Andreas Markus Hoenigschmid is the master of solid geometry, the black magic wizard of three-dimensional space. Check out the dozens of objects he can create with his amazing transforming cubes.
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Pentagon Grounds All F-35s Amid Fire Investigation
The Defense Department said the decision was made following a runway fire incident June 23 at the Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The Air Force is investigating the cause of the fire.
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Noisetrade Collects Free and Legal Ebooks and Music
Although we’ve covered many ways of getting free books and music before, Noisetrade has a huge selection of both—and it’s all legal.
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How An Intelligent Thimble Could Replace the Mouse In 3D Virtual Reality Worlds
Humans need better ways to interact with computers in three dimensions. Now computer scientists think they’ve come up with one.
The way in which humans interact with computers has been dominated by the mouse since it was invented in the 1960s by Doug Engelbert. A mouse uses a flat two-dimensional surface as a proxy for a computer screen. Any movements of the mouse over the surface are then translated into movements on the screen. These days, a mouse also has a number of buttons, and often scroll wheel, that allow interaction with on-screen objects.
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Early Android L tests show serious battery life improvement
One of the big reveals for Android 4.4 KitKat’s successor, Android L, was Project Volta — new tweaks to improve battery life. Those include a new API that schedules minor tasks better, a "battery historian" to track battery-sapping activities and…
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Why China is stealing America’s corn seeds
A seventh Chinese national has been charged with trying to smuggle stolen seeds out of U.S.
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A Cool New Use For Legos: Growing Lab Plants
Lego plant
Lego walls hold a transparent growth medium mimicking soil. The versatile setup allows researchers to see how plants respond to increasing levels of nutrients, which are here dyed orange.
Lind et al / PLOS ONE
Legos are great for making all kinds of things–castles, pirate ships and functioning miniature dockyards, as I can tell you from experience. But a new study found that they are absolutely excellent for something unexpected:Â studying the growth of plants and the delicate expansion of their roots.Â
The reasoning of the researchers, from the University of Iowa, went like this: Greenhouses are really large. Micro-fluidic devices used to grow plants and test unique growing conditions are really expensive. So, what about Legos? Transparent blocks of the common toy are perfect for creating the micro-environments needed to study plants and their roots, the researchers wrote in the journal PLOS ONE–they are cheap, abundant, easy to re-arrange, and can be tailor-made with CAD software. The Legos can even be sterilized in an autoclave (basically like a small oven for sanitizing lab equipment) without melting, while remaining translucent.
So far the scientists have used Legos to study and produce images of the real-time growth of the roots of garden cress. The Legos are perfect for holding the see-through growth medium, a type of agar. The Legos have also allowed the researchers to study differences in soil/agar that aren’t easy to produce with larger equipment, and they’re great for building in air pockets, solid barriers between plots, and chemical and microbial gradients that could for example show how roots respond to increasing concentrations of fertilizer.
Lind et al / PLOS ONE
[PLOS ONE]
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