Can a shape pass through itself? That is to say, if one had two identical solids, would it be possible to orient one such that a hole could be cut through it, allowing the other to pass through without breaking the first into separate pieces? It turns out that the answer is yes, at least […]
You are probably familiar with initiatives like Seti@Home, where you donate unused computer power to some science project that needs computer cycles. [Jeff Yoshimi] wants to borrow your most powerful computer: your brain. The reason: cancer research. [Jeff’s] recent book, Gaming Cancer, has three examples: Eterna, Foldit, and Nanocrafter. All three make games out of creating […]
[Lynnadeng]’s team wanted to monitor the Los Angeles River over time and wanted citizen scientists — or anyone, for that matter — to help. They built a dual phone holder to allow random passersby to use their phones to take photos. A QR code lets them easily send the pictures to the team. The 3D […]
When you were five, you probably spotted your best friend running at “a million miles an hour” when they beat everybody at the local athletics meet. You probably haven’t seen anything that fast snice. According to NASA, though, a group of citizen scientists spotted a celestial object doing just that! The group of citizen scientists […]
Pity the video team at a large hacker camp, because they have a huge pile of interesting talks in the can but only the limited resources of volunteers to put them online. Thus we often see talks appearing from past camps, and such it is with one from Electromagnetic Field 2022. It’s from [Sarah Angliss], […]
For all the successes of modern weather forecasting, where hurricanes, blizzards, and even notoriously unpredictable tornadoes are routinely detected before they strike, reliably predicting one aspect of nature’s fury has eluded us: earthquakes. The development of plate tectonic theory in the middle of the 20th century and the construction of a worldwide network of seismic […]
Soap cleans clothes better than magnets. There, we are spoiling the ending so don’t accuse us of clickbaiting. The funny thing is that folks believe this is plausible enough to ask magnets experts so often that they dedicate a blog entry to comparing magnets and soap. Since you already know how this ends, let’s talk […]
Can you electronically enhance your brain? I’m not talking about surgically turning into a Borg. But are there electronic methods that can improve various functions of your brain? Fans of brainwave entrainment say yes. There was an old recruiting ad for electrical engineers that started with the headline: The best electronic brains are still human. […]
Join us on Wednesday at noon Pacific time for the high-altitude ballooning Hack Chat! The Cope brothers are our hosts this week. Jeremy, a computer engineer, and Jason, a mechanical engineer, have recently caught the high-altitude ballooning (HAB) bug. In their initial flights they’ve racked up some successes and pushed the edge of space with interesting […]