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]

The show was trying to figure out how fast a cannonball could travel, when it misfired and shot hundreds of feet in the air, eventually going through someone’s home, hitting another roof and finally entering a minivan and hitting the dashboard.

When it hit the first home, it entered through the front door and bounced around, heading to the second floor before leaving through a back bedroom wall.

“This cannonball was supposed to go through several barrels of water and through a cinder block, and then ultimately into the side of the hill,” according to J.D. Nelson of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Jj-CErr0VOY

The team was at the Camp Parks Military Firing Reservation as usual and they must have fired this thing with enormous power to do so much devastation.

[via cbslocal]

The technology is being developed as part of Project Assist, with the ultimate goal of creating robots that will assist quadriplegic people. Knowing this makes no difference to me, and the whole thing is still creepy. In the experiment captured in the video below, the goal was for a robot to transfer a ball from a human arm and through a hoop. The team attached four electrodes into the arms of five slaves rebels test subjects. A Fujitsu humanoid robot then “took over” – i.e. zapped – the subjects’ arms, making the poor fleshbag move his elbow and open his fingers to surrender the ball.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The audience at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) “let out a gasp” when the researchers presented the experiment. That’s already a crowd of robotics experts and enthusiasts. When asked if the procedure was safe or if it could be more comfortable, lead researcher Bruno Vilhena Adorno said, “You get used to it.” Clearly Adorno is a robot.

[via IEEE Spectrum via Engadget]

In the experiment conducted by Arvid Guterstam, Valeria I. Petkova and H. Henrik Ehrsson, participants were asked to put their right arm next to a prosthetic right arm. As you can see in the left half of the picture below, both hands were simultaneously stroked by a brush at similar points. You’d expect that a participant would only feel the brush on his real hand, but what happens is that their brain gets confused. The blanket hides the fact that only the real arm is connected to the participant, so his brain is comfortable enough with treating BOTH hands as part of the body. Most participants responded that they felt the brush on both hands. Awesome.

To further prove the illusion, the scientists then threatened the confused participants by holding a knife over the fake right arm and then doing the same to their actual arm. The stress response for both events were very similar, again proving that the participants thought that the prosthetic was also their arm. But our brains are not that dumb – when the scientists tried placing a prosthetic left arm or a rubber foot next to a participants’ real right arm, the experiment failed.

So what applications could this result have? Ehrsson says that maybe in the future, stroke patients and other people with paralyzed limbs will be able to use prosthetic arms, or even people who have functional arms but could use an extra limb to do their job more effectively. Check out the source links below for more details on the experiment.

[via PLoSone via PhysOrg]

Persinger believes that man’s best way of coping with the fear of death is to imagine something infinite, omnipresent and everlasting, which is quite predictable really considering the problem is that we’re afraid of our finite existence. Persinger further believes that the efforts of our brain’s right temporal lobe to allay our anxiety about death can lead us to have spiritual experiences. So he made a helmet that specifically targets the right temporal lobe, stimulating it with magnetic fields. Here’s the soothing voice of Morgan Freeman with more info, in an excerpt from the Science Channel’s Through The Wormhole:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

As far as I’m concerned, we can interpret Persinger’s experiment in a variety of ways. It could be proof that deities are indeed safety nets, in which case announcing to billions of people that their safety net is illusory would probably lead them to either get depressed, or just create another illusory safety net. Or, it could be that Persinger is partly right – maybe we normally don’t think or dream of such things unless we’re blasted with magnetic fields or take part in rituals, but that could just be a way to help us heighten our senses. Think of it this way: if you enter a darkened room you obviously wouldn’t be able to see what else is inside. But if the room is illuminated, even if it is by artificial means, then you’ll be able to see.

Or it could be that magnetic fields just give a freaky good time.

[via linkfilter]

Scientists put human DNA into genetically-engineered yeast, which in turn produced human protein. The protein was then put in molds to create the artificial cornea, seen above. There’s more info in the video below, but there’s also quite a bit of footage of corneas being sewn onto human eyes. Unless you’re a seasoned doctor, said footage will either be revolting or interesting. You have been warned. Or tempted.

Sharingan! Sorry. Note that this technique, while promising, is still in the testing stage, so don’t take your real corneas for granted. They’re not like teeth that can easily be replaced. Not yet anyway.

[via Reuters]

While this is fairly convincing proof that sexual preference is genetic in mice, the scientists are keen to stress that this doesn’t necessarily mean that the same can be said for humans. Scientists are not sure whether oestrogens have the same effect on the human brain, and Professor Chankyu Park, who headed the experiment, knows that answering that question will prove to be difficult, especially since it’s quite hard to find people willing to become test subjects.

[via The Telegraph]

In order to achieve the third-person effect, they attached a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR camera to a bar behind their test vehicle. The feed from the camera was routed to a 15″ monitor in front of the steering wheel. All of the pickup’s windows were blacked out to prevent cheating. Also, fake Yakuza were there to beat up the drivers en route to the pickup. Why? Why the hell not?

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

So that was quite the fail, but I think the main problem was that the view made the drivers incorrectly delay their steering, plus the fact that steering an actual car takes more time than steering a virtual vehicle. Maybe they should try the top-down view next time, a la the first GTA.

[via Kotaku]

Or can they? Can cows look up? And if so, can they look up for long periods of time? The farmer is now measuring the milk production of the bourgeois cows against the ones who have no TVs. Hit up English Russia for more pics.

[via The Raw Feed]

The Electronics Components pack 1 contains over 200 doodads – batteries, LEDs, resistors, even an X-Acto knife – all you need to perform the first 11 experiments in the book. Or not! Mess with them, put them together, do anything you want with them.

You can pre-order the Electronics Components pack 1 at the Maker Shed, Make’s store, for $100 (USD); check out the product page for a complete list of the included parts. Components pack 2 hasn’t been priced yet, but it’ll probably be cheaper since it contains fewer components. The Electronics Book sells for $35, but you can always seek out other sources of information if you want. Go forth and whip up one of ‘em PS3 wireless visual interfaces for me!

The demonstration had a sender think of either 1 or 0. For some reason the person in the video didn’t directly think of either number; he had to think of moving his left arm for 0, and his right arm for 1. I wonder why. The EEG attached to the sender amplifies his brain signals, which are sent to the receiver via the Internet. The receiver’s brain picks up the 1s and 0s via a set of LEDs that flashed a different pattern depending on the digit sent.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Obviously the demo wasn’t too practical, but if this technology is improved maybe we won’t need monitors in the future; instead data will be sent directly to our brain. Then while you’re b2beeing with your friend, you could mess with his brain and make him slap or pee on himself. Awesome.

[via FreshCreation via gizmag]

The images above are of the first ever mouse that was made to float by the variable gravity simulator. The mouse apparently panicked, so the next mouse to float was sedated, and it “seemed content with floating.” Uhuh. Anyway I don’t know if the pics were shot from above or from below; either way the view’s kind of a letdown because you can’t really see that the little fella is floating. But what’s important is…Variable Gravity Simulator! Man what an awesome combination of words. The point of the device – and the mice – is to study the long term effects of gravity on humans. But I hope that we can build larger and stronger VGSes so us common people can try what these lucky mice are enjoying.

[LiveScience via Neatorama]

Also known as “The Crown Joule of Laser Science” (I’m not kidding, check out their website if you want proof), the NIF’s laser can deliver up to 2 million joules of ultraviolet energy. It can heat a packet of hydrogen “smaller than a match head” to temperatures of up to 100 million degrees and subject it to 100 billion times the normal atmospheric pressure at the same time. So what’s the point of creating such a powerful device? Mainly for nuclear science -  scientists hope that they will gain a better understanding of the physics of nuclear weapons with the NIF, and maybe even discover the trick to harvesting energy from nuclear fusion.

Check out the full article at Neatorama for more interesting trivia.

[image via NIF gallery]

The scientists’ next goal is to get the Einstein robot to socialize, and eventually robot tormentors tutors.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Marian Bartlett, a facial recognition expert who was a part of the experiment, said that the aim is to use robots to conduct one-on-one tutoring, which she says can improve learning “by as much as two standard deviations.” Sounds like they want our kids to go insane.

[via Wired]

Apparently the cells on the stumps of a salamander “only” need to revert to a “less mature” state instead of a day 1 embryonic state to differentiate and turn into the cells that will make up the new limb. Dr. Elly Tanaka, one of the biologists behind the study, said that this bodes well for us, because it means that tissue regeneration is much more probable than previously thought. But this is future-future tech, and further studies are needed before any human tests will be performed. I recommend that Dr. Tanaka and her colleagues read this document, published in 1963, so that we may avoid having to deal with the likes of this:

*shivers* Dr. Tanaka, please conduct research on radioactive spiders as well. It’ll be fun I promise.

[via Wired via Neatorama]

The experiment was conducted by dermatologist Emi Nishimura in 2004. She exposed mice (their hair also grays with age) to genotoxic stressors – things that can damage our DNA – such as  chemotherapy drugs and x-rays. The hair of the mice turned gray, and as Nishimura said, “the stressed mice’s gray hairs and the cell populations in their follicles were indistinguishable from those of elderly mice, suggesting that genotoxic stress might drive natural graying as well.”

So what does all of this mean? Oncologist David Fisher says that while it’s very strong evidence that the things we encounter everyday – radiation from the sun, household chemicals, perhaps even the medicine we take – can all damage us at a genetic level, the experiment doesn’t prove that emotional stress can damage our DNA or induce premature maturation of our cells.

More importantly, the experiment shows that to some extent our body is capable of protecting itself from DNA-damaged cells by accelerating their aging. Fisher thinks that the experiment is a good starting point to find ways for our body to do the same to cancer cells – which are also DNA-damaged cells.

[via Science]

Buss and his team dropped ACE outside of their university and instructed it to go to the Marienplatz, which is 1.5 kilometers (0.93 mi) away from the school. ACE’s problem? It didn’t know how to get there, and it had no digital map or GPS. So ACE had to ask the people it came across for directions.

ACE can detect nearby humans using cameras as well as motion- and posture detecting software. ACE also has a touchscreen for a head, and another screen with an animated mouth. Once it finds a human, ACE calls out using its built-in speaker and asks the person to touch its screen if he’s willing to help. ACE will then ask the good Samaritan to point its body in the right direction. ACE will then be on its way, but not before saying “thank you” to the fleshy construct who helped it.

After 5 hours, ACE reached its destination. In its defense, Buss’ team said that ACE became too popular for his own good, and was slowed down when it crossed a busy pedestrian zone, where 21 passersby stopped to talk to the defenseless robot. As expected, ACE also received wrong directions, but fortunately it only happened once. While ACE still needs to be equipped with a bullshit detector, roboticist Paul Newman of the University of Oxford in the UK was impressed by the German experiment, specially because the robot adapts to how humans process and share information instead of the other way around.

[via NewScientist]

The machine uses a pressurized saline solution to emulate blood flow. It can also be used to film the interior of the pumping heart, a welcome feature for researchers working on tools and technologies for repairing heart valves. The inventors hope that the dynamic heart system will lead to significant reduction in costs for experiments, since it allows scientists to refine their designs and ideas before moving on to expensive live tests. According to Richards, “It costs approximately $25 to run an experiment on the machine, whereas a similar experiment using a live animal costs approximately $2,500.”

[via Inventor Spot]

Seriously though, computers waste a lot of energy while performing such tedious tasks. But fear not, Mother Earth, a bunch of geeks are working on an energy saving device that will maintain a computer’s essential functions while consuming as low as 10% of the power normally used by a regular PC.

Computer scientists at the University of California in San Diego and  *gasp* Microsoft Research have come up with the Somniloquy, a USB dongle that is basically a barebones PC, complete with an OS, flash memory, and network connectivity. The idea behind Somniloquy is simple: if your computer has to perform nothing but a single time-consuming task – downloading all episodes of Top Gear for example – Somniloquy will take over while your computer goes to sleep: “Somniloquy essentially takes over as the computer’s presence on the network while the actual PC is asleep by operating at the computers’ network interface. In effect, it impersonates the sleeping PC to other hosts on the network.”

What’s more, Somniloquy can wake up the “main” computer if needed. For example, if its flash memory gets filled up, it can wake up the main computer and transfer its files, and then tell the big guy to go to sleep again. The people behind the device hope to shrink it further so that it can be installed into a network card, and hopefully into all computers.

[via apc via GetUSB]

Fortunately, you bought a Fruit Powered Clock for $18 US from Urban Outfitters a couple of months ago. You scream to the vendors “TOSS ME A FRUIT! ANY FRUIT WILL DO! THERE’S NO TIME TO EXPLAIN!”

The MacGyver theme starts playing, people are inspired and start tossing all kinds of fruits while egging you on – “You can do it!” “I hate guns too!” “Swiss Army Knife!” “Duct Tape!” – but they’re tossing too many fruits at you that you can’t see the road anymore so you accidentally run over a vendor. Also, you remember that the meeting’s at your house. Next week.

[via Like Cool]