NASA’s Curiosity rover has completed the first-ever detailed X-ray analysis of Martian sand,& … Read More → "Curiosity Rover’s first x-ray analysis reveals volcanic Martian soil"

A smart-road design that features glow-in-the-dark tarmac and illuminated weather indicators will be installed in the Netherlands from mid-2013.

“One day I was sitting in my car in the Netherlands, and I was amazed by these roads we spend millions on but no one seems to care what they look like and how they behave,” the designer behind the concept, Daan Roosegaarde, told Wired.co.uk. “I started imagining this Route 66 of … Read More → "Netherlands highways will glow in the dark starting mid-2013"

The Supreme Court on Wednesday is set to hold oral arguments concerning the novel question of whether judges may issue search warrants for private residences when a drug-sniffing dog outside the home reacts as if it smells drugs inside.

In a second case involving drug-sniffing dogs, the justices also will entertain arguments Wednesday concerning a Florida Supreme Court decision allowing defendants to challenge the authenticity of a drug sniff, by … Read More → "Supreme Court to decide if drug dogs pass constitutional smell test"

Carl Sagan once made an eloquent case for balancing skepticism and opennessas to avoid gullibility — but what, exactly, makes one gullible? In this short video from Open University — who gave us those wonderful 60-second animations of famous thought experiments and religious theories — Nigel Warburton of Philosophy Bites fame talks to English illusionist and mentalist Derren Brown about the psychology of gullibility.
via Brain Pickings

</ … Read More → "Illusionist Derren Brown on the psychology of gullibility"

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has just introduced Titan, the world’s most powerful supercomputer. The size of a basketball court and using enough power to run a small town, the water-cooled circuits of Titan are capable of 20 petaflops or 20,000 trillion calculations per second. This makes Titan ten times more powerful than ORNL’s previous computer, Jaguar and 20 trillion times more than the average PC. What& … Read More → "Oak Ridge unveils Titan, the world’s most powerful supercomputer"

Singularity Hub’s Keith Kleiner interviews Ray Kurzweil about his new book, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed.

The interview with Kurzweil focused at first on his new book to be released November 13 “How to Create a Mind”, but then in the second half we moved on to broader topics, such as Kurzweil’s more general thoughts on the future of man and machine, and Kurzweil’s personal goals for his work.
via Read More → "Exclusive interview with Ray Kurzweil"

A University of Southampton team have discovered that by embossing tiny raised or indented patterns onto the metal’s surface they can change the way it absorbs and reflects light – ensuring our eyes don’t see it as ‘golden’ in colour at all.

The finding results from a major initiative funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) targeting the development of a new generation of nanotechnology-enabled materials.

Equally applicable to other metals such as silver and aluminium, this breakthrough opens up the prospect of colouring metals without having to coat … Read More → "Nanoscale patterning can change the color of gold"

A new type of ocean power generator could harvest the steady, reliable energy of deep ocean currents, and a group of companies are working together to place the first 1-megawatt system on the seafloor. The companies are currently raising money for the demonstration project and say they’re investigating R&D funding from the U.S. Navy and the Department of Energy. 

The grid connections and system software are … Read More → "A new green energy idea: harvesting deep ocean currents"

In 1878 St. Louis, a man recorded 78 seconds of music and his own voice. The recording, which is the oldest in human history (so far as we know), was recorded on a phonograph invented by Thomas Edison. Oh yeah, and it’s on a piece of tinfoil.

At least, it was on a piece of tinfoil before the sounds were transferred to a computer.

The recording is pretty … Read More → "Oldest known recording of music can now be heard"

The tractor beam is one of the staples of science fiction, and it’s becoming closer and closer to a reality. Just last year, scientists at Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research were “able to create backward motion of particles in but separate from a forward-moving beam.” Now, two scientists in New York have built a tractor beam.
via DVICE

Continue reading</ … Read More → "New York scientists create working tractor beam"