19.02.11

New Wireless Tech Lets Radio Devices Send and Receive Simultaneously, Doubling Efficiency

Electrical engineering grad students Jung Il Choi and Mayank Jain (along with fellow grad student Kannan Srinivasan, not pictured here) developed the tech along with their professors at Stanford. Radio communications devices can either send or receive wireless signals
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Google Rolls Out a Browser-Based Content Farm Blocker, Helping Users Sort the Wheat from the Chaff

It seems like everyone in the twitterverse, the blogosphere, and tumblrdom is getting fed up with so-called content farms--those mostly-useless text generators that turn out articles based on the terms people most commonly search for. Now the Googleplex is getting
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By Shining a Laser From the Ground, Researchers Could Easily Measure Earth's Magnetic Field

Satellites, step aside To map the earth's magnetic field, scientists usually take readings from one of a number of satellites, a process that is expensive and often less-than accurate. Physicists at UC Berkeley have a better idea: measure
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Some Japanese Patients Shun Robot Helpers, Throwing High-Tech Future of Elder Care Into Doubt

In Japan, robot-led weddings, robot factory workers and even squeaky robot pets
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Toshiba's Automated Checkout Cam Can Distinguish Different Varieties of Apple

Self-checkout kiosks at the grocery store can save time and space for quick shoppers, but if an item doesn't have a bar code--like, say, produce (hopefully)--you still have to search through the list of variations, which can lose any time you've gained by phasing
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Chip-Sized Particle Accelerators Could Lead to Cancer-Fighting Ray Guns

Forget the gigantic Large Hadron Collider - how about a particle-accelerator-on-a-chip? OK, so it can't reach the energies produced at
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Water Flea Genome is the Most Complex Yet, and May Help Scientists Study Organisms' Response to Stress

A microscopic, see-through water flea is the most complex creature ever studied, genomically speaking. Daphnia pulex is the first crustacean to ever have its genome
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National Health Detective Squad Uses Genomic Tools to Diagnose its First Mysterious Disease

Medical detectives National Institutes of Health have just cracked their first case wide open, a result they hope to repeat with a slew of other uncharacterized illnesses and conditions. The Undiagnosed Diseases Program (UDP), a sleuthing agency set up within the NIH
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With Robotic Cargo Ferry Launch, Europe Will Become an Official Supplier to the ISS This Month

The ESA's newest Automated Transfer Vehicle--ATV-2, otherwise known as Johannes Kepler--is loaded up and primed for its February 15th launch to the International Space Station, marking a several significant milestones for the European Space Agency and its contribution
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A Company Seeks Ubiquitous Iris Scans On PCs, ATMs and Cell Phones

A company based in Puerto Rico wants to install iris-detection capabilities in everything from cell phones to ATMs, beefing up personalized
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All About the A380

Everyone is talking about the A380 today. Find out why here I live in the upper North Shore
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Hubble 3D IMAX Trailer Released, Looks Amazing

Just refrain from trying to touch the screen NASA launched one of its boldest space missions in 2009 to repair and save the aging Hubble Space Telescope. Now everyone can get a glimpse of astronaut derring-do in a preview trailer for the upcoming Hubble 3D IMAX film
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Video: Military's New Water Guns Can Rip Through Steel, Disabling IEDs

Need to disarm an IED? Make sure you've got your Super Soaker handy. Sorry, make that your "Fluid Blade Disablement Tool." The Stingray, the military's newest bomb-fighting tech, is a small water gun developed
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New Electric Skin Could Bring the Human Touch to Robots, Artificial Limbs

Human skin is primed for touch - even minuscule pressure from a fly is enough to make you flinch. This ability does not yet extend to artificial limbs, however, and robots are a long way from having sensitive tactile abilities. Now two California research teams have announced
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Munich Deploys Custom Bacteria at Oktoberfest to Devour Ubiquitous Stink of Stale Beer

Bavarian beer purveyors concerned about a smelly Oktoberfest are hoping bacteria can make the experience more enjoyable. They plan to pour a solution of live bacteria on the
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MIT's Opera of the Future Features Singing Walls and Dancing Robots

A new opera produced by the lab behind Guitar Hero technology includes robotic singers, interactive instruments and a focus on technology that could change the way we experience live performances.
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File-Sharing Group Mulls a Floating Pirate Ship of Servers in the Sky

Pirate Parties International, the central group that unites all of the disparate political Pirate Parties in other countries, recently had a meeting wherein a particularly bonkers proposal was discussed. The problem: Where can servers that store data frequently seen as unsavory
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Singapore's SkyPark infinity pool lets you swim to the edge of the world

You've got to admire an architect who can take an ordinary hotel pool and turn it into a genuinely terrifying attraction. The newly built Sands SkyPark in Singapore offers guests a place to cool off on the 55th floor, nearly 200
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Iran's Boat-Plane-Thing Would Strike Fear Into Other Flying Military Boats if Any Existed

Iran's Sacred Week of Defense (celebrating its eight-year resistance to the Iraqi invation of the 1980s) is never without a healthy dose of pomp and ceremony, but this week Iran's defense ministry took the usual military parade to the waterfront. Yesterday Iran unveiled
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Violent Star Birth Spawns Serene Snapshot of the Lagoon Nebula

Without a telescope, the Lagoon Nebula is faintly visible with the naked eye as a unremarkable patch of gray in the heart of the Milky Way. Observed up close with the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys, it looks slightly
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Video: An incredibly accurate (working!) hoverboard replica would make future-Marty proud

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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Video-stitching surveillance camera gives DHS 360-degree, 100-megapixel seamless views

Big Brother was watching before, but soon he'll bewatching with a whole new set of high-tech eyes. The US Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is creating a wide-eyed
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Iran's Boat-Plane-Thing Would Strike Fear Into Other Flying Military Boats if Any Existed

Iran's Sacred Week of Defense (celebrating its eight-year resistance to the Iraqi invation of the 1980s) is never without a healthy dose of pomp and ceremony, but this week Iran's defense ministry took the usual military parade to the waterfront. Yesterday Iran unveiled
Read more...


Video: Apocalypse-Fearing Folk Can Seek Shelter in Futuristic US$10 Million Doomsday Bunker

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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'Imaginary' hardware interface lets users wield their own fantasy peripherals to control a real device

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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Liquid mirror breakthrough could make state-of-the-art optics cheap

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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Kinect: good with kids, bad with couches

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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Satellite creates first global gravity map of Earth

Using only two months of data, the GOCE gravity-tracking satellite has built the first-ever full map of Earth's gravitational field. The map, called a geoid, reflects the bumps and valleys of Earth's gravitational effects. The map shows what the Earth would look
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Quantum Hackers Use Lasers to Crack Commercial Quantum Encryption Without Leaving a Trace

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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Intellitar's "Digital Clones" Creepily Preserve Your Legacy For Future Generations

What do you get when you cross a 1990s AIM-bot with the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks? Today, a company called Intellitar is set to release Virtual Eternity, a bit
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