IBM Develops Higher-Efficiency Solar Cells Using Non-Rare Materials
While IBM is primarily known for its information technology products, the company has recently begun expanding into the alternative energy market. So far, that change has mainly taken the form of a...
View ArticleIran Loads Up On High-Tech Chinese Riot-Control Trucks
Today marks the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. And in anticipation of Green Movement protests today, Iran has a new fleet of scary, high-tech riot-control trucks. Made in China,...
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 ArticleChanging the Language of DNA: Altered Cells Taught To Read 4-Base-Pair Codons
Much like your four-year-old nephew, RNA can only read three-letter combinations. Called codons, these three DNA-base-pair groups form the phrases that RNA translates into the 21 amino acids that...
View ArticleRobots To Clear Baltic Seabed Of WWII Mines
In a dangerous legacy of the world’s deadliest conflict, 150,000 World War Two-era sea mines litter the Baltic Sea. The danger these bombs pose to a proposed gas pipeline has prompted Russia to hire...
View ArticleMathematician Cracks The Code for Making Hollywood Blockbusters
Howard Hawks famously said that all a good movie needs is three great scenes and no bad ones. Well, according to James Cutting, a psychologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, they also need...
View ArticleGoogle 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 ArticleBill 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...
View ArticleCampbell’s Uses Neuromarketing To Design New Soup Can Labels
For over a hundred years, Campbell’s Soup cans have sported the iconic label inspired by Cornell’s football uniform and made famous by Andy Warhol. Now, thanks to market research that measured...
View ArticleTexas Secretly Gave The Blood of 800 Newborns to DNA Database
Parents across the Lone Star State are in an uproar after the Texas Tribune found that the Department of State Health Services covered up the donation of blood samples from 800 newborn babies to 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 ArticleNASA Tests Handy-Man Space Robots For Orbital Repairs
With cuts in the manned space program and the impending retirement of the Space Shuttle, NASA will soon face the need to repair satellites without the ability to send any astronauts to do it....
View ArticleA 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...
View ArticleWith 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,...
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 ArticleSuper-Small Microphone Detects Motion of Air Particles to Pinpoint Gunfire In...
Between the yelling of sergeants, the rumble of jet engines, and the deafening pop of gunfire, a soldier’s sense of hearing rapidly deteriorates in the heat of battle. Luckily, the Dutch company...
View ArticleConcept 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...
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 ArticleMetal Nano-Particles Suspend Human Cells In Magnetic Scaffolding For Easy...
While scientists have become rather adept at transforming generic skin cells into specialized organ cells, crafting the organs themselves has proven far more difficult. Since the 3-D architecture of...
View ArticleFastest Binary Stars Ever Discovered Orbit Each Other at 310 Miles Per Second
Despite moving at 18 miles per second, it still takes the Earth a year to make it around the Sun. For HM Cancri, an orbit takes a little bit less time: around five minutes. At that speed, HM Cancri is...
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