Popular Photography Magazine

New York City’s health department has become know in recent years for a series of attention-grabbing ads, aimed to scare New Yorkers into making healthier lifestyle choices. Past messages about the dangers of smoking, drinking and consuming too much junk food, have featured images such as a woman who lost her fingers from smoking related disease, and a bloodied man drank too much.  The latest ad cautions against consuming too much sugar and features large cups of soda set against the backdrop of a man with an amputated leg with the text:  “Portions have grown.

In an article published in this week's issue of Science, researchers have discovered that jumping spiders use a completely novel way of focusing and gauging distance for their attacks. Humans (and many animals) focus by adjusting the focal length of our eyes, and can tell the distance to objects through stereoscopic vision. Some animals that aren't as good at adjusting focal length shift their around to create binocular vision, a technique called motion parallax. But jumping spiders?

Word of a robotic hummingbird spy camera being developed by the Pentagon started circulating back in July, but now the “Nano Hummingbird or Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) which  is being built by AeroVironment, just passed DARPA's Phase II technical milestones.

Created by aerial enthusiast Kellie Sigler and her robotics maker husband, the “eye3” is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can be used without any special training. The six arm structure of the eye3 weighs four pounds and is made out of carbon and glass fibers, which offer strength without adding weight to the frame. Each arm is outfitted with a 350W motor capable of up to four pounds of vertical thrust, making a combined capability of 24 pounds of lift, more than enough to get a DSLR and lens into the air.