(YouTube Link)

Artist Soomi Park created a LED rig that gives the user the appearance of having glowing eyelashes. Here's her motivation:

An LED Eyelash project is brought into the world to find an answer to this simple question: Why do women want larger and bigger eyes? In particular, Asians tend to have stronger needs for bigger eyes as a standard of beauty.

Since relatively few Asians are born with big eyes, those without can only look for alternative ways to make their eyes look prettier - i.e., larger. They have a repertoire of skills to make their eyes look enlarged: makeup, jewelry, and plastic surgery. Their desire for bigger eyes are almost obsessive in that so many women look to plastic surgery in order to make their dream come true. Soomi calls this, the fetish of Big Eyes.

Artist's Website via Make

Mexican firm Decano Industries has developed a speed bump that remains in place when a vehicle that is moving too quickly is about to drive over it, but retracts when a slow-moving vehicle approaches. Christ Hawley writes in USA Today:

"With this speed bump, people will feel rewarded for obeying the law," says Carlos Cano, the company's president.

The technology is relatively basic: The speed bump is formed by two steel plates that form a triangle sticking out of the pavement. When a car tire touches the plate, a patented device under the triangle measures the force of the impact.

If the tire's impact is gentle enough — that is, if the vehicle is traveling slowly — both plates immediately collapse into the ground under the weight of the car.

Link via DVICE | Image: Sergio Solache, USA Today

(Video Link)

Un Trou a la Place du Coeur (A Hole in the Place of the Heart) is a short sand animation film by David Myriam. He writes that it describes "When the violence of individuals generates the birth of an unverifiable collective monster." Run time: 3 minutes.

via Have You Seen This? | Artist Website | Artist Bio | YouTube Channel

(YouTube Link)

Gay Wilkinson likes launching iron anvils high into the air. He's not entirely sure why and has a lot to say about how men and women respond differently to his hobby.

Anyway, he places one anvil on top of another and fills the reservoir in between with gunpowder.

Next Wilkinson herds the crowd to a spot about 50 feet from the loaded anvils and delivers a well-rehearsed introduction. "It'll be loud, but ya won't hardly remember that 'cause there'll be so much else goin' on," he says. "There'll be a slight second of fear after that anvil goes shootin' up and starts comin' back down. It'll look like it's going to land on top of you. It won't. Unless you hear me yell, 'Run!' Then you might wanna move.

"Now, some of you might be wonderin'," he continues, "'Why in the heck we would want to do somethin' like this?'"

"Because we can?" guesses a middle-aged man sporting a camouflage baseball cap.

"That's exactly right!" Wilkinson says with a mischievous smile. "It's a whole lot of fun! People talk about the joy of sex, but it don't last nothin' like shootin' anvils."

Link via Gizmodo

Image: Bryan Christie

Illustrator Bryan Christie specializes in transforming "complex ideas into compelling images", especially scientific or technological ideas. One of his recent works is this chart of the human exploration of Mars, organized by country, date, type, and successfulness. Click the link for a larger view.

Link via Fast Company | Artist's Website

It seems like everyone is getting into the green lifestyle movement, even a (legal) bordello in Berlin. Mary MacPherson Lane writes for the Associated Press:

One bordello, hoping to stave off falling demand in the economic crisis, has begun offering discounts to customers who pedal bicycles to the door.

"It's very difficult to find parking around here, and this option is better for our environment," said Thomas Goetz, who owns the brothel Maison d'Envie, or House of Desire.[...]

To qualify, customers must show the receptionist either a bicycle padlock key or proof they used public transit to get to the neighborhood. That knocks the price for 45 minutes in a room, for example, to euro65 from euro70.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hlIiLLfdOc5pjZNExqpkFyICzpOgD9BC7KH00 via Ace of Spades HQ | Image: flickr user keepwaddling1

Photo: Jimmy McBride

Artist Jimmy McBride makes quilts inspired by stunning astronomical photographs, such as this depiction of galaxy M64. It's currently on display at the City Quilter, a quilt shop in New York City. McBride writes:

they say in space, "no one can hear you scream." well, they can't hear the low drone of the internal power generators kick on again when you're half way to nowhere. i can. i work for a shipping company called "intergalactic transport." i travel back and forth from rock to rock carrying those two all important gems- salt and vinegar. there's a lot of time to kill up here so i downloaded a grandma program and she's been teaching me how to quilt. there's no "log cabins" or "poinsettias" around so i just stare out the window until something catches my eye. it's nice every once in a while to shoot the shit with a fellow traveler, or get caught up in the new dawn celebrations in the outer rim, but mostly it's just me; with a lot of time on my hands.

Link via Make | City Quilter

Image: Brian Kappel

Artist Brian Kappel creates art from an alternate universe where robot aesthetic needs are respected. Beyond obvious propaganda posters like the one above, you can find advertisements catering to the robot market as well as more heroic depictions. Wynter Holden writes in the Pheonix New Times:

Take Bastard Rat, for example. Modeled after a vintage advertisement, this mock billboard for Tin Man Pest Control depicts an ominous black robot sporting a metal funnel cap, à la The Wizard of Oz, above a rat with Xs for eyes. The slogan reads "no heart, no problem." I laughed so hard that my eyes watered. But underneath the humor, there's an insidious message. Kappel has created a robot-dominated world in which the human attribute of compassion is non-existent. Sound familiar? Lefty Lucy, in which a sexy girl-bot poses for the naughty "All Chrome Revue," and Loose Lips, Kappel's robot-era take on the Nazi posters (which encouraged silence through intimidation), are two other sardonic standouts.

Link via io9 (where there's a gallery)

Researchers at Western Washington University wanted to test how alert cell phone users were of their surroundings compared to the general population. So they dressed a student as a clown and had him ride his unicycle around campus:

The observers asked walkers if they had noticed anything unusual, and for those who didn't, they asked specifically if they had seen the unicycling clown. Even when directly asked, the cell-phone users were less than half as likely to notice the clown as those listening to music players or single individuals without any electronics. People who walked in pairs were the most likely to see the clown.

"So it's not the conversation that's the problem; it's not an electronic device that's the problem," Hyman told LiveScience. "It's something about a cell phone conversation is where the problem is."

He speculates, as do other researchers, that when talking to someone in person you both can modify your conversation based on the environment, so if a clown, say, pops up you can both look up. "That's not the case with the cell-phone conversations," Hyman said.

Link via Gizmodo | Image: Ira Hyman

(YouTube Link)

Bojan Nemec of the Jožef Stefan Institute in Slovenia developed an AI-enabled robot that can maneuver on skis without falling over:

The laptop control center plans the robot's trajectory, using a camera to measure its distance from the race gates. Gyros and force sensors help the bot stay stabilized on the slopes.

The robot carries a GPS unit, but it's used to help measure speed, not for trajectory planning. That makes sense, if you're trying to build a robot that works more like a human, relying on vision.

At the link, you can find the blooper reel from the video shoot.

Link via Popular Science

(YouTube Link)

Parahawking involves skydiving while specially-trained birds of prey swarm around you, including vultures, eagles, and falcons. It's available in Nepal courtesy of a bird rescue group called Himalayan Raptor Rescue. Hypothetically, it should lead to a superior paragliding experience:

Birds of prey have a natural instinct to conserve energy wherever and whenever possible. During a flight, a bird will burn more energy than it would if it was just sitting in a tree, this means it has to eat to replace the used energy. Sometimes birds will travel long distances to find food. To conserve energy whilst flying, birds of prey use thermals. Thermals are rising currents of warm air that are created by the sun heating the ground. Birds can gain height and travel long distances without flapping their wings by using thermals. Paragliders also use thermals when they are flying and will often use wild birds to guide them to where the thermals are. Our trained birds are no different, they will find the thermals in order to stay aloft and conserve energy whilst flying. We as paragliders harness their ability to conserve energy by following them as we fly.

Our birds need to be rewarded for guiding us into the thermals. During the flight the passenger will place small morsels of meat onto his gloved hand, the birds will come and gently land on the hand to take the food, and then gracefully fly away to find the next thermal. A perfect symbiotic relationship.

Link via Urlesque

Not only is the placebo effect becoming stronger, but it's now been imaged for the first time by researchers with fMRI machines. Falk Eippert at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany led the study:

Later, with an fMRI scanner on, the researchers rubbed "control" and "painkiller" creams onto two different spots on each volunteer's left forearm and applied the same level of heat to each spot, 15 times.

The fake "painkiller" cream worked: volunteers said they experienced 26 per cent less pain on the "painkiller"-treated patch of their arm, compared with the "control"-treated area.

Meanwhile, the fMRI scanner witnessed the placebo effect. When skin treated with the "control" cream was heated, an area of the dorsal horn located on the left side of volunteers' lower necks lit up, suggesting increased neural activity there in response to pain. However, this signal disappeared in the "painkiller" trials.

Link via Popular Science | Image: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

1962, a NASA administrator named James Webb decided to give artists broad access to the agency's facilities and programs. In the ensuing five decades, a vast body of work was created by those artists. Many of their compositions have been compiled into a new book called NASA/Art: 50 Years of Exploration by James Dean and Bertram Ulrich. Discover magazine has provided ten visually stunning examples from this book. Copyright restrictions prevent me from placing any here, but you can few them all at the link.

Link | Amazon Link

Image: Anne Cavanagh and Dave McCarthy

The Wellcome Image Awards are given annually for achievement in scientific imagery. The 2009 winners were announced yesterday in London. Among those winners was the above image showing:

...the synthetic polymers used to coat a drug, either to target the release of the drug in a specific part of the digestive tract or to allow the drug to be released slowly. Polymers play an important role in reducing side-effects of drugs, as well as the number of times a patient needs to take a medication.

Scanning electron micrograph images are taken in black and white and are coloured later. The orange spheres contain the drug and the encapsulating co-polymers are coloured blue.

You can view more amazing works by prize winners at the link.

http://www.wellcomeimageawards.org/gallery.aspx# via io9 | Information About the Competition

(YouTube Link)

Klenginem is a German rapper who performs in the Klingon language, mostly modified Eminem songs. Here is his performance of "SuvwI'pu' qan tu'lu'be", which is known in English as "Without Me."

Official Website via Popped Culture