The fastest submarine in the US Navy can go only 25 to 30 knots. But the Electric Boat Corporation, the primary designer for US Navy submarines, is trying to design one that can reach up to 100 knots. It plans on testing a 1/4 scale model off the coast of Rhode Island next year:

The sub utilizes the phenomenon known as supercavitation. Supercavitation is the process wherein an object moves so fast through the water that it creates a gas bubble around itself, nearly eliminating drag. Unencumbered by the high drag of water, the object is free to speed along at much higher speeds than otherwise possible. Supercavitation has been known since the end of World War Two, and the Soviets succeeded in creating a torpedo that utilizes supercavitation for high-speed travel, but so far no one has succeeded in scaling the effect up to the size of a whole submarine.

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-07/darpa-readies-ultra-fast-mini-sub

Some jobs could be done by a trained monkey.  So it's all the more impressive that an untrained monkey on a farm in India herds 75 goats out to and back from the fields every day. National Geographic reports:

Martin K, Estate Manager- "She takes out the goats for grazing and brings them back. A shepherd is usually required to accompany the goats all day long and bring them back in these hills. But because of her, manpower can be spared. She is as good as a shepherd. The only thing is that she does not speak, but otherwise carries out all responsibilities."

They say they feel confident that the goats will be safe when Mani accompanies them.

Mani is said to make a strange sound when she discovers a goat is missing or when danger lurks.

There's a (non-embeddable) video of the monkey at the link.

Link

image by flickr user eirikref used under creative commons license

The Sahara Desert is growing, consequently reducing food production in the area and therefore inducing poverty. But architect Magnus Larsson has an ambitious and fanciful plan to use bacteria to create a calcite wall on the desert's southern edge:

Bacillus pasteurii is commonly found in wetlands, and is able to chemically create calcite. By unleashing the bacteria on areas of the desert, sand could be solidified into sandstone within a few hours. The way Larsson proposes to do this is fill massive balloons with bacteria and station them along the Sahara's southern border, where the weight of the oncoming waves of sand would pop the balloons. The released bacteria would then quickly set up a protective wall to block future sand shifts.

http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2009-07/preventing-expansion-sahara-bacteria-built-walls

Sarah Kaufmann carves sculptures out of blocks of cheese. A native of Wisconsin who studied art and worked in the dairy industry, she was born for this work. The picture above is of Kaufmann and her sculpture of Neil Armstrong. Click the link for a video of the artist in action.

Link

Official Website

Scientists have conducted research which suggests that cats may have paw preferences:

Psychologists from Queen’s University Belfast in North Ireland, in a study published in Animal Behaviour, conducted a series of experiments on 42 kitties to discover if they are left- or right-pawed.

In two of the experiments, in which the cats had to reach for a toy mouse, the kitties were ambidextrous. But in the third experiment—in which bits of tuna were placed in a jar for a cat to fish out—showed a definite paw preference: 20 out of 21 female subjects used their right paw, and 20 out of 21 male subjects used their left.

Link

image by flickr user cjc4454 used under creative commons license

Researchers have found in Vietnam what they believe to be the world's largest cave:

By contrast, explorers walked 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) into Son Doong, in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, before being blocked by seasonal floodwaters—and they think that the passage is even longer.

In addition, for a couple of miles Son Doong reaches more than 460-by-460 feet (140-by-140 meters), said Adam Spillane, a member of the British Cave Research Association expedition that explored the massive cavern.

Link

Bogey's Pizza and Guns sells, guess what, both pizza and guns. It's one stop shopping for busy folks on the go. Its official website is rather skimpy, but there are web reports of people visiting, as well as a phone book listing, so I doubt that it's a hoax. So make mine a Hawaiian with extra cheese and .357 ball.

Link via Sharp as a Marble

Previously on Neatorama: Buy a Truck, Get a Free AK-47

Three weeks ago, peashooting athletes met in Witcham, UK to battle for the championship:

The crowd at Saturday's World Peashooting Championship looked on in wonder as George, 58, the sport's reigning superstar, languidly lowered his laser-guided shooter. This was no kiddie toy. This was a weapon of mass peastruction.

In an age of advanced ballistics, it's tempting to scoff at the humble peashooter – essentially a lung-powered piece of pipe – but technology prospers in improbable places, and there was enough of it at Witcham, Cambridgeshire, to impress the Pentagon.

Link via Ride Fast & Shoot Straight via Hell in a Handbasket

It's not such much a literal tattoo as an electronic interface implanted beneath the skin:

The basis of the 2x4-inch "Digital Tattoo Interface" is a Bluetooth device made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone. It´s inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, and then it unfurls beneath the skin to align between skin and muscle. Through the same incision, two small tubes on the device are attached to an artery and a vein to allow the blood to flow to a coin-sized blood fuel cell that converts glucose and oxygen to electricity. After blood flows in from the artery to the fuel cell, it flows out again through the vein.

On both the top and bottom surfaces of the display is a matching matrix of field-producing pixels. The top surface also enables touch-screen control through the skin. Instead of ink, the display uses tiny microscopic spheres, somewhat similar to tattoo ink. A field-sensitive material in the spheres changes their color from clear to black, aligned with the matrix fields.

The tattoo display communicates wirelessly to other Bluetooth devices - both in the outside world and within the same body. Although the device is always on (as long as your blood´s flowing), the display can be turned off and on by pushing a small dot on the skin. When the phone rings, for example, an individual turns the display on, and "the tattoo comes to life as a digital video of the caller," Mielke explains. When the call ends, the tattoo disappears.

Link via Say Uncle

Healthcare Robotics is hard at work developing a robot that will interact with the world at the click of a laser pointer. Simply point at an object, and the robot will go and pick it up.

In our object fetching application there are initially virtual buttons surrounding objects within the environment. If the user illuminates an object ("clicks it") the robot moves to the object, grasps it, and lifts it up. Once the robot has an object in its hand, a separate set of virtual buttons get mapped onto the world. At this point, clicking near a person tells the robot to deliver the object to the person. Clicking on a tabletop tells the robot to place the object on the table. While clicking on the floor tells the robot to move to the selected location.

One obvious application would be to assist people with limited mobility. Click the link for a video of the robot in action.

Link

Star Sports - Theatrical Trailer
(Video Link)

Every year, Atom Films hosts a contest for Star Wars-themed fan films.  There are several categories and this film, Star Sports Theatrical Trailer, won the Best Parody category.  It imagines the Star Wars story as a series of high school sports, such as the Battle of Hoth as a game of dodgeball (I think). You can view all of the winners at the link.

Link

James May of the British television show Top Gear is planning to build a full-sized house out of LEGOs:

On Friday, more than three million Lego bricks were delivered to the vineyard in preparation for the task.

Denbies marketing and business development manager, Jeanette Simpson, said: “The millions of bricks came all the way from the Czech Republic. The house will be life-size with a staircase, toilet and shower.”

Link via Geekologie

It was big enough to provide 1,500 servings:

Measuring 12 inches tall and 24 inches wide the cupcake weighed 150.7 pounds and used 15 pounds of fudge filling and 60 pounds of yellow icing.

Makers cakes.com created the cake as part of celebrations for the SpongeBob SquarePants' 10th anniversary at the Minneapolis Mall of America.

An adjudicator from Guinness World Records was on hand to inspect (and sample) the cake before declaring it the world's largest cupcake.

Link via Instapundit

From the food blog Insanewiches:

The Rubix Cube has confounded us for years. Maybe the sandwich version of this puzzling brain teaser will do the same. The Rubix Cubewich contains cubes of pastrami, kielbasa, pork fat, salami, and two types of cheddar.

Link via Geekologie

Jen Hui Liao created a machine that will take a picture of the user, and then guides his/her hands to draw the image on paper. Liao says:

I found some the relationship between human and machine are amazing and could be horrible (like this one that shows how we human invent machines then put human inside to it to manufacture goods), The final object - A machine is a miniature of what I understand through the process of research, and the aim of the machine is to let people have a chance to feel the condensed process of how we generate our self identity from external point of view as from the society, which is a big machine we all in.

Link via Gear Fuse

Videos of the machine in action