allmagic.com Wasps take shelter in zombie ladybugs If a ladybug's life were a horror film, this is how it would start: Scary string music. A close-up of the green-eyed face of a wasp. The sudden pierce of a stinger. Next, an establishing shot of our ladybug hero, sitting placidly on a leaf. This sordid tale isn't fiction for many ladybugs that fall victim to the parasitical wasp Dinocampus coccinellae. The research, published today (June 21) in the journal Biology Letters, finds that this protection comes at a cost: Larva that cocoon themselves to a living ladybug, as opposed to a dead one or to none at all, can expect fewer eggs of their own when they emerge as wasps. Ladybug horror The wasps' parasitical ways have been long noticed, and they aren't unique in the insect world. Nor is mind control very extraordinary for parasites. To test the idea, the researchers reared more than 4,000 ladybugs in the lab and let wasps lay their eggs in the unfortunate insects. Ladybug bodyguard Related on LiveScience:
3 MAN CHESS variant in the round mental_floss Blog » 8 Secrets From the Wonderful World of Disney 1. There Are Human Remains in the Haunted Mansion The Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland is one of the scariest places in the park, but not for the reasons you’d expect. In his 1994 book Mouse Tales , former Disney employee David Koenig tells the story of a tourist group that requested a little extra time on the ride so they could hold a quick memorial for a 7-year-old boy. This wasn’t an isolated incident. 2. Each night at Disneyland, after the sunburned families and exhausted cast members have made their way home, the park fills up again—this time, with hundreds of feral cats. Park officials love the felines because they help control the mouse population. Today, there are plenty of benefits to being a Disney-employed mouser. 3. Just before the final, five-story drop on Splash Mountain, Disney cameras take a snapshot of the riders to catch their facial expressions. 4. Even though Walt Disney had a mustache himself, he wanted his employees clean-shaven. 5. So, that’s what Florida did. 6.
LiquidRoam RoamBoards ready for sale Motorized one-, two- and three-wheeled personal transport innovations like the Solowheel and the cheap and cheerful Solaron certainly look like a fun way to get around, but if it's four-wheeled action you're looking for then the new RoamBoard is definitely worth a look. The result of two years of designing, building, testing and tweaking, this stand up transportation solution brings together technologies seen in the electric skateboard, bicycle, snowboard, and automotive industries and merges them into a land-surfing motorized skateboard. View all The RoamBoard story began with a young man's request to his father to build him a motorized caster board. Impressed by the maneuverability of the family's Wave Board, Rob Green noted that the device utilized different steering methods for high speed and low speed control - just like a bicycle. Riders would lean into corners to turn at speed or manipulate the steering mechanism during slower movement for impressively tight turning circles.
Why a $25 PC? Because its the price of a textbook – Computer Chips &... There is growing interest surrounding the Raspberry Pi Foundation and their promise of a PC that will cost just $25. We’ve seen how the OLPC has struggled to deliver a $100 laptop for developing countries, and yet Raspberry Pi is confident in delivering the $25 PC by November this year. Although we know a bit about the PC, there’s still a lot of information missing, but further details are starting to appear as Raspberry Pi develops the machine further and talks to more people about it. Eben Upton, director of the foundation, recently gave a talk at Bletchley Park regarding Educating Programmers, which focused on the thinking behind the $25 PC. During the talk Eben explains that the $25 price point was decided upon because it is the cost of a textbook so it made sense. As to why a $25 PC is needed, it simply comes down to the need to develop programming skills while still young, a skill that seems to have disappeared in recent years. Read more at Raspberry Pi
Bizarre Tongue-Eating Parasite Discovered Off the Jersey Coast Ceratothoa imbricata, the South African relative of the parasite discovered off the Jersey Shore. Photo Credit: Dr. Nico Smit There's been a spate of amazing animal discoveries recently--the giant rat-eating plants found in the Philippines, a huge woolly rat discovered in a volcanic crater--and now, yet another animal has emerged that could be right out of a sci-fi film. While the isopod, a kind of louse, has been known to exist for a while now, discoveries of live specimens are rare. Now, the picture above is a relative of the one discovered off the Jersey shore -- the one causing the ruckus, Cymothoa exigua, looks like this: Image Credit: NOAA Not that you'd have to be too concerned anyways--the isopod isn't a threat to humans in the slightest, though it's reportedly vicious, and can deliver quite a little bite. More on Strange AnimalsWatching Out For Giant Kangaroo Rats From SpaceUbercool "Mexican walking fish" Nearing ExtinctionFish Tongue-Eating Parasite Spreading?
Dissecting an Episode of MythBusters MythBusters is an excellent TV show on Discovery Channel, in which Adam, Jamie, Kari, Tory, and Grant test popular myths. That show, like so many other shows, is designed for a TV time-slot. It has to be a certain length. There has to be a certain number of breaks, at certain times etc. But most people probably do not realize just the tactics that go into making an episode. One hour time-slot, once per week First, let us look at how much time MythBusters spend on the actual show itself vs. all the other things. They spend 4% of the time talking about what is "coming up next," 2% of time showing the MythBuster logo, and 6% repeating something they have already said - e.g. when returning from a commercial break. All of that is just filler content. Then they spend 33% of the time talking about the first myth, 17% on second myth, and only 11% on the third myth (only 6 and a half minute). But then comes the real shocker. 27% of the time is spent watching advertising. Putting it all together
Make A Cheap &Easy Solar USB Charger With An Altoids Tin : TreeHugger - StumbleUpon Photos by Joshua Zimmerman The craftster behind the very popular $3 solar-powered emergency radio is back with a new awesome project: a cheap solar battery charger with a USB plug. Zimmerman wrote, saying that he saw a lot of small solar powered chargers being talked about over Earth Day, but there was a big problem: "They're all quite nice, but also quite expensive. So, he came up with his own, using one of our favorite reusable items -- the ever wonderful Altoids tin. In looking for the cheapest way to accomplish the task, Zimmerman found that he could build a USB solar charger for under $30 (or $10 if be buys parts in bulk, though it's not likely you'll be buying bulk solar cells and DC-to-USB converter circuits). Zimmerman states, "The central brain of our project is a DC to USB converter circuit. It can be done with a Minty Boost kit, a premade circuit off of ebay, or grabbing one from a cheap USB charger.
Less is more: The case for keeping gadgets longer Consumers go crazy for the latest gadgets, but as soon as the packaging is off, the device becomes a "used" good on its way to obsolescence. But what if consumers used devices for their full life instead of buying a new one every year or so? Remy Labesque, senior industrial designer for frog design Inc., believes products should be used until they reach the end of their useful lives, instead of being thrown away every year or so for something that's just incrementally better. Labesque spoke to TechNewsDaily about how wear and tear is part of the life cycle of technology and how people (and designers) should embrace it. TechNewsDaily: A lot of people protect their gadgets, especially smartphones, with protective cases. Do you think consumers should just embrace their ultimate demise and leave the covers off? Are they designed to become obsolete before this happens? Yes, the grim reality is that some products are actually engineered to have a shorter life than they would otherwise enjoy.
Speech recognition leaps forward During Interspeech 2011, the 12th annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association being held in Florence, Italy, from Aug. 28 to 31, researchers from Microsoft Research will present work that dramatically improves the potential of real-time, speaker-independent, automatic speech recognition. Dong Yu, researcher at Microsoft Research Redmond, and Frank Seide, senior researcher and research manager with Microsoft Research Asia, have been spearheading this work, and their teams have collaborated on what has developed into a research breakthrough in the use of artificial neural networks for large-vocabulary speech recognition. The Holy Grail of Speech Recognition Commercially available speech-recognition technology is behind applications such as voice-to-text software and automated phone services. “This goal has increased importance in a mobile world,” Yu says, “where voice is an essential interface mode for smartphones and other mobile devices.