Cutting Edge

In a brute-force search for ice on the moon, an empty 5,000-pound rocket stage traveling twice as fast as a rifle bullet crashed into a permanently shadowed crater near the moon's south pole Friday, presumably blasting out tons of debris for examination by an instrumented probe that carried out its own kamikaze plunge four minutes later.

While the initial impact at 4:31 a.m. PDT did not prove especially dramatic--it was not even visible in real-time video from the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)--scientists said a camera sensitive to temperature variations clearly recorded the … Read more

Scientists at the University of Missouri are developing a small nuclear battery that they say can hold a million times more charge than standard batteries.

The radioisotope battery, being developed by Jae Kwon of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and other researchers, is the size and thickness of a penny.

That makes it smaller than nuclear batteries used in space and military applications. Kwon says it might shrink to less than the thickness of a human hair if the right materials are used.

The battery is designed to drive micro/nanoelectromechanical systems (M/NEMS). Such devices include labs … Read more

I can tell you my computer password, but unless you type it in exactly the way I do, you won't be allowed entry. That's the idea behind Safelock, one of the just-announced winning entries in the UIST 2009 Student Innovation Competition, a Microsoft-sponsored contest aimed at inspiring keyboard innovation. About a month ago, the company sent out prototypes of pressure-sensitive keyboards to 40 international teams, which had four weeks to cobble together their creations. Here are just a few of the cool ideas they came up with:

First place, most useful: Safelock Safelock, by Jeff Allen and John Howard of Southern Methodist University, biometrically authenticates a user with just eight characters entered. The key (forgive the pun) is that the user has to enter that relatively short password just right. To create a machine-learning algorithm that discovers the unique way each person types, the team measured four keystroke attributes: flight time (the interval between each keystroke); hold time (the amount of time the key was held); maximum pressure; and a curve fit to the pressure over time as a user pressed each key.

The team conducted extensive tests of their system and say it's "extremely robust." Says Howard: "99.4 percent of the time, if you're not me, you're not able to log into my account."

First place, most creative: Hidden Forces This innovation lets users control multiple cursors by waving magnets above the keyboard but not touching it. A four-person team from Carnegie Mellon University accomplished this by placing one small magnet underneath each of the keyboard keys, with the north side facing up.

Julia Schwarz, Brian Lim, Stephen Oney, and Kevin Huang then used a larger magnet (north side facing down) as a cursor. The larger magnet repelled nearby magnets, pushing them against the pressure-sensitive pads and allowing the computer to know where the magnet was located above the keyboard. The innovators were able to control multiple cursors with this technique, turning the keyboard into a multipoint, in-air interaction device. … Read more

South Korea's Hoya Robot is developing a mini firefighter helper bot that can enter burning buildings to conduct reconnaissance and check for people.

The Firefighters Assistant Robot can apparently operate for up to 30 minutes in fires, and can withstand temperatures up to 320 F. It can also survive falls of more than 6 feet. It's water-resistant, as seen in this experiment video.

It may look like a tank up close, but the bot can nearly fit in the palm of your hand and weighs only 3 pounds.

The remote-controlled rover can scoot into a blaze and transmit … Read more

With radio frequency identification tags already showing up in school uniforms, it makes sense they'd make their way into other types of uniforms as well.

But what to do when said uniforms are worn in manufacturing plants where garments have to be sterilized with heat so microorganisms and other outside pollutants don't contaminate the goods? Wouldn't the RFID tags turn into goop?

Funny you should ask. Fujitsu has come up with a flexible, ultra high frequency (UHF)-band RFID tag that can withstand temperatures up to 250 degrees Fahrenheit (much, much hotter than CNET's New York … Read more

If you were brought up a Catholic, as a child, you were taught about the power of mysteries.

One mystery that I used to always find perplexing was how the face of Jesus Christ was superimposed on the Turin Shroud, a burial cloth that measures 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches.

Somehow, the face looked a little too much like the Jesus in all the religious pictures. It all seemed a little too perfect. And, as one grew up, one began to learn that nothing was quite that perfect. Not even priests.

Now an Italian scientist and … Read more

Eolas Technologies, a company that ground through a years-long patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft, now has sued a large swath of corporate powers for infringement of that same patent and another related patent concerning interactive programs on Web sites.

The list of defendants includes many high-profile companies inside and outside the tech world: Adobe Systems, Amazon, Apple, Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, Go Daddy, Google, J.C. Penney, JPMorgan Chase, Office Depot, Perot Systems, Playboy Enterprises, Staples, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Yahoo, and YouTube.

Eolas' suit is not to be taken lightly. Although the earlier Microsoft case took many years to … Read more

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded for "two revolutionary optical technologies."

Charles K. Kao, who discovered how to transmit light through fiber optics, and the team of Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, who designed the first digital-imaging sensor, split the Nobel Prize, announced by the Nobel Foundation on Tuesday.

Born in Shanghai, Charles K. Kao made a discovery in 1966 that would lead to today's fiber optics. A man ahead of this time, Kao calculated how it would be possible to transmit light over 100 kilometers (62 miles), compared to only 20 … Read more

It took 13 years for researchers to catalog all the information in a human genome the first time. Now IBM believes it can do better--somewhat perversely by equipping a newer genetic sequencing method with brakes.

Big Blue is among those who believe electronics technology can be applied to the task of sequencing a person's genes, thereby bringing genetic testing into the computing era and lowering its cost to something like $100 to $1,000.

IBM is working on prototype DNA-processing electronics that slurps strands of DNA through an extremely small hole called a nanopore, measuring the electrical properties of … Read more