Cutting Edge

It seems creativity knows no bounds when it comes to the Raspberry Pi. The $25 credit card-size computer has turned mixologist, powered an R2-D2 toy robot, and was even sent into near space.

Now, thanks to a group of National University of Singapore engineering undergraduates, the Raspberry Pi has also conquered water. Dubbed the Coconut Pi, the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) uses the Raspberry Pi for memory-intensive functions, while it relies on Arduino for precise control. … Read more

Turns out that crazy rumor was true: NASA is planning to capture an asteroid.

The plans were included in the space agency's $17.7 billion fiscal 2014 budget, part of the new $3.7 trillion government budget proposed earlier today by President Obama.

In the budgets, about $78 million is set aside for a plan that involves sending a craft to rendezvous with what's described as a "small asteroid," and then moving the space rock into a stable orbit near the moon. Astronauts will later visit the asteroid and scoop up samples for study back on … Read more

Segway scooters are still kind of cool, but they have the disadvantage of being big. It's a bit difficult to just pack one up, take it on your morning public transportation commute, and then saddle up to ride it to the office. Israeli designer Amir Zaid is thinking smaller than Segway when it comes to his all-electric MUV-e scooter. It's small enough to fold up into a suitcase-size bundle.

Zair's resume includes design work for Ferrari and Fiat, so you know the MUV-e isn't going to look like other scooters. It has three wheels and lots of rounded edges. There's even a bit of a Tron aesthetic at work here in looking at the renderings for the final product. Dare I say, it looks a little sporty? Not at all like this boxy scooter we saw recently.… Read more

There's no crying in baseball, and there's no crying in space.

While zero gravity doesn't have an impact on tears forming, it has an effect on if they fall -- and they don't. The water that builds up in your eyes from crying will stay there until the bubble gets so big it moves to another spot on your face, or it's removed. It's not very pretty or graceful.

Watch how Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield -- commander of the International Space Station and maker of all sorts of entertaining space videos -- demonstrates what … Read more

Xerox has a different view on the future than most.

The company recently gave The New York Times the opportunity to see a new technology it's working on at its Palo Alto, Calif., research center. Referred to as Xerographic microassembly, the technology is based on the idea of laser printing and could one day become the most efficient way to bring circuitry to electronics products, Xerox claims.

According to the Times, Xerographic microassembly breaks traditional silicon wafers into thousands of "chiplets" and then bottles them up as a physical "ink." Once that ink is produced … Read more

The U.S. Navy is continuing its flirtation with laser weapons.

The latest tip-toeing move toward a more serious relationship came today with word from the Navy that it plans to deploy a solid-state laser weapon system aboard the USS Ponce in fiscal year 2014. Other than that, though, the announcement was absent any details about the capabilities of the particular laser weapon system or the expectations for its performance, though the Navy talked up the virtues of laser weapons in general as a countermeasure against threats including aerial drones and fast-moving small boats.

The Navy also described the deployment … Read more

At the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, Yukiyasu Kamitani and his colleagues have spent a long time trying to assemble the data they need to image a sleeper's dreams on a screen -- and it looks like they might be nearly there.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which examines the flow of blood in the brain to monitor activity, the team has managed to create an algorithm that can accurately display in real time what images are appearing in a dream. This is the first time, it is believed, that objective data has been collected from … Read more

Intel today announced the next generation of its Thunderbolt technology, which doubles the speed and works with previous inputs.

The technology, which Intel announced at the National Association of Broadcasters conference today, supports up to 20Gbps bidirectionally (up from 10). That extra speed means the cables can now support both transferring a 4K video and putting it on screen at the same time, reports Engadget.

Thunderbolt is the input/output technology that brings transfer speeds that exceed what is currently available with USB 3.0 (though not for long), as well as extending that speed across several devices at once. … Read more

With lung cancer being the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S., effective early screening is key to saving lives. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic say they've developed new software that can help classify lung nodules noninvasively, saving lives and health care costs.

A pilot study of the program called Computer-aided Nodule Assessment and Risk Yield, or Canary, appears in the April issue of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology.

Canary leans on data from high-resolution CT images of a common type of cancerous nodule in the lung called pulmonary adenocarcinomas. It matches every pixel of the lung image to one of nine unique radiological exemplars. In the pilot study, it was able to classify the lesions as aggressive or indolent with high sensitivity, as compared to microscopic analyses of the lesions after being surgically removed and analyzed by lung pathologists.… Read more