Science

Meet Funranium Labs founder Phil Broughton.

He's a radiation safety specialist at the University of California at Berkeley. He was once a cryogenics technician for the Amundsen-Scott South Pole scientific research station. He's really into coffee and beer and finding the best way to deliver those products into his system, and he has boldly offered himself up as a guinea pig for science by personally testing and developing products for discerning geek customers.

Let's start with the Stein of Science. Each stein is crafted from a bench top liquid nitrogen dewar flask. That means it will keep your beer frosty cold for quite a long time. That also means it's not cheap. A 655-milliliter Stein of Science costs $230. Your fellow lab rats will be insanely jealous when you show up to the next party with one of these bad boys.… Read more

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Alex Yoder's bio below.

We are living in "the age of big data," according to The World Economic Forum. Renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil agrees. I do too.

As the likes of Google, Facebook, Adobe Systems, and IBM embrace big data with gusto, startups are also popping up with the promise to help companies discover what one of the most valuable assets in the world can accomplish for them. No industry is untouched by big data, which is notably transforming the way social networks work today. However, the key factor … Read more

If electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla designed a weapon, it very well might look like Rob Flickenger's Tesla Gun.

The self-described "mad science" enthusiast dreamed up a Tesla rifle after reading the graphic novel "The Five Fists of Science," which features a cover image of a young Tesla wielding several weapons with a built-in Tesla coil.

Flickenger tapped "Seattle's many hackerspaces" to help design and build the Tesla coil cannon over the course of many months. The high-voltage gun balances seriously dangerous science and an array of everyday electrical components capable of firing off 20,000 volts of hair-raising power with a simple click of a trigger. … Read more

Materials scientists have turned high-tech powders into an electronic nose that could be used for safety and health applications.

U.K.-based Peratech today announced that it has designed a device able to detect harmful chemicals, such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs). It uses a new type of electronically conductive material, made in a powder form, which is also being used to add touch controls to mobile phones and other surfaces.

Called quantum tunneling composite material, it can create an electrical current when it bends or is touched. For the electronic nose, the material can be placed on films and … Read more

President Obama today made a campaign stop at a major chip research and manufacturing in hub in New York to reemphasize his made-in-America theme.

Obama visited the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the University at Albany, State University of New York. CNSE is an education and research facility centered on nanotechnology.

The visit was intended to highlight "insourcing" and the connection between education, innovation, and manufacturing in supporting investment and bringing jobs back to the U.S.

The region is home to chipmakers IBM and Globalfoundries, the latter is in the final stages of constructing … Read more

President Obama will visit a chipmaking region in New York that includes a just-completed Globalfoundries manufacturing facility, one of the most advanced in the world.

Globalfoundries (GF) announced that it will take part in hosting a visit by President Obama on May 8 at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering's (CNSE) NanoTech Complex at the State University of New York in Albany. The President's visit was originally planned to be held at Globalfoundries new Fab 8 facility but was moved to CNSE for logistical reasons, according to the chipmaker.

Fab 8 -- located in Malta, N.Y. … Read more

Once in awhile, a supermassive black hole gets a sumptuous treat. A passing star wanders too close and gets caught in the black hole's gravitational pull, like a fly trapped in a spider's web. The star then becomes an easy meal for the black hole, which tears its prey to bits and ingests a good portion of it.

Astronomers have witnessed several such disruptions before in distant galaxies, but usually only toward the end of the process. (These feedings are far too rare, however, to have been witnessed in our own Milky Way anytime in recent human history; … Read more

Are people endangering with their lives, risking cancer, brain tumors, and infertility by talking on their cell phones? A new review by the U.K.'s Health Protection Agency (HPA) says no.

Scientists conducting the review looked at hundreds of studies and assessed all major research into "low-level radio frequency," which they said comes not only from mobile phones but also TV and radio broadcasting, Wi-Fi, and other technologies, and concluded that everyone in the U.K. is exposed to "universal and continuous" radio frequency, according to the BBC.

Despite this constant exposure, the scientists said … Read more

The latest iPad and its "resolutionary" display have made ever-smaller pixels all the rage, but here's a sculpture that boldly and beautifully goes in the opposite direction.

"Patterned by Nature" (see video below) is made up of 3,600 tiles of LCD glass -- each roughly the size of a laptop screen -- and is 90 feet long and 10 feet wide. The giant sculpture hangs in the several-story atrium of the just-opened Nature Research Center in North Carolina, a new wing of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Each LCD can display various levels of blue-gray transparency, from clear all the way to opaque. And the matrix as a whole is used as a giant screen of sorts to show 20 different animations of different natural phenomena -- a flock of geese swooping through the atrium, say, or the pattern of rain splashing into a pond.… Read more