Hasta La Gadget!

The PicoBrew Zymatic can serve up your suds according to the recipe you choose.

(Credit: Kickstarter)

Craft beer and microbreweries have exploded in popularity over the last decade, prompting many enthusiasts to try making their own suds.

I’ve never done that, but it sounds like a lot of trouble. Not to mention a lot of time that could be better spent drinking craft beer.

Enter the PicoBrew Zymatic, billed as “the world’s first fully automatic all-grain beer brewing system.”

Developed in Seattle, the countertop box debuted on Kickstarter Monday, and is already more than a third of the way to its campaign goal of $150,000.

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It’s not news every time a Kickstarter product starts shipping to backers, but in the case of 3Doodler, it’s worth a mention. At last count, the startup had raised $2.3 million to fund its 3D printing pen, and with a cost of $99 per device, well, you do the math: that’s a lot of people waiting for their new toy to arrive. And we mean it when we say “toy” — while you won’t be creating anything useful like a gun or a Van Gogh knockoff, there’s really nothing more addictive than “drawing” in the air with melted plastic, and watching it solidify. For those of you who ordered early, you already know what you’re in for. As for the rest of you, your next chance to get one will be in early 2014, though you can place a pre-order today if you like. Really, though, we suggest you revisit our hands-on video, embedded below; we’re descriptive writers, but nothing we say can do justice to a pen with molten plastic flowing out of it.

Filed under: Misc, Peripherals

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An artist’s rendering of a ‘chemical computer’ executing a molecular program.

(Credit: Yan Liang/L2XY2.com)

Chemical reaction networks make up an old language of equations that detail how chemicals behave together. Now engineers at the University of Washington are taking this language into the 21st century with a computer program for chemistry that can help direct the movement of synthetic molecules.

This standardized set of instructions on how to “program” how DNA molecules interact in a test tube or cell could pave the way for smart drug delivery systems and disease detectors at the cellular level, the researchers report this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

“We start from an abstract, mathematical description of a chemical system, and then use DNA to build the molecules that realize the desired dynamics,” author Georg Seelig, a UW assistant professor of electrical engineering and of computer science and engineering, said in a school news release. “The vision is that eventually you can use this technology to build general-purpose tools.”

Seelig calls his team’s approach a “programming language” because, he says, much like how programming langua… [Read more]

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Korean researchers have engineered a new strain of E. coli that can produce a suitable substitute for gasoline. And as they quite rightly point out, bacteria that poops out petroleum could be some valuable shit.

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“Too much bezel” — how often have you seen that complaint in the comment section of new phone announces? Well, you can throw this Sharp Aquos Phone Xx (and its mini companion) in the face of that haterade brigade because 80.5 percent of its 5.2-inch front is all screen. At 70 x 132 x 9.9mm, the Xx is more compact than Sony’s rival 5-inch phablet, the Xperia Z1, but its collection of top shelf specs gives it a fatter profile. The Android device, which joins Softbank’s 4G LTE lineup this December, crams a 1080p display, 2.2GHz Snapdragon 800 running Jelly Bean 4.2, 2,600mAh battery and a 16.3-megapixel rear camera (with an f/1.9 lens) into that squat, water-resistant frame. It also features pre-loaded translation software to make sense out of captured English text — handy if you’re, you know, Japanese. We realize this is an unfair mobile tease for those of you green-eyed monsters living in the Western world; you’ll likely never see the Xx make that transcontinental trek. But it’s always nice to dream.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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Source: Sharp, Softbank (Translated)