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Whether its filling the space between oranges in a box or squeezing molecules between cells, wasted storage space is a problem to which people, and especially companies, have been trying to find a solution for a long time. A recently published research might lead to dramatic improvements of storage capabilities and in the field of […]
This Monday (June 27), an asteroid the size of a bus just buzzed our planet after a flyby which brought it closer to Earth than most satellites. Dubbed asteroid 2011 MD, it was first spotted by MIT’s Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program just last week on June 22, but there never was any […]
A job can be as hard or easy as you make it to be, depending on how much you enjoy or are passionate about your work. However, it’s pretty hard to imagine how some people working particularly bizarre jobs through out history thought or felt. Listed below are a couple of odd jobs that caught […]
What if you could power regularly used consumer electronics, like for say a laptop, just by using them? It’s an incredible prospect, one which Australian scientists from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) hope to turn into reality in the near future. Harnessing the power of piezoelectric technology, researchers successfully embedded a piezoelectric thin […]
Gas prices have sky rocketed during the past five years, and so far it seems to know only one trend – upwards. As such, fuel efficiency, besides keeping environmental pollution to a minimum, has become a sort of priority for today’s automobile manufacturers. Captioned above is a hypermiling concept car, developed by Cambridge Design Partnership, […]
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s super sand! *tadam Researchers from Rice University have managed to develop a new kind of filtering sand, dubbed “super sand”, which has five times the filtering properties of regular sand. The advancement could provide an indispensable, cost-effective solution for the current water crisis in developing countries where […]
Launched in 1997 on a mission to study Saturn and its satellites, the Casisni spacecraft reached the system in 2004. Since then it has provided numerous invaluable scientific findings regarding the second largest planet in our solar system, and other important scientific findings alike. One such finding was detailed in a recently published study, which […]
Dubbed EDWARD, this most inspiring electric two-wheeler has managed to forge a simple Star Wars geek fantasy into reality. The name stands for Electric Diwheel With Active Rotation Damping, and was developed by students at Adelaide University in southern Australia. Very simply built, the vehicle runs on sealed lead acid batteries, which allows it to […]
Ghastly nails on a blackboard or deafening sires don’t come any close to a infant’s whining as far as annoying sounds are concerned, according to a recent study from SUNY New Paltz. In a fairly simple approach, researchers asked study participants to solve various math problems while a background noise was playing. Six sounds were […]
Climate change and over-fishing are held responsible for the swift collapse of coral reefs and the propagation of mass extinction among marine life. According to the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), which presented the study this Tuesday to the U.N., the Earth is faced with its biggest spate of mass extinctions […]
A team of neuro-scientists have managed to restore lost memories to rats by activating a part of their brains through an artificial memory chip – just like a sort of neuro-prosthesis. Further advances backed by this study might lead to the development of important leaps in long-term memory treatment, providing relief for Alzheimer or dementia […]
Akkadian, or Assyro-Babylonian, is the oldest attested written language – the code for the cuneiform writing system. Texts written in Akkadian date back as early as 2800 BC, and although it hasn’t been spoken for well over two thousand years, the language can be considered invaluable to the unraveling of the first human civilizations from […]
We previously reported about an incredible gamma ray burst triggered by a black hole, so powerful that nothing like this was observed before, or even dimmed possible. A recently published paper in the journal Science sheds more light on the subject. A typical gamma ray burst commonly occurs when massive stars explode due to collisions […]
Last year, Iran successfully launched a rocket that carried a mouse, a turtle and worms into space. This summer, the Iranian Space Organization is planning on taking its space program one step further by sending a monkey into orbit this summer. This was revealed this Thursday by Iran’s top space official at a press conference […]
The brilliant image from above was captured by Spitzer space telescope and depicts a ring shaped region formed by hot gas and glowing dust. Dubbed RCW 120, the nebula lies about 4,300 light-years away from Earth, and is located in the constellation Scorpius, just above the plane of the galaxy. The wavelength emited by the […]
Launched in in the late 1970’s in a mission to study the planets Jupiter, Saturn and their respective satellites, the two Voyager probes have been most certainly put to a more pioneering goal and sent into outer space after having completed their last missions. Currently, Voyager-1 is the most distant human-made object from Earth and […]
The river Ganges has literally been at the center of Indian life for thousands of years, both socially and spiritually. Millions of people have been fed, bathed and enlightened by it. It’s a sacred river, regarded as the most important stream in Hindu mythology – it’s also very dirty. The Ganges is considered to be […]
Researchers have found that the mystical experiences obtained by volunteers under the psychoactive substance found in hallucinogenic mushrooms has lead to a substantial improvement of their lives. Although a lot of similar studies have been made showing the beneficial long term effects which come with ingesting psilocybin mushrooms, be it spiritual or physical, this particular […]
Brain surgeons must have the best sense of humor in the whole scientific community. Seems like a team of German neurosurgeons took the liberty to analyze the hundreds of head injuries roman legionnaires had to suffer at the hands of the ruthless gaul Asterix. They’re results have been remarkable – this my friend is pure […]
According to a recently published study, computer processor chips made out of nano-scale magnets could yield an efficiency close to the limit imposed by physics. A 100% efficiency is impossible in practice, since any mechanical or electrical process requires more energy than it theoretically needs because of dissipation, be it heat (most of the time) […]
An Australian engineer boosts that he has successfully managed to build a working hover bike, one, he claims, that you could ride to 173 mph at 10,000 feet and feel like any other motorcycle. So far, however, Chris Malloy’s prototype hoverbike hasn’t done any of the aforementioned claims, aside from hovering a bit over ground, […]
When Google Earth was first released I was simply struck with amazement by the myriad of features the software was bundled with. I never imagined I could have my very own state of the art satellite imaging from the comfort of my armchair and notebook. This may be common enough now (meanwhile Google maps popularized […]
Last year, in October, China launched its second moon orbiter, as part of the country’s rapidly growing reformed space program . The Chang’e 2, as it was dubbed, has seen a great deal of improvements compared to its predecessor, including a more powerful rocket that delivered the probe to the moon more quickly. Today, after […]
Although they’ve been around for a while, 3D printers still manage to impress me with the quality and precission of the outputted models. Recently, another step in the popularization of this technology has been made by addressing its size once with the development of the world’s smallest 3D printer to date. The smallest 3D printer […]
After a long period of research and debates 114 and 116 are now the heaviest elements in the periodic table, after being recently added by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). How heavy? Well at 289 and 292 atomic mass, respectively, they’re […]
In a relevant display of NASA’s fireball-observing network capabilities, a set of automatic robotic cameras caught a man-sized meteor as it blasted though Earth’s atmosphere causing a fireball spectacle. The event took place on May 20, when the 6-foot-wide (1.8-meter) space rock entered the atmosphere at about 66 miles (106 kilometers) above the city of […]
Project Icarus is an extremely fascinating initiative which aims to bring humanity closer to the stars. The latest theory proposed by scientists there is related to the development of system which could allow the harvesting of helium-3 gas from Uranus to fuel a possible interstellar mission. Uranus, then, seems to be a very resourceful planet, […]
More and more countries are seeking to ban or at least limit the use of plastic bags or have already done so, and the latest government to go for this smart, eco-friendly move is the Republic of Congo. The African nation has just recently passed a bill in which the production, import, sale and use […]
Captioned above is the very last piece of transmitted imagery by the now defunct Mars Spirit Rover (rest its soul; HA!), before the harsh Martian winter forced it into submission; and it’s quite the vista as well – the Columbia Hills. This was transmitted during Spirit’s 2,175th sol on Mars, when it got stuck in […]
For most, a jetpack can be considered more of a SciFi concept than a viable, realistic flying contraction. However, recent advances from a New Zealand aeronautical company might have paved the way for jetpacks to finally become commercially mainstream. Exiting, right? Just recently this month, the aforementioned company, Martin Aircraft Co., has successfully tested one […]
Cats are surprisingly independent pets, which I’m sure most of you who own one already know, and as I’m steadily leaning about this myself in the past few weeks since I adopted a little feline devil. Do you really know, however, how independent your cat is? Well, although house cats can be fairly lazy and […]
After she suffered a stroke, a 36-year-old professor started to feel sounds. In the beginning she didn’t know what was happening when a radio announcer’s voice made her tingle, or when during a flight she became physically uncomfortable. Neuroscientist at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of […]
Two years ago, NASA’s LCROSS probe was looking for signs of water when it smashed into Cabeus crater at the moon’s south pole. It turned out to be one of those incredible fail moments, since not only did researchers found there was water from the data transmitted back, but that the surface was actually wetter […]
In an amazing feat of electrical engineering, scientists have managed to set a new landmark in optical communications by transmitting data at the remarkable speed of 26 terabits per second, or about 700 DVDs downloaded in an instant, all using a single transmitting laser. The research was lead by scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of […]
Pictured above is a cardinal, and if you don’t see anything special about it yet, you should check out its plumage. Alright, maybe not all of us are ornithologists, so I’ll just set the facts straight. If you look closely, you’ll see that the bird has bright red plumage of a male on its left […]
While a 3D map of the Universe using the light from 14,000 quasars has been previously released to the public by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which is considered the largest map of the known Universe, another version has been recently unveiled which scientists claim to be the most complete map. Called the 2MASS Redshift […]
This Wednesday morning, Andrew Feustel and Mike Fincke floated out on a spectacular 6 hour long spacewalk outside the International Space Station – the third spacewalk since Endeavour launched into space for its last mission before retirement. “It’s great to be back outside. It’s the most beautiful planet in the universe,” said Fincke as he […]
While scanning underneath the waters of Lake Michigan for shipwrecks, archeologists found something a lot more interesting than they bargained for.
I a recent study published by the University of British Columbia, Canada, it seems women are more sexually attracted by men who display a more gloomy complexion or awareness of social norms by displaying shame, than men who look happy all the time. The study published online Tuesday in the American Psychological Association journal Emotion […]
Due to weeks of continuous heavy rain, coupled with a runoff from an unusually snowy winter, thousands of homes and over 3 million acres of farmland in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas have been flooded. In a desperate attempt to save neighboring large cities from the floods, U.S, Army Corps of Engineers are working day and […]
Ironically, while most tidy people in the world are busy dusting off furniture, electronics, ceilings, cats, whatnot, researchers have shown in a recent study that the same dust is actually very good for the air, reducing ozone levels by 2 to 15 percent. All because of dead human skin. Ozone is crucial for preventing potentially […]
A new and extensive study by Hunch.com shows that persons who keep their desktops cluttered are more likely to be liberal, have a higher education, are career orientated and good math, while a person who keeps his desktop tidy and clutter free is more likely to be young suburbanites, somewhat techy and allegedly put their […]
Reminiscent of the infamous one-child policy introduced in China in 1978, which limited urban Chinese families togiving birth to a maximum of one child, as a means of slowing down the alarming overpopulation trend, the country’s biggest city Shanghai has introduced a similar policy – this time for pets. There are an estimated 800,000 dogs […]
In its most simple form, a memristor can be defined as a two-terminal electronic device whose conductance can be precisely modulated by charge or flux through it. What sets it apart from other electrical components is the property that its resistance can be programmed and subsequently remains stored (memory). Basically, memristors resist the passage of […]
In an exclusive interview with The Guardian, the eminent British physicist Stephen Hawking shared his view upon fatality and the afterlife, sparking a wave of criticism from creationists and religious personalities as he bluntly stated that the concept of heaven is simply a “fairy story” for people who fear death. How does Hawking explain his […]
Sakurajima is probably the most active and dangerous volcano in Japan. Actually, one of its eruptions from back in 1914 is still attested as the the most powerful volcanic eruption in Japanese history, which at the time engulfed a whole city in ash and lava, and joined the former island with the neighboring Osumi Peninsula. […]
If you think giving a robot a sword and teaching him how to use is a bad idea, you may be just about half wrong. A young robotics PhD student at Georgia Tech has programmed a robot how to sword fight, in terms of only defending itself against attacks in order to simulate the sudden […]
Discovered deep in the farthest reaches of our solar system, Haumea is a tiny dwarf planet which has been fascinating scientists for years now since its discovery in 2004, not only because of its peculiar rugby-ball shaped form, but also because of its surface structure. According to the European Southern Observatory, 75 per cent of […]
Accurate dating of a Neanderthal fossil found in a Russian cave, showed that it was 10,000 years older than previous research had suggested. The find could provide proof for the dismissal of the theory which states that Neanderthals and modern humans interacted for thousands of years. The study leads scientists to believe that coexistence between […]
Late this Monday, the Mississippi crested in at 47.8 feet (14.5 meters), just less than a foot below the city’s record, set in 1937. As the river reaches nearby city neighborhoods and Shelby County suburbs, nature has “put the pin back in the grenade,” said county spokesperson Steve Shular. Floods are really nasty, but for […]
