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.”