Science and research

How lizards can help build a better bot (video)

Where do you find inspiration for your work? Robert Full, a professor at University of California at Berkeley, and his team looked to lizards when it came to thinking of ways to better design robots for search and rescue missions.

Such robots have to be more agile. So Full's team studied the movements of a red-headed Agama lizard and discovered the importance of having a tail.

"I think what this shows is that even the strangest creature that we think has nothing to offer really holds fundamental secrets of how things work, and those can be translated to … Read more

Studies show how tasers can do more than stun

When a 15-year-old boy was shocked -- to death -- by a Taser stun gun in Michigan in 2009, Amnesty International called for rigorous testing of the weapon, which delivers an initial 50,000-volt shock.

"There have to be ways of restraining an unarmed teenager other than using electro-shock weapons," the organization said in a statement. "Taser guns are not the safe weapons they are portrayed to be. A full investigation into their safety needs to be carried out before more people suffer the consequences of their misuse."

Now, two research papers are weighing in on … Read more

Get ready to be moonstruck (again) this Saturday

If you missed it last year, the super perigee moon is back for an encore performance.

On Saturday, the moon will be up to 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than the other full moons of 2012, according to NASA.

That's because it will reach perigee, its closest point to Earth in its elliptical orbit, at 11:34 p.m. ET and become full just a minute later.

Super perigee moons happen about once a year on average, but the moon of March 19, 2011, was nearly 250 miles closer than this week's moon, prompting wild calamitous speculations. … Read more

Northrop Grumman fires up latest laser weapon

If you want to build a laser weapon, start small and go from there.

That's one of the principles underlying the Firestrike laser from Northrop Grumman. A demonstration prototype of that system called Gamma has proved its mettle in a recent test-firing, the defense contractor announced yesterday.

This is not yet a laser weapon in the wild. The test-lasing took place at Northrop Grumman's Redondo Beach, Calif., lab, where Gamma burned through the skin of a surplus BQM-74 drone and other materials configured as internal components that stood in as a "representative cruise missile threat."

Why … Read more

Computer use plus exercise may reduce age-related memory loss

The combination of mentally stimulating activities such as computer use and moderate physical exercise appears to decrease one's odds of suffering from age-related memory loss, according to a new Mayo Clinic study.

The researchers say their findings among a self-reporting cohort of 926 people ages 70 to 93 are just preliminary, but that the numbers are significant enough to warrant further investigation.

Previous studies have shown links between exercising one's mind and exercising one's body to improved memory, but this one, published in the May 2012 issue of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, suggests that a combination of … Read more

New ticket to Harvard and MIT: An Internet connection

Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology today launched an initiative to make its education material available online for free.

Through an initiative called edX, the two storied learning institutions will develop an open-source software platform and offer some of their courses online starting this fall. Harvard and MIT will govern the not-for-profit joint venture and dedicate $30 million each in grants and institutional support.

With edX, Harvard and MIT are seeking to learn about online education to enhance how they offer classes online, both to remote students and students on campus, university officials said at a press conference … Read more

Tiny mic could improve cochlear implants

Cochlear implants, which help 220,000 deaf people around the world hear, come with a few unfortunate side effects.

Because the implants also consist of external parts (the mic, a speech processor, and a radio transmitter coil) worn rather conspicuously behind the ear, users are often unable to swim or wear helmets comfortably, must fully rely on a microphone exposed to the elements, and have to deal with appearing at least somewhat handicapped.

So an electrical engineer at the University of Utah has developed a prototype that moves all these external parts into the middle ear, allowing cochlear implants to … Read more

Microsoft forges ahead with new home-automation OS

More than a decade ago, Microsoft execs, led by Chairman Bill Gates, were touting a future where .Net coffee pots, bulletin boards, and refrigerator magnets would be part of homes where smart devices would communicate and interoperate. Microsoft hasn't given up on that dream.

In 2010, Microsoft researchers published a white paper about their work on a HomeOS and a HomeStore -- early concepts around a Microsoft Research-developed home-automation system. Those concepts have morphed into prototypes since then, based on a white paper, "An Operating System for the Home," published this month on the Microsoft Research site. … Read more

Tracking diseases using Google Maps and cell phones

Many of us have relied on rapid diagnostic tests at one time or another, whether it's testing for pregnancy, blood glucose levels, or strep throat.

But while dropping fluid samples on a small strip for near-instantaneous results is affordable and convenient, reading results using the human eye means there is the potential for, well, human error.

So researchers at UCLA have taken the human out of the equation as much as possible and developed a digital "universal" reader for all rapid diagnostic tests, or RDTs, that requires no translation of results.

In the journal Lab on a … Read more