Cutting Edge

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--Launch of NASA's Ares I-X rocket on a planned $445 million test flight was delayed 24 hours Tuesday because of bad weather and an errant freighter that briefly strayed into the off-shore danger area.

"For everyone, great job today. You gave it a great shot," Launch Director Ed Mango told the team. "We had some opportunities and just couldn't get there, weather didn't cooperate. But good work today."

Launch was rescheduled for 8 a.m. Wednesday. Forecasters are predicting a 60 percent chance of acceptable weather during a four-hour … Read more

And you thought computer chips were pervasive now.

In conjunction with a conference in Europe this week, Xerox has announced a new ink technology for printing electronic circuitry on everything from clothes to roll-up computer displays.

Xerox's process uses ink containing silver metal that can be used to wire up processing circuitry. It works on surfaces such as plastic that earlier have shown an inconvenient tendency to melt under the high temperature of liquid silver; Xerox's process works with an ink compound with a much lower temperature, the company said.

"We've found the silver bullet that … Read more

It's long been held that no two fingerprints are exactly alike, rendering the old-fashioned print more reliable than current DNA sampling, which has resulted in false positive identifications.

But what if a fingerprint is warped? When I volunteered to be a mentor recently, I had to get my prints taken, and the process was tedious and full of re-dos because, as I rotated each finger, I tended to slightly smudge the results. (I might have made a good criminal, but I was an annoyed--and inky--mentor.)

Now, the biggest problem with fingerprints--that a good one is hard to find--may have … Read more

The Department of Energy on Monday named the first winners of a program aimed at generating breakthroughs in clean-energy technologies.

The program, called Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), began taking applications earlier this year for research ideas that reduce imports of foreign fuel, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and improve energy efficiency. Funding for the agency is part of the Obama administration's goal to improve the economic competitiveness of the U.S. by investing in energy technology.

The DOE is awarding $151 million in 37 grants to both academics and green-tech companies, most of which are start-ups. The ideas are … Read more

Amid work to ready NASA's Ares I-X rocket for a long-awaited test flight next week, a presidential panel charged with reviewing the nation's manned space program submitted its completed report Thursday, concluding NASA's planned shuttle replacement will cost too much and take too long to build to be a viable option.

Even so, panel members said they looked forward to the $445 million test flight Tuesday and the data it will generate to help validate computer models and processes that will be useful in any future rocket design efforts.

"We do think it's appropriate to … Read more

"Fetch" and "heel" may be the latest commands to join the military lexicon, with the arrival of Rex, a small, six-wheel-drive load-bearing robotic vehicle designed to follow squad-size units in response to voice commands.

Envisioned as a robotic "beast of burden" for the modern soldier, Rex can carry more than 400 pounds, a typical load for groups of 3 to 10 ground soldiers, for 72 hours at a time without refueling, according to developer Israel Aerospace Industries.

"The robotic vehicle follows the lead soldier from a given distance, utilizing technology developed and patented … Read more

Sex with oneself in the world of plants and animals is called, fittingly, "selfing." The offspring of selfing females share 100 percent of their mothers' genes, and they can go on to produce their own offspring.

The offspring of "outcrossing" (the sexy science term for mating) males and females, on the other hand, share 50 percent of each parent's genes. Some offspring, naturally, are males that cannot bear offspring.

Of the two systems, it turns out that outcrossing produces offspring whose more diverse genetic codes lead to greater chances for longer lives, lower susceptibility to … Read more

It looks as if Photoshop, already famous for its ability to make people look thinner and skies look bluer, could take digital erasure of unsightly objects to an entirely new level.

A feature called "content-aware fill" described in an Adobe video published Tuesday shows the technology used to remove buffalo, telephone wires, and a tree from various images and to clean up stray hairs from an imperfect scan of a print. Photoshop's existing cloning and spot-healing tools can take care of this to some extent, but the new version adds a lot of smarts to the process. … Read more

I have tried to avoid the Balloon Boy, his dad, and all who sail in this online/offline/out-of-line clattermaran.

However, thanks to CBS News, I have learned that Richard Heene once appeared on a fine YouTube extravaganza called The Psyience Detectives and offered 15 reasons why our haggard old world will end on December 21, 2012.

I have no idea if the world will end in 2012, though I suspect Richard Heene doesn't know either. And yet there is something quite eerie that he should assault our eyes and ears in the same week that a movie called &… Read more