Astronomers have discovered more than 50 new exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, including sixteen super-Earths (planets with a mass between one and ten times that of the Earth).
They used the HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO‘s La Silla Observatory in Chile, the world’s most successful planet finder.
One of the recently announced newly discovered planets, HD 85512 b, is estimated… read more
Eastman Kodak Company unveiled the world’s first 50 million pixel CCD image sensor for professional photography.
The sensor captures digital images with unprecedented resolution and detail. For instance, with a 50 megapixel camera, in an aerial photo of a field 1 1/2 miles across, you could detect an object about the size of a small notebook computer (1 foot by 1 foot).
University of Southampton and Eindhoven University of Technology.scientists have developed a new technology that could store vast quantities of information — 360 TB on a disc, about 100 times more than current disk drives — for more than a million years [1].
‘Superman memory crystal’
Using a high speed femtosecond laser, data is written on self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz, and stored in… read more
Soon we will all be able to decipher our own genomes for as little as $1,000, scientists say.
A new study by University of Chicago and Northwestern University researchers that calculates the influence of cloud behavior on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of stars in the universe.
In our Milky Way galaxy alone, 60 billion planets may be orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone.
Current data from NASA’s… read more
A U.N. report published today states that six in ten people (60%) of the world’s population has a cell phone subscription, up from just under 15% in 2002.
Internet use has more than doubled to 23% in 2008, up from 11% in 2002.
The report also ranked countries by how advanced their information and communications technology (ICT) is, with Sweden first and the U.S. at #17.
Tilera Corp. is pioneering a new chip architecture based on MIT research and has begun to ship a 64-core processor, promising dramatic advances in powering devices for the networking and multimedia industries.
Tilera claims they will deliver more than 10 times the performance of current dual-core processors and 40 times the performance of today’s digital signal processors, and can be scaled to much larger grids.
As of May 2013, 70% of American adults ages 18 and older have a high-speed broadband* connection at home, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.
Groups with the highest rates of home broadband adoption continue to be college graduates, adults under age 50, and adults living in households earning at least $50,000, as well as whites and adults living in… read more
Mars One says it has received applications from more than 78,000 people in more than 120 countries for the Mars One astronaut selection program, in hopes of becoming a Mars settler in 2023.
Most applications come from the U.S. (17324), followed by China (10241), United Kingdom (3581), Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Argentina and India.
The most popular candidate (for site visitors) so far is Anders… read more
Winners of the annual $1 million Kavli Prize in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience this year include Nadrian C. Seeman of New York University for structural DNA for use as nanorobots or in a DNA computer, Donald M. Eigler of IBM’s Almaden Research Center for picking up a single atom and moving it precisely to a different location, and Thomas Südhof of the Stanford School of Medicine, Richard H. Scheller of… read more
The University of Hasselt (Belgium) has announced that Belgian and Dutch scientists have successfully replaced a lower jaw with a 3D printed model for a 83 year-old woman, 3Ders.org reports.
According to the researchers, It is the first custom-made implant in the world to replace an entire lower jaw.
Normally it takes a few days to produce a custom implant, but with 3D printing… read more
A bipartisan coalition of 86 civil liberties organizations and Internet companies — including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, reddit, Mozilla, FreedomWorks, and the American Civil Liberties Union — are demanding swift action from Congress in light of the recent revelations about unchecked domestic surveillance, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In an open letter to lawmakers sent today, the groups call for a congressional investigatory committee, similar to… read more
The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon is coming off a $2 million win in November’s DARPA Urban Challenge, and director Matthew Mason discussed what’s next, from the Google Lunar X Prize to super artificial intelligence.