High-tech cyborg warriors are a thing in science fiction novels, but it seems that we’re getting closer to making this a reality. The U.S military plans to transform their soldiers into cyborgs. They plan to make them stronger, enhance their senses, and wire their brains into computers.
Pentagon brass thinks these cyborgs will make their way to the battlefield by 2050, Army Times reports. The Department of Defense just declassified a report from October that details its plans for “human/machine fusion,” revealing its bizarre plan to bring to life military tech that’s always been safely quarantined within the realm of science fiction.
Various research groups are testing “ink” produced from silk proteins to print human tissues, implants and human organs. The process is much more affordable compared to conventional 3-D printing with collagen, a key protein in the body’s natural scaffolding.
Researchers in Assam, a state in India, are investigating using local silkworm species for the task—they recently submitted a patent for bioinks using a combination of proteins extracted from local species Antheraea assamensis and Samia ricini, as well as the commonly used Bombyx mori. The scientists have woven them into synthetic structures ranging from blood vessels to liver lobes; in a paper published in September in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, they described mimicking the cartilage of an entire ear.
Mechanically strong and completely biodegradable, and highly suited for applications in tissue engineering, is silk, a natural polymer with long, repeating molecular chains.
To use it, researchers draw liquid silk from the silkworm's glands or dissolve silk fibers in solvents. They carefully mix the gelatinous liquid with a patient's stem cells, then build structures layer by layer with a 3-D printer. After implantation, the cells grow and replace the silken scaffold, which eventually degenerates into amino acids.
There are a couple of ways to cook turkey. There is the safe way where you cook the turkey in the oven. But if you don’t want to cook the turkey the safe way, there is a dangerous way of cooking it, and that is by deep-frying it. High risk, high return, so they say. But if you’re not satisfied with the deep-frying method, then you can opt to a more dangerous method, and that is by killing the turkey by electrocution, which the Founding Father Benjamin Franklin did.
Franklin began to study electricity as he was approaching 40. His scientific interest on the subject was piqued when he saw a show by Archibald Spencer, a scientist/showman known for performing various parlor tricks involving electricity. Franklin was so fascinated by electricity that he tried to reproduce Spencer’s parlor tricks in his own home.
Through his experiments, Franklin was able to demonstrate that electricity consisted of a common element he called "electric fire," arguing that it flowed like a liquid, passing from one body to another. He studied how sparks jumped between charged objects, correctly concluding that lightning was merely a massive electric spark. And he coined several electricity-related terms we still use today: "charging," "discharging," "conductor," and "battery," for instance.
But the Founding Father did not yet find a practical application of his study, and this irked him greatly.
To that end, he conceived of throwing an electricity-themed dinner party. "A turkey is to be killed for our dinner by the electric shock, and roasted by the electrical jack, before a fire kindled by the electrified bottle," Franklin wrote to Collinson. Guests would drink their wine from electrically charged glasses so they would receive a subtle shock with every sip.
It was not clear if Franklin really did host such an elaborate dinner party, but at the very least we have knowledge that he experimented with electrocuting various fowl through the use of six-gallon Leyden jars.
A Leyden jar is basically a glass jar partially filled with water, with a conducting wire sticking out of its cork. The jar was charged by exposing the end of the wire to an electric spark generated by friction—created by, say, rotating a glass plate so that it rubbed against leather pads. There were no standard units of electricity back then, but modern estimates indicate that a pint-sized Leyden jar would have had the energy of about 1 joule.
While the electric shock produced was enough to kill chickens, Franklin was still frustrated as he found out that the turkeys recovered from the shock after several minutes. He had to combine several Leyden jars to successfully kill a ten-pound turkey.
But on December 1750, he would learn a lesson he wouldn’t forget.
Find out more about this story over at Ars Technica.
Looking for an alternative to the regular paper? Stone paper might be the alternative you’re looking for! The paper is made up of smushed-up rocks, and is waterproof, durable, and more environmentally friendly. The creation of stone papers involves little to no bleach and water, as cnet.com details:
Rock dust may not sound like an ideal ingredient for paper, but it works. Karst's paper is made of about 80% calcium carbonate, the main ingredient in limestone and marble. A Taiwanese supplier, Taiwan Lung Meng Advanced Composite Materials, pulverizes the rock left from construction and quarries, fuses it with plastic that holds it together, then compresses it with massive rollers until it's paper-thin.
The paper itself feels a bit smoother than conventional paper since it's made of tiny particles and not a rougher matting of plant fibers. But it's also tackier, like latex, and I experienced more drag as pen tips slid over the surface.
The presence of the plastic is also noticeable when you tear the paper: It stretches first.
But because the paper is waterproof, the wet ink of fountain pens and felt-tip pens is a problem.
Here’s a faster alternative to the tedious process of putting on makeup every day to cover our imperfections: a custom synthetic spray-on skin. Japanese cosmetics company Kao Corporation has developed this spray on, that can cover unwanted blemishes, moles or other marks on the natural epidermis. The New York Post has the details:
The artificial product, called “est,” is composed of tiny, liquid fibers. When sprayed, the substance adheres to human skin, transforming into an extremely thin, derma-like material, the Daily Mail reports.
It has a similar elasticity to skin, and it’s porous, too. Water vapor and air can pass through this second skin to moisten the living dermis beneath. At its edges, est forms an even thinner bond, helping it blend in with natural flesh.
Est is set to hit the market exclusively in Japan beginning Dec 4. and will sell for roughly $532 as a diffuser and “potion” combination, with diffuser refills priced at $73. A lotion version will sell for $110, and everything will become available online in January, according to Japanese publication the Asahi Shimbun.
People usually sit on any flat surface when they really need to, and sometimes, we might have sat on cold floors or boxes, provided that they won’t fold the moment you sit on them. Now, sitting on a box isn’t just a last resort, but an actual choice. Savannah studio Don’t Take This The Wrong Way has revealed its design for a chair that consists of a single cardboard box. Even if it does look like a regular cardboard box, this chair has been “over-engineered” to resist wear and water as Dezeen detailed:
The final design takes the form of a simple cube in classic cardboard brown, adorned only with a few flourishes like the words "this closed box acts as a chair" emblazoned on the side, alongside signposting to help users discern the bottom from the top.
On the outside, the box reveals little of the days-long production process that goes into every piece.
An internal cardboard grid structure is added for stability and to help the box keep its shape throughout use. Then, the other flaps are glued shut before a cushion is glued to the top, which is especially engineered to be both comfortable and resistant to denting.
"The cushion consists of three sheets of corrugated cardboard which are laser cut, flattened with a foot roller and glued separately with wood glue," he explained.
"At each stage of the gluing process, boxes are clamped for 12 hours and after that they are sanded and the feet screen printed along with the other graphics."
The last ice age began just as humans were beginning to move out of Africa, and only began to wane around 18,000 years ago. For a long time, the extreme cold was assumed to be the reason that no human artifacts older than that have been found in the Arctic Circle. Yet Siberians migrated into the Americas during that time, albeit below the Arctic Circle, so they must have been tough people. A Siberian archaeological site first discovered twenty years ago is beginning to reveal just how tough they were.
The situation changed when a Russian geologist, searching for animal fossils, came across a foreshaft (the detachable end of a spear) crafted from a wooly rhinoceros horn. At 70 degrees latitude, the site was well north of the Arctic Circle, along the Yana River about 60 miles from its outlet to the Arctic Ocean. The artifact was almost certainly ancient, considering wooly rhinos were Ice Age creatures, now extinct.
In 2001, excavations began at this Yana “Rhinoceros Horn Site” (RHS), led by archaeologist Vladimir Pitulko of the Institute for the History of Material Culture in St. Petersburg, Russia. Over the next two summers, the team unearthed hoards of stone tools, animal bones and artifacts carved from mammoth ivory. Because the finds were buried under about 30 feet of frozen ground, perishable remains were exceptionally well preserved.
But the most exciting results from these initial digs were radiocarbon dates published in a 2004 Nature paper: The Yana RHS site was roughly 30,000 years old, which more than doubled the age for humans in the Arctic Circle.
We may be gobbling turkey meat made in bioreactors and not in the farm as early as 2030.
Paul Mozdiak is thankful this Thanksgiving that people are now finally paying attention to his idea. He is a professor of poultry science at North Carolina State University. He is also an expert in growing avian muscle cells in a lab flask, which landed him in the cutting edge of “cellular agriculture”, the idea that animal protein could be manufactured in bioreactors rather than by animals.
The technology, also known as in vitro meat cultivation, may sound strange. But it has been drawing a following of environmentalists, animal-rights activists, and investors who think meat can be made by biotech companies rather than on farms.
“Years from now, when people are [in] the grocery store trying to decide if they want to buy traditional versus cultivated meat, I am 100 percent sure that cultured meat is going to be just as cheap, if not cheaper,” says Mozdziak.
[...]
Lab-grown meat is still far from being economical. In Mozdziak’s lab, his team grows cells as a thin layer inside plastic flasks. If the cells become too thick, nutrients can’t get in. Growing a turkey-size amount of white meat this way would require about 11,340 flasks and about $34,000 worth of growth serum.
In 1910, the Los Angeles Times published a story about a boy who was tasked with opening a valve on a steam engine-powered water pump every so often in order to release the built-up steam. That was his whole job: staring at the whirring pieces of metal all day, and he got bored. One day, when the supervisor walked in, the boy was nowhere to be found. The pump, however, worked just as it should — the “lazy” boy, in his boredom, was able to create a mechanized release for the pump. It was the first iteration of the automatic steam engine.
Now, this story may be apocryphal but the boy’s behavior reflects a deeper truth. When we are feeling “lazy” and disinclined to do something, we often search for an easier way to do the undesirable task at hand. We try to streamline the process and save time and effort. We wind up making the task more efficient. In other words, laziness can drive innovation.
In recent years psychologists and business leaders have wisened up to this insight. It’s shifting our perspective of what “laziness” really means, and whether strategic idleness or our inclination toward ease may actually be powerful tools and great assets. Bill Gates is even reported to have said, “I always choose a lazy person to do a hard job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”
I believe that the T in Thanksgiving stands for “turkey”. Thanksgiving won’t be complete without it. Turkey has become the symbol for the American holidays. But how do you catch a turkey for your Thanksgiving needs? This remote-controlled turkey might be your answer.
This crazy turkey on wheels was built by Wayne Stang back in 2012 as a decoy to attract a real turkey that he and his family could enjoy at the dinner table. The Robo Turkey rides atop the drivetrain and suspension of a Mad Torque Rock Crawler truck, making it capable of handling some seriously rugged terrain too. Apparently, the wheeled bird has been quite successful at luring in real birds, too.
This is a bacterium that normally has a diet of simple sugars. Scientists, however, came and re-engineered the bacterium and transformed it into one that builds its cells by absorbing carbon dioxide, much like plants. This could lead into modified microbes that suck carbon dioxide out of the air, turning it into medicines and other high-value compounds.
“The implications of this are profound,” says Dave Savage, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved with the work. Such advances, he says, could “ultimately make us change the way we teach biochemistry.”
It's been 37 years since E.T. phoned home. Xfinity went all out for their Christmas greeting, in which our beloved extraterrestrial returns to earth for a holiday visit, and finds that Elliot (again played by Henry Thomas) has aged quite a bit and has children of his own -who look an awful lot like young Thomas and Drew Barrymore. -via Buzzfeed
If you thought that donor blood is pure, it’s time to change what you thought about it. Researchers studying 18 batches of donor blood found caffeine in all the samples. Traces of cough medicine, as well as anti-anxiety drugs were found in many of them, too.
The analysis was made as part of a study into how botanical dietary supplements and other drugs can interact together in the body, using mass spectrometry to identify the chemical composition of the molecules in the blood samples.
What the scientists set out to do was identify how dietary supplements might have adverse effects when they mix with existing prescriptions. But the team also ended up discovering how our lifestyles cause changes that live on in the samples when we donate our bodily fluids.
While caffeine may not be an issue for patients, the other drugs might be.
Insects are part of the future, where they will be the alternative to meat, according Jisun Kim’s vision. Kim is a South Korean multidisciplinary designer who created Future Chocolate, a conceptual product and packaging and design project that showcases Kim’s vision of chocolate of the future. Composed of five pieces that have different insect designs, each piece in the collection has 10% insect powder to introduce insect-flavoured food to our palettes, as Plain magazine detailed:
Kim designed five chocolate pieces that take the shapes of different insects’ appearances. Each piece comes in a futuristic-looking shell packaging inspired by a cocoon, cradled on translucent pedestals. “Since it is the chocolate of the future, I wanted to convey the feeling that the photography of the product is also in a virtual setting,” says Kim. The chocolate contains 10% insect powder to gently introduce the taste to our palates. “I wanted to break down the boundaries of how chocolates are eaten and give people new experiences about what they eat,” the designer says. We can’t deny that Future Chocolate has piqued our curiosity: is it savoury? Sweet? How well do insects and chocolate go together? Only the future can tell.
Have you ever had trouble remembering all the characters you’ve used in all your playthroughs or multiple Fire Emblem games? Or are you one of those Smash Bros players that just found it hard to differentiate all the Fire Emblem characters in the Smash roster? If you’re one of these people I’ve mentioned, or you would just like to see someone formulate a method of knowing 596 characters, you’re in for a treat. Watch as Polygon’s Brian David Gilbert give his method of knowing all the characters in the whole Fire Emblem franchise.
