science

How to Build Your Own Spaceship

When Piers Bizony was 10, his father asked him to keep a scrapbook of space travel. Four decades later, the science writer, still hooked, created this DIY manual for rocket jockeys. Though the book's structure is a weak conceit, it ...READ»

Schools are breeding laziness

It may shock you how little my students study. Last Spring, out of 90 students, not one admitted to spending more than 10 hours a week on school work -- and, a sizable chunk worked less than 5. In any given week, less than 2% did ...READ»

Will NASA Reinvent Its Lunar Rocket Program?

NASA's ambitious design to return humans to the lunar surface has been controversial right from the get-go. It calls for ditching the Space Shuttle entirely and abandoning nearly all of its technology except for the solid rocket ...READ»

A new antibiotic alternative

We've written about Intralytix, NovaBay, and Polymedix—companies developing drugs designed to circumvent the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. Now a hot-off-the-presses study from Nature suggests that ...READ»

Seven Stories This Week: Weird Science Edition

Yes, the King of Pop has gone to meet the Emperor of Pop, and taken much of his patented weirdness with him. Lest you forget that Earth is strange enough even without the scion of Neverland Ranch, here are a few of this week's viral ...READ»

Travel Search Wars: Google Tests City Guides, Bing Travel Plagiarizes

Seems like travel functionality is a trending topic in search engine design: Google's testing intelligently-created City Tours. Meanwhile Bing Travel, which we wrote about recently, is in trouble over an alleged plagiaristic ...READ»

New Material Makes White LED Home Lighting Pretty Certain

Korean and Spanish scientists have pulled off a neat trick--they've discovered a new molecule that will make white LEDs pretty much a certainty for replacing compact fluorescent bulbs. The invention replaces two previous molecules ...READ»

LS9 joins forces with P&G

Last year, I wrote about LS9, the scrappy Bay Area-based company that's engineering microbes to churn out transportation fuel. Now, LS9 has joined forces with Procter and Gamble--an upstart-titan partnership that could potentially ...READ»

Did The iPhone 3G S Sell a Million This Weekend? You Betcha

Some analysis last week poured cold water on the idea that the new iPhone 3G S would outsell its predecessor on the first weekend, and only make 500,000 sales. We say otherwise, and there's plenty of data around the net to back that ...READ»

Digital TV Switch Hailed as Success, Big-Bang Detection Included

Well, it's done: After a delay caused by project mismanagement, the U.S. is now a digital television-only nation. According to the FCC, the big switch on Friday went well. And there is a scientific benefit in the short term, as well.READ»

Data Visualization Borders on Art

Must See Data Viz - Eye Candy w/MeaningREAD»

Google Street View Now Lets You Navigate Like a Superhero

Google's Street View app has always been, if you think about it, a bit mind-blowing (that's why we put Stephen Chau on our list of the 100 Most Creative People). But amazing--and free!--as it is, the app has never been very easy to ...READ»

Sony, Microsoft Motion Controls Will Beat Wii at Its Own Game

Nintendo Wii's role as king of motion gaming consoles is at risk. Sony and Microsoft have both previewed motion control systems at the E3 video game expo, and both systems knock Wii clean off the throne--even though neither has ...READ»

Lithium Batteries on Verge of Explosion (in Power Capacity)

Lithium battery technology--the hidden power behind much of the improvements in our portable gadgets--is about to make a huge step-change, thanks to two different science groups. One uses sulfur and the other uses air--but both ...READ»

Innovative Search Engine

Date: May 15, 2009 Hello, “MelZoo.com” launched on January 01, 2009, is the first flagship; potential of Multi Million-Billion Dollar Business, Factory of product & Services and they will be making it ...READ»

EU Punishment For US Companies

After  Microsoft and Intel who else would be the next candidate for being punished? Will the other US companies be targeted?  Will  it be Google? Just wondering.READ»

Deus Ex Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider is like the Moon--round, large and mystical. To doubting thinkers, it's like the Moon missions: expensive and unnecessary. If you're a Dan Brown fan, it's dangerous. But whatever you think of it, the LHC is ...READ»

OLED's Best Use Yet: Skin Cancer-Killing Bandaid

When you read about OLEDs it's usually in the context of some super-performing display or TV, but now there's interesting news about a medical exploitation of OLED lights. They're being tested as a very efficient way to kill skin ...READ»

Dissolving Styrofoam in Biodiesel Makes Better Fuel

In terms of environmental impact, biodiesel fuel is nicer than "ordinary" diesel. Meanwhile, styrofoam is a nasty, non-biodegradable packaging material. Now, like a scene from Back to the Future made real, scientists have ...READ»

Pizza-Dough Throwers Teach Scientists How to Build a Nanoscale Motor

Scientists hoping to design a tiny, spinning motor capable of assisting in brain surgery are cribbing secrets from an unlikely source: Pizza-dough throwers. Standing-wave ultrasonic motors are related to the motors used in the ...READ»

Women - The Ultimate Entrepreneurs

More than one-third of entrepreneurs in the United States are women, and the growth in the number of woman-owned firms is more than double the rate of all U.S. firms. Stay-at-home moms are multi-tasking more than ever. In between childcare, cooking and cleaning, they are cranking out inventions that are making them millions. In America, women start 424 new enterprises every day that’s more than twice as many as men. READ»

IDEO Takes a Spin Inside a Real-life Holodeck

The hunt is on, to create a real-life Holodeck, and IDEO's designers just got a spin inside one of the leading offerings: The iCube, created by EON Reality. It is a room, measuring 10 feet by 10 feet by 10 feet, that has ...READ»

Inside the Virtual Brain in Life-Size

The AlloSphere is a three-story tall spherical chamber lined on the inside with 360-degree display screens--kind of like an IMAX theater, except panoramic. You view the sphere's content by standing on a breezeway that bisects the ...READ»

• MIT's Sixth Sense Machine Makes Reality Better

What? Clean Air Act Caused Half of Global Warming, Says NASA

In what must rank as the mother of all unintended consequences, and in a finding certain to have effects on international policy, NASA scientists have found that a decrease in airborne sulfates--dirty smokestack particles ...READ»

Rumor: YouTube to Show Sony Movies, as Ad Revenues Plunge

A Credit-Suisse analyst is currently saying that the world's most popular video-sharing website, YouTube, is heading for a loss at the close of this year as it only implements advertising on a fraction of its web pages. ...READ»