Electrical 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 ArticleDARPA Chief Testifies That US May Soon Face Critical Nerd Shortage
In last week’s testimony before Congress, Dr. Regina Dugan, director of DARPA, warned the House Armed Services Committee that the US was facing a lack of a critical resource — a lack so severe that it...
View ArticleTogolese Student Builds Humanoid Robot From Old TV Parts
Most robots covered on this site push the envelope of technology, by working in space or eerily replicating flesh-and-blood humans. But for Sam Todo, a student in the Togolese Republic in Africa,...
View ArticleEvidence of First Virus That Infects Both Plants and Humans
From rabies to bird flu to HIV, diseases passing from animals to humans is a well-known phenomenon. But a virus jumping from plants to humans? Never. At least, that’s what doctors thought until Didier...
View ArticleChina Designs Indigenous UAV Stealth Fighter, and Bootlegs Some US Models
When I hear the phrase “knock-off Chinese products”, I usually think of either the bootleg DVDs I get on the subway or the cheap electronics I get in Midtown. But a new report in Defense Professionals...
View ArticleHow Many Universes are There? Physicists Actually Try to Answer the Question
For some time, physicists have theorized about the existence of alternate universes. In fact, some models of physics require multiple universes, to explain some rarely observed phenomena. But, other...
View ArticleDoctors Equip Yorkshire Man With Cyborg Sphincter
Meet Ged Galvin, the Steve Austin of colorectal surgery. After a car crash in which Galvin almost died, surgeons at Royal London Hospital realized they could rebuild his crushed organs. Stronger....
View ArticleNASA Robotic Rocket Plane To Survey Martian Surface
Since budget cuts and the inability to overcome problems like boredom and high radiation doses have ruled out any manned mission to Mars in the foreseeable future, NASA has shifted gears back towards...
View ArticleRobotic Arm Opens Doors For the Wheelchair-Bound
For people confined to wheelchairs, the proliferation of ramps has greatly enhanced their mobility. Unfortunately, opening doors remains an omnipresent, and frustrating, challenge. Oddly enough,...
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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 ArticleStudy Finds Ozone Hole Repair Contributes To Global Warming, Sea Ice Melt
In 1985, scientists from the British Antarctic Survey found a giant hole in the ozone layer of Earth’s atmosphere over the South Pole. This discovery prompted a largely successful international effort...
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 ArticleGlowing Prairie Rodents Teach Us the Genetics Of Monogamy
Man, those scientists just love their glowing lab subjects. First came mice, and then recently the first primates got some jellyfish genes implanted into their DNA. Now, scientists at Emory University...
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Has Dark Matter Finally Been Detected On Earth?
For the past six years, the CDMS, the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector, sat deep beneath the Minnesotan countryside, watching super-cooled Germanium crystals for evidence of material...
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 ArticleDarpa’s Cyborg Insect Spies, Now Nuclear-Powered
When you write for Popular Science, it’s easy to become desensitized to wild and crazy future tech. To wit: When I first heard that Darpa wanted to develop cyborg insects to carry surveillance...
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 ArticleFirst Commercial 3-D Bioprinter Fabricates Organs To Order
The problem with organ transplants is that the organ has to come from someone else. Since most people rather fancy their hearts and lungs, getting any organ other than a kidney usually requires the...
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...
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