How The Sci-Fi Generation Saved The World!
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Erik and Martin Demaine are a father-son team exploring the mathematical mysteries in folded paper. When circular sheets are crinkled along concentric circumferences, it results in exotic projections like the ones seen above.
This is a form of paper art that has been explored since the 1920’s, but the Demaines are using modern computation to unravel the complex algorithms behind the shapes. Starting with different curvatures and rotations in flat paper, they don’t always know what will come out the other end.
More of their curved-crease sculpture here, and their book.
(via Brain Pickings)
This super slick Phone Size tool that compares the hottest smartphones against one another in as close to “meatspace” size as possible. You just plug in a few phones that you would like to compare, set the size and ratio of your screen and you’re off. (via A Slick Web Tool to Compare Real-Life Sizes of Smartphones)
Fluorescent nerves allow for exploration of the most mysterious sense: touch
A new technique for color-coding nerves involved in touch gives neuroscientists a much-needed tool for studying that mysterious sense.
For nearly 250 years, the intricate detail and complexity of skin’s nervous-system wiring has thwarted attempts at understanding it. But if researchers studying skin could be imagined as technicians reverse-engineering a supercomputer’s peripherals, they’d have just traced about four lines back to the motherboard.
“Of all five major senses, the skin sense is the least understood. It’s an enormous frontier, and this is a huge leap forward,” said Jeff Woodbury of the University of Wyoming, a sensory biologist who co-authored a study of nerve endings Dec. 23 in Cell. “With this technique we hope to unravel all of the different circuits of skin sensation.”
