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Researchers at startup Tasso, Inc. have developed a painless method for administering a blood test. The company created a device the size of a ping pong ball to painlessly draw blood without using a needle.Instead of using the needle to break the skin and enter the vein, the disposable gadget uses a delicate vacuum to suction blood from your microscopic vessels called capillaries into an attached container. The process, which takes about two minutes, gently sucks up enough blood for routine tests such as measuring cholesterol....

Media Platforms Design Team• Make sure any recycled plastic barrels are food-grade quality. Cisterns can also be made from old oak whiskey barrels or new garbage cans. Check your local authority for premade, recycled (often subsidized) barrels on hand or for workshops in building your own.• Cover and screen from insects and any roof debris.• Install securely to make them child-proof. Often propped up above the ground to prevent water from pooling below, barrels can be a hazard if they tip over....

Chevy SparkMedia Platforms Design TeamWhat is It:The Spark is a microcar about the same size as a Smart. Chevy unveiled a trio of small car at the 2007 New York Auto Show and told potential buyers to vote on which they liked best. The Spark (formerly know as the Beat) won out over the others.Why it Matters:Microcars are coming to the US from just about every manufacturer within the next couple years....

First FenceIt was started in 1990—a 14-mile-long, 10-foot-high barrier of welded steel that extended east from the Pacific shoreline south of San Diego. frameborder=“0” scrolling=“no” marginheight=“0” marginwidth=“0” src=“http://www.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=32.539313,-117.065895&spn=0.000334,0.000536&z=20&output=embed">View Larger MapLanding MatMedia Platforms Design TeamNamed for portable touchdown pads used by helicopters operating in Vietnam, landing mats form panels 12 feet long, 20 inches wide and 1/4 inch thick that are welded to steel pipes buried 8 feet deep. A mile of fencing requires 3080 panels....

Media Platforms Design TeamHow We TestedSturdiness: Stacked dumbbells on a tape sling until it snapped. Stickiness: Stuck a bundle of four 12-gauge wires against drywall for a week. Water resistance: Submerged a bundle of tape-wrapped pipes for a week.Media Platforms Design TeamSturdiness TestScotch Multi-use Duct Tape"For repairs in and around the house." $10 for 60 yd+ Sturdiness: We were able to stack 45 pounds of dumbbells on a length of tape before it broke....

Lego consistently develops new sets with fan involvement, like the recent Women of NASA and Dungeons and Dragons kits, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had outside official sets. This build, inspired by fruit bats at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, Australia, and built by the masters at JK Brickworks, both moves its stand and its wings to create a familiar sense of motion.View full post on YoutubeUsing an elevated stand at the bottom allows the engine enough room to move up and down....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe cheapest, most effective way for many people to save water could be the fastest DIY fix around: Replace a toilet’s leaking tank ball or flapper. A silently running toilet can waste 75 gal. of water per day. If you hear it running, a leak may be costing 300 gal. Got 10 minutes? Go forth and conserve.Diagnose the problemRemove the tank lid, flush and watch the ball or flapper (shown here) drop onto the valve to cut off water flow to the bowl....

Acura has released a sketch (at right, top) of the concept vehicle they’ll unveil at the auto show in Detroit on Jan. 7. Now if you look between the lines, there are at least two very interesting things that this sketch reveals about the future of Acura. First, this Advanced Sports Car Concept is the second rear-drive concept Acura has teased us with in just two months. The first was the Advanced Sedan Concept at the L....

The situation in the South China Sea continued to escalate this month, with China charging that a December 10 flight by one of two U.S. B-52 bombers flew within two miles of one of its “islands” in the the contest territory. The Pentagon claimed it was looking into the incident and has stated if true, the violation of Chinese territorial sovereignty was unintentional.China described the incident as a “serious military provocation” and warned such actions “must be prevented....

Media Platforms Design TeamEvery year, about 700 Americans die in recreational boating accidents. Not surprisingly, a disproportional number of those accidents occur in the summer months, when we’re more likely to be out on the water—and less likely to be thinking about personal safety than about keeping the ice cold and the cooler well-stocked. “People suffer from that cabin fever,” says Frank Jennings Jr., the recreational boating safety program manager for the Great Lakes region, where there are more registered pleasure boats than in any other Coast Guard district....

Media Platforms Design TeamManufacturers of eye scanners that identify people by their irises tout the technology as the 21st-­century equivalent of fingerprint analysis. But scanners have been limited by their 6-inch range, as well as their sensitivity to movement and obstructions (such as stray lashes). Now Honeywell has built a Combined Face and Iris Recognition System (CFAIRS), which extends the range of iris scans to 16 feet. CFAIRS shoots a high-resolution video image of the iris, then cross-references it with biometric data­bases....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe U.S. and Russian navies have long used nuclear-powered submarines, aircraft carriers, and icebreakers. But a new kind of nuclear power is coming. Russia’s currently under construction, will be a with two 35-megawatt generators designed to supply power to hard-to-reach Arctic communities straight from the ship. Akademik Lomonosov,floating power plantAfter years of delay, the Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation says it plans to build this first ship by 2016 and to ramp up to four to six in the near future to power up remote cities and industrial areas cut off from the regular power grid....

The Villar Perosa is one of the most unusual machine guns ever produced. It was designed in Italy in 1914, and adopted the next year by the Italian military. The machine gun was still a fairly new technology at the time, and there wasn’t necessarily a consensus on how to best use them.The Villar Perosa machine gun was actually two separate identical machine guns mounted together in a single fixture. The guns were chambered for the 9mm Glisenti cartridge (dimensionally the same as the 9mm Luger but loaded with a somewhat weaker powder charge) and fed from 25-round box magazines....

MORE NEW GREEN LIVING NEWS* PLUS: New Progress for Carbon Sequestration’s Global Warming FixWASHINGTON – Faced with the potentially devastating consequences of climate change–including sea level rise and an ice-free Arctic–some scientists and policy experts have begun to consider an equally drastic countermeasure: geoengineering.By physically altering the planet on a global scale, geoengineering projects would theoretically offset warming caused by the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The concept was dismissed as fringe science when it was first introduced in the 1960s....

The octopus’ clever camouflaging ability has been known for years, but the mechanics of it have been little understood. They can change the pigment in their skin almost instantaneously to reflect the environment around them. Two studies to be published in the Journal of Experimental Biology suggest that there’s something truly amazing at play here: the octopus can sense light in its skin.Cells called opsisn that are typically associated with the eye previously have been found in the skin of cuttlefish, a closely related cephalopod....

Media Platforms Design TeamThere’s no better way to beat the stifling summer heat than to spend a day at the pool—catching rays, cooling off in the water and, of course, impressing family and friends with a soaring, splashy cannonball. But no matter how impressive your jump, inevitably a larger, or more skilled, cannonballer will take to the pool with a louder, bigger and wetter splash. It doesn’t have to be that way....

An unsolved archeological mystery from antiquity will soon come under the scrutiny of advanced modern laser technology. An international team of researchers from Egypt, France, Japan and Canada has united to form the ScanPyramid project. With the blessing of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiques, the team will embark on a one-year project at the end of 2016 to use a number of different scanning and imaging techniques to create 3D maps of four ancient Egyptian pyramids....

Droids camouflaged as penguins can mingle with their flesh-and-blood counterparts without panicking the shy birds, a finding that shows how robots can help scientists learn secrets about wildlife by studying them in their natural habitat without disturbing them.Ecophysiologist Yvon Le Maho of France’s National Center for Scientific Research has studied penguins for 40 years; you might have seen some of this work in March of the Penguins. In 2011, Le Maho and his colleagues revealed tagging king penguins with bands around their flippers, a common way to study and track them, was harmful—it impaired their survival and the number of their offspring, presumably by reducing their speed in the water....

What is the significance of this storm?Normally, when you look at Saturn, it’s serene and still. You don’t see same swirling clouds and storms like you do in Jupiter. Since 1876, there have only been five planet-wide storms [not including this latest one]. These occurred during summertime in Saturn’s northern hemisphere, which happens roughly once every 30 years. It’s not a precise science, I’m afraid, because a lot of these really old observations are literally guys with telescopes who sketched, by hand, images of these storms....

How exactly do you remodel a brand icon? Well, if you’re Scion, you go big. Scion’s hip little van has grown significantly in just about every direction for 2008. The wheelbase is up 4 in., it’s wider by 3 in. and overall, it’s a foot longer. And that’s made it much more appealing to the small families who can put that room to good use. The old xB wasn’t the type of car you’d like to take on long trips....