From the Turkish Airline workers who sacrificed a camel at Istanbul airport to celebrate a job well done to the German who invented snug spray-on condoms, the world was full of offbeat news in 2006.

Huge celebrations have been held in Romania and Bulgaria to mark their accession to the European Union, 17 years after the fall of Communism. Their entry brings EU membership to 27 - up from 15 three years ago - and a population of half a billion.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have demonstrated a prototype that could offer a new way to power gadgets. The prototype, which consists of plastic and flexible electronics, can wirelessly supply power to any device that touches its surface.

A magnetic resonance imaging machine at the University of Illinois at Chicago tracks neurons in a way that reveals how real-time thoughts form, a report says.

Astronauts are trained to withstand as much as nine times the force of gravity. (Three Gs, by comparison, could make the average guy pass out.) But even the toughest among them fall out of the running when it comes to a launch concept from a small civilian company in Goleta, California. To survive the ride […]

Trying to avoid the chill that sweeps through the office during the winter months, we have been forced to either remain stationary, or do a bunny hop to get around in our USB heating slippers.

Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania have announced details for a suspended-load ergonomic backpack that reduces the force of a backpacks load on the wearer by 86%, allowing wearers to run far more comfortably with heavy loads.