TechRadar.com brightens our day with the story of a Dutch designer who has created illuminated wallpaper.

Delving deeper, Samson revealed that the wallpaper is constructed by “sandwiching” a number of layers together that combine to produce light:

“The back layer is a silver-based solution that conducts electricity, while the layer above this contains phosphorous pigments that light up. On top of [...]

In 1970, Life wanted us to know that home computers can be useful:

Those pioneer families who have one, like the Theodore Rodmans of Ardmore, Pa., have discovered their obedient machine can perform a large variety of useful functions. Dr. Rodman originally brought it home for medical research, but then his family found it could also plan mortgage payments, help [...]

BBC reports on a Russia’s new generation of space monkeys being trained for Mars:

“People and monkeys have approximately identical sensitivity to small and large radiation doses,” explains the institute’s director, Boris Lapin. “So it is better to experiment on the macaques, but not on dogs or other animals.”

The institute will select macaques that may eventually fly to Mars before [...]

New York Times gives us a new (well, new-ish) perspective on cellular phones – as a revolutionary technology for eliminating global poverty.. or for making killer profits with “human-centered design”:

Having a call-back number, Chipchase likes to say, is having a fixed identity point, which, inside of populations that are constantly on the move — displaced by war, floods, [...]

New Scientist rocks like a crustacean with a new report on crab courtship dances:

In the dense submarine thickets of seagrass that blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) call home, males and females can’t easily rendezvous. Sending out a pheromone love letter helps the pair find one another, says Charles Derby, a marine biologist at Georgia State University in Atlanta, who with [...]

This is how small they’re making machines nowadays:

Dwarfed by a spider mite. Lubricated by gases.

Photo courtesy of Sandia National Laboratories, SUMMiTTM Technologies, www.mems.sandia.gov

New York Times profiles a bizarre ailment that has me wondering how one could contract it halfway. It’s a syndrome that causes uncontrolled creativity:

In 1994, Dr. Adams became fascinated with the music of the composer Maurice Ravel, her husband recalled. At age 53, she painted “Unravelling Bolero” a work that translated the famous musical score into visual form.

Unbeknown [...]

Scientific American introduces us to a whole new family of (rather cute) flat-faced fish:

First photographed in January off Ambon Island, Indonesia, the critter has crooked, leglike pectoral fins on its sides—typical of anglerfish, which crawl or walk along the seafloor. Unlike others of its kind, however, which typically use lures on their heads to attract prey, this new flathead [...]

New Scientist says old dudes like Charles Darwin really should be shacked up with younger women like Scarlett Johansen because of science. Humans, they say, are primed for May/December pairings by evolution:

Statistics show that monogamous men have the most children if they marry women younger than themselves. How much younger is the key question.

Last year, a study of Swedish [...]