two, can cut through the noise and chaos of the surrounding environment. The tectonic language must be able to stand up to the visual clutter, the thick layer of dust that envelopes this area, and the constant reminder that Gurgaon is essentially one giant construction site.

FACADE STRATEGY

While the spatial organization is meant to insulate the guests from the chaos of the outside world, the façade design is very much about relating to and negotiating with the messy context. The main mass of the two blocks is clad in granite which renders the building as a piece of rock emerging from the yellow dirt of Gurgaon. The layers of glass and metal that penetrates through the stone mass reaches out to the emerging world of glass skyscrapers in Gurgaon.

The overall experience of the facade is that of something clean, minimal and refined, but the collage of the stone, glass and metal some how feels one with the assemblage of yellow dirt, concrete, brick and spots of green that adorn the modern Indian landscape.

SPATIAL LAYERING

A hotel, by very definition, needs to provide a space of safety, comfort, and relaxation for the weary traveller. The Vivanta achieves this through a series of interconnected courtyards and layered public spaces that draw on the traditional palace architecture of India. A series of landscaped courtyards are surrounded by the main public interior spaces. These spaces are separate, yet visually connected through layers of glass walls.The unpeeling of the layers of screens, starting from the façade, gradually unveils the internal spaces. Skinning the building reveals the swimming pool, restaurant blocks and other public spaces behind.

The spatial experience is simultaneously private but connected, interior but also continuous with the exterior landscape. The grandness of the main lobby is multiplied by the layers of outdoor courtyards and transparent connections to other public spaces like the main dining room and banquet facilities..

This is the second part in STUDIOFYNN's 'Brave New Modernism' series, which launched with a photo essay on Shanghai.

Dubai symbolizes the megacity with the megaprojects like no other. Rarely have our talents as builders been so effectively combined with our talents as storytellers. Dubai tells the story of unprecedented and rapid economic expansion spurred by oil wealth and the city's desire to be the hub of commerce for the region. The enactment of carefully crafted policies has created an international center for finance, tourism, trade and manufacture.

The fictional nature of Dubai has been the subject of much debate but interpreting the elements that contribute to the increasingly blurred lines between fact and fiction, myth and realty are a challenge for our era. Our abilities as architects and designers to understand the power of a brand now bridges every aspect of what we create. From handbags to high-rises, the entire built world becomes ever more sophisticated as we evolve our practices to better cater for the motivations and desires of both business and the individual.

One of the key differences on how cities develop visual characteristics and urban plans today is the power of the media. The media is not only a modern phenomenon capable of generating huge revenue and needing many square feet of office space to do this, but also a conduit that creates new visual myths and realities, especially through the photographic image and the cinema. Dubai is characterized strongly by these phenomena as its architecture takes on visual codes inspired by science fiction cinema and a need to communicate its value through the TV, online media, billboards and magazines. The built environment therefore has to take on a form conducive to dissemination of value propositions through media channels, possibly more so than catering to our basic needs and sensitivities towards issues of relative human scale, climate, recreation and keeping in balance with the natural world.

Such brave thrusts forward come with their wake, something we have much less understanding of than the pursuit of progress. Apart from disconnecting us from some basic elements of well being, there are the issues of environment, carbon footprint and the inevitable social consequences of rapid development and labour migration. With the need to desalinate its water supply and air condition its interior spaces, Dubai is one of the world leaders of energy consumption per capita. One persons shopping paradise can be another's environmental transgression so the definition of success and failure has many facets. What is apparent is that designers and architects, in conjunction with policy makers, marketers, industrialists and alike need to anticipate the wake of progress and learn to design for it with equal measure, otherwise our long term visions may not achieve the much vaunted status of 'sustainable.'

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Hitler was the boss from hell you never want to have. I don't even mean that in the sense that getting on his bad side could be lethal as opposed to merely career-ending. I mean that he had numerous habits, any one of which would have made him a pain in the neck to work for, but when combined, made him one of the worst managers imaginable.

1) The Dunning-Kruger Effect
In psychology, there's this concept called "the Dunning-Kruger Effect" where competent people tend to rate their own skills fairly accurately or as slightly worse than they actually are, while incompetent people tend to rate themselves as being really, really good. Hitler pretty much personified the negative side of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, because pretty much everything that was done in the government, he thought he could do better. This ranged from urban planning to military operations.

The latter there, of course, ended completely disastrously when he took personal charge of the Eastern Front. He'd never risen above corporal in his own military career, but he thought he could do a better job than the Prussian military establishment he inherited. He was wrong. Very, very wrong.

2) Shooting the Messenger
People don't like getting bad news. Some people react to bad news calmly. Hitler... well, okay, here's the clip from Downfall.


This sort of behavior was typical of Hitler even before the German war effort went to hell in a hand basket. The result was that Hitler's underlings generally did not tell him the whole truth when they could avoid doing so. Naturally, this led to even worse decisions from him than he might have otherwise made.

3) Complete Refusal to Take Responsibility
Hitler could take credit for things that went well easily enough. Things that went badly? They were never his fault, and some underling usually had to pay for it. The Wehrmacht's generals took a lot of heat from Hitler for failed operations that he himself had ordered.

4) Extreme Vindictiveness
Hitler largely viewed the failure of the German war effort as being the fault of the country he led as opposed to being the result of his own lousy decisions. Hence the Nero Decree, where rather than let the country fall into anyone else's hands (and partly to punish the failures who'd let the war get to this point), he ordered that everything had to burn.

5) Laziness
Hitler was actually quite lazy and he kept very weird hours. Getting him to make decisions was frequently a notoriously painful affair. He infamously slept through the Normandy landings - nobody wanted to wake him because hoo boy did he like his naps and the first four points already outlined here made it so that nobody at all wanted to wake him up.

6) Office Politics
Office politics are inescapable and while they sometimes do cause necessary personnel reshuffles, more often than not, they're a distraction from the work at hand. Good managers recognize this and tend to try and keep the infighting among subordinates to a minimum.

Hitler, on the other hand, actively encouraged office politics. He gossiped nonstop about his ministers, he assigned the same responsibilities to multiple people and thanks to the Fuehrerprinzip (the idea that all power in Germany stemmed from him personally), Hitler's ministers spent way more time jockeying for time with Hitler than could be considered necessary or reasonable.

7) An Inability to Prioritize
There were three aspects to this. First, Hitler had a nasty tendency to approve multiple projects in the same space when there were only resources for one project. The special weapons projects (e.g. the V-2s and the Nazi nuclear program) in particular saw this happen. Second, when he did come to a decision on that sort of thing, he had a really nasty habit of reversing himself. And third, when he stuck to his ideas on what to prioritize, his decision was often terrible. In 1944, the Wehrmacht couldn't afford to spend its resources razing occupied Warsaw to the ground - but Hitler ordered it all the same.

8) Poor Time Management
Meetings with Hitler were rarely direct and to the point. They often lacked an agenda, and even when they had one, he rarely stuck to it. Hitler often would expound at length on topics that didn't matter at all - his "planned retirement," for example, during war meetings.

Hitler was very good at gaining power. He was miserable at actually wielding it to good effect.

Read other related questions on Quora:

• Adolf Hitler: Was the Holocaust a result of Hitler's syphilis?
• Adolf Hitler: What was it like to live in Hitler's Germany if you weren't a member of a persecuted group?
• Adolf Hitler: What was Hitler's real name?

Read more answers on Quora.

Don't fuck with a guy on meth, because he might beat you and 11 other people senseless while also jacking off.

Read more...

Using a remote-controlled camera disguised as a sea turtle, marine biologists watched as young dolphins got themselves stoned by ingesting a nerve toxin released by puffer fish. And as if sharing a joint, the dolphins could be seen passing it around.

Read more...

Ya está online FinoVinilos.com

Todos los vinilos son de calidad tope que te cagas energy y vienen con un “aplicador” sencillo. Yo mismo tengo uno en mi “trono” desde hace más de un año y aguanta la humedad (y los olores extremadamente tóxicos) perfectamente.

Se aceptan también sugerencias para vinilos (teniendo en cuenta las limitaciones cromáticas) y modificaciones (como cambiar el texto de mierder is coming por “trono de Juan” por ejemplo).

Intros: such an important part of all the games which made us. First impressions count. First impressions can be indelible, even if what follows is eminently forgettable. Here, then, are just a few of the PC game introductions – be they CGI, FMV or in-game – which we just can’t seem to forget. What, delightful readers, are your favourites?

Be warned: all the videos follow. Your browser may have a little cry.
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Science suggests that, despite popular belief, human women's menstrual cycles don't necessarily synch up when they live together. Banded mongoose females, on the other hand, do synch up their reproductive cycles enough that mongoose babies are all born right around the same time.

Approximately 1.3 million unemployed Americans lost their jobless benefits Saturday as the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program expired. "I don't know what we're going to do," said unemployed case manager Richard Mattos, 59, of Salem, Ore. "We could end up homeless because of this."

Read more...

It's disturbing to imagine a street food vendor shoving an ice cream cone in your pants without permission, but this ice cream man in Istanbul's Old City makes the reality seem so fun.

Read more...

Meet "Ada." Reader Keith Kissel shared this wonderful photo in the Boing Boing Flickr pool. You can share your photos, too.

In Identifiable Images of Bystanders Extracted from Corneal Reflections, British psychology researchers Rob Jenkins and Christie Kerr show that recognizable images of the faces of unpictured bystanders can be captured from modern, high-resolution photography by zooming in on subjects' eyes to see the reflections in their corneas. The researchers asked experimental subjects to identify faces captured from these zoomed-in images and found that they were able to do so with a high degree of reliability.

The researchers used 39 megapixel cameras, substantially higher-rez than most people's phone-cameras, but low-cost cameras are making enormous leaps in resolution every day. What's more, the researchers suggest that the determining factor for identifying a face isn't resolution; it's having a viewer who is already familiar with the subject. It's an interesting wrinkle on the problem of information-leakage, and implies that future privacy-filters will have to scrub photos of reflective surfaces (especially eyes) of identifying faces before they're posted.

“In the context of criminal investigations, this could be used to piece together networks of associates, or to link individuals to particular locations. This may be especially important when for categories of crime in which perpetrators photograph their victims. Reflections in the victims eyes could reveal the identity of the photographer. “Also, around 40 million photographs per day are uploaded to Instagram alone, he pointed out. “Faces are among the most frequently photographed objects. Our study serves as a reminder to be careful what you upload. Eyes in the photographs could reveal where you were and who you were with.” Although Jenkins did the study with a high-resolution (39 megapixels) Hasselblad camera, face images retrieved from eye reflections need not be of high quality in order to be identifiable, he said. “Obtaining optimal viewers — those who are familiar with the faces concerned — may be more important than obtaining optimal images.” In addition, “in accordance with Hendy’s Law (a derivative of Moore’s Law), pixel count per dollar for digital cameras has been doubling approximately every twelve months. This trajectory implies that mobile phones could soon carry >39 megapixel cameras routinely.”

Reflected hidden faces in photographs revealed in pupil [Kurzweil AI]

The Aspesi Hooded Theremore Nylon Blazer is a balance of contrasting ideas – sport tech and classic tailoring. This Aspesi two-button blazer offering features a detachable hood, two generously-sized front flap pockets, and is made from a very comfortable lightweight nylon. The casual feel of this piece allows for it to be worn easily and taken care of easily, and thus, making it a very smart and versatile choice to have in your wardrobe.

Now available at: Nitty Gritty

Argentinean bathers enjoying a Christmas day dip in the appropriately named Parana River got more than they bargained for when a school of carnivorous fish attacked about 70 swimmers. Lifeguards near the river located in Rosario, about 185 miles north of Buenos Aires, blamed the attack on the flesh-eating palometa fish, a type of piranha native to South America. Many swimmers complained of mild discomfort from bite marks while others had deep wounds on their extremities. Paramedic Alberto Manino reported to the Associated Press that some people, including seven children, lost entire digits. The Director of Rosario lifeguards, Federico Cornier said the attack was highly unusual, “This is not normal. It’s normal for there to be an isolated bite or injury, but the magnitude in this case was great… this is an exceptional event.”

Via BBC NEWS

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Post tags: Argentina, Buenos Aires, carnivorous fish in Argentina, fish bit off fingers and toes in Argentina, Palometa fish, parana river, Piranha attack in Argentina, Rosario

Unsurprisingly, 2013 was a big year for digital fabrication, as the technology continues to trickle down into the affordable consumer category. So before we even get into what designers have done with the new technologies available to us, let's take a look at what the companies responsible for those technologies have gifted us with this year.

ShopBot Tools Handibot

The runaway Kickstarter digital fabrication success of the year was the HandiBot. North-Carolina-based ShopBot Tools' unusual concept—a portable CNC mill whose man-handle-ability gives it an infinite work area footprint--was a smashing success, hitting and more than doubling its funding target within days of going live (the first 150 units have since been delivered). "We really love the idea of a highly portable and affordable little CNC," says ShopBot founder Ted Hall. "The fact that you 'take the tool to the material' creates all sorts of new options for CNC... but the real aspiration for Handibot is to break the ease-of-use barrier for CNC-style, subtractive, digital fabrication." To that end, Hall and team are working on creating an app environment for the Handibot; in the company's vision of the Handibot's future, users will download apps for specific operations they want to perform, call them up on a paired smartphone, tablet or computer, then "click 'Start' and have the tool get to work right in front of you."

Inventables Shapeoko 2

On the open-source front, Inventables launched their Shapeoko 2 CNC mill, a small-footprint (12×12×2.5) desktop machine going for $650–685 depending on configuration. Some five years in the making, the Shapeoko 2 can also be ordered in a $300 kit form for those tinkerers willing to supply the electronics, belts, pulleys, etc. and assemble it themselves.

MATAERIAL Anti-Gravity Object Modeling 3D Printer

If there's a 3D-printing version of the Handibot—which is to say, a machine independent of a build platform—it's the MATAERIAL Anti-Gravity Object Modeling 3D Printer. The machine's articulating, robotic arm extrudes material in 3D space, rather than depositing it layer-by-layer, and the thing is so radical we expect it will take a little time for designers' imagination can catch up to what the machine is capable of.

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Animator Matthias Brown creates amazing looping GIFs using an animation method called ‘rotoscoping’.

For the uninitiated, rotoscoping is a technique where animators trace real footage frame by frame to create live-action animation with a hand-drawn feel. It was invented in 1915 by Max Fleischer and is characterized by a rough hewn quality, which lends it an unpolished charm.

View some of Brown’s animation at his Tumblr and read about how he got started here.




















[via This Is Colossal, GIFs via Matthias Brown]

m1ssred:

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