In almost everything, size matters.  And usually, being bigger helps.   I don't know anyone who couldn't use a larger refrigerator but University of Bristol physicists have done the…

Fish in a wind tunnel?   How else will you learn how they fly? It turns out flying fish can remain airborne for over 40 seconds and cover distances of up to a quarter mile hitting a top speed up…

I took a moment to look at Ray Kurzweil's response to PZ Myers' second-hand dissection of his talk at the Singularity Summit(1) I attended last weekend (see The Singularity Stole My ATM Card) because…

Traditional mirrors work by directing the path of photons of light but atoms possessing a magnetic moment can likewise be controlled using a magnetic mirror.  A new study investigates the…

Researchers have reported the creation of pseudo-magnetic fields far stronger than the strongest magnetic fields ever sustained in a laboratory, just by putting the right kind of strain onto a patch…

Elementary calculations show that the mass of the passenger's vehicle should have an important influence on risk of injury, greater mass yielding greater protection independent of the other mass(es)…

It's World Cup time and that means sports fans worldwide are focused on important issues, like complaining about vuvuzelas and this year's soccer ball, the Jabulani, which will push fan and player…

If you've watched any World Cup games so far (and a record 15 million in the US watched Saturday's match versus Ghana, so statistically, ummm, 50,000 people in our audience have watched at least one…

Researchers at Harvard and MIT using what is called programmable matter have demonstrated how a single thin sheet composed of interconnected triangular sections could transform itself into a boat- or…

The beauty and utility of crystalline materials has seen in almost every application today.  From silicon microprocessor and photovoltaic technologies, to dielectrics, laser applications, optics…