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FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) recently wrapped up its BODY FORWARD Challenge. Teams were asked to explore bio-engineering possibilities and discover innovative ways to improve and maximize the body's potential. The winning team, known as the "Flying Monkeys," will receive up to...

Want to learn how to fire a Patriot missile at something? There’s an app for that. No, seriously…there’s an app for that. According to a press release I received last week, a company called C2 Technologies has just developed the first of what will be 7 mobile iPhone applications designed to train the U.S Army’s...

There may be some new movies coming out in 3-D, and no, I'm not talking about a Yogi Bear sequel. A new live-cell microscope invented by scientists at Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus lets researchers use a thin sheet of light to reveal three-dimensional shapes of cellular landmarks....

Ideally, the concept of "on demand" shouldn't limit itself to pay-per-view movies. If 3D printers were widely available in every household, consumers could quickly "demand" and fabricate specialized food and other objects at the touch of a button. Scientists in the emerging field of "bioprinting" are even attempting to make it...

Will tomorrow's cars run on fungi fuel? As gas prices are set to rise, I thought it'd be interesting to point to recent biomass fuel efforts by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories. The Sandia team is modifying an endophytic fungus so that it will produce hydrocarbons, which work well as fuels for internal combustion engines....

Software called Micropilot may help researchers struggling to pinpoint particular cells in their microscopes. The technology, developed by European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) scientists, searches for cells with specific features. After detecting the cells that a researcher is interested in, the...

Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a nickel-size, curvilinear camera with a 3.5x optical zoom. Or, to put it simply, an eyeball camera. The lens and photodetectors are on flexible substrates. A hydraulic system then changes the shape of the substrates, allowing the...

Photoelectrochemical cells convert sunlight into electricity, but their light-absorbing dyes, called chromophores, eventually degrade because of sunlight exposure. For plant cells, the degradation of chromophores isn't a big deal - they simply self-regenerate. Now, Purdue researchers are in the early stages of creating a...

Mother Nature is a great innovator. In fact, one might argue that some of today's most efficient technologies were not engineered, but rather, exist in nature as the byproducts of a little process called evolution. As such, it comes as no surprise that scientists sometimes look to nature as a source of...

The emergency room may look a bit different in five years. And when I say "different," I mean that mobile robots will be waiting on you and collecting your blood pressure and pulse rate. Computer engineers at Vanderbilt University have a new idea about improving a hospital's emergency department, proposing...

We’ve been hearing for some time now how emissions-free electric vehicles (EVs) could someday save the planet – or at least our part of it – by replacing cars powered with internal combustion engines. What nobody can seem to tell us is when that day will come. Two companies that hope to answer that question are...

Matter and antimatter are almost identical, but their one crucial difference, an opposite charge, can cause mutual annihilation when the two are mixed. So if there's plenty of matter here in the world, where is its counterpart? When the universe formed, matter and antimatter should have been produced in equal...

Like many other alluring things on this Earth, video games can toe the line between good and evil. They are notoriously addicting (sometimes to their users' detriment) — but that quality also allows them to function as a successful medium in rehabilitation and therapy applications. “There are some people who claim that...

You just know somebody’s going to make a movie about this. On October 22, New Mexico’s governor, Bill Richardson, presided over the dedication of what could become the world’s first commercial spaceport. And what is a spaceport, you ask? Think of it as an airport for space travelers, and apparently they’re building one...

To provide an alternative to energy-inefficient, fume-heavy fire cooking, Paul Montgomery, a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, is helping to design a better, cleaner stove for people in developing countries. Central to the design is a heat-powered fan. Here's how the process is more...

Designing a material to cloak objects from visible light has always been a challenge -- Trust me, I've tried it many times during my childhood. Published today, the New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society) details how Meta-flex, a new material designed by...

When the Space Shuttle Discovery launches tomorrow, it will carry six human -- and one non-human -- crewmembers to the International Space Station. The non-human is Robonaut 2 (R2), which is set to become the first humanoid robot in space. R2 will be unpacked several months after it arrives, and tested on the station. He...

Yesterday, after unveiling Creo, PTC's soon-to-arrive design application suite, the company arranged for a panel of analysts to address attendee questions about the product. The roundtable included Marc Halpern, Research VP at Gartner, Sanjeev Pal, Research Manager at IDC, and John MacKrell, a senior consultant at...

There was a bit of a crowd lining up near Boston's Park Plaza this morning, and if it wasn't for all the business-casual attire, you may have thought another Apple Store was opening up down the street. The event was actually PTC's unveiling of its new product suite: Creo. Here's the quick rundown: Creo is a suite...

If you're an astronaut, the last thing you need jarring you awake first thing in the morning out in space is a beeping alarm clock. So, since the Apollo days, NASA has chosen to get its astronauts moving with a wakeup song. Now NASA is giving you two chances to help select wakeup songs that will be played during...

“It doesn’t matter where you are, it doesn’t matter where you go, If it’s a million miles away, or just a mile up the road. Take it in. Take it with you when you go. Who says you can’t go home?” So says New Jersey-born rocker Jon Bon Jovi in a hit song he penned several years ago. I don’t know if...

In the words of the late, great gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” That’s comforting to know because the future of America’s space exploration program has suddenly gotten weird, and the last thing you need when that happens is amateurs calling the shots. It all...

Another day at MD&M West has come and gone, and I'm continuing to see a lot of focus on miniaturization -- which makes sense, considering the multitude of medical applications that could benefit from compact yet efficient devices. The SQUIGGLE motor from New Scale Technologies measures 2.8 x 2.8 x 6 mm. Product...

Day one at the Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) West show in Anaheim, CA was bustling with energy. Nearly everyone I spoke with said that they had found themselves happily busy throughout the day. One nice part about meeting people at trade shows is that you might come across information you would...

Day two at SolidWorks World, the worldwide event for SolidWorks users, drew a record crowd. And this time it wasn’t because of the sunny Southern California weather. It was because the special guest speaker happened to be James Cameron, who just this morning was nominated for Best Director and Best Picture Academy Awards...

This week, I’m coming to you live from Anaheim, CA, and SolidWorks World 2010. The SolidWorks user community continues to flock to this annual event, and this year, there are more than 5,000 registrants learning about new features coming up in the next version of SolidWorks, as well as networking with other users, SolidWorks...

Do the Russians know something we don’t? In the waning days of 2009, the head of Russia’s federal space agency, Dr. Anatoly Perminov, made huge headlines by telling a Russian radio station that their space agency was contemplating sending a mission to Apophis, an 885-foot (270-meter) asteroid first...

I mentioned in my last blog post I will travel to Anaheim in early February to attend several shows, notably the Pacific Design & Manufacturing Show and Medical Design & Manufacturing West. That means once again subjecting myself to the rigors of airport security - whipping out my photo ID, emptying my pockets...