Congratulations to Denmark, which uses less toilet paper than any other Western nation:

The problem of toilet paper waste has been brought to the forefront of the media through a comprehensive, worldwide usage study by watchdog organisation World Watch, which said that each Dane uses a meagre 13 kilos of toilet paper annually – a figure at the ‘bottom’ of those for the western world.

On the flip side, Americans – the world leaders in TP usage – go through a whopping 23 kilos each per year. That figure is equivalent to using 57 squares of a roll each day.

Link via Ace of Spade HQ | Image: CDC

deviantART user orscobrusco specializes in origami. He's put pictures of impressive pieces in his gallery, such as this cobra. It was made from a single sheet of paper with no cuts or glue. Here's his description run through Google Translator:

Original model of the undersigned, created in '98.
This in particular is made of paper "elephant skin" patterned wet-folding, sheet starting about two meters long. The paper has been applied to the wounded colored with a dark wood stain and ink.

Link | Gallery

(YouTube Link)

We've seen a cat riding a Roomba. Now here's a soft-shelled turtle doing it. He doesn't appear to enjoy it as much.

via Geekologie

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Israeli artist Paz Bernstein uses a Wacom tablet to create speed paintings of people that he meets on Chatroulette. This video is a compilation of some of those encounters.

via Urlesque | Artist's Website

Previously on Neatorama:
Chatroulette Surprise
Chatroulette Piano Player Improviser

(YouTube Link)

This video, going around the Internet lately, was allegedly shot with the shutter speed synchronized to the helicopter's blade speed. I thought that shutter speed is a function of still shot cameras, so maybe it's really synchronized to the frame rate. Photographers, please educate us. via Urlesque

I found this funny photo while digging for blogfodder in deviantART. User nocturnalMoTH created "Enjoy Your Breakfast." Posted with the permission of the photographer.

Link

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When Puerto Rican man David Morales Colón died, he wasn't displayed in a casket at his wake, but astride his motorcycle:

Yesterday and today, callers who stopped to pay their final respects to the late Mr. Colón got a bit of a surprise. Instead of the traditional presentation of the body in a casket, Mr. Colón's corpse, dressed in casual duds and sunglasses, was instead posed in a very lifelike position atop his Repsol-liveried Honda CBR600 F4. According to Puerto Rico's Primera Hora newspaper, the motorcycle was given to the victim by his uncle, and upon Mr. Colón's untimely demise, family members delivered the bike to the funeral home specifically for this unusual wake.

Link via Geekologie

The Poseidon 37 is a floating wind farm under construction by the Danish company Floating Power Plant. It will generate 40 to 50 gigawatt hours of energy a year. The facility will be about 230 meters long and weigh over 30,000 tons, making it sturdy enough to withstand the roughest seas. The final product will also be able to acquire energy from turbines powered by the ocean's waves:

Topping a wave system with wind turbines takes out some of the risk. Offshore turbines are a proven, stable technology. Thus, even if the wave generators don't produce as much energy as planned, at least the investors will see revenue from wind energy. In a sense, this model could be viewed as an offshore wind turbine with wave energy thrown in as a bonus.

The risk is further diminished by the design of the wave power platform. It's big. The company borrowed heavily from the engineering techniques behind the floating platforms that have been built by the oil industry for years. The platform's sheer size insulates it from hazards posed by rogue waves and 100-year storms.

Link via Gizmodo | Image: Floating Power Plant

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For its 50th anniversary, the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam has created an interactive 3D model of the attic that Anne Frank and her companions hid in for two years during World War II. The above video is a sample of that model.

Link via Fast Company | Previously on Neatorama: The Only Known Video of Anne Frank

Japan's space agency plans to launch the first deep space vehicle to be use solar sail propulsion:

"Ikaros is a 'space yacht' that gets propulsion from the pressure of sunlight particles bouncing off its sail," Yuichi Tsuda, space systems expert at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), told journalists.

The flexible sails, which are thinner than a human hair, are also equipped with thin-film solar cells to generate electricity to create "a hybrid technology of electricity and pressure", Tsuda said.

"Solar sails are the technology that realises space travel without fuel as long as we have sunlight. The availability of electricity would enable us to navigate farther and more effectively in the solar system."

The Ikaros will be launched from Tanegashima space center on May 18. It cost $16 million to develop.

Link via Popular Science | Image: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

(YouTube Link)

Taco the pet tortoise lives in an outdoor burrow. When his humans call him, he (she?) comes out and crawls into their hands. That's a well-trained tortoise!

via Ace of Spades HQ

Scientists have studied chimpanzees and other primates in captivity when long-time companions died. In Scientific American, Katherine Harmon examines the tentative answers of scientists to this question:

Another paper appearing in the same issue of Current Biology describes two mother chimpanzees carrying their dead infants in the Bossou colony in Guinea. Although this behavior has been observed in chimps and other primates before, the researchers, led by Dora Biro, a research fellow in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford, documented the carrying behavior for 68 days in one of the instances—far longer than had been previously described.

Of note, Biro's group reported, is that documented deaths of infants in that particular colony (of which there were three) always resulted in "extended carrying," though it is not universal that mothers carry infant corpses for weeks—or months—after death. This difference "raises questions about the potential role of observational learning in promoting chimpanzee mothers' prolonged transport of deceased young," Biro and colleagues wrote.

These differences in handling death might also be a part of demonstrated cultural differences among chimpanzee groups, Anderson says.

Link | Image: NIH

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Rob Klinkey built this remote-controlled snowplow. Roboplow has a 50 inch blade, six powered wheels, and 660 amps of power. The blade can be pneumatically controlled in four directions. Lights and a mounted camera allow the Roboplow to be driven while out of sight and at night.

via Make

The Sony Corporation, which created the 3.5 inch floppy disk in 1981, will cease production of the format next year:

With the advent of CDs and later, DVDs, the use of the plastic floppys and its limited storage capacity were quickly deserted.

After the Apple G3, along with PCs, began shipping without the drives pre-installed the disks became virtually obsolete. However, the death of the format has only now become official with Sony's decision. [...]

The 3.5 inch floppy was first introduced in 1981, and hit the height of its sales in 2000.

Link via Nerd Bastards | Photo: flickr user matsuyuki used under Creative Commons license

Previously on Neatorama: Floppy Disks at Art Medium

At some universities, students can design their own majors. Jordan Goldklang of Indiana University is an illusionist, and is majoring in magic:

Known as The Great Jordini to some, Jordan Goldklang is a senior from the San Francisco area. He is the only student at IU, and the only one in the U.S., who is majoring in magic — a major he created through IU’s Individualized Major Program.

Since then, he has devoted his time at IU to the major.

Tonight Jordan will present a magic show in Alumni Hall for his final project as an undergraduate. He’s hoping to sell out the venue, which holds 600 people. So far, he’s handed out 1,000 flyers, put up 3,000 posters and invited more than 1,000 people to the event on Facebook.

Link via Geekologie | Photo: Sevil Mahfoozi, Indiana Daily Student