La Bisbal, Spain’s Chocolate Factory Turned Residence

From the bones of a former chocolate factory, rising three stories on a historic block dating back to the late nineteenth century, architects Anna and Eugeni Bach fashioned a light-filled residence. The architects preserved the building’s stone-bearing facade and embarked upon different design directions for each of the floors within—from supporting a Catalan vault on the ground floor to employing large logs beneath brick and …

Farewell to Cut, Copy, and Paste Inventor Larry Tesler

An Apple, Xerox, Amazon, Yahoo, and 23AndMe alum—and an early researcher in the field of artificial intelligence—Larry Tesler may not be as well-known as early computing icons like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Steve Wozniak, but his impact on the industry remains important today. Tesler popularized the tools cut, copy, and paste while working on Xerox PARC’s mouse-driven user interface—specifically an app within it called …

Bomb-Sniffing Cyborg Grasshoppers

Dogs and even pigs have long been heralded as having the ultimate snout—one capable of detecting bombs, drugs, truffles, and even human beings through thick brush and dense soil. But, courtesy of a bit of high-tech engineering, cyborg grasshoppers may be the ultimate nose after all. Researchers at the University of Missouri inserted electrodes into the antennal lobes of each grasshopper (the “brain” of the …