“Electric Lungs”
Welsh sculptor Jessica Lloyd-Jones created a series of four gas discharge tubes in the shape of human organs. Besides Electric Lungs, shown above, it includes Optic Nerve, Brain Wave, and Heart.
Biology
How Wood Hardness is Measured
In fact, there are a now a couple of different tests, but the traditional method is known as the Janka hardness test, named for Austrian wood researcher Gabriel Janka, who invented it in 1906. The test measures the force required to embed a standard-sized steel ball (of 0.444in/11.28mm diameter) exactly halfway into the surface of a standard-sized sample of the wood
Nanometer Scale 3D Printer
Researchers Jan Torgersen and Peter Gruber at Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) have successfully printed intricately detailed models of various objects at the nanometer scale using a process called “two-photon lithography”. In the process, they also managed to speed things up a bit and have gone from printing in millimeters per second to meters […]
How-To: Extract Your DNA
It’s news to me that it’s possible to extract the DNA from your own cells with just a few household products such as bottled water, dish soap, food coloring, table salt, and isopropyl alcohol. You can learn how to see your own DNA in this fun video from PBS’s NOVA.
LittleBits, Backyard Brains, MakerBot at TED
At the TED2012 Conference with Ayah Bdeir of littleBits, Gregory Gage of Backyard Brains, and Bre Pettis of MakerBot Industries
Build the Eyeboard Open Source Eye-Tracking Project
When 18-year-old Honduran maker Luis Cruz met a quadriplegic high school classmate and learned about the challenges he and other folks with disabilities face in the light of expensive assistive communication technologies, he was inspired to devise a solution. What Luis came up with is the Eyeboard: an inexpensive yet reliable human-computer interface that detects […]
Rock Out Hands Free with Air Guitar Hero
Biomechanical engineer Robert Armiger and surgical roboticist Carol Reiley, both of Johns Hopkins University, created Air Guitar Hero as a fun rehabilitation exercise for people with amputations. The original version they made was a bit costly, but they wrote up a less expensive DIY version, and shared their build instructions with us on the pages […]