A working prototype of a low-cost electroencephalography device funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) made its debut in New York this weekend, the first step in the agency’s effort to jumpstart a do-it-yourself revolution in neuroscience, The Verge reports.
Dr. Bill Casebeer, a DARPA program manager, is hoping to spark a neuroscience fad within the maker movement. His goal is to return to… read more
A new radar-based technology named Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response (FINDER) can detect a heartbeat of a human buried beneath 30 feet (9 meters) of crushed material
Developed by the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it can also detect people hidden behind 20 feet (6 meters) of solid concrete, and from a distance of 100… read more
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California’s Mojave Desert produced its first output of energy when the first of three towers was synchronized last week to the power grid for the first time.
Power generated from Ivanpah will first go to Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), followed by Southern California Edison in the coming months.
Ivanpah is the largest solar thermal plant in the… read more
Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials, an investigation by The New York Times has revealed.
A top-secret
In an advance that could dramatically shrink particle accelerators for science and medicine, researchers used a laser to accelerate electrons at a rate 10 times higher than conventional technology in a nanostructured glass chip just .5 millimeters long.
The achievement was reported in the journal Nature by a team including scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University.… read more
Michigan Technological University researchers have developed a way to use self-assembled titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanotubes to lower the rate of dental-implant failures.
Dental implants are posts, usually made of titanium, that are surgically placed into the jawbone and topped with artificial teeth.
While most dental implants are successful, a small percentage fail and either fall out or must be removed.
“There are two… read more
Google announced new Knowledge-Graph features Thursday in celebration of its fifteenth birthday.
Comparisons and filters
“We keep expanding features of Knowledge Graph so it can answer more questions — even those that don’t have a simple answer,” said Amit Singhal, SVP, Google Search.
“Let’s say you want to get your daughter excited about a visit to the Met. You can pull up your… read more
The first scoop of soil analyzed by the analytical suite in NASA’s Curiosity rover reveals that fine materials on the surface of Mars contain several percent water by weight.
The results were published today in Science as one article in a five-paper special section on the Curiosity mission.
“One of the most exciting results from this very first solid sample ingested by Curiosity is the high… read more
MIT engineers have developed a new type of nanoparticle that protects a vaccine long enough to generate a strong immune response in mucosal surfaces far from the vaccination site, such as the gastrointestinal and reproductive tracts, as well as in the lungs.
Such vaccines could help protect against influenza and other respiratory viruses, or prevent sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV, herpes simplex virus and… read more
Cambridge University researchers have devised a simple technique to increase the density of carbon nanotube forests grown on conductive supports by about five times over previous methods.
Such high-density nanotubes might one day replace some metal electronic components, such as interconnects, leading to faster devices.
Carbon nanotubes’ outstanding mechanical, electrical and thermal properties make them an alluring material to electronics manufacturers. However, until recently scientists believed… read more
Massachusetts Eye and Ear researchers have developed a simple technique of fundus (retinal) photography in human and rabbit eyes using a iPhone, an inexpensive app, and instruments that are readily available in an ophthalmic practice, as described in the Journal of Ophthalmology (open access).
Commercial fundus cameras can cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, making the technology out of reach for smaller ophthalmic… read more
Understanding how the molecular structure of polymers influences their electrical characteristics could hasten the advent of flexible electronics.
Flexible electronics could spawn new products: clothing wired to cool or heat, reading tablets that could fold like newspaper, and so on.
However, electronic components such as chips, displays and wires are generally made from metals and inorganic semiconductors — materials with physical properties that make them fairly stiff and… read more
Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have demonstrated that our brains could process new situations by relying on a method similar to the “pointer” system used by computers.
Pointers are used to tell a computer where to look for information stored elsewhere in the system.
For the study, the research team relied on sentences with words used in unique ways to test the… read more
Professor Stephen Hawking has predicted that it could be possible to preserve a mind as powerful as his on a computer — but not with technology existing today, The Telegraph reports.
Hawking said the brain operates in a way similar to a computer program, meaning it could in theory be kept running without a body to power it.
“I think the… read more
A team of Stanford engineers has built a basic computer using carbon nanotubes (CNTs) — a semiconductor material with the potential to launch a new generation of smaller electronic devices that run faster, while using less energy, than those made from silicon chips.
This unprecedented feat culminates years of efforts by scientists around the world to harness this promising but quirky material.
The achievement is reported… read more