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520 days after being locked inside a fake spaceship in a Moscow car park, a six-man team of volunteer astronauts is about to emerge back on planet Earth.

The year and a half of isolation, dubbed Mars500 and run by the European Space Agency (ESA), was designed to see how real space crews would cope with confinement, daily activities and psychological stress on a lengthy trip to the red planet and back.</ … Read More → "Fake astronauts return to real Earth after fake trip to fake Mars"

The latest health monitor hitting the market comes from Jawbone, a company that’s made its name by designing wireless headsets for phones. Called the Jawbone Up, the wrist-worn device launches on Nov. 6 for $99. Similar to the company’s prior products, the Up looks sleek and is fashionable while being functional: Up measures activity, sleep and nutrition.

We first head about Up earlier this year, not long after Jawbone raised $70 million in funding, … Read More → "Jawbone’s $99 UP is ready to boost your health"

At some point about halfway through the hurly-burly of pulling together our special issue on what I’d taken to calling The Data Age, senior associate editor Ryan Bradley noticed that Stephen Wolfram had created a timeline of significant milestones in the historical march of data. We thought it would be an excellent piece of contextual glue to apply to our analysis of the burgeoning power of data, well wielded, to both illuminate and influence our world. Fortunately, Wolfram agreed, and the timeline ran as connective tissue along the bottom of our magazine pages. Wolfram was at … Read More → "Q&A: Stephen Wolfram on the power and challenge of big data"

INTERVIEWER

How do you begin a novel?

GIBSON

I have to write an opening sentence. I think with one exception I’ve never changed an opening sentence after a book was completed.

INTERVIEWER

You won’t have planned beyond that one sentence?

GIBSON

No. I don’t begin a novel with a shopping list—the novel becomes my shopping list as I write it. It’s like … Read More → "Interview with William Gibson in the Paris Review"

When it comes to deciding on a form of locomotion for their creations, roboticists have plenty of options to choose from. While many go for the tried and tested tank-like tracks or wheels, nature is also a veritable treasure trove of inspiration. That’s just where Fraunhofer researchers have turned with a new eight-legged robot modeled on the same principle that moves spider legs. Not only does the design give the spiderbot the agility and stability of real … Read More → "Jumping spiderbot made using 3D printing technique"

Really??

Laugh all you want, but as of the end of September, AOL still had 3.5 million subscribers to its dialup Internet access service — a lot more than the number of people who pay for, say, Spotify. via Business Insider and Geekosystem

Nearly a thousand of the brightest minds in medical R&D convened in San Diego last week for the TEDMED conference. This for-profit event isn’t directly owned by the non-profit TED organization — so famous for its conference devoted to new ideas in technology, entertainment and design — but its management team members are reportedly, er, TEDsters, and what we discovered at TEDMED was interest-piquing to a TEDian degree.

… Read More → "Breakthrough medical gadgets: the future of healthcare hardware"

We’ve loved Commodore USA’s C64 computer recreations ever since it began producing them back in 2010. Much to our delight, the company recently outed its third variant, the C64x Extreme. This unit features the ’80s flair we’ve come to appreciate, but supercharged to 2011 spec. Crammed inside its case is a 2.2GHz Intel core i7 quad-core CPU (capable of turbo boosting to 3.3GHz), 8GB of DDR3 RAM, Intel HD integrated … Read More → "Commodore USA goes Extreme, stuffs a 2.2GHz quad-core i7 into its C64x"

Naughty robots can now be tamed with this snazzy smile-detecting device from the University of Tsukuba AI Lab. Anna Gruebler and her colleagues have developed a wireless headband that captures electromyographic (EMG) signals from the side of the face, detecting when you’re smiling with delight or frowning with disapproval.

Unlike cameras with smile-detection algorithms, this device can work in low light, while you’re walking around, and when you’re not looking into your computer’s camera. Part of the charm, the researchers say, comes from the discreet headband design … Read More → "Using smiles (and frowns) to teach robots how to behave"