CoolWall!

Hey gents have a look at the links & stories below - some mind blowing stuff - 29 pages of it!!

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BRAIN TEASERS!!! I'm usually useless at these but here are a few I've found.

After 100 years of trying, scientists have found a way to create the pufferfish neurotoxin

Here's why graphene may be the key to solving our concrete problem (interestingengineering.com)

An Engineer Arm-Wrestled a National Champion With a Bionic Hand. Who Won?

It's time for an upgrade.

FIRST DRAG RACE FOR FLYING CARS!!!!

Airspeeder, the startup that is on course to kickstart a flying car racing series, successfully completed its first drag race in Southern Australia, a press statement from the company reveals.

Boston Dynamics' Robots Can Do Parkour. Should We Worry?

It won't be easy to escape one of Boston Dynamics' Atlas robots, should they pursue you down a narrow alleyway.

A new video (featured below) depicts the human-like robots executing a series of routine parkour obstacles for the first time, leaping across gaps, performing coordinated backflips, and even vaulting beams despite their weight, with more grace than most humans.

However, this kind of performance takes "months" of development, according to a press release from the company, so they probably won't hunt you anytime soon.

Lab-Grown Stem Cell 'Mini Brains' Just Developed Eyes

Modern research methods allow us to extract skin or blood cells from an individual and then reprogram them into stem cells. Called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), these stem cells are capable of developing into any cell type in the body. Scientists carefully modify the nutritional medium they grow in to convert them into desired cell types, even making miniaturized brain cells, if needed.

Neuroscientist Jay Gopalakrishnan at University Hospital Dusseldorf and his team of researchers are interested in studying diseases of the eye. To understand, how these diseases occur in the first place, they need to understand the process of eye development. Other researchers had previously, used iPSCs to develop optic cups, structures that lead to the development of the retina - the light-sensitive layer of cells in the eye.

The retina plays an important role in the eye. It converts the light it receives into neural signals that it transmits to the brain using the optical nerve. The brain then analyses the signals, which in common terms is called 'sight'. Since the retina works closely with the brain, Gopalkrishnan and his team decided to grow the optic cups on brain cells, that were sourced from iPSCs.

Using samples from four iPSC donors, the team first made the brain organoids and then modified its growth media to induce the formation of optic cups. These cups on mini brains not only contained retinal cells but also developed lens and corneal tissue and demonstrated connections to the brain cells. During embryonic development, the retinal cells reach out to the brain but this was never demonstrated in the lab before, until this work.

China Wants to Build a Huge Orbital Solar Power Station in Space

China is on the verge of testing a potentially revolutionary technology that would allow it to harvest large amounts of solar energy at any time of day. The method would use an orbital station to send a powerful beam of solar energy down to Earth from space, a report by the South China Morning Post explains.

All going as planned, the tests, which will take place in Chongqing city in Southwestern China, will lead to the construction of a huge 1-megawatt solar power station in space by 2030. China, the world's largest manufacturer of solar panel cells, also plans to gradually grow that station's output after launch, with the goal of increasing its capacity to 1 gigawatt by 2049.

$15.4 million test facility will be ready this year

The construction of a $15.4 million ground testing facility for the technology in Chongqing city was halted three years ago amid debate over the project's cost, feasibility, and safety. But in the end, it was restarted in June, according to the local government's website. Now construction on the testing facility is expected to be finished by the end of this year.