ANU researchers have helped to uncover the courses of some of the world’s oldest rivers and streams, buried for millions of years under the Simpson Desert in central Australia. The research project was able to peer beneath the desert sands to map the underlying landscape thanks to software that models how water moves across the surface of the continent.

Arsenic levels detected in toenail clippings from children living in the Victorian Goldfields region are not alarming, but suggest that we should not be too complacent, according to research from the University of Ballarat.

Piezoelectric materials that create energy when flexed might go beyond recharging our smart phones and help make hydrogen fuel. Scientists have harnessed piezoelectric energy from nanocrystal fibers to split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas.

"This is a new phenomenon, converting mechanical energy directly to chemical energy," said Huifang Xu, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He and his colleagues have dubbed it the piezoelectrochemical (PZEC) effect.

Earlier today, I came upon the site of a man who is building his own jet-powered motorcycle. That's right. He's converting turbochargers into jet engines and building a motorcycle around them. But that's not all; there are apparently a lot of these crazies out there. Here's a look at some.

Tiny manufacturing flaws on the atomic level might cause most companies to throw up their hands, but MIT-spinoff Verayo saw them as the key to creating the perfect anti-counterfeiting tags for everything from Walmart DVD shipments to futuristic passports. The company's radio frequency identification (RFID) tags rely upon no two chip being exactly alike on the atomic level, Technology Review reports.

Here's one genius computer program you might consider pushing virally for science's sake. The "Quake Catchers" program aims to make earthquake detection a lot easier and cheaper by taking advantage of accelerometers built into MacBooks and other newer laptops, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Our solar system's 'hood may get a bit rougher sometime during the next 1.5 million years. An astronomer has given an 86 percent chance for a neighboring star to smash into the frozen Oort Cloud surrounding the outskirts of the solar system, and may scatter some comets toward Earth, Technology Review reports.

Perhaps it's time for Space Ghost to hand over his moniker to the International Space Station (ISS). The orbital outpost makes for an eerie blue shadow in this image taken by a German radar satellite, SPACE.com reports.

The snapshot was taken by Germany's TerraSAR-X satellite on March 13, 2008. But the German space agency only released the startling view of the then-incomplete space station this month.

Yes: this is, in fact, the largest video-game peripheral you've ever seen. The VirtuSphere is a new interface that captures movements in 360 degrees, and translates them into a video game. The gang over at Joystiq first caught wind of the human hamster ball in '06, but got to see it in the flesh just this week.

Brain scan technologies still can't do mind reading as such, but they do provide a window into what the human brain is doing at a given time. Now a computer algorithm has used brain activity patterns to predict which of three activities human volunteers were remembering.

Scientists showed 10 volunteers three short films that featured women carrying out ordinary activities. Some of the footage included drinking coffee and then tossing the paper cup, as well as mailing out a letter.

Pop quiz. An asteroid the size of Manhattan is hurtling towards Earth, its impact is sure to result in mass extinction and the destruction of humanity as we know it. What do you do?

The traditional answers would be "blow it up". But new research from Los Alamos National Lab and the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows that if the asteroid isn't moving fast enough, or if the nuke isn't big enough, the asteroid will pull itself back together, T-1000-style, within a matter of hours.

Tests for toxins or pathogens generally rely on chemical reactions. But a team of researchers at Cornell University have created a sensor that detects the presence of chemicals based on the mechanical disruption of a nanoscale system. The device can instantly detect as little as a single molecule of a substance.

For the last five years, eVolo Magazine has hosted a futuristic skyscraper design competition. Usually, the entrants imagine giant buildings taller than anything under construction today. However, the most impressive entry in this year's competition goes the opposite route, by dropping the building straight into the sea. This floating building would generate its own electricity and food, house thousands, and plunge deep beneath the waves.

The early detection of life threatening diseases such as cancer, bacterial or viral infections is essential for effective treatment. It is also crucial in the control of pandemics such as influenza and Dengue. Now a research team at James Cook University funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council has successfully developed a new ultrasensitive diagnostic technology.

In a discovery of consequence for efforts to save Tasmanian devils in the wild, scientists have found some devils from north-west Tasmania are genetically different and potentially resistant to the deadly cancer threatening the species. The discovery by University of Sydney and University of Tasmania researchers will have implications for efforts to contain the spread of Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) which has decimated 70 per cent of the devil population since the first diagnosis in east Tasmania in 1996.