The Blob Robot

Very cool new concept. It's simple in theory, surprised it hasn't been developed before.

via The Blob Robot | Scienceray

Icelandic biotech company deCODE Genetics slides towards bankruptcy

“This might seem like a simple case of yet another biotech out-stripping its capital - but it's sadder than that. While it appears that deCODE made some poor strategic decisions in a business sense, it did use its unique assets (i.e. access to the DNA, health and genealogical records of a large proportion of the Icelandic population) to answer fundamental questions about human genetics. A remarkable number of the genome-wide association studies published over the last couple of years have come from deCODE (I've heard the company described as "a biotech that acts like an academic research institute").”

Genetic Future : A train wreck in slow motion: deCODE Genetics slides towards bankruptcy

Extinct animal resurrected (briefly) by cloning

So there's this goat species, and they all died in 2000, so they take some DNA from skin samples and clone it, just like they did Dolly the sheep. And just like the many, many Dolly the sheeps with lung problems, and Dolly the sheep who also had lung problems, the cloned goat dies withing 7 minutes due to lung defects. The scientists that did it think this is great and we can bring back lots of extinct species. Can these cloning scientists see a pattern here? That maybe, oh, I don't know, cloning doesn't work? That maybe they should back off before we really do have a Jurassic Park? And how is it a clone if it's got defects? Isn't a clone meant to be a clone?

Extinct ibex is resurrected by cloning - Telegraph

Super Cargo Aircraft

This might be common knowledge to others, especially if you’re an aircraft nut, but there are planes that are designed to take oversized cargo, like other plane bits. This might sound pretty ordinary, but the amazing part is they are built on the base fuselage of normal planes, then just stretched out in the middle. The first series were called the Guppy series made by Aero Spaclines, and the coolest of which is the Super Guppy. It’s still used by NASA, and for a long time was used by Airbus to fright its parts. The cool thing is it’s based on a Boeing 377, so the running joke was that every Airbus was built on the wings of a Boeing. ;) It first flew in 1965.

Of course Airbus couldn’t keep making their planes with a Boeing, so they made the Airbus Beluga, a pimped out A300-600 that first flew in 1995. Fatta than yo momma.

Once Airbus got in on the act, Boeing had to give it a crack, and popped out the Dreamlifter in 2006. This fatty is based on the familiar 747-400, but you gotta admit the Frenchie design above looks way weirder and cooler.

Large Hadron Collider "Actually Worked

They  haven't smashed anything yet, but they've got a proton beam going the whole way around. I find it annoying that these guys can get a proton beam to travel around a 27,000km circle on their first go and I had to google how to pass a command line parameter into a perl script. Particle physicists make me feel really really dumb.

Large Hadron Collider "Actually Worked

Beautiful Photos of the Large Hadron Collider

The Boston Globe has an amazing photo essay on the installation of the LHC. But don’t worry, CERN says that no black holes will be created, but if they did, any black holes that are created would disintegrate instantly, and even if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be positively charged so they couldn’t suck up the Earth. So in summary even if the LHC did manage to create a stable black hole it’d be a weeny one with very small effect on the Earth. Besides, the LHC is has the same potential of making bad stuff like black holes, strangelets, vacuum bubbles and magnetic monopoles than is being made in the universe anyway, but if it does happen, instead of it being millions of light years away, it’ll be in Switzerland where we can watch it easily. See? Safe!

Latest Skyscraper Architecture in Dubai

This has to be seen to be believed, I’m not going to spoil it by describing it. This is not a fake or a dream, you can buy your apartment in this skyscraper off the plan right now.

http://www.dynamicarchitecture.net/

3 Launches iPhone Petition

I think it’s pretty damn lame that 3 have to launch a petition to get the iPhone on 3 in Australia.

Human + REAL Jetpack = CRAZY AWESOMENESS!!

His site

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

Looks like I'm not the only one that thinks the iPhone is an iDud.

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

Wiitard

wiitard (noun) An insulting name for a Nintendo fanboy. Derived from combining "Wii" and "retard."