Micro-artist Jin Yin Hua has painted portraits of US presidents on a single strand of human hair no more than half an inch in length! Above are the magnified portraits of the last four presidents – I think he drew Clinton perfectly!

Link (Thanks Jin Yin Hua!) Previously on Neatorama: Jin’s panda micro-art

The I/O Brush is a cool graphic tool that allows you to take color, texture, and movement of any object and draw with that characteristics – kind of like the real life version of the eyedropper tool in Photoshop!

In our current prototype, the brush houses a small CCD video camera in its tip with a ring of white LEDs around it. Force sensors are also embedded inside of the brush, measuring the pressure that is getting applied to the bristles. When the brush touches a surface, the lights around the camera briefly turn on to provide supplemental light for the camera. During that time, the system grabs the frames from the camera and stores them in the program.

This very cool brush, invented by Kimiko Ryokai, Stefan Marti, and Hiroshi Ishii of MIT, won an award at the 2005 Industrial Design Excellence Award.

Link | Video (Thanks Sebastian Clark!)

The Web Gallery of Art has a fantastic collection of European painting and sculpture from the 12th to the mid 19th century. The website also has a very useful search feature.

Link (via Kingboy)

"Was He a Man or a Monster?" is an exhibition by the New York State Historical Association and the Cooperstown Graduate Program, about the merchandising and sensationalizing of murder and violence in the nineteenth century.

The plate for the image above reads:

Confessions and execution of the pirates Gibbs & Wansley: on Ellis’ Iland in the harbour of New-York on 22d April 1831, under the direction of Thos. Morris, Esq. U. States Marshal. An interesting account of their lives will be found within, but the individual crime which brought them to the gallows was the murder of the captain and mate of the brig Vineyard at sea bound from New Orleans to New-York

Link to Images | to Exhibition (via BibliOdyssey)

From the website:

"In 1869 the craftsman Rousseau of Marseilles built this monocycle, which perches the cyclist on the inside of a 2 1/2 yards-high wheel. As there is no steering mechanism, it makes uncommon demands on the rider’s sense of balance." (from Galbiati & Ciravegna)

Note that this design actually has 2 wheels: it’s a wheel inside a wheel monowheel! Link

William Miller, the professor of horticulture and the director of Flower Bulb Research Program (apparently there is such a thing) and Erin Finan at Cornell University discovered that liquor will stunt the growth of stems and leaf of paperwhite narcissi, but not their flowers.

Last year, Miller received a call from The New York Times about a reader who had written to the garden editor claiming that gin had prevented some paperwhite narcissi from growing too tall and floppy and asked if it was because of some "essential oil" in the gin.

Intrigued that dilute alcohol might act as a growth retardant, Miller and former Cornell student Erin Finan ‘05 conducted experiments with ethanol (1, 5, 10 and 25 percent) and "Ziva" paperwhite narcissi (Narcissus tazetta), and later with about a dozen kinds of alcohol, including dry gin, unflavored vodka, whiskey, white rum, gold tequila, mint schnapps, red and white wine and pale lager beer, on paperwhites.

Link (via Nutmeg)

Astronomers using the UK MERLIN radio telescopes discovered a giant cloud – 300 billion miles across – composed of alcohol!

Dr Harvey-Smith, principal investigator for the study, said: “Although it is exciting to discover a cloud of alcohol almost 300 billion miles across, unfortunately methanol, unlike its chemical cousin ethanol, is not suitable for human consumption!”

Link (via Jasonspage)

The Audobon Society has released a list of 10 Most Endangered Birds in America:

At number 1 sits the Ivory-billed Woodpecker:

Once this species made most of the southeastern United States its home, but it was considered extinct for decades until a single bird was spotted in Arkansas in 2004.

That’s one lonely bird!

Check out the entire list: Link (via LoperCo. Post)