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Re-Enter the Dragon May 31, 2012 
SpaceX's Dragon space capsule returned to Earth on Thursday, 10 days after it took off into the wild blue yonder to resupply the International Space Station. The capsule touched down in the Pacific Ocean at 11:42 a.m. ET a few hundred miles west of Baja California, Mexico. It will be taken by boat to a port in California near Los Angeles.
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SpaceX Chalks Up Giant Leap for Commercial Space Travel May 25, 2012 
The Dragon was caught by its tail on Friday. The unmanned SpaceX spacecraft, which launched into orbit earlier this week, has successfully docked with the International Space Station, marking a first for a cargo-carrying private spacecraft. The docking was assisted with the station's 58-foot robotic arm controlled by astronaut Don Pettit.
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Phantom 'Planet X' May Lurk at Solar System's Edge May 25, 2012 
A giant but unseen planet may lurk on the outer edge of our solar system, making its presence known only by disrupting the orbits of nearby celestial objects, according to Rodney Gomes, an astronomer at the National Observatory of Brazil. Astronomers have long observed that a group of small, icy bodies in the so-called "scattered disc" region beyond the orbit of Neptune follow strange orbits around the sun.
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Plenty of Nail-Biting Moments Ahead for SpaceX Mission May 23, 2012
After last weekend's delayed launch, the Falcon 9 rocket built by SpaceX blasted off Tuesday, carrying the unmanned Dragon capsule into low-Earth orbit.While the launch itself could have been considered breathtaking, there will be more "hold your breath" moments ahead. The next one will come on Thursday when the craft is scheduled to dock with the International Space Station.
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Rx for Medical Students: Take One Tablet May 23, 2012 
The educational e-book market has grown fiercer in the last few years, raising the question of where the end game will leave educational institutions in their attempts to reduce student churn, increase productivity and radically reduce costs. As the battling e-textbook giants try to cut exclusive deals and limit competitors' supplies of e-content, educators are wondering if their choices of learning material will be choked as a result.
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SpaceX Dragon to Soar to Launch History on Falcon's Wings May 18, 2012 
When the SpaceX Dragon capsule blasts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop the company's Falcon rocket Saturday morning, it will be doing more than just setting off on another cargo-laden trip to the International Space Station. Rather, as the very first commercial attempt ever to fly to the ISS, this test launch will be making history.
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Paralyzed Woman Takes Sip of Joe Using Mind-Powered Robo Arm May 17, 2012 
Researchers have developed a robotic arm that has enabled a paralyzed woman to drink a cup of coffee -- by directly controlling it with her mind. The development has raised the question of whether this approach could perhaps restore some mobility to similarly affected people in the future.
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Quantum Teleportation Leaps to New Distance Record May 16, 2012 
Scientists in China have transmitted quantum bits, or qubits, over a record distance of 97 km, or roughly 60 miles. This is more than six times the distance of the previous record of 16 km, set by another team of Chinese researchers in May of 2010, as reported in Nature.com.
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Brainput Project Takes a Load Off Humans' Minds May 15, 2012
A group of researchers from several universities led by MIT have shown that robots controlled mentally by suitably equipped humans who are multitasking can take over some of the workload when needed. The Brainput project had researchers use a technique called "functional near-infrared" imaging to measure the activity of brains in test subjects.
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Iron-Eating Bacteria: Coming Soon to a Hard Drive Near You? May 15, 2012 
Today's hard drives may be smaller, faster, cheaper and more capacious than their predecessors, but the need for ever-tinier components is making it difficult to keep improving them. Therein lies at least part of the motivation behind biocomputing -- in which microscopic biological molecules are being recruited to play a role -- and recently scientists have identified a fresh new possibility in this area.
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Shining Some Light on Sunspots May 11, 2012 
Right now, if you look at the sky at sunrise or sunset when the sun's light is dim, you might be able to see Sunspot AR1476, which is now wending its way across the face of Sol, with your naked eye. The sunspot measures 160,000 km across, or about a dozen times Earth's diameter. Eyeballing the sun might hurt your eyes, of course, so it's better to avoid looking directly at it.
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mHealth Looks Rosy at CTIA May 09, 2012 
The future of the mHealth space is, in a word, "growth," which is exemplified at this week's International CTIA Wireless 2012 trade show. Several companies are presenting their wares in the Wireless Health Pavilion, with innovations that allow consumers to monitor health remotely, track daily habits, manage health records, track inventory, and support physical wellness.
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Brain-Scanning Bot Maps Minds at Warp Speed May 09, 2012
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgia Tech have automated the process of finding and recording information from cells in living brains. "Autopatching makes recording the electrical and circuit properties [of cells] straightforward and effortless for the operator," said Craig Forest, one of the members of the research team.
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There's a Supermoon Rising on Saturday May 03, 2012 
It may have been a "bad moon" rising in the famous 1969 song by CCR, but this weekend's full moon could well inspire predictions for trouble of a similar kind. That's because it's this year's "supermoon" -- the full moon that occurs when the moon is closest to Earth -- and supermoons are often believed to wreak even more havoc on our planet than ordinary full moons do.
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Facebook's Organ Donor Assist Likely to Play Well on the Street May 01, 2012 
The numbers reflecting the state of organ donation in the U.S. paint a mostly grim picture. There are 114,183 people waiting for an organ -- 18 of whom will die each day, according to DHHS. However, Facebook just added another number to the mix: 900 million -- its user base. In a new initiative, Facebook is encouraging its users to share their organ donor status.
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Asteroid Miners May Set the Stage for Space Colonization April 24, 2012 
On Tuesday, the founders of Planetary Resources held a press conference at the Museum of Flight in Seattle to announce a new megamillion-dollar plan to use commercially built robotic ships to travel to the asteroid belt to mine for valuable minerals including platinum and gold. "As we move beyond the bounds of Earth to a universe that is full of resources, we can finally bring those materials back to Earth," said speaker Peter Diamandis, cofounder of Planetary Resources.
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IBM Aims to Equip Electric Cars for the Long Haul April 20, 2012 
IBM researchers are looking to go the distance with electric vehicles. On Friday, Big Blue announced that material innovation developers Asahi Kasei and Central Glass had joined its Battery 500 Project team to develop new battery technology for electric vehicles. IBM Research has been striving to develop a lithium-air battery that would make it possible for a family-sized electric car to drive 500 miles on a single charge.
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'X-Ray Vision' Tech Could Work With Cellphone Cameras April 19, 2012 
X-ray vision won't just be limited to comic book superheroes in the future. A team at the
University of Texas at Dallas led by Kenneth O, Ph.D., professor of electrical engineering, has made new scientific advances that could make it possible for cameras to see through solid walls. The researchers have designed a chip that could make it possible for the camera on a mobile device to see through walls, wood, plastic, paper -- and even into the human body.
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Researchers Leap Into Quantum Networking April 12, 2012 
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have set up a quantum network consisting of two coupled single atoms. These atoms communicate quantum information through the coherent exchange of single photons. Decoherence, which can be thought of as the loss of information from a system into the environment, is one of the obstacles to building a working quantum computer.
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Diamonds Are a Quantum Scientist's Best Friends April 06, 2012 
An international group of scientists led by researchers from the University of California in Santa Barbar have taken the first steps toward creating a quantum computer -- in a diamond. So far they've built a two-qubit unit for a quantum computer. A qubit is the quantum computing equivalent of a bit, and it can be both on and off at the same time, unlike a regular bit which must be in one state or the other.
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