Science

Curiosity Really Starts to Click
August 09, 2012

Nasa's Curiosity rover has begun satisfying the curiosity of mission scientists by sending high-quality images of Mars' surface back to Earth. Although it's only had since Sunday night to collect data, Curiosity has sent a batch of snapshots that are already allowing the NASA team to garner a good deal of information.

Curiosity Begins Capturing Martian Kodak Moments
August 07, 2012

Following the most complex landing ever attempted on Mars, NASA's most advanced Mars rover to date landed on the Red Planet at 10:32 p.m. PDT on Sunday. Dubbed "Curiosity," the one-ton, car-sized rover had been in flight for 36 weeks. Its complicated touchdown settled the device near the foot of a mountain three miles tall and 96 miles in diameter inside the Red Planet's Gale Crater.

Gliese 581g: A Potentially Habitable World or Not?
July 31, 2012

There's been considerable debate over the existence of Gliese 581g ever since the discovery of the "Goldilocks" planet was first reported nearly two years ago, but new research claims to provide additional evidence that the potentially habitable "super-Earth" really is out there.

Foursquare's New Ad Layer Ropes In More Brand-Friendly Users
July 26, 2012

Foursquare is following up on a feature it introduced last week that layers on new ad functionality for brands seeking to target local customers. Unveiled last week, "Local Updates" lets users keep up with places they like in their Friends tab. Now the social service has rolled out "Promoted Updates" in the Explore tab.

Virtual Organism Reveals Secrets of Cellular Processes
July 24, 2012

Bioengineering researchers at Stanford University have created a computational model of an entire organism, according to a report published in Cell. This model lets them predict cellular behaviors that haven't been observed, as well as new biological processes and parameters. The organism modeled is Mycoplasma genitalium, or M. genitalium, the smallest known genome that can constitute a cell.

World's Most Powerful Laser Could Pew Pew Its Way to Fusion Power
July 17, 2012

The United States National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has successfully fired the most powerful laser beam ever recorded. It took 192 laser beams to deliver more than 500 trillion watts, or terawatts, of peak power and 1.85 megajoules of ultraviolet laser light to a target 2mm in diameter.

Astronomers Spot Moon No. 5 Circling Un-Planet Pluto
July 13, 2012

Pluto may no longer be considered a true planet following its official reclassification in 2006, but that doesn't appear to be stopping the tiny dwarf planet from amassing a considerable number of celestial "followers." Just this week, in fact, a team of astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope announced their discovery of yet another moon orbiting Pluto.

Sensor-Equipped Gloves May Give Voice to Sign Language
July 12, 2012

Making use of sleek black gloves, sophisticated sensors, a microcontroller and a smartphone, students from the Ukraine have created a device that translates sign language into speech. Called "Enable Talk," the system won first place in the software design category at Microsoft's 10th annual Imagine Cup, held this year in Sydney, Australia.

Will the Real Higgs Boson Please Stand Up?
July 11, 2012

The search for the elusive Higgs boson continues as scientists analyze the data from two recent experiments conducted at CERN, the European organization for nuclear research. On Tuesday, scientists raised the possibility that the data might indicate that the particle they observed was a Higgs impostor.

DARPA Wants to Give Robots More Staying Power
July 09, 2012

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has issued an open call to the robotics industry soliciting expert proposals to create more power-efficient robots. The agency aims to maximize robotic technology potential and improve the power efficiency of current robots by 2,000 percent.

The Higgs Boson: Another Feather in Linux's Cap
July 09, 2012

It's not exactly any secret that Linux dominates the world of high-performance computing, so perhaps it should go without saying that last week's exciting Higgs Boson announcement would involve Linux in some not-insignificant way. The reality, however, turns out to be far greater than marginal significance.

CERN Researchers May Have Hooked Higgs
July 05, 2012

After years of searching, particle physicists say they have all but certainly pinned down the elusive Higgs boson. Popularly known as the "God particle," this boson will help provide a better understanding of how most of the particles of nature acquire their mass, improving physicists' understanding of the universe.

Spray-On Battery Could Slip Power Into Tighter Spaces
June 29, 2012

Researchers at Rice University have developed a paint that works as a battery, and it could change the way batteries are produced and reduce energy storage restrictions. The paint-on battery is similar in material balance to traditional lithium-ion batteries. It has five layers -- a positive and a negative current collector, a cathode, an anode and an ion-conducting separator in the middle.

Terabits by Twisted Light: The Optical Communications Revolution
June 27, 2012

Twisted infrared light beams have propelled wireless data transmission to a dazzling 2.56 terabits per second via a system developed by a multinational team of researchers led by the Optical Communications Laboratory at the University of Southern California. The process essentially twists beams of light so that they can carry more data, more quickly than ever before.

AI System Learns to Recognize Faces and Felines
June 27, 2012

A neural network built over the years by researchers from Stanford University and Google has managed to teach itself to recognize faces and cats. The network consists of 16,000 processors on a cluster of 1,000 computers. After being exposed to 10 million images downloaded from the Internet, the network software learned to recognize human and cat faces, as well as human bodies, according to the researchers.

Gigapixel Photography: It's All in the Details
June 26, 2012

To test the 1-gigapixel AWARE-2 camera his team developed, David Brady, a professor at Duke, took a few snapshots of tundra swans. "Normally, with bird photography you're rushing to point the camera in the right direction," he said. "Here we just took a bunch of pictures and then went back later to see what we had.

Scientists Split Atom, Then Put It Back Together
June 15, 2012

Mention the words, "splitting the atom," and most people will automatically think of nuclear fission, bombs and radioactivity. Recently, however, physicists at Germany's University of Bonn not only managed to "split" an atom but also put it back together again.

Einstein Avenged: Neutrinos Bow to Light Speed Laws
June 08, 2012

Eight months after the multinational Opera research team caused an uproar among physicists with its findings that some neutrinos appeared to travel faster than light, its findings have been officially refuted. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, on Friday said that four experiments have found that neutrinos actually travel no faster than the speed of light.

Encryption on the Go, Part 2
June 06, 2012

The growing consumerization of IT is turning into a security nightmare for many IT departments, but it's perhaps hitting the healthcare industry worst. "BYOD is an emerging issue in healthcare, as staff bring their latest and greatest devices and ask to use them in their work," said Christina Thielst, vice president at Tower Strategies.

From Venus With Love: A Once-in-a-Lifetime Celestial Show
June 05, 2012

The planet Venus will create a rare spectacle on Tuesday when it passes directly in front of our sun, creating an image for viewers on Earth that won't be repeated until the year 2117. Known as "the 2012 Transit of Venus," the nearly seven-hour journey will begin at 3:09 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (22:09 UT) Tuesday and will be widely visible around the globe.