3D printing isn’t all about making guns and toys —some researchers are using it to make real medical advances . Now, a team of researchers from the University of Oxford has managed to create a 3D printer that can produce synthetic tissue using just water and oil. More »
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Scientists Can Print Synthetic Tissue Using Just Water and Oil
Known affectionately as Bertha, this tunnel boring machine has the widest diameter of any boring machine ever built; 57.5 feet. It’s being used to dig a highway tunnel under downtown Seattle and it just arrived there today after being shipped from Japan. I feel this warrants your attention for two reasons: 1) If you live near Seattle, you can actually go get a look at this massive beast before it starts chewing its way through the city. If you like looking at giant machines (or know someone who does) now’s your chance. She’s coming into the Port of Seattle, Terminal 46, as you read this and there will be ample opportunities to get a look as the pieces are assembled and moved into the nearby launch pit. The Washington State Department of Transportation has suggestions on places to go to get a good view . 2) If, for some reason, you were looking for a new way to lose massive amounts of time on YouTube, Bertha (and boring machines, in general) can help with that. Here’s a cutaway animation explaining how boring machines work . Here’s a video of Big Becky, another boring machine, breaking through to the other side of a tunnel at Niagara Falls, Canada . (In fact, boring machine breakthrough videos are, in and of themselves, a mesmerizing genre.) And in this video, you can watch the massively long line of support equipment go by in the wake of a boring machine .
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World’s largest tunnel boring machine lands in Seattle
It’s no secret that the likes of China and Iran censor the internet to within an inch of its life, but now there’s a new Big Brother blocking content: Russia. More »
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The Russian Government Has Started Censoring the Internet
theodp writes “In a move that would do Bill Lumbergh (YouTube homage) proud, Microsoft has been pulling in about $25 million a year through its unusual practice of charging its vendors for occupying office space on its campus while working on Microsoft projects, according to the real estate firm that manages the program. And that’s before a planned July 1st rate increase that Microsoft informed vendors of earlier this week, which will boost the ‘chargeback’ rate for its ‘shadow workforce’ from $450 per month ($5,400 per year) for every workstation to $510 per month (or $6,120 per year). So, is there a discount if you’re moved downstairs into Storage B?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Microsoft Makes Millions Renting Campus Space to Vendors
It’s useful for blasting dust, crumbs, and other crap off your keyboard and electronics, but those overpriced compressed air cans are almost as big a rip-off as printer ink . So here’s a brilliant and relatively simple hack that makes a compressed air can refillable with a standard tire pump. And just to highlight what’s probably the most crucial step in this project: you’ll want to make sure the can you’re using is completely and thoroughly empty before going at it with a drill. [ YouTube via Dooby Brain ] More »
No, this isn’t something out of an Octavia Butler novel. It’s Tetrahymena thermophila — a single-celled organism that goes way beyond male and female. It has seven different sexes to choose from. Now a new study published in PLOS has finally made sense of its bizarrely complex and seemingly random sex life. Read more…
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Think your sex life is complicated? Imagine having 7 sexes.
Back in 2011, GE unveiled DeltaVision OMX Blaze , a state-of-the art microscope that uses a combination of optics and powerful computer algorithms. Using a technique called 3D structured illumination microscopy (SIM), OMX can see objects as small as 100 nanometers across and more than doubles the resolution in all three dimensions . Here are some of the most mind blowing super-resolution images taken by the microscope to date. Read more…
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These spectacular images show why they call it the ‘OMG’ microscope
What harm could come to you when eating a close relative of carrots, parsley, and celery? As it turns out, quite a bit. A certain relative of the carrot can kill you, and if it doesn’t, it still permanently darkens your skin. Read more…
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The plant that darkens your skin permanently
The coming of the Hyperkin RetroN 3 marked the end of doing a rain dance while blowing into your childhood SNES. And now Hyperkin is so excited about expanding compatibility that they’re skipping ahead and calling their next console RetroN 5 . More »
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RetroN 5 Console: Play All the Best Games From Your Wasted Youth
itwbennett writes “Do you know what data the 1300+ tracking companies have on you? Privacy blogger Dan Tynan didn’t until he had had enough of being stalked by grandpa-friendly Jitterbug phone ads. Tracking company BlueKai and its partners had compiled 471 separate pieces of data on him. Some surprisingly accurate, some not (hence the Jitterbug ad). But what’s worse is that opting out of tracking is surprisingly hard. On the Network Advertising Initiative Opt Out Page you can ask the 98 member companies listed there to stop tracking you and on Evidon’s Global Opt Out page you can give some 200 more the boot — but that’s only about 300 companies out of 1300. And even if they all comply with your opt-out request, it doesn’t mean that they’ll stop collecting data on you, only that they’ll stop serving you targeted ads.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Tracking the Web Trackers