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ICYMI: Watching plants grow and playing 'Mario Kart' with an actual car

Beware the red shell.

Today on In Case You Missed It: The thought of watching a plant grow seems, well, boring. But researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria used lasers, fluorescent lights and a microscope to track the growth of a flowering weed's roots. The end result is a close-up 3D video that looks more like a glowing burrowing worm than a plant. The researchers also twisted the plate the plants are growing on to see how the roots adjust to changes in gravity, which could be helpful when we need to grow food in space.

Meanwhile, a teenager was able to talk his dad into allowing him and his friends to use the family's Chevy Volt as a giant controller for Mario Kart. The team figured out how to extract data from the vehicle's OBD port with a Raspberry Pi. They then mapped the steering wheel, accelerator, brake, high beams and windshield wipers to the racing game running in an emulator on a laptop. No word on if this mod helps you avoid the dreaded red shell.

As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @strngwys.