Strange & Offbeat News -- ScienceDaily

Data driven discoveries: Imagine smart cities with thousands of strategically placed sensors Posted: 06 Mar 2015 03:11 PM PST The Array of Things, The Internet of Things, ultimately, “smart” cities have to feature hundreds, maybe thousands, of strategically placed sensors. These devices would record everything from air pressure and temperature to microbial content. The newly developed Waggle platform is the system on a chip that will enable this to happen.

Holding energy by the threads: Researchers spin cotton into capacitive yarn Posted: 05 Mar 2015 12:18 PM PST While the pattern for making a wearable fabric battery has already been laid out, it’s now time to select the threads that will turn a textile into an energy storage device. A doctoral student has now threaded her way into the forefront of research on conductive yarns.

3-D imaging reveals hidden forces behind clogs, jams, avalanches, earthquakes Posted: 05 Mar 2015 05:17 AM PST When you walk on the beach, the sand supports your weight like a solid. What happens to the forces between the sand grains when you step on them to keep you from sinking? Researchers have developed a new way to measure the forces inside materials such as sand, soil or snow under pressure. The technique uses lasers coupled with force sensors, cameras and advanced computer algorithms to measure the forces between neighboring particles in 3-D.

First-ever human population adaptation to toxic chemical, arsenic Posted: 04 Mar 2015 04:54 AM PST High up in the high Andes mountains of Argentina, researchers have identified the first-ever evidence of a population uniquely adapted to tolerate the toxic chemical arsenic.