MIT Student Invention Deployed in Haiti to Save Lives
While many MIT students busily build break-dancing robots or websites that let your pets network better at doggie daycare, PhD candidate Danielle Zurovcik has designed a $3 pump to drastically speed...
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Happy 50th Birthday to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence!
Fifty years ago today, on April 8th, 1960, a Cornell astronomy professor named Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at the star Tau Ceti in the hope of hearing broadcasts from extraterrestrial...
View ArticleInkjet Cell Fabricator Prints Healing Flesh Directly Onto Wounds
As if fabricating a new heart from scratch wasn’t impressive enough, the doctors at the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine have come up with another astounding breakthrough. This time,...
View ArticleTogolese 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,...
View ArticleScots Use Cyberhawk Drones for Aerial Rugby Surveillance
While the English use their UAVs to covertly spy on their own citizens, the Scots have leveraged the technology for a much greater social good: helping them beat the snot out of those southern wankers...
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 ArticleIBM 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...
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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 ArticleVideo: Half-Kilometer-Long Explosive Whip Clears IEDs The Explode-y Way
Clearing battlefield obstacles has pitted trapper against sapper since Roman times. But whereas the minefields and dragon teeth of previous conflicts merely slowed advancing armies, the IEDs favored...
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 ArticleAntarctic Collision Snaps Rhode-Island-Sized Iceberg Off Glacier
This month, an iceberg roughly the size of Luxembourg slammed into an Antarctic glacier known as the Mertz Ice Tongue. Then, last week, a Rhode Island-sized section of the Mertz Ice Tongue finally...
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MIT Stumbles on a Way to Print Flexible Coatings Made of Micromachines
Microelectromechanical devices (MEMS) have the potential to enable a wide range of nanomachines. Unfortunately, MEMS suffer from the critical drawbacks of an expensive manufacturing process, a high...
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 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 ArticleAs China and US Plan to Exploit “Burning Ice” for Fuel, the Ice Race Is On
When methane and freezing cold water fuse under tremendous pressure, they create a substance as paradoxical as it coveted: burning ice. Earlier in the year, a report from the National Research Council...
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 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 ArticleDrug 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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