drag2share: MIT pioneers 'living materials' for self-aware chairs

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/24/mit-pioneers-living-materials-for-self-aware-chairs/

If Moya, Species 8472 and the White Star are any indication, then science fiction has always had a love affair with the idea of living spaceships crafted from genetically engineered material. We're not at that point yet, but a team at MIT has harnessed E. coli's natural ability to produce biofilms -- the pink slime you find in the shower if you're not too good at cleaning -- in order to build primitive structures. Even better, is that when the team added gold nanoparticles to the mix, the cells formed rows of nanowires that are capable of conducting electricity. The point of all this, of course, is to develop objects that react to their environment and regulate their activity accordingly. Researcher Timothy Lu told The Register that he was hoping the tech could be used to construct a living chair that adapts to your posture -- although the more we think about it, the more creeped out we are by the idea.

Filed under: Science, Alt

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Via: The Register

Source: bioRxiv (PDF), MIT

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drag2share: Marvel at this magic mahjong table again and again and again

Source: http://sploid.gizmodo.com/i-wish-this-magic-automatic-mahjong-table-could-work-wi-1549918977/@jesusdiaz

A table with a hole that will suck all your mahjong pieces and returns them perfectly stacked, ready to play. Obviously, it's powered by SORCERY...

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drag2share: This Health Risk Chart Proves That First World Problems Are No Joke

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/first-world-problems-are-no-joke-2014-3

People jokingly describe things like lines at Starbucks as first world problems.

Actually, first world problems are serious, involving things like elevated risk of death related to high blood pressure, tobacco, high blood sugar, obesity, and more.

Although low-income countries face so-called modern risks as well, wealthy countries are more at risk given greater opportunity for indolence and consumption of too much food, notably junk food, as well as cigarettes and alcohol.

The World Health Organization described this as a risk transition in a 2009 report:

Modern risks, which are nearly as deadly as traditional risks used to be, include high blood pressure (responsible for 13% of deaths globally), tobacco use (9%), high blood glucose (6%), physical inactivity (6%), overweight and obesity (5%), and more.

The following chart shows how high-income countries (15% of the global population at the time) face disproportionately high mortality rates associated with these risks.

And some more detail on how first-world problems compare to third-world problems:

SEE ALSO: 13 nutrition lies that made the world fat and sick

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drag2share: Time Warner Cable says 'me too,' issues first transparency report

source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/22/time-warner-cable-transparency-report/?utm_source=Feed_Classic_Full&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Engadget&?ncid=rss_full

Not to be outdone by its competitors (or future owner), Time Warner Cable has released a transparency report of its own. From January to June last year, the telco obeyed some 12,000 information requests from the government that break down as such. Of the legal requests, 82 percent were for subpoenas, 12 percent were for court orders and four percent related to search warrants. Seventy-seven percent of the time that data was requested, it was subscriber and transactional info that was disclosed, 20 percent resulted in no data shared at all and three percent of the time, content information was disclosed. Because the report doesn't give exact numbers, though, comparing the precise amount of requests that TWC handled with its competitors isn't exactly easy.

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drag2share: Google's 3D-sensing phones are taking a trip to the International Space Station

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/21/googles-project-tango-space-station/

It's arguably cool enough that Google is working on smartphones that can scan your surroundings, but now those devices are slated to take a spin in space too. How's that for living in the future? NASA first started sticking smartphones to machines back in 2011 when it used Samsung's Nexus S as the brains for a trio of robotic SPHERES satellite that use bursts of carbon dioxide to putter around the International Space Station. Those aging handsets will soon get the boot, as two of Google's Project Tango smartphones will hitch a ride on Orbital's Cygnus spacecraft when it resupplies the ISS in May. Why? The space agency is interested in seeing if the phone's spatial sensing abilities can help those floating robots navigate their surroundings better than they can right now. If it's lucky, NASA's zeal to upgrade the SPHERES' brains could ultimately lead to the development of a roaming robot that works as well outside the station (or around an asteroid) as it does inside a tin can hurtling around the earth.

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Source: PCWorld

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