Squishy

Tomorrow Corporation When I sat down to demo World of Goo 2 at this year’s GDC, I noted to the developers on hand how surprising it was to see a sequel after so long. “It’s been, what? Ten years?” I said. I was very far off the mark: They noted that the original World of Goo launched in 2008. After playing a few levels (and having an existential crisis over time’s rapid passing), I’d find myself wondering how such an obvious slam dunk didn’t come sooner. Like its predecessor, World of Goo 2 is a physics-based puzzle…

Gaming chairs are close enough in design to office chairs to make it feel like you’re doing important work, even if you’re just spending hours terrorizing families of five in The Sims. But if you’ve managed to shrug off the societal guilt of gamingand only care about being comfortable, Japan’s Bauhutte has created what it’s calling the Gaming Sofa Deluxe, and it’s where we want to live out the rest of our lives.Asus ROG Flow Z13 Gaming Tablet ReviewIf you’re a gamer unfamiliar with Bauhutte, that’s a real tragedy…

June 9, 2023 8:58 am ETMichelle Curb’s 7-year-old daughter has a new type of toy she cherishes. Unfortunately for Curb, the toys are tiny, squishy, sticky and tend to multiply exponentially. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8 June 9, 2023 8:58 am ETMichelle Curb’s 7-year-old daughter has a new type of toy she cherishes. Unfortunately for Curb, the toys are tiny, squishy, sticky and tend to multiply exponentially. Copyright ©2023Dow Jones & Company,…

To call Venus a real oddball of a planet would be slightly understating the issue. It is so very similar to Earth – and yet at the same time as unlike Earth as one might expect an Earth-like planet to be.One of those differences is the Venusian lithosphere – the planet's hard, outer shell. On Earth, the lithosphere is fragmented and mobile, divided up into tectonic plates that help shape the planetary surface, all the while leaking heat from the planet's interior around their jagged edges.Venus's lithosphere, by…

This illustration of the large Quetzalpetlatl Corona located in Venus’ southern hemisphere depicts active volcanism and a subduction zone, where the foreground crust plunges into the planet’s interior. A new study suggests coronae reveal locations where active geology is shaping Venus’ surface. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Peter RubinThe research uses archival <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>NASA</div><div…

Benjamin Adric Dunn, a data scientist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, shows me a picture of unevenly spaced dots arranged vaguely like the rocks at Stonehenge. The overall pattern is clear—at least, to a human. “When we look at this, it's obviously a circle,” he says. But an algorithm would likely struggle to recognize this simple shape. “It very often misses the big picture.” Many scientific processes involve loops, or repetitions. A computer's inability to see these relationships is a problem for…

Image: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)Medicine comes in all shapes and sizes—from mundane pills to less-pleasant intravenous infusions. But one form of drug delivery that doesn’t get its proper due is gel. We’re talking about the kind of gooey, semi-solid, and viscous material that can get smeared onto our skin or injected into our bodies. To remedy this injustice, here are seven recent medical innovations in gel technology, which are either close to fruition or available now.Male Birth ControlMale contraception outside …

Cryo-EM snapshots of the solid-electrolyte interphase, or SEI, reveal its natural swollen state and offer a new approach to lithium-metal battery design.Lithium metal batteries might store much more charge in a given space than lithium-ion batteries can today, and the race is on to create them for next-generation electric cars, electronics, and other applications.But one of the roadblocks is a silent battle between two of the battery’s components. The electrolyte, the liquid between the two electrodes, corrodes the…