Are we alone in the universe? Are there planets like Earth around other “suns” that might harbor life? Thanks to a recent technology breakthrough on a key NASA planet-finding project, the dream of answering those questions is no longer light-years away.

Brent Green: Fidelity Investments recently unveiled a 30-second television commercial that presents the biography of a Boomer woman. In this frenetic, flowing montage, augmented by rapid cuts of iconographic images such as the “peace sign,” Fidelity has effectively captured powerful elements of the Boomer zeitgeist.

The combined efforts of researchers from Durham University, Imperial College, London and the University of Sheffield have fructified. Till now the basic computer is usually made by using semiconductor electronics. The researchers have gone ahead and have successfully created a computer by using magnetic microchips rather than semiconductor electronics.

The Recording Industry has released a new ‘unbiased’ study, blaming file sharing in part for the erosion of Canadian Society’s core values.

South African health authorities may have uncovered a “spit scam” in which tuberculosis sufferers sell spit samples to healthy South Africans trying to qualify for disability grants.

Thomas Frey: The idea of offering cash rewards for technological innovation goes back to a time long before humans took flight. In the 1700s, governments awarded prizes for inventions of military importance — a chronometer that would keep warships from getting lost at sea, or a food preservation technique suitable for the battlefield.

Nicholas Negroponte, the co-founder of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, detailed specifications for a $100 windup-powered laptop targeted at children in developing nations.

Tim O’Reilly:
Authors struggle, mostly in vain, against their fated obscurity. According to Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks sales from major booksellers, only 2 percent of the 1.2 million unique titles sold in 2004 had sales of more than 5,000 copies. Against this backdrop, the recent Authors Guild suit against the Google Library Project is […]

A lesson learned by centuries of beachcombers has been distilled to a physicist’s formula: to make the perfect sandcastle, use eight parts sand to one part water.

A scientist at the Medical University of South Carolina has found that magnetic resonance imaging machines also can serve as lie detectors.

Genetically altered mice discovered accidentally at the Wistar Institute in Pennsylvania have the seemingly miraculous ability to regenerate like a salamander, and even regrow vital organs.

They are called CubeSats. Packed with microelectronics, these ultra-small spacecraft can fly in formation, dock with each other, carry out science duties, inspect other satellites, scan our planet—and might be used to create an actual Earth-orbiting game of “Space Pong.”

When background noise is horribly loud - in a tank, on an airport runway or aircraft carrier - ordinary microphones are useless. Even mics that clamp to the throat or skull are no good because the noise vibrates the sensor.

An Australian company has come up with a remote-controlled crib that rocks your infant to sleep.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign scientists say a hybrid grass that can grow 13 feet high may become a renewable source of fuel in the future.

Tens of thousands of empty storage containers are stacked in towers along I-95 across from the harbor in Newark, New Jersey. They’re heaped there in perpetuity, too cheap to be shipped back to Asia but too expensive to melt down.

Faced with a growing number of medical students and few training hospitals, a Mexican university is turning to robotic patients to better train future doctors.

In a major breakthrough, scientists in Korea report using umbilical cord blood stem cells to restore feeling and mobility to a spinal-cord injury patient.

Seth Godin:
Notice that ideas never spread because they are important to the originator.
Notice too that a key dynamic in the spread of the idea is the capsule that contains it. If it’s easy to swallow, tempting and complete, it’s a lot more likely to get a good start.

A Cornell University study suggests unwed mothers are significantly less likely to marry and more likely to cohabit than women without children.

A Baltimore scientist has used a protein called Hairless in hair progenitor cells to restore follicle growth in genetically hairless mice.

Proponents of the latest Web trends were warned on Tuesday that the rest of the world may not have a clue what they are talking about.

An Australian pharmaceutical company said on Tuesday a naturally occurring chemical extracted from oranges can be used to treat HIV/AIDS, influenza, SARS and the common cold.

Japanese scientists have taken the first photographs of one of the most mysterious creatures in the deep ocean — the giant squid. Great photos.

“Must-have” devices seem to instantly lose their charm for me when they’re adopted en masse — even when it comes to the iPod.