Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have invented a disposable diaper that automatically detects wetness caused by urine and alerts caregivers that it's time for changing. A press release describes how it works:

The sensor consists of a passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tag, that is placed below a layer of super absorbent polymer, a type of hydrogel that is typically used in diapers to soak up moisture. When the hydrogel is wet, the material expands and becomes slightly conductive — enough to trigger the RFID tag to send a radio signal to an RFID reader up to 1 meter away.

The researchers say the design is the first demonstration of hydrogel as a functional antenna element for moisture sensing in diapers using RFID. They estimate that the sensor costs less than 2 cents to manufacture, making it a low-cost, disposable alternative to other smart diaper technology.

-via Walyou | Image: MIT

As master of the mascara brush, Aaron Storms creates unique and original eye makeup designs. What is so interesting about his work is geometric forms executed with precise, sharp lines. Vivid colors pop out to add flair to any face.

Ben Zaehringer of Berkeley Mews would like to consider you for a relationship, but neglected to fill out the necessary form first. You can still write in his name when it's time for the prom if you have not moved on to another candidate relationship by that point.

Photographer Jannelle Lynch wants us to appreciate the beauty in our everyday surroundings by looking slower and more closely. Lynch wants each of her photographs to be viewed as a world in itself, an instance captured by her camera lenses that showcases the beauty created by nature. To put it simply, she wants us to take our time to observe and pay attention to our surroundings, so that we can appreciate nature. Even a tumble of weeds has beauty if we look closer, as NPR details: 

She says she often would shoot from the ground, sitting in the grass, sometimes flanked by her dogs. That gives an animal-eye view to scenes only a foot or two high. Lynch says that this perspective gave her a sense of grounding — to the earth and the plant life she was photographing.

The idea of connection is crucial for Lynch, and it helps explain her photo book's mysterious title, Another Way of Looking at Love. It comes from something she heard on the radio, an interview with the philosopher Alain de Botton; he said: "Another way of looking at love is connection." In this sense, love is not a romantic imperative, but a feeling of belonging with others and with the world.

Visual connections are also created by the many lines and geometries of branches, stalks and twigs, which come alive under Lynch's focused gaze: the way a string of tiny blooms folds back on itself to create the appearance of an eye in Seeing Anew; the way a fallen branch is held parallel to a barberry plant in Orthogonal Reality; the way entwining branches of pokeweed and goldenrod appear to create a Summer Wreath.

"I do innately find beauty in all of nature," she says. "So whether it's a weed or a dead branch, there's surely something beautiful there."

image via NPR

Reno, Nevada, proclaimed itself to be the “divorce capital of the world”, becoming a haven for people who wish to cut ties with the person to who they once promised forever with. Reno allows divorcees to establish residency in six weeks, and instantly processes the divorce papers no matter the reason for the split. Time magazine shares the history of how Reno built its reputation over the years: 

The practice of seeking divorce in Reno dates back to the early 20th century, when the city shrewdly built lodging and entertainment steps from its courthouse, drawing a steady flow of “divorce tourists” looking to escape the East Coast press. By the 1950s, by which time Reno’s divorce laws had further loosened, a thriving economy had evolved for the sole purpose of meeting divorcees’ needs while they waited — and, indeed, Reno relied on the divorce trade to keep her coffers full.

That the majority of Reno divorce-seekers were women reflects the fact that men had jobs that kept them home, though many women found work in Reno, either by choice or necessity. A steady need for waitresses, laundresses, card dealers, clerks, maids and even ranch hands meant a girl could arrive with next to nothing and earn enough to pay her way. For many women, this was the first time they had money of her own to manage and spend.

image via wikimedia commons

If you were reading Neatorama in 2012, you no doubt heard plenty about Ecce Homo, the Spanish artwork that was the victim of a botched restoration and became the biggest meme of the year. Cecilia Giménez, the amateur artist who "touched up" the original painting, was quite traumatized at the notoriety the story brought, but plenty has happened in the eight years since then. Solar Sands updates her story, and those of a couple of other unfortunate art restoration attempts in this video. -via reddit

This is why computers are no substitute for human experience. Humans are pretty good a deciphering rather fractured grammar from, say, a writer working in their second or third language. Computers work from rules, while people can take intuitive leaps based on a range of experience that may have little to do with the task at hand. Tom Scott breaks that down for us.    

Sixty years ago this month, four Black college students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and did not leave after they were refused service. The next day, more students participated in the protest against segregation, and the sit-in grew and continued for weeks. Charles Bess worked at Woolworth as a busboy, and was caught in a news photograph of the protest. Sixty years later, he tells the story of that protest from his point of view.

After his shift was over, the four had gone, and he had finished his closing duties, Bess caught a cab home and remembers telling the driver all about the young men who came into the store that day. As soon as he got home, he told his sister, and then his brother-in-law.

“I felt like I wanted to tell everybody,” he says as he waves his arms up and down. “I was excited about it. It was a very exciting week.”

Bess says that working for a company that kept whites and black separated — not only behind the scenes, but publicly — felt complicated at times.

“I did have to wrestle with it,” he says. “I was on the other side, being paid by a company that was keeping me going, but all the same time, I was kind of on their side. I was on this side, but I was rejoiced by the people on the other side. I felt like there needed to be a change.”

On July 25th, 1960, Bess was one of four Black Woolworth employees who were invited to sit down at the store's lunch counter and enjoy a meal, ushering in the store's new desegregated policy. Read his story at The Bitter Southerner. -via Metafilter 

Comedian Bec Hill shares a collection of misheard lyrics that arise from hunger. This funny project was a promotion for the BBC One show The Hit List. -via Laughing Squid

Don't let the headline fool you. These 14 facts about sex among different species range from sad or mildly gross to truly horrifying. Mating can often mean death, but if it's required for the species to remain extant, they consider it worth the risk. For example, the cute little guy pictured here is an antechinus. He's probably only got one shot at a sex life.

For a two- or three-week stretch in early spring, Australian forests reverberate with the sexual shenanigans of the male antechinus. These tiny, tireless marsupials can engage in a single intimate encounter for 14 hours straight. Desperate, virile and indefatigable, each of these bitty boys will mate with as many females as possible, plugging away until the fur sloughs off his skin, his immune system fails and blood pools around his organs. In a grand culmination of this fornication feat, the male antechinus physically disintegrates: He quite literally boinks himself to death, usually just shy of his first birthday.

So-called suicidal reproduction might sound absurd, but vigorous, organ-shredding sex is the antechinus males’ way of outcompeting each other in the reproductive race to father the most young.

Read about traumatic insemination, urine tasting, penis fencing, and other mating habits in the animal kingdom at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: Mel Williams)

Josh Gibbs of Frog Forest Designs built a custom vivarium for a client who wanted to surprise her Star Wars fan husband. He recreated the look of the environment on Dagobah, where Yoda trained Luke Skywalker to become a Jedi, right down to Luke's crashed X-Wing starfighter!   

This tank was truly a delight to plan and build with a singular direction in mind. We tried to make the hardscape look as true to the theme as possible, while still functioning as a bioactive vivarium capable of housing live plants and animals – which was no easy feat! This 20 gallon vivarium includes an external fogger drilled and installed seamlessly hidden into the hardscape, a daylight LED light with a blue night time setting, natural California manzanita wood to form the “trees”, a hand built and painted model X-Wing, custom cut glass lid, printed concept art background, custom hand carved coco hut with Star Wars emblem, and “Zebra” isopods scurrying around. We are very happy with how this tank turned out, and even more happy about how excited the surprised husband was upon seeing it!”

See a gallery of pictures of the vivarium, including daytime, nighttime, and fog mode, at the artist's website. -via Geeks Are Sexy

There is now a new way of creating 3D objects “in record time”. Researchers from Switzerland's Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have developed this new method. The method uses the principle of tomography, displaying a representation of a cross section through a solid object via x-rays or ultrasound. An object to be created using this new method would form a solid structure in a photosensitive resin in one go, unlike the traditional 3D printing method, which prints an object segment by segment. Engadget has more details: 

"It's all about the light," explains Paul Delrot, CTO of Readily3D, the company that has been set up to develop and market the system. "The laser hardens the liquid through a process of polymerization. Depending on what we're building, we use algorithms to calculate exactly where we need to aim the beams, from what angles, and at what dose."

The technology could have a wide range of uses, but its advantages over existing methods may assist medical experts. Researchers believe the process could be used, for instance, to make soft objects such as "tissue, organs, hearing aids and mouthguards." What's more, printing can take place inside sealed, sterile containers, preventing contamination.

"The system is currently capable of making two-centimeter structures with a precision of 80 micrometers, about the same as the diameter of a strand of hair," EPFL News adds. However, the team believe that could be increased to 15 centimeters in the future. "The process could also be used to quickly build small silicone or acrylic parts that don't need finishing after printing," says Christophe Moser, head of EPFL's Laboratory of Applied Photonics Devices.

image via Engadget

"Hey! What if we made Jurassic Park into a war movie? No, we don't have any money for special effects, but maybe people will buy it as a comedy!" That seems to be the thinking behind Jurassic Thunder, a real movie, in a sense, that isn't even plausible enough for TV. High Octane Pictures is going for the Sharknado crowd with a film that will be available on DVD and digital download March 10. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

1. Three weeks ago, I ordered a box of boxes from @PkgWholesalers, via @amazonca. Specifically, I ordered a package of 25 boxes, each 6x9x6: https://t.co/My0zSBmYyD

— dave meslin (@meslin) February 7, 2020

Dave Meslin just wanted to order boxes from Amazon. He received some granola instead. That was the beginning of an adventure in which he felt stuck in an endless loop of ever-more-bizarre deliveries and order corrections. At one point they figured out what the problem was, but they still couldn't fix it.

13. I've now received a total of 12 bags of granola + 4 Harry Potter coasters. I've reached out to @PkgWholesalers, but they brushed me off. I think I'm gonna take @m_layton's advice and just go to a damn store. You know, a physical place, with things in it. Things you can see.

— dave meslin (@meslin) February 9, 2020

People had plenty of suggestions for what to do with the stuff he didn't want, and tales of their own Amazon snafus. You can read the story in the original Twitter thread, or all that plus the resulting memes and reactions at Bored Panda.

In 1915, a man named Percival Lowell predicted that there is a planet beyond Neptune. This statement was proven 15 years later in 1930, when American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered that there was, in fact, a planet beyond Neptune, and that planet was called Pluto.

For 76 years Pluto was classified as a planet by astronomers. Unfortunately in 2006, it was kicked out from our Solar System’s family of planets. The question is, why?

Michael Guillen lays down to us the messy history behind Pluto’s sudden change in classification from “planet” to “dwarf planet”. He also believes that Pluto should be reinstated as a planet, for many reasons.

Check out the full story over at Fox News.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Alex Parker/ Wikimedia Commons)