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Why Do Zebras Have Stripes? To Create Optical Illusions
Why zebras have stripes has long been something of a mystery. We have a pretty good idea they're used as protection, but the exact mechanism isn't totally understood. I mean, why would evolution pick...
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Get Ready For The Robot Smog
DJI's Phantom In Flight Also pictured: NYC's famous Flatiron Building. Dan Bracaglia Ah, the good old days when your microwave stayed put where you left it. Introducing autonomous robots into everyday...
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This Dog Thought-To-Speech Translator Is Bogus
No More Woof Making the rounds is the project you see here: a dog-to-speech translator. Put this EEG headset on your dog's head, and it'll pick up on its brain waves, then put those scans in plain ol'...
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Deceased Researcher’s Message In A Bottle Discovered In The Arctic
Ice Shelves, Including Ward Hunt, in the Canadian Arctic, 2008 NASA images by Jesse Allen In the northernmost reaches of the Canadian Arctic, 500 miles (800 kilometers) away from the nearest human...
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One Farmer And His Engineered Non-Browning Apples
Conventional Granny Smith Apple vs. Arctic Granny Smith Apple Arctic Apples For a small-time farmer, Neal Carter has received a lot of big-time attention. Carter is the owner of a 21-acre farm in...
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A Microscopic Look At Drugs And Other Amazing Images From This Week
Drugs Under The Microscope Sarah Schoenfeld via Design TAXI
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Reviewed: DJI Phantom 2 Vision Personal Drone
The world of consumer-ready drones is in its infancy, with only a few ready-to-fly options in existence. But DJI’s Phantom 2 Vision is evidence that the space is maturing. With its latest offering, DJI...
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The Week In Numbers: China Lands On The Moon, NASA's Deep-Space Chamber, And...
NASA Chamber A NASA 40 tons: the weight of the door to NASA's Chamber A, a room that recreates the deadly conditions of deep space and, because it can reach 11 Kelvin, is the coldest place on Earth4:...
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Whooping Cough Has Evolved In Response To Its Vaccine
The Old-Fashioned Way An infant gets immunized in this undated historical photo. American doctors no longer use so-called “gluteal injection sites” for immunizations. Photo made available through the...
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A Guide To Spotting And Hiding From Drones
Pater's Drone Survival Guide Ruben Pater Consider it a rough Audubon guide to the mechanical fauna of battlefields. Created by Amsterdam-based designer Ruben Pater, the Drone Survival Guide is, on one...
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Big Pic: Ho Ho Ho, Don’t Forget About Tuberculosis!
Stamp Out Tuberculosis Illustrated by Ernest Hamlin Baker. Available online from the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Why is this merry fellow advertising about tuberculosis? He's on a 1924 poster...
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This Robot Just Won The DARPA Robotics Challenge
The DRC Winner Schaft The DARPA Robotics Challenge, a search for the rescue robot of tomorrow, just ended its two-day competition, and the machine you see here is the glorious champion. Team Schaft, a...
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Why Robots Are Better Than Humans At Testing Human User Experiences
Robot Arm A robotic arm made by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects, not the same as the robot model used below U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Flickr Who would you want to test your...
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USDA Issues Livestock Permit For Magical Reindeer To Enter U.S.
You guys. The U.S. Department of Agriculture would like you to know it has issued a permit for nine particular reindeer to enter the U.S. between the hours of 0600, December 24, 2013, and 0600 December...
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How To Castrate A Hippo
Hippopotamus Underwater, San Diego Zoo cloudzilla on Flickr, CC BY 2.0Hippopotami weigh anywhere from two to four tons and have got mouths that practically unhinge. I wouldn’t want to have to castrate...
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The Science Behind Reindeer's Color-Changing Eyes
A reindeer in Sweden Look Sharp! via Wikimedia Commons Winter in the Arctic is grim—day and night blur together for 24 hour stints without sunlight. Reindeer manage to survive these gloomy weeks...
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Finally, A Super-Simple Modular Robotics Kit
EZ-Robot Revolution JD Brian Klutch The robot of the popular imagination, whether it’s R2D2 or Rosie, just works. But in reality, making a robot just work takes a lot of hard work. Many would-be...
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8 Ways Jellyfish Are Awesome And Terrifying
Mooning Moon jellies, which don't sting humans, are believed to be native to Europe, but have spread throughout the globe. Mark Conlin/seapics.com& T. Brakemeir/Corbis The jellyfish is a...
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FYI: Did Dinosaurs Get The Flu?
Dino Flu Left To Right: Christian Martínez Kempin/Getty Images; Syldavia/Getty Images; Christian Martínez Kempin/Getty Images It’s very hard to figure out when the influenza virus first started making...
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NASA's Plan To Deal With Pesky Moon Dust
Dust Buster Brian Klutch The ProblemMoon dust is dangerous. Each mote is like a tiny shard of glass—there’s no wind or rain to soften the edges of lunar soil. During the Apollo missions, it jammed...
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