While tattoos have been around for almost 1000 years in China, it is only in the last few years that their popularity has taken really taken off. Tim Johnson covers this trend, interviewing tattoo artists who are so busy that new customers have to make an appointment a month in advance.  The growing popularity of tattoos in China is juxtaposed with Americans, especially basketball stars, who get tattoos of Chinese characters.
In both cultures, there is an attraction to a foreign exotic aesthetic.  One of the interviewed Chinese tattoo artists explains the preferences of different demographics when choosing between Chinese versus [...]

Taking the notion of limited edition to the extreme, Swedish magazine Tare Lugnt have released their third issue as a tattoo. You can see the magazine being “published” below.

[via shu and joe & Selectism]

In the future, tattoos may be able to communicate more than just style and rebellion. Draper Laboratories of Massachusetts is developing a tattoo ink which changes color based on glucose levels inside the skin. This invention could spare diabetics from daily painful blood glucose tests.
Discovery explains how it works:
The nano ink particles are tiny, squishy spheres about 120 nanometers across. Inside the sphere are three parts: the glucose detecting molecule, a color-changing dye, and another molecule that mimics glucose. When the particles are dissolved in water they look like food coloring, says Clark.
The three parts continuously move around the inside [...]