WIRED Science S01E08 · Technology: Geek Dad: Japanese Robots

Overview

GeekDad: Japanese Robots Every family needs a hobby. For the Maru family of Nagoya, Japan, that hobby is crushing the competition in humanoid robot contests. We travel to the island country to get the heartwarming story of a father, his sons and their custom master/slave control harness. Deep Brain Stimulation We'll go under the knife with a Cardington, Ohio farmer who's getting electrodes implanted in his brain to alleviate the debilitating physical effects of a rare neurological disorder. Dr. Schrempp's Chem Lab Host Chris Hardwick learns how to turn cotton balls into smokeless gunpowder with chemist Chris Schrempp, star high school teacher and author of the book Bangs, Flashes, and Explosions. Where's My Rocketbelt? Rocketbelts went from being a grand military ambition to a classic James Bond moment, to part of a future that never materialized. WIRED SCIENCE travels to the first International Rocketbelt Convention in Niagara Falls to meet rocketbelt legends past and present CHAT: Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey: Entrepreneurs With the help of 23andMe, a much anticipated Silicon Valley startup, you can get a look at your own genome - and discover your own secrets. Company co-founders, Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey, sit down with special correspondent Adam Rogers to chat about how they're helping people make sense of their genetic information. Laser Archaeology Ben Kaycra grew up playing on ancient Mesopotamian ruins in his native Iraq. As an adult, he became a civil engineer and developed lasers that can scan buildings and translate them into three-dimensional blueprints. Host Ziya Tong takes a trip to Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park to see how this technology is changing the way archaeologists are mapping the ancient ruins of the Pueblo Indians. Video Lab: Keepon Dancing WIRED SCIENCE web crawlers scour the Internet to find the coolest science and tech videos. This week, a dancing yellow robot named Keepon takes to the streets of Tokyo with his creator in search of kindred bots to the tune of Spoon's Don't You Evah. But there's more to Keepon than meets the eye - he's a serious clinical research tool developed by child psychologist and roboticist Hideki Kozima for his research with autistic children

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Episodes

1. 0 0. Pilot2007-01-03
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3. 2 2. Earth: Flotsam Found2007-10-10Flotsam Found Retired oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer and his colleague tracked thousands of plastic toys that fell off a freighter during a storm to map current patterns. Their wor
4. 3 3. Physics & Chemistry: Ball Busters2007-10-17Ball Busters At the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, a team of scientists make sure that every baseball that makes it into a Major League game has just the right amount of hard
5. 4 4. Health: Body Builders2007-10-24Body Builders We visit with Dr. Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University and learn about how he's "cooking" and growing organs - unattached to human beings. Experiment Cave Deep
6. 5 5. Health: Blood Simple2007-10-31Blood Simple Be it A, B, AB or O, most of us don’t think about blood until we see it. Physicians at Virginia Commonwealth University are cracking the elusive problem and testing a
7. 6 6. Health: Bio Banking2007-11-07Biobanking These days, major universities, drug companies, and even a few governments maintain their own biobanks, which are basically places where scientists store human parts li
8. 7 7. Space & Flight: Satellite Shopping2007-11-14Satellite Shopping It's been 50 years since the first satellite, Sputnik, was launched into orbit. Now, communication satellites are used in everything from radio and television
9. 8 8. Technology: Geek Dad: Japanese Robots2007-11-21GeekDad: Japanese Robots Every family needs a hobby. For the Maru family of Nagoya, Japan, that hobby is crushing the competition in humanoid robot contests. We travel to the isla
10. 9 9. Space & Flight: Space Junkyard2007-12-19
11. 10 10. Earth: Icy Depths2007-12-26