February 24, 2021
ben krasnow, bomb calorimetry, calories, chemistry hacks, poop, Science, Soylent

Ben Krasnow Measures Human Calorie Consumption By Collecting The “Output”

It’s a bit icky reading between the lines on this one… but it’s a fascinating experiment! In his latest Applied Science video, [Ben Krasnow] tries to measure how efficient the human body is at getting energy from food by accurately measuring what he put in and what comes out of his body. The jumping off […]

February 20, 2021
helicopter, mars, mars rover, open source, Perseverance, Science, Space

A Look At The “Risky” Tech In NASA’s Martian Helicopter

On February 18th, the Perseverance rover safely touched down on the Martian surface. In the coming days and weeks, the wide array of instruments and scientific payloads tucked aboard the robotic explorer will spring to life; allowing us to learn more about the Red Planet. With a little luck, it may even bring us closer […]

February 18, 2021
Featured, fiber optic, laser communication, LiFi, optical communication, Original Art, satellite internet, Science, Space

A Brief History Of Optical Communication

We live in the information age where access to the internet is considered a fundamental human right. Exercising this right does largely rely on the technological advances made in optical communication. Using light to send information has a long history: from ancient Greece, through Claude Chappe’s semaphore towers and Alexander Graham Bell’s photophone, to fiber […]

December 20, 2020
bacteria, chemistry hacks, filter, mask, Pandemic, pathogen, research, salt, Science, virus

How Researchers Used Salt To Give Masks An Edge Against Pathogens

Masks are proven tools against airborne diseases, but pathogens — like the COVID-19 virus — can collect in a mask and survive which complicates handling and disposal. [Ilaria Rubino], a researcher at the University of Alberta, recently received an award for her work showing how treating a mask’s main filtration layer with a solution of […]

November 10, 2020
art, deck prism, Featured, Interest, lcd, led, Original Art, prism, prism film, prism tiles, Science, vault light

Prism Lighting – The Art Of Steering Daylight

The incandescent light bulb was one of the first early applications of electricity, and it’s hard to underestimate its importance. But before the electric light, people didn’t live in darkness — they thought of ways to redirect sunlight to brighten up interior spaces. This was made possible through the understanding of the basic principles of […]

July 13, 2020
bme280, lightning detector, Raspberry Pi, Science, solar power, weather station, weatherproof

Solar Weather Station Listens For Lightning

Custom weather stations are a common enough project these days, especially based around the ESP8266. Wire a sensor up to the MCU, power it up with an old phone charger, and you’re half way there. But if you want something that’s going to operate remotely on the long term, you’ve got to put a little […]

June 27, 2020
art, machine learning, paintings, Science

Recreating Paintings By Teaching An AI To Paint

The Timecraft project by [Amy Zhao] and team members uses machine learning to figure out a way how an existing painting may have been originally been painted, stroke by stroke. In their paper titled ‘Painting Many Pasts: Synthesizing Time Lapse Videos of Paintings’, they describe how they trained a ML algorithm using existing time lapse […]

January 23, 2020
Cameras, News, researchers, Science

New ultrafast camera takes 1 trillion frames per second

Researchers have developed a new camera that can take up to 1 trillion pictures per second of transparent objects. The camera technology, which is known as phase-sensitive compressed ultrafast photography (pCUP), can take video not just of transparent objects but also of more ephemeral things like shockwaves and possibly even of the signals that travel […]

Category: Science