Technology, features and articles | Educational Science

Sep 30, 2005

Radar as Death Ray?

According to Aviation Week, the Pentagon is now developing active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars that could be used as weapons. A bizarre historical twist to this story is that in 1934, a rumor was started to the effect that Nazi Germany had developed a death ray based on radar....

Sep 30, 2005

Digital Newspapers Almost Here

Siemens, a German electronics firm, says that it has lowered production costsfor paper-thin displays sufficiently to allow their use in newspapers and magazines. Norbert Aschenbrenner of Siemens claimed the new screens can do everything a regular TV screen or computer monitor can do, but at a fraction of the cost:...

Sep 30, 2005

Microbe and Machine Merged to Create First 'Cellborg'

Fully merging microbe and machine for the first time, scientists have created gold-plated bacteria that can sense humidity. The breakthrough is the first cellborg in what might become an array of devices that could sense dangerous gases or other hazardous substances. The bioelectronic device swells and contracts in response to...

Aug 31, 2005

Housing for Katrina Victims: Ideas from Science Fiction

In the wake of hurricane Katrina, and the flooding of New Orleans, hundreds of thousands of survivors have been left homeless -- probably for many months. Large areas have been devastated, without any services. Readers wrote in suggesting that perhaps science fiction writers had some ideas that could be of...

Aug 31, 2005

The Military's Walrus: An Unlikely Flying Machine

DARPA's Walrus program to develop and evaluate a very large airlift vehicle has moved forward; DARPA announced the contractors for the first phase of the program. Despite detailed early descriptions of war-balloons in late nineteenth century science fiction, this isn't your father's (not to mention great-grandfather's) dirigible airship. According to...

Jun 30, 2005

Space Station's Air Problems Like a 1942 Novel

The International Space Station and the fictional Venus Equilateral Station (from a 1942 story by George O. Smith) have a problem in common - a failure of the air plant. The ISS uses (among other components) the Elektron oxygen generation system. After several stoppages, the unit failed completely about a...

Jun 30, 2005

NY Police Computer Predicts Robbery

In the movie Minority Lt. James In the gloomy half-darkness the three idiots sat babbling. Every incoherent utterance, every random syllable, was analyzed, compared and reassembled in the form of visual symbols, transcribed on conventional punchcards, and ejected into various coded slots.(Read more about the precrime analytical wing) ...

May 31, 2005

Singing Benches and Trash Cans

Robotic benches and bins with Sirius Cybernetics Corporation GPP (Genuine People Personalities) straight out of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy have been created by Greyworld, a group of London artists. Andrew Shoben of Greyworld describes the six solar-powered robotic bins and benches in the following way: At first...

May 31, 2005

New Skin Lets Robots Get Sensitive

Scientists are working on a type of skin that will allow robots to be more touchy feely.? The high-tech skin has fingernail sized sensors embedded all over its surface. The sensors allow a robot to feel changes in its surroundings and move accordingly. Robots move well on their own, especially...

May 31, 2005

New Invisible Watermark to Prevent Fake Photos

With advances in computer software making it easier and easier to alter photographs, researchers have devised a way to encode digital images to detect frauds. The new technique embeds a computer generated hologram (CGH) into an image. Usually a simple word or picture, the hologram hides in the noise –...

Apr 30, 2005

Bill Gates Envisions Cars that Can't Crash

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) _ Microsoft Corp. mogul Bill Gates and the leader of Ford Motor Co. outlined a future Friday in which software enables cars to fix themselves and avoid accidents. Gates and Bill Ford Jr., Ford's chairman and chief executive, said high-definition screens, speech recognition technology, cameras, digital calendars...

Apr 30, 2005

New Bridges Made of Bendable Concrete

By mixing fiber in concrete scientists have created a bendable material that is lightweight, resists cracking, and lasts longer. The newfangled concrete, already in use in Japan, Korea, Switzerland and Australia, will find its first application in the United States this summer, researchers said this week. Fiber-reinforced concrete is not...

Apr 30, 2005

New Robots Clone Themselves

Mimicking reproduction in living organisms, researchers have built a simple self-replicating robot out of automated blocks. Machines that can copy themselves have been built before, but the earlier experiments were limited to two dimensions or confined to a track. Hod Lipson and his collaborators at Cornell University have designed modular...

Apr 30, 2005

New Technique Could Make 300-Carat Diamonds

Researchers have developed a new technique for making very large diamonds of high quality that could soon boost optics technology and gaudily adorn fingers of the wealthy with sparkling rocks up to an inch wide. Using a process called chemical vapor deposition (CVD), several groups have figured out how to...

Apr 30, 2005

Older and Wiser: Expanse of Knowledge Delays Big Ideas

A new study of Nobel Prize winners and great inventors suggests top innovators are older today than they were a century ago. I find that the age at which noted innovations are produced has increased by approximately 6 years over the 20th Century, says Benjamin Jones of Northwestern University. Innovators...