Slegoons – A Sledge-Type Crafts for Snow Covered Slopes

Slegoons – A Sledge-Type Crafts for Snow Covered Slopes

I want to careen down snow covered slopes, and I want somebody beside me when I do it! I want to bounce around, then continue down the hill upside down. I want to Slegoon!


Slegooning is a new winter sport in which participants travel down a snow-covered slope in single person sledge-type crafts, called Slegoons, in full-contact races. They can continue even when overturned.


The Slegoon won first prize in the UK IOM3 Design Innovation in Plastics competition 2003, and has received international press, from magazines like Blueprint and Design Week.via

E. Coli Bacteria Based Clock

E. Coli Bacteria Based Clock

When you hear someone say their biological clock is ticking, this probably isn’t what they meant! Bioengineers at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering have created a programmable clock based on E. Coli bacteria. The clock blinks at a predictable rate in response to its environmental conditions. By carefully controlling or measuring those conditions, the researchers are able to use the blinking to tell time, or even create new types of biosensors.


The researchers created the flashing clocks by carefully manipulating the genes inside the cell and actually “reading” the relationship between the genetic material, known as “mRNA”, and other proteins, as each are produced.


According to Scientificcomputing.com, “At the core of the new clock is a negative feedback loop that includes a two-minute delay between when the mRNA is made and when the functional proteins are made. On top of this is the positive feedback loop which makes the clock more regular and robust.”


That’s a fairly technical way of saying that, by measuring the surrounding conditions, they can now predict how fast the cells will blink so they can be used as a clock.


“One next step is to synchronize the clocks within large numbers of E. coli cells so that all the cells in a test tube would blink in unison. "This would start to look a lot like the makings of a fascinating environmental sensor," said Jeff Hasty, a UC San Diego bioengineering professor and senior author on the Nature paper.”via

The Hobart I-Cool Chair - Designed To Reduce Body Weight

The Hobart I-Cool Chair - Designed To Reduce Body Weight

Are you tired of exercising? Good news, there is now a new technology that let your weigths reduced even while you are sitting.


Yes, the cool looking Hobart I-Cool seat has been designed to reduce body weight while sitting. The concept accelerates calorie output through temperature regulation. The I-Cool is touted as the “first ever exercise-free, calorie-burning seat.” The user sets their personal preferred temperature, creating a revolutionary micro-environment.


Seems a bit hard to believe, but if it works, sign me up, I am all for burning off some cals while sitting at the computer all day. Maybe they should be regulation-issue for all cubicle dwellers.via