Lasers amplify light. The name itself is an acronym for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation." It's only natural then that the world's first anti-laser cancels light, and could spark applications in optical supercomputing and radiation oncology. "Our device is a laser that works ...
Science fiction enthusiasts could probably connect over plans Microsoft announced Monday for Kinect, the company's interactive gaming add-on for the Xbox 360. A software developers kit is on the way, Microsoft representatives told journalists at a sneak-peek event that featured a Kinect digital ren...
Cold fusion -- the largely discredited science of making more energy from less -- may be making a comeback. Controversial yet high-profile demonstrations in Italy last month purported to show a cold fusion device turning 400 watts of heat power into 12,400 watts. The eye-popping 31-fold "excess hea...
With a much-anticipated NASA announcement Thursday, "The Devil in the Dark" is no longer the name of actor William Shatner's favorite original "Star Trek" episode, about a man-eating subterranean monster made ofcells based on silicon rather than carbon. Rather, it's a newly discovered bacteria that ...
Fresh from a super-sized "Jeopardy" victory where it looked suspiciously like President Obama's ubiquitous teleprompter, IBM supercomputer Watson is about to become Dr. Watson, M.D. assistant. A joint venture will combine IBM's question-answering, language-processing, and machine-learning capabilit...
Ten-4. Back to you. Over. On a radio or over the TV airwaves, speakers have to rely on back-and-forth communications because radio traffic only flows in one direction at a time on a frequency. Or so said scientific conventional wisdom, until Stanford researchers developed so-called "full duplex" r...
Instantly sorting 15 trillion memory bytes to find the right answer to a "Jeopardy" question: Elementary, my dear Watson. Or so an IBM supercomputer named "Watson" set out to prove Monday, tackling trivia with the popular television game show's all-time human champs, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. "...
"Big screen, middle screen, little screen," might be a fast way to describe the journey of 3D technology, the last leg of which LG unveiled Monday at the Mobile World Congress. The world's first three-dimensional smartphone, LG's Optimus 3D runs the Android operating system on a 4.3-inch LCD glasses...
Sixty one CD-ROMS for every man, woman, and child on Earth. That's the amount of global data humankind stored on devices of every kind in 2007 -- 295 exabytes, or 80 times more information per person than exists in the historic Library of Alexandria, Egypt. "We tracked 60 analog and digital technolo...
It was deja vu for President Barack Obama and the FCC, as both unveiled broad plans this week to expand broadband access. Obama revisited an idea he presented last June with the launch on Thursday of his Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative. Although White House officials spun the plan ...
Rocket and space shuttle contractors are orbiting U.S. space agency NASA, searching for the future of space flight through contracts that would privatize key missions.
After the Space Shuttle Program completes its final flight this year, United Space Alliance -- the Boeing-Lockheed-Martin joint v...
Cybercriminals are following innocent consumers away from email and toward more popular, smartphone-style platforms, McAfee reported Tuesday. "New mobile malware in 2010 increased by 46 percent compared with 2009," noted McAfee spokesperson Joris Evers. In 2010, Symbian and Android platforms, in par...
With lightRadio Cube, the engineers at Bell Labs sound like the slick designers at Apple. Part of a mobile and broadband infrastructure technology Bell parent Alcatel-Lucent unveiled Monday, lightRadio Cube packs a radio, amplifier, and passive cooling unit into a 6-cm cube that can fit in the palm ...
An international crew of cosmonauts and astronauts reached orbit around Mars Thursday, marking a major milestone on a 520-day simulated journey to the fourth planet from the Sun. Now 245 days away from Earth, Mars500 crew members from Russia, France, China, Italy and Colombia are scheduled to land F...
Ever hunting for a better digital vaccine, HP's TippingPoint DVLabs announced a partnership with Google that has the scions of search cosponsoring a hacking contest at the CanSecWest security conference in March. "This is a part of the 4th annual Pwn2Own contest," said Google spokesperson Eitan Benc...
In an abrupt about-face, the Egyptian government reopened the Internet Wednesday, ending a five-day shutdown that took out the country's top ISPs and a rebellious populace's ability to communicate. The move comes shortly after Noor -- the only ISP initially left standing after the crackdown -- was s...
Caregivers of people with epilepsy and related disorders harbor a major fear: that a seizure could occur without their knowledge. Now, a wristwatch-style device aptly named the "SmartWatch" can detect seizures and alert caregivers within seven to 10 seconds, explained Stanford University pediatric ...
AOL cofounder Steve Case is teaming up with the Obama White House and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to launch Startup America, a partnership to "foster innovative high-growth firms in the United States," said Kauffman representative Benjamin Branham. It "is designed to marshal more resources ...
Governments are at it again, trying to stifle online communication with a major disconnect in Egypt and a reintroduced Internet "Kill Switch" bill in the U.S. Fax machines, ham radios, and dial-up modems are riding to the rescue as Egyptian citizens revolt against the government of Hosni Mubarak. An...
"Dear UK government," the ominous letter begins. "It has come to our attention that you deemed it necessary to arrest five of our fellow anons for their participation in the DDoS attacks against PayPal, Mastercard, and others, that have been carried out in our name in retaliation for those organiza...