Link About It: This Week’s Picks

Nokia's banana phone, exploding stars, the world's oldest tattoos and more in our look around the web

1. Amateur Astronomer Photographs Exploding Star An Argentinian amateur astronomer was simply testing out his new 16-inch telescope by taking a bunch of short-exposure photographs when he managed to snap an image believed to be one in 10 million—or even one in 100 million. The photo is of an exploding star in a distant galaxy—a visual that professionals have been hoping to capture for a …

Oldest Tattoos Discovered on 5,000-Year-Old Mummies

In a discovery that has “pushed back evidence for tattooing in Africa by over 1,000 years,” researchers at the British Museum have found the world’s oldest tattoos on 5,000-year-old mummies. These figurative tattoos resemble letters and animals; the female mummy has four small S-shaped designs on her right shoulder. The male’s tattoos (on his upper arm) resemble a wild bull and a sheep. These are …

BrainQ’s Mind-Reading Technology Aims to Treat Neurological Diseases

Rather than embed chips in the human brain—as proposed by two of its better-known competitors, Israeli start-up BrainQ is developing a non-surgically embedded EEG machine to accrue and analyze data on stroke and spinal cord patients. BrainQ isn’t the only company utilizing EEG technology, but their application is unique. Its “mind-reading” capabilities are already being put to the test in two human clinical trials. Read …