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Funny article .... Reminds me a bit of Luzi :-) And look at this phrase: am I in good or bad company ? "Sergey Brin, a founder of Google, rarely leaves home without his Vibram FiveFingers nylon shoes." In the article it is mentioned as a sign of particularly bad taste :-)

But there should be a second article on sandals! And finally one on the synthesis: socks with sandals... :-)

not even gears are a human invention it seems ... Gears are found rarely in animals and have never been reported to intermesh and rotate functionally like mechanical gears. We now demonstrate functional gears in the ballistic jumping movements of the flightless planthopper insect Issus. The nymphs, but not adults, have a row of cuticular gear (cog) teeth around the curved medial surfaces of their two hindleg trochantera. The gear teeth on one trochanter engaged with and sequentially moved past those on the other trochanter during the preparatory cocking and the propulsive phases of jumping. Close registration between the gears ensured that both hindlegs moved at the same angular velocities to propel the body without yaw rotation. At the final molt to adulthood, this synchronization mechanism is jettisoned.

maybe also a future way to store information?

I'll just leave this here :) They only cut corners on the lens - which allegedly should be a Nikkor 8mm F8.0, but the latter is rare and much more expensive than the final product itself (if you manage to find one used, that is)

I have no access to the pdf, but abstract sounds interesting.

First peer review study about he criticality of rare-earth metals. It can be read "They found that supply limits for many metals critical in the emerging electronics sector (including gallium and selenium) are the result of supply risks. The environmental implications of mining and processing present the greatest challenges with platinum-group metals, gold, and mercury. For steel alloying elements (including chromium and niobium) and elements used in high-temperature alloys (tungsten and molybdenum), the greatest vulnerabilities are associated with supply restrictions" Questions about estimation apart, this can be a valuable market for asteroid mining.. (ot just more market for Infinium-like companies http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527526/a-cleaner-cheaper-way-to-make-metals/).

Network scientists have discovered how social networks can create the illusion that something is common when it is actually rare. One of the curious things about social networks is the way that some messages, pictures, or ideas can spread like wildfire while others that seem just as catchy or interesting barely register at all.

"The effect is largest in the political blogs network, where as many as 60%-70% of nodes will have a majority active neighbours, even when only 20% of the nodes are active." How convenient :-)

Tufts University biologists have discovered the bioelectric mechanism by which a rare genetic disorder causes facial abnormalities, a finding that could lead to preventive measures and treatments for a host of disorders, from birth defects to cancer. For the study, published on Feb.

Bio-hacking/cyborg: implanting rare-earth magnets into your fingers to sense magnetic fields. At the same time quite awesome and quite extreme.

first science results reported in Nature (as far as I know) from the Yutu-2 and Chang'e mission .... and they look very good!

Sure they are very useful! It will be even better if they manage to fit the data to modeled circulation of the lunar magma ocean that was formed posterior to the "Theia" body collision with Earth. The collision was the cause of the magma ocean in the first place. The question now is how this circulation pattern of the lava-moon "froze" in time upon phase transition to solid. Because, what crystallizes last in sequence, is more rich in "incompatible" with the crystal structure, elements, we might combine data+models to predict their location. Those incompatible tracers are mainly radioactively decaying elements that produce heat (google publications about lunar KREEP elements (potassium (K), rare earth elements(REE), and phosphorus(P)). By knowing where the KREEP is: - we know where to dig for them mining (if they are useful for something, eg. Phosphorus for plants to be grown on the Moon) - we avoid planning to build the future human colony on top of radioactives, of course. The hope is that the Moon, due to lack of plate tectonics, has preserved this "signature of the freezing sequence". Let's see.

thanks Nasia! very interesting comment

beautiful research