Medical technology is advancing rapidly thanks to computers, but it’s taking a while for all that nifty computerized medicine to make its way inside our bodies. Humans aren’t generally compatible with electronics, but that may change with the invention of the first 3D bioengineered cyborg tissues.

When we say “cyborg tissues,” we mean chunks of human cells with a three dimensional network of active nanowires running through them. The living cells are grown around tiny wiring scaffolds, and by the time everything has meshed together, the idea is that you’re left with … Read More → "Researchers create first 3D bioengineered cyborg tissues"

Astronomers have published a study revealing that NASA’s exoplanet-hunting Kepler telescope has spotted two planets orbiting two suns for the first time.

The find proves that circumbinary planetary systems can not only form in, but continue to withstand, the intense pressures exerted by a binary star system — until now, astronomers had only been able to identify binary star systems with one planet in orbit, a find that … Read More → "Astronomers find double-planet, double-star system"

… Read More → "How science turned into science fiction"

Companies. They’ll tell you next to nothing when the chips are down. Ask them if the sky is blue and if the headline story is “Experts Claim ‘Sky Might Be Blue’,” they’ll invariably reply “no comment.”

Someone at World of Warcraft developer Blizzard must have missed that memo, because instead of waving off rumors relating their 800-pound MMO to an often touchy subject — ongoing U.S. sanctions against Iran — they’re actually talking about the who, what, where and … Read More → "World of Warcraft blocked in Iran: Blizzard (unexpectedly) explains why"

The Nerdy Derby is a Pinewood Derby-inspired no-rules* car building and racing competition brought to you by students from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. The first Nerdy Derby will take place on September 29th and 30th at World Maker Faire New York at the New York Hall of Science in Queens.
via MAKE

Read more</ … Read More → "The Nerdy Derby at World Maker Faire New York"

From a very early age Neil Armstrong was fascinated with flight. He was playing with toy airplanes at 3, and by the time he was 5 or 6 Armstrong went on his first airplane ride in a Ford Tri-Motor. By 8 or 9 he said he was building model airplanes out of balsa wood. And by the time he was 15 he had saved enough money working at a drug store to begin taking flying lessons at the small … Read More → "The aircraft and spacecraft of Neil Armstrong’s career"

Craigslist, that quaint digital home to unwanted couches and vacant two-bedroom bungalows, has begun attaching maps to some of its listings. That would be humdrum news if it were about any other website, but Craigslist is so famously hidebound, so trapped in the Netscape era, that even legal foes are cheering its maps as a sign of innovation.

The maps appear on housing listings in the San Francisco Bay Area and Portland, Oregon, and pull data from OpenStreet Map, a collaborative, freely licensed collection of directions and images. Craigslist joins Apple, Foursquare, and … Read More → "Craigslist baby-steps into modernity"

At first glance, photovoltaic solar panels are brilliant. They’re self-contained, need no fuel and so long as the sun is shining, they make lots of lovely electricity. The trouble is, they’re expensive to make, batteries are poor storage systems for cloudy days, and the panels have a very short service life. Now, Dr. Mikhail Zamkov of Ohio’s Bowling Green State University and his team have used synthetic nanocrystals to make solar panels more durable as well as capable of producing hydrogen gas.
via Read More → "New nanocrystals let solar panels generate electricity … and hydrogen gas"

Since we don’t have the usual landmarks on Mars that we enjoy on Earth, it can be tough to get a sense of scale for the great shots we’ve seen from Mars rover Curiosity. In this photo of Mount Sharp–Curiosity’s scientific destination–the mound in the center of the image is about 1,000 feet across and 300 feet high. Curiosity, relative to that, looks like … Read More → "Mars rover Curiosity photographs its destination, enormous Mount Sharp"

If you use the web for more than just browsing (that’s pretty much everyone), chances are you’ve had your fair share of “CAPTCHA rage,” the frustration stemming from trying to discern a marginally legible string of letters aimed at verifying that you are a human. CAPTCHA, which stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart,” was introduced to the Internet a decade ago and has seen widespread adoption in various forms — whether using letters, sounds, math equations, or images — even as complaints about … Read More → "Artificial intelligence will defeat CAPTCHA — how will we prove we’re human then?"