Congressional UAV Caucus Courts Robot Voters
The US Congress has well over 100 caucuses, or groups of common interests. They’re like the clubs in a high school that play chess or work on the year book, except they usually focus on a constituency...
View ArticleMagnetic Ink Turns Any Paper Into Possible Nanomachine
It seems like everyone is trying to make nanomachines these days, usually through some expensive procedure like carving them out of an exotic material with a laser. In an effort to produce cheaper...
View ArticleUnwanted Side Effect: Cocaine Vaccine Leads Addicts to Take 10 Times More...
Over the last decade, the advances in neuroscience that led doctors to view addiction as a disease, rather than a desire or personal failing, raised the natural question of whether or not addicts...
View ArticleGoogle Earth Images Confirm Mythological Meteor Impact
Australian Aborigine mythology begins in a period known as the “dream time”, before the emergence of humanity. Many stories about the dream time include legends about stars, gods, or rocks falling...
View Article2,400-Foot-Tall Solar Turbines To Power Arizona
Today’s solar power plants work either through photovoltaics or heated steam. If Enviromission gets its way, tomorrow’s plants will combine wind and solar, with acre-sized mirrors and...
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NASA Scientists Classify the Time Before Earth Existed: the Chaotian Era
The geological time scale, with its familiar Cretaceous, Cambrian, and Eocene periods, works great as a calendar for the history of the Earth. Indeed, the different periods only cover the 3.8 billion...
View ArticleDARPA Spends $51 Million On Matrix-Like Cyber War Firing Range
As any soldier will tell you, consistent and realistic drill forms the foundation of any successful military action. But whereas an infantryman can hone his aim at a firing range, America’s Internet...
View ArticleDroplet Of Oil Navigates a Maze As Well As a Lab Rat
Successfully navigating a complex maze is the basic lab test for intelligence. Rats can do it. Cuttlefish can do it. And now, inanimate droplets of oil can do it. By creating a pH gradient, scientists...
View ArticleCocaine Found In Space Shuttle Hangar
Apparently, outer space isn’t high enough for some folks over at NASA. Earlier today, NASA confirmed that a small baggie of cocaine was found in the hangar housing the space shuttle Discovery. A...
View ArticleIsrael Developing Semi-Lethal Sonic Cannon To Control Rioters
A desert people have developed a new weapon that uses sound instead of bullets. But this time, it will be used to control crowds instead of fighting giant worms or devious members of House Harkonnen....
View ArticleFirst Artificial Muscles Used to Control Eyelids
For victims of strokes, serious face injuries, or degenerative muscular diseases, losing the ability to blink threatens to compound their condition with corneal ulcers, or even eventual blindness. To...
View ArticleSiftables, the Amazing Computerized Toy Blocks, Are Coming To a Store Near...
Sifteo, makers of Siftables, the ingenious cookie-sized computer blocks that play together in infinitely interesting ways, has today officially gone from MIT Media Lab research project to actual...
View ArticleWater Purification Chemical Uses Visible, Not UV, Light To Kill Bacteria
The World Health Organization estimates that around one sixth of the world lacks access to clean drinking water. Since those billion people are also the poorest people in the world, water purification...
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Robots Display Predator-Prey Co-Evolution, Evolve Better Homing Techniques
When we last checked in with the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems in the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne, Switzerland, their evolving robots had learned how deceive other robots about the...
View ArticleNew Computer Program Studies Trees on TV to Simulate Their Movement
The same subtle, random movements, bouncing shadows, and immense complexity that make plants fascinating to observe in life also make them hell to animate. Like water and fire, a rustling tree is one...
View ArticleDARPA Gives $32 Million For A Bigger Big Dog From Boston Dynamics
After years of development and several creepy videos, Boston Dynamics’ Big Dog robot is scheduled to get bigger. Working off a $32 million request from DARPA and the Marine Corps, Boston Dynamics has...
View ArticleCarbon Crystals Harder Than Diamond Found In Finnish Meteorite
Diamond may remain the preferred material for wedding rings, Lil’ Wayne’s birthday gifts, and Damien Hirst sculptures, but it looks like girls’ best friend will have to relinquish its title as the...
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Say Hello to Robonaut2, NASA’s Android Space Explorer of the Future
With the news that the White House has canceled the Constellation Program, NASA seems to be moving out of the human space flight business. However, the unveiling of a next-generation robot astronaut...
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 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...
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