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If you’ve ever been to London, you might have noticed the city is packed with CCTV cameras even in the least crowded street crossings. Besides 24/7 monitoring, these cameras feed images to a highly complex system that automagically runs face recognition, checks the mugs of pedestrians and runs a check if there’s anything on file […]
At the turn of the 1990s, scholarly publishers were increasingly concerned about what had become known as the serials crisis. Journal subscriptions were rising at an average of 10% per year, which in turn meant each year libraries were struggling harder to keep up and in, consequence, many would cancel. To counter, publishers would further increase […]
The Simpsons Movie’s plot starts off with Homer adopting a messy piglet he names “Spider Pig”. The pig, helped a great deal by Homer, made enough waste to fill a silo in just two days, so how does Homer decide to solve this problem? Naturally, being Homer (doh!), he throws away the silo into the […]
Sverker Johansson could encompass the definition of prolific. The 53-year-old Swede has edited so far 2.7 million articles on Wikipedia, or 8.5% of the entire collection. But there’s a catch – he did this with the help of a bot he wrote. Wait, you thought all Wikipedia articles are written by humans? A good day’s work […]
Expect the price of sand to skyrocket! Researchers at University of California, Riverside have devised a coin-sized battery that uses silicone at its anode (negative side), instead of the over-used graphite, that lasts up to three times longer than conventional lithium-ion batteries. The key of the research is the silicon extraction method which uses quartz-rich […]
A few months ago I went hiking with some of my friends in an absolutely stunning mountain setting. We climbed a country road for half an hour or so on foot, then reached a chalet right in the middle of a pine tree clearing and had a few beers with the keeper there, who was […]
You might have thought black is too solemn or boring, but you may just change your mind. Through careful material science manipulation, involving thousands of tightly packed carbon nanotubes, British company Surrey NanoSystems made a super black coating that absorbs almost 99.96% of visual light – a world record. Practically only a tiny fraction of the visual […]
Since the 1990s, biologists have witnessed a sudden demise of amphibian species. So far, hundreds of species have become extinct after becoming plagued by a wretched fungus. From mountain lakes to meadow puddles, no matter the continent, frogs are dying everywhere – a demise that might spell an ecological meltdown. There may still be hope yet, according […]
If you’ve ever watched chimps during a nature program and became startled by your own empathy towards them, you’re not alone. It’s no secret that chimps are our closest relatives out of all primates, having 98% similar DNA. It goes further than genetics – it’s enough to look a chimp in the eye. The reflection is more […]
Advancements in genetic sequencing has allowed genomic research to flourish. DNA sequencing is now much faster, cheaper and accurate than ever before, and we’re only now beginning to reap the rewards. It’s the first step to a complete understanding of our bodies. The Human Genome Project, once finally completed, mapped and identified all the genes of […]
Materials found in nature often speak of at least one comprise. Metals for instance are highly conductive, but not transparent. Plastics on the other hand can be made to be transparent, but they’re very poor electrical conductors. This annoying tradeoff has aggravated scientists for some time in their efforts to design better solar cells or […]
Professor Terry Dawson of the University of New South Wales and colleagues found that kangaroos use their tail as an extra leg when walking, actively participating with energy in the process, instead of using it like a strut as some literature would had us believe. The findings might prove to be important for robotics applications. Hoppity hop […]
A new species of ground beetle perfectly adapted to extreme environments has been discovered in the world’s deepest cave system, the Krubera-Voronja, in Russia. The insect is about a quarter of an inch long and blind. In fact, given there isn’t light whatsoever reaching it, the bug has evolved extended antennae and a body that has […]
Rashid Bashir, the head of bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is one of the pioneers leading a new field of robotics which deals with bio-bots. These tiny robots, less than a centimeter in size, combine biological and mechanical components to meet a certain purpose. Recently, Bashir and his team demonstrated a bio-bot […]
Guns today are looking more and more like they’re from a video game or something. Take TrackingPoint’s latest Precision-Guided Firearm (PGF) – a sniper rifle that allows the user to tag targets so that the gun will come off only when the tag is in scope. Actually, considering the rifle doesn’t actually have an optical scope, […]
The PowerCube looks like any other shipping container, but after it unfolds its ‘wings’ you start realizing there’s more than meets the eye. Designing for humanitarian relief efforts, the PowerCube is meant to deliver electrical power, purify water and offer WiFi signal to disaster inflicted areas all through harnessing solar power. While the idea is […]
Germany has reached a new renewable energy milestone recently after the country announced that on a given day an impressive 50.6% of its energy demand was covered by solar energy alone. Breaching this important psychological barrier means a lot of for renewable energy efforts in Germany, and worldwide as well serving as an example. According to […]
Since its advent some 100 years ago, crystallography has become one of the most important processes in chemical research and development. It involves bombarding a material with X-rays to produce a diffraction pattern as they reflect off the sample. The pattern can be used then to directly determine the atomic structure of the crystal. Using […]
In the past years, several types of invisibility cloaks have been developed, hiding objects not only from light, but also from sound and even heat. But this is the first time an invisibility cloak for touch has been developed. Recently, we’ve written quite a lot about invisibility cloaks – how they work, how they can be […]
Chinese doctors have grafted a man’s hand onto his food in order to preserve it until they could transplant it back to its rightful place. If a body part becomes severed from the body, there is only a limited period of time before it can be reattached – usually just 2-3 hours. Adding some ice […]
The new NASA-funded study showed that if the icy surface of Pluto’s giant moon Charon is cracked, analyzing the fractures could show if the interior was warm and perhaps warm enough to have maintained a subterranean ocean of liquid water. Pluto is the most distant planetoid (no longer a planet, sorry) in the solar system. […]
Today, Elon Must, the founder and owner of Tesla Motors announced that they were releasing all the patents they own, for free, for everyone to use. The release of over 200 patents was announced in style, through a blog entry called “All our patents are belong to you“. ” Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla […]
A brilliant technology reaching its limits Carrying heavier spacecraft to Mars and then safely landing it at supersonic speeds in the Martian atmosphere is no easy feat – and NASA could use any bit of help they can get. NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility is playing an integral role in solving those problems with the Low Density Supersonic […]
Superhydrophobic surfaces are surfaces that not only don’t get wet, but they actually repel water. This is the so-called lotus effect, named after the superhydrophobic leaves of the lotus plant (as usually, nature’s been doing long before we have). We’ve written time and time again about the amazing achievements in the field of superhydrophobics – and […]
When people think of teleportation, inevitably a Star Trek reference like “beam me up, Scotty’ comes to mind. You’ve got to admit though, it’s a really cool idea – how many times did you think about instantly traveling to some place distant? I used to wish for teleportation every single day of my life when […]
What would you need to survive on the Moon? Air, water, some food, and if you ask the average American – wi-fi. We still have to wait for the air, water and food, but according to researchers from NASA and MIT, wi-fi on the Moon is quite feasible. They’ve even made a demonstration, downloading information from […]
The current world land speed record stands at 763.035 mph, as set in October 1997 by British Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green driving the jet-powered Thrust SSC. Green is looking to break his own record and has a new team and a new car behind him, however, called Bloodhound SSC. Green wants to top […]
If it weren’t for man’s innate drive for exploration and curiosity, humanity might have never made it farther than its African cradle. There’s a reason why humans are the dominant race on Earth and why there are only a few pristine places left, unscathed by man’s touch. Some have liken this expansion with the familiar […]
The world has been toying with the idea of driverless cars for years now, but California is really taking it to the next level – they will probably make self-driving cars legel by 2015. If you’ve seen the movies with Google’s ‘chandelier’ topped autonomous cars driving down the street, you may have assumed the technology is […]
Researchers at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales found a connection between excessive sharing of information on facebook and feeling lonely and/or depressed. This is the latest in a slew of studies that suggest the social network can cause serious emotional damage to some people. The researchers found that 79 percent of users who describe themselves […]
Five hundred million tweets are tweeted each day – with so many details about the location, interests and behaviors of users, the tweets are a trove of useful information for scientists who might be, for example, looking to find patterns in human behaviors, checking out risk factors for health conditions and track the spread of infectious […]
Ants are one of the most fascinating and extraordinary organisms on Earth. The ant society is extremely stable, compact and adaptable, but while ants can only survive as a colony, taken individually each ant is extremely remarkable by itself, too. Body size considered, ants are among the strongest beings in the world, capable of lifting […]
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign report they’ve devised a new type of highly efficient solar cell that is potentially easier to manufacture and cheaper than cells of similar performance. The stacked cell allows photon energy to be garnered from across the whole solar spectrum, and this new design makes use of a […]
Inspired by the healing properties of the human liver, researchers at University of California, San Diego created a 3D-printed biodevice which mimics the liver and removes dangerous toxins from the blood. Used outside the body, like a dialysis machine, the device employs nanoparticles to trap pore-forming toxins that can damage cellular membranes. These toxins often result from […]
When you think about Silly Putty toys, the last thing that comes to mind is high-tech. A group of researchers, however, used a novel trick to incorporate an ingredient in Silly Putty to improve lithium-ion battery life between charges by three times the industry standard. For what’s it worth, Silly Putty is actually one of the […]
It’s official – graphene is the wonder material of the millennium. A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P) in Mainz and the National Univ. of Singapore found that thermal conductivity of graphene diverges with the size of the samples. What’s the big deal? Well, the findings show that the thermal […]
I’ve seen a lot of strange Chinese ideas, but this one is definitely something else – the Chinese government is bent on building an 8,000+ mile railroad (sounds plausible) connecting China, Russia, Canada, and the U.S. that includes a 125 mile undersea tunnel spanning the Bering Strait. A report in China’s state-run Beijing Times claims the nation […]
“Juanita Knits the Planet” is a short comic strip that tells the story of Juanita, a very creative little girl. In fact, she’s only 10 microns tall, small enough for the entire comic strip to fit on a strand of human hair, making it the smallest comic in the world. The strip was printed for the […]
Some 65 million years ago an asteroid impact caused countless species of land, marine and plant life to become extinct, including the mighty dinosaur which dominated the planet for millions of years. Not all species of the dinosaur group vanished, however. You’ve guess right: birds! Now, a new study sheds light on why birds were […]
Self driving cars are hitting the road in Sweden! Volvo Car Group’s “Drive Me” project involving 100 cars is now being tested in the streets in the Swedish city of Gothenburg. Apparently, everything is going out just fine: “The test cars are now able to handle lane following, speed adaption, and merging traffic all by themselves,” says Erik Coelingh, […]
3D printing is the hot jazz nowadays, with applications varying from cranium and skin replacements to houses to nanoscale objects. Now, Grace Choi, a self proclaimed inventor has developed a way to 3D print makeup at home, in every color you want, as eye shadow, blush, lip gloss or whatever you need – reducing both waste […]
Modern climate tracking and water flow records go back only 100 years, but to prepare for the worse, scientists and policy makers alike need to understand how the weather was like in the world many more years prior. A solution is to study the tree rings of certain tree species which bear telltale signs of water […]
With all the different types of computers in modern times, special-purpose computers are becoming more and more advanced; nowadays, you can almost define the civilized world as people with computers. Most people are familiar with desktop, laptop and mobile computers – more commonly known as smartphones and tablets. Tech industry professionals, military personnel and employees […]
A mouse might not look like the smartest animal, but however modest its cortex may seem it’s still 9,000 times faster than a personal computer simulation of its functions. Not only that, but it takes 40,000 times more power to run – energy efficiency being, in fact, the true benchmark that needs to be considered when […]
Hugh Herr, head of the Lab’s Biomechatronics research group, spoke at TED 2014 on March 19 about his group’s work in creating bionic prosthetic limbs, and their goal to eliminate human disability through technology. For Herr, his work and involvement is deeply personal, having lost both his lower limbs in a climbing accident 30 years […]
The animal kingdom is full of cons – shapeshifter who have learned that to survive, they need look different or mask their appearance altogether. Everyone’s heard of the chameleon, a distinct species of lizard with the ability to change colours and easily blend to his environment. He’s not alone, though, and frankly he’s not even […]
Water is liquid, air is gaseous, but glass? For years at end, glass has perplexed scholars intending on fixing it under a state of matter. Neither liquid, nor solid, explaining glass is a lot harder than some might think. Researchers at Duke University have contributed to solving the puzzle after they performed numerical solutions and […]
Say what you will, but the Chinese are clearly the fastest builders in the world, though sometimes quick haste makes to waste. A while ago, I wrote about how a Chinese company wants to build the tallest skyscraper in the world in just 90 days. Really crazy stuff, but now another Chinese company, with many […]
A team led by Jonathan Coleman at Trinity College Dublin reports they’ve patented a technique that can easily produce large quantities of quality graphene. The method is so simple that the researchers have even been able to scale it down for use in a kitchen blender. The exact ‘recipe’ has yet to be disclosed, but nevertheless […]
As the night covers the tropics, odd clicky sounds run about much to the annoyance of sailors stationed in harbors. These sounds are made by the punching mantis shrimp, a very small crustacean which doesn’t seem that much threatening but who definitely lives up to its name. Its claws are so powerful that it can […]
