March 8, 2010 – 12:22 pm | Comments Off

Windows Media | Real Audio … Can an injection help you stop smoking? Or end a drug addiction? We hear about a new approach to curing addiction that works like the flu vaccine. How your …

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Blind British Soldier ‘Sees’ With His Tongue (PhysOrg)
March 16, 2010 – 5:07 pm | Comments Off

A British soldier left blind by a grenade in Iraq has told how his life has been transformed by ground-breaking technology that enables him to “see” with his tongue. … Read more

How We See the Future (Huffington Post)
March 16, 2010 – 6:58 am | Comments Off

You might expect that the American Dream would appear to be in trouble in the midst of the longest recession since the great Depression. However, the first State of the American Dream Survey from Xavier …

Hands Have Unique Bacteria ‘Fingerprint’ (CBC)
March 16, 2010 – 6:56 am | Comments Off

Criminals leave behind an identifiable mix of hand bacteria that forensic scientists could use to identify them, a new study suggests. Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder shows that bacterial samples taken from …

Brazil May Break US Patents on Films, Music, Drugs (Boston Globe)
March 16, 2010 – 6:54 am | Comments Off

Brazil says it may let local companies break U.S. patents on products including movies, music, pharmaceutical products and chemicals. The World Trade Organization says Brazil can take punitive action because the United States has failed …

Gene Loss Lets Mice Regenerate Parts (CBC)
March 16, 2010 – 6:53 am | Comments Off

Geneticists have found that the removal of a single gene allows mice to regenerate damaged body parts, as some salamanders do, a discovery that could one day lead to faster healing in humans. …

U.S. Firms Working to Lower Cost of Solar Energy (PhysOrg)
March 16, 2010 – 6:51 am | Comments Off

One piece of the American effort to find a way to make solar energy cheap enough that everyone will want it is unfolding in a modest redbrick building in this Midwestern city once known as …

Crowdsourced Wisdom on How to Disperse the Budget Dollars (The Scientist)
March 16, 2010 – 6:50 am | Comments Off

Working backward from the apt observation by physicist Ernest Rutherford—“We haven’t the money, so we have to think”—we might ask: Are there pitfalls to these buckets of cash? … Read more

Is Greece the Future of America? (The Glimer Mirror)
March 16, 2010 – 6:48 am | Comments Off

It may be possible to look into America’s future. How? Watch what’s going on in Greece. … Read more

Climate Report Shows Australia Getting Warmer (Gulf Times)
March 16, 2010 – 6:46 am | Comments Off

Australia’s top scientists yesterday released a “State of the Climate” report at a time of growing scepticism over climate change as a result of revelations of errors in some global scientific reports. … …

U.S. to Roll Out Major Broadband Policy (Reuters)
March 16, 2010 – 6:45 am | Comments Off

U.S. regulators will announce a major Internet policy this week to revolutionize how Americans communicate and play, proposing a dramatic increase in broadband speeds that could let people download a high-definition film in minutes instead …

Eco-Cars Go By, Gas Stations Go Under (Asia News Network)
March 16, 2010 – 6:43 am | Comments Off

The spread of eco-friendly vehicles could spell doom for about two-thirds of Japan’s 40,000 gas stations in the next decade, and, according to one observer, even render some rural communities uninhabitable. … Read more

Survey: Readers Don’t Want to Pay for News Online (Boston Globe)
March 16, 2010 – 6:41 am | Comments Off

Getting people to pay for news online at this point would be “like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons,” a new consumer survey suggests. That was one of several bleak headlines in the …

Light Activated ‘Warhead’ Turns Modest Molecules into Super Protein Killers (PhysOrg)
March 14, 2010 – 2:08 pm | Comments Off

Using a novel light activation technique, Scripps Research Institute scientists have been able to turn molecules with only a modest ability to fight specific proteins into virtual protein destroyers. … Read more

Virtual Reality Pioneer Turns Against Web 2.0 Culture (Toronto Star)
March 14, 2010 – 2:03 pm | Comments Off

Lanier, a former proponent of the open-source model of freely sharing intellectual property, has reversed course as the author of a contentious new book, You are Not a Gadget. The heretical manifesto sounds a serious …

Climate Change ‘Makes Birds Shrink’ in North America (BBC)
March 14, 2010 – 2:01 pm | Comments Off

Songbirds in the US are getting smaller, and climate change is suspected as the cause. A study of almost half a million birds, belonging to over 100 species, shows that many are gradually becoming lighter …

The Digital Disconnect: In Relentless Pursuit of ‘Connecting,’ We Miss Out on Each Other (Seattle Times)
March 14, 2010 – 1:59 pm | Comments Off

While communication and gaming gadgets have convenienced and connected us in ways never before possible, they may also be profoundly hurting our ability to be social, empathic and involved with each other. The signs are …

The Virtual Battles Where Soldiers Can’t Die: MoD Trains Army to Fight Using Sophisticated video Games (Daily Mail)
March 14, 2010 – 1:56 pm | Comments Off

Poised with his rifle in the searing heat of the Afghan desert, a British soldier suddenly has to dive for cover as he comes under enemy fire. However, despite the bullets whizzing all around he …

India Company’s Medical-Tourism Push (BusinessWeek)
March 14, 2010 – 1:53 pm | Comments Off

Indian hospital operator Fortis Healthcare’s purchase of a big stake in Singapore-based Parkway Holdings could lead to a major shakeup in the global health-care industry. … Read more

China Looks to ‘Combustible Ice’ as a Fuel Source (PhysOrg)
March 14, 2010 – 1:52 pm | Comments Off

Buried below the tundra of China’s Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a type of frozen natural gas containing methane and ice crystals that could supply energy to China for 90 years. China discovered the large reserve of …

New Computing Tools Threaten the Role of the PC (Mercury News)
March 14, 2010 – 1:44 pm | Comments Off

The PC has been at the center of the computing universe for 30 years. But that’s about to change. Within two or three years, smartphones will outsell PCs, if analysts’ projections hold true. Already, netbooks …

The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done. By Peter Miller. Avery.
March 13, 2010 – 11:39 am | Comments Off
The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done. By Peter Miller. Avery.

The modern world may be obsessed with speed and productivity, but twenty-first-century humans actually have much to learn from the ancient instincts of swarms. A fascinating new take on the concept of collective intelligence and …

Japan Aims its Home Fuel Cells at Europe (BBC)
March 13, 2010 – 9:12 am | Comments Off

With over 5,000 fuel cells providing heat and energy for conventional homes up and down Japan, the BBC has learnt that companies such as electronics giant Panasonic are in talks with EU governments about the …

China May Emulate U.S. ‘Quiet Revolution’ in Shale Gas Output (Bloomberg)
March 11, 2010 – 10:11 pm | Comments Off

China may produce a quarter of its natural gas from shale deposits within 20 years to meet growing demand for the cleaner-burning fuel, reduce imports and emulate a boom in U.S. output from the gas-bearing …

Computer Program ‘Reads’ Minds (CBC)
March 11, 2010 – 10:09 pm | Comments Off

U.K. researchers have used a computer program to analyze human brain activity and “read” a person’s memory of watching a short film. … Read more

Recognition Technology to Transform Mobile Devices (PhysOrg)
March 11, 2010 – 10:07 pm | Comments Off

UT Dallas researchers are working with Texas Instruments Inc. and GetFugu Inc. to enable next-generation human-device interaction (HDI) technologies that merge a physical, real-world environment with virtual, computer-generated imagery on mobile devices. … …

Curbs on Media, Internet Rise Worldwide, U.S. Says (BusinessWeek)
March 11, 2010 – 10:06 pm | Comments Off

Crackdowns on the media and on Internet use rose last year in China, Iran, Russia and other nations in an effort by governments to clamp down on dissent, according to the annual U.S. report on …

Down on the Farm With the Robots (BBC)
March 11, 2010 – 10:04 pm | Comments Off

Dr. Richard Dudley and colleagues at NPL along with agricultural firm Vegetable Harvesting Systems (VHS) are working on robots that are as fast as humans at working out if a cauliflower is ready to be …

Google’s Library Project Forces Important Media Decisions (PhysOrg)
March 11, 2010 – 10:01 pm | Comments Off

Sometime in the near future, a federal judge will decide whether Google can proceed with its plan to create a digital library and bookstore out of millions of old books scanned from libraries around the …

Arctic Seed Vault Becomes World’s Most Diverse Collection of Crop Diversity (PhysOrg)
March 10, 2010 – 10:13 pm | Comments Off

Days after celebrating its second anniversary, the Svalbard “Doomsday” Global Seed Vault is receiving this week thousands of new seeds that will push its collection to more than half a million unique samples, making it …