Fully Loaded chair made of shotgun shells

The fully loaded chair, made from 450 .12 gauge shotgun shells has a "massaging texture" due to the protruding brass tips. Link (via Yanko Design) (via Boing Boing)

Plants form networks to communicate

Researchers at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands have found that certain types of plants form underground networks of runners that they use for communication with neighboring plants of the same species. From Science Daily:

Recently [Josef] Stuefer and his colleagues were the first to demonstrate that clover plants warn each other via the network links if enemies are nearby. If one of the plants is attacked by caterpillars, the other members of the network are warned via an internal signal. Once warned, the intact plants strengthen their chemical and mechanical resistance so that they are less attractive for advancing caterpillars.

Link (Via ComDig) (via Boing Boing)

Scientific study on why knots happen

Danny says: Tangled telephone cords and electronic cables that come to resemble bird nests can frazzle even the most stoic person. Now researchers have unraveled the mystery behind how such knots form."

[Douglas Smith of the University of California, San Diego] and UCSD colleague Dorian Raymer ran a series of homespun experiments in which they dropped a string into a box and tumbled it for 10 seconds (one revolution per second). They repeated the string-dropping more than 3,000 times varying the length and stiffness of the string, box size and tumbling speed.

Digital photos and video of the tumbling strings revealed: Strings shorter than 1.5 feet (.46 meters) didn't form knots; the likelihood of knotting sharply increased as string length went from 1.5 feet to 5 feet (.46 meters to 1.5 meters); and beyond this length, knotting probability leveled off.

Their conclusion?

While there is no magical knot buster, Smith advised what all sailors, cowboys, electricians, sewers and knitters know: to avoid tangles, keep a cord or string tied in a coil so it can't move. Link (via Boing Boing)

The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss

This Benthocodon jellyfish was spotted near undersea mountains. The photo is in a new book titled The Deep that features more than 200 photos of the insanely strange and beautiful denizen of our oceans. It was edited by Claire Nouvian, a French documentary filmmaker. Smithsonian has a feature on the book and a sampling of remarkable photos from it. From the Smithsonian article:

The more than 200 photographs—most taken by scientists from submersibles and ROVs, some shot for the book—show just how head-shakingly bizarre life can be. The scientists who discovered the creatures were apparently as amused as we are, giving them names such as gulper eel, droopy sea pen, squarenose helmetfish, ping-pong tree sponge, Gorgon's head and googly-eyed glass squid.

Nouvian herself made two dives in a submersible, to 3,200 feet. The first thing she noticed, she says, was that "it's very slow. You can tell that all their laws are different."

Link to Smithsonian article, Link to slideshow, Link to buy The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss (via Boing Boing)

Tiny new frog discovered

Biologists from Delhi University discovered this darling frog that when fully grown is just 0.3937 inches or 10 mm. From Loren Coleman's post at Cryptomundo:

Delhi University Systematics Biologist S. D. Biju and his colleagues have found this new frog, India’s smallest land vertebrate, in the Western Ghats of Kerala, a mountainous region in the western portion of India. Link: http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/tiny-nightfrog/

The humid rainforests of the Western Ghats are the perfect habitat for these nocturnal frogs, which enjoy making mating calls from under leaf litter and among the roots of ferns during the monsoon months. (via Boing Boing)