Wednesday, 8 February, 2012

MRI scans of older people show major differences between searchers and non-searchers. After seven hours of Internet experience, those differences disappear. Honest? Could changing the brain be this easy?

Texting already banned for truckers, etc. What do research and reality say about the danger of hitting the keys or yakking on the mobile?

Adding nanotubes makes a stronger plastic, but adding several nano-structures greatly increases the benefit, according to a new study from India. Read about the frontier of material science.

By tweaking the conventional recipe, researchers have sped up electricity movement in a lithium battery by 100X. Want to charge your electric car in minutes or your phone in seconds?

Obama decides that current and new grant applications at the National Institutes of Health are an effective economic stimulus. People get jobs. Inventions get invented. What’s not to like?

Decay is part of life, and death. When garbage decays in a landfill, or manure decays in a tank, the result is methane. Is this natural gas a problem — or an opportunity?

A single neuron in the brain may deliver enough information to control a muscle. These results could eventually help bypass the spinal cord, allowing paralyzed people to control their own muscles.

We need elements. Without phosphorus fertilizer, millions would starve. A shortage of copper means a shortage of electricity. And we’re importing more than 95% of the “rare-earth” elements needed for LCDs, cell phones and green energy. Is this smart?

Lenses cannot project a perfect image on the flat back of a camera, so images are distorted at the edges. A revolutionary camera solves this problem by curving the light detector.

Lasers read and write CDs and DVDs, form the heart of fiber-optics, and are being used in climate prediction, chemical identification, high-tech manufacturing, even the battle against influenza.