Archive for the ‘Experiment’ Category

This Ugly Blob is the Future of New Materials

Monday, June 11th, 2012

That thing pictured over there to the right? That thing that looks like hair from your shower drain or a Giger-inspired coffee mug? It’s a living organism that just might be the future of how we harvest material for all of our tech needs.

Wait…wha?

That weird-looking thing is actually a genetically engineered living thing that, depending on the materials used to create it, produces various types of material including fiberglass and even magnetic nanoparticles.

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara are continually tweaking the original DNA combinations used in these things to produce not only materials which we are currently using but to produce new types of materials that hadn’t even existed before.

Remember when your grandma would crochet a sweater for you that you’d never wear? In about ten years time you’ll be crocheting a Kevlar-like sweater for your grandchildren except that instead of rolls of yarn? You’ll have a bunch of THESE things producing all your Kevlar in different colors sitting in an adorable little basket covered in holograms of geese wearing bonnets.

[ARSTechnica”]

Lab Experiment Gone Wrong? Chinese Pig Dog Baffles Chinese Residents

Monday, June 11th, 2012
chinese pig dog.jpg

Is this curious pig/dog hybrid creature a runaway from a lab experiment? A new cryptid? A beast of myth and fable?

No to the first, probably to the second and hopefully to the third.

As it turns out, this little fella is actually a very rare, and expensive, breed.

The bizarre looking stray – actually a rare pedigree Chinese crested hairless dog – was spotted wandering the streets in Xinxiang, Henan province, central China, close to several scientific research centres and a local medical school.

One witness said: “The pink skin makes it look just like pig gone wrong in some sort of genetic experiment.”

Police believe it got loose after giving it’s rich owners the slip.

[Orange] via readers Raph Ware and

Scientists Make Computer Schizophrenic

Monday, May 9th, 2011

Filed under “Things That Maybe Aren’t That Great”, scientists have figured out how to induce schizophrenic symptoms in a computer.  In the test, they were able to overwhelm the computer with so much information that it developed crazy delusions, even claiming responsibility at one point for a terrorist bombing.  Using a neural network called DISCERN that is able to learn using natural language, they cranked up the rate of learning and instructed DISCERN to forget less, thus causing a mental breakdown.

Telling the computer to “forget less” was akin to flooding the system with dopamine, confounding its ability to discern relationships between words, sentences and events, according to a news release from UT.

“DISCERN began putting itself at the center of fantastical, delusional stories that incorporated elements from other stories it had been told to recall,” according to the news release. In one answer, it claimed responsibility for a terrorist bombing.

[Popsci via Geekologie]

Sammy Hagar Vividly Describes His Own Alien Abduction, UFO Sighting

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Skitched 20110404 143858

While speaking to MTV’s The Hive, Sammy Hagar describes in detail how a band of aliens experimented on him while he slept:

How is that crazy? I wasn’t there, I don’t know what happened to you.

Remember the story in the book, where I have a dream about being contacted by aliens in the foothills above Fontana?

Yeah, yeah, I’ve got the page right here. “I saw a ship and two creatures inside of this ship… And they were connected to me, tapped into my mind through some kind of mysterious wireless connection.” You’re telling me that wasn’t a dream?

That’s right. It was real. [Aliens] were plugged into me. It was a download situation. This was long before computers or any kind of wireless. There weren’t even wireless telephones. Looking back now, it was like, “F-ck, they downloaded something into me!” Or they uploaded something from my brain, like an experiment. “See what this guy knows.”

And this actually happened?

That happened. That friggin’ happened, I’ll tell you right now. Another thing happened when I was about four that I didn’t put into the book. One time I saw what I considered to be, well, at the time I thought it was a car with no wheels. We lived out in the country and I saw this thing floating across a field, creating this big dust storm. I threw rocks at it and sh-t. And I don’t know what happened after that.

You blacked out?

I guess. I just have no memory of it. And that wasn’t a dream. It was during daylight.

Sammy is promoting his new autobiography Red. In the interview he also discusses boring stuff like drugs, booze and David Lee Roth.

What could aliens want with the brain of Sammy Hagar? Beyond an intergalactic fascination with his oft-discussed inability to drive 55, your guess is as good as mine.

[MTV Hive]