Cooking Bacon with Lasers

From precision fabrication to denim distressing, laser-cutting has seen its fair share of applications. Now, Tokyo-based professor and tinkerer Kentaro Fukuchi is turning to laser technology to alter the way we prepare (and experience) food. Using a laser-cutting machine, he’s able to accurately cook only the fatty sections of a piece of bacon, leaving the rest of the meat raw—creating two contrasting flavors. Watch Fukuchi …

Practical DIY Designs From ’70s Book Nomadic Furniture

Long before build-it-yourself furniture behemoths like IKEA came along, thrifty homeowners turned to DIY projects to furnish their spaces. Many of these people looked to the pages of Nomadic Furniture—a book published in 1973 by designers Victor Papanek and James Hennessey—for advice on “How to build and where to buy lightweight furniture that folds, inflates, knocks down, stacks, or is disposable and can be recycled.” …

Why Psychopaths Can’t Catch a Yawn

Catching someone else’s yawn is no simple coincidence. Researchers have proven that yawns are contagious because of empathy and, now, they’ve linked psychopaths to the inability to catch one. Researchers at Baylor University conducted the experiment by giving participants a Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised test and then subjected them to a Contagious-Yawn Experiment, resulting in a large portion of the people who displayed coldheartedness on paper …