Photos taken by Ricardo Hurtubia, from inside CERN’s visitors center, via io9.

New technology will give burn patients a higher fighting chance to prevent infection and recover with less scaring.

We’ve heard about the spray-on skin gun back in 2008 but we didn’t think it’d become this real, this useful, this fast. Though it is still technically in an experimental stage, the skin gun has already successfully treated over a dozen burn victims. The way it works is by using stem cells from the patient’s healthy skin and mixing it with a solution to come up with the spray paint. And combined with that fancy gun, the rest is easy. Doctors say “skin cell spraying is like paint spraying”.

Via Gizmodo, video from Christian Naths on Vimeo, due to region restrictions.

From from artist Mauritius Seeger, via Make:

I use modul8 with a midi controller and have kind of given up on video scratching because it’s so bad in software when i last tried it ( with modul8) and have been generally frustrated with the type of control i have over video playback in vj software.

The reason i was interested in using kinect for this is because i can imagine a much more intuitive, natural and fun way to control visuals than sliders or a mouse. i was going to add clip transition controlled with a swipe movement, since scratching and clip changing would go a long way in having something usable already, and that would just be the beginning.

Making these machines, the group explains, is 8 times cheaper than buying them from manufacturers, on average. And in a world where resources might be scarcer than we anticipate more quickly than we anticipate, their ambitious project could prove to be a vital one. They’re publishing the full schematics and diagrams on their Wiki, so anyone can use them once shit goes Mad Max. If the internet still works, that is. OK, maybe you should print them out now just to be safe.

Via Gizmodo.

Windshields that shed water so effectively that they don’t need wipers. Ship hulls so slippery that they glide through the water more efficiently than ordinary hulls.

These are some of the potential applications for graphene, one of the hottest new materials in the field of nanotechnology, raised by the research of James Dickerson, assistant professor of physics at Vanderbilt.
Dickerson and his colleagues have figured out how to create a freestanding film of graphene oxide and alter its surface roughness so that it either causes water to bead up and run off or causes it to spread out in a thin layer.

“Graphene films are transparent and, because they are made of carbon, they are very inexpensive to make,” Dickerson said. “The technique that we use can be rapidly scaled up to produce it in commercial quantities.”

Via Science Daily.

The GEO-IK-2 spacecraft, designed to measure the shape of the earth, was launched earlier on Tuesday from the Plesetsk launchpad in northern Russia.

The loss of three GLONASS navigation satellites that crashed into the sea in December provoked outrage from the Kremlin, which is trying to build Russian technological independence. President Dmitry Medvedev afterwards sacked two top space officials.

“Contact has still not been established with the spacecraft and it will most likely be considered lost,” an unnamed space source told Interfax news agency.

Via Reuters.

From The Guardian:

For a man serving a life sentence for murder, Pradeep Deburma has a slightly unlikely dream: to work in a call centre like hundreds of thousands of other young ambitious Indians. Even more improbably, he has every chance of realising it while still behind bars.

Deburma, 24, is detained in a high-security prison near Hyderabad which is launching an innovative scheme to turn convicts into “outsourcing providers” for local firms and eventually, it is hoped, international clients.

The scheme is in its early stages, with prisoners being trained in basic data entry skills. Jail authorities hope that inmates will soon be just as likely to tap at a keyboard as dig vegetables, make carpets or stitch uniforms.

“We have got so many computer literates and professionals in our prison,” said Gopinath Reddy, director general of prisons in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

“So far they are not being fully recognised, but now their knowledge will be utilised for the nation and when they go out they can also lead a meaningful life.”

Video Via Engadget.

From io9:

Residents of Polk County, Florida are getting their own book “red box.” With the mere swipe of a library card, the vending machine will expel the book of their choice.

Photo by Chris Kotsiopoulos, using many single shots layered into one. Via geekologie.

Via suspiciousminds’ photostream.

At about 10.30am on 17 January 1966, when Jesus Caceido heard a deafening explosion coming from the village of Palomares, the future mayor of the area had no idea he had just witnessed one of the Cold War’s most serious nuclear accidents – or that nearly half a century later, the 1,500 villagers would still be battling to have the ensuing contamination removed for good. After all, they live in Europe’s most radioactive village.

Today, 45 years after four nuclear bombs fell near the village when a US Air Force B-52 bomber and a refuelling aircraft collided in mid-air, tens of thousands of cubic metres of contaminated soil and an estimated – although never officially confirmed – half a kilogram of plutonium remain. And the radiation is getting potentially more dangerous, not less.

“As this type of plutonium decays, it is converted into another radioactive substance, americium, which is highly carcinogenic and can be released into the atmosphere,” says Igor Parra, a specialist for the Ecologistas en Accion pressure group for Palomares.

Via The Independent.

City planners in south China have laid out an ambitious plan to merge together the nine cities that lie around the Pearl River Delta. The “Turn The Pearl River Delta Into One” scheme will create a 16,000 sq mile urban area that is 26 times larger geographically than Greater London, or twice the size of Wales.

The new mega-city will cover a large part of China’s manufacturing heartland, stretching from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and including Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing. Together, they account for nearly a tenth of the Chinese economy.

Over the next six years, around 150 major infrastructure projects will mesh the transport, energy, water and telecommunications networks of the nine cities together, at a cost of some 2 trillion yuan (£190 billion). An express rail line will also connect the hub with nearby Hong Kong.

“The idea is that when the cities are integrated, the residents can travel around freely and use the health care and other facilities in the different areas,” said Ma Xiangming, the chief planner at the Guangdong Rural and Urban Planning Institute and a senior consultant on the project.

Via disinfo.

From Inhabitat:

Paper batteries are not a new creation — many scientists are working on creating transistors out of the material — but CENIMAT has taken the concept a step further with a battery that gets its energy from water through hydrogen and oxygen electrolysis.

The battery can also absorb water vapors from the atmosphere. Apparently if the air has just 40 percent humidity, it is enough for the battery to recharge itself. The faculty’s scientists hope that the technology will benefit in the production of tablets, mobile phones and medical devices

Violet Blue reports its “it’s worth a look if you have the glasses“.

In the film Plastic Bag, the title character spends a lifetime (or more) on a quest for a creator not even aware of his existence. A stunning short by Ramin Bahrani, director of Man Push Cart and Goodbye Solo, Plastic Bag is both a postmodern spiritual pilgrimage and an ecological fable.

Via Next Nature.

Josh Bongard is one member of a growing field called evolutionary robotics. In short, it means that stronger, more useful, more adaptable robots should develop their skills one step at a time, like animals and humans, rather than being built ‘ready to go.’ Bongard has experimented with his very literal biomimetic approach to robot upbringing in a first-of-its-kind experiment sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Bongard demonstrated his theory in a sophisticated computer simulation where little beasts with different body plans move around in 3-dimensional space. The objective of these figures is for them to get to a light source in the simulation, upright, without tipping over.

During the experiment, Bongard conducts a variety of genetic algorithms that allow the beasts to develop different movements like slithering, shuffling, or walking, based on the beast’s body plan. Eventually, as the body parts are altered, the beasts are able to reach their goals and also to face other challenges, like resisting a force trying to tip them over.

After running 5,000 simulations, Bongard built a simple robot out of Lego Mindstorm kits, to show that a real ‘robot’ is capable of evolving. Though the Lego robot is four-legged, it starts out with a brace on its front and back legs.

Via InventorSpot.

From Wired:

Never mind the flying car. It’s all about slowed-rotor/compound, according to Carter Aviation Technologies. SR/C is what the Texas company considers the key to a practical, personal transportation aircraft. And from the looks of its new, second-generation aircraft, Carter might be on to something.

The company’s latest flight test aircraft is a proof-of-concept version of a four-seat autogyro capable of vertical takeoff and landing. Carter has been flight-testing the aircraft and earlier this month completed a 36 minute flight, its longest yet. In addition to the size, the new aircraft reduces pilot workload by using automated systems and computer controls similar to many new aircraft.

The only big factor missing in the lack of gravity:

It sounds crazy, but 233 days ago a team of six scientists entered a sealed simulator in Russia. Their mission? Recreate the conditions of a 520-day round trip to and from Mars, realistically cutoff from the rest of the world. Come February they’ll finally reach the Red Planet, but the hardest part of the journey will still be ahead.

The experiment, called Mars500, is going down in a windowless isolation chamber within the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow, with a team composed of three Russians, a fellow from France, one from China, and an Italian-Colombian. Communication is delayed just as it would be if the team was traveling further and further away from Earth for real; email and video messaging are the prime ways to exchange words even though the simulator is surrounded by a team of researchers, unseen by those inside. The team eats the kind of meals you’d find on the International Space Station and typically only enjoys showers weekly.

Via dvice.

Via Science Daily:

A study from researchers in Germany showed that magnetic maneuvering of a modified capsule endoscope in the stomach of healthy volunteers under clinical conditions is safe, well-tolerated, and technically feasible. Maneuverability of the capsule within the stomach was excellent and visualization of the gastric mucosa, the inner lining of the stomach, was satisfactory in the majority of subjects. Apart from a single experiment performed with a supervising flexible gastroscope, this was the first study to use the system in the stomach of healthy subjects.

See also:

• Take your robot pill now

• Snake-like Robotic Pills

• Walkers swallow RFID pills for science

• Philips develops “intelligent pill”

• Italian Scientists Put Robot Spiders In Your Colon