Make a Human Paper Mache

"Dead or alive, you're coming with me!" That iconic quote from the 1987 movie RoboCop was repeated by kids like me for years. The 2014 reboot introduced the baddest robot-cop on the planet to new audiences worldwide. While it didn't live up to the amazingly high expectations s ...more

Thanks to everyone who submitted ideas in last month's Mad Science contest. The question called for your best idea for using Sugru, a temporarily malleable silicone modeling clay that self cures for a soft-touch permanent bond. It's a marvelous product for at-home quick fixes ...more

In yesterday's tidbit, we learned that across the planet women seek material wealth in their mates. This stems from our hunter-gather past in which females depended on male hunters to provide them and their children the meat necessary to support their large brains. Women beco ...more

We've seen a number of unique mashups of augmented reality with other bleeding edge technologies, but somehow it took until 2018 for someone to come up with a now obvious complement to AR: 3D printing. Cornell information science doctoral student Huaishu Peng has developed an ...more

Need to look like a rotting, decaying zombie corpse for Halloween? Rather than bribing your special effects makeup artist friend to treat you one for the night, you can definitely DIY a couple of good Halloween makeup effects using common household items in your pantry or medi ...more

Microsoft Research has published a technical paper reviewing their work with near-eye displays for virtual and augmented reality to project phase-only holograms. The team built a holographic projector that displayed a series of sub-holograms, which allowed the hologram to dis ...more

Tom Friedman. One of my very favorite contemporary artists. Friedman injects the wonder into the humdrum. He creates magic from the unsuspected with his incredible sculptures assembled from simple, everyday materials. His materials have included: toilet paper, drinking straws ...more

The human body is amazingly complex, and seeing inside one poses a variety of challenges whether you're dealing with an actual human or some kind of facsimile. Mixed reality offers the ability to get the best of both worlds by creating a holographic teaching tool for human ana ...more

Let's face It ... Pennywise is going to be the Halloween costume to beat this year. It's terrifying, simple enough to pull off, and with the original movie's gargantuan box office gross and the hit status of the sequel, released in September, everyone and their pet dog will ge ...more

Most people know that you can add vegetable peelings and egg shells to your compost heap, but did you know that you can also add nail clippings, human hair and pet hair? In addition to organic matter that you or your animal friends naturally shed, you can also add latex ballo ...more

New weapons are needed to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Instead of drugs, scientists have discovered in an animal study that they may be able to harness vampire bacteria to vanquish pneumonia. Microbes, good and bad, predate and outnumber us. Humans will never "win" a ...more

Research group OpenAI, a research institute co-founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, says it is possible to trick driverless cars' neural networks into mistaking images for something else. In a blog post published on OpenAI's website, Anish Athalye, an undergraduate studying comput ...more

We all know you are what you eat—or so the expression goes—but it's good to remember that what you are (at least intestinally) is mainly bacteria. A new study has shown that what you eat, and how your gut microbiome reacts to that food, might be a key player in your risk of de ...more

The last few months of WikiLeaks controversy has surely peaked your interest, but when viewing the WikiLeaks site, finding what you want is quite a hard task. Despite rumors of easy access via the Kindle and iTunes App Store, there currently is no way to view the leaked docum ...more

First off, don't be frustrated. YOU CAN DO IT! Contrary to the message in the image above, it's NOT over. It's just beginning. And when it comes to solving the New York Times crossword puzzle, the old cliche does apply: practice makes perfect. I've read quite a few books and ...more

Here's a two-in-one "tutorial" for you today; how to fold a paper airplane, and how to execute a belated St. Patrick's Day manicure. Just follow along and do as the da Vinci does—our adroit instructor is a surgical robot, with a hefty price tag of approximately 1.3 million dol ...more

Paul Lung requires nothing but a 0.5 mm technical graphite pencil, plus one sheet of A2 paper to create a nearly perfectly hand drawn facsimile of a photograph. The 38-year-old graphic designer of Hong Kong spends up to 60 hours on each labor intensive drawing. Self Portrait o ...more

Tats that Fly! Augmented Reality Skin Art Another innovative use of augmented reality - we've seen transparent walls, t-shirts that play Rock, Paper, Scissors, an iPhone operated video game drone; and now, a tattoo that comes to life. Just tattoo a simple "barcode", point a ...more

Another innovative use of augmented reality - we've seen transparent walls, t-shirts that play Rock, Paper, Scissors, an iPhone operated video game drone; and now, a tattoo that comes to life. Just tattoo a simple "barcode", point a webcam at it, and a flying animated dragon w ...more

Master Figure Drawing using an Eraser Having trouble with the human form in your figure drawing class? Or just looking to impress your girlfriend or boyfriend with your art skills with a beautiful drawing of their figure? Here is a simple tip to trick your brain into using mo ...more

Scrabble Bingo of the Day: GEOPHAGY [n] Geophagy is the practice of eating earth, especially chalk or clay, in famine-stricken regions. It applies to both wild animals and humans. When humans eat soil-like substances, it's usually to augment a scanty or mineral-deficient diet ...more

The da Vinci robot has proven to be an endless source of amusement to surgeons everywhere; in Japan, it folds origami cranes, at the state of Washington's Swedish Medical Center, it flies paper airplanes and gives manicures. It's a battle of the hospitals—who can make their pr ...more

Two research teams, in Turkey and Iran, both recently discovered an incredibly rare species of bees. Coined the Osmia (Ozbekosima) avoseta bee, the insects use colorful flower petals to create papier-mache cocoons for their offspring. NPR reports: "Building a nest takes a da ...more

In this series on weaponized lasers, I'll be exploring the function, operation, strength and building instructions for three basic laser weapons; CO2, Diode, and Flashlamp. These laser types are just a few of many, selected because of their simplicity and basic construction (d ...more

In my early life I was deeply impacted by the work of physician and psychoanalyst John C. Lilly. I still have my dog-eared copies of The Mind of the Dolphin (1967) and Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer (1968). Lilly's work, with dolphins and the developm ...more

Lost the product key for your game? If you have to reinstall the game and don't have that key anymore, you're out of luck, especially if you didn't "buy" the game. But never be in fear of losing product keys again with today's Null Byte, where we'll be practicing a little bit ...more

Hello everybody, I am Merrill Kazanjian (aka kazanjianm on YouTube). I will be your instructor. Before starting your figure drawing session. Please watch this short, funny video first to learn the basics of human proportion. The rules that you learn in this video will be very ...more

10 years already... I think it's time for some teambuilding, Jackass-style! An easy 3 step program to tighten up those bonds amongst the Jackass team members... 'Towel-Tag ALONG': Before we can start a decent teambuilding journey, we need to set up some teams. With this li ...more

Graffiti is a great way of getting your message out to the masses. The earliest known graffiti dates back to 30,000 years ago and used the traditional apply-paint-to-wall technique. Though our paint now comes in cans and not from scavenged berries, the actual graffiti process ...more

The 2011 Toronto International Scrabble Open (TOSI) took place last weekend, with former World Champion Adam Logan beating out all of the human competition for the $3,000 grand prize. But when it came time to take on the Quackle program in the Human vs. Computer Showdown, he l ...more

Hi there Dolls, I just got done putting the children to bed for the night. Fed the husband, made a little love, and took a bubble bath! I lathered up my body with a Gardenia lotion and have thrown on my amazing silk robe. I smell and feel wonderful as I sip on my Cantaloupe ...more

If you've run out of time for all of our more time-consuming Halloween costume ideas, here are some places on the web for free, downloadable paper masks. There must be at least 100 options among these links to satisfy your last-minute costume needs! Just download, print, and c ...more

For as long as I've loved SCRABBLE, I can't believe I've never come across this before. "CRAZIEST" - A short story by Liz Dubelman about words and numbers as a religion (think Pi), about SCRABBLE being the oracle, about her quest for the "triple-triple". This spoke words to m ...more

Ever wonder what people used before toilet paper? Humans have been living on the earth for about 200,000 years. But toilet paper wasn't created until 1880. So what did we use before? Video: .

The Guardians of the Galaxy have to be the most fun superhero team to have at a Halloween party. They dance, they break the rules, and they definitely have the grooviest music. So the Guardians are a great bunch to pick from for your Halloween costume — or even for a themed gr ...more

We've worked hard to reduce the flow of toxic chemicals into our waterways, which means no more DDT and other bad actors to pollute or destroy wildlife and our health. But one observation has been plaguing scientists for decades: Why are large quantities of one toxic chemical ...more

If you've ever built a piece of IKEA furniture, you're familiar with the confusion that some 2D instruction booklets can create. But neuroscience suggests that they're cognitively overloading, as our brains have to translate their basic flatness into physical reality and that' ...more

Despite being disgusting, houseflies are actually beneficial to humans in a few ways. As scavengers, they help the environment by eating rotting organic matter, and make great food for pet tarantulas. Regardless of the advantages to their existence, having them in your home ca ...more

The best go-to method for reducing your risk of infection is to wash your hands. Next time you reach for the soap, here is some news you can use. For years, soaps and healthcare products touted their "antibacterial" properties. While soap was good, antibacterial soap had to b ...more

To much of the United States, Zika seems like a tropical disease that causes horrible problems in other countries but is nothing to be worried about stateside. It may make you rethink your beach vacation abroad, but not much more than that. However, if you live in Florida or T ...more

When it comes to building luxury cars, Bentley certainly knows what it's doing. However, when it comes to building an AR app, Bentley is looking less Continental GT and more Geo Metro. At least that's our initial take after sampling the company's new AR app, called Bentley 10 ...more

Halloween is one of those things that always seems to sneak up on you before you're prepared, so if you don't have tons of free time to make your own kickass costume, you might have to throw together something a little more last minute. If you're really in a bind, it doesn't ...more

This is a tale about microbes, a man who became a hermit, and the parchment that carries both of their stories. Sometime around 1190 AD in Italy, a man named Laurentius Loricatus was born. Trained to be a soldier, Loricatus killed someone by accident and was stricken with rem ...more

While at work, you notice your gloves changing color, and you know immediately that you've come in contact with dangerous chemicals. Bandages on a patient signal the presence of unseen, drug-resistant microbes. These are ideas that might have once seemed futuristic but are bec ...more

Andre was enjoying the carefree life of a 12-year-old with his friends, riding his bike and playing sports, like all kids that age. Schoolwork wasn't hard for him, and his grades showed that. Then, the headaches began. He lost vision in one eye, symptoms that drove his famil ...more

I can't stand trying to use my phone in direct sunlight. It drives me crazy — I just want to get through a game of Sonic, but I can't see where I'm going. No one has it harder than I do. But my troubles might soon be over, as researchers are developing anti-glare films for sma ...more