Anyone with even the vaguest understanding of the theory of relativity knows that time isn’t a fixed construct. How you experience time depends on what you’re doing –whether you’re sitting around, or moving at near light-speed. Your perception of time also depends on what you’re doing in a more mundane way, like whether you’re playing video games or sitting in a meeting. The TicTocTrac watch aims to help you learn more about that second kind of time warping. Also, like any good watch, it also tells time.

Smartphone gaming has quickly become a mainstay of our modern living-in-the-future culture. However, it’s not without its problems. Since most phones use a giant screen, putting your fingers on said screen blocks your view of the game. Motion controls are common on smartphone games, but are far from accurate. To the rescue is a research team from Keio University, which developed a gel-based device that converts your front-facing smartphone camera into a three-axis joystick.

Some valuable information from thegnome54 as we approach New Year’s Eve. Stay safe, everyone.

The most exciting quest in modern physics has been the search for the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle thought to be responsible for imbuing matter with mass. Today, scientists working on experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider called CMS and ATLAS have said that while a major breakthrough is still in the offing, they’ve made tremendous progress in the search for what some call the “God particle.”

Rutgers University professor Barry Komisaruk has secured his place in history as being the first to capture imagery of what goes on in a woman’s brain before, after, and during an orgasm. Using an fMRI machine, Komisaruk took a series of images of the brain during an orgasm and compiled them into a short animated movie. Using this, he’s hoping to get a better idea of how an orgasm works and what parts of the brain are involved. So hot.

When it’s wet and miserable outside, odds are you never asked yourself — huddled beneath your umbrella, trying desperately not to fall face-first into a puddle — about how hummingbirds stay dry in the rain. After all, damp feathers are the perfect breeding ground for disease, and the flying ability of the delicate birds can be hindered even by a little water.

Turns out that Anna’s Hummingbird, despite water proof feathers, opts to dry itself by executing high-speed shakes in midair that would incapacitate a human.

In addition to sporting a massive collection of dinosaur remains and replicas, the Jurassic Museum of Asturias on the northern coast of Spain also has a display that features two copulating Tyrannosaurus rex. How about that?

Of course, the orientation of the two dinosaurs on display is a complete guess. Even after decades of study, paleontologists are still divided on how to determine the gender of T-rex remains. We can all agree on thing, though: Those tiny arms look even sillier in this context. Now excuse me while I book a flight to Spain right after I swing by the Icelandic Phallological Museum.

With technology getting cheaper and ever more compact, Steve Hoefer, glove-inventor extraordinaire, decided that it was time there be an upgrade from the standard blind man’s cane. Unfortunately, it’s not a laser-cane or anything, but it’s still pretty neat: A haptic sonar gauntlet. The device wears kind of a like a glove. You slip your middle finger through a loop and then the actual guts of the thing, which appear to be about the size of a clay pidgeon, sit on top of your hand. From its perch there, the device sends out ultra-sonic pings and feeds the response times into a pair of servos that apply pressure proportional to the distance of the object.

Through the use of this device, a blind person can survey the general lay of their surroundings by gently swinging their arm around and pushing towards, or pulling away from  pressure, depending on what they’re trying to do. Because the device sits on the back of the hand the way it does, it won’t interfere with normal sense of touch or any dexterity-based activities. Hoefer toyed with the idea of a head-based device, before deciding that was just a sighted-bias.

At the foot of Japan’s mount Fuji is Fuji-Q, home to many wondrous roller coasters, including the newly ordained steepest coaster in the world: The Takabisha. This coaster has a massive drop at 141 feet, where it achieves vertical fall at around 121º. Now that may not be the highest peak for a coaster, but that 121º really matters when you go over the edge.

Don’t believe me? Just watch the video. It is far more intense than I was expecting. My stomach dropped and I am sitting comfortably in an office chair. The big drop comes up about halfway, but don’t worry — you won’t miss it.

(video via Reddit, info via the Telegraph)

While Japan, as usual, has been pumping out some crazy, questionable inventions like hug simulators, portable plastic bag toilets and poop meat, the latest must-have product that’s become all the rage is decidedly less ridiculous, if still a little weird: coolant foam. The foam comes in cans and is sprayed onto the user’s body, at which point, it slightly hardens and becomes moldable so that it can be formed into a wristband, headband, or any other kind of cool, foamy fashion accessory your heart, wrist or head desires.

Cooling foams have been around and available for use in Japan for years, but only caught on huge this summer, presumably because of increasingly pervasive idea of “setsuden” (literally “energy saving”), the Japanese equivalent of going green. If you ask me, substituting air conditioning with the liberal use of chemical foam seems like more of a lateral movement. Then again, I’m also extremely jealous that covering oneself in foam isn’t popular (or even acceptable) in my society. Whatever, I guess I’ll just go pant in front of an oscillating fan and play with shaving cream instead.

(Trends in Japan via Gizmodo)