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The next time you throw away an aluminium can, picture the can half full of gasoline. That's how much energy goes into making it, and how much energy will have to be spent to produce a new one rather than recycle.
Just in time for Halloween, scientists have developed the blackest material - a material so dark that it absorbs almost all the light that hits its surface.
A team of students in Canada invented a cheap, portable cooling device that doesn't need any electricity.
A preliminary study from Switzerland, published this month in the Annals of Neurology, proved the effectiveness of a new method of non-invasive brain surgery: using a newly-developed operating device that relies on ultrasound, in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allowed neurosurgeons to precisely remove small pieces of brain tissue in nine patients suffering from chronic pain without removing skin or skull bone. Researchers now plan to test it on patients with other disorders, such as Parkinson's. Neal Kassell, neurosurgeon at the University of Virginia, not directly involved in the study.
Cristiano Menezes of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation has discovered farming behaviors in bees, adding them to the list of social insects that practice agriculture.
"Please enter a strong password", is now an ubiquitous greeting whenever we try to register online. Security experts advise we use long passwords at least 12 characters in length, which should include numbers, symbols, capital letters, and lower-case letters. Most websites nowadays force you to enter a password under some or all of these conditions. Moreover, the password shouldn't contain dictionary words and combinations of dictionary words. Common substitution like "h0use" instead of "house" are also not recommended - these naive attempts will fool no automated hacking algorithm. So, what we end up at the end is a very strong password, like the website kindly asked (or forced) us to do. At the same time, it's damn difficult if not impossible to remember. People end up endlessly hitting "recover password" or, far worse, write down their passwords in email or other notes on their computer which can easily be recovered by any novice hacker.
The Yuanmeng (which means “dream”) isn't a work in progress - it's actually flying, taking off for the first time from Xilinhot in Inner Mongolia.
A recent study published Wednesday in the journal Nature shows that there is a strong functional relationship between a region's average recorded temperature and economic productivity -- further warning of the damage climate warming would inflict on our economy.
Bitcoin's blockchain database is shared by all nodes participating in a system - that's more computing power than Google has. This makes the Bitcoin ledger impossible to forge or destroy, since there are millions of other copies distributed across the whole web. Now, this remarkable financial innovation could be used to thwart corruption.
Carbon nanotubes are a class of advanced materials that researchers think will transform electronics someday, but while great effort is expended trying to figure out the best way to make them, it appears that our lungs are already littered with them. American and French researchers collected both biological samples from randomly selected asthma patients and swabs from nearby buildings and busy intersections. Eventually they found carbon nanotubes, leading them to believe that the material is expelled throughout the city. The source? Vehicles, it seems, which act like carbon nanotube factories on wheels. Similar findings were detected in samples from Houston, in spider webs in India and in ice cores, suggesting carbon nanotubes are everywhere where automobiles are on the loose.
A recent U.S. study shows how the upward trend in economic damage from hurricanes correlates very closely to the influence global warming has on the number and intensity of hurricanes. Published in Nature Geoscience, it concludes that the commonly cited reasons for growing hurricane damage -- increases in vulnerability, value, and exposure of property -- don't stand up very well to scrutiny.
What exactly makes you thirsty? Dehydration, obviously, but how does your brain know that your body needs water? And how does that grey, squishy lump resting in your cool and comfortable cranium, know when your body needs to heat up or cool off? Scientists at the McGill University Health Centre Research Institute (RI-MUHC) and Duke University have asked themselves just that, and being scientists, went ahead to find out.
A research effort at Winship Cancer Institute recently identified a substance in orange lichen and rhubarb that has the potential to be used as a new anti-cancer drug. The substance, an orange pigment known as parietin or physcion, slows the growth and can even kill leukemia cells harvested from patients, without obvious toxic effects on human cells, the study authors report.
Used to make almost everything from skyscraper girders, automobiles, and appliances to thumb tacks and paper clips, steel is one of the world's most vital materials. While there's been a great amount of research invested into steel, most of it has concentrated on making various grades of steel, with little focus on the surface itself. Understanding that there's a great interest and need for steel surfaces that can stay clean and don't corrode under harsh biological conditions, a group of material scientists at Harvard have come up with a squeaky clean coating that does just that.
Researchers have discovered a new species of banana christened "nanensis", belonging to the Musa genus, sharing a place in the family Musaceae with more than 70 other species of bananas and plantains. It's scientific name honors the province of Nan where the type specimens were collected.
The world's oceans are sadly full of pollution, but now, you can help make a difference - while also looking dashing at the beach. A team of US researchers developed a very 3D printed chic bikini that helps clean up pollution from the water, while posing no risk to yourself.
Prosthetics has come a long way from its humble beginnings – the crude wooden legs of yore are a far cry from the technological marvels we can create to replace our limbs today. However, there is one thing that, with all our know-how, we haven’t yet been able to incorporate in them: a sense of touch. A research team from Stanford University aims to fix this shortcoming, and has developed technology that can “feel” when force is exerted upon it, then transmit the sensory data to brain cells – in essence, they’ve created an artificial skin.
Recent fossils unearthed in the Chinese province of Daoxian come to unravel the story of humanity’s spread as we know it today. The find consists of 47 teeth, belonging to modern humans, but what’s really important is their age – they have been dated to 80,000 years ago. This number doesn’t fit with the “Out of Africa” migration theory, holding that humans originate and have spread from the horn of the continent all around the world. The theory as we know it can’t explain human presence in the area for another 20,000 years.
Solar energy could be turned up a notch not by some exotic material or chip, but surprisingly by viruses. A team at MIT published a paper demonstrating how a genetically modified virus was used in a quantum system to transfer energy at double the speed and over a greater distance than even the best solar cells.
The greenest cars of the year... but why are there no Teslas?
Sometimes, it’s not just about the functionality of a prosthetic, but the hope and morale it brings. With this in mind, Open Bionics, a startup working to provide affordable, 3D printed prosthetic hands for amputees has revealed prosthetic arms for kids inspired from Iron Man, Frozen or Star Wars. Based in Bristol, UK, Open Bionics first began […]
Thor’s hammer was so magically heavy that only the worthy could lift it – and only Thor was worthy enough (or maybe … I don’t know, I haven’t watched the new Marvel movies). Electrical engineer Allen Pan, aka Sufficiently Advanced on YouTube,decided to replicate in his very own take on a “working” Mjolnir. The best way […]
Meet Napz - a biohacking device that improves your sleep quality and can even simulate lucid dreams.
A couple of days back we wrote that Tesla's new model S will be featuring an autopilot mode. The first reactions are amazing.
Combining machine learning and data analytics, Siri - the personal assistant for millions of Apple users - is a very powerful tool. Simply by voicing commands, Siri listens and obeys, whether you want to know how many calories are in your soda can or how many planes are flying above your head this very instant. But what if someone commanded Siri without your permission? A group of ethical French hackers recently showed it's possible to hijack Siri from up to 16 feet away using hardware that can fit in a backpack and satisfy any whim.
It's easy to assume that with economic gain comes happiness -- we live in capitalism, after all. But science comes to prove us all wrong yet again, and shows that the link between economics and happiness is much more complicated that we thought. Money can't buy happiness, it seems.
Chinese researchers discovered a chemical compound that works just as well as morphine -- without any of the negative side effects. The substance is derived from the venom of a centipede native to China. The discovery has huge medical applications, and could potentially reduce the country's military reliance on morphine for battlefield use.
A while ago, aerospace giant applied a patent for a most peculiar propulsion system that uses high power lasers to kick off a fusion reaction, akin to a small thermonuclear explosion. The energy released would be enough power spacecraft, rockets and even jetliners with tremendous thrust.
How do you understand the natural history of rocks and water on another planet when all you have are pictures? You do the math. Scientists have discovered how to use images of pebble shapes to estimate to estimate how far water may have moved them in ancient Martian riverbeds. These estimates enhance geographic information about […]
Bad news for us -- and fish.
Researchers stumbled upon a new tool to fight cancer in a rather unexpected place; while searching for a vaccine against malaria in pregnant women, a team of Danish scientists found that, simply put, armed malaria proteins are remarkably good at killing cancer cells. They hope to have a working prototype ready for human trials within four years' time. Their discovery has been published in the scientific journal Cancer Cell.
Earlier this week Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to twitter announcing a new software update for the Model S will come bundled with an autopilot feature for highway cruising. Previously, Tesla worked with a couple hundred early adopters, but come October 15th, everyone will be able to enjoy the spoils. The v7.0 autopilot features include auto-steering, lane change activated by the turn signal and auto-parking in parallel spaces.
The battlefield is shifting from trench soldiers to cyberspace and unmanned machines. As always, when a new technology of war is developed, a counter that levels the game isn't far behind. Business Insider reports three companies in the UK are working on a device that freezes drones in mid-air by flooding them with radio signals across all frequencies, similarly to how cell phone blockers work, or how Cooper in Interstellar captured a drone in his corn fields.
The rest of the 1% is made up of hallow tubes of nickel. So, this makes for a very rigid, but extremely lightweight material. Just look at the picture below of the lightest material in the world, called microlattice, balancing on a dandelion. You know the potential is huge.
The Sulaymaniyah Museum in Iraq uncovered 20 new lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the nearly 3000 years old Mesopotamian poem, considered to be one of the world's first great works of literature. They belong to a passage in which Gilgamesh enters a cedar forest and slays a demigod named Humbaba, with the setting and the demigod himself described differently and in more detail, writes Ted Mills for Open Culture.
With the variety of games available today varying from those designed to enhance mental fitness, solve real world problems all the way to ones meant for pure entertainment, they have diverse and profound effects on our brains. A new article published in the October 1st issue of Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences argues that the specific content, dynamics, and mechanics of individual games determine their effects on the brain and that the long-criticized action video games might have particularly positive benefits.
A newly founded artificial intelligence lab, called Vicarious, wants to build the world's first, unified artificial intelligence that can match human intelligence. This is not the first time we've heard companies or universities trumpet such ambitious goals, but considering who's backing the project I can only entertain the possibility Vicarious might just do it. Entrepreneurs with great vision and a track record of backing successful companies have all hopped aboard, like Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Peter Thiel (Paypal, founder of venture capital and hedge funds worth billions), Jerry Yang (Yahoo! founder), Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder) and more.
With Virtual Reality headsets coming out right around the corner, how can the gap with experience become more immersive? A couple of technologies on the horizon and currently under development may be the key.
Quantum computing is one of the future's transitional technologies destined to transform human society, along with advanced materials like graphene and metallic glass or advances in space propulsion. Imagine what the transition from vacuum tubes to transistors did for computing, scale that a couple of folds and you might somewhat be close to what quantum computers are capable of. Operations that today's supercomputers require days even weeks to crunch, would be completed immediately by leveraging the quantum weirdness that happens below the nano scale. All of this is theoretically possible - but in practice building a working quantum computer that doesn't disintegrate information has proven to be an immense challenge. We're still far from there, but advances reported by Australian researchers hint that quantum computers aren't a pipe dream.
The brain forms new thoughts using two adjacent brain regions that are the cornerstone of the process.
Despite decades worth of research, unbelievable computing power and sophisticated algorithms, one of today's best artificial intelligence can't score better than a four year old on a standard IQ test.
For most people listening to music or playing an instrument is a great way to relax, unwind, have fun, and express themselves. But not everybody is able to perceive, appreciate or memorize music, to sing or to dance. Monica is one such person, and to her, any kind of music is just a bunch of noise that makes her head ache and feel stressed.
Material scientists at Oxford University, collaborating with experts from Karlsruhe, Munster and Exeter, have developed the world's first light-based memory banks that can store data permanently. The device is build from simple materials, in use in CDs and DVDs today, and promises to dramatically improve the speed of modern computing.
Two drugs, currently prescribed to organ transplant patients to suppress their immune system after the procedure, show great promise as birth-control medicine for men, according to a study published in the journal Science.
While everyone from Google, to Tesla, to BMW is engineering driverless cars, gearing up for an impeding auto revolution, a Chinese company went directly for a niche market: driverless buses.
After the recent Volkswagen fiasco which revealed that their cars emit much more than they should (and claimed), a new study revealed that diesel cars made by Renault, Nissan, Hyundai, Citroen, Fiat, Volvo and many others also emit more.
When there's rain, let alone a storm, city streets form puddles and in some extreme cases get flooded. That's because concrete mostly keeps water out, and only a tiny volume gets absorbed. A company from the UK, however, has come up with such an innovative solution that it almost seems like magic were it not pure science at work. Namely, they came up with a new kind of concrete that allows more water to percolate through its gaps, so much that 1,056 gallons were gobbled up in under 60 seconds during a test. It all seems unreal - but it's as concrete as it gets.
The word on every tech executive's mouth today is data. Curse or blessing, there's so much data lying around - with about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data added each day - that it's become increasingly difficult to make sense of it in a meaningful way. There's a solution to the big data problem, though: machine learning algorithms that get fed countless variables and spot patterns otherwise oblivious to humans. Researchers have already made use of machine learning to solve challenges in medicine, cosmology and, most recently, crime. Tech giant Hitachi, for instance, developed a machine learning interface reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's Minority Report which can predict when, where and possibly who might commit a crime before it happens.
In front of hundreds of guests, Tesla's CEO, the ever resourceful Elon Musk, unveiled the company's new model: the Model X crossover. It's been a long heralded and waited vehicle, and it sure didn't disappoint. This beauty, all dressed in white, looks more like a bird than a car with its upward-opening "falcon doors". It also flies like one, reaching 0 to 60mph in 3.2 seconds making it the world's quickest SUV. Wait 'till the kids see it.
Despite manufacturers have tirelessly designed new types of razor blades for a cleaner shave, the process has stayed virtually unchanged for thousands of years. The difference between a modern razor blade and an ancient roman shaving knife isn't that large, on a fundamental level at least. This may set to change if the Skarp Laser Razor makes its way into the shaving kit market. The gadget is basically a high-tech razor - named so only by function - that uses a highly focused laser beam instead of a blade.
