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Nanofiber 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...

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Windows 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...

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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...

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Bill Gates’s 2010 TED Talk Now Online

There are plenty of reasons to disagree with President Obama and Bill Gates, but there’s no denying that both men are profoundly smart. And when they start agreeing on something, lesser minds like us...

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Next 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...

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Physics Student Petitions For “Hella” to Be Next SI Unit Prefix

Beloved by Bay Area natives and loathed by the rest of the country, the term “hella” has entered the general American lexicon thanks to the combined efforts of No Doubt and South Park. And now, if...

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A New Breed of Medical Screws Dissolve In Body and Promote Bone Growth

The screws used by doctors to repair broken bones and torn ligaments enable recovery from a wide range of injuries. Unfortunately, they also leave holes in bones, require secondary surgery for...

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New 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...

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With Artificial Photosynthesis, A Bottle of Water Could Produce Enough Energy...

One of the interesting side effects of last year’s stimulus bill was $400 million in funding for ARPA-E, the civilian, energy-focused cousin of DARPA. And in this week’s first ever ARPA-E conference,...

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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...

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Gold 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...

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The Undersea Hunt for Intraterrestrial Life

Despite the impact of mankind, the size of trees, and the sheer numbers of bugs, multicellular terrestrial life only makes up a small portion of the planet’s biomass. The majority of life on Earth...

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Concept Waterscraper Brings Monumental Architecture Into The Open Sea

For the last five years, eVolo Magazine has hosted a futuristic skyscraper design competition. Usually, the entrants imagine giant buildings taller than anything under construction today. However, the...

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Nanoelectromechanical 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...

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Drug 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)...

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Autonomous 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...

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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...

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DARPA 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...

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Togolese 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,...

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What 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...

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