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Robotics, emerging technology, space exploration -- if it starts in a lab, you'll read about it here

Gaming wins big at National Science Foundation's Visualization Challenge

Posted February 13, 2012 - 3:16 pm

Protein-folding might not sound like an especially exhilarating way to spend a weekend, but puzzle mavens and scientific researchers alike rallied behind the game's innovative take on crowd-sourcing public ingenuity to tackle scientific conundrums. The effort has long since paid off, but this year the game adds another feather to its cap: taking top honors at the ninth annual International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, with a first place win in the Interactive Games category.
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When you're president, you get to fire marshmallow cannons

Posted February 8, 2012 - 11:46 am

I don't normally comment on political items or videos, but when the President of the United States gets to fire a marshmallow cannon (as part of the White House Science Fair), and it gets captured on video, well, I just have to comment.
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President Obama shoots marshmallow at White House Science Fair

Posted February 8, 2012 - 10:11 am

With help from Joey, an 8th grader from Arizona, U.S. President Barack Obama loaded a homemade rocket launcher and fired it inside the White House.
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Telepresence robots less creepy when used as more than just a way to bug co-workers

Posted February 7, 2012 - 5:09 pm

Telepresence gets big every time travel budgets get small, but the number of situations in which someone would need to remote-control an avatar in a distant office are pretty small. oVideo conferencing does the trick in most cases; in the rest, apparently, there's the VG0.
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Mobile app may help schizophrenics tame the wild voices in their heads

Posted February 6, 2012 - 4:15 pm

Auditory hallucinations -- hearing voices in your head is one of the most frustrating symptoms of schizophrenia. Even schizophrenics who know the voices aren't real have a hard time ignoring them due to abnormalities in the frontal lobe. A mobile app under development in Norway may help train them to filter the noise and hear the right voices.
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World of Glass: The future will have lots of fingerprint smudges

Posted February 6, 2012 - 2:26 pm

See all of the things that will be made of glass in the future.
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Science Monday: Slingshot rubber and thermal energy

Posted February 6, 2012 - 1:17 pm

No slingshots here, just cold rubber.
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Science Monday: Why We Live in the Past

Posted February 6, 2012 - 10:54 am

The next time someone tells you to "live in the present" or "live in the now", hit them in the face. Or better, show them this video.
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Robot moves like a snake, but won't make you squeamish [video]

Posted February 4, 2012 - 7:18 am

Sometimes it can be really hard to improve on nature's designs. From the awesome strength of spiderwebs to the improbable stickiness of a gecko's feet, scientists have long been inspired by nature's feats of engineering. And now, scientists from Georgia Tech are looking to snakes to help them design an energy efficient robot that can be used for search-and-rescue missions.
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Robots learn how to play catch with soulless, mechanical precision

Posted February 4, 2012 - 6:57 am

Last year, the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics at the German Aerospace Center created the "Rollin' Justin" robot, a technical marvel that could catch a ball through a mix of precision, user input, and motion sensors. It proved to be a success, but there's only so much research you can do with a single-function robot. Enter "Agile Justin," the counterpart machine that can pitch a ball with a great deal of finesse.
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NASA answers question, "Where's all the snow at?"

Posted February 2, 2012 - 3:11 pm

Today a groundhog said there would be six more weeks of winter, and yet many of us here in the U.S. are wondering, "What winter?"
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Man torches hand to prove foam's safety; eats foam to prove it's biodegradable

Posted February 2, 2012 - 2:20 pm

To show how cool and safe their insulating foam is, YouTuber "George4title" covers his hand with the foam and then aims a welding torch directly at it. God, I love YouTube.
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Scientists use freaking lasers to cool superconductors

Posted January 28, 2012 - 7:58 am

Here at GeekTech, we’ve seen our share of lasers used for anything from art to shooting down freaking missiles. But, one that “cools”?
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Researchers plan to make a robot with touchy-feely skin

Posted January 28, 2012 - 7:52 am

This robot, lovingly named Pumpkin, might look like it was made with an oversized LEGO Mindstorm NXT kit but in the future, it could be the closest thing to a human analog. The researchers at the University of Ottawa plan to make Pumpkin look like us, with a face that can express emotions and an artificial skin that can feel just like us.
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Quantum dots could protect spacecraft from missiles

Posted January 28, 2012 - 7:15 am

There's not a ton of oxygen in space. Because of this, we have to rethink how we go about doing the things that we take for granted here on Earth, like defense against an incoming missile. Back in 2007, China tested the first ASAT (Anti-Satellite missile) against one of it's own dead satellites; it was a resounding success.
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Radio-controlled flying toys have shot down Maverick, Goose and the whole Top Gun culture

Posted January 27, 2012 - 7:07 pm

In a change as aesthetically and ethically challenging as the shift from beautiful but slow, inefficient men-of-war under sail to smoky, oily steam or diesel warships, drones are taking down the flashiest, most astonishing crafts in which anyone has ever gone to war.
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Delta flights rerouted to avoid radiation attack from space

Posted January 24, 2012 - 4:47 pm

Delta diverted flights headed over the pole today to avoid the firehose of cosmic radiation drenching us with charged particles and static. It's mostly harmless unless you get run over by a car driven by a skygazer distracted by a rare aurora visible as far south as Scotland.
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Sundance film about a man and robot gets early buzz

Posted January 23, 2012 - 11:03 am

A film that's getting some significant buzz at the Sundance Film Festival is "Robot and Frank", a futuristic movie about a cranky old man and a caretaker robot.
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Beaming information onto the brain: Learning like Kung Fu Keanu in The Matrix

Posted January 20, 2012 - 5:32 pm

Scientists researching how information is imprinted on the brain found a way to decode functional MRI patterns and replay them onto the brain. Could it lead to learning by data dump the way Keanu learned Kung Fu in The Matrix? Only if our brains decide to cooperate. So: no.
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Fukushima radiation built into apartment housing evacuees from disaster

Posted January 16, 2012 - 3:29 pm

It won't make Americans underwater on their mortgages any less angry by comparison, but it's hard not to sympathize with families evacuated from near the stricken Fukushima nuclear plants, then housed in apartments built with concrete flavored with radioactive cesium.
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IBM breakthrough could lead to data storage media 100 times more dense than now

Posted January 13, 2012 - 6:01 pm

IBM's Almaden Research Center figured out a way to store a data bit on 12 atoms rather than a million. Lining up individual atoms at close to absolute zero is so difficult and expensive it makes more sense to just keep using the new material for quantum research for now.
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CES 2012: Lenovo shows off tornado chaser truck

Posted January 10, 2012 - 9:46 pm

The truck uses lots of Lenovo gear to help researchers gather data from tornadoes, blizzards and other storms.
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Science Monday: How tides work

Posted January 9, 2012 - 9:48 am

Today's topic is on tides, and why the moon gives us two high tides and low tides instead of just one. Also, why you can never survive flying into a black hole.
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10 tech research projects to watch

Posted January 7, 2012 - 7:43 am

Technology firms wowed us in 2011, delivering tablets, ultrathin laptops, innovative cloud services, and voice command digital assistants. Not so long ago, the technology underlying these products was nothing more than research and development projects. So, in an effort to peek into our not-so-distant tech future, here's a glimpse at ten promising projects percolating in tech research labs.
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Navy researchers refuse to admit chain-of-accidents spy drone delivery system is a joke

Posted January 6, 2012 - 6:00 pm

The Naval Research Lab has come up with a super-stealthy, super-silly way to get tiny drones into enemy territory undetected. First you fly a balloon up to 60,000 feet and tell it to drop a mid-size drone. That dron flies as far as it can and then it drops a smaller drone that drops a Russian nesting doll whose intent is to confuse the enemy so much it just gives up.
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