Author Archives: Soph

This is a visualisation of dust travelling across the world through the upper atmosphere. Each year, 180 million tonnes of Saharan dust are shifted by strong winds and, according to a study published in Geophysical Research Letters, 28 million tonnes of it are swept across the Atlantic to the Amazon. And it’s filled with naturalContinueContinue reading “Nasa scientists are tracking tonnes of Saharan dust | WIRED UK”

This is White Hell: the northernmost car-tyre testing centre in the world. Spread over 700 hectares of Finnish Lapland, the facility boasts more than 20 testing sites, from snow-covered tracks to iced-over lakes — and more are added every year. Source: Welcome to the world’s most extreme car tyre-testing centre | WIRED UK

Berlin-based design studio Blond & Bieber is making microalgae fashionable. Its founders, Rasa Weber and Essi Glomb, have created Algaemy, a technique for using algae to dye textiles. Each species has its own colour — from the reds of Haematococcus pluvialis to the greens of Spirulina platensis. Source: Berlin-based design studio Blond & Bieber isContinueContinue reading “Berlin-based design studio Blond & Bieber is making microalgae fashionable | WIRED UK”

Tomás Saraceno loves cobwebs. The Berlin-based architect turned artist builds installations inspired by intricately woven spider silk. Source: Spiders steal the show in Tomás Saraceno’s installations

Apps such as Vivino and Delectable already use crowd-sourced reviews to help you choose a bottle of wine. But North Carolina-based startup Next Glass relies on a tipple’s chemical composition. Source: North Carolina-based startup Next Glass helps you choose your tipple according to its chemical composition | WIRED UK

Engineered Arts, a Cornwall-based company, designs and builds robots by hand, in its workshop. “We have a motto,” says Will Jackson, the firm’s founder, “we design in the morning, we make in the afternoon, and we fail in the evening.” Source: Inside Cornwall’s robot factory

“Neuroscience has already infiltrated education,” says Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, professor of cognitive neuroscience at UCL, but not in the way she would like. Source: Ditch the pseudoscience — students are wired differently

Need to simulate a strong tornado? The wind Engineering, Energy and Environmental Research Institute (WindEEE) can create hyper-realistic tornadoes and other 3D wind phenomena. Source: These DIY tornadoes are designed to improve the stability of buildings | WIRED UK

The Parisian skyline has been redrawn — this 50-metre apartment block is the tallest building to be built in central Paris since the early 70s. Source: This is Paris’s first high-rise in decades | WIRED UK

Dealing with an overflowing email inbox can seem like a full-time job, so apps that can help reduce the time it takes to read them are welcome, says TL;DR creator Ami Ben-David. Here are four of our favourites. (TL;DR? Long emails suck. Auto-edit.) Source: Trending: 4 email editors to deal with inbox overload