Feb 18
There’s a veritable menagerie in this week’s landscape reads: domesticated sheep, archeologist rabbits, robot cockroaches, and acidified limpets.
     |
Feb 07
This unusual bedside table was inspired by the works of Salvador Dalí and made by Oscar Tusquets, an artist in Spain. He built these drawers using taxidermied sheep. Obviously.
They specifically reference this image by Dalí seen here called “Interpretation Project for a Stable-Library.” You can see the sheep cabinet on the left side of the image. And now this dude is bringing it to life. Using dead sheep. Tusquets worked with a famous French taxidermy studio in Paris, to make 21 sheep cabinets in all. Each one has bronze feet, a tabletop and a drawer for all of your stuff that you absolutely must store in a dead sheep.
There will be 20 white sheep and one black sheep with white legs, just to keep things interesting. Each cabinet will sell for about $82,000(USD). Now that’s a lot of bah bah bucks.
[via Weird Universe via Neatorama]
Mar 12
Japanese researchers from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology recently announced that they have cloned one mouse a total of 581 times. They did this by making clones, then making clones out of its clones and so on for 25 generations. The Nutcracker is screwed.
Original images by Karl Palutke and CJ Isherwood; resulting masterpiece by Lambert Varias
The researchers, who began their experiment back in 2005, used a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer. That in itself is nothing new; in fact it’s the same technique that was used to clone the legendaryDolly the sheep. However, according to Live Science and the researchers themselves, repeated cloning was usually highly improbable, if not outright impossible, probably because successive clones had genetic defects in them. Interestingly enough, Dolly lived for only 6 years, even though domestic sheep live 10 to 12 years on average.
To counteract the defects, the Japanese used trichostatin, a histone deacetylase inhibitor or HDI. HDIs are compounds that stop certain genes from being expressed. As a result, not only is my nose bleeding because of all these advanced biology terms, the 581 mice clones (seen above) “were all fertile, they gave birth to healthy pups and lived a normal lifespan of about two years, similar to normally conceived mice.”
The leader of the research team Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama said that they hope their breakthrough could be used to make “superior quality animals” for conservation and agricultural purposes. All I know is that it is imperative that these people not get their hands on Jango Fett, or we’re all doomed.
[via RIKEN, Cell Stem Cell & Live Science via Popular Science]
Aug 06
Swiss Researchers Invent System to Text Shepherds When Sheep Are under Attack
Posted in: Today's ChiliApparently, sheep herding is big business in some parts of Switzerland and elsewhere in the world. The problem for Swiss shepherds is that wolves are making return to the area after being gone for about 100 years. That means that their previously safe sheep are now coming under attack and being killed by wolves.
Researchers from the country have now developed a system that can monitor the heart rate of the sheep. The system has been proven to work effectively by noting increased heart rate when a wolf attacks a flock of sheep. The heart rate sensor system can be integrated with a collar that would be able to text shepherds when sheep are under attack.
The researchers expect to be able to test the new collar, which can also spray wolf repellent, sometime next year. I wonder how the system would differentiate between increased heart rate due to attacks or simply a male sheep staring at a female sheep.
[via Phys.org]
Aug 06
Prototype heart monitor collar could let sheep text their shepherd, tattle on creeping wolves
Posted in: Today's Chili 
It’s easy to imagine the lonely Swiss shepherd casually texting his pals during a long day in the field, but reading an SMS from his flock? More possible then you might think. A recent trial in Switzerland outfitted 10 sheep with heart monitoring collars and submitted them to a simulated wolf attack, causing their heart rate to jump from 60 / 80 BPM to 225. The team behind the experiment hope to pair the significant change in heart rate with a future device that releases a predator deterrent while simultaneously sending a text message to the local shepherd. Complete prototypes are being prepped for a 2013 trial in Switzerland and France, where wolf attacks are on the rise. The devices hopes to offer owners of smaller flocks an affordable alternative to keeping a sheepdog.
[Image credit: Shutterstock]
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Prototype heart monitor collar could let sheep text their shepherd, tattle on creeping wolves originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 03:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink 
The Verge, PhysOrg | | Email this | Comments
Aug 04
Sheepherding is a profession as ancient as civilization, but that doesn’t mean it can’t benefit from a little tech. New heart-monitoring collars let sheep shoot their shepherd a text whenever they’re in danger. More »
Jul 14
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.
While there might not quite have been the epic science news that we had last week, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty going on in the world of Alt. In this installment we get to see how CERN tricks out its offices, how one farmer tries to keep his flock, and learn about how the military will be high-tailing around the planet in just a few years. This is alt / week.
Continue reading Alt-week 7.14.2012: Bleeping sheep and ATLAS art
Filed under: Science
Alt-week 7.14.2012: Bleeping sheep and ATLAS art originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 Jul 2012 17:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
Who's in charge here?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.