Six New Planets: Mini-Neptunes Found Around Sunlike Star
NASA's Kepler space telescope has uncovered six new planets huddled around a sunlike star--odd worlds that astronomers have dubbed mini-Neptunes. Five of the new planets are closer to their parent star than Mercury is to the sun. The sixth world lies farther out, within a region that would fit inside the orbit of Venus. "This is the most closely packed known planetary system," said study co-author... posted on Mar 09 2011, 3,165 reads

Visit the MET From Your Desk
Google has taken its 360-degree Street View cameras into some of the most famous and acclaimed galleries, opening the world's art collection to the internet. From the Tate Britain in London to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, you can now browse 385 rooms in 17 galleries, and see more than 1,000 works by 486 artists. Zoom in close enough, and you can see individual brushstrokes, hairline cracks in t... posted on Feb 12 2011, 6,197 reads

Graphene Wins Nobel Prize
Two University of Manchester scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for their pioneering research on graphene, a one-atom-thick film of carbon whose strength, flexibility and electrical conductivity have opened up new horizons for pure physics research as well as high-tech applications. Graphene is one of the strongest, lightest and most conductive materials known to humankind. It's al... posted on Feb 03 2011, 3,908 reads

A Light in India
When we hear the word "innovation," we often think of new technologies or silver bullet solutions - like hydrogen fuel cells or a cure for cancer. But some of the greatest advances come from taking old ideas or technologies and making them accessible to millions of people who are under-served. One off-the-grid electricity company based in Bihar is doing just that. With an innovative solution to th... posted on Feb 01 2011, 3,486 reads

Being the Change In Bihar
In an under-construction school building in India's Bihar village, children are learning algebra, chemistry, Newton's laws of motion. There's no teacher in the classroom, no blackboard. The teacher is hundreds of miles away, and he is teaching via Skype. In this very unsual school, teachers mark their attendance using a biometric fingerprinter, and students log their attendance in a computer. The ... posted on Jan 26 2011, 4,165 reads

A Home Like No Other
Dai Haifei lives in an egg on the sidewalk. Though he might sound like a character in a new movie- he's actually an architect from Beijing. Taking small living spaces to a new level, Haifei built a mobile egg-shaped house made of bamboo strips, wood chippings, sack bags, the six-foot tall structure that is powered by the sun. He even planted a covering of grass to sprout in the spring!... posted on Jan 16 2011, 2,873 reads

Virtual Doctors Reach the Rural Poor
These days, it's not uncommon to skype a friend overseas, or videochat with family over the holidays. But how about using videoconferencing to provide health care to rural villages? That's what E Health Point Services is up to. By opening clinics up in rural India, the program allows patients to video chat with a doctor, and then run necessary tests and get the appropriate medicine from the clinic... posted on Jan 14 2011, 2,973 reads

Can Science Create Heroes?
Can modern science help us to create heroes? That's the lofty question behind the Heroic Imagination Project, a new nonprofit started by Phil Zimbardo, a psychologist at Stanford University. Heroism isn't supposed to be a teachable trait. We assume that people like Gandhi or Rosa Parks or the 9/11 hero Todd Beamer have some intangible quality that the rest of us lack. When we get scared and selfis... posted on Jan 07 2011, 4,668 reads

If Santa Claus Was An Engineer...
Of all the gifts that will be exchanged this holiday season, there probably aren't too many that will change someone's life. But a robotics workshop in Seattle has taken the holiday tradition and given it a high-tech twist. When Yoky Matsuoka started getting emails from parents of disabled children asking for help, the neurobiotics pioneer made it her hobby to build devices to assist kids in need.... posted on Dec 25 2010, 3,662 reads

The Economics of Trust
The laws of economics say that people act out of rational and self-serving motives. But what would it say about the self-sacrificing gestures we make for family and friends? On an inquiry into why people invest in their children in 2000, neuroeconomist Paul Zak discovered the hormone oxytocin, a chemical released when petting dogs, nursing children, or cuddling with loved ones. Since then, Zak has... posted on Dec 15 2010, 4,506 reads