The AirMule, developed by the Israeli aerospace company Urban Aeronautics, completed its first test flight. It only went two feet, but since it was just a concept two years ago, that's pretty far. In Aviation Week, Graham Warwick writes:

Urban says the tethered hovers, about 2ft off the ground, showed the control system's ability to stabilize the vehicle in all three axes using inertial measurements augmented by GPS and two laser altimeters. The next phase of flight tests will be untethered and will include horizontal and vertical position stabilization.

The AirMule is powered by a 730shp Turbomeca Arriel I turboshaft driving fore and aft ducted rotors. Urban says the initial tests show the vane system used for roll and yaw control will, with planned improvements, allow the production vehicle to hover with high precision in winds gusting up to 50kt.

Israel hopes to use it for medical evacuation in urban areas that helicopters cannot access.

Link via Popular Science | Photo: Urban Aeronautics

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This awesome commercial re-imagines MS Office as an action/thriller film. In this two-minute trailer, the partner of the slain agent Clippy swears to bring his killer to justice. It was directed by Dennis Liu working under Traffik Advertising.

Official Website via reddit

Australian millionaire David Walsh plans to open a new museum in 2011 called The Museum of Old and New Art. One of his ongoing exhibits will be the life of French artist Christian Boltanski, recorded on camera 24 hours a day:

Photographer, sculptor and installation artist Boltanski has said the deal with the Moorilla winery, brewery and restaurant owner gives him an ongoing fee until he dies.

The 65-year-old artist told the French press agency AFP recently: "This man (Walsh) thinks he can beat the odds and he says he never loses. Anyone who never loses or thinks he never loses must be the devil."

His payment increases with each passing year, so to make the venture financially worthwhile, he must live for another eight years.

Link via Marginal Revolution | Museum of Old and New Art | Photo: Saatchi Gallery

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Solar Dog is a prototype cell phone recharging station developed by Erik Schiegg of Switzerland. The user mounts it on a dog's back to collect solar energy as it plays outside. Schiegg writes:

My Android phone is charged in no time... The dog feels good and I'm feeling good and planet mud is turned a little bit more into planet earth. But this idea would be interesting? for farmers around the world, letting their animals collect electricity, too. Without the cost and waste for installation and the ground.

via Make

Oxygen therapy is variously a medical or spa treatment in which people breath air with a higher than normal oxygen content. In Japan, dogs can experience it as well as humans. Air Press is a Tokyo-based company offering this service at the Wag Style salon to your pampered pooch.

Link (Google Translator version) via DVICE

Melbourne-based Lowbrow illustrator Nate Holmes Trapnell puts tattoo-like designs on bowling pins. The curves of the pins add a lovely element of three-dimensionality to the images.

http://www.thesouthpaw.com.au/illustrations.html via DudeCraft | Photo: Nate Holmes Trapnell

DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a US government organization that performs research in military technology. One of their current projects, the Fine Detail Optical Surveillance (FDOS), hopes to develop optical equipment sensitive enough to literally "a needle moving along the surface of a haystack." That phrase is actually in the specs:

The program can be described as developing the technology and systems analogous to that required for the rapid imaging and identification, without the need for scanning or focusing of the optical receiver, of a needle moving along the surface of a haystack, where the location and type of needle on the haystack is uncertain.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/11/darpa_needle_haystack/ via DVICE | Photo: NASA

A team of European computer researchers are building a computer that will simulate the way that neurons work. They hope that successful development could aid in nanotechnology and smart pharmaceutical control systems. Here's how it works:

What distinguishes the current project is that it will make use of stable "cells" featuring a coating that forms spontaneously, similar to the walls of our own cells, and uses chemistry to accomplish the signal processing similar to that of our own neurons.[...]

The group's approach hinges on two critical ideas.

First, individual "cells" are surrounded by a wall made up of so-called lipids that spontaneously encapsulate the liquid innards of the cell.

Recent work has shown that when two such lipid layers encounter each other as the cells come into contact, a protein can form a passage between them, allowing chemical signalling molecules to pass.

Second, the cells' interiors will play host to what is known as a Belousov-Zhabotinsky or B-Z chemical reaction. Simply put, reactions of this type can be initiated by changing the concentration of the element bromine by a certain threshold amount.

Link via Popular Science | Image: US Department of Health and Human Services

Years ago, chef Dave Arnold expressed a desire for a substance that had the consistency, texture, and applicability of chocolate, but wasn't chocolate. He wanted to be able to coat food in ketchup as one coats, for example, cherries in chocolate. After some experimentation, he was successful. Here's his recipe:

1 kg de-odorized cocoa butter
325 g powdered tomato (spray dried or freeze dryed)
60 grams malt vinegar powder
25 grams salt
Spices to taste (onion powder, garlic powder, etc)
60 grams mycryo (to temper)

At the link, you can read about the preparation process, as well as see photos of the results. Pictured above are bits of chicken coated in the substance.

Link via J-Walk Blog

The New York Times has a set of infographics showing the popularity of certain movies distributed in the zip codes of several cities, based on their incidence of Netflix rental. Netflix provided this data on the fifty most popular movies of 2009. Hover over each map to see what movies were the most popular in neighborhoods of a city. The infographic above shows the distribution of Yes Man rentals in Atlanta, Georgia.

Link via Fast Company

The New Jersey design firm Lovegrove & Repucci has created this graffiti-covered dinnerware set in the tradition of the Netherland's Delft-style porcelain. It's called "New York Delft" and in the links, you can can find an Antiques Roadshow spoof featuring the collection.

http://www.lovegroverepucci.com/collection-new-york-delft-dinner-plate.htm via Make | YouTube Video | Image: Davies & Starr

Dick Kleis, a farmer in Zwingle, Iowa, decided to express his affection for his wife in a way that she would (apparently) appreciate. On the occasion of her birthday, he wrote out "HAP B DAY LUV U" in giant letters made of manure across his field:

But Carole Kleis isn’t just any woman — she’s the wife of a farmer, and a little natural fertilizer doesn’t bother her a bit, even if this particular usage is rather unusual.

"He's done weird things before for birthdays," she said. "But maybe not this weird." [...]

"I was going to put a heart out there after the happy birthday, but I ran out of manure," he said. "It's not hard. Any manure will work but the good, soft, gushy, warm stuff works the best. It kind of melts the snow."

Link via The Presurfer | Photo: My Fox DC

The Photonics Research Group of Ghent University in Belgium created a 1 trillionth scale map that measures only 40 micrometers across. That's about half the width of a human hair. It serves a purely decorative purpose on a new type of microchip that the team is developing:

The silicon photonics technology that is being developed with these chips integrates optical circuits onto a small chip: Light can be manipulated on submicrometer scale in tiny strips of silicon called waveguides or photonic wires. Using the unique properties of silicon, combined with state-of-the-art manufacturing technology, these silicon photonic circuits can pack a million times more components on the same footprint as today’s commercial glass-based photonics.

Link via Gizmodo

Sure, you could talk to actual human beings, but who would want to? Cleverbot, an artificial intelligence, is willing to have a conversation with you. Just start typing in the blank space. The program was developed by computer scientist Rollo Carpenter and his firm, Icogno Ltd.

Link via Geekologie | Screenshot: Geekologie | Video from Popular Science about the project

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In 2008, Eirik Solheim of Oslo, Norway, filmed his backyard regularly for a year and compiled the results into a 40-second time-lapse video. In 2009, he did the same thing in a 120-second video. But this time, the video and audio quality are superior and the transitions smoother. You can read a post by Solheim on the technical details at the link.

Link via Urlesque