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After months of delays and years of underfunding, the US Congress finally revealed its plans for funding the federal government in 2016.
This beauty was designed, crafted and assembled by Matt Olczyk. The custom-made clock looks like a cross between old pendulum antiques and modern, minimalist designs. All the parts were custom made in Olczyk's shop using CNC milling, laser cutting and 3D-printing. The real innovation, however, lied in the fat that all of these operations were performed by one single machine - the ZMorph Hybrid 3D printer.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a United States agency responsible for developing new technologies, mostly with military applications. They work with advanced prosthetics, holograms, robots, drones, and more robots. They’re at the cutting edge of technology, and I’d bet quite a few pints that they have groundbreaking classified projects. Now, in a new […]
MIT researchers made a huge upgrade to an instrument that's indispensable in research today: the atomic force microscope (AFM).
A company called Windspeed Tech has for the past year or so been busy designing a novel upgrade to carriers and jets: a little bubble placed on the tail of an aircraft that offers a fantastic 360 degree view.
. According to Designer Carbon Materials - the only company in the world that manufactures this exotic material - it sold 200 micrograms of pure endohedral fullerenes for $33,400.
A promising power generation system uses the energy you expend walking or running to power mobile devices.
If you're an alien buff or just really, really bored with knowing just one species that can hold a decent conversation, this might come as a bummer. SETI has confirmed that KIC 8462852, the 1,500 light-years away star that's been all over the news as potentially having signs of an advanced alien megastructure built around it is just a regular, run of the mill, alien-free ball of atomic fire.
Scientists from the University of Ferrara, Italy collaborating with the Beijing Genomics Institute have isolated a gene that, when mutated, causes muscle tissue to become significantly weakened and damaged. Their findings, published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, show how the gene, dubbed Popeye domain containing-1, has a role in ‘gluing’ muscles cells together.
Scientists finally crack down a puzzle that has eluded the community for years. It seems sea level rise does indeed slow down Earth's spin.
Developing countries need an astonishing amount of cash to respect the commitments made at COP21, Paris. This money needs to come from developed nations.
Obesity rates have increased virtually everywhere in the world, especially in the developed world. Some 160 million Americans are obese or overweight. Over 70 percent of all men and 60 percent of all women from the US are overweight, and it seems like the next generation will have similar problems: nearly 30% of boys and girls under age 20 are either obese or overweight, up from 19% in 1980. When talking strictly about obesity, one-third of American men (32%) and women (34%) were obese in 2013 compared with about 4% of Chinese and Indian adults. Being obese puts you at risk of developing a myriad of conditions from heart disease and stroke, to diabetes, to some cancers, to osteoarthritis. Yet, for all the hazards that being overweight causes most people would rather lose weight to appear more attractive, than be more healthy. The two are interlinked, as we shall see. But that's better than not having any reason at all to lose weight, and now a new study quantified just how much weight men and women need to lose for this to show and make them look more attractive. Some might find the findings useful.
Citizens were against installing a solar farm because it would suck all the energy from the sun -- so plants will die.
In 2001 a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in the United Kingdom was traced back to a farmer that illegally fed uncooked waste to his pigs. It left the country's agricultural industry in tatters -- over 10 million sheep and cattle were killed in an effort to contain the disease. Later that year EU legislators banned the use of human food waste (or swill) as pig feed, a decision that is now coming under a lot of fire from disgruntled livestock farmers and the scientific community.
"There's a window that could be opened for a long time or a short time where we have an opportunity to establish a self-sustaining base on Mars," Musk says.
A crucial date, or another point in a long line of failures? History will certainly judge the Paris Climate Agreement, but until then, reactions to it have generally been positive. It’s a monumental achievement, if only for being unanimously supported. I found remarks by US Secretary of State John Kerry to be highly relevant: “For […]
The agreement in Paris is not a cure for the world’s environmental problems, but it’s definitely more than a band-aid. It provides a framework on which to build future global and national efforts, but one word came close to ruining everything. Visibly exhausted, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius cracked a smile – probably the first […]
After two weeks of marathon negotiations, hundreds of presentations and dozens of press conferences, 195 countries unanimously approved an acord that will ultimately eliminate our dependency on fossil fuels, limiting global warming to 2ºC, with an incremental goal of 1.5ºC. For better or for worse, it’s the first global climate accord after two decades of […]
The image above is a timeline with each frame showcasing a stage in our Universe's evolution, from humble beginning to present date (left to right), as simulated by the Argonne National Laboratory. Called the Q Continuum simulation, this is the most complete cosmological simulation to date covering a volume of 1300 Mpc on a side (one Mpc = 3.08567758 × 1022 meters) where half a trillion particles evolved for a mass resolution of ~1.5x108 Msun.
Powerful and smart people in the tech space join hands to found a new AI lab - one focused on making AI safe and beneficial to mankind.
Colorado State University chemists have done the impossible: they've synthesized a fully recyclable, biodegradable polymer. Their work will not only keep countless tons of plastic from piling up in the landfills in the future, but also break petroleum's grip on the polymer industry.
Archaeologists believe they have found the he tomb of sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled over the Ottoman empire from 1520 to 1566, near the fortress of Szigetvar in southern Hungary.
While the windy and overcast weather of a stormy day isn't surprising on telluric planets, it's not something most of us readily associate with stars. But it does happen -- the best evidence for this is W1906+40, a distant dwarf star recently described in a study published in the Astrophysical Journal.
From its first try, a computer can now draw handwritten characters from an unfamiliar language just as well as humans can.
With only hours remaining on the COP21 negotiations, there’s a good chance the draft we got to see yesterday will be final – with some small tweaks perhaps. Opinions have been mixed, but mostly negative about this particular draft; sure, it’s important that we get a final draft on which all parties agree, but it’s […]
You know how the old saying goes, that "diamonds are forever," and giving your significant other a piece of diamond jewelry is considered to be a declaration of eternal love? Well, scientists working at the Borexino experiment in Italy may change the saying and send enamored young men scrambling for something that's really eternal to profess their love -- electrons.
There's a new player in the EV market -- one that might give Tesla a run for its money.
After hundreds of hours of negotiations and discourse, it seems that the parties involved are finally settled and can agree to a new draft for a binding climate agreement. But with one day left to go, is that enough – can we call it a success? The pact is a top-bottom approach; it’s an international agreement […]
Loyalty is a complex emotion, and paradoxical at times. For many loyalty is intrinsically link to identity, since our loyalty and allegiance to our nationality, families and friends or lack thereof defines us as persons. Psychologists have been studying the interplay of social injustice, righteous anger and group allegiance of many years (marketers especially love these kinds of studies). Loyal persons are seen by others as nicer and more trustworthy. But how early in life do we actually see group loyalty develop? As early as age four, a new research suggests.
The craziest thing you'll see all day -- predicting what you look like from DNA.
NASA just released an infrared composite image of Saturn's largest moon, constructed from images taken by the Cassini probe.
The future is now - researchers at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland have developed a camera that can see around corners and track movements in real time.
You know something is down when the most important climate change event in history is sponsored by fossil fuel companies.
A very ambitious initiative could make Africa the cleanest continent – Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI) an African-led plan to add 10,000 MW of additional renewable energy on the continent by 2020, has received over $10 billion in funding from international sources at COP21. The mega-scale initiative wants to develop all sectors of African renewable energy by […]
Agriculture is a difficult topic to tackle – on one hand, it has to keep up with the growing demand from a growing population, but on the other hand, agriculture accounts for a big part of our greenhouse gas emissions, and there is a need to limit emissions as much as possible. Land usage has […]
Emissions flatlined in 2014 -- the first time in 15 years. There is still hope!
Researchers from the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment claim that plants aren't keeping up with CO2 levels.
The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) is probably celebrating right now, as their Akatsuki orbiter reached Venus on December 7. The first time JAXA tried to do this in 2010, they failed because the engine malfunctioned, and the shuttle didn’t enter the Venusian orbit. Aimlessly wandering into space without its main engines, the spacecraft appeared doomed […]
With only three days left from the Paris Climate Summit, the time for populist talks has passed, and we're expecting concrete solutions.
This map shows what gun ownership on a per capita basis looks like around the world, based on data compiled by the Guardian. As you can see from the color codes, the United States tops the list being home to 88.8 guns per 100 people! The only country that marginally comes close is Yemen with 54.8 guns per 100 people.
Despite it being studied for many decades, there are still many things we don’t understand about the Stonehenge. Scientists have now identified the original quarries where the bluestones were mined: 225 km away in Wales, and 500 years before the Stonehenge was built! This could indicate that perhaps a proto-version of the Neolithic monument could […]
The Internet is a wonderful and wonderfully powerful place. Just think about it, you have access to almost all of human knowledge with just a few key strokes. But having this much information at your disposal seems to actually make us rely less on what we already know.
Competition between tech giants is more fierce than ever, and Google is out for blood - literally.
There is a long-lasting debate dividing the cancer researchers community over the point at which a skin lesion is considered a melanoma. A University of California-San Francisco team led by Hunter Shain might have found the answers to settle the debate once and for all; they have found a way to tell whether a lesion is harmless or growing into a melanoma.
Researchers run a problem on a quantum machine and found it performed 100 million times faster than a conventional processor.
A ship missing for over 300 years has been rediscovered, according to Colombian authorities – a boat with an estimated $17 billion in loot. San José was a 60-gun, 3-masted galleon of the Spanish Navy. It was launched in 1698, and was sunk in the battle off the coast of Cartagena in 1708, during a […]
In what reads like the headline for a modern mystery novel, a researcher has found a hidden portrait under the Mona Lisa - or so he claims.
An unprecedented image created by UK and US researchers shows how a submerged human is “seen” by dolphins through echolocation. Echolocation, also called bio sonar, is the biological sonar used by several kinds of animals, including dolphins. Basically, they emit sounds around them and then listen to the returning echo to locate and identify different […]
An undercover investigation exposed how fossil fuel companies pay off academics to publish research sowing doubt about climate change and promote corporate interests.
Talks are in full force in Paris at the COP21 climate change conference, but meanwhile in China, Beijing is going through one of its hardest smog events ever. The mayor of Beijing announced on Monday its first red alert for pollution, showing that Chinese smog is still a huge problem.
