Hasta La Gadget!

Some people don’t mind drinking a beer at room temperature, but I think most of us prefer it to be chilled. It takes at-least 10 to 15 minutes in the refrigerator before you can get it chilled. Who has the time for that when there’s drinking to be done? Well, now you can chill your beer in under a minute.

The answer? The Spin Chill. This little first world problem solver spins an individual beer can inside your ice chest. It’s basically a drill bit with cap on the top. That cap holds your beer. You supply the spin.

But what if you’re too lazy to get the drill out of the garage? Go for the Beerouette – a complete mini drill that you attach your beer to and spin. If you want to get in on this, head on over to Kickstarter by October 17th. The bit by itself is going for $12, and comes in versions for either bottles or cans, while the Beerouette sells for $35, and can chill either bottles or cans.

[via Damn Geeky]

UK researchers are ready to see if life can exist in one of the harshest environments on the planet: Lake Ellsworth in the Antarctic, 3 km (2 miles) below a glacier. They’ll try to drill through the ice by December 12th using a high pressure sterile water jet heated to 90 degrees Celsius (194 Fahrenheit) and sterilize the patch of lake with intense ultraviolet light before attempting to retrieve a sample. If any organisms can be found, they’ll have evolved in isolation for at least 100,000 years, according to team, and probably even much longer. That could help scientists understand more about how life evolves on this planet, and possibly elsewhere — like iced-over oceans on Europa, Jupiter’s moon, or other harsh planetary environments. It’ll be the deepest borehole ever made with hot water, and the team will have a mere 24 hours to sterilize the lake entry and collect samples before it refreezes. When asked which part of the tricky experiment worried him the most, lead scientist Chris Hill replied, “everything.” For a video tour of the drill site, head below the break.

Continue reading Researchers to bore through 3km of Antarctic ice, seek organisms isolated for 100K years

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Source: The Guardian

If you told us on Monday that we’d be capping our week off by checking out an innovative cranial drill, we likely would have just stared at you funny. But here were are and here it is, a device referred to, quite straightforwardly, as the Cranial Drilling Device with Retracting Drill Bit After Skull Penetration. The drill was designed by a team of researchers at Harvard in order to address a major shortcoming with manual drills. Such devices require neurosurgical training in order to know precisely when to stop so as to not damage underlying brain tissue. In certain instances, such as emergency rooms and the backs of ambulances, medical practitioners may require a cranial drill in order to perform procedures such as the insertion of pressure monitors, with nary a neurosurgeon to be found. The Harvard team has concocted a drill that automatically retracts back into its protective casing, as soon as it’s finished drilling through the skull, using a bi-stable mechanism that is active as the drill spins.

After the break, team member Conor Walsh explains the technology is a manner that, thankfully, is not quite brain surgery.

Continue reading Cranial Drilling Device puts a hole in skulls, not brains

Cranial Drilling Device puts a hole in skulls, not brains originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Aug 2012 18:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Formation-flying quadrocopters have already given us hours of entertainment, but now they’ve also accomplished something serious. Earlier this month, mini choppers developed at Japan’s robot-loving Chiba University assisted in an emergency drill that simulated an explosion at a chemical plant. Four machines and a host computer (shown off after the break) used spherical markers, image processing and a heck of a lot of math to autonomously scan the site for survivors. The researchers claim the exercise went “very well” and that the local police force would like to “introduce this system” for genuine reconnaissance. That could include monitoring volcanic eruptions or inspecting power lines, but alas there’s no mention yet of using quadrocopter swarms to sneak up on yakuza.

Continue reading Swarming quadrocopters complete trial recon mission for Japanese police (video)

Filed under: Robots

Swarming quadrocopters complete trial recon mission for Japanese police (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Jul 2012 23:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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