Google hopes to build on its existing translation database of 52 languages.
 Search giant Google has said that it is working on a phone that can translate live, automatically between languages.
Live language translation on mobile phones could be just two years away, according to search giant Google. The company already offers text translation services and [...]

Mimetic races of Heliconius erato (left) and Heliconius melpomene (right) from the Tarapoto area of Peru.
How two butterfly species have evolved exactly the same striking wing colour and pattern has intrigued biologists since Darwin’s day. Now, scientists at Cambridge have found “hotspots” in the butterflies’ genes that they believe will explain one of the most [...]

NIST postdoctoral researcher James Chin-wen Chou with the world’s most precise clock, based on the vibrations of a single aluminum ion (electrically charged atom).
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have built an enhanced version of an experimental atomic clock based on a single aluminum atom that is now the world’s most [...]

A new study sheds light on the flight behaviours that enable insects to undertake long-distance migrations, and highlights the remarkable abilities of these insect migrants.
A study published in Science, by researchers at Rothamsted Research (an institute of the BBSRC), the Met Office, the Natural Resources Institute, and the Universities of Exeter, Greenwich and York, sheds [...]

Artist’s rendering of cell structure.
Monash University biochemists have found a critical piece in the evolutionary puzzle that explains how life on Earth evolved millions of centuries ago.

3D illustration of the knee. Damaged cartilage can lead to joint pain and loss of physical function and eventually to osteoarthritis.
Northwestern University researchers are the first to design a bioactive nanomaterial that promotes the growth of new cartilage in vivo and without the use of expensive growth factors. Minimally invasive, the therapy activates the bone [...]

Such a fine place for old pussies to hang out!

Homeleigh retirement village is a perfect place to spend the twilight years, with staff to clean and cook, a garden and immaculate quarters. But forget about signing up – unless you are a cat.
Inside a fully functional house next to Keysborough Animal Shelter in outer Melbourne, [...]

 
One important factor that can explain Avatar’s success at the box office is certainly the 3D experience viewers can have when they walk into the right movie theater. But what about watching Avatar in “4D”? In Korea, you can.

A swordfish attack punctured an oil loading pipe in Angola recently, causing a three-day delay in tanker shipments of Girassol crude. Total, the French oil company which operates the pipeline, declared force majeure on shipments. Total later said that swordfish had damaged a flexible loading pipe. Declaring force majeure frees an operator from supply obligations [...]

How many ways can you spell YUMMY!

The day when restaurants will serve garlic grasshoppers or beetle larva skewers is getting closer in Costa Rica, where scientists are “growing” insects for human consumption.
Entomologist Manuel Zumbado’s research into this alternative food source is inspired by practices in Africa, where insects have long been part of people’s diet.
With [...]

Credit card numbers are so passe. Today’s hackers know the real powerhouse data to steal is emission certificates.
That’s exactly what hackers went after last week when they obtained unauthorized access to online accounts where companies maintain their carbon credits, according to the German newspaper Der Spiegel.
The hackers launched a targeted phishing attack against employees of [...]

Debris objects in Earth’s orbit is an increasingly troublesome issue.
An international air traffic control for outer space should be set up to prevent damage to satellites and spacecraft orbiting the Earth, according to proposal to be discussed at the United Nations next week.  Space experts from around the world will discuss ways of tackling the [...]

Acrylic microcapsules are filled with a paraffin wax that can absorb heat from buildings.

Building materials that absorb heat during the day and release it at night, eliminating the need for air-conditioning in some climates, will soon be on the market in the United States. The North Carolina company National Gypsum is testing drywall sheets–the plaster [...]

Turning The Tide To A Well Lit Tomorrow on the Highway

As far as practical renewable energy concepts go, these wind-powered highway lights are pretty elegant. And from my layman’s perspective, they seem to be practical and realistic. I like ‘em!

Bodywork could one day double as a car’s battery
Parts of a car’s bodywork could one day double up as its battery, according to the scientists behind a new €3.4 million project announced today.
Researchers from Imperial College London, UK, and their European partners, including Volvo Car Corporation, are developing a prototype material which can store and [...]

Chalk Crayon Under an SEM Scanning Electron Microscope
ASPEX is the world’s only SEM Elemental Analysis company that allows anyone to send in their sample to get scanned by our SEM.  Ever wonder what something looks like up close? Really close? Most people have seen objects under a standard optical microscope, but few have seen what [...]

According to a new mathematical analysis, the mysterious “3/4 law of metabolism” — proposed by Max Kleiber in 1932 and later described as “extended to all life forms” from bacteria to whales — is wrong.
Apparently, the mysterious “3/4 law of metabolism” — proposed by Max Kleiber in 1932, printed in biology textbooks for decades, explained [...]

If you’re stealing a car these days, there’s a good chance you’re not bothering to actually pick the locks, but if you are, your job is about to get a little easier. A device called the Electronic Key Impressioner is inserted into a car door and scans the position of the tumblers inside. ..

Perhaps a little tart in the bathroom?

Mildred’s Temple Kitchen is inviting customers to have sex in its bathrooms. The Valentine’s weekend promotion takes uncomfortable but electrifying sex from the close confines of an airplane and transfers it to the unisex stalls of the Hanna Ave. restaurant.
The Liberty Village restaurant proposes its modern bathrooms become one [...]

Bacteria (Streptococcus pneumoniae, red) under attack by a neutrophil (blue).
Scientists have long pondered the seeming contradiction that taking broad-spectrum antibiotics over a long period of time can lead to severe secondary bacterial infections. Now researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine may have figured out why.

In rejecting the soup theory the researchers turned to the Earth’s chemistry to identify the energy source which could power the first primitive predecessors of living organisms: geochemical gradients across a honeycomb of microscopic natural caverns at hydrothermal vents. These catalytic cells generated lipids, proteins and nucleotides which may have given rise to the first [...]

A small but significant proportion of morbidly obese people are missing a section of their DNA, according to new research.
A small but significant proportion of morbidly obese people are missing a section of their DNA, according to research published February 3 in Nature. The authors of the study, from Imperial College London and ten other [...]

Straight out of China comes “The Machismo!” – billed as “the world’s hottest cigarette lighter mobile phone.” Does that mean there’s more than one? Like, are there other, lesser, not-as-hot cell phones with built-in cigarette lighters? Nothing would surprise me after seeing this.
According to the product description on Chinavasion.com…

An Icey New Idea
An abandoned home has been encased in ice in an effort to draw attention to the housing crisis in the US.
Gregory Holm, a photographer, and Matthew Radune, a New York architect, picked a house in Detroit which had been slated for demolition, from the state’s land bank.
In return, they agreed to pay [...]

Just what we need. Murray Hill Incorporated has just announced its intention to run for Congress in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District.
Murray Hill Inc. is believed to be the first “corporate person” to exercise its constitutional right to run for office. As Supreme Court observer Lyle Denniston wrote in his SCOTUSblog, “If anything, the decision in Citizens United [...]