Earth Day every day

One of my favorite hobbies is imagining ways to reuse things, for the environment's sake.

Recently, my sewing basket of 20-some years failed. The wicker snapped in the back (not seen in photo) of the hinged lid. I couldn't fix it and make it look good. The parts poking out could have scratched anyone using the basket.

What if I removed the lid and saved the rest?

If it couldn't be a sewing basket any more, what else could it be?

Maybe a plant pot cover. But what plant pot would fit? Several small round ones? Would the plants look lost?

Later that day, I gathered the week's recyclables. Look what was among them:

A salad box. Yes, occasionally when life really gets too busy with family activities or good work, I'm guilty of buying salad boxes instead of lettuce.

All the box needs is a few holes at the bottom to let water drip out.

And plants.

Treating blindness with robotics

Watch neuroscientist Sheila Nirenberg talk about how she wants to treat some types of blindness, by hooking into the optic nerve and sending signals from a camera directly to the brain.

For more on how to do this without surgery--with only an injection and special glasses!--watch the Q&A beginning at 3 minutes.

Read the article that explains that Nirenberg's team used gene therapy to add a special protein to specific cells in the eyes of blind mice, to make them responsive to light. Next, a pair of glasses containing a tiny video camera and computer used a math recipe (algorithm) to turn images into mini light flashes, which the glasses were equipped to shine into the eye. Then the blind mice could see!

Factory balls - test of problem-solving skills



Goal: paint a ball to make it look like the one on the box.

How: drag a ball and drop it on the tools, in logical order.

Click here and have fun!