coondoggie writes to tell us that NASA has started down the road to reinvention with the addition of four new committees to the external advisory group that drives the agency's direction. The four new committees include Commercial Space, Ed...
Multiple missions have been sent to Mars with the hopes of testing the surface of the planet for life or the conditions that could create life. The question of whether life in the form of bacteria (or something even more exotic) exists on Ma...
Seems like there might be a revolution in the works, as far as VoIP software for Linux is concerned. After mailing Skype support about Skype providing Mandriva RPM packages, Olivier Faurax got an answer which suggests that the Linux Skype cl...
MikeChino writes to mention that the European Space Agency has launched a pair of satellites , one that will pinpoint accurately the future location and intensity of floods and droughts, and the other aimed at testing new tech. Launched on a...
'Nintendo is feeling the sting of competition from the iPhone,' writes Peter Smith in a recent post. 'At least, that's the feeling one gets when reading Nintendo president Satoru Iwata's thoughts on the future of Nintendo handhelds. Accordin...
According to Wired's 'Gadget Lab' blog, Snow Leopard's next update, OS X 10.6.2, will block the Atom processor and will disable many 'Hackintosh' netbooks . It is indeed true that OS X will run just fine on some netbooks if you install the r...
In a sign that ebooks are rising in popularity, a recent survey by mobile analytics company Flurry revealed that users may be using the iPhone for more intellectual pursuits, and not just the visual sizzle. The 'book-related' apps on the iPh...
My girlfriend is training to be a speech and language therapist here in the UK (speech pathologist in the US). A number of clients are guys who enjoy playing computer games, and for a variety of reasons some have no incentive to try and impr...
Yale University researchers believe that if evolutionary pressures of sexual selection and reproductive fitness continue for another 10 generations, the trends detected in their study may mean that the average woman in 2409 AD will be 2 cm s...
A wheat farmer in Australia has eliminated adding fertilizer to his crop by the simple process of injecting the cooled diesel exhaust of his modified tractor into the ground when the wheat is being sown. In doing so he eliminates releasing c...
Science Daily News reports that human missions to Mars and all other long-term space flights might be compromised by disease , first because space travel appears to weaken astronauts' immune systems; and second, because it increases the viru...
Student teams designed and built robotic power-lifters to excavate simulated lunar soil (a.k.a. 'regolith') earlier this month, with $750,000 in prizes up for grabs. Excavating regolith, according to NASA, will be an important part of any co...
TechCrunch is running a story about the prevalence of scams and shady monetization techniques in popular social games on Facebook and MySpace. As an alternative to buying in-game currency with real money, many games make use of lead-generati...
A team with members from Microsoft, the University of Toronto, and the University of Washington have developed an interface that uses electrodes to monitor muscle signals and translate those into commands or button presses , allowing a user...
Tony Alfrey has put together a fascinating page with some history, analysis, and possible explanations for what ultimately went wrong with the recent emergency repair of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The bridge has been closed for da...
Groklaw has an extensive look at the latest developments in the Psystar vs. Apple story . There's a nice picture illustrating the accusation by Apple that Psystar makes three unauthorized copies of OS X . The most interesting, however, is th...
Masten Space Systems successfully qualified for first place in level two of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Wednesday. Flying a brand new vehicle named XA-0.1E (nicknamed Xoie), Masten demonstrated their ability to build, debug...
An anonymous reader sends along this excerpt from Nature News : Kepler, NASA's mission to search for planets around other stars, will not be able to spot an Earth-sized planet until 2011 , according to the mission's team. The delays are cau...
Great things are expected of terahertz waves , the radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and the infrared. Terahertz waves pass through non-conducting materials such as clothes, paper, wood and brick and so cameras sen...
Every few months, it seems, there is a new 'iPhone killer.' Android 2.0, in the guise of the Motorola Droid, is the latest such 'killer.' But what will it really take to beat or match the iPhone ( single page ), and does Android or any other...