Archaeologists have found five Roman ships in excellent condition off the coast of Italy:

A team of archaeologists using sonar technology to scan the seabed have discovered a "graveyard" of five pristine ancient Roman shipwrecks off the small Italian island of Ventotene.

The trading vessels, dating from the first century BC to the fifth century AD, lie more than 100 meters underwater and are amongst the deepest wrecks discovered in the Mediterranean in recent years, the researchers said on Thursday.

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(YouTube Link)

The American Library Association (ALA) just finished its annual conference in Chicago.  This is a video of the winners of the book cart drill team competition.  These librarians from the Omaha Public Library chose a 'Ride of the Valkyries' theme.

Alas, I missed ALA this year.  But as a faithfully married man, I shouldn't be availing myself of its bacchanal pleasures anyway.

Via Geekologie

Previously on Neatorama: March of the Librarians

Creating nanomachines can be unprofitable because of the time necessary to create and then assemble the components. But researchers at Columbia University have found a way to make machines assemble themselves:

To make the gears, a thin copper sheet is laid over a heat-expanded polymer. When the polymer cools, it shrinks faster than the metal, which causes the metal to bend. When the metal bends, it creates regularly spaced teeth in the polymer, effectively making a microscopic gear. Stiffer metal that's harder to bend creates a gear with fewer, larger teeth, while a more supple metal creates gears with smaller, more numerous teeth.

The team has already made a number of different types of gears, all at the six-to-25 millimeter range, and are now ready to shrink the process down further, to create gears smaller than a micrometer.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-07/scientists-design-versatile-self-assembling-nanogears

Listverse has information about 10 strange studies that scientists have conducted, such as how breasts bounce while women jog, can sheep recognize each others' faces, and flatulating fish. From the latter:

Two teams carried out this research project. One studied Pacific herring in Bamfield, British Columbia, while the other focused on Atlantic herring in Oban, Scotland. It was discovered that the Atlantic and Pacific herring create a mysterious underwater noise. It turns out that the high-frequency sound was created by releasing air from their anuses. The noise was always accompanied by a fine stream of bubbles. Researchers suspect herring hear the bubbles as they’re expelled, helping the fish form protective shoals at night.

The link is just a smidgen NSFWish because, well, I guess scientists are kinda pervy.

Link via The Presurfer

That stands for "vertical take off and landing", not in the way that a helicopter does, but more like the tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey in the U.S. military inventory. As the U.S. Air Force is moving toward a greater role for unmanned aircraft, the Excalibur could have a production future:

The unmanned aerial system (UAS) could pack a 400-pound payload of four Hellfire missiles, and also deliver weapons or other supplies to warfighters deep in rough territory. Its design allows it to have a maximum speed of 460 mph, but also have the ability to loiter overhead at just 115 mph.

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-07/unmanned-hover-aircraft-takes-first-flight (where you can find a video of a 1/2 scale version in flight)

Cartoonist Arthur Jones writes stories through text and doodles on Post-It Notes, then reads his stories live to audiences as his cartoons scroll in the background. There are a few on his site, but my favorite is actually a translation of Jonathan Goldstein's "Man Not Superman". This is the story of the ordinary guy who dates Lois Lane after she breaks up with Superman, and tries to overcome his feelings of inadequacy. Jones' comics just make this funny story even funnier.

Official Website

Man Not Superman (text version)

Via io9

Artist Franco Brambilla depicts scenes of pleasant, everyday life during and after aliens have conquered the Earth. To do so, he superimposes aliens over actual postcards of serene landscapes. It's like Norman Rockwell like drunk one night and woke up the next morning in bed with Frank R. Paul.

Link via io9

Since scientists are out to kill us again, what with flesh-eating robots, ethicists and roboticists have called for revisions to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:

A human-robot co-existence society could emerge by 2030, says Chen in his paper. Already iRobot’s Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner and Scooba floor cleaner are a part of more than 3 million American households. The next generation robots will be more sophisticated and are expected to provide services such as nursing, security, housework and education.

These machines will have the ability to make independent decisions and work reasonably unsupervised. That’s why, says Chen, it may be time to decide who regulates robots.

If it was up to you, what laws would you program into robots?

Link

German daredevil Dirk Auer established a new world record when he raced down a 860-meter wood roller coaster track in under a minute. He maintained an average speed of 56 mph on custom skates that he built himself:

'After this some of the sides were so high that at times I was at 90 degrees and so it was very important to have as much traction as possible. Luckily everything went according to plan - it was a lot of fun.'

Mr Auer, from Gross-Gerau near Frankfurt, is considered to be the most extreme in-line skater in the world.

He already holds the world record for reaching speeds of 190mph as he was dragged along behind a Porsche GT2.

Link via Hell in a Handbasket

As an assignment, Professor Daniel Fletcher of the University of California at Berkeley instructed students to build a functional microscope from a cell phone and a few lenses. When they completed the project, Fletcher and his students realized that they had a useful product, which they named the Cellscope. They hope to use the instrument in impoverished areas of the world where malaria, sickle-cell anemia, and tuberculosis are widespread. In such places, large numbers of microscopes are necessary for diagnosis, but remain very expensive. The Cellscope can be a cheaper alternative to fit this need.

Link

(YouTube Link)

The Schweeb is an experimental transit system in New Zealand that combines the bicycle and a monorail track. Users lie down individual pods and work the pedals to move forward:

Our proposal to get you safely and quickly from one point in the city to another would be to elevate you onto a network of interconnected monorails where you never have to stop at traffic lights. The ideal vehicle for such a system already exists. Fully faired recumbent cycles, because of their low aerodynamic resistance, are breaking all bicycle speed records and currently reaching speeds of 90 kph (56 mph) in sprints. Suspending these comfortable and highly efficient machines from monorail tracks has the added advantage of taking away the rolling resistance of pneumatic tyres. Trains of Shweebs can further reduce the aero drag – ten people travelling at 40 kph will each have a lot less work to do than a single rider at the same speed. A single rider requires only a fraction of the energy to achieve the same speed as a normal cyclist – thanks to the significant reductions in both aero drag and tire friction. The vehicle is completely weatherproof, you can't derail or fall out while on the cellphone or blackberry!

Link

(YouTube Link)

A biotech company named InSightec is developing a surgical technique that uses focused ultrasound waves instead of scalpels to destroy tumors:

Machinery like this had previously been used to treat some cancers, for example in the uterus and breast. But until now, the distorting effects brought about by the skull's thickness has made it impossibly tricky to focus the beams onto the brain while also maintaining the required accuracy.

InSightec's technology solves that by using over a thousand individually focused transducers, which broadcast the ultrasonic beams. But it's not like shooting a laser into a person's head--rather, the beams raise the temperature of the location being treated by about forty degrees, or just enough to kill the diseased cells. A built-in cooling system keeps the brain from cooking like an egg overheating.

Link

(Video Link)

Artist Thomas Thwaites is trying to build a toaster from scratch from the original raw materials -- which he mined himself. Here is a video about his efforts to smelt iron ore at home. He's doing so as a reflection upon a line from Douglas Adams' novel Mostly Harmless: "Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it."

Link via Ace of Spades

Official Website

Can a dramatic prairie dog be fine art? If you're looking for squirrels in underpants or zombies in romantic moonlight, then this oil painting and others like it are for you. They're availabe at McPhee. I can't find a general directory of these meme-themed works, but if you look at the related products section at the link, you'll find more more like it.

Link via Nerd Approved

Fast Company has a slideshow of unusual buildings in which people live or work, using unique materials or shapes. These include high-grade bricks made from cow dung, a house made from hemp (pictured), a building made from shipping containers, and one designed like a concert hall.

Link