Artist Won Park makes origami figures with paper currency. He made this koi fish with a one dollar bill, with no cuts, glue, or tape. The way that he arranged for a curl to serve as an eye is particularly impressive.

Link | Artist's Gallery

(YouTube Link)

Watch this elderly (but very sharp) woman interact with a computer for the first time in her life:

We, Virginia's family, wish to say this video was made within minutes of her receiving her iPad. ? She quickly caught on to how to read and write on it, activities which were impossible before. She cannot read large print books any longer as her glaucoma prevents this. Glasses are useless. She loves to read and is a avid poet, now writing many many limericks for fun. She does not bend over the iPad, as you see in this video, but now puts it on several pillows.

via Urlesque

(YouTube Link)

SensoMotoric and the Free University of Berlin have developed a technology that allows a person to steer a car by moving his eyes. A camera tracks the eyes' movements and a computer uses this data to direct the car's steering column. The above video shows a car and driver set up with the gadgetry maneuvering around Tempelhof Airport.

via CrunchGear | Company Website

Doctors in Spain have carried out the world's first full-face transplant. Although there have already been partial transplants, this was the most complex so far:

It appears to include more bone and much more of the lower part of the face.

A spokesperson for the UK's Facial Transplantation Research Team, which has ethical permission to carry out a full face transplant, said it was "a tremendous achievement".

"This appears to be the most complex facial transplant operation carried out so far worldwide," he said.

"It once again shows how facial transplantation can help a small number of people who are the most severely facially injured and for whom reconstructive surgery cannot and has not worked."

Link via Gizmodo | Image: Vall D'Hebron Hospital

Designer David Garcia made this circular bookcase that the reader can use for both storage and transportation:

ARCHIVE II, a round wheel book archive, functions as a nomadic library, where the user can travel with his own books. Once still, it creates a room for meeting and inspiration, generating a special acoustic echo for the reader inside the wheel.

Link via DVICE | Photo: David Garcia

Well they would have the element of surprise. It's like those kids who tried to hold up a police station. Who would expect that criminals would try to break into a prison?

It would make a good gag for a comedy if it weren't actually true - thieves have broken into a Dutch prison to steal the inmates' televisions.

Twice in the last six weeks, burglars broke into a minimum-security prison and stole TVs from cells while prisoners were away for the weekend, a spokesman for the justice ministry said on Wednesday.

Link | Image: FBI

I guess he was out of toilet paper:

A man who received a parking ticket in Bartlett now faces criminal charges after authorities said he stained the citation with human excrement before mailing it back to the village.

Officials said Alexander J. Bailey, 22, of the 6N600 block of Medinah Road in Medinah, was arrested last week charged with disorderly conduct after a village hall employee found brown stains and a foul odor on the ticket and alerted police, authorities said. The original ticket was for $15, Bartlett police said.

Bailey also scrawled a note on the ticket indicating he'd used it to wipe himself, court documents said.

Link via Digg | Photo: City of Tampa

Joshua Keating of Foreign Policy magazine has a slideshow of what he considers to be the ugliest monumental statues in public display in the world. Pictured above is one of Tsar Peter I (the Great) of Russia, known for building that country's first navy:

Just because communism ended doesn't mean that Russia has stopped building grotesque, propagandistic statues. The master of the form is Georgian-born artist Zurab Tsereteli, best known for the garish 315-foot maritime statue of Peter the Great looming over the Moskva River. The statue was commissioned by Tsereteli's frequent booster, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and has fast become a popular tourist attraction, if not exactly for the reasons its planners hoped.

Link via Hell in a Handbasket | Photo: flickr user Effervescing Elephant, used under Creative Commons license

Pharmaceutical start-up Gelesis has developed a pill that is filled with tiny polymer beads. Swallow the pill, and the beads absorb water in your stomach, swelling over one hundred times in size. The idea is to partially fill up the stomach so that the patient is less hungry:

So when you down a pill with a glass of water, the capsule dissolves in your stomach and the hydrogel beads begin to grow. In a few minutes you’re feeling pretty full, and that second Double Down from KFC is decidedly less attractive.

Of course, now you have a belly full of hydrogel, and this is where the engineers at Gelesis had to be clever. The food is now mixed in with the gel, but you still need to digest that food (the object here is weight loss, not starvation). The hydrogel keeps food in the stomach longer, giving stomach acid more time to break down both the food and the hydrogel, which begins to release its water. Everything then moves to the small intestine where the gel can re-expand to some extent, slowing the absorption of fatty materials and sugars. Finally everything ends up in the lower bowels, and the rest is history.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-04/obesity-pill-swells-your-stomach-making-you-full-you-even-start-eating | Image: Gelesis

(YouTube Link)

A History of the Sky is Ken Murphy's ongoing project to record time-lapse images of the sky. Each square in the video represents a day, and each day is in order:

This is a work in progress. Currently, an image of the sky is being captured every 10 seconds from a camera installed on the roof of the Exploratorium, on the edge of San Francisco Bay. The images collected over each 24-hour period are assembled into a 6 minute movie (at 24 frames/second).

The final piece will consist of a large projected grid of 365 movies, each representing one day of the year, and cycling in parallel through consecutive 24-hour periods. The viewer can stand back and observe the atmospheric phenomena of an entire year in just a few minutes, or approach the piece to focus on a particular day.

This will also be an active piece. The camera will continue to collect images and integrate them with the montage daily. The visualization will therefore vary from day to day, and will always display the most recent 365 days.

Link via Urlesque

British artist Philip Smith is an accomplished bookbinder. Pictured above is his vision of Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings:

Book-box made from binders board, balsawood and with brass-reinforced epoxy-putty modelling. Covered with goatskin. Various parts of goatskin are used; strips, emulsified or individual flesh side and grain side parings, and maril. The box has two compartments for the book and a map folder. The leather clasp is designed to match the of images on both sides. The skull (supposedly of a Ringwrailh King; the contorted upper spires now represent the crown) is designed to work with a raking light to give deep relief to the modeling. The nine dead ringwraiths' headstones line the lower edge of the box.

You can view more examples of his work at the link.

Link via io9 | Photo: Philip Smith

Medical researchers have developed tiny electrodes from silk and thin sheets of metal that can be surgically implanted on the brain. They can gather data and send out electrical signals without causing damage to the patient:

"These implants have the potential to maximize the contact between electrodes and brain tissue, while minimizing damage to the brain," said Dr. Walter Koroshetz of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health, which helped pay for the study.

"They could provide a platform for a range of devices with applications in epilepsy, spinal cord injuries and other neurological disorders."

For instance, such a sensitive electrode could detect a seizure as it starts and deliver pulses to counter it. Brain signals might be routed to prosthetics for people with spinal cord and other injuries.

Link via Nerdesque | Image: Reuters

Coca-Cola used to contain coca, a plant that can be refined into cocaine. Bolivians are now putting it back into cola and calling it "Coca-Colla":

The drink, made from the coca leaf and named after the indigenous Colla people from Bolivia's highlands, went on sale this week across the South American country.

It is black, sweet and comes in a bottle with a red label – but similarities to Coca-Cola end there. One is a symbol of US-led globalisation and corporate might; the other could be considered a socialist-tinged affront to western imperialism. [...]

It is made from the coca leaf, a mild stimulant that wards off fatigue and hunger, and has been used in the Andes for thousands of years in cooking, medicine and religious rites. [...]

Bolivia tried to wipe out the leaf at Washington's behest. But that was before Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and coca grower, was elected president, championing coca as a crop with legitimate uses.

Link via Fast Company | Photo: Dado Galdieri/AP

(YouTube Link)

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich new yacht Eclipse is the largest in the world. It features lasers that disrupt cameras pointed at it and missile defense system to ward off attack:

Even the precise length of the vessel has been kept secret, though it is thought to be about 16ft longer than the previous record holder, the 532ft yacht Dubai, owned by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. It has been built by Blohm & Voss — the shipyard in Hamburg that constructed the German battleship Bismarck.

The Eclipse is said to have two helipads, two swimming pools — the larger of which converts into a dance floor when drained — bullet-proof glass, 6ft home cinema screens in every guest cabin and a master cabin where the roof opens to allow Abramovich and his girlfriend Daria Zhukova to sleep under the stars. An anti-paparazzi electronic “shield” will take care of their privacy while on board.

Link via DVICE

Previously on Neatorama:
$47K Food Bill, $7K Tip: Just a Friday Night Out for Russian Billionaire Roman Abramovich

(YouTube Link)

This video by YouTube user Lisapud shows baby kangaroos playing and swimming with humans on a beach.

via Urlesque