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13,776 articles from Technology Review Feed - Tech Review Top Stories
Blog - Mathematicians Create Objective Quality of Life Index
The US comes second in a new quality of life index designed to be mathematically objective
Here's a thorny problem: to develop an objective way to rank countries according to the quality of life they offer their citizens....
Blog - NIH Halts all Internal Embryonic Stem Cell Research
The federal agency makes an unprecedented response to last week's federal injunction.
The National Institutes of Health, the nation's largest biomedical funding agency, halted all ongoing research at the agency that involves human embryonic stem cells. The order comes in response to a...
SATURDAY 28. AUGUST 2010
Blog - Rings 'n' Fingers
The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv this week:
FRIDAY 27. AUGUST 2010
Blog - The Mathematical Secret of Viking Jewellery
A long-standing puzzle over the craftsmanship behind Viking bracelets and necklaces has finally been solved--mathematically
The beautiful bracelets and necklaces made by Viking artisans leave archaeologists with something of a conundrum. These objects are made from rods of gold and silver which have twisted together into double helices. The puzzle is the regularity of these helices, which are...
Blog - Flying Robotic Hands
A helicopter equipped with a robotic hand picks up small objects.
A robotic hand attached to a small helicopter can successfully and autonomously grip objects while the helicopter is hovering, as demonstrated by a group at Yale University led by...
Video - Flying Robotic Hands
The Yale Aerial Manipulator uses a flexible robotic hand to successfully grasp a range of objects while hovering....
THURSDAY 26. AUGUST 2010
Blog - Fine Structure Constant Varies With Direction in Space, Says New Data
A spatial variation in the fine structure constant has profound implications for cosmology
Over the years, many physicists have wondered whether the fundamental constants of nature might have been different when the universe was younger. If so, the evidence ought to be out there in the cosmos where we can see distant things exactly as they were in the past....
Blog - Generating Power from Electricity in the Air
A researcher describes a potential new source of renewable energy.
Lightning is a powerful manifestation of the electrical charge that can accumulate in the atmosphere....
WEDNESDAY 25. AUGUST 2010
Blog - Quantum Entanglement Can Be A Measure Of Free Will, Say Physicists
The same experiments that reveal the nature of entanglement can also be interpreted as a measure of free will, say researchers
The nature of quantum mechanics has forced researchers to reconsider their own role in the process of science. Gone is the Victorian idea that measurement is objective and absolute. Today, we know that in the quantum world, it is impossible to separate the measured from...
TUESDAY 24. AUGUST 2010
Blog - Is the Recovery Act Working?
Two reports out Tuesday argue it is, but what's most important--from an energy perspective--is what comes next.
On Tuesday both the United States Vice President's office and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued separate reports about the impact of the Recovery Act of 2009....
Blog - Synaptic Behaviour Captured By New Memristor Circuit Design
When it comes to copying the real behaviour of synapses, two memristors are better than one, according to a new circuit design
Since the 1970s, electronic engineers have known that there are four fundamental building blocks of electronic circuits: resistors, capacitors, inductors and memristors (essentially variable resistors with memory). Memristors, however, had an air of mythology about them...
MONDAY 23. AUGUST 2010
Blog - How One Idea Solves The Dark Energy and Lithium Abundance Mysteries
The same simple idea explains two of cosmology's biggest problems; but also introduces a conundrum of its own
One of the great outstanding challenges of modern science is to explain the observations that point to the accelerating expansion of the universe....
Blog - Predicting the Death of Print
Two years ago print was going to soldier on another 10 years. Now it's five--or fewer.
What a difference two years makes....
SATURDAY 21. AUGUST 2010
Blog - Buttons 'n' Levers
The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv this week:
FRIDAY 20. AUGUST 2010
Blog - Quantum Zeno Effect Allows "Interaction-free" Switching
Exploiting one of the quantum world's strangest effects should lead to a new generation of switches that can handle quantum information
The quantum zeno effect is one of the stranger and more fascinating consequences of quantum mechanics. It offers a surprising and counterintuitive way of controlling quantum systems that are changing from one state to another....
THURSDAY 19. AUGUST 2010
Blog - Intel Seeks Security in Silicon
Why would the chip giant buy antivirus firm McAfee?
Chipmaker Intel surprised even the savviest tech-watchers today when it announced it is...
Blog - GM Rides a Rickshaw to China
The strange, but surprisingly fun, two-wheeled electric pod could be successful there.
Last year when GM first introduced a prototype two-person vehicle called Puma, which is based on the two-wheeled Segway platform, I was intensely...
Blog - The Emerging Science of Worker Productivity
Experiments with Amazon's Mechanical Turk are teasing apart the factors that determine worker productivity
There's a puzzle at the heart of our economy that has troubled economists for decades. The question is this: why do people work hard in environments where they are poorly monitored and paid a fixed wage, rather than a performance-related one.Surely any rational worker would do the...
Graphene Could Improve DNA Sequencing
The atom-thick material may be ideal for a new sequencing technique.
Layers of graphene that are only as thick as an atom could help make human DNA sequencing faster and cheaper. Harvard University and MIT researchers have shown that sheets of graphene could be a big improvement over membranes that are currently used for...
Blog - The Fear-Based Psychology of the "Internet Kill Switch"
Security legend Paul Kocher talks about the attitudes shaping Congress's latest tech misstep....
WEDNESDAY 18. AUGUST 2010
Blog - 1978 Cryptosystem Resists Quantum Attack
The search for encryption algorithms that will be safe against attacks by quantum computers has thrown up a surprise, say mathematicians
Nobody has built a quantum computer much more powerful than a pocket calculator but that hasn't stopped people worrying about the implications of the post-quantum computing world. Most worried are the people who rely on cryptographic codes to protect...
TUESDAY 17. AUGUST 2010
Blog - Honors Course Using StarCraft is for Gamers Only
The University of Florida is teaching real world skills using the strategy game....
Blog - The Problem of Predicting Crowd Crush
Predicting when the crushing forces in crowds are likely to become dangerous is a task that looks beyond current techniques
Crowd control is a significant problem for organisers of major public events. Last month, 19 people died in a crush at a dance music event called the Love Parade in Germany when a crowd was channelled through a tunnel. In 2005, 350 died in a stampede during the annual...
SATURDAY 14. AUGUST 2010
Blog - Is Apple Getting Ready to Bring iTunes to the Web?
A job advert suggests the company is.
When Apple bought streaming music service Lala, speculation was that the company intended to work on a Web interface for iTunes. Lala's engineers would certainly have had the expertise, and the company had an interesting approach to the concept of owning songs--users could buy "web albums" which gave them unlimited streaming rights but no downloads or...
Blog - Point 'n' Shoot
The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv this week: