Our Weekly List of Top 10 Twitter Posts — Week 44

Really, is it November already? First Friday of the month's here and with it our first top 10 tweets of the week update. This is a collection of notable articles, photos, videos and other stuff we found through the Twitterverse this week. If you don't follow us on Twitter, you're missing out! Talk to us via @BWCnews — we'd love to hear from you!

Credit: Food in Canada/Canadian MFG

1. Scientists Give Meat a Jolt on the Bishop-Wisecarver Daily: Caffeinated beef jerky? Yup, it's a new superfood the U.S. government wants to feed soldiers to supply quick energy and protein. Wonder if they'll start selling 'em at gas stations soon — sounds more marketable than a Slim Jim!

2. The Real Cost of Commuting via StreamlinerFinance.net: How much money do you spend driving to and from work? We stumbled upon this sticker-shock-inducing infographic, which illustrates the actual price some of us pay to get to work. Sure makes bicycling seem more attractive ...

Credit: New York Times

3. Blue-Ribbon Ideas Emerge at SEMA on the New York Times automotive blog: The annual Specialty Equipment Marketing Association is a huge deal for car lovers, tech geeks and mechanical engineers of all stripes. Our company president, Pamela Kan, was there, perusing the event's state-of-the-art car displays and networking with some of our customers. Check out the NYT's coverage, including a rundown of some award-winning innovations that debuted at the Las Vegas expo.

4. American Picker on Product Design & Development: Who knew old billboard vinyl works as a waterproof tarp? Or that defunct street-sweepers make for great livestock scratchers? I know that last one sounds pretty odd, but those are a couple examples of how some folks creatively reincarnated old junk. There's an entire website dedicated to putting throwaway industrial scraps into the hands of folks who can find another use for it. "It's not recycling, it's repurposing," reads this article. Pretty cool, huh?

5. 10 Roads to the End of the Earth on Popular Mechanics: It's strange to imagine that in a day of GPS navigation, information overload and geographic accessibility that there exist roads too remote for all but a few drivers. This photo essay shows the most isolated corridors, scattered around the farthest or highest reaches of our planet. Awesome visuals here.

Credit: Popular Mechanics

6. A Gecko-Inspired Robot via Discovery News: Geckos are unique for their ability to adhere to a surface on a microscopic level, without hooks or suction cups or any of the trappings we'd need to, let's say, scale a skyscraper. Well, some Canadian researchers found a way to mimic that gecko-grip and apply it to the tracks of a robotic tank. Check out this video to see the gecko-bot in action!

7. Robot Helps the Paralyzed Walk in ComputerWorld.com: It's incredible that we live in a day when this exists — a fix for the wheelchair-bound. Toyota announced this week that it plans to release this healthcare robot to consumers in a few years. Click through the link to see a photo of one in action!

8. Slinky: Imitated but Never Duplicated on CNN Money: Did you know that every slinky in the world comes from the same place? Follow that link to find out where ...

Credit: NASA

9 . Ancient White Stars image from NASA: Astronomers released this stellar photo (pun intended) earlier this week. It's a snapshot of some of the oldest burned-out stars in our galaxy. Incredible!

10. Up, Up and Away ... on Product Design & Development: We loved these photos of some dude in a lawn chair hooked up to 150 helium balloons drifting up into the sky. It's like that Pixar movie "Up" but on a smaller scale. Love it!