If you somehow managed to magically avoid all hints at what happens during Game of Thrones‘ now-infamous Red Wedding scene, stop reading now. Because one man hooked himself up to an Arduino and PulseSensor to track his heart rate during the episode, and spoilers abound (kind of maybe if you have really good eyesight).
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This story proves that sometimes even really smart people get things horribly wrong. For the last 30 years, astronomers have believed that a massive object known as Don Quixote was a near-Earth asteroid. In fact, the object was classified as the third largest near-Earth asteroid. The problem is scientists have recently realized it’s not an asteroid at all. Don Quixote is actually a comet.
The orbit of the comet skirts the Earth and goes all the way close to the orbit of Jupiter. Some believed that Don Quixote was a dead comet, but recently the scientists realized that it has a faint coma and tail. This comet activity has gone undetected for 30 years.
Scientist David Trilling from Northern Arizona University says that Don Quixote is “sopping wet” with large deposits of carbon dioxide and water ice. The comet measures about 11 miles long. Some scientists believe that comets rich in water ice such as Don Quixote could possibly be the source of water here on earth.
[via ASDNews]
‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ says Ozymandias’s ruined statue in the desert of Shelley’s imagination. Shelley’s sonnet is often interpreted as a sober warning that human works are fleeting, but when I read it as a young boy it kindled a sense of adventure; it suggested a wonderfully mysterious past beneath my familiar suburban surroundings.
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Due to the lack of water, plants and insects in some of the most arid regions on Earth have evolved to absorb moisture straight from the air, pulling it from fog banks that roll in off the ocean. Now, researchers at MIT are looking to emulate that technique on a much, much larger scale.
What you see above might not be the most artistically inclined font that you have set your sights on, but it sure as heck is special. Why do we say so? Well, robots are not exactly the kind of “brain” that you would have expected to come up with something artistic, would you? After all, they are nothing but pre-programmed automatons, and whatever you “feed” it would result in a corresponding output. Having said that, the typeface above is known as Robosans, and it was so named because it is an effort to pay homage to the robot that created it.
Egyptian designer Mostafa El Abasiry decided to run an experiment that saw Robosans created by a robot. This particular robot actually gripped a brush, before it continued to sweep out its curves and create the relevant letters or alphabet as we know. It was not perfection right from the get go, but rather, a journey that involved a fair amount of trial and error. Still, at the end of it all, the results are definitely worthy of a report. I wonder if the Transformers or droids like C3-PO and R2-D2 would “approve” of such a font, or do they figure out that Robosans could have been much, much more?
Robosans Is A Robot-Created Font original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Curious as to what toilets in the future will hold? Toilet technology in the future will feature new innovations to protect public health. The emerging technology here is pretty amazing. And the names for this new technology are pretty amusing for those easily amused.
Grab your Marauder’s Map and get ready to roll. Researchers at Zhejiang University in China have pioneered a new, time-efficient method of producing real world invisibility cloaks made out of Teflon. While it isn’t the first time we’ve come across an invisibility cloak, it is the first to make use of an innovation called topology optimization. Thus far, physicists working on invisibility have largely relied on metamaterials — synthetic materials that alter the behavior of light as it interacts with objects — but the cost and difficulty of manufacturing them has made them an impractical option. The Zhejiang team has circumvented those obstacles by creating a so-called “eyelid” out of Teflon, the computer-altered topology of which minimizes the distortion of light as it moves past a cloaked object — and it only took 15 minutes to produce. Since the Teflon eyelid is only invisible to microwaves, it won’t enable you to roam the halls of Hogwarts unseen, but the technology could potentially open up new avenues in exploring invisibility on other wavelengths. To learn more, read the full paper at the source link below.
Source: arXiv (PDF)
At the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine, researchers in its Laboratory for Retinal Rehabilitation have been studying the potential of a class of drugs aimed at inhibiting MDM2
proteins that occur in the eyes of patients with age-related macular
degeneration (AMD). Positve results in testing these inhibitors in mice
models of the disease suggest a promising path to treatment of AMD, a
disease that affects 11 million persons in the U.S. alone.
Bomb sniffing dogs are marvelously trained creatures, but when it comes to such dangerous work, any help would be more than welcome. In a project that was funded by the Department of Homeland Security, the whole idea is to perform a research into producing a bomb-detecting laser that will see action at transportation security checkpoints. This research is being performed at the moment at Michigan State University, and the team is helmed by Marcos Dantus, MSU chemistry professor and founder of BioPhotonic Solutions. The whole idea of this bomb detecting laser is to be able to detect even minute traces of chemicals that are normally components of explosives, to be found on both luggage and clothing.
Dantus shared, “Since this method uses a single beam and requires no bulky spectrometers, it is quite practical and could scan many people and their belongings quickly. Not only does it detect the explosive material, but it also provides an image of the chemical’s exact location, even if it’s merely a minute trace on a zipper.” This particular low energy laser will most probably be placed in an area such as a conveyor belt, which is illustrated on X-ray scanners that currently see action at airport security checkpoints worldwide, and has been deemed to be safe for use on passengers and luggage.
Laser Capable Of Detecting Bombs original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Whale meat again? Don’t know where, don’t know when… until now! Thanks to a new litmus-paper test developed in Taiwan, the question of whether the catch of the day had fins or flippers can be resolved conclusively in just 10 minutes.
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