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(Credit: NASA)

The International Space Station isn't just an orbiting laboratory, spaceship testing ground, and multinational geek fest--it's also the world's highest (250 miles) and fastest (17,500 mph) computer network. We burrow under its metal skin and siphon out its most interesting specifications, like some kind of star-hopping alien data vampires (but without the plutonium-coated fangs).

Read more of "Space Station IT: High technology" at Crave UK.

(Credit: Jonathan Worth/PopSci)

I know most of you out there think we landed two Americans on the moon in 1969. Well, let me tell you that you're wrong. It's all a hoax! It was done on a sound stage and George Clooney and Dan Aykroyd were involved!

I mean, look at this real-life version of the Atari classic Lunar Lander vector game!

It took British engineer Iain Sharp less than $800 and a year to build this replica in his garage to honor the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, and it works almost like the real thing. It's powered by a pair of old PCs he wrote custom software for. In addition, the movements are controlled by things like old inkjet printer motors, and fishing line. But what's important is it works just like a real lunar lander would--if one existed.

If Sharp can make a device like this in his garage in his spare time then it's not a leap to assume the U.S. government could have made a full-size mock-up with the years and millions it took to make the so-called "moon shot" happen. This awesome toy might be all the evidence I need. Myth busted.

(Via PopSci)

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for iPhone.

OK, that's probably a little overly dramatic, but the new NASA iPhone app, which was released Friday, is pretty cool.

With NASA's iPhone app, space geeks can access all kinds of information about their favorite missions.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Designed to provide information, updates, and images on all current and scheduled NASA missions, the app--which can be found in Apple's App Store under the name "NASA app for iPhone--nicely allows you to search for any specific mission, say, Constellation, and then find information and images just for that project.

"Users can access NASA countdown clocks, the NASA Image of the Day, Astronomy Image of the Day, online videos, NASA's many Twitter feeds," and more, the space agency said in a press release about the app. It also allows users to track where the International Space Station is at any moment, as well as other spacecraft orbiting the planet, in three different views: maps with labels and borders, available visible imagery of satellites, and satellite positions overlaid on maps with country labels and borders.

Already, NASA nuts--you know who you are--have had access to much of this information online. But now, having it all available in a free iPhone app is going to keep these people happily staring down at the screen of their devices no matter where they are.

And for NASA, anything it can do to get more people excited about its various missions and projects is a good thing as it struggles for public resources and attention in an era where the economy is in trouble and people are increasingly distracted by other things.

The maple seed device seen next to actual samara seeds.

(Credit: Eric Schurr/A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland)

Remember as a kid being entertained by how maple tree seeds (or samara fruit) would spin like helicopters as they fell around you in the fall? I do, and that's why I love this prototype rotorcraft by graduate students at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering.

It's a remote-controlled monocopter with a design based heavily on the aerodynamic and geometric properties of maple seeds. Researchers have tried for years to create an unmanned aerial vehicle that could mimic maple seeds' spiraling fall. The results out of Maryland are awesome.

As you can see in the video after the jump, the patent-pending device uses just one blade to take off, as well as a stabilizer to keep it steady. It looks weird, but it works. This is a great example of nature influencing science.

The students say they've created he world's smallest controllable single-winged rotorcraft, with the most minuscule having a maximum dimension of about 3.7 inches and a wing equal in size to a natural samara. Graduate student Evan Ulrich says he thinks the 'copter could be mass produced as a toy for less than $100, which even sounds high to us given that one of the parts experimented with is a vibrating motor from a pager.

There could also be military or rescue applications: a flyer fitted with a small camera could easily be sent across an area looking for survivors--or targets.

But no matter what the flyer ends up being used for, one thing is sure: I want one badly.

Jimmy McBride's "The Black Eye Galaxy" measures 45 inches by 60 inches and sells for $2,000. Most of McBride's space quilts are for kids, be we think adults would like them, too.

(Credit: Jimmy McBride)

On these chilly fall days I like to combat my crippling seasonal depression curled up in a blanket with a grilled cheese sandwich, soup, and some strong liquor. If only my blanket was as nice as these space-inspired quilts.

Designed by artist Jimmy McBride, the quilts draw inspiration from both astronomy and sci-fi movies--a mixture of real science and imagination. Plus they look really warm.

If you happen to be in the New York area, you can see the quilt pictured above at the Made in New York: City Quilting exhibition through November 14. Click on the gallery below to see more of McBride's spacey creations.

Snuggle up with a space quilt -- photos

This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.

(Credit: Caltech)

Researchers at Caltech have developed a mobile, four-wheeled robot that could help refine artificial retinas and other prostheses used by the visually impaired.

At first glance, Cyclops resembles a bot you might find on the battlefield, and it's hard to imagine what connection it could have to restoring sight. But dig a little deeper and it starts to make sense that a remote-controlled robot with an onboard camera could deliver some very useful data.

The digital camera can emulate left-to-right and up-and-down head movements. The idea is that as artificial vision prostheses increasingly become a reality, scientists could use the mobile robotic platform to mimic those devices--and more importantly, to get a better sense of how well they work for people who wear them.

The researchers might do that by asking the robot outfitted with an artificial vision aid to navigate obstacles in a corridor or follow a black line down a white-tiled hallway to see if it can find--and enter--a darkened doorway. All the while, they could try out different pixel arrays (say 50 pixels vs. 16 pixels), as well as image filters (for factors such as contrast, brightness enhancement, and grayscale equalization) to venture an educated guess as to what settings maximize a subject's sight.

Wolfgang Fink

(Credit: Caltech)

But "we're not quite at that stage yet," researcher Wolfgang Fink says of such independent maneuvering. Fink is a visiting associate in physics at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., and founder of the school's Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory, where where he and Caltech visiting scientist Mark Tarbell are collaborating on Cyclops with the support of a grant from the National Science Foundation.

The pair designed and built the body of the battery-operated rover using off-the-shelf parts, then furnished it with an onboard computing platform that allows for processing and manipulating images in real time using software they created called "Artificial Vision Support System."

Cyclops, so named because it's monocular, is about 12 inches wide by 12 inches long and 10 inches tall (the camera can be mounted on a mast to make Cyclops the height of an average person). It weighs about 15 pounds, Fink estimates, and can move at an "expedited walking speed" of about 2 to 3 feet per second.

For now, the platform itself is controlled remotely, via a joystick, and can be operated through a wireless Internet connection. "We have the image-processing algorithms running locally on the robot's platform," Fink says, "but we have to get it to the point where it has complete control of its own responses."

Once that's done, he adds, "we can run many, many tests without bothering the blind prosthesis carriers." ... Read more

Updated at 10 a.m. PDT October 20 with specific model of robotic arm used.

A robotic arm is lending a hand to children with dyspraxia, a motor-skills deficit also known as Developmental Coordination Disorder or Clumsy Child Syndrome.

The system, under development at the U.K.'s University of Leeds, combines a commercially available Phantom Omni haptic device with software that lets children with coordination problems practice therapist-prescribed exercises at home using an interactive desktop setup. It can also monitor how the kids move, measuring factors like smoothness, speed of movement, and joint configurations.

Children with dyspraxia are currently working with the robotic arm weekly to help them develop better coordination.

(Credit: University of Leeds)

Guided by the robotic arm, for example, kids use a pen to push objects along a 3D track displayed on a computer screen. The system applies guiding forces to the child's arm and hand to help control movements. The strength of the forces can be altered to shape movements and vary the difficulty of the exercises.

"We originally started with a hospital-based system, but our user group of children said they'd much prefer to be able to use it at home after school, so we adapted it to a more suitable laptop-based system that fits inside a small holdall," said Mark Mon-Williams, a University of Leeds professor of cognitive psychology who is leading the research, in a statement. "They also got involved in the design of the games and exercises."

The Leeds team is collaborating with researchers at universities in Aberdeen, Scotland, and Indiana, with funding from U.K. children's health charity Action Medical Research.

Dyspraxia is a neurologically based disorder that affects the ability to see a movement goal through to completion. Children with dyspraxia struggle with skillful, controlled actions, making simple, daily tasks such as buttoning their coats more difficult. Handwriting often suffers, which can lead to homework struggles and ultimately a loss of self-confidence.

Neuroscientists at Princeton University created a new way to study the neurons of the classic mouse-in-a-maze: strap it to a suspended ball and have it run through a virtual maze. That first virtual maze? Derived from a Quake 2 level.

Apparently it's difficult to control and study the neurons of a mouse when it's physically moving, and this method makes that easier. The ball is suspended on a jet of air, and the mouse is strapped in place with a collar on top of it (like a giant trackball, sort of) while running on a spherical treadmill.

Given that I don't understand psychology at all, or even totally know what a neuron is, I'm going to go ahead and assume this is an elaborate ruse to get a mouse to play Quake 2. The researchers detail their findings in the latest issue of the journal Nature. Well played, scientists.

This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.

While we've covered the tech of morbidity before, what we have in the U.S. is nothing compared with the Japanese. Since burials in Tokyo can be so expensive (topping out at more than $100,000), some people have invented a more conservative yet radical solution, according to the BBC: converting warehouses into high-tech graveyards.

Instead of one grave per a given area (like a house on a plot), the graves are stacked (like condos) several feet high. To give relatives access to the remains, a robotic arm retrieves the urn (most Japanese are cremated) and shuttles it to a "mourning room." Think of how a jukebox retrieves a record, only it's ashes.

It's a novel concept, but it's also uniquely Japanese, and we can't really see that catching on here. But it totally makes sense in hyper-dense Tokyo where land is scarce and getting out of the city really isn't an option for many people.