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April 27, 2006
Bees Say We're Flying All Wrong
Researchers have discovered the faster a bee flies, the more it lowers its legs? Our own aviation prowess tells us to tuck anything protruding inwards to reduce drag in order to maintain that speed. Mother nature has her reasons and apparently, we've been doing it wrong all along.
Researches tested orchid bees known for their speed. They placed special aromatic oils that attract the bees at the mouth of a wind tunnel. As the bees flew for the scent, the scientists kept increasing the wind speeds. Instead of tucking their hind legs in, the bee's actually extended them further. Interestingly, this forces their head to pitch forward, allowing them to cut thru the air and fly faster.
This technique is similar to how old helicopters used to pitch forward to offset wind drag before flying forward.
Researchers also found the bees extended their legs to increase stability. At such high speeds, its easy to crash or fly upside. You need something to protrude out to increase equilibrium. This is similar to how a figure skater extends their arms in order to stop a fast spin or keep from tipping over.
NOTE: Those bees in the photo really are that color. They are called orchid bees.
Posted by tranism at 1:46 AM | Permalink
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April 14, 2006
Ferrofluid Display
A true liquid display using the science of ferrofluid (micro magnetic particles suspended in a soap like agent) to play a simple game of SNAKE.
The display was created as a student project entitled SNOIL. The developers not only demonstrate snake, but also time keeping, and simple text animations. The display apparently has gyroscopes in it or something to read the slight angle pitches created by the player to direct where the ferrofluid should react.
Ferrofluids are normally used in industrial applications so it's damn cool to see it used like this.
Check out this video.
via Core77
Posted by tranism at 1:36 AM | Permalink
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April 10, 2006
MUSH ROVER MUSH!
Strange, it doesn't look like any rovers I know. All the rovers I know are four legged, tail wagging doggies. No, this rover has more in common with distant cousins that are currently "roving" around Mar's surface.
Meet Cool Robot; a solar powered prototype capable of navigating the arctic wastes while towing massive loads behind it. The bot can move more equipment in less time than a standard pack of dogs.
On the flip side, I've always felt the image of dogs pulling humans across vast snow flats was beautiful. Of course using bots as a replacement is no detriment. I know the conditions are extremely dangerous out there for these nomadic explorers and anything to lessen the likely hood of catastrophes is a step in the right direction. I say, bring on the rovers!
more pictures after the jump
via BBC
Posted by tranism at 2:48 AM | Permalink
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April 3, 2006
How Much is That Dragon in the Window?
Mythological creatures here they come! Rogue geneticist and business man GeneDupe is at it again. He believes that one day, we all could have dragons as pets - or any creature we wanted; myth or self-invented. The vehicle to deliver this "miracle"? Virtual cell biology.
Biology has a lot in common with computing since both are about processing information. The general difference is one is biochemical and the other is electronic. His theories about virtual cell biology could allow us to accurately model a cell in every biochemical detail. All animals use the same basic building blocks - mitochondria for energy processing, endoplasmic reticulum for making proteins, and golgi body for protein assembly.
By building an electronic version of these building blocks, GeneDupe's scientists can customize results so that it belongs to a particular species by loading it with a virtual copy of that animal's genome. Since it's all virtual, the whole growth process is accelerated to form an adult.
Here comes the fantastic part; by selectively "breeding" virtual models of real animals (lets say a lizard) and carefully combining it with other animals and then cross breading it's offspring to keep only the wanted mutations - we could end up with a real virtual dragon.
The final step is to make it all happen for real. That means taking a cell, removing it's nucleus and replacing it with a customized one, then let nature do the rest.
Kinda scary but kinda cool since I would LOVE to have me a little pet dragon, but I take it all with a grain of salt. After all, this is the same guy that claimed he could make goldfish with real gold skin cells. He was actually successful. Unfortunately gold is one of the heavier elements and the poor goldfish just sank straight to the bottom.
via Economist
NOTE: If you didn't know, this is just an April Fool's Joke. Yes pretty late but I had a cute picture of a dragon and this article went great with it.
Posted by tranism at 3:24 PM | Permalink
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