Plus: Perspiration and Prostheses, Internet Dog Feeder and MORE.

This weekend is a holiday twofer: Valentine’s Day and Presidents’ Day rolled up in one. So, if you’re like most Americans, you’re looking at dropping a little more than $100 this weekend on celebrations.

According to the National Retail Federation’s annual Valentine’s Day Consumer Intentions and Actions survey, the average American is set to spend $102.50 on Valentine’s Day this year, down a whopping 17 percent from last year, with the total spending reaching $14.7 billion.

The majority of people are planning to spend the most on their spouse ($67.22), with the rest going to family members, focusing mainly on traditional favorites: flowers (35.7 percent, nearly the same as last year’s 35.9 percent), jewelry (16 percent, compared to 16.6 percent in 2008), greeting cards (58 percent versus 56.8 percent in 2008) and restaurants (47 percent).

For the disgruntled and single among IMT readers, some cheer may be needed for the long weekend. So here are some inspiring and bizarre stories from the past week to keep holiday cheer going.

Mouse for Feeding Fido
If you’re one of the folks who believe problems can be solved by rolling up your sleeves and using a little elbow grease, the story of Tyler’s invention will surely inspire you. Young Tyler had to go on vacation, but instead of hiring someone to feed his dog Gibson, he designed a Web site to do the job for him.

As can be seen in the video below (via TechEBlog), Tyler simply pushes a button on InternetDogFeeder.com and a constantly rotating gyro dumps food into Gibson’s bowl.

Taking the idea a step further, Tyler set up a new site where you can feed Gibson yourself by donating $1 to Tyler’s future plans/college fund.

Perspiration and Prostheses
Scientists in Switzerland have finally developed the machine everyone has been waiting for: the sweating robot. The machine Sweating Agile Mannequin, nicknamed “SAM,” is housed in University of Zurich labs where it simulates running and its 125 different sweat nozzles release moisture. Why did the scientists spend so much time working on this seemingly unnecessary device?

Sports, of course. SAM’s controllers hope the perspiring automaton can help with the development of high-tech winter activewear, specifically for winter sports. Five years in the making, you be the judge if it’s worth it: See the Reuters video.

In a more useful column comes the JHUAPL Proto 1 Arm, a new prosthetic limb that utilizes targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR) to help amputees rehabilitate. The arm, developed by scientists at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, is attached to chest muscles with small electromyogram (EMG) electrodes. These electrodes read chest muscle tension sent by nerves and convert these rewired signals into movement of the prosthesis. The current model only has four different movements but is powerful and fast enough to catch a ball, swing a hammer or even give a wily friend a pinch. Jesse Sullivan, paraplegic due to an electrical accident in 2001, demonstrates in another Reuters video.

Preserving Digital Nostalgia
In an attempt to preserve cultural history, the European Union has awarded $5.2 million to a project called Keeping Emulation Environments Portable (KEEP), the focus of which is to develop software that will play virtually any video or computer game on modern technology.

Because digital technology becomes obsolete at a pace faster than preserving this technology allows, all those games that were played in the 1980s and ’90s are in danger of disappearing forever. While emulators for Atari and the Nintendo Entertainment System exist, they are typically dedicated programs and thus can’t run several different operating systems or platforms. KEEP’s ultimate goal is to create the “first general-purpose emulator,” which will be easier to preserve and update to new computer technologies.

David Anderson of KEEP tells New Scientist:

Early hardware, like games, consoles and computers, is already found in museums, but if you can’t show visitors what they did by playing the software on them, it’s much the same as putting musical instruments on display but throwing away all the music…For future generations, it would be a cultural catastrophe.

Almost as catastrophic as losing your oxen while fording the river…

The History of the Internet
Finally, if you have eight minutes to spend putzing around on the Internet, you may as well spend them learning about how this marvelous time-wastingsaving system was developed. Melih Bilgil, at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz in Germany, developed the following short video that explains the Internet’s history from 1957 to today.

Have a happy Valentine’s Day and a relaxing Presidents’ Day weekend.