Technology

Cicadas might have used their wily prime number scheme to dodge 2 and 4 year predators, but what about a predator with continual exponential growth?  The microcircuitry industry has reliably doubled the density of transistors on a chip every 2 years, as observed by Gordon E. Moore in 1965. This exponential density growth trend is known as Moore’s law, and satisfying it requires that nanofabrication techniques are constantly embraced, devoured, then cast aside.  Unlike fish and birds, Moore’s law isn’t interested in the cicada’s insect innards, but rather its wings.   The…

 What looked to be a small stroke of genius in the fight against global warming has resulted in scientific disaster. Planktos, a California-based company that sell “carbon credits” to businesses looking to reduce their carbon footprint had planned to harness the photosynthetic power of algae to lower greenhouse gases - and make a tidy profit. Algae come cheap, requiring light and water. They also require iron, which may be the sixth most abundant element in the Universe, but still relatively rare in the ocean. The small bits algae utilize are blown in by the wind and runoff from rivers…

There was once a theory in manufacturing and business; 'planned obsolescence.'  If you didn't make products with limitations, no one would ever buy new ones. Then along came a bunch of Asian companies who made better products and American manufacturing took a dive.    Made In America became a political point of pride rather than a mark of quality. But quality is making a comeback because warranty costs are the next big cost items, write researchers in the International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage - so manufacturers need to design for reliability. Tongdan Jin…

Discover jumped into science blogging on a national scale last year when they hired the awesome Phil Plait, our favorite Bad Astronomer, to be their anchor and then boosted their credibility when they lured respected journalist Carl Zimmer from Seed Media's Scienceblogs.com property, along with the Cosmic Variance folks and others. They've expanded again, adding blogger, journalist and book author Chris Mooney.  Maybe you want to be next.  Like anything else, content is king but popularity certainly helps and that takes some work. First, it's important to understand why larger…

If I were Hugh Hefner, I'd be all over this company, trying to invest. Researchers from Philips Electronics are developing a vibrating jacket to study the effects of touch on a movie viewer’s emotional response to what the characters are experiencing. The jacket will be discussed at the 2009 World  Haptics Conference, sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. How does it work? The jacket contains 64 independently controlled actuators distributed across the arms and torso. The actuators are arrayed in 16 groups of four and linked along a serial bus; each group…

Half-biological and half-synthetic, an army of thousands of wrecking balls are contained within Dr. Metin Sitti's Carnegie Mellon laboratory.  Once incited, they keep moving to the death.  They run on sugar.  And they can all be taken down by penicillin.  Sitti’s army is a cadre of Serratia marcensens bacteria-coated polystyrene microbeads, propelled by the bacteria’s innate restlessness.  To Sitti, recruiting bacteria to form the propulsion side of a microprojectile is more than a fun day in the lab.  These tiny living robots are the foundation for the future of…

A novel motion sensor developed by the Fraunhofer Institutes for Applied Polymer Research IAP in Potsdam-Golm and for Computer Architecture and Software Technology FIRST in Berlin could  enable window panes and glass doors to detect movements, thanks to a new pecial coating. If anything changes in front of the pane, or someone sneaks up to it, an alarm signal is sent to the security guard.  Your cat is going to have a lot of fun with that, right?   Luckily, threshold for the alarm can be set, so that small moving objects  do not trigger an alarm. The principle: The…

Sixty-one teams from Southern California, Arizona, Brazil and Chile faced off in the Los Angeles regional FIRST Robotics Competition on March 13 and 14. JPL sponsored nine of the schools in this annual engineering and technology contest held at the Long Beach Convention Center.  The teams from Centinela Valley Union High School District, Lawndale; Atascadero High School, Atascadero; and the NASA-sponsored Bishop Alemany High School, Mission Hills, won the regional competition and will compete in the FIRST championship competition in Atlanta, from April 16-19. Chaminade College…

While science is of tremendous societal importance, it is difficult to probe the often hidden world of scientific creativity. Most studies of scientific activity rely on citation data, which takes a while to become available because both the cited publication and the publication of a particular citation can take years to appear. In other words, citation data observes science as it existed years in the past, not the present. What we need is a Map Of Science. Enter a group of Los Alamos researchers who created a high-resolution graphic depiction of the virtual trails scientists leave behind…

We have an outstanding graphic design intern who just started so we're going to have T-shirts made for each category rather than just the generic one with the logo.   If you have ideas for cool science-related and/or funny t-shirts that just need a capable hand to bring them to life, make a comment and we can see about making some magic happen.    Then we can send writers here any kind they want.   We are all about customization. Edit: Here are a few: Math ... Biology ... Space ...Physics ... and ... ... and chemistry and lots more obviously.   Check them all out.