Technology, features and articles | Educational Science

Dec 31, 2004

Presto! Instant Petrified Wood Created in Lab

Achieving what would take millions of years in only a few days, scientists have drastically sped up the process of petrifying wood. Yongsoon Shin and his colleagues at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have recreated, under laboratory conditions, the conversion of wood into a ceramic, the very process of petrification....

Nov 30, 2006

RoboSalmon to Spy on Fish

RoboSalmon, an underwater robot meant to spy on the real fish, is being developed at Glasgow University. The robot has a built-in camera to broadcast images of real fish back to the operators of the device. Zoologists will use RoboSalmon to monitor various fish species in their natural habitat. A...

Nov 30, 2006

Paul Bunyan Robot Dives For Trees

Sawfish is a real-life robotic underwater lumberjack; it swims down to harvest trees that are now underwater due to flooding to create reservoirs. The Triton Sawfish Underwater Harvester is the world's first viable marine technology for logging underwater forests. It is the only deep water logging machine. Piloted and powered...

Nov 30, 2006

Human Thoughts Control New Robot

Scientists have created a way to control a robot with signals from a human brain. By generating the proper brainwaves—picked up by a cap with electrodes that sense the signals and reflect a person's instructions—scientists can instruct a humanoid robot to move to specific locations and pick up certain objects...

Oct 31, 2006

Miniature Robot to Power Through the Spine

In the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, a full-size underwater vehicle was shrunk to microscopic size and injected into the blood vessels of a person. Now, a team headed by Dr. Moshe Shoham of Haifa's Technion has created a novel propulsion system for a miniature robot to travel through the spinal...

Oct 31, 2006

Antiviral Paint Kills Flu on Contact

A remarkable new anti-viral polymer can be applied like paint and could help reduce the spread of germs in public areas and hospitals. The biocidal paint was developed by MIT's Alexander Klibanov. In a graphic demonstration (see photo), a regular commercial glass slide and another one coated with alkylated PEI...

Oct 31, 2006

Humans Inhabit Body of Experimental Robot

A pair of new, immersive technologies allows a person to inhabit the body of a distant robot in an experiment conducted in Germany. The first is the haptic system (from a Greek word meaning touch) that allows the operator to don a pair of gloves that can actually feel what...

Sep 30, 2006

Snail Mail with Real Snails

We often jokingly refer to delivery of letters by the post office as snail mail, comparing it to the lightning speed of email and instant messaging. RealSnailMail is a performance art piece in which the artists create snail mail with real snails. The intent is to harness the power of...

Sep 30, 2006

Microscopic Robot Lends Helping Hand

A microscopic robot hand, made of silicon and plastic balloons, could help perform surgery and defuse bombs. The microhand is so tiny that when clenched into a fist it measures a little over one millimeter across, or roughly as thick as a dime [image]. It is made using silicon finger...

Aug 31, 2006

'Minority Report' Ads Are In Your Future

BluScreen, an interactive advertising technology that identifies passers-by using their Bluetooth-enabled cellphones, is being tested at the school of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University in the UK. At the school, the system will chose from different announcements about school events and scheduling. Once out in the real world,...

Aug 31, 2006

Experts: Technology Could Save or Destroy Civilization This Century

NEW YORK—The continual advancement of technology will be critical in determining whether humanity will evolve into a true global civilization or destroy itself in the next century, a panel of experts said this week. In the next 100 years, humanity could leap forward into a true global civilization—complete with a...

Jul 31, 2006

Battle Bot: Machine Designed to Extract Wounded Troops

The Vecna BEAR robot (Battlefield Extraction and Retrieval Robot) is being developed as an adjunct to other rescue technologies for extracting combat casualties. The BEAR bot has three main elements; hydraulic upper body, mobile platform and dynamic balancing behavior. The robot should be able to fully stand up by straightening...

Jul 31, 2006

Look Mom, No Legs! Robots Enter New Sphere

A new type of robot balances on a ball rather than relying on legs or wheels. The Ballbot, as it is called, can move in tight spots, making it potentially more useful than other designs for some uses. Carnegie Mellon University robotics Professor and inventor Ralph Hollis first started fiddling...

Jul 31, 2006

Rising Cyberviolence Mirrors Sci-Fi

Cyberviolence, a form of vigilante justice in which a large group of Internet users post attacks against an individual, are increasing in South Korea. In Seoul, a 30-year-old accountant named Kim Myong Jae became theNo. 1 hate figure of South Korea's huge Internet community.People who belied that he had killed...

Jul 31, 2006

Pong Game is Put on a Dress

The Pong Dress is the creation of artists Max Moswitzer and Magarete Jahrmann of the Ludic Society. The classic video game Pong is implemented on a 5x7 LED screen worked into the front of the dress. Two pixels on the right and left borders form the paddles; a single pixel...