We don’t have flying cars, but otherwise, it can be hard for science fiction to keep up with the pace of modern technology. Evan Hoovler of blastr has a list of eight technological wonders from science fiction now present in real life, such as the PADD from Star Trek, now available as the iPad…
This is not a special-effects still from an upcoming movie. Instead, it’s a photo taken at Nyiragongo Volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and National Geographic has the story of a team of Congolese seismologists who journeyed into Nyiragongo’s crater to study the volcano’s massive lava lake, and try to learn more about what’s going on inside a mountain that could potentially kill thousands…
Earth may be round, but not its gravitational field! After two years in orbit, the European Space Agency’s Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer satellite has revealed the clearest picture of earth’s gravity-field map…
John Galliano, the famed Dior fashion designer, lost his job after a drunken anti-Semitic tirade he made was captured on video and ended up on YouTube.
Once upon a time you could make a drunken rant at a bar, write about your secret passions at home, or complain about your manager to friends after work, and your boss would never know about it. But today, thanks to social media, all bets are off.
Low-cost carrier AirTran had the best overall performance of the 16 largest U.S. carriers last year in an annual study of airline quality released Monday, knocking the previous leader – Hawaiian Airlines – into second place. Regional air carrier American Eagle ranked last in the study, which is based on Department of Transportation data.
Graphene is a substance that scientists have been highly interested in as an alternative material for faster-charging batteries. We’ve been hearing for several years about its potential to replace silicone in computer chips, but for the first time, we’re hearing that graphene might also be self-cooling, a feature that might be a huge boon for more efficient and energy-saving devices.
If you read the print edition of a newspaper, still make calls over a landline or plan to rent a tuxedo for an upcoming wedding, you are doing what many of your friends and neighbors gave up long ago.
Nanostructures are introduced to traditional antibiotic drugs they make them much more effective.
Powerful new antibiotics are being developed that act like magnets to destroy bacteria and disease, according to a new study. Researchers from IBM, the computer giant, say they are working on tiny particles known as nanostructures that are attracted to infected cells but do not destroy healthy ones.
A quadrocopter is an aircraft that is lifted and propelled by four rotors. Zurich’s Flying Machine Arena hosted a quadrocopter tennis match, involving a human-robot volley, a doubles match and an impressive robot-to-robot juggling act. The robots were outfitted with tennis rackets, allowing them to fly toward the ball and return a human’s serve.
This is an x-ray of a new stingray that was just discovered in the Amazon rainforest. Dubbed the “pancake” stingray due to it’s resemblance to the breakfast food..
A tiny array of microelectrodes, shown here, was implanted into the brains of epilepsy patients,
allowing scientists to gather data about seizures at the level of single cells.
For the first time, scientists have recorded activity from hundreds of single cells in the human brain during a seizure. The research, published this week in Nature Neuroscience, is part of a growing movement to employ new technologies to study brain processes at the single-cell level, which until recently has been impossible to do in living humans.
In an epileptic seizure, the normally orderly activity of neurons goes haywire. The abnormal amounts of electricity that get discharged can be temporarily disabling. Scientists typically monitor human seizures using electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures electrical activity across millions of neurons at a time, an approach that has revealed much about the overall patterns of activity in seizures. But researchers hope that by studying single cells, they’ll learn how seizures spread…
On April 3rd, 1973, 38 years ago, Martin Cooper made a phone call while walking down the street in New York City. At the time, he was the general manager of the company’s communications division. He had promoted the idea that phone numbers shouldn’t be tethered to a place, but to people. And they should be able to take their phones with them, anywhere they went.
When Martin Cooper made that first cell phone call, he did not make it to another cell phone. People didn’t have them yet — who could he call?