A new concept in robotics may improve the efficiency of building demolition and recycling. Swedish student designer Omer Haciomeroglu says that the robot called ERO is a smart recycling robot like Wall-E.
The ERO can “efficiently disassemble concrete structures without any waste, dust or separation and enable reclaimed building materials to be reused for new prefabricated concrete buildings”.
This is achieved using high-powered water jets to crack the concrete. The aggregate cement and water is then sucked up and separated. The water is recycled back into the system, while clean aggregate is packed and sent to concrete precast stations for reuse. The rebar can then be cleaned and cut on the spot to be reused.
A fleet of ERO robots working together would be able to scan the surroundings and plan a route of action. Once they start working, the robots can “literally erase a building”.
If you ask me, the concept art looks more like the Nu-Nu from The Teletubbies than Wall-E. Get a better look at DesignTaxi. Link -via Digg
On a spring day in 1920 in Rigby, Idaho, a farm boy named Philo took a break from his plowing and invented television. Then his amazing invention was stolen from him.
ALONE IN HIS FIELD
Electricity and radio in 1920 were like computers in the 1970s: exciting new innovations into which the technologically minded put their dreams, mental energy, and considerable spare time. Fourteen-year-old Philo Taylor Farnsworth -tall, skinny, and full of ideas- was already showing promise as an electricity prodigy. Two years earlier, shortly after he'd seen an electric light for the first time, he'd re-wired a burned out motor and presented his family with its first automatic washing machine.
Living on a farm meant lots of tedious chores, which gave Philo plenty of time to think. As he was plowing a field one day, he started wondering if it was possible for radios to broadcast moving pictures as well as sound.
SPINNING THE WHEELS
Philo certainly wasn't the first person to come up with the idea of sending images over the air. He'd found a stack of science magazines in the attic (they were there when his family moved in), with articles about European experimenters trying to do just that. One of the more promising attempts: German inventor Paul Nipkow had rigged a spinning wheel mounted on a lit picture, dotted with tiny pinholes. As the hand-cranked wheel spun rapidly in front of a brightly-lit scene, the first pinhole let in a thin strip of light from the top of the scene, the next let in another thin strip, and so on- thus the entire scene was rapidly scanned from top to bottom over and over again.
How did that make TV? The thin strips of light landed on photosensitive material that generated a little surge of electricity when the light hit it. The brighter the light, the more juice was produced; connected electrically to that wheel was another wheel spinning at exactly the same rate of speed while transforming the electric signals back into light again. Demonstrations showed promise: Images, while ill-defined, could be recognized and transmitted.
PLOWING AHEAD
Philo thought about the spinning wheel device as he plowed. He felt it was a great idea but knew it would never lead to broadcasting images. First of all, the two wheels would have to spin at exactly the same rate all the time, or the images would be lost. That can easily be managed if the wheels are a few feet apart in a laboratory, but how do you maintain the same speed if the wheels are hundreds of miles apart, the transmitter in one place and the receiver in a home? And if it was used in large-scale broadcasting, every wheel on every receiver would have to be synchronized -a near-impossible feat.
A man watching mechanical TV. At right, a 1928 image of Felix the Cat broadcast mechanically.
Philo knew there had to be a better approach, one that wouldn't require wheels or mass synchronization. That's when, according to legend, he stopped plowing and looked around -his plow had created equally spaced parallel lines all over the entire field. He'd read that scientists could manipulate the motion of an electron thousands of time per second in a vacuum tube, so he looked at the field and saw a large vacuum tube acting as a screen. And "plowing" that field was a thin ray of light, pulled by alternating magnetic fields, moving across the screen in superfast "furrows" while lighting up selected pieces along each furrow. Phil realized that if this were done in a fraction of a second and repeated, the human eye would perceive motion.
What do you think is going on here? The most logical explanation is that a time traveler has created a paradox by returning to our present from five different points in time. I would guess that five versions of the person are inside the house watching Back to the Future. Redditor jraevis posted this picture of the shenanigans in his neighborhood. If you go see the full-size picture, you'll see the sign says "DeLorean Parking Only." Link
Think that memories are in the brain? New research says that may not be exactly true -at least for flatworms. The planarian is fascinating in that it has the ability to regrow body parts when you cut it into pieces -it will even grow a new head if you cut it off! If that's not freakish enough, experiments show that a newly-regrown head can have some knowledge the earlier head learned. Experiments had been don on planarian heads decades ago, with inconsistent results. Tal Shomrat and Michael Levin at Tufts University returned to this idea with state-of-the-art planarian training methods and computerized testing methods. They trained the worms to overcome their distaste of light and rough surfaces to reach food. After two weeks, the trained planarians went straight to the food, unlike a control group of untrained worms.
The worms were relieved of their heads. The scientists made certain that no bit of brain survived. Then, after the worm stumps had painstakingly re-headed themselves, the planarians went back into the testing chamber.
The memory wasn't there right away. But Levin and Shomrat found that if they gave all the worms one quick training session before testing, worms who'd previously been familiarized with rough petri dishes reached the food significantly faster than the other worms. The training session "basically allowed the worms to refresh their memory of what they had learned before decapitation," Levin says. In other words, their memories had survived the loss and regrowth of their heads.
Levin doesn't know how to explain this. He says epigenetics may play a role—modifications to an organism's DNA that dial certain genes up or down—"but this alone doesn't begin to explain it."
Gertie Cleary of Elmsdale, Nova Scotia, saw a raven perched on her fence with porcupine quills stuck in its face. The overly-friendly juvenile raven had a run-in with a porcupine, then made a better choice to let the woman get close. Cleary, wisely wearing gloves, did what she had to do.
The bird, clearly in pain, waited for Cleary to get each one of the quills out. Cleary says she didn’t think twice about helping the animal in distress.
“It reminded me of a child with a splinter and when you pull a splinter out, they holler and screech and pull their hand away,” says Cleary.
Once the quills were out, Cleary carried the bird to her daughter’s house, where she fed him dog food and water.
She let the raven, named Wilfred by the Cleary family, outside the next day, and he hung around for a while before flying off. Let's just hope the bird learned his lesson about porcupines. Link -via Arbroath
If any of nature's creatures can get organized, it's ants. In this video marking the World Wildlife Fund's 50th anniversary, leafcutter ants were given leaves that were already cut by a laser into protest signs! The ants, of course, march with their signs to protest the destruction of the rain forests. The ad was made by BBDO Düsseldorf for the WWF. -via Laughing Squid
During the days of slavery in America, there were plenty of people willing to risk their lives for freedom. Many did escape, many were caught, and many died, but there are a few stories of schemes that were so unbelievable that they not only worked, but went down in history. I particularly liked the story of Lewis Williams, who was arrested in Cincinnati for escaping from Kentucky. Williams was taken before a judge for an extradition hearing.
And they would have gotten away with it, too, if the leader of the black community in Cincinnati hadn't been a stone-cold badass by the name of Reverend William Troy. No sooner had he heard about the arrest than he was dreaming up a plan so insane that no one would see it coming.
As luck would have it, Troy knew another young man who bore a striking resemblance to Williams. And he also knew that some white people have famously questionable skills in the field of advanced telling black people apart. So when Troy heard that Williams had been seized, he made sure that a crowd of his fellow abolitionists rushed over and packed into the courtroom. Then they simply waited until everyone else was distracted by a dramatic legal argument, at which point Williams and his double quickly switched places and Williams crawled out the door on his hands and knees, hidden behind a wall of hilariously large old-timey women's skirts.
But that's not the end of the story, because he later had to escape from a safe house with another audacious scheme. Read his story and those of four others at Cracked. Link
You know, we don't say this often enough, but I feel so grateful to have the community of readers that we do here at Neatorama. I surf a lot of sites, looking for the best of the web to post here. I see comment sections of all kinds -some that are empty, others that are full of trolls, illiterates, and political nut cases. I see communities that appear to be all children, or all people who just want to fight. Then I come back here to Neatoramanauts who I feel like I know, who have varying intelligent opinions expressed in a matter-of-fact, non-threatening way, or puns, or encouragement, or personal stories, or extra information on a post. That makes me feel good. Thank you all for being a part of Neatorama! Here's a look at the things that happened this past week.
This week's What Is It? game featured a gadget that turned out to be an old-fashioned crimper for can lids. After many serious and no-so-serious guesses, ladybugs finally had the correct answer. The funniest answer was from Randall, who said,
This is a clock unwinder. In Victorian time it was feared that a clock left wound over the new year eve would cause infertility. The first thing that Victorian men would do on the New Years day was get out of bed to wind and set the clock. THe would then go back to bed and test for infertility. As a result of this pratice the clock unwinder was considered a very risque' item great care was taken to keep it stored descreetly. You can still find them in secret cubbyholes under staircases in older homes, covered with dust, biding their time.
That's good for a t-shirt, too! See the answers to all the mystery items of the week at the What Is It? blog.
We had one featured pet over at Lifestyles of the Cute and Cuddly this week: her name is Zodi, and you can see her here snoozing in the car. Check out that sweet mustache! Send a picture of your pet to tips@neatorama.com to get them on as a featured pet, too!
The comment of the week was when humblehern suggested the perfect song to go with the Truck Stuck in the Mud post. The video is there for you to enjoy.
All in all, The Forbidden Island was the standout post of the week. Thanks to everyone who passed the link around!
Have you been to Neatorama's Pinterest boards lately? Not only do we have items from Neatorama categorized for your interests, but also extra links from all over, sorted just so you can find what you're interested in -and you can follow each separately, like a custom-designed feed. Check it out!
If go to the NeatoShop quite a bit, you can save yourself some time when you just want to browse by first checking out the section of what's new, and also the section of what's on sale to get the latest and best bargains. If you haven't been there in a long time, you'll need to look at everything! If you're looking for something specific, the categories on the left should help you narrow the search.
And as always, if you have any suggestions, feedback, kudos, complaints, or trouble with Neatorama, please let us know! It's our goal to bring you the best of what's neat on Neatorama.
Jon Negroni has a theory about Pixar films. They are all part of the same universe, connected to each other. This goes way beyond seeing a character from one movie in the background of another (often as a toy). This is a unified theory he explains in a timeline. The first Pixar event in the timeline is the movie Brave, which explains the origin of animals and inanimate objects that talk. He explains that and then goes on.
Centuries later, the animals from Brave that have been experimented on by the witch have interbred, creating a large-scale population of animals slowly gaining personification and intelligence on their own.
There are two progressions: the progression of the animals and the progression of artificial intelligence. The events of the following movies set up a power struggle between humans, animals, and machines. The stage for all-out war in regards to animals is set by Ratatouille, Finding Nemo, and Up, in that order. Notice I left out A Bug’s Life, but I’ll explain why later.
The way he connects each Pixar film, from Cars to Up! to Monsters, Inc. will blow your mind …but not as much as how the end connects to the beginning. Read the whole theory at Negroni's blog. Link -via Geekosystem
Boston Dynamics unveils ATLAS, the latest incarnation of a humanoid robot they are building for DARPA. Atlas is the next step beyond PETMAN, complete with a Terminator physique, a Robocop walk, and Johnny Five's eyes. We can only hope that will be programmed with Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. -via Geeks Are Sexy
With Pacific Rim hitting theaters this weekend, it's time to revisit movie robots in all their glory. From the Maschinen-Mensch in the 1927 film Metropolis through Star Wars, The Terminator, and Wall-E, see video clips of the different ways robots have been presented in film. Link
Pay attention; this one is complicated. Two guys in a Lexus in Craighall, South Africa, witnessed a BMW hitting a Peugot in a hit-and-run and then followed the perpetrator. When the two cars stopped, the Lexus passenger got out to take pictures for evidence. Three men got out of the BMW. One of them jumped into the Lexus and pointed a gun at the driver. The Lexus driver hit the gas pedal and backed the car swiftly into a wall. The wall collapsed, and thousands of enraged bees swarmed from their hive behind the wall and into the Lexus.
Resident Sophie Sigrist said that she had heard the crash and from her property was able to see the suspects running up the road while pulling off their clothing, likely due to the bees. Sigrist's husband told the police the cost of the damage to the wall could be as much as R100 000. The damage to the Peugeot was an estimated R50 000. The Lexus was reportedly a write-off.
The police report indicated that the BMW had been hijacked in Edenvale in May. The licence was false and two extra licence plates were found in the car.
Emergency services responded and treated the two men from the Lexus for bee stings. The three men from the BMW are still at large. Link -via Fortean Times
Arizona Public Service Co. will file a request today with the Arizona Corporation Commission to add a surcharge to customers who generate their own electricity with solar panels. The power company's proposal has two possible formulas to use for the extra charge, which are estimated to add between $50 to more than $100 to a solar customer's monthly bill. The reason is to offset the costs of maintaining the power grid.
APS officials said solar customers are not paying enough for the services they get from the power grid, which enables them to get electricity at night when solar panels don’t generate power and balance their household energy needs during the day when their solar-panel output and home demand don’t match up.
The change would only affect new solar customers, not those that already have solar on their homes, and would significantly reduce the savings associated with generating power using rooftop systems.
On the one hand, maintaining the power grid is a necessary service. But then you look at the details of the power company's reasoning. The system in place now allows solar customers who generate more electricity than they need to send electricity to the power company, which pays for it in kind, by crediting customers on their electric bills. For each kilowatt hour a solar customer sends to the grid, they are discounted one kilowatt hour from their bill. Therefore, generating extra power during the daylight hours helps to pay for a household's use of power at night.
APS charges its customers between about 9 cents to 17 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity, with prices increasing the more electricity a customer uses. Solar customers tend to be more affluent, with larger homes that use more electricity, so the average price they pay for a kilowatt-hour is about 15.5 cents, APS officials said. That means that when they get a credit for a kilowatt-hour of electricity from solar, the credit is worth about 15.5 cents.
APS officials said it is unfair to pay those customers a 15.5-cent credit when the utility could contract to buy solar power for 8 to 9 cents per kilowatt-hour from large power plants.
So the more they charge a customer, the higher the reimbursement rate, and that's not fair? The idea behind charging more for higher-use customers is already solved for solar users, because they take less power from the grid. Isn't that what the graduated pricing is supposed to encourage? What do you think? Read more about the case at AZ Central. Link -via Simply Left Behind
Domenico Codispoti was arrested for petty theft and drug charges in Milan, Italy, and was sentenced to two years of house arrest in 2006. But Codispoti is homeless, so the court did the best they could to carry out the sentence. Each night, Codispoti must be at the sidewalk at number 22 via Pisani, in his normal sleeping place by 9PM. He must stay in that spot until 7AM. Police patrols come by to make sure he is in his spot.
“I am a special person under surveillance,” he says with a sad smile. How could you blame him? The rules of the game leave no margin: if he moves away from his slice of pavement, he might end up in handcuffs again. It's happened before.
"One evening, a couple of years ago, I went to the other side of the road to pee," he recalls. The patrolling officers busted him, saying he was trying to escape. After a plea bargain they sentenced him to two additional years.
As it stands, Codispoti's sentence will be up in 2014. Unless he crosses the street again. Link -via Arbroath
