Inspired by a children’s toy, scientists at Stanford have created a human-powered blood centrifuge. Nicknamed the paperfuge, this simple device costs only 20 cents. The device is made of either paper or 3D printed plastic, fishing wire, and wood.

Terry Elliott Another great Vialogue. And the topic is crazy cool, paper centrifuge that costs 20 cents. I am going to make a practice this next week of being the rando dude who crashes someone else’s Vialogue. Starting here.

newlearningtimes.com – Mar 21

If you’re afraid of public speaking, you’re not alone. In fact, most people in the world are. But new app Orai can help assuage your fears and prepare you to speak confidently in front of a crowd. Orai is based on the belief that training to be a…

Terry Elliott Practice that presentation till it’s somewhat better. C’mon, you didn’t think I was going to say perfect did you. Gotta love New Learning Times. Nice ‘pros’ and ‘cons’. Orai might not be perfect, but it might be good enough.

atlasobscura.com

The largest crater in Siberia, known as “the doorway to the underworld” and a “mega slump” depending on who you ask, is getting larger and deeper each year—a trend that brings with it both foreboding and promise.

Terry Elliott Gaia farts. Who knew? The ‘Siberia is melting’ story is one I have been all over for the last year. It is probably the ultimate tipping point for climate change as the methane just keeps on pouring out of the permaslush.

YaCy (http://yacy.net) is one of those projects I’ve heard about for a while, but never actually checked it out until recently. Unlike centralized search engines like google, bing, and duckduckgo, YaCy is decentralized, and run entirely by a…

Terry Elliott The future of search is decentralized. Crowdsourced search.

Wayne State University Blogs – Mar 20

Some of you may remember oaDOI, a tool that searches for an Open Access (OA) version of an article when provided with a digital object identifier (DOI). Impactstory, the team behind oaDOI, has just announced the upcoming release of a new tool based…

Terry Elliott If you don’t have university paywall access, then this might just do the trick for you.

onemorebrown.com – Richard Brown – Mar 20, 12:45 PM

I am teaching Introduction to Neuroscience this spring semester and am using An Introduction to Brain and Behavior 5th edition by Kolb et al as the textbook (this is the book the biology program decided to adopt). I have not previously used this…

Terry Elliott Not like anyone needs another ‘ism’ rolling around in their skull along with all the other marbles in the Chinese checkers box, but this is intriguing and resonant and makes me want to check it out. Thanks to Stephen Downes for the heads-up.