Darpa hatches plan for insect cyborgs to fly reconnaissance

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 08:51:37 GMT
Cyborg insects with embedded microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) will run remotely controlled reconnaissance missions for the military, if its '"HI-MEMS" program succeeds. The Hybrid-Insect MEMS program hatched earlier this year at the Defense ...

SENS3 conference videos now online

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 07:15:05 GMT
Videos of talks at the third Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) Conference are now online. According to the ...

MIT develops brain-to-machine algorithm

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 06:59:38 GMT
MIT researchers have developed an universal algorithm for a neural prosthetic aid that can link an individual's brain activity to the person's intentions, and then translate that intention into movement....

50 Years Later, a New 'Sputnik' Crisis: The War of Minds

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 06:50:49 GMT
The American education system is not mobilizing to support science, technology, engineering and math. Today's generation of kids is the most technology savvy group that this country has ever produced. They are born with an iPod in one hand and a ...

New Alliance for space solar power to be announced

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 05:49:22 GMT
On October 10, 2007, leading space advocacy organizations and Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin will announce the formation of a new alliance to "ensure that the benefits of renewable clean energy from space solar power are understood and supported by bus...

Lifenaut launches free lifelog service for future uploading

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 08:04:53 GMT
The Terasem Movement Foundation has launched Lifenaut.com, a free online networking and personal data storage service that will "preserve one's individual consciousness so that it remains viable for ...

Scientists to explore nano advancements in DNA sequencing

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 06:58:58 GMT
UC Irvine's Henry Samueli School of Engineering has been awarded $2.18 million to blend traditional DNA sequencing techniques with cutting-edge nanotechnology to develop a faster and less costly method of DNA sequencing and make it a routine part of ...

IBM Attempts to Reinvent Memory

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 06:29:53 GMT
A new nanowire-based memory device being developed by researchers at IBM's Almaden Research Center would pack a hundred bits of data on a single nanowire and could potentially store up to 100 times more data than flash while operating at much faster ...

Why Climate Change Can't Be Stopped

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:01:27 GMT
Environmental advocates have finally managed to put the issue of global warming at the top of the world's agenda. But the scientific, economic, and political realities may mean that their efforts are too little, too late. Given the scale and compl...

3-D avatar to help doctors visualize patient records and improve care

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 08:37:28 GMT
IBM's Zurich Research Lab has developed an avatar to allow doctors to visualize patient medical records. The ...

Robotic Therapy Tiles: Playing Your Way to Health

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:41:27 GMT
Patients recovering from surgery or injuries may soon be able to physically play their way to a full recovery with intelligent robotic systems that generate specialized games to challenge the human body's abilities. Henrik Hautop Lund, a robotics ...

Aren't We All Just Replicants on the Inside?

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:30:18 GMT
The 1982 science fiction film "Blade Runner," Ridley Scott's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel about artificial superhumans on the loose in 2019 Los Angeles, lives on, hitching its boundless imagination to deep anxieties about civilization. ...

Online videos may be conduits for viruses

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:56:25 GMT
Malicious code could be embedded in online video players, according to a report on Internet threats released Tuesday by the Georgia Tech Information Security Center. One worm discovered in November 2006 launches a corrupt Web site without promptin...

Its Creators Call Internet Outdated, Offer Remedies

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:53:18 GMT
There's a growing debate over whether the Internet's current infrastructure is sufficient to handle the explosion of bandwidth-hungry services such as Internet telephony and video. In a recent report, Cisco calculated that monthly Internet traffi...

Nanotube Forests Grown On Silicon Chips For Future Computers, Electronics

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:40:35 GMT
Purdue engineers have shown how to grow forests of carbon nanotubes onto the surfaces of computer chips to enhance the flow of heat at a critical point where the chips connect to heat sinks. Researchers are trying to develop new types of thermal i...

A Land Rover That Drives Itself

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:37:29 GMT
Talos, a Land Rover that drives itself, is MIT's entry in the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's (DARPA) "Urban Challenge" robotic car race, which will take place on November 3, in Victorville, CA. ...

Deciphering Human Differences

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:32:33 GMT
With the help of new high-speed DNA sequencing technology, scientists have uncovered extensive regions in the human genome where chunks of DNA have been deleted, copied, or completely rearranged. Mapping and characterizing these structural varian...

The Problem with Atheism

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:24:22 GMT
"I think that 'atheist' is a term that we do not need, in the same way that we don't need a word for someone who rejects astrology. We simply do not call people 'non-astrologers,'" says author Sam Haris in a talk given at the Atheist Alliance confere...

It's All in Your Head

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 08:09:41 GMT
The Library Journal has compiled a useful online list of reference books, textbooks, general books, periodicals, web sites, and DVDs on neuroscience. ...

Study Finds Human-Robot Attachment

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 08:05:34 GMT
A newly released Georgia Tech study shows that some Roomba owners become deeply attached to the robotic vacuums and suggests there's a measure of public readiness to accept additional robots in the house -- even flawed ones. The study revealed peo...

Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:58:09 GMT
The Arctic ice cap this summer dwindled to an extent unparalleled in a century or more. ...

Technology Could Enable Computers To 'Read The Minds' Of Users

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:48:02 GMT
Tufts University researchers are developing techniques that could allow computers to respond to users' thoughts of frustration (too much work) or boredom (too little work). They are using light-based functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) t...

Display Technology Promises Cheaper Solar

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:38:37 GMT
Applied Materials has converted its equipment to produce thin-film silicon solar cells that are cheap enough to compete with more conventional solar cells, at a cost similar to the price of electricity in some parts of the United States--15 to 20 cen...

Breaking The Barrier Toward Nanometer X-ray Resolution

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 07:54:55 GMT
A team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have overcome a major obstacle for using refractive lenses to focus x-rays. This method will allow the efficient focusing of x-rays down to extremely small sp...

Neuroscientists connect neural activity and blood flow in new brain stimulation technique

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 07:38:26 GMT
Neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have for the first time measured the electrical activity of nerve cells and correlated it to changes in blood flow in response to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a noninvasive method...

Robots Take on Social Tasks

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:23:17 GMT
Robotics experts say gadgets introduced Thursday could usher more socially oriented robots into the U.S. market. A new device by iRobot Corp. has a webcam, designed to enable parents on a business trip could remotely check up on children. The Spyk...

Artificial brain falls for optical illusions

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:05:37 GMT
A computer program that emulates the human brain falls for the same optical illusions humans do, suggesting that the illusions are a by-product of the way babies learn to filter their complex surroundings. Researchers say this means future robots...

Scientists warn of 'vocal terror'

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:54:39 GMT
Computers could mimic human speech so perfectly that vocal terrorism could be a new threat in 10-15 years' time, scientists suggest....

New system makes any digital camera take multibillion-pixel shots

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:44:12 GMT
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center, have built a low-cost robotic device that enables any digital camera to produce breathtaking gigapixel (billions of pixels) panoramas, called ...

NIST Debuts Superconducting Quantum Computing Cable

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:38:15 GMT
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have transferred information between two "artificial atoms" by way of electronic vibrations on a microfabricated aluminum cable, demonstrating a new component for potential ultra-powerf...

Novel Nanowires for Faster Memory

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:19:13 GMT
University of Pennsylvania researchers have pioneered a new technique for producing phase-change nanowires. The technique could make it possible to build memory devices thousands of times faster and eight to ten times more energy efficient than m...

Storing Solar Power Efficiently

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:13:51 GMT
Thermal-power plants could solve some of the problems with solar power outages by turning sunlight into steam and storing heat for cloudy days. ...

DIY lab scanner made from standard CD drive

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:07:03 GMT
A couple of extra light sensors turn an everyday CD drive it into a cheap, portable, chemical scanner that could replace larger, more expensive machines. ...

Staged cyber attack reveals vulnerability in power grid

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:31:04 GMT
Researchers who launched an experimental cyber attack on an electrical power plant caused a generator to self-destruct, alarming the federal government and electrical industry about what might happen if such an attack were carried out on a larger sca...

Quantum chip rides on superconducting bus

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 06:18:50 GMT
National Institute of Standards and Yale University scientists have connected qubits on a chip for the first time, demonstrating two key computational elements: a bus and short-term memory. Putting them onto chips like those in conventional compu...

Researchers set new record for brightness of quantum dots

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 08:34:26 GMT
By placing quantum dots on a specially designed photonic crystal, University of Illinois researchers have demonstrated enhanced fluorescence intensity by a factor of up to 108. Potential applications include high-brightness light-emitting diodes,...

Asian spacefarers race for the moon

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 08:24:21 GMT
Asian giants Japan, China and India are engaged in a race to map lunar resources and make the moon a platform to explore planets beyond, amid a renewed burst of global space activity....

Quantum physics cools down computers

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 08:21:35 GMT
Stanford researchers have drastically reduced the heat produced by electron flow in semiconductors by using the Quantum Spin Hall Effect, which aligns the spin of electrons. Under these extraordinary conditions, the current flows only along the e...

Researchers Develop Nanoblade

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 08:11:34 GMT
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have created a razor-like material called nanoblades. Nanoblades are extremely thin, with very large surface areas and surpri...

Google testing "My World" for launch later this year

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 07:41:44 GMT
Rumors of Google's plans to create a virtual world that rivals that of Second Life have popped up once again. It would be a 3D social network tied into Google's current applications of Google Earth and Google Maps. A virtual world is a natural ...

The Future of Computing, According to Intel

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 07:28:15 GMT
Andrew Chien, director of Intel Research, is exploring terascale computing, in which machines with tens or hundreds of cores perform trillions of operations per second. The big idea he's exploring is the role of inference and sensors as missing p...

Robot dogs race to be soldier's best friend

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 07:01:51 GMT
DARPA has selected six university research teams to compete to develop the best algorithms for controlling a robot puppy called LittleDog. ...

Ray Kurzweil receives Future of Health Technology award

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 06:25:21 GMT
Ray Kurzweil received the Future of Health Technology Award at the 12th annual Future of Health Technology Summit 2007, held at the MIT Faculty Club. ...

Studies say out-of-body is not out-of-mind

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 08:19:03 GMT
British and other European researchers have found a way to induce out-of-body experiences using virtual reality goggles. The findings, published in the journal Science, suggest out-of-body experiences may be created by a disconnect between the bra...

Parallel universes exist - study

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 07:56:54 GMT
Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists, described by one expert as "one of the most important developments in the history of science." The Oxford team, led by Dr. David Deutsch, showed mathem...

An Oracle for Our Time, Part Man, Part Machine

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 07:33:17 GMT
Internet algorithms are increasingly incorporating people, with their special skills, as volunteer components of the Net, blurring the boundary between human and machine and amplifying both biological and electronic intelligence. Examples include ...

DARPA leads new AI research

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 07:22:00 GMT
With a new Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program called Bootstrapped Learning, the agency wants to allow humans to teach computers in a way that's natural for humans...and then for computers to be able to assimilate the knowledge ...

Scientists get first look at nanotubes inside living animals

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 07:10:09 GMT
Rice University scientists have captured the first optical images of carbon nanotubes inside inside living fruit flies, using near-infrared fluorescent imaging. Based on their assays, the team estimates that only about one in 100 million nanotubes...

On the White Path

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 07:04:46 GMT
Scientists in India are reporting that have have made nanoscale crystals of cadmium sulfide that, when coated onto a light-emitting diode (LED), give off a white glow. The LED emits light at ultraviolet wavelengths and the crystals produce the mix...

Universal DNA database would make us all suspects

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 06:54:46 GMT
Imagine being a potential suspect for every crime committed in your country. That would be the logic if DNA from all of a country's citizens were stored in police DNA records, claims a report by the UK-based Nuffield Council on Bioethics....

Robot reproduces human mouth movements for speech

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 06:52:59 GMT
Researchers at the Tokyo University of Science and the Musashino Red Cross Hospital are developing a robot capable of reproducing oral movements necessary to produce human speech, for use in speech therapy and teaching foreign languages. ...

Meet the New Robots

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 09:01:40 GMT
Although U.S. robot numbers are not yet measured in millions, the industrial automatons are nonetheless playing strategic roles in U.S. manufacturing competitiveness, with more than 171,000 robots now at work in U.S. factories, placing the U.S. secon...

The Double Thinker

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:56:49 GMT
Steven Pinker brings his theory of human nature and his obsession with words together in his new book, "The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature."...

Happiness is a Warm Electrode

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:53:46 GMT
The most promising new treatment for severe depression isn't a pill. It's a permanent implant that stimulates the brain....

'Self-aware' space rovers would be speedy explorers

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:46:13 GMT
Josh Bongard of the University of Vermont has designed a simulated rover that shows how to work much faster. This rover "imagines" itself and its immediate surroundings, and heads off to explore the areas that stimulate its curiosity. The approac...

Singularity Summit 2007 audio is now online

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 08:58:43 GMT
Audio for all talks and panel discussions at the recent Singularity Summit 2007 is now available free online and via iTunes podcast. ...

Toward Next-generation Integrated Circuits Made From Carbon Nanotubes

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 08:34:48 GMT
Scientists in Israel are reporting the first simple and inexpensive method for building large-scale networks of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) into integrated circuits for use in a future generation of faster, smaller, and more powerful compu...

Personal Genomes: Mainstream In Five Years, But Who Should Have Access?

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 08:22:46 GMT
Scientists predict that within five years, DNA sequencing technologies will be affordable enough that personal genomics will be integrated into routine clinical care. Companies are responding by offering their services for ancestry tracing, foren...

UC-Santa Cruz to put novelist Robert Heinlein's archive online

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 07:37:12 GMT
The entire contents of the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Archive -- housed in the UC-Santa Cruz Library's Special Collections since 1968 -- have been scanned in an effort to preserve the contents digitally while making the collection ...

U.S. study finds potential new ways to fight aging

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 07:29:43 GMT
Harvard Medical School researchers have found that the enzymes controlled by SIRT3 and SIRT4 genes help preserve the cell's mitochondria, which are important for keeping cells healthy and alive when they undergo stress and DNA damage during aging. ...

Robot Face Mimics Human Expression: Crosses Uncanny Valley

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:59:51 GMT
The WD-2 robot has a face made of a rigid yet elastic material called Septom, which, when rods are pushed into the rear surface at any of 17 key points, changes its shape to mimic human expression. ...

21st-century pack mule: MIT's 'exoskeleton' lightens the load

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:54:56 GMT
Researchers in the MIT Media Lab's Biomechatronics Group have created an exoskeleton device to lighten the burden for soldiers and others who carry heavy packs and equipment. E...

Artists 'draw on air' to create 3D illustrations

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:52:18 GMT
By putting on a virtual reality mask, holding a stylus in one hand and a tracking device in the other, an artist can draw 3D objects in the air with unprecedented precision. ...

Lung-Cancer Blood Test

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:50:04 GMT
Researchers at Panacea Pharmaceuticals have found that 99 percent of patients with all stages of lung cancer have detectable levels of a particular protein, HAAH, in their blood that healthy individuals do not. ...

Did the big bang spawn trillions of black holes?

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:37:08 GMT
Were vast numbers of black holes spawned during our universe's earliest moments? So far, there is no hard evidence that such primordial black holes (PBHs) ever existed, but new observations just around the corner could change that. The black holes...

The Future of Nano & Bio Technologies

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:42:02 GMT
Presentations at the recent "Challenges & Opportunities: The Future of Nano & Bio Technologies" conference, presented by World Care and the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, are now ...

Metaplace: open DIY virtual worlds for everyone

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:17:10 GMT
Just-launched Metaplace -- a virtual world creation system that lets anyone make their own multiplayer games, link them and share them -- is a world-creator that runs right in your browser, and that makes it simple to share objects, characters and en...

Surface plasmons enhance nanostructure possibilities

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:06:09 GMT
Scientists from University College London and at the Queen's University of Belfast have demonstrated a method of achieving ultrahigh light dispersion that makes use of surface plasmon polaritons on nanostructures. Uses would be in such areas as qu...

Free Phone Calls With Startup's $399 Box

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:01:04 GMT
A Silicon Valley startup will begin selling $399 gadgets Wednesday that consumers with broadband Internet service can use to make unlimited free domestic phone calls....

Solar-Powered Laser

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:56:22 GMT
A new kind of efficient, solar-powered laser developed by researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology is intended to combust the magnesium content of seawater, generating large amounts of heat and hydrogen. ...

Intelligent, Chatty Machines

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:51:33 GMT
A new company called Cognitive Code has built natural-language processing software that it believes could let businesses, such as cell-phone manufacturers and toy makers, use the technology to add conversational abilities to a product. ...

Cyber-Threats Outpace Security Measures, Says McAfee CEO

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:44:21 GMT
McAfee CEO David DeWalt says cyber-crime has become a $105 billion business that now surpasses the value of the illegal drug trade worldwide. Worldwide data losses now represent $40 billion in losses to affected companies and individuals each year...

BI and Analytics: A Power Couple

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:37:26 GMT
The marriage of business intelligence and text analytics is starting to have a profound impact on companies in several industries, including health care, insurance and finance. Text analytics tools use linguistics, rules-based natural-language pro...

USB 3.0 To Boost Peripherals to Multi-Gigabit Speeds

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:28:03 GMT
The new "SuperSpeed" USB spec will provide a 10X boost in transfer rate (from 480-Mbits/s in USB 2.0 to 4.8 Gbits/s in USB 3.0), while dramatically lowering power consumption, with broad deployment by 2010. One example of their speed goals is to t...

Intel Chips to Shrink to 32-Nanometer Process

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:18:30 GMT
Intel Corp. said Tuesday it will ramp up performance and energy efficiency in its microprocessors by using a 32-nanometer process technology starting in 2009. Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini showed a 300mm wafer built using the 32-nm manufac...

New carbon nanotube technology to reduce large-scale emissions

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:44:25 GMT
A novel technology to trap large-scale greenhouse gas emissions is being developed by University of Queensland researcher Dr. John Zhu. He aims to develop a carbon nanotube membrane for gas separation that will work like a sieve to separate high v...

Brain's messengers could be regulated, researchers find

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:02:03 GMT
Researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have found that tiny, spontaneous releases of the brain's primary chemical messengers can be regulated, potentially giving scientists unprecedented control over how the brain is wired....

Nanoscale computer memory retrieves data 1,000 times faster

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 08:59:48 GMT
Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania have developed nanowires capable of storing computer data for 100,000 years and retrieving that data a thousand times faster than existing portable memory devices such as Flash memory and micro-drives, a...

Scientists unlock secrets of protein folding

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 08:58:38 GMT
A team led by biophysicist Jeremy Smith of the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory has taken a significant step toward unraveling the mystery of how proteins fold into unique, three-dimensional shapes. The team determined tha...

AIs May Call Virtual Worlds Home

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:56:51 GMT
Novamente is looking at virtual worlds like Second Life as training grounds for self-directed AI applications that learn by interacting with their environments. Novamente plans to unveil a teachable "virtual companion" in Second Life at the Virtua...

Printing Nano Building Blocks

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 08:07:18 GMT
Researchers from IBM's Zurich Research Lab have devised a way to print particles as small as 60 nanometers in diameter with single-particle resolution. The technique lets researchers arrange tiny particles of various materials into well-defined s...

Robots That Sense Before They Touch

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 08:01:01 GMT
Intel researchers are using electric-field sensors to build pre-touch technology into robots to help them size up objects and people they encounter. ...

SENS3 Report: the GIFT Versus Cancer

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 07:55:02 GMT
At the third Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence conference (SENS3), Dr. Zheng Cui at the Comprehensive Cancer Center of Wake Forest University presented evidence of high-potency cancer-killing granulocytes in humans. He plans to test ...

SENS3 Report: Towards Mitochondrial Repair

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 07:42:19 GMT
At the third conference on Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS3), several researchers presented their recent work on approaches to mitochondrial damage....

Big Brother is watching us all

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 06:48:09 GMT
The US and UK governments are developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep individuals under surveillance. ...

Dark matter and inflation - one and the same?

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 06:39:52 GMT
Cosmologist Andrew Liddle at the University of Sussex and his colleagues say the hypothetical inflaton particle may be responsible for both inflation and the dark matter that has been perplexing astronomers....

New satellite to sharpen Google Earth

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 06:29:46 GMT
DigitalGlobe, provider of imagery for Google Earth, said WorldView I, a new high-resolution satellite to be launched on Tuesday, will produce one-half meter resolution images for commercial use, and will be able to collect over 600,000 square kilomet...

Multiple Sclerosis patients walk faster thanks to VR technology

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 04:19:19 GMT
Using virtual reality technology coupled with sensors, scientists at Technion, Israel's Institute of Technology, have developed a system to enable people suffering from Multiple Sclerosis to walk more effectively. A small screen attached to glass...

Google Sponsors $30 Million Lunar X PRIZE to put robotic rovers on the Moon

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 06:06:52 GMT
The X PRIZE Foundation and Google Inc. has announced the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a $30 million prize purse. ...

Scientists' Good News: Earth May Survive Sun's Demise in 5 Billion Years

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 09:00:51 GMT
There is new hope that Earth, if not the life on it, might survive an apocalypse five billion years from now. That is when, scientists say, the Sun will run out of hydrogen fuel and swell temporarily more than 100 times in diameter into a so-calle...

Reports Says Organized Crime Top Problem

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:37:14 GMT
Organized crime may have brought in more than $2 trillion in revenue last year, about twice all the military budgets in the world combined, according to the "2007 Sta...

Nanoscale Inkjet Printing

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 05:45:43 GMT
A new type of inkjet printer has been developed that can precisely print dots of various materials just 250 nanometers in diameter. The inkjet printer could make it possible to rapidly synthesize complex nanoscale structures out of a broad range ...

Scientists Use the 'Dark Web' to Snag Extremists and Terrorists Online

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:40:32 GMT
Computational scientists in the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Arizona have created the Dark Web project, which aims to systematically collect and analyze...

U.S. Life Expectancy Hits New High

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 03:17:48 GMT
Life expectancy rates in the United States are at an all-time high, with people born in 2005 projected to live for nearly 78 years, up from 69.6 in 1955, a new study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health ...

Brain network related to intelligence identified

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:10:01 GMT
Richard Haier of the University of California, Irvine and Rex Jung of the University of New Mexico have uncovered evidence of a distinct neurobiology of human intelligence. The...

Who Needs Hackers?

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 08:50:28 GMT
Problems arising from flawed systems, increasingly complex networks and even technology headaches from corporate mergers can make computer systems less reliable. Meanwhile, society as a whole is growing ever more dependent on computers and comput...

NASA building silicon chips that can handle massively high-heat and then some

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 08:37:07 GMT
NASA researchers have designed and built a new circuit chip that can take the heat of a blast furnace and keep on performing. Silicon Carbide (SiC) chips can operate in 600 degrees Celsius or 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit where conventional silicon-ba...

Will Super Smart Artificial Intelligences Keep Humans Around As Pets?

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 08:03:57 GMT
By 2030, or by 2050 at the latest, will a super-smart artificial intelligence decide to keep humans around as pets? Will it instead choose to turn the entire Earth, including the messy organic bits like us, into computronium? Or is there a third alte...

Reshaping the Architecture of Memory

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 10:25:52 GMT
IBM's "racetrack memory" could outpace both solid-state flash memory chips and computer hard disks, making it a technology that could transform not only the storage business but the entire computing industry, increasing the amount of data stored on a...

Utility Will Use Batteries to Store Wind Power

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 10:24:39 GMT
American Electric Power, a coal-burning utility company that is looking for ways to connect more wind power to its grid, plans to announce on Tuesday that it will install huge banks of high-technology batteries. They will smooth the power delive...

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