‘Inventing Stuff’ Archives
FOR BACK PAIN: AN INJECTION OF YOUTH
REJUVINATE YOUR BACK Brian Saunders and Tony Freemont (University of Manchester) would inject a new kind of substance into aging spines to restore them to almost their "original" condition. Which we will discuss shortly. But first.. BACKS (According to MISTERScienceAintSoBad) Your spine's an upright column of bones (vertebrae) and disks. The [...]
Shoot! What A Smelly Landfill!
CANONIZING AN ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM Several cities are toying with changing their names to Google to see if that'll land 'em ultrafast Internet. Bejing, the Capital of China isn't one of them. But its good name IS being sullied by big piles of smelly garbage. Bejingers toss out roughly 18,000 tons of garbage each day. It's out of space [...]
A Home Kit For Cancer Detection?
BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH: Do-It-Yourself Medicine TEST YOURSELF FOR CANCER? My dad was SO proud that he was one of the first to drive an automobile. But, you know what? He got to drive a car his entire adult life. The cars got better and better. But he never had to learn how to drive a rocket ship. It never even came up. Now we have ALL [...]
A Phone App That Steals Your Soul?
Phone Apps: A Scary App That Matches Your ID To Your Photo SCUSE ME. DON'T I KNOW YOU FROM FACEBOOK? ShyGuy1 writes: Mister ScienceAintSoBad: I am smart and I am nice. I bet I would be a great boyfriend. If I had a girlfriend. But I'll probably die a male old maid because when I see a girl who has the "right look", I freeze. Instead of [...]
Underwater Communications: A 21st Century Upgrade
HIGH SPEED UNDERWATER WIRELESS "INTERNET" Texting while driving a submarine? The captain should be so lucky. Submarine communication is slow and dorky. If it works at all. Electromagnetic waves get kinda sulky in the ocean; they dissipate too fast to be useful for underwater communications so subs rely on beeps and boops - audio signals [...]
Lasers: Leaving Light Behind
Optics: The Phonon Laser LASERS: AIN'T SEEN NOTHIN' YET I guess you're not impressed by lasers. You've got an $8.95 laser pointer from Job Lot. You had some hair removed by a laser. There's one in your CD player. And they're inside of things that're all over your house. You even use one to drive the cat WACKY. And I wish you wouldn't. SAME [...]
The Scientific Work Of Amy Bishop
"It didn't happen. There's no way ... they are still alive." - Amy Bishop, being taken to jail. THE DARK SIDE Amy Bishop (Assistant Professor Of Biology at the University of Alabama) figured out that her colleagues weren't gonna give her tenure. So she shot them. TOO assertive, we think. They say she also shot and killed her [...]
Slipping A Little? How About A Spare Brain?
Geriatrics: Project COGKNOW. TOUCH SCREEN HELP FOR MILD DEMENTIA Every teenager I know thinks his.her parents are demented. Knows it for a fact. But dementia is real, not just a derisive term for parents who don't "get it". And, when it happens, it's always hard. Out, goes the fierce irascible mind you've known all your life [...]
The Future Of Light
SEMICONDUCTOR TECHNOLOGY: Cheap, bright, and disposable. ORGANIC LIGHT-EMITTING ELECTROCHEMICAL CELLS I've never been a big fan of light coming from walls. Too much pressure on the dust devils. But ACS Nano describes a new kind of light source made from graphene which consists of sheets of ultra efficient [...]
Behaving Robotically
Jobs Jobs Jobs We need more jobs, right? Maybe General Motors and NASA are a little "off message" here. They're creating "Robonaut 2", a humanoid robot worker that any productivity - hungry, greedy corporation would LOVE to get its mitts around. See, workplace robots aren't easily mistaken for somebody you went out with last year. [...]
