Interesting Information

The funeral of Ghana's John Atta Mills drew thousands It's rare for the leader of a country to die in office. Since 2008, it's happened 13 times worldwide - but 10 of those leaders have been African. Why is it so much more common in this one continent? Large crowds carrying candles ran alongside the hearse carrying the body of Meles Zenawi, as it made its way through Addis Ababa, on Tuesday. He had died, aged 57, after a long illness. Earlier in the month, tens of thousands of Ghanaians attended the funeral of their late President, John Atta Mills, who had died suddenly at the age of 68. Four months earlier, a national holiday was declared in Malawi to allow as many people as possible to attend the funeral of the late president, Bingu wa Mutharika, who had died of a cardiac arrest, aged 78. And in January, the president of Guinea Bissau, Malam Bacai Sanha, died in a military hospital in Paris after a long illness. He was 64. So, four African ...

Formlabs is bringing down the costs of a better 3-D printing technique, but it must survive a patent lawsuit. The Form 1 3-D printer is now coming off a factory production line. Desktop 3-D printers are about to become available with higher-definition capabilities, with a new startup shipping its first model this month. At $3,299, the Form 1 could expand the market for 3-D printing technology. It can produce much higher-fidelity plastic objects than the consumer desktop printers available today. But it is still cheap enough to be affordable to a wide swath of professional designers, engineers, and dedicated tinkerers. The Form 1 can, for example, create detailed functioning prototypes with mechanical parts, such as precise screw threads. “We wanted a product with a discretionary price point,” says Formlabs cofounder Natan Linder, a PhD student at MIT’s Media Lab. “So you don’t think about it. You might not need a signature from your boss. Maybe you can order it li...

The first wave of tomorrow's wars may begin with a printout. When U.S. Navy ships need to resupply ammunition and other essential equipment, they have to pull into port. But could the advent of 3-D printers cut out the middleman, allowing the military to literally print out weapons and other supplies? Writing in the Armed Forces Journal, Lt. Cmdr. Michael Llenza says rapidly evolving technology may soon make 3-D printer warfare a reality. “For the Navy, the technology promises to shift inventory from the physical world to the digital one,” Llenza writes. “Instead of actual parts, a ship might carry 3-D printers and bags of various powdered ingredients, and simply download the design files needed to print items as necessary.” The idea isn’t as far-fetched as it might sound. After all, a college student recently made international headlines with his 3-D printer gun schematic. And just last week, NASA announced it had given a grant to a company working on a 3-D f...

A French company is preparing to test a complex artificial heart that combines biology with machinery. The Latest Artificial Heart Around 5.7 million people in the U.S. have heart failure, meaning their hearts cannot pump enough blood and oxygen to other organs. A new kind of artificial heart that combines synthetic and biological materials as well as sensors and software to detect a patient’s level of exertion and adjust output accordingly is to be tested in patients at four cardiac surgery centers in Europe and the Middle East. If the “bioprosthetic” device, made by the Paris-based Carmat, proves to be safe and effective, it could be given to patients waiting for a heart transplant. Currently, only one fully artificial heart, made by Tucson, Arizona-based SynCardia, has U.S., Canadian, and European regulatory approval for use in patients. Attempts to completely replace the human heart with a prosthetic device started decades ago (see “CPR for the Artificial He...

Google’s new Moto X will know what you want to do before you do but cost significantly less than an iPhone, Motorola has claimed. Motorola's Razr I is its current flagship, but the X will be very different, Google has said The phone, which is to largely be manufactured in America and is likely to launch later this year, will use advanced sensors to anticipate user behaviour, Motorola’s Dennis Woodside announced at a conference in America. Without offering further details, he said the Moto X would change the way users “engage with how the devices are designed”, and that the “broadly distributed” phone would provide “experiences [that] are unlike other experiences out there.” The device will mark Google’s first new product since it bought Motorola, the manufacturers of the first mobile phone, and will be an attempt to drive down prices of smartphones. Woodside, a former Googler who was brought in to run the 2011 acquisition, said the flagship device would ...

Samsung has announced that a smaller version of its flagship Galaxy S4 phone, the mini, is on its way Samsung announced that smaller version of its Galaxy S4 phone is coming The S4 mini will have a 4.3-inch display screen The existence of the phone had been accidentally leaked on Samsung's site No price or release date was announced Thursday The Galaxy S4 mini, a slimmed-down version of Samsung's flagship smartphone, is on its way, the company announced Thursday. Widely rumored after an accidental leak, the company confirmed that the mini will be one of the products rolled out at a Samsung event in London on June 20. On the heels of a hot start for the Galaxy S4, which the company says sold 10 million units in less than a month, the Korean gadget-maker seems to be homing in on the rival iPhone with a handset that promises to be easier to grip than its bulkier cousins in the Galaxy line. The mini will have a 4.3-inch display screen, comparable to the iPho...

5 Questions That Still Linger After Michael Jackson's Death Michael Jackson, known as the King of Pop and beloved by millions, was found unconscious and not breathing in his bed at his home in California on June 25, 2009, and was later pronounced dead at UCLA Medical Center. According to the coroner's report, Jackson died of heart failure. The report, though, leaves some questions unanswered while raising others. Here, we'll look at five questions that still linger more than a year after his sudden death. 1:  Why did the coroner's office perform two autopsies? A coroner performs autopsies to figure out why and how a person died. They aren't performed on everyone. They're done to determine the cause of death when an otherwise healthy person dies unexpectedly. Immediate family members can also request one. Michael Jackson's body underwent two autopsies: the first to determine why a seemingly healthy Jackson suffered cardiac failure ...

Hong Kong is famed for its skyline, but a French photographer is taking viewers on a different visual journey Try Try Again lol

When we explain it to people we get a lot of doubt,” Matt Parker says of Lumarca, his volumetric display installation, which renders graphics in 3D and has been in the works for several years. What puts that doubt in people’s heads is not necessarily how brilliant it looks, but instead how it works — Lumarca is composed of little more than a computer, a projector, and some string. Projected images turn hanging bits of string into dazzling beams of light, which can create 3D objects that appear to be suspended midair. It’s this contrast between the futuristic-looking display and the low-tech construction that makes people wonder. “Part of me, every time we build one, expects it not to work this time,” he says. “So I guess I’m not surprised when other people don’t believe it when they see it.” Lumarca isn’t the only project to experiment with string and light, and it was originally built off of another project called Wiremap. Created by Albert Hwang, Wiremap worked in much the ...

Brazil has a big couple of years coming up: the FIFA World Cup and the pope are both coming to Brazil in 2014, and the summer 2016 Olympic Games will be held in Rio. To ensure the safety of those attending those events, Brazil has brought in the big guns: robots. The Brazilian government has contracted iRobot, makers of both circular vacuum-bots like the Roomba and military/rescue tools, to provide iRobot 510 PackBots for the preparation of these events. The 510 PackBot will be used during the construction of the Olympic stadia, to make sure no explosives are being planted during this messy phase, and also to clear routes. It's not a dissimilar job from what the 510 PackBot does in the military--and over 5,000 of them have been deployed worldwide, for military purposes. They're even used by the US military in Afghanistan. Brazil contracted iRobot to provide $7.2 million worth of 510 PackBots. The PackBot uses a remote controller, not unlike a videogame controller, and i...

A month after being released to mostly positive reviews, Samsung's flagship phone is getting some validation from Consumer Reports. The publication has run all its tests, kicked the phone's tires, and named the Android-powered Galaxy S4 its top rated smartphone. The previous list-topper was the Optimus G, a solid $100 4.7-inch phone from LG that held Consumer Reports' No. 1 spot for several months. The Optimus G is now ranked as the No. 2 smartphone, followed by the HTC One, the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the Apple iPhone 5. Consumer reports bases its ratings on a number of extensive tests and rates the devices in categories including ease of use, display and voice quality, portability and battery life. The $200 Galaxy S4's weakest scores were in video quality and portability. Like all the other smartphones on the list, it also had mediocre scores for voice quality, a sacrifice that seems common in the smartphone market. The publication also lamented the la...

A rare working model of the Apple 1, the tech giant's first desktop computer, sold for more than $671,000 over the weekend at an auction in Germany. The computer, along with a letter from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to its original owner, is believed to be one of only six working Apple 1s and one of only three on the open market. The buyer, who chose to remain anonymous, is from the Far East, according to Uwe H. Breker of Auction Team Breker, which auctioned off a roster of vintage tech Saturday in Cologne. The Apple PC was expected to bring at least $400,000. But Breker said it's no surprise that it fetched more than 50% more. In November, his team auctioned a similar model for $640,000. Sotheby's New York sold one last year for $375,000. Prices for the rare devices have gone up since Jobs' death in 2011. In November 2010, Christie's auctioned an Apple 1 for $212,000. "It's not only the technology of the world's first ready-to-use PC,...

The official name of Mexico is Estados Únidos Mexicanos (United Mexican States). A Mexican tamale called the zacahuil is three feet long and weighs about 150 pounds. Mexico introduced chocolate, corn, and chilies to the world. Mexico is home to a very rare rabbit called the volcano rabbit which lives near Mexican volcanoes. The largest wildcat in North America is the jaguar, which can be found in Mexico's southern jungles. The first printing press in North America was used in Mexico City in 1539. The National University of Mexico was founded in 1551 by Charles V of Spain and is the oldest university in North America. Millions of monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico every year from the U.S. and Canada, though logging operations are rapidly destroying their habitat. The border between Mexico and the United States is the second largest border in the world (only the U.S.-Canadian border is longer). Mexico is second only to Brazil in the number of Catholic citizens. The poinsett...