Collaborate Disseminate
All it takes is one knucklehead to go and do something stupid to screw things up for everyone. We’re not exactly sure who the knucklehead is behind the recent ban …read more Continue reading Homebrew Gel Fuel Keeps the Steam Coming, Legally
There are some technologies first imagined in the Star Trek universe have already come to exist in the modern day. Communicators, tablet computers, and computer voice recognition are nearly as …read more Continue reading Conductive Gel Has Potential
“Look with your eyes, not your hands” is something many of us have heard while growing up, but that doesn’t apply to the touch-sensitive microscope [Steve Mould] got to play …read more Continue reading Behold a Microscope That Sees By Squashing Things Into It
This is an older project, but the electromechanical solution used to create this giant, staring eyeball is worth a peek. [Richard] and [Anton] needed a big, unblinking eyeball that could look in any direction and their solution even provides an adjustable pupil and iris size. Making the pupil dilate or contract on demand is a really nice feature, as well.
The huge fabric sphere is lit from the inside with a light bulb at the center, and the iris and pupil mechanism orbit the bulb like parts of an orrery. By keeping the bulb in the center and orbiting the …read more
Continue reading Behold the Giant Eye’s Orrery-Like Iris and Pupil Mechanism
If print supports have ever caused you grief, know that there’s an alternate printing method in the works. First: get yourself a vat of industrial gel in which to print.
Rapid Liquid Printing(RLP) is being developed in collaboration by Michigan-based company [Steelcase] and [Skylar Tibbits’] Self Assembly Lab at MIT. RLP is touting advantages over traditional 3D printing technology such as reduced print times, a higher quality print, and enabling larger scale prints — all without supports!
Working with rubber, plastic, or foam, the printing material is injected by nozzle into a basin of industrial gel. That gel suspends the …read more
If you want to get into electronics, it’s pretty straightforward: read up a little, buy a breadboard and some parts, and go to town. Getting into molecular biology as a hobby, however, presents some challenges. The knowledge is all out there, true, but finding the equipment can be a problem, and what’s out there tends to be fiendishly expensive.
So many would-be biohackers end up making their own equipment, like this DIY gel electrophoresis rig. Electrophoresis sorts macromolecules like DNA or proteins by size using an electric field. For DNA, a slab of agarose gel is immersed in a buffer …read more
Continue reading Get into Biohacking on the Cheap with this Electrophoresis Rig
Yes, the pun was ripped off the article that got our attention . It was just too good not to share. A team of researchers in Japan created an artificial honeybee, a small drone that is meant to cross-pollinate flowers. The (still) manually controlled drone is 4 centimetres wide and weighs only 15 grams. At the bottom side of the drone, a mix of a special sticky gel and horse hair resides. The purpose of this gel is to collect the pollen particles as it bumps into the flowers and exchange it as it goes hopping around from plant to …read more
