If you dabble in NASA news, you’ve probably heard of the agency’s main space centers: Johnson (the “Houston, we have a problem” one) and Kennedy (the Cape Canaveral launch site one). Today, though, all eyes were on the lesser-known Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi, where NASA completed one of the last tests of an engine that will … Read More → "NASA successfully tests engine for future Mars mission"

Ferrolic is a clock in which magnets draw ferrofluid into ever-shifting shapes (and, occasionally numbers, so you can tell the time). It is more beautiful and weird than you perhaps imagine.
via Boing Boing

… Read More → "Magnetic numbers shift and reform in amazing ferrofluid clock"

Marvel’s effort to encourage diversity on its pages is still going strong. Entertainment Weekly reports that the comics company now plans on launching a new title this fall that doesn’t star an already popular white superhero. Titled Moon-Girl and Devil Dinosaur, the series will feature the adventures of pre-teen genius Lunella Lafayette and friend that happens to be a 30-foot … Read More → "Marvel’s next female superhero is a little girl with a dinosaur"

A video taken by researchers at the ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories shows a number of children interacting and becoming violent with a remotely controlled Robovie 2 robot during an experiment at an Osaka, Japan shopping center. The researchers used data from the experiment to develop an algorithm to help the robot evade future abuse.
via Read More → "Researchers study how and why children abuse robots to help develop new escape maneuvers"

In 1862, a group of Spanish explorers set off on the “Comisión Científica del Pacífico,” thepremiere mission for Spanish scientists studying the Americas in the 19th century. They returned three years later with a bevy of specimens and new knowledge of natural history. Some of those specimens, however, never made it into the scientific record. 

Read More → "New snail discovered after sitting on a shelf for more than 150 years"

Researchers have created a “mom” robot that independently reproduces “children,” passing beneficial features along to the next generation.

The experiment was carried out at the University of Cambridge in collaboration with ETH Zurich, and the results were published today in the journal PLOS One. A mother bot (a big robotic arm) designed, built, … Read More → "This robot builds other robots, learns from failures, builds better robots"

The whiskers that help rats find their way around dingy sewers has inspired a tactile sensor that could be used for navigating all manner of dark conditions. Scientists have developed a device capable of generating images of obscured environments by monitoring both air and fluid flow, and which could find its way into biomedical applications.

Researchers working at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and its affiliate, the Advanced Digital Sciences Center … Read More → "Robotic whiskers may get a feel for navigating in the dark"

As batteries go through repeated charge-and-discharge cycles, their electrodes expand and contract—and the physical damage that causes leads to gradual battery degradation. Now, a team of researchers from MIT has a new kind of nanoparticle that may ease the problem.

The new advance is a nanoparticle, with a solid shell and a kind of “yolk” inside, that can … Read More → "“Yolk and shell” nanoparticles could make batteries last longer"

Scientists have found a way to erase very specific memories in mouse brains, helping drug-addicted lab rodents recover. 

Following up on a similar study they published in 2013, researchers from the Scripps Research Institute in Florida were able to selectively erase memories of methamphetamine in mice using a drug that disrupts a memory-related protein in the brain. 
… Read More → "Scientists find a way to erase memories of drug use in addicted mice"

The Wanamaker Organ, inside a Philadelphia, PA Macy’s, is the world’s largest working musical instrument.

The Wanamaker Grand Court Organ at Macy’s is a 7-story-high contraption bigger than most people’s houses, even rich people’s. The vast maze of 26,677 pipes and baffles and bellows and wires and wooden stairways lies hidden behind what many of us have always thought was the Wanamaker Organ.
via Read More → "This is the world’s largest musical instrument"