Slice of Awesome

London-based Levitate Architects came up with this ingenious solution to a book storage problem and created a loft-like bedroom nestled under the roof of the top-floor apartment.

The flat occupies part of the shared top floor of an existing Victorian mansion block. Our proposal extended the flat into the unused loft space above, creating a new bedroom level and increasing the floor area of the flat by approximately one third. We created a ‘secret’ staircase, hidden from the main reception room, to access a new loft bedroom lit by roof lights. Limited by space, we melded the idea of a staircase with our client’s desire for a library to form a ‘library staircase’ in which English oak stair treads and shelves are both completely lined with books. With a skylight above lighting the staircase, it becomes the perfect place to stop and browse a tome.

Source: Apartment Therapy via Boing Boing

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Gamers will soon be able to interact with the virtual world using their thoughts and emotions alone.

A neuro-headset which interprets the interaction of neurons in the brain will go on sale later this year.

“It picks up electrical activity from the brain and sends wireless signals to a computer,” said Tan Le, president of US/Australian firm Emotiv.

“It allows the user to manipulate a game or virtual environment naturally and intuitively,” she added.

The brain is made up of about 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons, which emit an electrical impulse when interacting. The headset implements a technology known as non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) to read the neural activity.

“This is the first headset that doesn’t require a large net of electrodes, or a technician to calibrate or operate it and doesn’t require gel on the scalp,” Ms Le said. “It also doesn’t cost tens of thousands of dollars.”

Gamers are able to move objects in the world just by thinking of the action.

Source: BBC News

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Good news for all you slothful, gluttonous, hedonistic lazy asses out there: an Italian designer wants your money.

The Hi-Can high fidelity canopy features beautifully designed equipment that allows you to surf the web, watch movies, play games, and listen to music all from the comfort of your bed. There is even a slick looking control panel on the headboard that allows you to control other gadgets in the room. At this point, the Hi-Can looks as though it is only a concept from designer Edoardo Carlino — but the video after the break ends with the words “coming soon.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KVQ8VcvXBc[/youtube]

Source: Likecool via Gizmodo

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Like any thrilled mother to be, Michelle Stepney cherished the first kicks she could feel from her unborn babies.

But her lively twin girls were doing more than simply making their presence felt.

Each little kick was saving their mother’s life.

Unknown to her, Mrs. Stepney, 35, had developed cervical cancer. Her unborn twins’ constant kicking in the womb actually managed to dislodge the tumor.

It was only when Mrs. Stepney was taken to hospital with a suspected miscarriage that doctors realized she had cancer.

They told her the babies had saved her life. Without them, the cancer may not have been discovered until it was too late.

Source: Daily Mail via Neatorama

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The completely insane ingenious folks over at Brando have done it yet again. Say hello to the mechanical paper shredder. For $10, you will receive a hand-cranked paper shredder, and a basket to put your new confetti in. This is exactly the kind of thing I’ve been looking for. I printed out tons and tons of paper (literally, about 10,000 lbs.) that said “SECRET” all over it, and my current shredder just wasn’t doing the job. I tried to make my own hand-shredder once, but it didn’t work nearly as well as I expect this one to. It was mostly a handful of homeless people shredding my documents by hand. They did decent work, but they took way too long, and often threw up on the documents they were shredding, which kinda ruined the confetti business I had going. Apparently kids don’t like to have vomit-covered “SECRET” documents thrown at them.

Source: Swongled

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A material that is able to self-repair even when it is sliced in two has been invented by French researchers.

The substance, described in the journal Nature, produces surfaces when cut that retain a strong chemical attraction to each other.

Pieces of the material join together again as if never parted without the need for glue or a special treatment.

Source: BBC News

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Bravit Candles, designed by German-born and Eindhoven-trained Christophe van Bömmel, are made of sheets of paraffin. They have trails of wicks that cause the original flame to ignite other flames and to die out over time.

Source: Trend Hunter via Spluch

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Deep underneath some tall office buildings in Tokyo is a secret series of gardens, sprouting with healthy vegetables in the most unlikely of places. The whole shebang consists of six large rooms, each teeming with plants, all dedicated to both researching indoor gardens as well as producing delicious fresh veggies.

The gardens are staffed by local youth, who get to get off the streets and learn about agriculture in their free time. In the future, underground gardens like this may become a large food source for cities, cutting down on the shipping costs that are required when fresh fruits and vegetables need to be sent in from afar.

Source: Pruned via DVICE

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A Virginia Tech student has won the Greener Gadget Award for a clever LED lamp that gets all of its power from gravity, which is a seriously renewable resource. Working kind of like a grandfather clock that needs to be wound in order to work, the lamp has a weight that’s raised up every day. As the day goes on, it slowly lowers, with that movement powering the LEDs.

Dubbed the Gravia, the lamp will stand about four feet tall. Encased in glass, the entire thing is lit with a soft, diffuse glow that comes from the 10 built-in LEDs. Because it’s self sufficient, there are no cables or cords to worry about, so you can place it anywhere. The best part? It’ll last for 200 years if used 8 hours a day, 365 days a year. You’ll never buy another lamp again; it doesn’t get much more green than that.

Source: Sawf via DVICE

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Neil Shubin, head of the University of Chicago’s anatomy school, claims that hiccups are a remnant of our amphibian ancestry.

Spasms in our diaphragms, hiccups are triggered by electric signals generated in the brain stem. Amphibian brain stems emit similar signals, which control the regular motion of their gills. Our brain stems, inherited from amphibian ancestors, still spurt out odd signals producing hiccups that are, according to Shubin, essentially the same phenomenon as gill breathing.

Source: collision detection

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What do you do with a 25-meter-high acrylic glass cylinder, 238,000 gallons of sea water, 2,600 fish from 56 different species, and two divers? The AquaDom, the largest cylindrical aquarium in the world, that’s what. In its core there’s an elevator that travels through a cylinder of glass.

Located in the atrium of the 5-star Radisson SAS Hotel in Berlin, the $18.8 million aquarium is 36 feet in diameter and sits on a 29.5-foot-tall concrete foundation. Without a doubt, the most impressive thing about the aquarium from an engineering point of view is the glass surface. Built by Reynolds Polymer Technology, it required 41 R-Cast panels, 26 for the outside cylinder and 15 panels for the inside, plus 16 on-site bonds. Reynolds specializes in creating this kind of aquarium, among other things, like the AB Baltic Mega Mall Aquarium, which holds 43,000 gallons of water but has reef sharks, or the aquariums of the famous the Burj-Al-Arab tower, in Dubai.

Source: Below the Clouds via Gizmodo

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I actually read about this earlier on The Register, and their article was relatively benign. But once I saw The Sun’s sensationally overblown take on it, I knew I had to post it up. So really, this is not so much about the snakehead fish that was caught in England; it’s more about The Sun’s egregious sensationalism. Just look at the following excerpts from The Sun and then check out The Register’s article for comparison.

A savage fish more terrifying than a piranha has been caught in Britain for the first time — sparking fears of a deadly invasion.

The vicious giant snakehead eats everything it comes across and has even been reported to kill people.

The monster — from south-east Asia — has a mouth crammed with fearsome teeth, can “crawl” on land and survive out of water for up to four days.

It is feared the fish had been smuggled in for an aquarium and then illegally released. Snakeheads caused chaos when they were found in America in 2002, with snipers setting up on banksides to shoot them and entire lakes being poisoned to kill them.

Source: The Sun via Spluch

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A hunger for carnitas nearly led to some carnage after a Fontana, California man was robbed of a bag of tacos at gunpoint. Police Sergeant Jeff Decker said the 35-year-old victim had just bought about $20 in tacos from a street-corner stand Sunday night and was bicycling home when the suspect confronted him and said “Give me your tacos.”

Decker said the suspect grabbed the bag of food, punched the victim in the face and began to flee.

When the victim demanded his tacos back, the suspect pointed what appeared to be a handgun at the man and threatened to kill him before running away.

Source: Yahoo News

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The Fox Hotel in Copenhagen commissioned 21 international artists to create some of the coolest hotel rooms ever created.

The hotel has 61 rooms that are all completely different so choosing between a room with Art Deco inspired furnishings or a room where the walls have patterns taken straight out of a 1960′s psychedelic film or a room where you spend the night in the company of Japanese Manga inspired cartoon characters may well pose a dilemma to some guests. From fantastic street art to simply spaced out fantasies, you will find flowers, fairy tales, friendly monsters, dreaming creatures, secrets vaults and more…

Source: freshome

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From Thomas Edison to American Idol, this is the complete history of the music that shaped and defined five generations. 3 million records and 300,000 CDs containing more than 6 million song titles. It’s the undisputed largest collection of recorded music in the world. About half of the recordings are new and never played, and every genre of 20th century music is represented. There are countless rare recordings worth hundreds, or even thousands of dollars each on the collectibles market. Organized and cataloged, the collection is meticulously maintained and housed in a climate-controlled warehouse. The estimated value of this amazing collection is more than $50 million.

Every recording in the collection was purchased by the collection’s owner over the past fifty years and represents a lifetime of work and his desire to see the music preserved for future generations. Advancing age and health concerns are forcing the owner to sell.

Bidding starts at $3 million.

Source: Geekologie

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