The Very Large Array is a spectacular piece of a scientific equipment with a less-than-compelling name. Located in New Mexico, you’ve seen this radio observatory pop up in the background of movies, album covers, and on Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.

This year, the Very Large Array, which has been around since the 1970s, got some much-needed electronic upgrades and now the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which runs the Array, would like to rename … Read More → "Suggest a new name for the Very Large Array"

Researcher Kevin Karsch and his team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are developing a software system that lets users easily insert objects into photographs, complete with convincing lighting and perspective. The system is astonishingly effective–to see it in action, watch their demo video. via Laughing Squid

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Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Wired takes a look at how innovation is being stifled by easy money and cheap transistors.

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Carbon is the fourth-most-abundant element in the universe and comes in a wide variety of forms, called allotropes, including graphite, graphene, and the hardest natural material known to man, diamonds. Now scientists have discovered a new form of carbon that is capable of withstanding extreme pressure stresses previously only observed in diamond. Unlike crystalline forms of carbon such as diamonds, whose hardness is highly dependent upon the direction in which the crystal is formed, the new form of carbon is amorphous meaning it could be equally strong in all directions. via Read More → "Scientists discover new form of superhard carbon"

Published in 2006 by Chronicle Books, The ACME Catalog: Quality is Our #1 Dream is full of “fine products used by Looney Tunes characters” including “iron birdseed, anvils, fake holes” and much more. The ACME Catalog is a humorous look at the many gag products used in Looney Tunes cartoons and is authored by Warner Bros. writer Charles Carney.  … Read More → "The ACME Catalog, retro product catalog for Looney Tunes fans"

The project is built on an Altera DE-1 FPGA dev board and at this time implements only the absolute minimum of hardware necessary to boot the computer. The disk is read-only, and there is no keyboard, sound, SCSI, serial ports, or real-time clock. via Dangerous Prototypes

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All technologists work in the same environment, but we experience the workplace in very different ways.

We like to think of the tech sector as a colorblind, gender-blind meritocracy; unfortunately, this simply isn’t an accurate picture.

Women in tech often have different experiences and encounter different challenges than do their male counterparts. The same goes for people in underrepresented ethnic groups.

Last week, VentureBeat published Why more women aren’t working in tech (hint: it’s not just education), which discussed the Level Playing Field Institute& … Read More → "The three biggest myths about women in tech"

Dennis Ritchie was the designer and original developer of the C programming language, and a central figure in the development of Unix. He spent much of his career at Bell Labs. He was awarded the Turing Award in 1983, and the National Medal of Technology in 1999. via Boing Boing

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The Isolator is a bizarre helmet invented in 1925 that encourages focus and concentration by rendering the wearer deaf, piping them full of oxygen, and limiting their vision to a tiny horizontal slit. The Isolator was invented by Hugo Gernsback, editor of Science and Invention magazine, member of “The American Physical Society,” and one of the pioneers of science fiction. via Laughing … Read More → "Trouble focusing at work?"

This is full circle – London Philharmonic has been recording movie soundtracks for years. The Star Wars soundtrack was London Phil.