Cutting Edge

Despite Earthlings depending on the sun for survival, there's a lot that scientists still don't know about our solar system's star. NASA is looking to change this.

The U.S. space agency is launching a solar satellite called the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) on June 26 to get a closer look at the sun's lower atmosphere. This part of the atmosphere is important because it is where most of the sun's ultraviolet emissions are generated, which are known to impact Earth's climate and the near-Earth space environment, according to NASA.

"IRIS data … Read more

Intel likes to invest in emerging categories of computing that can consume a lot of its processors. The company's latest target is what it calls "perceptual computing," which focuses on next-generation, natural user interfaces such as touch, gesture, voice, emotion sensing, biometrics, and image recognition. Intel's investment arm is allocating $100 million to the Intel Capital Experiences and Perceptual Computing Fund over the next two to three years for startups and companies developing software and apps to take computing beyond the mouse and keyboard.

Intel will also provide recipients of funding with support for business development … Read more

Let's face it: It doesn't matter how high quality the video is. Chatting over Skype or FaceTime doesn't do a lot of good if the call is between the hearing and the deaf and only the latter know sign language.

Now, following a successful release in California in April, the SmartVP videophone by Purple Communications is available free of charge to the deaf and hard-of-hearing nationwide, and it manages to solve the signing conundrum.… Read more

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Philip Rosedale's second act could be a 3D virtual world that will feel like real life in terms of the speed of interaction, use body tracking sensors for more life-like avatars, and apply the compute power of tens of millions of devices contributed by end users, rather than tens of thousands of servers, to power the world.

Rosedale, who created Second Life in 2000 and which still has about a million users, spoke at the Augmented World Expo here Tuesday. He declined to say exactly what his new company, High Fidelity, is up to, but … Read more

British TV series "Top Gear" is known for building some pretty outlandish automotive creations. The latest in that lineage is a Honda FH2620 mower. That doesn't sound very exciting until you learn just how heavily modified it is, from the tires to the engine.

"Top Gear" called in Honda racing group Team Dynamics to help turn the lawn mower into a lawn monster. The steering rack is from a Morris Minor. It got a fresh set of racing wheels and tires. They managed to stuff a VTR 1000cc motorcycle engine into the thing. The theoretical top speed is 130 mph.… Read more

The solar-powered Solar Impulse is another leg closer to completing its mission across America.

Flown by Solar Impulse co-founder and Chairman Bertrand Piccard, the plane landed smoothly at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport at 1:28 a.m. local time Tuesday.

Taking to the skies on Monday morning from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Piccard -- and the plane -- stayed in the air for 21 hours and 21 minutes, marking his longest flight to date.

The landing in St. Louis also saw the debut of an inflatable mobile hangar, which will be the aircraft's home until it takes off … Read more

The smart lock space is suddenly crowded with competitors, each of which want consumers to see their offering as the best way to use a mobile phone to replace the traditional door key.

But with the unveiling of its own smart lock, and an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, the San Francisco startup Goji may have staked out the most desirable position in the space.

Several companies -- including Lockitron, Kwikset and August -- have all announced various approaches to home door locks that can be accessed from a mobile phone. Common features include being able to tell remotely if the door … Read more

Carl Zeiss has begun selling its first two Touit lenses for Sony and Fujifilm compact cameras, high-end prime lenses whose existence reflects the steadying maturity of the market for smaller "mirrorless" cameras.

The $1,250 Touit 2.8/12 and $900 Touit 1.8/32 autofocusing lenses are geared for the Sony NEX and Fujifilm X series of cameras, both of which employ an APS-C-sized sensor common in lower-end digital SLRs. That means the 12mm lens has a field of view equivalent to an ultrawide 18mm lens on a full-frame SLR, while the 32mm is equivalent to about … Read more

The emerging field of soft robotics, which involves mimicking the squishiness and stickiness of such creatures as octopuses, starfish, and squid, may be taking its next cue from a different source: plants.

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley describe in the journal Nano Letters a new hydrogel that, inspired by phototropism (the phenomenon of plants moving toward light), can actually expand and shrink in a very controlled fashion via light.

"Shape-changing gels such as ours could have applications for drug delivery and tissue engineering," principal investigator Seung-Wuk Lee, associated professor of bioengineering, said in a school … Read more