When Mark Taylor’s computer crashed, he suspected he had a “worm” virus in the system, but was surprised to discover the problem was caused by an actual earthworm. The discovery was made by IT repairmen who found the 5in worm lodged inside the computer. The creature had crawled into his £360 old laptop through an air vent and wrapped itself around the internal fan, leading to a total breakdown. The worm itself was burned and frazzled having been ‘cooked’ by the overheating internal workings of the Gateway laptop computer.
Toyota is looking to a greener future — literally — with dreams of an ultralight, superefficient plug-in hybrid with a bioplastic body made of seaweed that could be in showrooms within 15 years. The kelp car would build upon the already hypergreen 1/X plug-in hybrid concept, which weighs 926 pounds, by replacing its carbon-fiber body with plastic derived from seaweed. As wild as it might sound, bioplastics are becoming increasingly common and Toyota thinks it’s only a matter of time before automakers use them to build cars.
Rather than relying on warm, fuzzy feelings to protect animals, conservationists suggest appealing to something more reliable: greed. By selling financial contracts pegged to species health, the government could create a market in the future of threatened animals, making their preservation literally valuable to investors.
MIT’s latest solar race car might look like a funky Ikea table with a hump, but don’t laugh. It’ll do 90 mph and is packed with technology that may end up in the hybrids and EVs the rest of us will soon be driving. The university’s Solar Electric Vehicle Team, the oldest such team in the country, unveiled the $243,000 carbon-fiber racer dubbed Eleanor on Friday and is shaking the car down to prepare for its inaugural race later this year.
POST-A new study has found that removing just the tears out of pictures of people crying reduces the sadness that viewers perceive in the photos, even though the rest of the expression remains intact. The research subjects said when the tears were digitally erased, the faces’ emotional content became ambiguous, ranging from awe-filled to puzzlement. “One of the startling things is that the faces not only look less sad but they don’t look sad at all. They look neutral,” said Robert Provine, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County neuroscientist who led the work. “Any photograph you see, you can put your finger on the screen and block out the tears.
