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The ancient art of origami has inspired designs for numerous pieces of hardware on NASA missions, allowing scientists to pack more technology into smaller space-bound packages. For example, the agency is working on a piece of hardware called Starshade, which looks like a massive sunflower and could be made compact using what's known as an iris-folding pattern.  This pattern allows Starshade to be packed down into a space small enough to fit atop a rocket; the object could then unfurl to its full diameter of about 85 feet (26 meters) in space, according to NASA. Starshade would be used to...

People are finding origami butterflies with ominous messages, scattered on the ground throughout Seattle. The folded papers have a puzzling warning about safety, but no one seems to know who is behind the campaign or what it’s about. When unfolded, the message “you are not safe,” is revealed and there is a date: 9-28-17. The flip side has illustrations of Russell Wilson, Kurt Cobain, the Starbucks siren, and a message about peace.

Building Self-Assembling Robots With Origami, PowerPoint, and an LED Projector A new photopolymer technique creates self-folding origami structures from PowerPoint slides, which might be used as tiny, medical bots inside the body. By Glenn McDonald May 5, 2017 3:03 PM EDT Share on Facebook Tweet this article Email Origami, the art of paper folding, has been around for a long time. Historians are pretty sure that origami as we know it today — think paper cranes and frogs — has its origins in 17th-century Japan. But it's likely that the roots of the practice date back to 1st-century China.  ...

he new bulletproof shield developed by Howell and his colleagues can be folded compactly when not in use. It is also much easier to deploy and transport. When expanded, which only takes five seconds, the bulletproof shield can offer cover for police officers and shield them from bullets such as the 9 mm, .44 Magnum and .357 Magnum. This new shield is also lightweight, weighing only 55 pounds. It was built with 12 layers of Kevlar and a common creasing origami-like pattern, which makes it foldable into a more manageable size. During tests, the bulletproof shield prototype proved to be...

There are houses for cold climates, which are designed to keep in the precious warmth; there are houses for hot climates where architecture allows for air to sweep through and keep inhabitants cool. However, until now, the two were difficult to combine. But this new incredible folding house is able to, in the words of its creators, 'metamorphosize' into eight different configurations to adapt to seasonal, meteorological and even astronomical conditions. For example, in the summer plan, bedroom one faces east and watches the sun rise as its inhabitan wakes up. It can then rotate so that the user is...

A man arrived at a municipal court this week and attempted to pay a $137 traffic violation ticket with 137 origami pigs fashioned with dollar bills and boxed in two Dunkin Donut trays. A city clerk refused to accept his creative payment method however, and forced him to unfold each every one of his painstakingly made creations. A policeman in uniform who arrives on the scene shows more of sense of humour and though he insists the man unfold each because they have 'no way to store it', he commends 'Bacon Mouse' for his work. 'I agree with you, that's...

Origami architect, Ingrid Siliakus, can spent up to two months painstakingly creating entire cities purely from folding pieces of paper.

February 7, 2008 Japan to launch origami planes into outer space Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent Video: how to create the perfct paper plane In a bold bid to take the traditional art of origami beyond the Final Frontier, Japan is planning to release a huge squadron of paper aeroplanes in outer space. The trailblazing experiment, slated for launch later this year, could see around 100 paper planes raining down on the planet as they are captured by the Earth’s gravitational pull and sucked down towards the surface. Astronomers and star-gazers should have plenty of warning of the planes’ arrival,...

Codenamed Origami, Ultra-Mobile Personal Computers Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2006-03-09 11:30. Introduced at CeBIT, the new mobile PC form factor, formerly codenamed “Origami,” provides full Windows functionality with an enhanced touch screen, pen and keyboard input. Microsoft today unveiled details for Ultra-Mobile Personal Computers (UMPCs), a new category of mobile computing devices that features small, lightweight, carry-everywhere hardware designs coupled with the full functionality of a Microsoft Windows-based PC and a choice of input options, including enhanced touch-screen capabilities. The debut of UMPCs here at CeBIT, the world’s largest trade fair showcasing digital IT and telecommunications solutions, follows Microsoft...

Reality check for the much-hyped Origami PC Ina Fried, for News.com Bill Gates' vision of an ultramobile PC seemed like a winner: a device with all-day battery life, yet small enough to fit in a pocket and much cheaper than a laptop. But as devices begin to roll out a year later, reality still trails Microsoft's ambitions. The first generation of devices, being announced Thursday, are bigger, pricier and more power hungry than the software maker had hoped. Microsoft acknowledges that instead of a mass-market hit riding a wave of prelaunch hype, these devices are likely to appeal only to...

In 1980, a Japanese scientist, Dr. Koryo Miura, developed a pattern of peaks and valleys that allows a map to be unfolded all at once, with one pull of a corner. In introducing his method, Dr. Miura wrote that his "experience on deployable space structures and origami science" led him to look for a better way to fold a map. The result of his work, the Miura-ori origami pattern, has indeed been used for solar arrays as well as maps. Last week, in the journal Science, Dr. Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan of Harvard reported that nature itself has an origami trick or...

SCIENTIST AT WORK Rick Friedman for The New York Times Three paper shapes cut and pleated by Dr. Erik Demaine, who is applying insights from wrinkling and crinkling to questions in architecture, robotics and molecular biology. CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - "Some people don't even think this exists," says Dr. Erik Demaine, turning in his hands an elaborately folded paper structure. The intricately pleated sail-like form swooshes gracefully in a compound curve and certainly looks real enough - if decidedly tricky to make. Dr. Demaine, an assistant professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the leading theoretician in...

Talk about papering over a problem. Since January, the predominantly Muslim southern provinces of Thailand have been the scenes of violent separatist riots and terrorist bombings apparently linked to Jemaah Islamiyah, the al Qaeda affiliate in Southeast Asia. The death toll exceeds 500. So what's the Thai government to do? After an initially stern response tragically led to 78 prisoners suffocating in police trucks, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra chose a different approach. On Monday, the Thai Army air-dropped 100 million origami cranes over the region. Another 30 million cranes are to be delivered by land. The operation was meticulously planned...