Blair Armstrong and his team of researchers from the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain, and Language in Spain observed the brain signals of 45 subjects while they read a list of 45 acronyms, such as FBI and DVD. According to New Scientist, they found that the volunteers’ brains reacted differently to each one, enough for the system to pinpoint their identities with 94 percent accuracy.

Brain signals are typically hard to analyze, so Armstrong’s team decided to … Read More → "The brain’s unique reaction to words could sign people into devices"

By enabling the rigid brains of adult mice to return to the high levels of plasticity found in juvenile brains, scientists are opening new pathways to the treatment of brain injuries such as stroke. Back in 2013, researchers from Yale University reported the discovery of a molecular switch that achieved this result, and now scientists at the University of California, Irvine, have managed to make an old brain young again using a different approach.

The UC Irvine technique … Read More → "Juvenile plasticity returned to adult mice brains"

Even the nicer drones you can buy typically last for just minutes in the air, which isn’t much help if you’re delivering packages or shooting movies. Horizon Unmanned Systems (HUS) thinks it has a solution, however: hydrogen power. Its recently unveiled Hycopter drone runs on a lightweight hydrogen fuel cell that should deliver up to 4 hours of flight time unloaded, and 2.5 hours when it’s carrying 2.2 pounds of cargo. That still may not … Read More → "Hydrogen-powered drone will fly for hours at a time"

With the release of Apple Watch and Google Glass, personal electronics are breaking out from our pockets. But even these newest iterations are rigid; despite years of buzz about foldable electronics, you still can’t read a book on your Kindle then fold it up like a newspaper. Now a team of Chinese researchers has developed a glowing, flexible paper designed to bring foldable electronics closer to … Read More → "Glowing paper could pave the way for bendy devices"

AS RUSS TEDRAKE flings up the garage door to the dusty MIT lab, light whooshes in, revealing a 360-pound humanoid robot hanging from a rope. The hulky human form sways as the Cambridge breeze blows into the room.

The deactivated dangling thing looks like a metal rag doll, vulnerable and grotesque. But this is Atlas, one of the most sophisticated robots in the world. “The … Read More → "MIT’s humanoid robot goes to robo boot camp"

When Facebook bought Oculus VR back in March of 2014, many wondered exactly what the social network was going to do with it—let’s face it, many of us are still wondering. But there are some interesting bits of tech starting to emerge from the now Facebook-owned Oculus that hint at what the future might hold for the Rift outside gaming. One such piece of … Read More → "Oculus Rift hack transfers your facial expressions onto your virtual avatar"

The L’Oreal Group hasn’t tested its products on animals worldwide since 2013, instead relying on a predictive model that utilizes a “Reconstructed Human Epidermis” — basically bits of skin grown in a lab — to ensure that its products are safe. Now the French cosmetics giant is teaming up with 3D bioprinting company Organovo to create the real thing…or at least as real as human skin that comes out of an … Read More → "L’Oreal is 3D printing its own human skin to test cosmetics"

Molten lava reaches temperatures of at least 1300 degrees Fahrenheit, which makes it a solid heat source if you need to grill up some steaks in seconds. Recently, students and geologists from Syracuse did just that as part of their Lava Project, and the resulting video is incredibly intense. In under six minutes, the heavily-protected team cooks up a party’s worth of t-bones, hot dogs, and salmon steaks& … Read More → "Watch geologists use molten lava to grill up some steaks"

When your eyes’ photoreceptors (the so-called rods and cones) fail due to either illness or injury, so too does your vision. And until very recently, few options to correct the condition existed — typically in the form of a bulky and intrusive wearable. But now, a long-researchedgene therapy is finally ready for human trials and could pave the way for at least partial restoration of a patient’s sense of sight.

The technique, which was developed by … Read More → "Researchers discover a ‘partial workaround’ for blindness"

When it comes to the complexity of their vocal range, horses have more in common with singing birds than other mammals. 

Domestic horses are social animals that prefer to live in herds, and they disseminate information over long distances by whinnying, which research suggests can convey information about the caller’s identity, sex, and body size. Whinnying also allows horses to communicate the nature and strength of their … Read More → "Horses whinny in two different frequencies to convey emotion"