The Ecobot-III does just that, plus it can poop itself. So, that’s more poop for the planet. Ecobot-I had an E. Coli engine that ran on refined sugar and Ecobot-II had sludge microbe engine that ate stuff like dead flies and prawn shells. The only problem was that they could not eject waste. They just kept cramming in new batteries until there was no room. You might say they became the world’s first constipated robots.

This third version can collect its own food and water and poop in a litter tray, which should prolong it’s life, but I guess someone has to change that tray now and again like changing a diaper. Ecobot is being funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who, coincidentally have also invested in the creation of some shiny new toilets.

[via Scientific American via Geekosystem]

An 83-year-old woman needed a new lower jawbone last year for transplant and instead of a traditional implant, the medical team used a 3D printed jawbone manufactured by LayerWise. The transplant was carried out in the Netherlands last June and it has just now been announced. The implant was printed out of a titanium powder using a laser, layer-by-layer until the finished product was completed. The implant is a complicated part with articulated joints and cavities to provoke muscle attachment along with grooves to direct the regrowth of nerves and veins.

According to the team, it took 33 layers of titanium melted using the laser for 1 mm of height. That means that the finished jawbone had many thousands of laser passes. One of the interesting parts of the 3D printed jawbone is that it has a special double bridge that was attached and false teeth screwed in the that dental bridge. Also interesting is that the finished titanium jawbone weighs 107g, which is about one-third heavier than the replaced bone.

[via BBC]

This intricate 3D model was done by Visual Science and it’s based on X-ray analysis and data that was published in the last twenty years. Some of the protein structures were predicted using computer modeling techniques.

This new model is 10 times more complex than the last one they did of HIV, which is kind of astounding. Where can I print mine?

[via designyoutrust]

The video was released this week but was actually filmed back in January. It begins in an impact basin known as Mare Orientale. That impact basin is massive at 560 miles wide. To capture the footage, NASA used one of the Grail spacecraft and the camera it’s equipped with called the MoonKAM.

The coolest thing about that camera is that NASA will allow students on earth to snap pictures the lunar surface as part of a project for education. MoonKAM is the first camera ever sent on a NASA probe that is completely dedicated to educational use. Camera control will be given to Middle School students starting in March.

You can check out the video above ore on the official NASA page here.

The process of using roaches to create power has something to do with an enzyme roaches have that can be turned into a cockroach biofuel cell. The enzyme from the roach is able to break down sugars in the digestive tract into simpler sugars called monosaccharides. A second enzyme is introduced that oxidizes the monosaccharides and results in the release of electrons or creation of power.

So far, the system only produces around 100 µW of power, which admittedly isn’t much. Who knows what be done with that little bit of power in the future, perhaps something along the lines of little remote-control roaches to invade roach strongholds and disperse bug killer. According to the researchers, hailing from Case Western Reserve University, the little bugs aren’t harmed in any way. The electronics that are used to create power can be removed from the insects with no lasting effects.

[via medGadget via OhGizmo!]

The deep-sea salvage ship discovered the site while towing a side looking sonar beneath the ship. The sonar discovered first a 400m long cylinder shaped object that was about 60m in diameter. A subsequent pass also discovered a disc-shaped object 200m away from the original discovery. The ship’s captain and crew are saying that they aren’t sure exactly what this is. Some are calling the discovery a UFO, and others are saying it’s nothing but natural occurring formations on the ocean floor.

The captain of the ship says he’s been in deep-sea salvage for many years, and has never come across anything like this. He notes that both of the objects are too large to be shipwrecks and are too large to the objects the might have fallen off ships on the surface of the Baltic. What we do know is that a casual exploration of the site is out of the question because of the costs involved. No one is willing to fund a full investigation until more details are discovered. What do you think is sitting on the bottom of the Baltic Sea? Maybe they’ve discovered Atlantis. Oh, and where’s James Cameron when you need him?

[via JDJournal]

The coolest of the projects that received grant money is one proposed by a team of scientists at Boston University that want to figure out if you can grow brown fat cells and then inject them into the human body as a way to boost metabolism and burn fat, leading to weight loss. The human body has both brown adipose tissue and white adipose tissue. The white fat cells make people obese, yet the brown fat cells help burn calories.

In fact, a recent study showed that a pockets of brown fat cells can burn as much as 250 calories in a three-hour time span. Those brown fat cells can even steal energy from white fat cells, further stunting obesity. The researchers hope to develop a method of growing those brown fat cells and injecting them into the body with the goal of helping overweight soldiers lose weight. You can bet that if the team is successful, this will also be highly profitable in the private sector with obese people looking for a way to lose weight.

[via Wired: Danger Room]

Right now the single biggest space hazard in orbit are the thousands of pieces of debris left over after the Chinese conducted an anti-satellite test with a missile back in 2007. Early Sunday morning this past weekend, mission controllers in Russia had to make a change in the orbital altitude of the ISS to avoid a chunk of that Chinese space debris that was coming perilously close to the ISS.

Mission controllers fired up the engines on the Russian Zvezda service module and over 64 seconds raised the orbit of the ISS by 1.7 km. The ISS is now orbiting at an altitude of 391.6 km above the surface of the Earth. The increased orbital distance was enough to get the ISS away from the chunk of space debris. It seems like we need to start coming up with a good plan to clean up all the junk orbiting the Earth.

[via SpaceDaily]

According to the Russian, the object is an organism with the body of a scorpion or a crab, a disc shape and a back flap that changed position from one shot to the next the probe took. Life on Venus is hard for most people to imagine, since the surface of the planet can reach temps of 464°C, and the gravity is nine times that of Earth.

A scientist that works with the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University doesn’t believe the Russian is seeing what he thinks. According to Jonathon Hill, who processes images NASA takes of Mars, what Prof. Ksanfomaliti sees is a piece of mechanical equipment which broke off on landing. He also thinks that the reason it looks like it changed positions is that the images were taken by two different cameras on the craft.

Hill also says that the same object shows up in photos taken by another probe called Venera 14 that landed nearby. Venera 14 and Venera 13 are identical, and likely both dropped the same bit of debris on the ground. What do you think from the blurry images here? I can certainly see something you might think are legs, but the mechanical equipment theory seems much more logical.

[via Telegraph]

As he shows in his video, as soon as you stretch the rubber band on a slingshot, the band heats up, which gives the slingshot more firing power. Right away the band cools and as the heat leaves, the power declines too. The problem is if you want to have your slingshot loaded and ready to fire you end up losing power. The answer to the problem of losing that power is to apply heat.

Sprave took a heating element and encapsulated it and the rubber bands in an enclosure that traps the heat and keeps the bands nice and warm for firing. This way when he stretches the bands, he can heat them up for maximum power. The heater is powered by a rechargeable battery and appears to heat quickly. He’s also included an interior/exterior thermometer for optimizing the temperature.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if Joerg heated up the rubber bands on some of his more destructive creations like the circular saw slingshot or the slingshot cannon.

Demonstrated in the video below – albeit on a very small fire – their system manages to snuff out a flame by destabilizing the fire by playing with electromagnetism and acoustics. While the DARPA program that drove the experiment aims to extinguish fires instantly, this technique does take a few seconds to kill these small methane flames.

It’s unclear exactly how it works, and there’s no evidence that they could scale it up to put out larger fires with the same technique. Still, it’s kind of magical how they just wave that little wand over the flames, and it puts them out for good.

[DARPA via Geekosystem]

STEREO-B is one of a pair of spacecraft near the sun that watch the inner solar system and provide images and video. NASA has decided to step up and debunk the rumor on the cover-up and existence of this particular UFO. According to space agency, in the video you can see the bright planet Venus come into view and the “UFO” moves along with Venus.

The triangular shaped “UFO” is nothing but reflected light from inside the telescope on the spacecraft. NASA says that this sort of triangular pattern is not uncommon and that sometimes the reflections manifest as circles too. In other words, calm down UFO nuts. NASA said, “The answer lies on the exact opposite side of the image,” the scientists wrote. “At the same time as this strange-looking feature starts being visible, the very bright planet Venus enters the [telescopic camera's] field-of-view from the lower left.”

“This is not a coincidence. The strange-looking geometrical ‘object’ is actually an internal reflection of the planet Venus within the telescope optics. This effect has been seen many times before.”

[via CSMonitor]

Well, the New York Police Department’s plan for mobile weapon scanners sort of remind me of that, but they are, of course, completely different.

The NYPD is developing a small, portable version of the full body scanners – similar to those that you have to go through in the airport, but using infrared sensors. These devices would enable officers to determine if someone is carrying or concealing a weapon under his or her clothes, without having to leave the police car or van. The device would be able to differentiate between the suspect’s body and any metal objects they are carrying.

The initiative was announced this week by NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. So far, Kelly reports they have already been able to produce a prototype scanner in conjunction with the Department of Defense, although it’s still pretty limited: it only has a range of three to four feet. Kelly remains confident though, that they can push this up to eighty feet with continued work on the project.

[via Gothamist via Dvice]

Tests have yielded a 98% percent recognition success rate. The data gets sent back to a laptop where it is aggregated into a reading of your specific butt. Then it can be used as the “key” to keep others from using your car.

It might also alert you to the fact that you are gaining weight if it one day refuses to turn on the car. That will teach you to eat the entire bag of chips.

[via TechCrunch via Geekosysytem]

If doctors at the offices around town had tricorders like Spock and the rest of the Enterprise crew, I might go. That is assuming it’s capable of diagnosing any issues in the intestinal tract without some sort of nasty invasive procedure. Then they could just do that scan thing and not have to poke or prod. Qualcomm wants some tricorder action too and it has teamed up with the X Prize people to offer a cool $10 million to the smart folks that can invent one. It’s going to be tough to do though. Here’s a description of the criteria for the tricorder:

“As envisioned for this competition, the device will be a tool capable of capturing key health metrics and diagnosing a set of 15 diseases. Metrics for health could include such elements as blood pressure, respiratory rate, and temperature. Ultimately, this tool will collect large volumes of data from ongoing measurement of health states through a combination of wireless sensors, imaging technologies, and portable, non-invasive laboratory replacements.”

Apparently, the way to make something like this work with today’s tech is by measuring metabolites. The catch is that the hardware needed to measure metabolites is inside a chunk of lab equipment about as large as a Mini Cooper. It looks like I’ll be avoiding the doctor for a few more years to come.

[via BBC]

The 13-ton probe failed to get into space far enough to continue its journey and will now fall back to Earth sometime this coming weekend. The swath of land that the remnant satellite parts could fall onto include some of the most populous cities on Earth. The Russian space agency director Vladimir Popovkin has now hinted that some sort of weapon might have caused the satellite to fail.

Previously, a retired commander that was in charge of a missile early warning station said that strong radar signals from Alaska could have damaged the spacecraft. Russia didn’t accuse the US or any other countries of attacking its satellites. However, the insinuation was there. Popovkin said, “We don’t want to accuse anybody, but there are very powerful devices that can influence spacecraft now. The possibility they were used cannot be ruled out.”

[via NYTimes]

The improvements include dual extruders and the interface controller. Each MakerBot Replicator now comes with an LCD and video-game-style control pad. The LCD screen allows you to view build statistics and monitor information as well as full control of the machine without the use of plugging in a computer. There’s an SD card slot and you can load models directly. It’s also larger than the original, allowing you to output bigger models (up to 9″ x 6″ x 6″ – about the size of a loaf of bread).

The whole thing is sold as a complete product, not a kit, allowing people who are less technologically savvy to get going right away. The MakerBot Replicator sells for $1,749 for the single extruder model and $1,999 for the dual extruder (for 2-color printing) over at the MakerBot store. They expect to start shipping in about six weeks.

[via Make:]

Generally, the smaller the wires in a semiconductor get, the more resistance they have making them less efficient. The team of researchers from the University of New South Wales has discovered a way to make tiny wires that have extremely low resistance. The tiny wires are made by stringing together individual atoms on silicon making wires as tiny as four atoms wide. For those of you counting, four atoms measure about 1.5 nanometers.

The team prepared each wire by lithographically writing lines onto a silicon sample with microscopy techniques and then depositing phosphorus along the line. The closely packed phosphorus atoms were then encase in silicon and resistivity stayed down, at least at low temperatures. The new wires have the carrying capacity of copper and could allow microchips to continue the shrink and meet Moore’s law ever-increasing demands.

[via Scientific American]

I doubt we’ll ever reach that stage, but the point is, time is valuable. Time is money. And time is something we all probably don’t have enough of.

So for the guys, there’s the e-Urinal. This thing will speed you up by checking your urinary health as you pee. The touchscreen fires up as you go, and you can just browse through the different menu and options by tapping (preferably after washing your hands.) So maybe it might also be a good idea to stick a mini sink in there somewhere.

The e-Urinal concept would measure the PH, SG, URO, BLO, WBC, PRO, GLI, BIL, & KET in your pee. That’s a whole lot of stuff, but basically, those are measures of your sugar levels, PH, and red/white blood cell count, among others. It could also store your history so you could check up on your trends over time (assuming you can remember which urinal you used.)

The e-Urinal was designed by Royce Zhang. It seems pretty cool, though it would be much cooler if he also came up with a female version. Hmmm.

[via Yanko Design]

But can you imagine wearing the same pair, five days a week, for three months without washing them?

Apparently, it’s okay. And if you already do, then you’re not alone. Researchers in Australia had 30 willing volunteers wear a pair of denims for the time indicated above without allowing them to wash it or have it washed during that time period. They were then conducted to a smell test, and surprisingly, they didn’t really smell that bad.

Melbourne University student Tullia Jack, who was behind the whole experiment, said: “You really don’t need to wash clothes as often as you think. Stains come and go, they just wear off.” And although some of the jeans had stains (motor oil, tuna, among others), they didn’t present smells that were “socially challenging.”

Jack believes her study, done for her Masters thesis, could have a huge impact on the environment. Just think how many liters of water can be saved, if we all pitched in and just washed our jeans once every three months. (Although I think I probably wouldn’t be comfortable going past a whole month without washing them… But we’ll see!)

[via Daily Mail]