Images From Space - A DIY Family Science Project

This is quite possibly the best father / son science project of all time! Enough said...

Spray On Clothing Demonstrated

I'm a little speechless over this one, it's like technology you'd expect to see in an episode of The Jetson's in a can... you have to see it to believe it.

I wonder how it fairs in the washing machine, or in the rain for that matter?

Want To Improve Your Game - Wear Red!

A study conducted by German sports psychologists at the University of Munster, and reported in New Scientist magazine has concluded that athletes who wear red score 10 per cent more in any competition than if they were in another colour. "If one competitor is strong and the other weak, it won't change the outcome of the fight," said Norbert Hagemann, who led the study. "But the closer the levels, the easier it is for the colour to tip the scale." In the study "the researchers showed video clips of taekwondo bouts to 42 experienced referees. One combatant wore blue, the other red. They then showed them the same clips but digitally manipulated the clothing to swap the colours. The fighters wearing red were given an average of 13 per cent more points than when they were blue."

Interestingly another study conducted in 2004 by Durham University scientists showed that 55% of Olympic combat sports were won by the competitor in red. I wonder if the same is true in video games?

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

Napping Improves Creativity

Need to amp up your creativity? Take a nap!

47-million-year-old Primate Fossil Displayed

Scientists put on display a 47-million-year-old fossilized primate on Tuesday calling it one of the oldest and most complete skeletons of an early primate found to date. Called Darwinius masillae, the primate estimated to be about 9 or 10 months of age, died at the margin of a volcanic lake in a rain forest about 20 kilometres south of modern-day Frankfurt, Germany, near the town of Messel. "We do not interpret Darwinius as anthropoid, but the adapoid primates it represents deserve more careful comparison with higher primates than they have received in the past," the scientists who are studying the fossil wrote in the scientific journal PLoS One. "She tells so many stories. We have just started the research on this fabulous specimen,"said researcher Jorn Hurum of the University of Oslo Natural History Museum.

Source: CBC

US Army Invests In Sticky Foam Weaponry... Again

According to Wired's Danger Room blog the US Army has issued a contract to Albuquerque, New Mexico contractor Adherent Technologies for the development of a "foam-based vehicle arresting system," which is intended to stop a vehicle in it's tracks before it puts soldiers or civilians in harms way. According to the blog "In theory, the foam would "instantly disable" the oncoming vehicle by clogging up the engine intakes and blocking the steering mechanism. The foam would absorb the vehicle's kinetic energy, bringing it to a stop. "Lastly," the company says, it "will leave the driver trapped inside an encapsulated vehicle, with no means of orientation."" This sounds like one of those attempts to stop the Road Runner by Wille E. Coyote. Meep meep!