Sighted: A Secret US Aircraft in Afghanistan
Since April, a steady string of reports have detailed sightings of a mysterious, unidentified UAV prowling the skies above Kandahar. Grainy, Loch-Ness-Monster-like photos revealed a flying-wing-type...
View ArticleOptical Sensors in Robots’ Skin Give Them A Softer Touch
Whether they are assisting the elderly, or simply popping human skulls like ripe fruit, robots aren’t usually known for their light touch. And while this may be fine as long as they stay relegated to...
View ArticleFind Your Twitter Friends In Real Life With an Augmented Reality iPhone App
Like most Internet applications, Twitter connects you with people who seem to exist in a vast, abstract, cyberspace. Now, a new iPhone app from the French company Presselite uses augmented reality to...
View ArticleElectromagnetic Pulse Cuts Through Steel In 200 Milliseconds
Cutting through solid steel with flaming bacon certainly has its appeal, but for large-scale industrial processes, the Fraunhofer institute thinks [electromagnetic pulses]( The post Electromagnetic...
View ArticleNew Artificial Larynx Does Away With Dreaded ‘Robot Voice’
For decades, people with vocal cord problems could only hope to communicate in the cold, robotic voice provided by a mechanical larynx. The search for a more lifelike, and individualized, voice has...
View ArticleGlowing Prairie Rodents Teach Us the Genetics Of Monogamy
Man, those scientists just love their glowing lab subjects. First came mice, and then recently the first primates got some jellyfish genes implanted into their DNA. Now, scientists at Emory University...
View ArticleChinese Woman Surgically Switches Fingerprints To Evade Japanese Immigration...
When attempting to evade biometric sensors, most go with the Tyler Durden or the John Doe from Se7en route, and simply cut or burn off their fingerprints. Unfortunately, that’s a little obvious. So,...
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Has Dark Matter Finally Been Detected On Earth?
For the past six years, the CDMS, the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector, sat deep beneath the Minnesotan countryside, watching super-cooled Germanium crystals for evidence of material...
View ArticleFirst Internet-Enabled Undersea Observatory Now Operational
More people have been to the Moon than to the deepest parts of the ocean, and scientists have more detailed maps of the surface of Mars than they do of much of the ocean floor. That glaring lack of...
View ArticleGerman Zoo’s Bears Struck With Mystery Baldness
Countless hours wasted watching Locked Up have taught me that prison changes a man. And based on developments in a zoo in Leipzig, Germany, it seems like captivity changes a bear as well. For almost...
View ArticlePaper-Thin Batteries To Juice Self-Powered OLEDs
Organig LEDs hold large promise for efficient, thin and flexible lighting elements (as well as razor-thin TVs), but low-tech power sources continue to constrain more creative uses of the lights. After...
View ArticleDarpa’s Cyborg Insect Spies, Now Nuclear-Powered
When you write for Popular Science, it’s easy to become desensitized to wild and crazy future tech. To wit: When I first heard that Darpa wanted to develop cyborg insects to carry surveillance...
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Robovie-II, the Robot That Helps You Buy Groceries
The ease and variety of online shopping enabled by the first dot-com explosion cast technology as the killer of in-store retail. But in Japan, with its aging population and unique consumer culture,...
View ArticleDetails Of Brain-Implanted Speech Synthesizer For Locked-In Syndrome Revealed...
Five years after a 1999 car crash left Eric Ramsey a victim of locked-in syndrome–essentially a conscious mind trapped inside a completely unresponsive body, unable even to blink–he soon found himself...
View ArticleArtificial Red Blood Cells To Aid Drug Delivery, Imaging
Blood cells are great for transporting materials through the body as the entire circulatory system evolved to facilitate their movement. For 50 years, scientists have tried to take advantage of that...
View ArticleInsurgents Hack Predator Video Feed With $26 Software
The use of drone aircraft for surveillance and bombing has transformed how the US wages war — a fact not lost on our cunning adversaries. Rather than just sit around, waiting for the next Predator...
View ArticleFirst Nanotube Circuit Created, Paves Way For Better Chips
A computer chip using nanotube circuitry can run much faster than a regular silicon chip, for a fraction of the cost, but no one has been able to effectively string together two nanotube transistors,...
View ArticleFirst Commercial 3-D Bioprinter Fabricates Organs To Order
The problem with organ transplants is that the organ has to come from someone else. Since most people rather fancy their hearts and lungs, getting any organ other than a kidney usually requires the...
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Video: Simulation Renders Entire Known Universe
Everyone loves a good road movie, whether it’s Hope and Crosby or Fonda and Hopper. But the scope of those films pales in comparison to the ground covered by the Hayden Planetarium’s new video, The...
View ArticleSophisticated New Computer Models Predict Details of Insurgent Attacks
Chaos, confusion, and uncertainty have pervaded battle since Homer first described the din of clashing hoplites. But new developments in computer modeling look to pierce the fog of modern war by...
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