Men from Francisco de Orellana’s expedition building a small brigantine, the “San Pedro”, to be used for searching for food.

The white oak keel is steam bent onto the mold.

For the few things I still use batteries for, this would save me time, money and waste. Chargeable in any USB port, flip the USBCELL lid down and use as a standard AA battery over and over.

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The history of origata, the art of carefully folding gifts in decorative paper, will take you to Japan, 1336. Originally developed to wrap decorative fans or kelp in handmade paper, correctly folded origata can tell you about the relationship between the sender and receiver or the event the gift forecasts.

The Origata Design Institute honors the legacy of origata by resurrecting and reinventing traditional folding techniques.

It’s just that I want this so bad. The software automatically adjusts to screen orientation.


I could treat you so right.

One of the great American visionaries of the twentieth century, R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) endeavored to see what he, a single individual, might do to benefit the largest segment of humanity while consuming the minimum of the earth’s resources. Doing “more with less” was Fuller’s credo. He described himself as a “comprehensive anticipatory design scientist,” setting forth to solve the escalating challenges that faced humanity before they became insurmountable…”

Read more about Buckminster Fuller on display at the Whitney exhibit.

via Charles & Maria

This website functions as a canvas for you to create a Pollock-esque painting. Move the mouse to draw, click to change colors and hit spacebar to start over. Smooth, interesting and quick loading. A nice example of interactive web design.

Sunlight over Earth Feb 29 2008 23:00 UTC

via opentopia

I have to say, this innovation made sense to me immediately when I saw it. And it priced at only 5 Euros! This is roughly $1500 USD these days, but still. You all know those cell phone cords piled on the floor or looped across the room are hazardous eyesores.

Go get you one hombre!

via popflower.

Rat heart, stripped of cells = ghost rat heart

Dr. Doris A. Taylor of the University of Minnesota did some pretty smart science. In trying to solve the age old how-to of human organ generation, she decided tissue generation, not cell replication, was the root problem. So, she refocused her energy on the difficulty of recreating the 3D structure of the heart - a sticky ham due to the intricate nature the heart’s framework. The solution?

Dr. Taylor and her team washed harvested dead rat hearts, leaving the framework of arteries and valves intact. Next, using the expired heart as a scaffolding, the team injected newborn baby rat heart cells and simulated blood pressure. Within two weeks, they had a beating, electrical impulse conducting, blood pumping zombie rat heart.

Tissue engineers all over their world seem to be thunking their collective forehead at the simple elegance of Dr. Taylor’s solution. Seeding an organ with cells from the recipient helps resolve the issue of implanted organs being rejected by the recipient’s immune system. The ability to use the organs of cadavers as scaffolds for new, viable organs - a coup for transplant doctors, patients and B movie screen writers worldwide.

The implications for humans? Well, first up against the wall are the pigs of the world. Their heart resembles a human heart and, like rats, they are readily available. The next step is to get the heart to pump enough blood to support a body as large as a pig - or human. In this New York Times article, Todd N. McAllister of Cytograft Tissue Engineering in Novato, Calif., had this to say to the New York Times about exporting this advance to humans and other human organs:

The principal problem in escalating it to humans is one of scale, not of cell biology, and that is an easier problem to solve potentially.

So now, instead of inventing the wheel, they just need to make it haul the wagon. Finally, a use for all that science!

“It looks like a ghost heart. And it feels a little like jello.”

Doris Taylor

Amid the many awards Dr. Taylor will receive for her discovery, she seems a shoe-in for the infamous Least Scientific Analogy of the Year. “It looks like what? Ah yes. The old Ghost Heart.” (Seriously though, it does look awesomely spooky–I’m on the zombie rat heart bus).