The iMSO-104 Osilloscope (Image: Oscium)

Over the last year, I have been working myself into the world of makers. I have generally focused on building electronics projects because I understand electronics and make use of that knowledge regularly in my day job but I don’t get to do much in the realm of actually designing and building electronics. There have been several times where I have been building a project and realized how useful an oscilloscope would be to look at the signals on the lines or the voltage change over time rather than the snapshot offered by my trusty DVM. I recently had t...

By John Timmer, Ars Timmer

Those of you who get a bit weirded out by spiders and other arthropods would probably have a coronary if an Anomalocaris were to swim in your direction. The animals were about a meter long, and shaped as a flattened oval, a bit like a modern flounder. That’s about the only similarity with a fish, though. Instead of fins, the Anomalocarids propelled themselves through the water using a series of elongated paddle-like structures running down both edges of the body. In front, a pair of appendages could shovel prey into a circular mouth located on its underside.