Archive
- Saturday science subject: Moon water 2: Aquatic boogaloo
In September, we wrote about how a trio of science teams had discovered evidence of water on the Moon. As ScienceNow reports, NASA has now made an even more spectacular find. The agency's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which smashed into the Moon on October 9...
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Last by Mavrick88 at 12:00 PM on 11/16/09 - Saturday science subject: Climbing up the space elevator
Arthur C. Clarke once famously said that the space elevator will be built about 10 years after everybody stops laughing. We're certainly getting there: as New Scientist reports, NASA has awarded a $900,000 prize to a team that developed a robotic climber capable of ascending a cable at 3.9...
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Last by zima at 8:10 AM on 11/12/09 - Etc.
Every year at this time for the past few, we've had a strangely ample ladybug bloom. The things gather all over the sides of our house, and many of them manage to slip inside through open doors or cracks. Today, while I was making breakfast, I spotted one...
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Last by Flying Fox at 10:42 PM on 11/03/09 - Saturday science subject: A really old gamma ray burst
The neat thing about light and other radio waves is that, even though they travel extremely fast by our standards, they still take billions of years to go from one end of the universe to another. So, the further away we point our telescopes, the further back in time we...
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Last by gaffo at 9:09 PM on 11/02/09 - Saturday science subject: Gene therapy and blindness
Can gene therapy help blind kids regain their sight? Yes, according to a new paper by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and in the United Kingdom. As ScienceNow reports, the paper shows results of treatment for Leber's congenital amaurosis (LCA) in four children aged 8 to 11 as...
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Last by Ragnar Dan at 12:37 AM on 10/26/09 - Tech Share moves forward thanks to large donation
Earlier this year we shared how the students at Ebenezer Educational Center have been able to spend some time with the Eee PCs you helped us procure and ship half way around the globe. Although they've been using them on an occasional basis, daily access was not...
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Last by FireGryphon at 5:01 AM on 10/30/09 - Saturday science subject: Placebo
Why do people get better when taking sugar pills instead of the real thing? It's not just psychological, according to a new study by researchers at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany. As Reuters reports, the researchers were able to see the placebo effect in action by...
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Last by TurtlePerson2 at 9:44 AM on 10/19/09 - Sponsored Family Guy special to pimp Windows 7
Microsoft won't just rely on Windows 7's "it's not Vista" street cred and positive hype to sell its new operating system. According to Advertising Age, the company's multimillion-dollar advertising campaign will include a sponsored, commercial-free Family Guy special on Fox. The special, entitled Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex's Almost...
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Last by MadManOriginal at 7:04 PM on 10/15/09 - Saturday science subject: The tiny nuclear battery
We're lucky Ford never went through with that nuclear car concept. Still, nuclear energy has found its way into devices like pacemakers and spacecrafts thanks to nuclear batteries, which generate electricity from radioactive decay, not fission. Earlier this week, the University of Missouri announced that a team led...
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Last by Veerappan at 10:34 PM on 10/19/09 - New StarTech KVM switch has native DisplayPort
With many newer monitors and graphics cards flaunting DisplayPort connections, it's about time keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) switches got in line, too. StarTech now claims to be the "first to market" with a DisplayPort-capable KVM switch, which it sells for $219.99 from its online store. The "2 Port Professional USB DisplayPort KVM...
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Last by Trymor at 10:02 AM on 10/10/09 - Saturday science subject: Rock rain
Rain isn't a phenomenon exclusive to Earth-like planets. On Saturn's moon Titan, for instance, recent evidence suggests liquid methane rains down and forms lakes—and that's with a surface temperature of 94 K. But venturing beyond the solar system may reveal even stranger weather.
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Last by shaq_mobile at 7:53 AM on 10/06/09 - Newegg files for initial public offering
Get ready to buy some Newegg stock. According to MarketWatch, the growing Californian online retailer has filed for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission. The IPO will be worth "up to $175 million," although MarketWatch says Newegg hasn't yet disclosed other details, like when shares...
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Last by Krazeee at 9:29 AM on 10/03/09 - Saturday science subject: Moon water
Well, how about that? No need to go looking all the way on Mars for extraterrestrial water. As Science reports, three independent groups have found evidence of water on our Moon: A less dry moon makes its debut courtesy of the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) that has been orbiting the...
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Last by SPOOFE at 12:39 PM on 09/28/09 - Saturday science subject: Electron-stimulated luminscence
No matter how you look at it, the days of incandescent light bulbs are numbered. Despite generally being more power efficient, however, replacements have their downsides—compact fluorescents emit cooler light, can take a while to warm up, and are trickier to dispose of when they break, for instance....
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Last by Richie_G at 7:20 PM on 09/26/09 - Friday night topic: YouTube fever
Our last Friday night topic was about the darkest recesses of the Internet, where folks go to post sad, disturbing, or otherwise uncanny exhibits from the everyday world. What about the web's less sinister side, though? Once in a while, a person's idle pastime can be another's welcome break from...
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Last by VILLAIN_xx at 10:08 PM on 09/20/09 - Chance to win a Core i7 gaming PC
Intel and a couple of its system-building partners are going out of their way to make this week's launch extra special. CyberPower and iBuypower are giving away a handful of well-outfitted PCs based on the new Core i7-870 CPUs. The best news is that one of these systems...
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Last by khands at 11:10 AM on 11/06/09 - Saturday science subject: Pain-free meat
When someone decides to avoid eating meat altogether, animal cruelty often lies pretty high on their list of motives. What if animals in factory farms didn't have to suffer, though? The New Scientist points to a controversial paper that proposes farm-animal breeds be genetically modified to prevent them from...
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Last by Imperor at 6:44 PM on 09/08/09 - Friday night topic: Don't point, honey
It happens to the best of us. Someone or something completely outrageous enters our field of view, and we have great trouble averting our gaze. Thanks to the two-way mirror of the Internet, not only can we share such phenomena and stare until our eyes pop out, but we can...
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Last by indeego at 1:24 PM on 09/06/09
- Upcoming microATX MSI H57 motherboard pictured[12]
- Internet Explorer 9 to feature GPU acceleration[13]
- Deal of the week: A $550 ultraportable and a $225 home server[13]
- Name Your PC Day Shortbread[23]
- Chrome OS VMware image pops up on BitTorrent[19]
- Power Pack 3 for Windows Home Server arrives next week[13]
