NOTCOT.ORG. Voronoi Bookshelf Prototype, an experiment in interactive, generative design | Hero Design. Posted by Hero on Mar 22, 2012 in Configurable Design, Creative Code, Custom Design, Generative Design, Mass Customization What is this? This is a prototype. An experiment in generative, collaborative design. The prototype consists of two parts: a generator and an object. The generator is a piece of software that designs the object. So what is generative, collaborative design? When think of a design, we typically imagine marks on paper (or a screen) specifying what the object is. The natural next step is to put the software managing the generation and interaction on the Internet. What were your intention/goals for this project? My primary goals in this project were more technical than creative.
My goal was to write a program with the following features: My secondary goal was to create a Voronoi bookshelf for my own home. My secret hope was that in this first round, I’d be able to develop a program/experience that anyone could use easily and purchase online. It’s likely. In three ways. Origin of Modern Cows Traced to Single Herd | Wired Science. By Duncan Geere, Wired UK A genetic study of cattle has claimed that all modern domesticated bovines are descended from a single herd of wild ox, which lived 10,500 years ago. [partner id="wireduk"]A team of geneticists from the National Museum of Natural History in France, the University of Mainz in Germany, and UCL in the UK excavated the bones of domestic cattle on archaeological sites in Iran, and then compared those to modern cows. They looked at how differences in DNA sequences could have arisen under different population history scenarios, modeled in computer simulations.
The team found that the differences that show up between the two populations could only have arisen if a relatively small number of animals — approximately 80 — had been domesticated from a now-extinct species of wild ox, known as aurochs, which roamed across Europe and Asia. The process of collecting the data was tricky. The research has implications for the study of the history of domestication. From Crowdfunded to Financially Sustainable? The Post-Kickstarter Marketplace - Business. Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites can be the perfect platforms to get feedback about a project, build a community around an idea, and, of course, pull in initial cash to get an effort off the ground.
But once the campaign is over and the project is funded, makers often see a decline in interaction on their websites and a slacking off of sales. At least, that's what happened to Matthew McLachlan after his SoundJaw, a sound amplifier that clips onto the iPad, received its Kickstarter funding. "He was going full throttle with it," says Matthew's brother Mark. "But he noticed that when all the excitement wore down after [the Kickstarter] ended, his sales started to fluctuate. " The two decided to work together on building a website positioned as "the go-to place–for 'I saw this project on Kickstarter. It's ended now. Where can I find it? '" Tiny Lightbulb's success is bound to the success of its sellers, Mark says, and the company is running Google ads to promote certain products.
A Mouse Made Just For You Will Be Your Medical Avatar | Gizmodo UK. When you check in to a hospital in the future, along with checking your vitals and ordering a blood panel, your doctors may assign you a personal mouse. The immune-deficient creature will receive a transplant of your tissue, which will allow it to mimic your immune system, or maybe your specific type of cancer.
Then doctors can try out a cocktail of drugs or gene therapies to see what might work on you. Two teams of researchers have been working on personalized mouse models, or mouse avatars, that can serve as test beds for doctors looking for the right treatments. Physicians could try different combinations of drugs to see what works best, and if they make some mistakes, it's OK because it's a mouse, not a human patient.
In one recent study, Australian researchers were working with a pancreatic cancer patient, trying to determine genetic mutations that could make his cancer susceptible to certain drugs, reports Nature News. [Nature, Columbia University Medical Center] The Rise and Fall of Online Empires. Photos of an Elite Russian Military School for Young Girls. Toril Johannessen : Words And Years. Seeking Ways to Make Computer Passwords Unnecessary. That’s a vision that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the Defense Department, wants to turn into a reality.
It will distribute research funds to develop software that determines, just by the way you type, that you are indeed the person you say you are. Darpa’s purpose is to sponsor “revolutionary, high-payoff research” for military use. But technology developed under Darpa’s auspices — the Internet itself being only one among many achievements traceable to its initiatives— eventually tends to find its way into the civilian world.
Passwords like “6tFcVbNh^TfCvBn” meet the Defense Department’s definition of “strong,” says Richard Guidorizzi, a program manager at Darpa. Mr. “What I’d like to do,” Mr. No biometric sensors, like thumbprint or iris scanners, would be used. Academic experts are trying several approaches to determine users’ identities solely through their computer behavior. Charles C. Research overseen by Salvatore J. ‘Hi! I’m a Nutria’ Bubble Machine. These are the tools and materials that I used for my bubble machine. Yours will differ greatly depending on what you have available. This is a great project to do with scraps, and odds and ends all hacked together.
It doesn't have to look amazing to be a lot of fun, it just has to work. To make it easier for others to reproduce this, I've done away with my normal format of exactly what to use and instead broken it down into the five main components the machine's made from. The 5 steps after this talk about what alternatives you could use and what each has to do to make a great bubble machine. Trough: To hold the bubble solution.
Bubble Ring: A ring of holes that will spin slowly through the trough picking up the bubble solution. Motion: A slowly moving motor to spin the bubble ring. Blower: Something with a bit of puff. Power: A power source or two for the blower and spinner. You'll also need nuts, bolts, hot glue or superglue to hold everything together. The Free Universal Construction Kit. Ever wanted to connect your Legos and Tinkertoys together? Now you can — and much more. Announcing the Free Universal Construction Kit: a set of adapters for complete interoperability between 10 popular construction toys. Fig. 1. The Free Universal Construction Kit. Overview Video by Riley Harmon for F.A.T.
F.A.T. The Free Universal Construction Kit offers adapters between Lego, Duplo, Fischertechnik, Gears! Motivation Our kids are already doing it! Opening doors to new creative worlds is one major reason we created the Free Universal Construction Kit. The Kit offers a “best of all worlds” approach to play and learning that combines the advantages of each toy system.
Finally, in producing the Free Universal Construction Kit, we hope to demonstrate a model of reverse engineering as a civic activity: a creative process in which anyone can develop the necessary pieces to bridge the limitations presented by mass-produced commercial artifacts. Download Figure 2. We (F.A.T. Implementation. Must-listen radio: "Nuclear Power After Fukushima," documentary from BURN: An Energy Journal. Rob Mulholland: Vestige Installation « 19 Mar Click to enlarge Scottish sculptor Rob Mulholland has created a ghostly art installation in the woodland walk at the David Marshall Lodge in Scotland titled Vestige. Originally intended to be temporary, the six mirrored life-size silhouettes (three men and three women) have been so popular that they are now to become a permanent fixture in the previously inhabited woodlands. Mulholland’s idea behind the installation seems twofold: 1) to create a vestige of the people who once occupied the land until following World War I, when they were re-located while forests were planted to generate timber and; 2) to make people ‘reflect’ upon man’s impact on the nature.
The almost imperceptible sculptures camouflaged by their surroundings have an eerie quality that has been compared by many to the predator in the 1980s film of the same name that seamlessly blends into its surroundings. Photos courtesy of the artist and The Daily Mail. via trendhunter. Necessary #053. DrawBraille Phone | Klat Magazine. In tempi di smartphone, gli apparecchi per chi ha qualche disabilità tendono a essere molto semplici, forse anche troppo semplici: con poche funzioni elementari. Shikun San, uno studente della Sheffield Hallam University (Regno Unito), ha progettato uno smartphone appositamente per ciechi, con tastiera e touch screen in Braille.
Oltre alle funzioni base di un telefono, DrawBraille Phone include book reader, e-mail e lettore musicale. La tastiera ha la funzione di scorrimento in due direzioni, per avere tutte le lettere e i caratteri speciali. Una serie di piccoli tasti da un lato permette di sentire il livello della batteria. In the age of the smartphone, devices for those who have some disability tend to be very simple, perhaps too simple: with just a few, elementary functions.
Roberta Mutti. Select. Why We Need Food Trucks in a Recession - News. In our weekly Hustlin' series, we go beyond the pitying articles about recession-era youth and illuminate ways our generation is coping. The last few years may have been a rude awakening, but we're surviving. Here's how. A new proposed bill in California mandates that food trucks be barred from parking within 1,500 feet of public schools. Given the sheer number of schools in California, the law amounts to one of most dramatic food-truck crackdowns in a while, but it's hardly the first. In recent years, food trucks have been battling city and state governments across the country, from Boston to the Twin Cities to my hometown of New York City. The argument against food trucks is that they're stealing the business of more established restaurants and, in the case of California, that they supposedly undermine efforts to feed kids nutritious lunches.
Of course, food trucks have always been a no-brainer for the broke. Neither do the new entrepreneurs. Essentient Wants To Feed The World Without Farmland. It’s not easy to feed a rapidly growing planet, and our appetite for meat and biofuels that take up farmland doesn’t help. If only we could create nutrients at will without arable land, skipping all those intermediate steps of actually growing food and feeding animals. Essentient, a stealth startup based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, thinks it can do just that. The company won’t say much in the way of details, but CEO David Berry has an impressive history.
He is the founder of Joule Unlimited, a company that claims it can create renewable fuel out of CO2, sun, water, and microorganisms (though said renewable fuel is currently unavailable). Berry provides a bit of context for Essentient in the video below, which was recorded at Google’s Solve for X event. Essentient is currently testing a sixth-generation version of its nutrient production system. This isn’t just for the developing world, either; there are plenty of applications in well-fed (but still unhealthy) places like the U.S. 'The Rot Riders' Bike for Compost - Environment. On Sunday afternoons, a handful of trailer-towing bike riders pedal through the neighborhoods of Kirksville, Missouri, stopping at select lawns and porches to collect buckets brimming with food waste.
The unwanted contents are raw material for compost piles, which any green thumb in the community can use to nourish her garden. The environmentally-minded two-wheeler crew called “The Rot Riders” has made weekly rounds since spring 2010, collecting from more than 40 houses and apartments within striking distance of downtown Kirksville. The number of food waste donors is growing fast, and the program is earning more recognition—it finished as the runner-up in GOOD Maker's recent GOOD Citizenship challenge. Crew member Kyle LaVelle says getting involved in Rot Riders is easy—all that's needed is an ice cream bucket or other container to hold the organic waste. “I was initially drawn to the idea of the Rot Riders [as] community action to close the broken nutrient cycle in our soil,” he says.
Magazine > Takanori Aiba. Top image: Bonsia-B © Tokyo Good Idea Development Institute Co. Ltd. Thought you knew bonsai art? That diddy little tree you buy from a garden centre, neglect to tend properly and then witness shrivelling on your window sill, wondering what went wrong? Think again. Lighthouse-A © Tokyo Good Idea Development Institute Co. Hi Takanori. My artistic background began way before I acquired any formal art training. Whilst playing with bonsai and railway models my imagination was weaving tiny stories, and make-believe worlds around the objects; these early experiences expanded what I am capable of as an artist. My mother later trained me in classical methods of textile design and cloth dying and this helped me to cultivate the rich colour sensations which are traditional for Japanese artisans. At 20 I was struggling to find ways to express my artistic vision. Mona Lisa's Smile ©Tokyo Good Idea Development Institute Co.
Your creations are intensely elaborate and intricate. Sex-starved fruit flies turn to drink. 15 March 2012Last updated at 18:32 GMT By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News Male fruit flies that have been rejected by females drink significantly more alcohol than those that have mated freely, scientists say. In an article in Science, researchers suggest that alcohol stimulates the flies' brains as a "reward" in a similar way to sexual conquest. The work points to a brain chemical called neuropeptide F, which seems to be regulated by the flies' behaviour. Human brains have a similar chemical, which may react in a similar way. The connection between alcohol and this chemical, which in humans is known as neuropeptide Y, has already been noted in studies involving hard-drinking mice.
The new work explores the link between such reward-seeking and the study of social interactions, said the lead author of the report Galit Shohat-Ophir, now of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia, US. 'Control system' Robot Begs to be Allowed to Live – Don’t Miss The Impressive “Kara” Video Demo from Quantic Dream. Archetype Futuristic Viral Video to Become Feature Film. Aaron Sims Uses Youtube, Web to Conquer Hollywood. The Crowd-Funding Phenomenon Continues – Comic Raises $1.2M on Kickstarter (+Q&A with Creator Rich Burlew)! Monument to Civilization: Vertical Landfill for Metropolises. Japan's obsession with perfect fruit.