The future, as they say, is here. Microsoft has announced that it’s built a new touchscreen computer—a coffee table that will change the world. Forget the keyboard and mouse: The next generation of computer interfaces will be hands-on. [ via Popular Mechanics ]
Tags: microsoft, touchscreen, interface, awesome
A fish story that might shed some light in the evolutionary process of living creatures: a fish caught (as a fossil) during its transition between leaving the water and beginning a life on land, breathing air and walking on four legs (from the Houston Chronicle).
Some 375 million years ago, the creature looked like a cross between a fish and a crocodile. It swam in shallow, gently meandering streams in what was then a subtropical climate, researchers say. A meat-eater, it lived mostly in water.
Yet, its front fins had bones that correspond to a shoulder, upper arm, elbow, forearm and a primitive version of a wrist, said Neil Shubin, of the University of Chicago. From the shoulder to the wrist area, “it basically looks like a scale-covered arm,” he said.
“Here’s a creature that has a fin that can do push-ups,” he said. “This is clearly an animal that is able to support itself on the ground,” probably both in very shallow water and for brief excursions on dry land. On land, it apparently moved like a seal, he said.
By building a machine that took 125 steps to turn on a flashlight, students at Purdue University wrapped up their third consecutive win at the National Rube Goldberg Machine contest – a competition in complexity and inefficiency.
The annual competition rewards creatively and inefficiency in completing a simple task. This year’s task was to create a machine that employed principles of engineering and physics to individually cut or shred five sheets of paper in a minimum of 20 steps.
(Via LiveScience and Dvorak)
As an adult, Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, buzzing about and mating. But things get weird when it’s time for a female to lay an egg. She finds a cockroach to make her egg’s host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach’s mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head.
Or so Carl Zimmer says in The Wisdom of Parasites.
Tags: parasites
Ah, if only these ultra-cool Charles Darwin bookmarks were available as a silicon wristband, they’d be buying them by the dozens! Or the tens, or whatver. I’d buy one.
And although they’re not for sale, they’re available absolutely free at a Swarthmore College website. Beware of cheap imitations!
