At a high school football game in South Dakota, one player punted the ball 40 yards. The ball hit the ground, and thanks to strong winds, started rolling on the ground. And rolling. And rolling. Right up to the 3-yard line. At the link, you can watch an embedded video of the play.
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20101031/SPORTS0107/101031003/1002/sports via Deadspin
Designers Jasna Sokolovic and Noel O’Connell invented the Retroreflector Tie. It's a tie with built-in reflective stripes to make bicyclists more noticeable to automobile drivers.
The town of Ston, Croatia, is protected by a wall three and a half miles long. This archaeological gem was built during the fifteen century while the region struggled for some margin of independence from the Ottoman Empire. It gradually decayed over time and was devastated by an earthquake in 1996, but restoration is presently underway.
Philip Neuman, Gayle Stuwe Neuman, and William Gavin are three musicologists who have reconstructed music from ancient societies and performed them in front of living audiences. Their Ensemble De Organographia, as the group calls itself, used remnants of Sumerian musical notations to make the above recording.
Instructables user ModMischief created a costume that makes her look like a genie on a flying carpet. Her legs are hidden beneath the carpet by a black curtain. The entire project took her just four hours to complete.
LEGO artist Dave Kaleta made this model of a frog dissection for MOCpages, an online community of LEGO builders. You can view seven more pictures at the link.
In Hamburg, Germany, artist Ralf Schmerberg made an igloo out of refrigerators. There's an electric meter outside that displays how much electricity it consumes. Schmerberg intends for the exhibit to serve as commentary on consumption and waste.
Until very recently, biologists believed that once a virus enters a cell, a person's immune system cannot combat that virus because antibodies cannot enter cells. But researchers at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, have uncovered evidence that antibodies can, in fact, enter cells. This opens up the possibility of attaching antiviral components to antibodies that can kill viruses inside cells:
Once inside the cell, the presence of the antibody is recognised by a naturally occurring protein in the cell called TRIM21 which in turn activates a powerful virus-crushing machinery that can eliminate the virus within two hours – long before it has the chance to hijack the cell to start making its own viral proteins. "This is the last opportunity a cell gets because after that it gets infected and there is nothing else the body can do but kill the cell," Dr James said.
"The antibody is attached to the virus and when the virus gets sucked inside the cell, the antibody stays attached, there is nothing in that process to make the antibody to fall off.
"The great thing about it is that there shouldn't be anything attached to antibodies in the cell, so that anything that is attached to the antibody is recognised as foreign and destroyed."
Leo James, the lead researcher, speculated that this discovery could lead to effective treatments for cold viruses, among others.
There are at least five distinct and substantial mistakes in the opening minute of this newscast by the ABC affiliate in San Diego. It was time for them to call "Do over!" and start over again.
Bitplay is a Japanese design firm that tries to make ordinary household objects into fun games. Pictured above is "Bang!", a lamp turns on and off by pressing the trigger on its gun-shaped remote control. When you pull the trigger, the lampshade tilts.
Ed Del Grande, a plumber, has an advice column in The Seattle Times. He responded to one query about home toilets by describing how the color of a toilet may indicate its vintage:
1920s: Rich pastels like autumn brown reflected fashion trends, and the surplus of beige left over from World War I found its way into our homes.
1930s: As the home became the focus of more activities, cozy neutrals like peach blow gave way to rich colors like dark green and maroon.
1940s: During the war years, the fashion and plumbing industries restricted the number of new colors. Some soil-hiding colors like olive green did appear.
Popular science educator Steve Spangler made this video to demonstrate laminar flow, which the Larousse Dictionary of Science and Technology defines as:
A type of fluid flow in which adjacent layers do not mix except on the molecular scale.
Spangler did so by injecting a container of transparent corn syrup with portions of colored corn syrup. He then rotated the container to mix it up. Next, Spanger rotated the container in the other direction, and colors separated almost completely.
Mehmet Ali Uysal, a professor of art at Middle East Technical University created this giant clothespin sculpture. It was built for the Festival of the Five Seasons in Chaudfontaine Park, which appears to be in a town on the outskirts of Liège, Belgium.
YouTube user UtahAerials attached a ghost-like object to a remote controlled helicopter and used it to chase trick-or-treaters that came to his house. A camera mounted on the helicopter captured the scene.
Mathieu Deflem, a professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina, is offering a class on Lady Gaga:
The synopsis for the course reads: "The central objective is to unravel some of the sociologically relevant dimensions of the fame of Lady Gaga".
Prof Deflem, 48, who has met the singer, real name Stefani Germanotta, on a number of occasions, said: "We're going to look at Lady Gaga as a social event. Other people say that Gaga's the new Madonna. I see it more like there's people who have this very individual thing. Frank Zappa had it. Prince had it. Miles Davis had it. Jimi Hendrix had it. And Lady Gaga has it."
