Spectrum: Eagle Gets a New 3-D Printed Beak

Beauty, a bald eagle whose beak has been replaced with a 3-D prosthetic one. Photo courtesy of Birds of Prey Northwest

October 3, 2012 By Karen Stewartson

Happy Belated Birthday, Disk Memory!

September marked the 60th anniversary of computer disk memory. As it turns out, the good old disk drive, which has been surpassed by other fancier storage devices, has something in common with another icon: the Golden Gate Bridge. The metal oxide paint used on disk drives is the same coating used on the bridge, except for the consistency.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Meet Lady Shamrock

Lady Shamrock is a bovine British beauty emblazoned with a QR code, which

when scanned, takes users to a website where they can see Lady Shamrock’s daily eating habits and milking patterns. The idea behind the high-tech makeover is to educate consumers about the dairy industry. The QR code — which links to www.thisisdairyfarming.com — is specially designed for animals and can be brushed off at the end of the day.

Source: Mail Online

BYOB: Build Your Own Robot

Do it yourself will soon become easier for aspiring roboticists. Popular crowdfunding site Kickstarter now features Multiplo, a kit that allows users to build their own bots. The kit, priced at $85, includes all the necessary mechanical parts and open source software for DIYers to assemble and program their own creation. Although aimed at educators, this bot-in-a-box may be a viable solution for cities looking to incorporate robotics in their operations

on the cheap. Source: Kickstarter

Tower Power

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the world’s tallest building, standing majestically at 2,717 feet. But its dominance is being threatened by a Chinese development company that wants to take the record. The Chinese company, Broad Sustainable Building, hopes to dethrone the Burj Khalifa by building Sky City, a 2,749-foot-tall skyscraper. Work on the 220-story tower will begin in November, and the company intends to complete the project in 90 days by using prefabricated materials that can be assembled like a 3-D puzzle. Sky City will house 100,000 people and use one-fifth the energy of other buildings, according to the developer. Source: Inhabitat

‘Beakause’ 3-D Can

Beauty, a bald eagle with an injured beak, now has a new one thanks to 3-D printing technology. A prosthetic beak was sketched with CAD software and printed on nylon polymers, courtesy of a collaboration among researchers, engineers and even dentists. Beauty’s fitting took two hours. Source: Digital Journal

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