Plants are extremely efficient converters of light into energy, more or less setting the bar for researchers creating photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight into electricity. As such, researchers are constantly trying to mimic the tricks that millions of years of
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Researchers at Yale's Grab Lab aren't about to let the nuances of rotary-wing flight restrict what unmanned aerial vehicles can do. A team there has developed a hand-like modular grasping and manipulation platform that can be fitted to the bellies of UAVs to provide them
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Quantum cryptography is one of the most secure known means of transmitting data, due to the fact that even if a third party does intercept a quantum signal, that interference changes the encryption key, making the tampering apparent to parties at both ends. But a handful
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Plenty of human-gadget interfaces can let you control a robot or a computer with your mind. But these communications are command-based -- your PR2 still can't tell whether you're asking it for a beer to celebrate, or to drink away your sorrows. An EEG-based affective computing
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A sharp-looking tabletop touchscreen can be used to command robots and combine data from various sources, potentially improving military planning,
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Nano-thin sheets of metal can be used to build a tiny high-definition display, according to University of Michigan researchers. They built
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Swarms of autonomous, solar-powered towel-bots, based on a nanowire mesh, could help those oil-eating microbes clean up the Gulf of Mexico. The "Seaswarm" robot moves like a tank in water, using
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Everyone loves the beer-fetching Willow Garage PR2 robot. Evidently, it even loves itself. When developers at Bosch Research gave it a pen, it drew a handsome self-portrait.
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Human pluripotent stem cells - the kind that can become any kind of specialized cell and therefore be used to treat pretty much any kind of cellular damage - hold seemingly limitless promise if only we could manipulate them in useful quantities. Now, researchers at
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A new generation of e-nose uses a DNA scaffolding and molecular fluorescence to distinguish among various vapours, in a breakthrough that could make electronic sniffers more
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A young German guy has a detailed Instructable online this week that explains how you can exercise your inner narcissist and make a 3D paper clone of yourself.
It's worth checking out
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The Most Advanced R/C Car LOSI 1/10 TEN-T TRUGGY RTR Top speed: 72km/h Size: 34.3 x 45 cm. Price: US$500 Get it: losi.com
This 18-inch off-roader
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For those out there that simply cannot wait to get their hands on the latest version of Apple’s iPhone and have been champing at the bit to get any indication of when it will be released, the good news is the end is nigh. According to a recent Apple press release published in full at
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Anthony Le, 25, has been a fan of Iron Man since he was a kid, but when he heard that the comic-book superhero was hitting the big screen in 2008, he was inspired to build his own Iron Man suit. That version was more of a costume, but his new one, finished just in time for
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Per Segerbäck lives in a modest cottage in a nature reserve some 120km northeast of Stockholm. Wolves, moose and brown bears roam freely past his front door. He keeps limited human company, because human technology makes him physically ill. How ill? On a walk last summer, he ran into one of
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Using homemade software and a standard computer port, a team of scientists has figured out exactly how easy it is to hack into a modern car -- scary news for motorists already wary of faulty brake and accelerator systems.
The research team wrote code that allows
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Virgin Galactic just released some nice video of its latest SpaceShipTwo (aka VSS Enterprise) test flight, the first with the spacecraft's two-pilot flight crew aboard.
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We're putting things that used to be on paper on video devices, things usually associated with large video screens onto pocket-sized devices, and now Sony is putting video on a flexible
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Videocalling has been a sci-fi staple for decades. From 2001 to Back to the Future people chatting face-to-face from great distances was a way of saying "Hey, look, it's the future!" So does FaceTime mean we're in the future?
FaceTime is
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Our computer doesn?t blow up. Is this really a Microsoft product?
That?s right, Popular Science
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Apple's iPad was finally launched yesterday to eager Australian crowds yesterday, with numerous media reports of enormous crowds being piled up outside
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The closer we get to the year 2015, the louder people lament that our world hardly resembles the one depicted in Back to the Future II. Although it will be awhile before any of us coast around in a flying Delorean, we've piped down our complaints, as a young
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A doomsday bunker envisioned by California company Vivos can offer you, your family, and 4,000 other people the chance to escape the end of the world in a network of 20 underground shelters. Surely even the sceptics can't resist the allure of scary music played over scenes of comfortable underground
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After a weekend using the iPad, I've realised I'm not interested in hedging my reaction to it with careful considerations of its lack of a USB port or webcam. It's not every day, or every year or maybe even every decade that we're able to see a piece of technology that takes a familiar human
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Imagine a gesture-based mobile device with no screen, no keyboard, and no other peripheral inputs or outputs, a mobile device that's not really a device at all. Can you see it in your mind's eye? If so, you're probably picturing something akin to a new
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A $136 million Earth-based telescope using brand new adaptive optics just trumped Hubble's deep space image clarity three-fold, but such high tech optics aren't just reserved for high-dollar observatories. A breakthrough in deformable liquid mirror technology
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Microsoft's Kinect, the controller-free, gesture-based gaming platform that finally saw an official unveiling at E3 this week continues to surprise us, but not always necessarily in good ways. For instance, we think it's awesome that the non-peripheral peripheral can
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With Avatar, the highest-grossing movie of all time, and the World Cup, the most-watched TV broadcast, both in 3-D, it was only a matter of time until Nintendo, the most popular video game maker in the world, jumped on the three-dimensional bandwagon. And last
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The future of community bike systems may not require much pedaling at all; Sanyo has just installed two "Solar Parking Lots" that serve as solar charging stations for 100 Eneloop electric hybrid
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It's a question many experienced gamers have probably asked: Why do video game software publishers continue to print instruction manuals for their games? It's not as though games aren't already furnished with comprehensive training modes and option menus that can't be summarily skipped by players
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