Mutant Purple Potatoes and Bubble Computers

[dracodraconis]

Source: MAKE Magazine Tired of stacking dishes? This device recycles cups, bowls and plates by molding new ones from the remains of the old. The device uses the shape-memory of acrylic to regenerate a dish thousands of times before becomes real garbage. Mind you, it still doesn't replace a dishwasher, just the cupboards.

Source: MedGadget Duke University researchers have developed a way to weave artificial cartilage. The weave forms a scaffold on which stem cells can be placed to grow replacement cartilage.

Source: MedGadget MIT researchers have developed a "computer" that uses bubbles instead of electronics to transfer information.This means that the bubbles themselves can carry information that previously had to be converted to electrical impulses. The interactions of bubbles within the microfluidic channels becomes a form of processing, with the presence or absence of a bubble being equivalent to a high or low voltage in a conventional microprocessor.

Source: SlashDot The University of Washington is working on a system for allowing the death deaf (thanks trippingpossum) to talk through cellphones using sign language. The challenge is to find a video compression method that will work with the low data rates that cellphones use while retaining the message. The study is looking for people fluent in ASL (American Sign Language) so if you are interested, pay them a visit at http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/MobileASL/ where you can find a sign-up page.

Source: BBC News Thanks to ancalagon_tb for alerting me to this. The latest food fad in Shanghai is mutant potato. Specifically, consumers are lining up to sample purple potatoes grown from seeds mutated in space during a recent manned Chinese space mission.

Comments

[trippingpossum.livejournal.com]

It allows the death to talk to each other?? wow just wait until they can talk to the living.

[dracodraconis.livejournal.com]

Yet one more example of why spell-checking is no substitute for proofreading, as well as of how many wise-asses are on my friends list ;)

Good eye, BTW. I'll make the correction.