Bad 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 ArticleVideo: F-35 Performs Its First Fully Vertical Landing
After cost overruns, a series of delays, and almost a decade of hype, the F-35 Lighting finally performed a vertical landing for the first time. Yesterday at 1 P.M., after descending from a...
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 ArticleNintendo’s 3DS Will Take the DS Experience into Three Dimensions, Somehow
With Avatar, the highest-grossing movie of all time, and the World Cup, the most-watched TV broadcast, both in 3-D, it was only a matter of time until Nintendo, the most popular video game maker in...
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 ArticleNational Institute of Standards and Technology Tests Spray-On Transistors,...
In a discovery sure to help the development of solar panel and display technology, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have engineered transistors that they can...
View ArticleFinland Launching National Pilot Program To Open and Scan All Snail Mail
In an effort to increase efficiency, cut carbon emissions, and reduce costs, Finland has begun a pilot program wherein snail-mail letters are converted into PDFs and made viewable online by their...
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...
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To 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 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 ArticleIon Engines Will Make Little CubeSats Steerable
The DIY miniature satellites known as CubeSats have a lot going for them. They’re cheap, they’re easy to program, and they’re small. That last benefit also adds a downside, in that the CubeSats are...
View ArticleThis Week, Cybersecurity Efforts Advance on Several Fronts
For cybersecurity wonks who see Chinese agents or al Qaeda hackers lurking behind every email from a Nigerian prince, this was one hell of a busy week. With fallout continuing from the recent attack...
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...
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Video: Easy Russian DIY Car-to-Tank Conversion Kit
As the Northeast and South brace for yet another day of record snow fall, thousands of Americans are struggling with ways to deal with treacherous road conditions. Thankfully, some intrepid Russian...
View ArticleRHIC Collider Creates Quark-Gluon Plasma at 4,000,000,000,000 Degrees Celsius
Until the LHC finally gets up to full speed, Brookhaven National Lab’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) remains the world’s most powerful heavy ion smasher. And on Monday, they showed off some...
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...
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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...
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 ArticleNoses Beat Eyes as a Biometric Identification Marker
While retina scans still give a James Bond feel to security, and finger prints have a bit of retro charm, the cutting edge of biometric identification has moved to a new body part: the nose. According...
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