01.03.11

MIT Femtosecond Laser Camera Shoots Pics Around Corners, No Periscope Required

To most of us, seeing what's around the corner before rounding the bend is known as premonition. For students and professors at MIT's Media Lab, it's called physics. The lab is working on a laser-based camera that can snap
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CERN Researchers Trap Antimatter Hydrogen Molecules For the First Time

While CERN researchers at the Large Hadron Collider continue to smash protons, create mini Big Bangs, and otherwise probe the fundamental fabrics
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Professor Is Getting a Camera Surgically Implanted in the Back of His Head

All art is introspective - or so it is said - but a New York University photography professor is taking the idea of turning the lens around on himself to a literal extreme. Assistant professor Wafaa Bilal is implanting
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Hayabusa Probe Has Successfully Brought Back First Asteroid Dust to Earth

Ever since Japan's asteroid exploring spacecraft Hyabusa crash-landed in the Australian outback this summer after a seven year round trip through space, astronomers and space geeks the world over have been waiting to hear confirmation from JAXA (the Japanese space agency)
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New Bacteria-Killing Light Can Destroy Superbugs With the Flip of a Switch

Sterilization is hands down one of the most important technologies ever developed by mankind, but though we've known how to do battle with bacterial pathogens in places like the operating room for decades, superbugs like MRSA and Clostridium difficile persist in hospital
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China Plans Commercial Jet, Challenger to Boeing and Airbus

It's been a tough couple of weeks for the world's two premier builders of large commercial jets. An Airbus A380, the new crown jewel in Airbus's fleet, suffered an engine
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The Largest Communication Antenna Ever Put Into Space Will Beam 4G Where Towers Won't

Boeing has received the first signals from SkyTerra 1, a communications satellite it built for LightSquared that was hurled into orbit aboard a Proton rocket launched from Kazakhstan yesterday. The
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World's Largest Video Protein Database Promises Rapid Drug Development

A new database developed by Spanish biologists is giving pharmaceutical quick access to protein structure data that could lead to more rapid development of important biologic drugs. The database, known as MoDEL, contains protein motion data for more than 1,700 different
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The Navy's Free Electron Laser System Will be More Than Just a Death Ray

But don't worry, it will still be partly a death ray The Navy has been seeking its "Holy Grail" free electron laser (FEL) weapon for a while now, but it would rather you think of it more as a multipurpose
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Construction Begins on America's First Commercial Spaceship Factory

Who says America isn't a manufacturing economy anymore? The country has already dedicated her first commercial spaceport,
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A Dishless Future: New Flat Antennas Can Work As Satellite TV Signal Receivers

Satellite dishes as we know them - both the huge ones that require a corner of the backyard and the more modern, compact variety that mount on rooftops - could be on their way out. A grad student at the Netherlands' University of Twente has devised a new
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Microsoft Announces Office 2010 Pricing For Australia

Looks like it's time to update again, folks. But this time, Microsoft has a slightly more complicated pricing system based on the type of computer you're using (and the kind of package you want). Essentially, people who've bought ready-made home computers from any of the major manufacturers
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'Moon Bombing' Data Shows South Pole Crater is Wetter Than Some Parts of Earth

The moon's south pole could be a pleasantly moist place to put a moon base When NASA "bombed" the moon back in October there was a lot of fanfare leading up to a visually
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Philadelphia Eagles to Be Powered by On-Site Renewable Energy in 10 Months

Those spiky things around the stadium's top? Those are 20-foot-tall wind turbines. 80 of them The Philadelphia Eagles announced a partnership with Solar Blue to completely re-green their
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Opinion: Should You Buy An iPad?

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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Video: Virgin's VSS enterprise makes its first crewed test flight

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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NASA's Tasty-Sounding O/OREOS Mission Launches Today to Study Life's Origins In Outer Space

A nanosatellite no bigger than a loaf of bread -- and named after cookies -- is set to launch today to study the origins of life in the universe. Its name stands for Organism/Organic
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Video: Sony unveils paper-thin OLED screen that rolls up while still playing

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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Is Apple's FaceTime on the iPhone really from the future?

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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Bandage Changes Color to Indicate State of Wound Underneath

Researchers in Germany have created bandages that turn purple at the first sign of infection. A new wound dressing, developed at the Fraunhofer Research Institution
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The mind: no longer a terrible thing to waste

It is said that life imitates art and vice versa. So it should come as no surprise that various fictional quotes (or even entire texts) are so commonly used to define us. This is, in itself, not problematic from my side of the fence as there is no need to reinvent the defining quotation wheel:
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Photographing the elusive true self

The fantastic thing about slow news weeks is that I get to be incredibly obscure with my blog topic choices, which can mean only one thing: exploring the philosophy of the everyday. You may have seen this
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The logic of luck

In Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi’s opinion, his empirical research into the phenomenon otherwise known as luck has reaped no results. Tesla Patent Pending’s empirical research into the same phenomenon, on the other hand, has pointed very much towards the existence of the global conspiracy
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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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To Thwart Distracted Driving, US Government Considers Cell Phone Jammers in Cars

The Obama administration is considering disabling cell phones in American cars, aiming to cut down on distracted
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Water found on the moon

Colonisation is now a (distant) possibility! The Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) on the Indian
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New Electric Car Seats Two, Hits 75 MPH, Needs a Name

Myers Motors Unveils New Electric
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Brain Implants by 2020

If the idea of turning consumers into true cyborgs sounds creepy, don't tell Intel researchers. Intel's Pittsburgh lab aims to develop brain implants that can control
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Electromagnetic Pulse Cannon Could Demo Car-Stopping Power Next Month

U.S. Marines could deploy the non-lethal weapon if it proves viable Stopping a speeding
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Sous Vide Supreme Review: The Tenderest Meats, From the Science Lab To Your Home Kitchen

A new machine aims to bring sous vide cooking to the home chef for the first time Sous vide
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