Innovation
New ideas and scientific and technological advancements
Ten Unforgettable Web Memes
Cats and failures highlight this list of the memes that have gone mainstream. Which ones did we miss?
April 18, 2011 |
By Megan Gambino, Ryan R. Reed, Jesse Rhodes and Brian Wolly
Explore the Human Body on Your Computer Screen
The plastic skeletons and body models used in classrooms and doctors' offices may soon become obsolete, it seems, due to one of Google's latest offerings: Google Body. The program is still in beta (meaning it's got some bugs); this week its creators added a male body to the female they began with i...
March 31, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Traditional Cookbooks vs. E-Readers, Searches and Apps
Whenever a new cookbook comes into my possession, the first thing I do is sit down, scan through the recipes and use Post-Its to flag the things I might actually take the time to make, paying attention to ingredients and the time required to pull a dish together. It makes for easy referencing, espe...
March 31, 2011 |
By Jesse Rhodes
Great Depression Had Little Effect on Death Rates
There's this somewhat counter-intuitive idea that economic downturns are good for your health. You might expect the privation and malnutrition inherent in such times would take a toll. But during the Great Depression, mortality rates fell. And since that time, the idea that recessions are a net-pos...
March 28, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
What's the Most Important Invention?
Way back in 1999, members of a brain trust called The Edge debated a fascinating question: What is the most important invention in the past 2,000 years? Some of the answers (much like the design of the archived discussion site) are dated now. Aspects of computer programming and artificial intellige...
March 23, 2011 |
By Laura Helmuth
Help Scientists Track Light Pollution By Looking At the Stars
In my neighborhood, some of the street lamps aim their light directly down on the sidewalk and road. Others spew their illumination in a sphere of light, wasting it as it streams into the sky. All those poorly aimed lights add up to 17 billion kilowatt-hours of lost energy each year, costing us aro...
March 21, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Cities as Seen by Locals or Tourists
If you live in a tourist destination town, you see people snapping the same pictures all the time. Here in Washington, D.C., scads of visitors record the same views of the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial and the front yard of the White House. But what are they missing? And when you vacation in other ...
March 09, 2011 |
By Laura Helmuth
Lightbulb Ban Means Reinventing the Easy-Bake Oven
The common incandescent light bulb will soon become a lot less common. In an effort to reduce energy waste and greenhouse gas emissions, the provisions laid out in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (pdf) stipulate that manufacture of the classic 100 watt bulb will cease in 2012, with...
March 03, 2011 |
By Jesse Rhodes
How Your Brain Is Better Than A Supercomputer
Did you watch IBM's Watson supercomputer trounce two humans playing Jeopardy last week and do you now fear a future controlled by these jumbles of wires and circuitry with really boring voices? No? Me neither. And not just because I refuse to be intimidated by an invention that contains more inform...
February 24, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Win A Million Dollars With Science
Last week, a neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston won $1 million from Prize4Life for his discovery of a reliable way to monitor progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Prize4Life, which also has an ongoing competition for deve...
February 07, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
A Robot That Tells Jokes
The robot takeover steadily approaches: They're now figuring out humor. Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. student Heather Knight, who calls herself a "social roboticist," has created Data, an adorable robot who not only tells jokes but learns from the audience response and then adjusts its comedy routine. Data...
February 02, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Jane McGonigal on How Computer Games Make You Smarter
The "alternate reality game" designer looks to develop ways in which people can combine play with problem-solving
February 2011 |
By Amanda Bensen
What Can the Banking Industry Learn From Ecology?
Can anyone explain the recent financial crisis? I've been listening to Planet Money and This American Life try to do so over the last couple of years, but it's only driven home how complex everything is. Even simple questions like "what is money?" and "how much is there?" aren't easy to answer. But...
January 20, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Life Without Left Turns
I once was hit while making a left turn. The driver of a car coming in the opposite direction ran the red light, striking the rear of the minivan I was driving, and spinning it 180 degrees. I walked away, badly shaken. My mom's minivan was totaled.I still hate making left turns.I'm not the only one...
January 11, 2011 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Year in Science: A List of Lists
It's the end of the year, so you know what that means—it's time for the parade of "year in review" articles. Start with Smithsonian.com's Top 10 Stories of 2010, which features lots of science, and then move on to these others:* Discover magazine picked the top 100 stories of 2010 (and my brother w...
December 29, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
How to Keep the Needles on Your Christmas Tree
Putting up a live Christmas tree can be a lot of work. You have to make sure that the tree has plenty of water, sometimes having to crawl beneath the branches while trying not to dislodge any of the breakable ornaments. And then there's the clean-up. No matter what you do, the tree is going to shed...
December 23, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Dryer Sheets as Bug Repellant?
It's a modern old-wives tale: put a Bounce dryer sheet in your pocket while gardening and it'll keep away the mosquitoes or gnats. This may seem a bit far-fetched to those of us who have never tried it, but researchers have now found that there could be some truth in it, when it comes to gnats, any...
December 20, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Rare Earth Elements Not Rare, Just Playing Hard to Get
Given their name, rare earth elements, and the fact that China controls 96 percent of REE production, you might think the Chinese had won some geologic lottery. But these metallic substances—elements 57 to 71 on the periodic table, plus scandium and yttrium—are not all that rare. It's been economic...
November 18, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Looking for New Discoveries in Old Data
What happens to old lab notebooks and other records of scientific data? It's still useful, though not so much so when it's molding away in a box at the bottom of a closet. But now a group of scientists who recently met at the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) conference is start...
November 08, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Why You Waste Time Playing Farmville
Why do 70 million people spend time managing virtual farms in Farmville? (I know they're not all crazy.) Tom Chatfield, a writer and video game expert (he blogs at What Happens Next?) says it's because the game designers have figured out how to take advantage of human nature. We evolved to find thi...
November 04, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
