Robotics: Biohybrids

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have combined tissues from a sea slug with flexible 3-D printed components to build “biohybrid” robots that crawl like sea turtles on the beach. Photo by Vickie Webster.

“We’re building a living machine—a biohybrid robot that’s not completely organic—yet,” said Victoria Webster, a PhD student at CWRU who is leading the research.

Interesting development in robotic was reported in CWRU’s The Daily: Researchers build a crawling robot from sea slug parts and a 3-D printed body.

Oh god, don’t let my wild, unscientific imagination run amok. Is “not completely organic—yet” robot-slug just the beginning of  yet another branch of robotics — completely organic robots?

Meet The Photographer: Albulena Panduri

Only Hope

Albulena Panduri, concept artist from Albania, concentrates her art on imparting surrealism on objects that don’t necessarily go together had they been seen from a normal perspective. She takes things a step further away from reality by playing with one’s prospect, expressing different concepts that at times will provoke questions in one’s mind such as “What if I had looked at the world at this angle?” is the creator of an unbelievable world, surreal and full of color.

Just Another Day To Live

She is the creator of an unbelievable world, surreal and full of color.

Her photos enhance the environment that surrounds the main character, emphasizing how small and insignificant this is in this world it lives in.

Words Apart

Walking On A Dream

The artist thinks that things always look better when you put them in a square. And this adds a certain harmony to the entire series.

Her photos enhance the environment that surrounds the main character, emphasizing how small and insignificant this is in this world it lives in.

Albulena doesn’t own a blog, but you can view her portfolio on her personal Deviantart profile, where you can also find simple, unretouched photos, that are just as incredible as the photo-manipulated ones.

Amazing Shoebill

This fabulous bird is a royal heron otherwise known as shoebill. The homeland of royal herons are marshy areas of sub-Saharan Africa. The birds’ habitat is quite large, but shoebill population is very small and fragmented. The largest group of them make its home in Southern Sudan. Shoebill can stand still for long hours in shallow water.  Shoebills are well adapted to life in the marshes — their long legs with wide apart toes allow them to move easily through the mud.The bird is most active at dawn, but sometimes it hunts during the day.

A Shoebill shot in Ueno Zoo, Tokyo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ArjlPAU_X4

Mammoth Hunters

Photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva‘ s project Mammoth Hunters is a set of fascinating images of the indigenous peoples of Siberia searching for, finding and excavating tonnes of mammoth tusks. I read a Russian article featuring these photographs and was about to retell the story for this post, but found an article in English that pretty much word for word repears the content — Extraction of Mammoth tusks in Siberia.

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