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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How's this for spooky action at a distance? The sun, at 93 million miles away, appears to be influencing the decay of radioactive elements inside the Earth, researchers say.
Given
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The best way to enjoy a national park, in my opinion, involves little more than a tent, hiking boots and a hydration pack - the only gadgetry I bring is a digital camera. This Luddite sensibility is not shared by many of my fellow park-goers, of course. As
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During the siege of Leningrad, 12 scientists starved to death rather than eat the grains stored at Pavlosk Agricultural Station, the world's first seed bank. According to an AP
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You may not have heard about it during your local traffic report this weekend, but anyone negotiating the Beijing-Tibet expressway in recent days is painfully aware of the problem: a 100 kilometre jam that slowed
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A floating crane prepares to raise from the depths a South Korean navy combat corvette that mysteriously split in two and sank on March 26. To allow military and civilian investigators from South Korea, the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and Sweden to examine the 1,322-ton
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Remember earlier this month when the government said it thought only a quarter of the oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster was still in the water? Think again. Two new studies conclude things are still quite dire in the Gulf, estimating not only that 79 percent of
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While M&Ms have famously claimed that a thin candy shell ensures they melt in your mouth rather than your hand, the same can't be said for chocolate bars, which seem to melt easily within their own packaging. But if Kraft Foods gets its way, the soft, melted candy
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File this under news you can raise a glass to: Researchers at Edinburgh Napier University have figured out how to turn the leftovers from one of Scotland's biggest exports into biofuel. Made from byproducts of the whisky-making process, the scotch-derived
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Tagging trees with embedded RFID tags not only helps logging companies keep track of the origin and destination of timber on the truck, but it helps keep companies honest and aids in the prosecution of illegal logging operations. But those RFID chips, unless they're expensively
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First dolphins caught on. Now underwater robots are using iPads to communicate, thanks to a new system designed at York University in Toronto.
As Technology Review reports,
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Capture a terrorist, eat a fish: it's all in a day's work for the US navy's latest terror-fighting weapon.
Specially trained marine mammals were the star attraction in a Governor Schwarzenegger-initiated anti-terrorist training session held at ports throughout California this week. One
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Smart house tech is about to go a step beyond your average energy-efficiency monitoring systems. What about a house that prepares a fresh pot of coffee when you wake up, plays your favorite music without being told to, and sets the thermostat to your ideal setting? Now that's
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The West Mata volcano erupted nearly 4,000 feet underwater in the Pacific Ocean
This
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While Toyota and Volkswagen – the world’s two biggest car makers – are locked in a battle for global sales leadership over the next decade, driven by a new generation of hybrid and electric cars, Japanese maker Honda is working on technology that may well leapfrog them both. Most big
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Good morning, readers. Settled in, ready to take on the day? Great, we hope you have a good one. Also, FYI, a new mutation that makes bacteria resistant to pretty much every antibiotic known to man
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A floating crane prepares to raise from the depths a South Korean navy combat corvette that mysteriously split in two and sank on March 26. To allow military and civilian investigators from South Korea, the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and Sweden to examine the 1,322-ton
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The world's deepest drill is about to get taller-tall enough to dig into Earth's semi-molten interior. Already, the Chikyu research vessel is capable of fetching samples at depths of 2,890 feet below the seabed, two to four times that of any other drill. In 2007, off the coast of Japan,
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UK researchers seeking to cut back on greenhouse gases have found a deliciously potent weapon for fighting agricultural methane emissions: curry. It turns out two spices customarily used to season curry dishes -- coriander and turmeric -- have an antibiotic effect in
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Remember earlier this month when the government said it thought only a quarter of the oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster was still in the water? Think again. Two new studies conclude things are still quite dire in the Gulf, estimating not only that 79 percent of
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What if we could use our pollution as fuel? That notion seems intractable within the current energy paradigm, in which so many of our pollutants are byproducts of our fuels. But it's precisely that idea that inspired Mexican artist Gilberto Esparza to create "Nomadic
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While Toyota and Volkswagen – the world’s two biggest car makers – are locked in a battle for global sales leadership over the next decade, driven by a new generation of hybrid and electric cars, Japanese maker Honda is working on technology that may well leapfrog them both. Most big
Read more...
If you've been anywhere near a television or Web enabled device in the last week (and you must have been), you know that a volcanic eruption in Iceland has grounded airline flights across Europe and even halted a few flights into the northeastern-most
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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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There's been a lot of rather vague back and forth regarding the magnitude of the Gulf oil leak -- it's worse than the Exxon Valdez, but not as bad as 1979's Ixtoc I leak, but worse than the Pittsburgh Pirates, etc. etc. Now researchers have qualified
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It's easy not to think much about oil spill remediation technology until something like the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster happens, but materials scientists spend a lot of time thinking about how different materials respond to all kinds of offending substances. In
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Scientists trying to explain the universe's accelerating expansion usually point to dark energy, which seems to be pushing everything apart.
But an Indiana University professor has a new theory, reports New Scientist:
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The raising of livestock consumes two-thirds of the planet's farmland, and is a major source of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, tons of edible, sustainable protein swarms all around us, free for the taking. In a new policy paper being
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A floating crane prepares to raise from the depths a South Korean navy combat corvette that mysteriously split in two and sank on March 26. To allow military and civilian investigators from South Korea, the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and Sweden to examine the 1,322-ton
Read more...
The pressure to green-up the Olympics builds with each games, forcing the host cities to get creative. Like using beetle-chewed wood for your skating center's roof
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