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,...
View ArticleSenate 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 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 ArticleAre Our Asteroid-Destroying Nukes Big Enough?
Pop quiz. An asteroid the size of Manhattan is hurtling towards Earth, its impact is sure to result in mass extinction and the destruction of humanity as we know it. What do you do? The traditional...
View ArticleFCC Broadband Plan Promises High-Speed Internet For 100 Million More...
Today the Federal Communications Commission unveiled its plan to expand broadband Internet access to 100 million more Americans within the next five years. The plan calls both for the expansion of...
View ArticleBad News for Terraformers: Periodic Bursts Of Solar Radiation Destroy The...
Unfortunately for anyone looking to terraform Mars, a new study shows that powerful waves of solar wind periodically strip the Red Planet of its atmosphere. Scientists had known for years that Mars...
View ArticleNanoribbons Moved by Light: Could Propel Cell-Sized Submarines, Create...
The ability of matter to move light underpins such common phenomena as transparency, refraction, and reflection. But light moving matter? That’s a bit rarer. So rare, in fact, that University of...
View ArticleIn First Successful Human Trial, Nanotech Robots Deploy Cancer-Fighting RNA
RNAi, also known as “gene silencing,” is a cellular mechanism that blocks the production of proteins, and has tantalized doctors as a potential medicine for a number of years now. However, by placing...
View ArticleUS District Court Says No To Patenting Human Genes
In a move that could significantly alter the future of genetic medicine and the industry around it, a US District Court judge invalidated seven patents for human genes linked to breast and ovarian...
View ArticleTo TiVo or Not to TiVo
This year’s fall TV lineup couldn’t be geekier. With two new network shows breaking out the beakers and several returning shows ratcheting up the scientific tension, it seems lab coats have taken over...
View ArticleUS Troops In Afghanistan to Get Sensors That See Through Walls
As if aerial robots and bionic limbs didn’t make the Army seem futuristic enough, it looks like another hallmark of sci-fi, X-ray vision, will ship off to Afghanistan later this year. The device in...
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 ArticleRoger Ebert to Debut His Miraculous New Voice Synthesizer Today
In 2006, famed film critic Roger Ebert lost the ability to speak after larynx surgery. Today, thanks to computer voice specialists CereProc, he gets it back. The new voice, which he will debut in an...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleTED Talk: Mark Roth Says Suspended Animation Could Soon Be a Reality
It used to be that suspended animation was only for people heading to Planet LV-426, and former Red Sox players. But Mark Roth, a researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle,...
View ArticleNew Evidence that Mysterious Dark Force From Outside Tugs at Our Universe
First came dark matter, the gravitational source from within our galaxy that astronomers couldn’t see. Then came dark energy, the undetectable force pushing the expansion of the universe. Now, NASA...
View ArticlePARC Develops iPod-Sized HIV-Detection Device to Bring Affordable Testing To...
The monetary and energy expense of HIV testing machines prevent their deployment to remote or impoverished areas; the very places that need them the most. To rectify that inequity, Palo Alto Research...
View ArticleNew LOFAR Telescope Network Probes Universe’s Low-Frequency Radiation to Look...
Until recently, radio astronomers have concentrated almost exclusively on the high-energy radiation streaming in towards Earth from exotic stellar bodies like pulsars, quasars, and super-massive black...
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 ArticleUS Troops In Afghanistan to Get Sensors That See Through Walls
As if aerial robots and bionic limbs didn’t make the Army seem futuristic enough, it looks like another hallmark of sci-fi, X-ray vision, will ship off to Afghanistan later this year. The device in...
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