Software That Fakes An Active Social Life While You’re On The Sofa

Now that our cooler friends can Instagram, tweet, and FourSquare the heck out of every underground concert and speakeasy cocktail, FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) has become a persistent problem for the less-hip. But there’s hope for those who would rather spend their Saturday nights watching re-runs of Downton Abbey than heading downtown to the newest brewpub.

The new application CouchCachet promises to give you the fully-booked, in-the-know life you so desperately wish to present. The app is a full-service social booster: Not only does it check you in to the trendiest places in your neighborhood, it also periodically tweets obscure lyrics and photos of hipsters in skinny jeans. As one of the quotes from the site says: “I can finally  be who I want you to think I am”. And what you are, along with the rest of the internet, is mostly an algorithm.

Via the New York Times.

‘Victimless Shelter’ Grown from Pig Cells

It’s a self-evident truth that there’s nothing that can’t be better with bacon – including housing. While Next Nature was busy dreaming up new in vitro meat (IVM) foods, the mad scientists of Terreform ONE in New York went ahead and designed an entire dwelling made of IVM pig cells. While the prototype for the “victimless shelter” is just conventional pig leather, the real deal (if it ever exists) would be a complex structure with tissue-engineered bone for support and giant sphincters for windows. We’ll leave it up to the religious authorities to decide whether a pork house is kosher.

Reverse Retouching: Fattening Up Too-Thin Models

In a darkly ironic reversal of its normal role, Photoshop is now being deployed to make models look more fleshy than they actually are. In part spurred on by the impossible beauty standards that Photoshop has made commonplace, models have become so adept at self-starvation that magazine editors have to use software to make them look healthier.

Former Cosmo editor Leah Hardy recently described the “reverse-retouching” that occurred under her tenure:

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Pubic Lice (Possibly) Going Extinct Due to Brazilian Waxing

With each swipe of the razor or rip of the waxing strip, the world has unwittingly been massacring one of its most familiar species. In what may be the first extinction caused by porn and string bikinis, pubic lice are disappearing from the world’s nether regions. The popularity of hair removal has, supposedly, decimated the louse’s habitat.

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Did Forks Really Give Modern Humans an Overbite?

The food writer Bee Wilson, author of Consider the Fork, has put forth a surprising theory about forks and teeth that has received widespread online coverage. According to Wilson, humans had an ape-like bite until relatively recently, with our top and bottom incisors aligned along their edges. With the invention of the fork around 250 years ago, our teeth abruptly switched to the overbite that is common to nearly every human today.

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Herds of Deer-Shaped Power Lines

Not real, but a far more creative way to deal with unsightly public works than tree-shaped antennas.

Via Gizmodo.

Moss Table Powers Its Own Lamp

When moss photosynthesize, they release nutritious fats, carbs and proteins into their roots to feed colonies of helpful, symbiotic bacteria. In the process of breaking down these compounds, the bacteria release electrons. In other words, the create electricity. Researchers at the University of Cambridge have figured out how to harness these minute electrical charges into an emerging technology called biophotovoltiacs (BPV).

Created by Alex Driver, Carlos Peralta, Paolo Bombelli, the prototype Moss Table produces enough electricity to power a small lamp. According to Peralta, the Moss Table “suggests a world in which self-sustaining organic-synthetic hybrid objects surround us, and supply us with our daily needs in a clean and environmentally friendly manner.” Small devices could be powered by houseplants or backyard gardens, while larger arrays of plants might hold promise as a new renewable source of energy, especially in remote or impoverished communities.

See also the NANO Supermarket’s speculative algae-powered Latro Lamp and the Bioelectric Bonsai.

Story via the University of Cambridge. Image via Keetsa.

NASA Might Give the Moon a Mini-Moon

Think the moon looks lonely up there? In a decade or so, NASA may add a tiny playmate to keep the moon company. Last April, researchers from the Keck Institute for Space Studies presented a proposal to “capture” an asteroid and drag it into the moon’s orbit. The moon’s new mini-moon would provide NASA astronauts with a laboratory for studying the feasibility of mining asteroids for metals, using their oxygen, hydrogen and carbon to refuel spacecraft, and for figuring out ways to prevent a Cretaceous-style extinction event. Compared to the moon, the 500 ton, 20-foot asteroid would not be very big, but would be a feat of engineering to astonish the world.

Via Discover Magazine.

“Ento” Brand Normalizes Eating Insects

While Next Nature is hard at work normalizing the idea of eating lab-grown meat, a group of British design students are working to bring insect-eating into the mainstream. Though worm and insect protein is vastly more efficient and eco-friendly than vertebrate protein, most Westerners dismiss it as unclean and unappetizing. In their video, the group maps out an eight-year plan to bring bugs from a gourmet curiosity to a familiar brand – one that customers might even prefer over pork or chicken. The amount of research the group put into making palatable, marketable bug food is remarkable: from molecular-level ingredient paring to designing a network of urban insect farms, it seems they’ve left no log unturned in the quest for gastro-grubs. For a detailed break-down of the project, visit here.

Thanks to Stephen Perry for the heads-up.

Dad Hires Virtual Hitman to Kill Son’s Online Avatars

A 23-year-old in China was recently puzzled why his online avatars were being killed off at disproportionate rates. After asking around, the young man eventually discovered that his own father was behind the virtual murders. It turns out that the father was concerned that his unemployed son had become addicted to gaming, and reasoned that hiring an online hitman would be as terminal a solution as a real-life assassin. The only problem? Virtual avatars usually have a pesky supply of extra lives.

Story via BBC News. Image via Kotaku. Thanks to Jack for the heads-up.

Clothes that Turn Heat into Electricity

With rising energy costs and our growing arsenal of iPads, smart phones, and wearable monitors, we’re always on the lookout for new ways to power our devices. Perpetua Power, an Oregon-based startup, has invented a chip that can turn heat into energy – specifically the heat from your own body. When placed against your skin, the one square-inch TEGwear thermoelectric generator outputs up to three volts. One generator is enough to power headphones or a pedometer; a battery of them sewn into your favorite jumpsuit might even provide enough power for a phone. Maybe the TEGwear chip will be the intermediate step between old-and-tired fossil fuels and our fat-powered Energy Belt.

Image and story via Fast Company.

A Touchable, Moss-Covered Keyboard

Designer Robbie Tilton’s keyboard replaces the impersonal metal of a keyboard with lush imitation moss and wooden keys. Though it’s a good example of fake nature, Tilton’s keyboard is about more than just plastic replacements for the real thing. According to Tilton, “Tech products are often built in a clean, glass, pristine style. They’re not touchable. Tactilely, they are not that interesting.” The keyboard reintroduces some of the tactility of old nature into our unresponsive, button-filled environment.

Thanks to Daniel R. Witte for the heads-up.

Cigarettes: Bad for You, Good for Birds

Birds use whatever they can get their beaks on to build nests, including cigarette butts. Surprising new research from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México shows that instead of giving baby birds a bad case of smoker’s cough, the cigarettes in their nests might actually be helping them. The more used-up filters a nest had, the fewer nest-dwelling parasites called it home.

Since nicotine is a natural pesticide, it’s likely that trace remains of the chemical in the butts are keeping away the creepy-crawlies. The researchers still don’t know if the birds are using butts because they’re good insulators, or if they’re somehow aware of their anti-parasite properties. Birds in more wild environments have been known to line their nests with strong-smelling, bug-repelling herbs, so it’s possible they’re instinctively attracted to that special cigarette stink.

Via Io9

Genetic Screening for Christmas Trees

If you’ve turned to plastic Christmas trees because the real ones leave piles of needles behind, science is working to bring live conifers back into your holidays. A $1.3 million project in the US is trying to find which individual trees hold onto their needles most tenaciously. A team headed by plant pathologist Gary Chastagner is subjecting thousands of branch samples to a “rub test” and then meticulously counting the number of needles that fall off. By comparing shedding versus non-shedding pines, the team hopes to find the piece of RNA responsible for needle loss  – and to develop an easy field test for identifying that trees that lack the offending nucleotide.

Genetic testing aside, the story of the commercial Christmas tree in the US is an interesting one. A tradition introduced by German immigrants, Christmas trees were mostly gathered from wild or semi-wild conditions until the 1970s. Unfortunately, harvesting all the young conifers from a forest has the side effect of letting understory shrubs and weeds to go wild. Competing for light against these quick-growing plants, pine tree saplings grew tall and spindly – a shape that’s not particularly festive. Christmas tree farms sprung up to provide the perfectly conical trees that no longer existed in the wild. Hypernature at its most festive.

Via the New York Times. Image via Ian Sane.

Nanotech Diatoms

No, those aren’t plastic trinkets or beads from a craft store. They’re diatoms, a group of single-celled algae, and unlike almost all of our current technologies, they can rapidly and reliably synthesize  nanoscale structures. Diatoms produce incredibly complex silica shells that are riddled with a regular pattern of pores. As can be seen above, diatoms come in an incredible variety of shapes – around 100,000 species in all. Strong, easy and quick-growing, and virtually unlimited, diatoms are drawing the attention of scientists who are interested in nanotechnology.

As with many nanotechnologies, research into the use of diatoms is in its infancy. These microscopic algae have been studied for their ability of synthesize novel electrical devices, including new ways to detect pollution. A chemical process that converts their silica shells into silicon creates ready-made nano electronics. Since biologically active molecules attach to the pores in their shells, they may eventually function as a “lab on a chip” for detecting antibodies, traces of diseases, and other chemicals in the body. Diatoms also show promise in the fields of optics. Solar energy cells with diatom-based coatings capture three times more electrons that standard coatings. Genetic manipulation might refine the diatom’s natural precision engineering to create bespoke parts for nanosensors and nanoscale machines from diatoms. Further proof that guided growth is the future of manufacturing.

A Pill for Golden Poop

Sure, there’s a pill to make your sweat smell like roses, but what about a pill that makes your poop look sparkly? Part of a high/low culture collaboration with Tobias Wong and Ken Courtney, Gold Pills are a $425 indulgence that promise to fleck your doo with bits of 24K gold. First exhibited in 246 and Counting at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, these pills are now available in an unlimited edition from the CITIZEN online store.

New Robot Turns Poo into Energy

Though disgusting, sewage is an abundant, nutrient-rich resource. Researchers at the University of West England have taken advantage of this fact by creating a robot that turns human poo into energy. The EcoBotIII has an artificial stomach that consists of layers of microbial fuel cells that digest sewage and transform them into fuel. In case you’re wondering, the robot has a “solid waste excretion mechanism“, so it can poop just like you do. The hope is that autonomous robots such as these might patrol sewer systems looking for problems, or be put to work in sewage treatment plants to drive down treatment costs.

Thanks to Yuri for the heads up.

When Biomimicmarketing Kills

Loosely regulated and largely untested in clinical trials, herbal medicines nonetheless do big business based on their image of being wholesome, natural, and backed by millennia of tradition. Common sense tells us that it’s healthier to swallow a flower than a pill, and wiser to consult with a kindly herbalist than with a white-coated doctor.

Biomimicmarketing is so persuasive that it can sell poison, so long as the poison is “natural”. Aristolochia, a mottled purple flower, was a common medicine in ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt, and is still an ingredient in traditional chinese remedies and in certain weight-loss supplements. Prescribed for ailments as wide-ranging as childbirth, arthritis and snakebites, for thousands of years doctors and patients managed to miss the flower’s most potent property: It will kill you.

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