Hasta La Gadget!

See that package above? That phone-and-case combo could find a home in your hand, thanks to Otterbox. The company, which is well known for its durable cases, has an AT&T-branded Samsung Galaxy S 4 to hand out to one of our lucky readers! Additionally, the grand prize winner — along with a runner-up — will receive one Defender case (valued at $50) and one Commuter case (valued at $35) specifically designed for the GS4. The phone is locked and doesn’t come with service, so those of you who aren’t AT&T fans may need to get creative with it. Hit up the Rafflecopter widget below to enter, and good luck!

Note: Because the GS4 is locked to a US carrier, this week’s giveaway is unfortunately limited to our US readers. We should have some Canadian and UK giveaways coming up in the near future, however, so stay tuned!

Filed under: Announcements, HD, Mobile, Alt, Samsung

Comments

Sure, your pet hamster’s amazing leg strength may someday power a house, but can it beat you in a race? A pair of Chicago-based artists might be able to help you solve this mystery. The duo recently hooked up a homemade tachometer to a hamster’s exercise wheel and mapped the data to a treadmill’s motor. The fur ball’s RPMs are transferred in real time, which gives it the ability to control its bipedal competitor’s running speeds. The team cautions that no animals were harmed during this experiment, however a human ego may have been bruised after trying to keep up with a tireless rodent.

Filed under: Science, Alt

Comments

Source: Daniel Jay Bertner (Blog)

Dr. Mark Post of the University of Maastricht has carefully cultivated the most expensive burger you will probably never eat. Using stem cells and the science of tissue engineering, Post and his team have developed a method for creating an edible product called in-Vitro meat, which they hope to present in burger form at a special event in London next month. Despite the burger’s artificial origins, Post claims it “tastes reasonably good.”

The in-Vitro burger was designed as a proof-of-concept to address the problem of a growing global population with a rapidly dwindling food supply. Even so, it’s unlikely that lab-grown meat will be as widely available as White Castle anytime soon since creating it is an expensive, time-consuming process — a single burger costs about $325,000 to produce. Each pricey patty begins its life as cells sourced from the necks of slaughterhouse cows, which are then developed in a growth serum comprised of fetal calf stem cells. After three weeks, those cells divide into a strip of meat, about half an inch long. Combine about 20,000 of those tissue strips and you’ve got yourself a burger. If that doesn’t get your taste buds tingling, we don’t know what will.

Filed under: Science, Alt

Comments

Via: The Verge

Source: The New York Times

There’s a more efficient way to harvest energy from the backyard than by wiring up hapless critters. Researchers at the University of Georgia have proof: they’ve discovered a way to generate electricity from plants through hijacking the photosynthesis process. By altering the proteins inside a plant cell’s thylakoids, which store solar energy, scientists can intercept electrons through a carbon nanotube backing that draws them away before they’re used to make sugar. While the resulting power isn’t phenomenal, it’s still two orders of magnitude better than previous methods, according to the university. The protein modification method may have a rosier future, as well: the team believes that it could eventually compete with solar cells, producing green energy in a very literal sense.

Filed under: Science, Alt

Comments

Via: Gizmag

Source: RSC Publishing, University of Georgia

Dustin Adams, a Ph.D student at the University of California at Santa Cruz, has teamed up with colleagues at his school in order to craft an app that helps visually impaired users line up the ideal snapshot. The project started out as a quiz, asking 54 people with varying degrees of ocular impairment what they found most difficult about taking photos. From there, he essentially boiled that down into requirements for a smartphone program. For starters, the app does away with a conventional shutter button, instead relying on an upward swipe gesture to grab a frame.

Moreover, it integrates face detection and voice accessibility, enabling the phone itself to talk to the photographer and alert him / her as to how many faces are detected and in focus. The app also captures a 30-second audio clip whenever the camera mode is activated, which helps remind users of what was going on during the capture of a shot. Unfortunately, there aren’t any screenshots or videos of the app in action just yet, but that’s scheduled to change when it’s formally unveiled at the Pervasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments conference in Greece later this month.

Filed under: Software, Alt

Comments

Via: NewScientist

Source: University of California at Santa Cruz [PDF]