Senate Bill Proposes Extending The Shuttle Program By Another Two Years
In an attempt to shorten the gap between the end of the Space Shuttle and the deployment of its replacement, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) has introduced a bill that would extend the life of...
View ArticleDecoded Corn Genome Promises Higher Yields, Better Biofuels, New Plastics
With its annual output of over 330 million tons a year feeding animals, running cars, and decorating South Dakota tourist attractions, maize is clearly Americas most important crop. That’s why the...
View ArticleGold Nanoparticles and Lasers Kill the Brain Parasite That Causes “Crazy Cat...
Toxoplasmosis, a common food- and pet-borne illness linked to hallucinations, personality alteration, and, since it’s often carried by house pets, the stereotype of the crazy cat lady, infects around...
View ArticleWhen the DoD’s Fantasy Projects Get Real: DARPA Monitors Student Minds, SOCOM...
Three times a year, the Department of Defense (DoD) solicits help from the small business community to transform their high-tech research projects into actual, usable products. While the businesses...
View ArticleFind Your Twitter Friends In Real Life With an Augmented Reality iPhone App
Like most Internet applications, Twitter connects you with people who seem to exist in a vast, abstract, cyberspace. Now, a new iPhone app from the French company Presselite uses augmented reality to...
View ArticlePaper-Thin Batteries To Juice Self-Powered OLEDs
Organig LEDs hold large promise for efficient, thin and flexible lighting elements (as well as razor-thin TVs), but low-tech power sources continue to constrain more creative uses of the lights. After...
View ArticleBulletin of Atomic Scientists Turns Back Doomsday Clock, Gives Us An Extra...
Good news everyone! Armageddon has been postponed by another 60 seconds. This morning, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock back to six minutes before...
View ArticleDroplet Of Oil Navigates a Maze As Well As a Lab Rat
Successfully navigating a complex maze is the basic lab test for intelligence. Rats can do it. Cuttlefish can do it. And now, inanimate droplets of oil can do it. By creating a pH gradient, scientists...
View ArticleMiniature Sensor Perpetually Charges Self Using Environmental Energy
Scientistsu, engineers, and doctors yearn for tiny sensors to record a vast array of events in the world’s many hard-to-reach places. And so far, the tradeoff between battery life and size has...
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Google Goggles Could Add Optical Character Recognition and Real-Time...
The Google Goggles Android app can already copy business cards directly into the address book and provide augmented reality overlays for restaurants. But now, Google has unveiled a prototype of a...
View ArticleNext for NASA: Inflatable Space Stations, In-Orbit Refueling, Space UAVs and...
As we’ve been hearing for months, 2010 is going to be a year of belt-tightening for NASA. But now, with the release of the new NASA budget, we can see that even with substantially less money, NASA...
View ArticleWhat the Defense Department Wants For Christmas
When you control a budget that exceeds a trillion dollars, you don’t have to wait until after Thanksgiving to start writing your holiday present wish list. The Department of Defense (DoD) has just...
View ArticleRussia Will End Space Tourism Flights When Shuttle Retires
Well, it looks like Charles Simonyi might have to wait a while for a third trip, because space tourism is going on hiatus. With the shuttle’s cancellation leaving Russia as the only country able to...
View ArticleMed Students Use P2P File Sharing To Get Restricted Access Papers
While some companies hope an iTunes-like approach to distributing scientific papers on the cheap will get journal articles into the hands of people who need them, a new study shows that many medical...
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Video: Improvising Jazzbot Jams With Humans, Really Swings
Advances in robotics have lead to automatons that can do everything from ski to open doors to help the elderly. Now, thanks to the Takanishi Laboratory at Waseda University in Japan, robots have...
View ArticleInsurgents Hack Predator Video Feed With $26 Software
The use of drone aircraft for surveillance and bombing has transformed how the US wages war — a fact not lost on our cunning adversaries. Rather than just sit around, waiting for the next Predator...
View ArticleFirst Nanotube Circuit Created, Paves Way For Better Chips
A computer chip using nanotube circuitry can run much faster than a regular silicon chip, for a fraction of the cost, but no one has been able to effectively string together two nanotube transistors,...
View ArticleSophisticated New Computer Models Predict Details of Insurgent Attacks
Chaos, confusion, and uncertainty have pervaded battle since Homer first described the din of clashing hoplites. But new developments in computer modeling look to pierce the fog of modern war by...
View ArticleCongressional UAV Caucus Courts Robot Voters
The US Congress has well over 100 caucuses, or groups of common interests. They’re like the clubs in a high school that play chess or work on the year book, except they usually focus on a constituency...
View Article2,400-Foot-Tall Solar Turbines To Power Arizona
Today’s solar power plants work either through photovoltaics or heated steam. If Enviromission gets its way, tomorrow’s plants will combine wind and solar, with acre-sized mirrors and...
View ArticleUK Report On Future Jobs Predicts More Space Pilots and Organ Manufacturers,...
With the US unemployment rate hovering around 10 percent, and the UK unemployment rate stuck at about 8 percent, most people are worrying about what job they’ll have 20 days from now, not 20 years in...
View ArticleNew Computer Program Studies Trees on TV to Simulate Their Movement
The same subtle, random movements, bouncing shadows, and immense complexity that make plants fascinating to observe in life also make them hell to animate. Like water and fire, a rustling tree is one...
View ArticleMarine Corps’ Unmanned Programmable Copter Passes First Major Test
The difficulty of supplying remote outposts across rugged terrain has contributed to many of the deadliest moments in the Afghan War, by preventing the delivery of weapons and ammo to engaged...
View ArticleNanofiber Lamps Are More Efficient Than Incandescent Bulbs, Eco-Friendlier...
For those who want to start saving the planet at home, lighting presents a vexing paradox. While incandescent bulbs are wildly inefficient, compact fluorescent bulbs contain hazardous chemicals. With...
View ArticleWindows Phone Series 7 Takes Aim at iPhone, Android
Gadget lovers are nothing if not fickle, always ditching their older tech for pretty young things. And recently, all the attention on the iPhone and Google’s Android OS has made Microsoft seem a bit...
View ArticleNew Brain Scan Quantifies The Formerly Subjective Feeling of Pain
The seemingly subjective nature of pain always proves problematic for doctors, who have to use a woefully imprecise chart to gauge a patient’s suffering. But by using a new interpretation of fMRI...
View Article2012 Military Wishlist Features Smart Wound-Diagnosing Uniforms and...
Even though giant companies like Lockheed and General Dynamics produce the majority of U.S. military hardware, the Department of Defense still turns to small businesses for some of its more...
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Revitalized LHC Manages to Collide Protons
After 14 years of work and $5.5 billion, the LHC has survived faulty magnets, avian sabotage, and the threat of malevolent time travelers to finally collided its first particles. Three days after the...
View ArticleDrug Treatment Could Sharpen Adult Brains
Anyone who’s tried to learn a second language knows that the earlier in life you start, the easier it is to learn. Now, a scientist at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center (SUNY)...
View ArticleAutonomous Submarinebot Heads Down on Deepest-Ever Undersea Search For...
While some scientists resort to undersea drilling to find undiscovered forms of life, a new group of researchers has decided that piloting a robotic submarine into a submerged volcano was the way to...
View ArticleElectrical Nerve Hacking Restores Movement To Paralyzed Limbs
When Matthew Schiefer, a neural engineer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, first managed to stimulate the leg of an unconscious volunteer by wrapping an electrode around a nerve...
View ArticleNIF Moves 5.9 Million Degrees Closer To Fusion Power
With the need for a cheap and abundant alternative to fossils fuels more important than ever before, the field of fusion energy is getting hotter. Really, really hot. 6 million degrees hot. Yes, the...
View ArticleOceans on Europa Have Enough Oxygen to Support Space Fish
Thanks to a surface covered in liquid water, Jupiter’s moon Europa serves as the prime suspect for bodies in our solar system harboring extraterrestrial life. For the most part though, speculation has...
View ArticleNanoelectromechanical Sensor Can Instantly Detect Pathogens And Toxins
Tests for toxins or pathogens generally rely on chemical reactions. But a team of researchers at Cornell University have created a sensor that detects the presence of chemicals based on the mechanical...
View ArticleVideo: A Company’s Algorithms Reveal Hidden Connections Among All That Data
Within the vast, undifferentiated torrent of data that courses through the Internet, there hides an intricate topology of information. Decision makers with millions of dollars on the line need a much...
View ArticleFace-Recognition Software Shields Your Computer Screen From Eavesdroppers
The dropping price of laptops and netbooks has resulted in a proliferation of computer use in public spaces. Whether at the airport, in a cafe, or on the Chinatown bus, more and more people are using...
View ArticleWhat’s It Like to Name An Element on the Periodic Table?
It’s one of the most hallowed clubs in all of science–the lucky few who have discovered and named an element on the periodic table. After stabilizing and observing the latest addition to chemistry’s...
View ArticleNewly Discovered Element 112 Named “Copernicum”
When we talked with element 112’s discoverer, Sigurd Hofmann, on the significance of making a permanent mark on the periodic table, he told us he wanted a moniker that recognized a famous scientist...
View ArticleScientist Vows To Reverse-Engineer Dinosaur From Chicken
When I was a kid, the only animal I wanted for a pet was a dinosaur. Seeing as non-avian dinosaurs had been extinct for around 65 million years, I settled for an iguana. However, new research at...
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Polaris Phone Rolls Self to Charger, Keeps an Eye on Users’ Behavior
Sure, your iPhone may play games, tell you where to eat, and surf the Internet, but can it tell you what you did the other day and how to do it better? Enter the Polaris phone, a new system designed...
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World’s Fastest Electric Motorcycle Sets New Record
In a high-velocity demonstration that proves green and badass can coexist in the same vehicle, Mission Motors has set a new speed record for electric motorcycles. Topping out at 161 mph, the Mission...
View ArticleSnake With Clawed Foot Found In China
Just because most mutants don’t gain special powers doesn’t make them any less interesting. Case and point, this snake discovered the other day in Southwest China. Looking at the picture, you should...
View ArticleWhite House To Scrap Eastern European Missile Defense Shield
Reversing years of Bush administration policy, the White House announced that it has scrapped plans for an Eastern European component of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) shield. Instead...
View ArticleAt UN Climate Change Conference, US And China Promise Carbon Emission Reductions
Today, heads of state from around the globe met at the United Nations to face a problem that affects all of their constituencies: climate change. In a day-long conference on global warming, President...
View ArticleFor the First Time Ever, an HIV Vaccine Shows Success in Trial
After over 25 years of failed formulas, an HIV vaccine has, for the first time, displayed the ability to confer some immunity against the virus. Deployed in a clinical trial in Thailand, the vaccine...
View ArticleIntel’s New Light Peak Cable Transfers 10 Gb/S, Puts USB To Shame
Despite the fact that optical cables transmit data far faster than copper wire, wire is still the primary medium for communication on computer chips, and between computers and devices through USB...
View ArticleYour Screen Saver Could Help Create New Life
In the beginning, there were organic molecules. And they were good, but unorganized. Then, those organic molecules formed proteins, and evolution kicked in and started a three-billion-year journey...
View ArticleEPA To Impose New Greenhouse Gas Regulations
In an attempt to both strengthen the US’s negotiating hand in the upcoming Copenhagen climate talks, and to prod domestic lawmakers into swifter action on lasting legislation, the White House has told...
View ArticleWi-Fi Signals Can Be Used to See Through Walls
Time for everyone at 113 East 38th Street* to ditch the cameras, because researchers at the University of Utah have found a more subtle way to spy on your neighbors: Wi-Fi. By measuring the resistance...
View ArticleSingularity Summit 2009: Ten Unanswered Questions For Our Future Robot Overlords
While I undoubtedly learned a lot at the Singularity Summit, the conference’s greatest benefit was the questions it didn’t answer. Unresolved issues regarding the Singularity have provided a lot of...
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