This is just incredible. Jokke Sommer & Ludovic Woerth took their extreme sport to a new level recently in Rio de Janeiro. They went up on Ultralight Planes and at 5:45 in the morning, they jumped into the heart of the city. My jaw dropped when they approached the opening between the two buildings. Wow! I hope Urban Wingsuit Flying takes off. I’d like to see more locations, like this one in Dallas:
Here’s a short video of Jokke describing his passion for flying:
-RSB
[via Reddit]
The Ethiopian Caterpillar is an Automaton Mechanical Robot created by Swiss watchmaker Henri Maillardet in 1820. It is covered in rare gold, ornate jewels, and pearls and was sold at Sotheby’s Geneva auction room in 2010 for $415,215 to an Asian buyer.
Here’s a write-up on the mechanism from the Oddment Emporium:
“The body is realistically designed to represent a caterpillar comprising eleven jointed ring segments, framed by seed pearls, and decorated with translucent red enamel over an engine-turned ground, studded overall with gold-set rubies, turquoise, emeralds,and diamonds. The underside is decorated with champlevé black enamel. When the automaton movement is engaged, the caterpillar crawls realistically, its body moving up and down simulating the undulations of a caterpillar by means of a set of gilt-metal knurled wheels. The automata work is composed of a barrel, cam and two leavers all working together to create the crawling motion.”
Maillardet, it is believed, was one of the only people creating animal automatons in the early 1800s. The creation date puts the age of this caterpillar at almost 200 years. We’ve been making robots for a long time!
-RSB
Russian-based design studio, Kibardindesign, is working on this fascinating Levitating Mouse called “The Bat”. It works through the power of magnetism.
If you spend countless hours each day at the computer, you might be at risk for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, an extremely painful and annoying condition caused by entrapment of the median nerve at the wrist. The hope is that the levitating mouse could prevent this condition from ever forming by improving hand posture.
buy kamagra online https://nouvita.co.uk/wp-content/languages/en/kamagra.html no prescription
The project is currently in the testing period, but I hope to try it out when it’s released.
-RSB
[via Design Milk]
The Ocean covers roughly 71% of the Earth’s surface, yet more than 95% of it remains unexplored! At one time, we believed that all life on Earth was part of a photosynthetic food chain, drawing energy from the sun, but we have since learned that life can appear in some very strange places, even in the deepest crevices of the sea. Reefs are particularly diverse ecosystems hosting over 4,000 species of fish, massive numbers of cnidaria, mollusks, crustacea, and many other animals, and unless you scuba dive, you probably haven’t had the opportunity to see one up close. They are absolutely incredible.
buy actos generic myindianpharmacy.net over the counter
LA-based photographer and composer Felix Salazar shot the images you see above.
buy viagra generic mexicanpharmacyonlinerx.net over the counter
I think he captured the strange plant and animal lifeforms that flourish here in excellent form.
buy advair generic myindianpharmacy.net over the counter
The colors are brilliant.
For more of the Alien Reef, visit Felix’s website.
[via But Does It Float]
Scientists have created a Brain-to-Brain interface that allows two different animals to pass neural information from one brain to the next without ever seeing each other. The study, published on February 28th in Scientific Reports, is the first of its kind. The internet has been going crazy about it so I thought I’d offer my two cents and try to explain in layman’s terms exactly what happened.
The lab of Miguel Nicolelis from Duke University performed the experiment with some collaborators in Natal, Brazil. This lab was one of the first teams to study the restoration of movement for paraplegics through the use of Brain-to-Machine interfaces.
First of all, electrodes must be implanted in 2 different rats’ brains. It looks like this:
The electrodes record electrical activity from neurons in the brain in the form of spikes. These spikes represent information (thoughts) and their number and timing are recorded and then transmitted through those wires into a nearby computer. The computer then converts the spikes into a representation that can be stimulated into the second rat’s brain. The hope is that the pattern that is stimulated into the second brain will make the rat respond in the same way as the first rat. In more detail: The first rat is signaled by an LED light to either go Left or Right (you can see in the yellow circle above). The brain information from rat #1 is recorded and transferred to rat #2, and then he has to go in the same direction as the first rat, but without seeing an LED light to let him know which way to go. He can only know which way to go if he uses the information that is being pumped into his brain through the wires.
So really, it is a brain-to-computer-to-brain interface. Here’s a schematic of what I just described:
An important point of this experimental design is that the original rat (labeled “Encoder”) received a reward if the second rat (“Decoder”) could perform the task successfully. This means that the 1st rat could change its thoughts a little bit if the second rat was not working correctly, and this effectively trained the network to operate more effectively.
buy benicar online blobuyinfo.com no prescription
One really cool thing about this study is that this all worked over very large distances.
buy Glucophage online bloinfobuy.com no prescription
One rat was in a cage in Brazil while the other one was in America!
The second rat was able to pick the right lever 70% of the time, a performance significantly better than chance, suggesting that the information was successfully transferred and understood. If the information wasn’t transferring properly, the performance would have been around 50%, meaning that the second rat had no idea which direction to go. You can see that graphically in the image below. The Encoder rat is the 1st rat and the Decoder rat is the second rat that is trying to use the first rat’s thoughts to complete the task.
I have been pondering the implications of the study for the past week or so. Nicolelis pointed out that, in theory, such a system is not limited to a pair of brains, but instead could include a network of brains, which he named a “Brain-Net.” Researchers at Duke and at the ELS-IINN are now working on experiments to link multiple animals cooperatively to solve more complex behavioral tasks. “We cannot even predict what kinds of emergent properties would appear when animals begin interacting as part of a brain-net. In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves.” Such a connection might even mean that one animal would incorporate another’s sense of “self,” he said.
To me, this paper says that it’s possible to take information from one brain and pump it into another brain to assist the second brain to do something. I think to make this really useful, it will be necessary to record from many more neurons at a time to get a more accurate representation of the neural information. We also have to have a better understanding of how thoughts are encoded in those spikes so we really know what information we’re transferring.
Maybe one day we’ll see bees flying in formation or cows herding themselves… And when they find a way to translate this technology to humans, we could ultimately see some sort of telepathic communication in action.
buy benzac online blobuyinfo.com no prescription
Exciting times ahead!
-RSB
Fabian Oefner, from Switzerland, created these Black Hole photographs using centrifugal force, which basically means he spins a drill really really fast and photographs paint flying off the edges.
Here’s a quote from the artist about the process:
“Various shades of acrylic paint are dripped onto a metallic rod, which is connected to a drill. When switched on, the paint starts to move away from the rod due to the centrifugal force, creating these amazing looking structures.
buy cialis free viagra online https://www.sanjeevanam.com/products/wp-content/languages/new/cialis-free-viagra.html no prescription
The motion of the paint happens in a blink of an eye, the images you see are taken only millisecond after the drill was turned on. To capture the moment, where the paint forms that distinctive shape, I connected a sensor to the drill, which sends an impulse to the flashes.
buy extra super p-force online https://www.sanjeevanam.com/products/wp-content/languages/new/extra-super-p-force.html no prescription
These specialized units are capable of creating flashes as short as a 1/40000 of a second, freezing the motion of the paint.”
It’s a really interesting technique that requires incredible timing. I especially like the oblique angle shots, amazing expression and color!
buy fildena professional online https://www.sanjeevanam.com/products/wp-content/languages/new/fildena-professional.html no prescription
For more information, visit Fabian’s Behance page.
-RSB
[via Colossal]