‘Fungi-made prosthetic device named 79th Organ filters, extracts, and breaks down microplastics inside the human body. The project takes its name from the assumption that the human body has 78 organs today, but in the future, a 79th will be necessary. Designer Odette Dierkx refers to research from 2011 that uncovered plastic-eating mushrooms and imagines their potential use in a future prosthetic organ designed to help humans survive in a plastic-polluted world by 2110. Enters the 79th Organ, which is made from fungi such as the Pleurotus ostreatus (the humble oyster mushroom), bioengineered to make it capable of digesting certain plastics. …’ (via Designboom)

‘My advice to people is to not come closer than 3 meters to a full size walking robot…’ ( via Rodney Brooks)

If a devoted and passionate reader you may already know much of this but it will change the way i pick you a book. (Henrik Karlsson via Escaping Flatland)

‘The Desertas petrel, a small agile seabird with long slender wings, seeks out powerful storms to hitch a ride. It darts into the spinning air, reaching areas within 200km (124 miles) of the storm’s eye.

“I can’t imagine the conditions,” says Francesco Ventura, a biologist and postdoctoral investigator at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “These pigeon-sized birds, just a few hundred grams, experience winds up to 100km/h (62mph) and gigantic waves with ocean swells up to 8m (26ft). They’re amidst the storm’s madness.”

After the tropical cyclone passes, Ventura explains, “the birds align their movement along the hurricane’s wake. Now, they ride on the storm’s tail, foraging on creatures churned up from the twilight zone.”…’ ( via BBC)

‘The size of our social networks is limited even in the age of social media…’ (Aylin Woodward via WSJ)

‘For lovers of cool astronomy and math, this finding is a real treat. Citizen astronomers stumbled upon not one but two rings of extragalactic radio signals crossing each other to form a near-perfect Venn diagram.

A paper published October 2 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society identifies this strangely geometric object as an “odd radio circle” (ORC), vast rings of magnetized plasma. These rings, only visible at radio wavelengths, emit non-thermal synchrotron radiation. They’re also gigantic, typically spanning hundreds of thousands of light-years. Astronomers have only documented a small handful of cases, but this particular pair of rings is reportedly the most distant and most powerful so far.…’ (Gayoung Lee via Gizmodo)