Posted Archive
David Szondy – The vehicle-mounted laser combines a solid state laser with an advanced variant of the company’s Multi-Spectral Targeting System, installed on a small, all-terrain Polaris militarized vehicle (Credit: Raytheon). An energy weapon system built by Raytheon has clocked up an impressive score …
Michael Irving – Researchers have found colonies of asexual termites that contain no males at all (Credit: smuayc/Depositphotos). Some species of termites have been known to reproduce asexually on occasion, but most of the time they seem to do things the old …
David Szondy – Artist’s concept of the two MINERVA-II1 rovers (Credit: JAXA). Japan has scored a space race double first by becoming the first nation to land not one, but two rovers on an asteroid. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has …
Through computationally intensive computer simulations, researchers have discovered that “nuclear pasta,” found in the crusts of neutron stars, is the strongest material in the universe. By Paul Ratner – – The strongest material in the universe may be the whimsically named “nuclear pasta.” …
Ben Coxworth – The fish-eating praying mantis chows down on its catch (Credit: Rajesh Puttaswamaiah). Praying mantises may not actually pray, but they do prey heavily on their fellow insects, along with other small land animals. Now, however, for the first time, …
Michael Irving – The sprayable antenna is made of MXene, a 2D titanium carbide material, which is extremely conductive and in tests performs as well as traditional antennas (Credit: Drexel University). If a device connects wirelessly to other things, chances are high …
By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News – The synthetic cell looks identical to the ‘wild type’. Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. The researchers constructed a bacterium’s “genetic …
James Holloway – Could the fediverse help to restore the web we lost? (Credit: Eukombos) Since its launch in October 2016, microblogging social network Mastodon has been gaining ground, reaching 1 million users as of December 2017. To many it’s the …
It’s a chance to turn something very abundant into something very useful. By James Dennin – For a century and a half or more, researchers have been trying to figure out how to do something useful with all the carbon dioxide floating around …
Michael Irving – An artist’s rendition of Listeria bacteria, which have been found to produce electricity (Credit: UC Berkeley/Amy Ca. The diverse microbes that live in our gut keep turning up new surprises. In recent years this tiny ecosystem has been found to …
