Link List: Robot Actors, Bees, and Printed Body Parts

1) Robotic Actors share the stage with humans in plays by the Japanese Robot Theater Project. Figures it would be a Japanese idea--and I wish I could go see one!

2) Using 3-D printers to grow ears. This is amazing! And one of those things that might happen soon, not "in the next twenty years or so."

3) Amputee to Get an Artificial Hand with Feeling. I've kept some tabs on the controlling-limbs-with-the-mind tests, but not close enough, evidently, because this is miles past where I thought we were!

4)Bumblebees Sense Electrical Fields in Flowers. Bees build up a positive charge as they fly; when they visit flowers, the flowers become more positively charged. Other bees, it turns out, can sense this and use it as a way to tell which flowers have already been visited and won't have nectar.