Congressional 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 ArticleUnwanted Side Effect: Cocaine Vaccine Leads Addicts to Take 10 Times More...
Over the last decade, the advances in neuroscience that led doctors to view addiction as a disease, rather than a desire or personal failing, raised the natural question of whether or not addicts...
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...
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NASA Scientists Classify the Time Before Earth Existed: the Chaotian Era
The geological time scale, with its familiar Cretaceous, Cambrian, and Eocene periods, works great as a calendar for the history of the Earth. Indeed, the different periods only cover the 3.8 billion...
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 ArticleIsrael Developing Semi-Lethal Sonic Cannon To Control Rioters
A desert people have developed a new weapon that uses sound instead of bullets. But this time, it will be used to control crowds instead of fighting giant worms or devious members of House Harkonnen....
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 ArticleSiftables, the Amazing Computerized Toy Blocks, Are Coming To a Store Near...
Sifteo, makers of Siftables, the ingenious cookie-sized computer blocks that play together in infinitely interesting ways, has today officially gone from MIT Media Lab research project to actual...
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 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 ArticleCompound LJ001 Acts Like Antibiotic Against Viruses
Unlike antibiotics, which kill many different types of bacteria, antiviral drugs for the most part need to target individual, specific viruses. A drug that attacks a multitude of viruses — an...
View ArticleInsulin Can Now Be Made Cheaply from Flowers
In 1922, Canadian scientists isolated insulin for the first time. Now, over 80 years later, our neighbors to the north are helping diabetics again by devising the cheapest way yet to produce insulin....
View ArticleCarbon Crystals Harder Than Diamond Found In Finnish Meteorite
Diamond may remain the preferred material for wedding rings, Lil’ Wayne’s birthday gifts, and Damien Hirst sculptures, but it looks like girls’ best friend will have to relinquish its title as the...
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Say Hello to Robonaut2, NASA’s Android Space Explorer of the Future
With the news that the White House has canceled the Constellation Program, NASA seems to be moving out of the human space flight business. However, the unveiling of a next-generation robot astronaut...
View ArticleBrain Scan Shows Vegetative Patient Responding To Yes-or-No Questions
In a study that challenges the diagnosis of vegetative state, doctors found that the brain of a seemingly unconscious, vegetative man responded to yes-or-no questions in the same fashion as an alert,...
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 ArticleMarijuana Research Offers New Hope For Male Birth Control Pill
The male birth control pill has lingered for years tantalizingly just out of reach, in the realm where rumor meets science. Recently developed hormonal and mechanical contraceptives never found an...
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...
View ArticleMeat the iPhone Sausage Stylus
It’s easy to see how Apple might have overlooked this, what with their headquarters located in a place with 60 degree days in February, but anyone from colder climates knows that you can’t operate an...
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