Snakes ~ Remarkable Structure & Motorskills!

Spotlight: Snakes! First, Lauren at io9 sees baby Cobra feasting! Adult Cobra vs Mongoose... Next, the Secrets of Slithering... Robosnake! Slithertron evolves! Vi Hart's Snakes + Graphs;-) Finally, Samuel L Jackson in Snakes on a Plane...

Epicenter ~ NSF-funded Stanford Edu Initiative

Cool, check out Stanford's NSF-funded Epicenter initiative!

I-Corps ~ NSF's New MIT-Style Action Teams...

Check out the new I-Corps...

"The National Science Foundation (NSF) has established a new opportunity to assess the readiness of emerging technology concepts for transitioning into valuable new products through a public-private partnership. The NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program will bring together the technological, entrepreneurial, and business know-how to bring discoveries ripe for innovation out of the university lab. [...] "The United States has a long history of investing in -- and deploying -- technological advances derived from a foundation of basic research," says NSF Director Subra Suresh. "And the NSF mission connects advancing the nation's prosperity and welfare with our passionate pursuit of scientific knowledge. I-Corps will help strengthen a national innovation ecosystem that firmly unites industry with scientific discoveries for the benefit of society." [...] The I-Corps program will initially support up to 100 projects per year, at $50,000 a project. "The Deshpande Foundation is pleased to be part of the NSF effort to bring innovators, mentors and entrepreneurs together in a meaningful way to create economic and social impact," says Desh Deshpande, Trustee, Deshpande Foundation."

Born of MIT roots, mimicking our Deshpande Center I-Teams program (which was named by yours truly;-) Cool! (Of course, my fundamental question about this is why should taxpayer money be spent on something currently handled by angels, VCs, and private individuals and companies? It's a neat idea, but it's unclear to me why a bunch of politicos should meddle here...)