Archive
- Saturday science subject: The Moon, comets, and water
Last Saturday, we wrote about how NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) has discovered a substantial amount of water on the Moon. There was talk about comets, not solar wind, being the source of the water pretty early on, and New Scientist now says "evidence...
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Last by eitje at 8:47 AM on 11/22/09 - 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 - Mini DisplayPort becomes a real standard
When Apple unveiled its aluminum MacBooks in 2008, it broke new ground on several fronts, offering users aluminum unibody enclosures, multi-touch glass touch pads... and a new display connector of its own design: Mini DisplayPort. Just over a year on, the Video Electronics Standards Association has adopted Mini DisplayPort...
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Last by loophole at 6:49 PM on 11/11/09 - 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 - Acer unveils 23'' multi-touch monitor
You don't need to spring for a touch-screen notebook or some sort of all-in-one PC to take advantage of Windows 7's multi-touch capabilities. As CrunchGear reports, all you have to do is grab a display like Acer's...
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Last by kamikaziechameleon at 8:34 PM on 11/01/09 - 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
