sperms are the hottest recruits for TV.

first it was the UK on the show Lab Rats, now it's in Germany.

however, like the way art usually precedes pop culture, there was already a sperm race project way back in 2000.

Boffins at Duke University have demonstrated that monkeys, like humans, are ready to "pay" to see powerful or sexually attractive individuals.

The scientists measured how much fruit juice monkeys would accept or forgo to see photographs of familiar monkeys. Male monkeys "paid" in juice to view female bum or high-ranking monkeys' faces, but required "overpayment" to view low-ranking monkeys' faces.

Ian Haig's Futurotica prototypes explore the ubiquitous and untapped mastarbatory fantasies found in everyday, off the shelf domestic items, as forms of technology that our bodies can relate to and interact with in unusual ways.

Tony Blow, a longtime commentor on Collision Detection and publisher of Typescape, has just launched the Squidblog -- a blog for people "who are fascinated by giant squid and related semi-mythical creatures." There could be no task more noble. This thing is now a daily part of my news diet.

And this month was a hell of a propitious time to start a blog about squid, because of the recent invertebrate invasion! Last week, about 1,500 jumbo squid washed up dead on the shores of Orange County in California. As The Seattle Times reported:

"These things are invading, and we don't know what's going on," he said. "It may be they're following a warm California current. Oceanographers don't have a clue why a large population of squid like this is moving north or why they strand themselves."

Reader SB bestows on this vegetable a 2005 Natural Design Award.

I agree.

It's a piece of romanesco broccoli (a cross between broccoli and cauliflower).

SB bought and ate some over the weekend and - like William Blake, when he stopped a moment and really looked at a grain of sand - found himself not playing with but, rather, staring at his food.

So he thought I should have a look.

He was right.

Read much more about fractals, of which romanesco broccoli is a wonderful living example, here.

If you'd like to learn more about Benoît Mandelbrot, who invented the word "fractal," you can do so right here.

[via SB and callalillie.com]

looks like someone got inspired by the Wooden Mirror project. "SensiTile uses daylight and ambient light as its source of power to respond to the movement around it by creating a dazzling set of ripples on its surface." [via]

Some moments become lasting recollections while others just evaporate. The reason may involve the same processes that shape our brains to begin with

TO STIMULATE MEMORY FORMATION,  an electrophysiological recording apparatus can both stimulate and record electrical signals from a 400-micron-thick slice of rat hippocampus.

In the movie thriller Memento, the principal character, Leonard, can remember everything that happened before his head injury on the night his wife was attacked, but anyone he meets or anything he has done since that fateful night simply vanishes. He has lost the ability to convert short-term memory into long-term memory. Leonard is driven to find his wife's killer and avenge her death, but trapped permanently in the present, he must resort to tattooing the clues of his investigation all over his body.

That disturbing story was inspired by the real case history of a patient known in the medical literature only as "HM." When HM was nine years old, a head injury in a bicycle accident left him with debilitating epilepsy. To relieve his seizures that could not be controlled in any other way, surgeons removed parts of HM's hippocampus and adjoining brain regions. The operation succeeded in reducing the brain seizures but inadvertently severed the mysterious link between short-term and long-term memory. Information destined for what is known as declarative memory--people, places, events--must pass through the hippocampus before being recorded in the cerebral cortex. Thus, memories from long ago that were already stored in HM's brain remained clear, but all his experiences of the present soon faded into nothing. HM saw his doctor on a monthly basis, but at each visit it was as if the two had never met.

This transition from the present mental experience to an enduring memory has long fascinated neuroscientists. A person's name when you are first introduced is stored in short-term memory and may be gone within a few minutes. But some information, like your best friend's name, is converted into long-term memory and can persist a lifetime. The mechanism by which the brain preserves certain moments and allows others to fade has recently become clearer, but first neuroscientists had to resolve a central paradox.

Both long- and short-term memories arise from the connections between neurons, at points of contact called synapses, where one neuron's signal-emitting extension, called an axon, meets any of an adjacent neuron's dozens of signal-receiving fingers, called dendrites. When a short-term memory is created, stimulation of the synapse is enough to temporarily "strengthen," or sensitize, it to subsequent signals. For a long-term memory, the synapse strengthening becomes permanent. Scientists have been aware since the 1960s, however, that this requires genes in the neuron's nucleus to activate, initiating the production of proteins.

Memory researchers have puzzled over how gene activity deep in the cell nucleus could govern activities at faraway synapses. How does a gene "know" when to strengthen a synapse permanently and when to let a fleeting moment fade unrecorded? And how do the proteins encoded by the gene "know" which of thousands of synapses to strengthen? The same questions have implications for understanding fetal brain development, a time when the brain is deciding which synaptic connections to keep and which to discard. In studying that phenomenon, my lab came up with an intriguing solution to one of these mysteries of memory. And just like Dorothy, we realized that the answer was there all the time.

continued January 25, 2005
XML Smell language   permalink

A researcher at Huelva University in Spain claims to have created a version of XML that can transmit fragrances.

The scientist developed a dual pass printing system, using two polymers which degrade by light and by touch, so that the smell is perceptible only when a document is read.

To propagate smell over the Web, the boffin created XML Smell, which would define in a standardised way the transmission of smell to allow the transmission of fragrances by email, by SMS to a mobile phone, or via a TV show.

Currently, the researchers are designing a device which will sit next to your TV, radio, phone or PC, and which contains a "smell palette". The components in the palette are realised according to instructions contained in the XML Smell language.

Via textually.

See also: the Internet aromatherapy service that sends out smells according to data received over the Internet, Jenny Tillotson's emotional and aromatic dress, smelly images, SNIF- Sexy New Intelligent Fragrance, 3D scents.

"Scientists at the University of Manchester in the UK have developed a type of inkjet printer that can print human cells. The scientists claim that it will be possible to print 'made-to-measure' tissue and bones to be grown simply by inputting their dimensions into a computer. But that’s not all, the printer’s creator claims that the potential of his team's discovery is enormous: 'You could print the scaffolding to create an organ in a day,' well, one day maybe. Where could this technology lead in a 100 years I wonder? Could it lead to a fax machine for complete living organisms?"

I love simple genius ideas. To sell small living plants for your keychain is a genius idea.

Soroban Geeks reports about the latest fad in Japan. Tiny plants are placed in plastic domes to be carried around on keychains. They cost about $10 and measure 41x25mm.

A VOICEMAIL system that labels messages according to the caller's tone of voice could soon be helping people identify which messages are the most urgent. The software, called Emotive Alert, is designed by Zeynep Inanoglu and Ron Caneel of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

It might be installed at the phone exchange or in an intelligent answering machine, where it will listen to incoming messages and send the recipient a text message along with an emoticon indicating whether the message is urgent, happy, excited or formal.

It works by extracting the distribution of volume, pitch and speech rate - the ratio of words to pauses - in the first 10 seconds of each message, and then comparing them with eight stored "acoustical fingerprints" that roughly represent eight emotional states: urgent or not urgent; formal or informal; happy or sad; excited or calm.

The fingerprints were created by "learning" software, which was fed hundreds of snippets from old voicemail messages that had been assigned emotional labels by the researchers. In use, the software looks for the acoustical fingerprint that is closest to the characteristics of the voice message and sends the recipient the corresponding emoticon. It also sends a text message indicating the two best-matching emotional labels.

In tests on real-life messages, the software was able to tell the difference between excited and calm and between happy and sad, but found it harder to distinguish between formal and informal, and urgent and non-urgent. Inanoglu suspects this is because excitement and happiness are often conveyed through speech rate and volume, which the software measures - while formality and urgency are normally expressed through words, or personal nuances in volume and speech speed, which it does not measure.

“In the future, machines will know more about our emotions and respond in accordance with them”She has also combined the software with a speech-recognition system that links patterns of words, such as an increased use of negatives, to particular emotions. However, doing this deprives it of one of its talents: the ability to label messages in any language. She hopes soon to build a system in which the acoustical fingerprint can be personalised for somebody's most frequent callers.

Bar Soba, a nightclub in Glasgow (Scotland), is about to offer its regulars the option of having a microchip implanted in their arm that will obviate the need to carry their wallet or queue for entry. It's the same chip worn by VIP members at two nightclubs in Barcelona and Rotterdam and by Mexico's Attorney General.

The size of a grain of rice, VeriChip is encased inside a glass and silicone cylinder and implanted between the layer of fat and skin on the upper arm.

The chip, which has a life span of about 20 years sends out a low-range radio frequency when scanned, supplying the scanner with its unique ID number. How that number is used depends on the database the scanner is hooked up to. In the case of Soba, it will be the balance on a person's bar account.

Steve van Soest, one of more than 100 people who have been "chipped" at Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, believes that: "It would be great if this catches on and you could put all your personal details and medical records on it. If I was involved in an accident, doctors could simply scan me and find out my blood group and any allergies."

Via The Guardian.

Related: an injection of RFID or GPS, anyone?

though unsurprising, in this age of pill-popping, i found it interesting that the insomnia market is growing. i'm an insomniac with the deprived desire to have a normal sleep pattern though i would rather be able to skip sleep altogether and spend my extra 8 hours on other more "productive" things. often times i wish i was like the heroin in Beggars in Spain, who is genetically modified to require no sleep whatsoever. perhaps my reincarnate can have a chance at that. but who knows, maybe Ambien will be beaten out by a new drug in the future that, instead of helping you sleep, would help you not need sleep and still let your body get all the benefits of sleep. hmm...

"Metal rubber" has been developed by NanoSonic and is the product of nanotechnology fabrication processes. Metal rubber is very thin and can be bent, folded, or crumpled up, and then immediately snaps back to its original shape. It also conducts electricity just like solid metal. Metal Rubber is a plastic polymer with metal ions, and one of the "nano-advantages" is that it only needs around one percent of metal content to make it conductive - allowing the material to maintain elasticity, and keeping the costly metal component low.

our brilliant defense department spent $7.5 mil to pursue these ridiculous ideas. oh wait, i suppose it's better than blowing each other up!

The US military investigated building a "gay bomb", which would make enemy soldiers "sexually irresistible" to each other, government papers say.

Scientists also reportedly considered a "sting me/attack me" chemical weapon to attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats towards enemy troops.

A substance to make the skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight was also pondered.

Another idea was to develop a chemical causing "severe and lasting halitosis", so that enemy forces would be obvious even when they tried to blend in with civilians.

In a variation on that idea, researchers pondered a "Who? Me?" bomb, which would simulate flatulence in enemy ranks. Indeed, a "Who? Me?" device had been under consideration since 1945, the government papers say.

However, researchers concluded that the premise for such a device was fatally flawed because "people in many areas of the world do not find faecal odour offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis".

Captain Dan McSweeney of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate at the Pentagon said the defence department receives "literally hundreds" of project ideas, but that "none of the systems described in that [1994] proposal have been developed".

[Phoenicians] used a mapping method over 3000 years ago that was quite meaningful to *totally* blind users. It was literally a map without paper.

They assigned names to locations based on the names of parts of the human body. The body was "mapped" to the area so that simply knowing the Phoenician name for the area enabled one to know approximately where it was in relation to other areas (body parts) of the same map. In English, one would call this "the lay of the land", that is, how the body is configured on the ground. #

See also: threatless: Follow It & Shona Kitchen: The City In Man

Related: Bio-graphy & Ubiquity

Social Prototypes, by Toronto-based artist Victoria Scott, is a group of five mechanically driven "handtools", which are electronically controlled by the blind underground movements of "Red Wriggler' composting worms.

Near the "prototypes", the piles of soil are hosting the worms, decayed organic matter (vegetable scraps, eggshells and coffee grounds) and several sensors.

The worm's activities are recorded by the sensors and the resulting minute signals are amplified and modulate the electrical current to each of the motors attached to the tools.

These mechanical sculptural objects are in search of a function, and do not perform a useful task, or fulfill a practical need.

By inventing and building these sculptures, the artist wanted to question how certain technologies may have been created for our betterment, for constructive purposes, but have been misused or abused, used to abuse ourselves, create distance between each other and our environment.

Another installation by Scott, Lay Down can be seen till January 30th as part of the Intimachine exhibition.

The "PolyHap" implant combines polymer with the mineral-like substance hydroxyapatite so that it's both tough and bone-friendly. Light, flexible and cheap, the implant is undergoing clinical trials in Moscow where it has been used on about 50 fifty children as young as 18 months and as old as 18 years—including a baby with a jaw tumor and a 12-year-old girl who could barely open her mouth from birth.

Intricate shapes

For treatment, researchers are using X-ray and tomography images to create a three-dimensional plastic cast of a damaged area. They then assess how much bone needs removal and create the implant to fill the space. Using a technique called stereolithography, the researchers draw an outline of the implant with a laser beam, leaving a very fine coating of polymer. In just a few hours, intricate shapes can be created.

While the PolyHap implants have produced good results, they may need replacing as children develop. The researchers are therefore working on a biodegradable version that would slowly dissolve as repairing bone begins to re-grow.

Now what I want to get back to is the idea of a global organism;. a group thoughtform. Rupert Sheldrake coined the term morphogenetic fields which I admit is only based on a theory and to some a shaky theory it is none the less intereting food for thought. His experiments dealt with the study of animals and how behavior is learned. A certain monkey on a remote island chain in I want to say the South Pacific started cleaning off leaves before eating them. Other monkeys observed this and also took on the habit but the really remarkable discovery by scientist who were studying the monkeys is when they found out that monkeys on all the other remote islands also picked up this habit. There was another observation made after World War II in England dealing with birds who learned to open milk bottles but I won't go into that. To support this finding I want to turn your attention to the book "The secret life of Plants" by Peter Tompkins written in 1989 which dealt with using biofeedback meters to detect and prove that a plant will scream or at least feel something akin to pain,fear, etc when another plant which part of its kin; perhaps a cutting from the first plant is placed half way around the world (any distance it doesnt matter) and chopped to bits.

Whizzy is a device that enables a woman to urinate from a standing position like a man. It is formed of heavy paper that slides virtually flat between your legs and opens to form a trough. Its unique and patented shape, angle and easy-grip handles make it very easy to use. It adjusts to each user's anatomy and stance. You stand naturally, with no bending or straddling necessary. It is disposable, and fits easily into purse, pocket or backpack. Available in two lengths, the longer original Whizzy, and the compact travel size Whizzy with easy-grip handles.

TravelMate non-invasive urinary devices enable females to pee through the fly of their clothes while standing, or by attaching our medical-grade thermoplastic elastomer tubing and collection bag, answer the call of nature while seated in a car, boat, or small aircraft.

If you're not turned on by the world's most fascinating urinals, I'll add to Steve's list, the Magic Cone and the Plasgoot, by Dutch designer Isabelle Leijn. (via elastico and popgadget)

i live in los angeles, california, usa and we just came out of our "Rainiest 15 Days on Record". (some of you might be saying, "15 days? so what!" :-) this is a photo of a boulder that landed on a street in topanga canyon, a city in this area that had a serious mudslide.

it started on december 27, the day after the tsunami so i am wondering if these two events were related in some way. so i tried to search for news and such that may explain the relationship of the two, and found nothing. then i wondered if weather in other places was unusual lately. if you have run across a site that explains this, please let me know. this is when comments would be great but i had to take the feature off because of the spam problem. anyway, please email me if you know of a site that talks about the tsunami affecting the weather (in LA or around the world): beverly -[at]- this domain name. thanx!

Rats can learn to distinguish between Dutch and Japanese by the difference in rhythm, which may provide clues to the evolution of human language ability

Swordfish warm up their eyes to improve their tracking of fast-moving prey in deep, cold water, a new study suggests

Via: A Welsh View: A Musician's Toilet.

The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions.

-- Donald Calne, author of Within Reason

People whose brains are damaged in their emotional centres are not only unable to express joy or sadness, they are unable to make decisions and they are unable to choose. Because you make decisions based on what you would like, what you fear would happen if you chose to do another thing instead, what you fear would happen if you don't do this particular thing in time, or what you desire the outcome to be. As it says in Lovemarks, which I have been reading since this morning, "emotion and reason are intertwined, but when they are in conflict, emotion wins every time. Without the fleeting and intense stimulus of emotion, rational thought winds down and disintegrates." As much as we'd like to believe we make decisions based on a dispassionate and unswerving adherence to the facts, it's just not true. Birthing simulator   permalink

A wireless birthing simulator, designed by students at Johns Hopkins University, allows the doctor to know precisely how much force is being applied during the delivery, which could make complicated labors easier for clinicians and their patients.

Unlike commercially available birth simulators, this one has a pelvis that mimics soft tissue which allows for better training in matters of maternal manipulation.

The fetal model is equipped with bioengineering instrumentation that allows measurement of the effect of clinician-applied force on the fetus. The nylon-lycra glove has pockets sewn into it to house force-sensors, which measure the traction in delivery. Wires emanating from the sensors are connected to a computer-based data-acquisition system that stores and then processes the data on a laptop.

Video.

Via Technology Review.

Tokyo-based architecture and design company nendo has an impressive portfolio.

You wouldn't tell by the look of the picture, but they designed for Typsy's , a wine bar in Tokyo, a wooden floor that evokes the "floating" feeling of tipsiness. Once you pass the terrace, the floor slightly sinks under your weight.

In 2003, they created for the Tokyo Designers Week the Sinking about furniture series. It may lose its original use, but we can always find a different way. Maybe we can give you a little hint about the relation between function and form. And, yes, they even got the DESIGN PREMIO award for it.

Via The Apartment.

From the days of the Abenaki Indians, even before there was such a thing as New England, weather forecasting was a science.

They invented what is now called the weather stick, a slender piece of balsam fir wood, about 15-16" long, that was affixed to an vertical surface.

If the stick bent upward, fair weather was in store; downward meant inclement weather was near.

In Vermont they call it the Vermont weather stick. They'd sell you one here if they weren't sold out.

Not to worry, though.

In Maine, they call it... surprise, the Maine weather stick, and they'll sell you one for $9.99 here.

Seemed a little steep to us here at bookofjoe for a balsam fir twig.

I told my crack research team, find a better deal for my readers.

And after many hours in virtual space, they did.

How about that very same Maine weather stick for a nice $4.95 right here?

Thought you'd like that better.

A bookofjoe 2004 Design Award Winner.

Yes, I realize that - in a sense - the only part does move; however, this is a different sense of having "moving parts" than that usually applied here, and so qualifies for consideration and an award.

[via redferret]

Say what?

If you lie awake at night worrying about wardrivers, this stuff's for you.

If you think wardrivers only take part in battles, you don't need this paint.

It's a flat gray (dare I stay stealthy gray?) latex house paint ($69/gallon) laced with copper and aluminum fibers to form an electromagnetic shield around your crib.

From the website:

This specially formulated flat interior paint will help reduce the transmission of radio waves through walls, ceilings and doors.  

A great solution for protecting your Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, Bluetooth or any wireless network in the 5GHz or less frequency range.

Create a field of protection around your wireless network.

Paint a shield on one wall or around your entire house.

Based on the refinement of the Faraday cage principle.

DefendAir can be used to block radio wave interference and noise and prevent radio wave leakage. 

One coat has the shielding range of 100MHz - 2.6GHz.  

With just a few coats DefendAir has a shielding range up to 5GHz. 

Tested according to IEEE 299-1991 standard.  

Actual performance depends on the user environment. 

We recommend multiple coats for better shielding.

Patents pending.  

DefendAir Radio Shield paint is an acrylic latex paint ensuring long-lasting color and durability. 

It is non-toxic, non-flammable, and non-hazardous.  

DefendAir can be applied by brush or roller like ordinary latex paint, but cannot be used with a sprayer.  

Contains 1 gallon (128 fluid ounces).

[via Adam Baer and the New York Times]

Longish interview with Paul Laffoley in Paranoia Magazine:

RG: The painting you're working on now is about Lovecraft?

PL: It's called "Pickman's Mephitic Models," based on the story. Certain things about it many people don't realize. Pickman was a real painter who lived between 1888 and 1926. Now, there's a question mark [gesturing toward the writing in the margins of the painting], because Lovecraft claims that he turned into a ghoul. God knows how old he is now.

Link (via New World Disorder)

A radical evolution from the spit handshake or blood brothers ritual, Biojewlery uses lab grown human bone tissue as a design material. Their intention is to have nuptial rings created from the bone tissue of both people to be wed. Now that the Modern Primitives are growing up, this seems like their ideal wedding band.

via Régine

Just goes to show you how out of it I am: a new painkiller called Prialt - a synthetic version of sea snail venom - has just been approved for sale in the U.S.

I didn't even know it was in Elan's pipeline.

Available next month, it's expected to generate a quarter-billion dollars a year in sales once it starts getting prescribed.

I mean, I didn't even know sea snails - or any snails, for that matter - had venom.

The things you learn if you live long enough.

The drug's generic name is ziconotide, and it's the equivalent of the naturally occurring venom that the tropical cone snail species Conus magus (pictured above and below) uses to incapacitate prey.

Researchers believe it works by blocking calcium channels in the nerves that transmit pain signals to the brain.

It's administered directly into the spinal canal via a catheter connected to an internal or external pump.

Since it doesn't work by occupying opiate receptors, as do narcotics, the drug can be used long-term without tolerance developing.

The drug is not addictive.

However, it can produce profound psychiatric side effects such as hallucinations, dizziness, confusion, and difficulty walking.

On the other hand, patients requiring this drug, with the requisite indwelling catheter and attached pump, will likely be so sick - often terminal - that such side effects may be of less concern than they otherwise might be.

Here's Sara Schaefer-Muñoz's story, from yesterday's Wall Street Journal.

Tovi Grossman, Daniel Wigdor, Ravin Balakrishnan at the University of Toronto have developed a system that allows for direct gestural interaction with virtual objects contained in a crystal ball.

The interface includes 2D menus projected on the display and a browser for selecting 3D objects used to construct models. The browser uses a grid that contains images of objects like cubes, spheres and pyramids.

With finger gestures tracked by cameras, users can point at objects, trigger commands, and move, rotate or resize 3D models projected in the display.

It could eventually be used as an interface for 3D medical, architectural and graphic design applications.

Video.
PDF of the research.

Via Technology Review News.

A co-operative experience

Pas de Deux by Mary Lucking is a performative installation for two people. The participants wear biofeedback devices and must co-operate by regulating their breathing to create patterns and align projected circles on the gallery wall.

When we think of performance, we tend to think of disciplines that are directly related - theatre, dance, etc. Pas de Deux reminds us that even very fundamental actions, such as breathing, can be measured in a performative sense, and that in many ways, we are all performers.

Walls as Touch Messaging Devices

Dry Translator, a sculptural installation piece by Sabrina Raaf, is built in response to new trends in 'smart architecture.' Smart technology is being created for enhanced human interaction and control of one’s urban building and home environments. Interestingly what excites many is not the necessarily the enhancement of control, but really more the idea of intelligent responsiveness and heightened personal connection with the rooms they inhabit.

Dry Translator is taking this idea of responsiveness to an exaggerated degree. The idea is to create an environment so sensitive to human presence that a touch to its walls sends resonant vibrations throughout the bodies of its occupants. Whereas normally people acknowledge the presence of walls in a building as merely types of boundaries or surfaces, this piece allows them to engage with walls in newly intimate ways such as touching, beating, and even 'playing' the walls as instruments. And, it also allows them to use the walls as sorts of touch messaging devices.

The piece includes two custom designed audio vests (which gallery visitors are invited to put on) and an interactive wall. Essentially what occurs with this piece is that when a participant touches the wall in the gallery, they hear the sound of their touch not locally where their fingers hit the wall, but actually on their own torso (via the vest). Inside of the wall there are several wired tentacles that act like stethoscopes which are able to pick up the slightest vibrations within the drywall material. Sounds from participants touching the wall are greatly amplified and transmitted wirelessly to the vests. The wall becomes a skin-like extension of the participant’s own body. In touching the wall, they touch their self. Participants may also record a series of touches or gestures on the wall via an interactive consol and thereby leave a message for the next participant to play back on the vest.

Surface Magazine supplies our '05 vision-of-the-future fix in a minisite that celebrates their first decade by challenging designers to visualize the next. Before you vote for your favorite, perhaps Scott Wilson can sway your vote with some exclusive insight into the creative process that led to his three entries on the Core77 boards.

We don't need no stinkin' museum show to tell us the difference between art and design. Oh no wait, yes we do. Thanks to uncleeric for the link.