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Quantum Teleportation Leaps to New Distance Record May 16, 2012 
Scientists in China have transmitted quantum bits, or qubits, over a record distance of 97 km, or roughly 60 miles. This is more than six times the distance of the previous record of 16 km, set by another team of Chinese researchers in May of 2010, as reported in Nature.com.
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Brainput Project Takes a Load Off Humans' Minds May 15, 2012 
A group of researchers from several universities led by MIT have shown that robots controlled mentally by suitably equipped humans who are multitasking can take over some of the workload when needed. The Brainput project had researchers use a technique called "functional near-infrared" imaging to measure the activity of brains in test subjects.
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Iron-Eating Bacteria: Coming Soon to a Hard Drive Near You? May 15, 2012 
Today's hard drives may be smaller, faster, cheaper and more capacious than their predecessors, but the need for ever-tinier components is making it difficult to keep improving them. Therein lies at least part of the motivation behind biocomputing -- in which microscopic biological molecules are being recruited to play a role -- and recently scientists have identified a fresh new possibility in this area.
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Shining Some Light on Sunspots May 11, 2012 
Right now, if you look at the sky at sunrise or sunset when the sun's light is dim, you might be able to see Sunspot AR1476, which is now wending its way across the face of Sol, with your naked eye. The sunspot measures 160,000 km across, or about a dozen times Earth's diameter. Eyeballing the sun might hurt your eyes, of course, so it's better to avoid looking directly at it.
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mHealth Looks Rosy at CTIA May 09, 2012 
The future of the mHealth space is, in a word, "growth," which is exemplified at this week's International CTIA Wireless 2012 trade show. Several companies are presenting their wares in the Wireless Health Pavilion, with innovations that allow consumers to monitor health remotely, track daily habits, manage health records, track inventory, and support physical wellness.
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Brain-Scanning Bot Maps Minds at Warp Speed May 09, 2012
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgia Tech have automated the process of finding and recording information from cells in living brains. "Autopatching makes recording the electrical and circuit properties [of cells] straightforward and effortless for the operator," said Craig Forest, one of the members of the research team.
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There's a Supermoon Rising on Saturday May 03, 2012 
It may have been a "bad moon" rising in the famous 1969 song by CCR, but this weekend's full moon could well inspire predictions for trouble of a similar kind. That's because it's this year's "supermoon" -- the full moon that occurs when the moon is closest to Earth -- and supermoons are often believed to wreak even more havoc on our planet than ordinary full moons do.
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Facebook's Organ Donor Assist Likely to Play Well on the Street May 01, 2012 
The numbers reflecting the state of organ donation in the U.S. paint a mostly grim picture. There are 114,183 people waiting for an organ -- 18 of whom will die each day, according to DHHS. However, Facebook just added another number to the mix: 900 million -- its user base. In a new initiative, Facebook is encouraging its users to share their organ donor status.
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Asteroid Miners May Set the Stage for Space Colonization April 24, 2012 
On Tuesday, the founders of Planetary Resources held a press conference at the Museum of Flight in Seattle to announce a new megamillion-dollar plan to use commercially built robotic ships to travel to the asteroid belt to mine for valuable minerals including platinum and gold. "As we move beyond the bounds of Earth to a universe that is full of resources, we can finally bring those materials back to Earth," said speaker Peter Diamandis, cofounder of Planetary Resources.
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IBM Aims to Equip Electric Cars for the Long Haul April 20, 2012 
IBM researchers are looking to go the distance with electric vehicles. On Friday, Big Blue announced that material innovation developers Asahi Kasei and Central Glass had joined its Battery 500 Project team to develop new battery technology for electric vehicles. IBM Research has been striving to develop a lithium-air battery that would make it possible for a family-sized electric car to drive 500 miles on a single charge.
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'X-Ray Vision' Tech Could Work With Cellphone Cameras April 19, 2012 
X-ray vision won't just be limited to comic book superheroes in the future. A team at the
University of Texas at Dallas led by Kenneth O, Ph.D., professor of electrical engineering, has made new scientific advances that could make it possible for cameras to see through solid walls. The researchers have designed a chip that could make it possible for the camera on a mobile device to see through walls, wood, plastic, paper -- and even into the human body.
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Researchers Leap Into Quantum Networking April 12, 2012 
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have set up a quantum network consisting of two coupled single atoms. These atoms communicate quantum information through the coherent exchange of single photons. Decoherence, which can be thought of as the loss of information from a system into the environment, is one of the obstacles to building a working quantum computer.
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Diamonds Are a Quantum Scientist's Best Friends April 06, 2012 
An international group of scientists led by researchers from the University of California in Santa Barbar have taken the first steps toward creating a quantum computer -- in a diamond. So far they've built a two-qubit unit for a quantum computer. A qubit is the quantum computing equivalent of a bit, and it can be both on and off at the same time, unlike a regular bit which must be in one state or the other.
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MIT's Smart Sand Can 'Build' Whatever It Touches April 06, 2012 
Of late, people working in specialized fields such as industrial design, architecture and the medical and dental industries have been going gaga over 3D printing, a process in which three-dimensional solid objects are produced on a special printer using materials such as molten polymers. However, this technology may be trumped by research on so-called self-sculpting sand.
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IBM Plans Massive Computer System to Digest Big Telescope Data April 02, 2012 
IBM is teaming up with The Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, otherwise known as "Astron," on a five-year project to look into very fast, low-power exascale computer systems for the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope. The project, to be called "DOME," will cost about $44 million.
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Driving Into the Future: Autonomous Cars March 27, 2012 
Self-driving cars are no longer just the stuff of science fiction. Increasingly, they're becoming a reality. For the last several years, Google has been testing self-driving, autonomous vehicles in California -- and if they ever become mainstream, their promise is better controlled and less deadly roadways. "We want to improve people's lives by making driving safer, more enjoyable, and more efficient," said Jay Nancarrow, a Google spokesperson.
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3D Printing Gets a Speed Injection March 14, 2012 
The Gutenberg printing press, which was invented around A.D. 1440, truly revolutionized the world. It allowed more people to have access to books, which until that time had to be manually copied by hand. Today the world is seeing another revolutionary advance in printing technology, but this time in 3D printing. The concept of 3D printing isn't that far removed from the traditional printing technique of basically casting ink on a page.
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Keeping a Lid on It: New Motorcycle Helmet Technologies March 13, 2012 
It's extremely important to wear helmets when riding motorcycles, according to Jackie Gillan, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, but that's not just her personal opinion -- it's based on clear facts about what happens in the case of a crash. "We know from research that every time a state repeals its motorcycle helmet laws, there's an immediate jump in deaths and brain injuries from motorcycle crashes," Gillan said.
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