water

Disappointed about that hyped-up supposed Mars discovery that ended up evaporating? Turn your eyes toward Mercury.

A NASA news conference yesterday suggested what many scientists have suspected for decades: Mercury's northern pole most likely contains large deposits of water ice and possible organic materials. The new data comes from Messenger -- a NASA spacecraft currently orbiting Mercury -- which observed the icy deposits by measuring hydrogen concentrations on the planet. The findings were described in three separate papers published yesterday in the science journal Nature. … Read more

Readers have from time to time requested a list of the "test" tracks I use to evaluate gear. It's a long list, mostly recordings I've used for many years and heard on hundreds of products, and recordings I made myself or from sessions I attended. They work for me, but wouldn't necessarily help you. More than any specific tracks, I recommend starting with music you know best, favorite tunes you've listened to for years, and then listen to how the speaker, headphones, etc., you're considering changes, improves, or degrades the sound of your … Read more

When the going gets tough, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency creates a vehicle -- capable of driving on water, land, and even deep mud -- to keep things going.

Officially known as the captive air amphibious transporter (CAAT), this water wagon currently under development looks like the strange lovechild of a tank and a hovercraft. CAAT could one day serve as an invaluable tool for the U.S. military when it delivers supplies to the coasts of disaster-stricken areas. … Read more

This is the week that the torture test really comes into its own, I think. We decided to toughen up and test the brand-new 11-inch Apple MacBook Air. Yeah, I know. Yikes. But I really want to test portable devices, and the Air is the epitome of portable, is it not?

We're down to a good rhythm with heat, cold, dropping, and water, and we're really trying to figure out how to make the wild card tests true to life. So, when three or four viewers tweeted me and told me they had put their MacBook Airs on … Read more

Modifications to the world's fastest camera are enabling the real-time identification of rare breast cancer cells in blood, with a record low false-positive rate of one cell in a million, according to new research out of UCLA.

"This technology can significantly reduce errors and costs in medical diagnosis," lead author Keisuke Goda, a UCLA program manager in electrical engineering and bioengineering, said in a school news release.

The team's approach could not only pave the way for earlier detection of cancer and monitoring of drug and radiation therapy but also prove useful in urine analysis, water … Read more

I often write about action games in my collections, and it's no secret I'm a fan of the racing-game genre as well. But another genre I like to play while on my commute is mind-twisting puzzle games. A new game was released a few days ago that has jumped to the top of the charts at iTunes App Store and it has all the bells and whistles to remain a hit.

Though puzzle games come in a lot of different forms, one of my favorite types is those that use realistic physics. Some of the best I have come across use liquid physics and require you to experiment in order to solve each puzzle.… Read more

Apple has won a patent related to detecting water damage in a gadget.

The patent, 8,210,032, describes a method by which customer service representatives can quickly determine if a product has been damaged by water. In order for the invention to work, Apple says that a detector would be placed inside an enclosed device and provide "at least one visual indication after being immersed in water." The detector, Apple says, is strategically placed within the enclosed device so users can determine water damage from the outside.

Apple filed for the patent in January 2010. However, the … Read more

In the hundreds of millions of Asian, Latin American, and African households where water is only available once every week or two weeks, families lose both time and potential income waiting to fill their buckets. SmartPlanet's Sumi Das talks to a founder at NextDrop, an organization that's using SMS technology to help families make sure they never miss a precious drop.

This post first appeared on SmartPlanet under the headline "How texting can solve unreliable water issues."

Gadgets and devices of all shapes and sizes have become quite adept at giving us what we want when we want it (and more than a little of what we don't want). But whatever "it" may be, it is something that is easy to take for granted. This on-demand access and availability for whatever our hearts desire may be baked into all of our mobile devices, but for stationary objects, the concept is still spreading. Like to the kitchen faucet.

Way back when running water was somehow magically introduced through a series of pipes into our abodes, … Read more