Invisibility cloaks can make objects invisible not just to light in the visible part of the spectrum, but to many other physical excitations. These include acoustic waves, matter waves, heat flux, and infrared or ultraviolet electromagnetic (EM) waves. But so far, any single invisibility cloak can manipulate only one of these types of excitations.

Now in a new study, scientists have provided the first experimental demonstration of an invisibility cloak … Read More → "Multiphysics invisibility cloak manipulates both electric current and heat"

The researchers used a problem-solving task that produced a reward for the participants—peanuts for chimps and orangutans, and chocolate drops for children. Participants were given the chance to play with a box with three sections. One of the sections would produce a reward when a ball was dropped into it, while the other two wouldn’t. The researchers could control which of the sections produced the reward.

The participants played with the boxes long enough to learn which section would give them a reward. Once they had learned … Read More → "Children will change behavior that’s rewarded in order to conform"

You can use 3D printing to make a handful of electronics, such as antennas and batteries, but LEDs and semiconductors have been elusive; you usually need some other manufacturing technique to make them work, which limits what they can do and where they’ll fit. A team of Princeton researchers recently solved this problem, however. They’ve found a way to make quantum dot LEDs (and thus semiconductors) using only</ … Read More → "3D printing technique will put electronics into just about everything"

Thanks to some clever special effects, the gadgets that Q creates for James Bond and other MI6 agents are often well ahead of their time. So much so that it’s only now, more than 31 years afterNever Say Never Again hit theaters, that we finally have a wristwatch with a built-in laser powerful enough to do some damage.
via Read More → "James Bond’s laser-cutting watch is finally a reality"

Disneyland has allowed feral cats to call the park home since the very beginning, but by 2001 the park’s feral cat population was growing out of control, so they allowed animal rescue group Best Friends Catnippers to perform TNRs (trap-neuter-return) on the furry populace.  

Today there are at least 100 feral cats roaming around the park after dark, but Disney doesn’t want to discuss these guest gatos, … Read More → "The feral cats who call Disneyland home"

So far, the biggest benefit of 3D-printing organs is that you don’t need someone to donate their body to medical science before you can do an experiment. That’s why Organovo’s big news is so exciting for scientists, since the company has let it be known that its 3D-printed livers are now on sale. The bio-printed tissues can be used for drug testing programs, since causing unexpected liver damage is … Read More → "3D-printed livers go on sale to impatient scientists"

Imagine spending years of your life working on a cutting-edge new invention for the government – which incidentally you have to part-pay-for out of your own pocket – only to be told to smash it to pieces and burn all evidence. This is exactly what happened to Tommy Flowers and even now, nearly 70 years later, his first computer, Colossus, is still far more well-known than he is. 

A dapper man walks … Read More → "Tommy Flowers: the forgotten father of computing?"

Cats have an innate ability to orient themselves as they fall so that they land on their feet. This ability, called the cat righting reflex, is thanks to their unusually flexible backbone and lack of a functional collarbone. While it is theoretically possible for us humans to change our body poses in mid air, the researchers say that joint limits and muscle strength constraints prevent us from doing so in practice.

Robots, on … Read More → "Researchers turn to cats to help soften robot landings"

Two-dimensional artwork has graced the foamy heads of Guinnesses and coffee drinks for decades. But over in Japan, they’re taking beverage-top sculptures to another level entirely. If you go to the right coffee shop, you’ll get 3-D foam sculptures and froth giraffes right on top of your drink.

Now there’s an in-home machine that you … Read More → "Gadget fires foamy 3-D pandas into your lattes"

Here’s how Lovelace 2.0 works:

“For the test, the artificial agent passes if it develops a creative artifact from a subset of artistic genres deemed to require human-level intelligence and the artifact meets certain creative constraints given by a human evaluator. Further, the human evaluator must determine that the object is a valid representative of the creative subset and that it meets the criteria. The created artifact needs only meet … Read More → "Revamped Turing test expects computers to show imagination"