Cutting Edge

Scientists discover dinosaur's true colors

A team of paleontologists at Yale University say they've been able to determine the actual colors of an extinct species of dinosaur.

While many of the illustrations of dinosaurs we see in movies and books are striking, the truth is that much of the way we depict our jurassic friends is based on educated guesswork. But a few teams of scientists now say they have been able to determine a dinosaur's coloring with more precision. And one dino, in particular, has been color-mapped from head plume to toe.

Anchiornis huxleyi was a four-winged, feathered dinosaur that lived during … Read more

Vegetative patients show brain activity, awareness

It all started in 2006, when researchers were studying a young woman considered to be in a vegetative state. Using MRI to scan her brain, they asked her to imagine herself playing tennis and touring her own home, and found that her brain behaved in much the way a normally functioning brain does.

The neuroscientists were shocked into action as news of what may have only been an anomaly prompted families to ask that the researchers study their own loved ones, too.

One of the neuroscientists, Adrian Owen at the University of Cambridge, alongside colleagues at the University of Liege … Read more

Solar spacecraft to record sun at Imax resolution

This is the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly. Together with the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager and the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment, it will capture the sun at Imax resolution every 10 seconds. The instruments will travel together inside NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft.

After its expected February 9 launch on top of an Atlas V rocket, the SDO will capture images at almost four times the resolution of an HD TV, transmitting the results back to Earth at 130 megabits per second. Basically, this thing will be transmitting the equivalent of 500,000 MP3s per day, seven days a week. According to Dean Pesnell at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the potential for new discoveries is giganormous.

"We'll be getting Imax-quality images every 10 seconds. We'll see every nuance of solar activity," Pesnell said.

Pesnell said that this speed opens an incredible potential for discovery, using 18th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge as an example:

But when Muybridge photographed horses using a new high-speed camera system, he discovered something surprising. Galloping horses spend part of the race completely airborne--all four feet are off the ground.

To achieve all this, the three instruments in the SDO have been designed to cover three vital aspects of our home star.… Read more

Robonaut 2: The offspring of GM and NASA

This is not your average assembly line worker.

But Robonaut 2 is expected to be an exemplary co-worker. General Motors and NASA on Thursday introduced Robonaut 2, a humanoid robot being jointly developed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston for use in both the automotive and aerospace industries.

Robonaut 2 is stronger, more dexterous, and more technologically advanced than the original Robonaut, according to NASA. Robonaut, which was developed 10 years ago by NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, was intended--as its name implies--for use as a robot astronaut.

Robonaut 2, nicknamed R2, seems more destined for … Read more

Magnetic nanoparticles target human cancer cells

In 2008, scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Ovarian Cancer Institute developed a potential treatment to fight cancer using magnetic nanoparticles designed to attach themselves to cancer cells. They found in their groundbreaking tests on mice that the particles not only attached to cancer cells, but they also moved those cells.

In what may well prove to be some of the most exciting health news in the year to come, the group announced in the journal Nanomedicine in December and further publicized on Tuesday that it has replicated the study on human cancer cells, with the nanoparticles … Read more

Google gives millions of dollars in research awards

Research a better mousetrap for Google, and you could find yourself the recipient of a healthy grant.

The search giant debuted its first Google Focused Research Awards on Monday, announcing grants of $5.7 million to several fortunate college professors tackling projects that could benefit the company and hopefully benefit research efforts in general.

The grants cover four specific areas of interest to Google--machine learning, using mobile phones to collect information on health and the environment, energy-efficient computing, and privacy. The company said it has already invested in these fields but that there is much more to do, so it'… Read more

Wozniak cites 'scary' Prius acceleration problem

More problems may be lurking for Toyota. Speaking at an event in San Francisco on Monday, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak waxed eloquent about a "very scary" problem with his 2010 Toyota Prius.

Wozniak was speaking at Discovery Forum 2010 when he went off topic for a few minutes and spoke about problems with his 2010 Toyota Prius.

"I don't get upset and teed off at things in life, except computers that don't work right," was his segue into the Toyota comments. Then he said he had been trying to get through to Toyota and … Read more

Obama ends moon program, endorses private spaceflight

On the seventh anniversary of the Columbia disaster, President Obama unveiled a sweeping change of course for the nation's space program Monday, putting an end to NASA's post-Columbia moon program and shifting development and operation of new rockets and capsules from the government to private industry.

Requesting some $19 billion for NASA in fiscal 2011, the administration announced plans to pump an additional $6 billion into NASA's budget over the next five years to kick-start development of a new commercial manned spaceflight capability, including some $500 million in 2011.

Over that same five years, some $7.8 … Read more

Robots evolve to learn cooperation, hunting

If robots are allowed to evolve through natural selection, they will develop adaptive abilities to hunt prey, cooperate, and even help one another, according to Swiss researchers.

In a series of experiments described in the journal PLoS Biology, Dario Floreano of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne and Laurent Keller of the University of Lausanne reported that simple, small-wheeled Khepera and Alice robots can evolve behaviors such as collision-free movement and homing techniques in only several hundred "generations."

The robots were controlled by a neural network that mutated randomly, with input information from the robots' sensors. In an imitation of natural selection, the robots with the best maneuvering abilities were allowed to foster a new generation. Furthermore, selected robots were "paired" by having their neural net connections mixed and passed to a new generation.

Within 100 generations, the robots were able to move through a maze without bumping into anything. … Read more