Robots are learning to carefully peel lettuce leaves

Technology is designed to improve and streamline every facet of life, and that inevitably includes areas most people would never even think about. Such a lettuce peeling. A random issue for many, perhaps, but for the agriculture industry, a new devel...

Astronauts Eat First Veggies Grown in Space


Fresh vegetables have been grown in the near zero gravity environment of space. This space produce will get sampled by the astronauts aboard the ISS. The members of Expedition 44 will engage in this...

This Umbrella Looks Like Lettuce: Romaine Dry

These days you can get all kinds of unusual umbrellas. You can choose practically anything that suits your style or mood. You can even go green. As in a lettuce umbrella. Japanese design strikes again. This umbrella looks just like a head of crisp lettuce.

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The Vegetabrella uses wrinkled fabric to replicate the look of the lettuce leaves just right, and the brown tip even resembles the stalk. The strip that wraps around the umbrella looks like the tie that it would be packaged with at the supermarket. When opened up, it looks like a fresh leaf of the green stuff too.

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Keep dry while your lettuce umbrella stays crisp. You can buy the Vegetabrella from the Koncent webstore or Nihon Ichiban if you like this kind of vegetable accessory.

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[via Design Taxi and Spoon & Tamago]

Could Lettuce Replace Copper As Material For Wires?

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We have an ongoing quest for maintaining our lifestyles and the planet at the same time, and replacing the copper (a nonrenewable resource) in wires is a must.

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The best estimates claim that we will run out of copper for our cables in about 25 years from now, so you better take good care of your computer parts, the wires especially! For this very reason, a group of researchers from the University of West England have attempted to get lettuce to conduct electricity. And yes, you read that right.

The idea is great: we can always grow more plants if this eventually works. The scientists found that an old lettuce seedling and connected two electrodes is actually able to conduct electricity, albeit a really noisy connection. This means that, while it would theoretically work, it’s probably not the best idea to run a lettuce-operated computer just yet. But, who knows what the future holds for us?

Source: Geeky Gadgets

Learn more about the universe here at Walyou by reading Organovo Will Open the Way for 3D Printed Organs in 2014 and College Student Generates Electricity Using Swimming Pools.