Hasta La Gadget!

Normally, if a grown man talks about building a fusion reactor and wants your 13-year-old to hang out in his garage, we’d expect you to smile, back away slowly, and perhaps alert the authorities. But, if that man is Microsoft program manager Carl Greninger there’s no need to run. The science fanatic recruited a team of teens, as young as 13, and worked with them to build a Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor — a (comparatively) simple nuclear reactor that smashes together atoms and produces neutrons. Check out the nearly 20-min video after the break to watch a bunch of high school kids generate ball of ionized plasma. And to think, all that’s in your garage is that ’65 Mustang you swear you’re gonna restore one day.

Continue reading Microsoft manager teams up with teens to build a fusion reactor in his garage (video)

Microsoft manager teams up with teens to build a fusion reactor in his garage (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 28 May 2011 02:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dr Sarah Parcak thinks that “excavating a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist” but that Indiana Jones is “old school”. Well, she must know. After all, she has discovered 17 pyramids and 1000 tombs. From space. More »

When Su Meck got hit with a ceiling fan and woke up one week later with a total memory loss, her husband Jim thought “she was Su 2.0. She had rebooted.” More »

We could feed you a line about the final frontier or exploring strange new worlds, but we’ll just give it to you straight: the X-Prize Foundation has teamed up with Qualcomm to design the Tricorder X-Prize, a $10 million competition designed to boldly go where no contest has gone before. Sorry, we couldn’t help ourselves. The most recent addition to the ambitious X-Prize stable is aimed at producing a mobile medical device, similar to those used on Star Trek, that can “diagnose patients better than or equal to a panel of board certified physicians.” Said device would allow regular folks to “quickly and effectively assess health conditions, determine if they need professional help,” and then decide on a plan of action. The Tricorder X-Prize competition is still in the planning stages and should be ready to launch sometime in 2012. Full PR after the break.

Continue reading X-Prize reveals plans for tricorder competition, suspiciously lacking Nimoy endorsement

X-Prize reveals plans for tricorder competition, suspiciously lacking Nimoy endorsement originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 May 2011 09:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been told time and time again to fear our mechanical friends, so imagine our relief when we heard that some Swiss scientists had a batch of bots that displayed altruism. What’s more, these little two-wheeled foragers weren’t programmed to share, they evolved the trait. Researchers at EPFL infused Alice microbots with digital “genes” that mutated over time as well as color sensors that allow them to navigate their environment. The robots were tasked with collecting “food” and given the option to keep it for themselves or split it amongst their silicon-brained relatives. The more they decided to give to others with similar genetic makeup the more those virtual genes were passed on to future generations — including the one for altruism. The experiment is an example of Hamilton’s Rule, an evolutionary model for how the seemingly counter-intuitive trait of selflessness could arise through natural selection. Don’t let your guard down just yet, though — the robots are only sharing with each other for now.

Continue reading Robots learn to share, try to repair bad rep (video)

Robots learn to share, try to repair bad rep (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 May 2011 05:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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