An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the University of Houston, TX, adapted an imaging technique called optical coherence tomography to capture at 3D video of the mammalian heart as it forms. They used the method to image a mouse embryo just 8.5 days past conception and about a day after it starts to form. In the remarkable video a normal heartbeat is visible. Normally optical coherence tomography is used for clinical imaging of the retina. Having such a high-resolution, non-invasive way to image the developing heart could perhaps help doctors treat congenital heart disorders in human babies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here are some of my favorites from CRAFT this week:

Janet Echelman's Her Secret is Patience

Shoe Repair Tips + Interview with Vince Pacheo

Headless Marie Antoinette Costume

Chocolate Human Skulls

Fairytale Fashion: Deployable Structures

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Trailrunner7 writes "A new report by a Washington policy think tank dismisses out of hand the idea that terrorist groups are currently launching cyber attacks and says that the recent attacks against US and South Korean networks were not damaging enough to be considered serious incidents.The report, written by James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, looks at cyberwar through the prism of the Korean attacks, and calls the idea that terrorists have attack capabilities and just aren't using them 'nonsensical.' 'A very rough estimate would say that there is a lag of three and eight years between the capabilities developed by advanced intelligence agencies and the capabilities available for purchase or rental in the cybercrime black market. The evidence for this is partial and anecdotal, but the trend has been consistent for more two decades,' Lewis writes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A market develops, a bunch of people get it started, then someone at a big company discovers it, changes its name (sometimes they don't even do that) and relaunches it as if it were something wholly new. The press, many of whom were aware of the earlier efforts, goes for it.

"Everyone knows" that it only matters when a big company does it. However, if you look at history that's often not true, it's often the small guy who ends up defining the market, despite what the press thinks.

A classic case is P2P. Ten years ago there were all kinds of early efforts, some remarkably popular (thinking of Napster) and the industry launched a huge hype balloon. Conferences, white papers, press tours, alliances, books, VC, startups, etc etc. Billions of dollars thrown at it. What ends up taking the prize? BitTorrent! An open source project launched by a bunch of nerds, without much PR. I don't know if it was the best technology, but it certainly was good enough. It wasn't glitzy or even particularly easy to to use. It worked, and most important, you could get the movies and TV shows you wanted.

It's a good bet that in five years we'll look back and most of the companies staking out realtime today will be forgotten and something like BitTorrent will rule this space, gently of course.

Last week, at the annual MassTEC conference an interesting collection of science and technology teachers gathered to share experiences and information. Here are some highlights:

Johanna Bunn of the Boston Museum of Science introduced the Engineering the Future curriculum, with interactive demonstrations of hands-on projects introducing students to structures, fluids and electricity.

The forum on the Massachusetts state science and technology curriculum frameworks introduced a series of strand maps that show how the concepts and possible activities in the various STEM subjects interrelate. Their hope is that existing and new courses could be designed so that they step students through learning ideas within courses and how the courses could build upon each other. Right now the maps are static PDFs, but their goal is to have them be more interactive in the way they connect projects and concepts.

Martha Cyr, Director of K-12 Outreach at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute showed the TEACHEngineering site, which has resources for K-12 teachers. The site's search engine allows teachers to find curriculum and projects that map to many states' frameworks, and loads of scientific and engineering concepts. The curriculum tools on the site have a consistent look and feel and have been tested by STEM teachers.

Nate Ball of Design Squad told of his experiences in back yard, garage and kitchen making. Though his school in Oregon lacked a hands-on technology and engineering program, his childhood was filled with adventures of the making sort. His rigorous personal projects and academic record led him to MIT, where he discovered what engineers do. When WGBH uncovered a need for youth to understand more about the realities and techniques of engineering, he was in a group of students who helped to develop possible projects for the show before he tested for and ultimately filled the role of host. The show encourages creativity, teamwork and real world problem solving. The third season of Design Squad has just begun airing, and the site has lots of curriculum resources, and full episodes of the show.

If you are involved in an organization helping to prepare teachers and their students for a lifetime of making, pass along some links in the comments.

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docinthemachine writes with word of some "research just presented at the 65th ASRM on 4K surgery. Using bleeding-edge Hollywood 4K cameras coupled to laparoscopes, surgery was performed in 4K, or 4X the resolution of HD. Since laparoscopy is performed while viewing on a video monitor, this is a huge advancement of resolution and clarity for the surgeon. It only took a million dollars of projectors to show it to the audience."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jon Udell's "A literary appreciation of the Olson/Zoneinfo/tz database" points out the transcendentally complex nature of keeping track of every timezone and temporary change in times that exists today or has existed in the past. I've spent hours poring over this file and have to concur with John -- it's probably the most fascinating reading on your hard-drive.

What I didn't appreciate, until I finally unzipped and untarred a copy of ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2009o.tar.gz, is the historical scholarship scribbled in the margins of this remarkable database, or document, or hybrid of the two.

You can see a glimpse of that scholarship in the above example. The most recent two rules define the latest (2007) change to US daylight savings. The spring forward rule says: "On the second Sunday in March, at 2AM, save one hour, and use D to change EST to EDT." Likewise, on the fast-approaching first Sunday in November, spend one hour and go back to EST.

But look at the rules for Feb 9 1942 and Aug 14 1945. The letters are W and P instead of D and S. And the comments tell us that during that period there were timezones like Eastern War Time (EWT) and Eastern Peace Time (EPT). Arthur David Olson elaborates:

From Arthur David Olson (2000-09-25): Last night I heard part of a rebroadcast of a 1945 Arch Oboler radio drama. In the introduction, Oboler spoke of "Eastern Peace Time." An AltaVista search turned up :"When the time is announced over the radio now, it is 'Eastern Peace Time' instead of the old familiar 'Eastern War Time.' Peace is wonderful."

Most of this Talmudic scholarship comes from founding contributor Arthur David Olson and editor Paul Eggert, both of whose Wikipedia pages, although referenced from the Zoneinfo page, strangely do not exist.

A literary appreciation of the Olson/Zoneinfo/tz database

Bryant writes "The Windows community is somewhat notorious for leaks from upcoming versions of Windows (obligatory link to this guy since that's most of what he does), and while the official PR word from Microsoft and many other companies with regards to leaks is a simple 'no comment,' no one has really gotten a candid, inside look at the various things that go down when word, screenshots, or builds of upcoming software leak. I managed to get some time with a senior Microsoft employee for the sake of discussing leaks, and the conclusions reached (leaks heavily affect communication, not so much the product schedule) as well as what these guys actually have to deal with whenever someone leaks a build, breaks an embargo, etc. may actually be a surprise given what most companies try to instill in the public mind."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bryant writes "The Windows community is somewhat notorious for leaks from upcoming versions of Windows (obligatory link to this guy since that's most of what he does), and while the official PR word from Microsoft and many other companies with regards to leaks is a simple 'no comment,' no one has really gotten a candid, inside look at the various things that go down when word, screenshots, or builds of upcoming software leak. I managed to get some time with a senior Microsoft employee for the sake of discussing leaks, and the conclusions reached (leaks heavily affect communication, not so much the product schedule) as well as what these guys actually have to deal with whenever someone leaks a build, breaks an embargo, etc. may actually be a surprise given what most companies try to instill in the public mind."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's precious little time left to enter the Alex Rider book Giveaway! Get your comments in on the giveaway post for your chance to win a copy of Stormbreaker or Point Blank. This giveaway is part of our upcoming Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest, which will launch the same day as MAKE, Volume 20 and the new Alex Rider book, Crocodile Tears.

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An anonymous reader writes "Windows users will be able to use a new Kindle Books application to purchase, download and read e-book titles from Amazon's Kindle Store service. The PC application will be offered as a free download and will support Windows 7, Vista and XP systems. The news comes as Amazon is suddenly finding itself with a fresh crop of competitors in the e-book reader market. Earlier this week hardware vendor Spring Design entered the market with its Alex device, while publisher/retailer Barnes and Noble presented an even more serious challenge to Kindle when it unveiled its Nook reader device." Worth noting, if you're in the market for any such device: the base Kindle's price is now down to $259.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've been amusing myself with illogic this last week, at times giggling with the relief I feel at the passing of my father. I finally found a way to explain it in words.

When I was a kid, like every other kid, when the parents went out and left me alone, I'd do stuff that I wasn't normally allowed to do. But I had to be sure to cover my tracks so my mischief wouldn't be discovered. The lessons learned from the failures were incorporated into my future exploits, I'd never get caught the same way twice!

So all through my life I've been preparing for my father to come home and catch me doing whatever it is is I'm doing. Whether I was aware of it or not, I was always covering my tracks. My subconscious can't get rid of this. It's a program I'll be running forever. But now it has a different ending. He's never coming home.

From Creatrope. The mechanism of the tongue is made from Lego elements.

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I've been putting off programming with Twitter lists, but I shouldn't have.

They did a really good job, as usual, with the API.

The project -- convert the page of Berkeley people's tweets to run off a list instead of a special Twitter account. It turns out there's an API call that retrieves the timeline for a list, and it works exactly like the API call that retrieves the timeline for an account. So much so that I didn't even have to change the glue script, I pass in a different URL and it just worked.

It Just Worked™.

That's the Holy Grail of APIs.

I am happy to criticize Twitter when I think they made a mistake, and I'm even happier to applaud when something works incredibly simply, and well.

Thanks!!

At the Brick Lane Upmarket in East London today, I was delighted to discover that Dan Hillier -- he of the wonderfully demented remixed Victorian woodcuts -- had two new ink drawings of a woodsy, autumnal nature.

Caught in the Headlights

At the Edge of the Woods

Today only, Teefury is selling these great Dinosaur Arm tees for your inner T.Rex. Or Tee-Rex.

RAAAAAR!!! by Simon Sherry - $9 (via Geekologie!)

mpol writes "For years I've been using a home server with Linux, but recently I've been having doubts about the electric bill. I'm not touched by the recession yet, but I would like to cut costs, and going from a 100-Watt system to a 30-Watt system would save me 70 bucks a year. The system doesn't need to do much, just apache, imap, ssh and some nfs, but I do prefer to have a full-fledged system, where I can choose what to install on it. I also don't really care if it's a low-power Via or an ARM processor as long as it's cheap. I'm aiming for $300 or less for a full system, which I could then earn back in about four years through power savings. I've been reading about the Western Digital Mybook World Edition, which has an ARM processor but isn't that easy to install Debian on. A Mac Mini draws about 85 Watts, so that isn't an option either. Something a bit more than turn-key would be fine, but preferably not a complete hack-job. Adding a temporary CR-ROM or DVD-ROM, or a USB disk with an iso to install from would be nice. Any Slashdotters run nice and cheap low-power Linux systems? What can you recommend?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hello Kitty turned 35 this week, and to celebrate, a birthday party was held for her last night at Royal/T in Culver City, Calif. I took my daughters with me to the opening of "3 Apples: An Exhibition Celebrating 35 Years of Hello Kitty," expecting a quiet affair with madeleine cookies and chamomile tea. I was surprised to see the line around the block waiting to get into what turned out to be a booze-fueled celebrity bash.

There was an art show with works by Boing Boing favorites like Tim Biskup and Gary Baseman, lots of cosplay characters, go-go dancers, Hello Kitty themed maids serving drinks and snacks, a commemorative Hello Kitty Airstream travel trailer (which will be auctioned on eBay, check here for details), and lots of new Sanrio merchandise (my wife was fond of this dress).

The exhibition will run at Royal/T until November 15th.

Arrested Motion has more photos.

This week we added a few new products to our lineup. One of our favorites is the Ethernet Shield for Arduino. It's a great way to connect your Arduino (think Twitter) to the web. Also, we added a quick video demo of the Cross Copter EX from Gakken. Are there any kits in the Shed that you would like to see us demo? Let us know in the comments. Thanks!

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This editorial at Eurogamer examines how the games industry is dealing with the growth of digital distribution — a transition they're handling better than other entertainment industries, but not without a few stumbling blocks of their own. "The examples from other industries undergoing this transition are not promising, since they tend largely to focus on metaphors involving creeks and a distinct lack of paddles. Bricks-and-mortar retailers of music and movies have largely sat back and grumbled while their businesses were hijacked, first by online retailers of physical product and then by digital distribution services. ... Specialist games retailers who follow that model face little more than a decline into insolvency in their medium-term futures. Worse again, they face competing with far bigger companies to retain their slice of an already shrinking pie — as boxed game retail sales fall off in favor of digital distribution, supermarket chains are increasingly seeing high profile games as a worthwhile loss-leaders."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Two car bombs exploded in Baghdad today, killing at least 136 and wounding more than 520, according to news accounts: Al Jazeera, New York Times, CNN, WaPo. So far on this Sunday morning, American cable news networks aren't talking about it much, so why don't we do so here, in the comments. [Image: AFP]

Napalm Dragon posted a gorgeous super slow motion video of fire breathing. (via @futuryst)

AT&T customers (iPhone users notably among them) have seen some wireless congestion in recent months; Brough Turner thinks the trouble might be self-inflicted. According to Turner, the poor throughput and connection errors can be chalked up to "configuration errors specifically, congestion collapse induced by misconfigured buffers in their mobile core network." His explanation makes an interesting read.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ruphus13 writes "Privacy is becoming a scarce commodity, especially with geo-aware phones. Now, Android phone users can browse anonymously using Tor — a capability, until now, limited to the desktop. From the post: 'We have successfully ported the native C Tor app to Android and built an Android application bundle that installs, runs and provides the glue needed to make it useful to end users. Secure, anonymous access to the web via Tor on Android is now a reality,' writes Guardian Project team member Nathan Freitas. The Tor 0.2.2.6-alpha release uses toolchain wrapper scripts to run Tor without requiring root access."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You can get another $7 off this cryogenically-treated, gold-plated "audio grade" power socket, but only if you buy four. The customer reviews are splendid:

Finally something to go with my custom vacuum sputtered unobtainium circuit breaker contacts and calibrated studio grade Romex. Now if I can just get the power company to get rid of those pesky scalar waves in my zero point energy transmission system, I'll be all set.

The vendor has also trademarked the phrase "Audio Grade." Wattgate 381 Audio Grade Duplex Socket [Parts Express] Thanks, Joel!

This 1962 high-school textbook, "When You Marry," is a long, mind-bendingly awful manual for marriage, including sticking to traditional gender roles, staying away from race-mixing, resisting communism and saving yourself for your wedding night.

Love, 1962 American High School Style (via Making Light)

Falc0n writes "WhiteHouse.gov has gone Drupal. After months of planning, says an Obama Administration source, the White House has ditched the proprietary content management system that had been in place since the days of the Bush Administration in favor of the latest version of the open-source Drupal software. Dries Buytaert reflected on this, adding: 'this is a clear sign that governments realize that Open Source does not pose additional risks compared to proprietary software, and furthermore, that by moving away from proprietary software, they are not being locked into a particular technology, and that they can benefit from the innovation that is the result of thousands of developers collaborating on Drupal.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

wisesifu writes "One of the interesting features of Mac OS X is its 'universal binaries' feature that allows a single binary file to run natively on both PowerPC and Intel x86 platforms. While this comes at a cost of a larger binary file, it's convenient on the end-user and on software vendors for distributing their applications. While Linux has lacked such support for fat binaries, Ryan Gordon has decided this should be changed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Good Instructable for the advanced folks out there, your code won't be portable, but you're advanced, so whatever :) RazorConcepts writes-

Arduino is slow? What? This instructable will show just how slow a part of Arduino is, and how to fix it. It’s true – more specifically, Arduino’s digitalWrite command takes a considerable amount of time. If you are just switching on a LED once or something, you won’t be able to notice it. However, I realized how slow it was while I was trying to use a TLC5947 PWM driver. That requires the microcontroller to shift in 288 bytes each time! Each byte required about 12 digitalWrites, for a total of 3456 digitalWrites each time I wanted to shift in new data to the TLC5947. How long did that take? 30 seconds of just digitalWrite! But there is a solution – using “true c” style commands, or what the AVR GCC (GNU C Compiler) uses. The brains behind Arduinos are ATMega168s or ATMega328s. The AVR community typically uses “true c” commands to program these c

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Tasha26 writes "No, not the one which will end up building terminator robots. BBC's Click brings news of a Japanese company, Cyberdyne, which is in the process of building different robotic suits to assist the elderly in accomplishing simple body tasks such as walking and lifting. Even though still in R&D, this video (@3m15s) shows a pretty promising future for the elderly."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ruphus13 writes "Privacy is becoming a scarce commodity, especially with geo-aware phones. Now, Android phone users can browse anonymously using Tor — a capability, until now, limited to the desktop. From the post, ". Thanks to a grant from the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge and the team behind The Guardian Project, now Android mobile phone owners can use Tor to browse privately on their handheld devices..."We have successfully ported the native C Tor app to Android and built an Android application bundle that installs, runs and provides the glue needed to make it useful to end users. secure, anonymous access to the web via Tor on Android is now a reality," writes Guardian Project team member Nathan Freitas. The Tor 0.2.2.6-alpha release uses toolchain wrapper scripts to run Tor without requiring root access.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bigwophh writes "ARM launched its new Cortex-A5 processor (codenamed Sparrow) this week, and while it's not targeted at the top end of the mobile market, it is a significant launch nonetheless. The Cortex-A5, which will likely battle future iterations of Intel's Atom for market share, is an important step forward for ARM for several reasons. First, it's significantly more efficient to build than the company's older ARM1176JZ(F)-S, while simultaneously outperforming the ARM926EJ-S. The Cortex-A5, however, is more than just a faster ARM processor. Architecturally, it's identical to the more advanced Cortex-A9, and it supports the same features as that part as well. This flexibility is designed to give product developers and manufacturers access to a fully backwards-compatible processor with better thermal and performance characteristics than the previous generation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A face mask with which to attract hungry, curious hummingbirds, $80 from heatstick.com. The masks do look silly, and the website is nothing if not homebaked. But if the maker's YouTube videos are to be believed, these contraptions do attract the little buggers and make for amazing eye-to-eye encounters with one of the most magical winged creatures on the planet. I'm kind of dying to try one out.

Using and enjoying the feeder is a two step process. The first is to acquaint the hummingbirds with the feeder. We set an old can of paint on a small shelf on the side of the barn and slipped the feeder onto the can. It wasn't long before the hummingbirds found it, and after a little searching, found the feeding station. Then we let them get familiar with the feeder for a few days. Finally we set a chair next to the shelf, removed the feeder from the can, slipped it on and waited. One never forgets the first time a hummingbird suddenly arrives at the feeder right in front of your eyes.

Video embedded above: "Chris Makes a New Friend" [YouTube]

Product: "Eye to Eye Wearable Hummingbird Feeder." The guy behind it lives in California's Humboldt County, and has invented some other neat earth-gadgety stuff, too, like the Veg-a-Lot growing shelter [heatstick.com].

(Thanks, Dean Putney!)

Gillian Higgins teaches horse owners about what's "under the hood." To do so, she very carefully paints detailed anatomical art onto the pelt of her white horses "Freddie Fox" and "Henry." [via Neatorama]

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Grant Thomas, of Making Visual Narratives, pointed us to this free, printable papercraft Zoetrope, featuring the famous motion photos of Eadweard Muybridge.

Free Printable Papercraft Eadweard Muybridge Zoetrope

More:
Laser cut & animated Muybridge horses
Grotesque Menagerie

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theodp writes "It's the not-too-distant future. They've turned off the Internet. After the riots have settled down and the withdrawal symptoms have faded, how would you cope? Cracked.com asked readers to Photoshop what life would be like in an Internet-addicted society learning to cope without it. Better hope it never happens, or be prepared for dry-erase message boards, carrier pigeon-powered Twitter, block-long lines to get into adult video shops, door-to-door Rickrolling, Lolcats on Broadway, and $199.99 CDs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.