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Smart News / Smart News Ideas & Innovations

If Women Assume Fake Names, They Do Better on Math Tests

Assuming a false name helped women perform better on math tests

A coy Buttercup wearing his brand new foot.

Buttercup the One-Legged Duck No Longer Has to Hobble

Buttercup’s adorable plight, which concluded on Sunday when engineers successfully outfitted the duck with a 3D printed duck foot

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Woman Builds a Prosthetic Leg Out of Legos

Vanity prosthetic legs aren’t new - but this is probably the first one built out of LEGOS

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These Contact Lenses Can Zoom In and Out, Give You Telescopic Vision

These contact lenses can switch your vision back and forth from regular sight to a 2.8x zoom

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One Thousand Robots Face Off In a Soccer Tournament

The roboticists behind RoboCup want their team of bots to beat the World Cup champions on a level playing field by 2050

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Pufferfish’s Deadly Toxin Could Help Chemo Patients

Researchers in New Jersey are working on an experimental drug that they hope will provide pain relief to cancer patients going through chemotherapy

One day, these will be laughably large.

Batteries Are Now Unbelievably Tiny

A group from Harvard and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana figured out how to print tiny batteries, no bigger than a grain of sand

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Now You Can Control Video Games With Your Thoughts Alone

Thinking of blinking sends the paddle sailing in this brain-controlled version of PONG

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Plan a Psychedelic Wedding with Glowing Dresses Made from Material from Engineered Silkworm

Researchers say they see potential for the glowing silk to be used for some medical technologies, too

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These People Want to Replace Fruit Stickers With Laser Etched Tattoos

One company is trying to solve the sticker problem by actually laser etching logos onto fruit

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All of Facebook Could Fit on 100 of These Futuristic DVDs

This new DVD could probably hold every file you’ve ever made

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Visit the Bottom of the Ocean with this Deep-Sea Submarine’s Live Stream

A live stream video from the Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents will be a glimpse into a world of strange creatures and volcanic activity

Facebook Helped Kick Off a 20-Fold Registration Spike for Desperately Needed Organ Donors

Last May, Facebook began allowing users to post their organ donor status on their profile timelines

A New 3D Map of the Universe Covers More Than 100 Million Light-Years

The map makes infinity seem comprehensible by depicting the structures of galaxy clusters, dark matter and open patches of lonely space

The RoboRoach

Cyborg Cockroaches May Become New Teaching Tools in Neuroscience Classes

Roach neurons aren’t that different than human neurons, making the RoboRoach a learning tool for all sorts of basic principles of neuroscience

New At-Home Test Could Tell Women If Their Pregnancy Has Terminated

Women who both do and do not want to be pregnant could benefit from the new test

The fire near Colorado Spring as of yesterday afternoon.

Colorado Wildfire Forces Evacuations, Threatens World’s Highest Suspension Bridge

A series of three wildfires are currently tearing through Colorado

Gold Nanoparticles May Be the Future of Male Contraception

A twist in the on-going quest for a male contraceptive

Planetary Resources president Chris Lewicki stands next to the Arkyd space telescope.

A Space-Based Telescope for the People Wants Your Support

An asteroid mining company wants your money to put a satellite telescope that you can control into space

The chemical rearrangement of oligo-(phenylene-1,2-ethynylenes) as seen in the microscope image (top) and the stick diagram of the molecular structure.

For the First Time, See What the Most Basic Chemistry Actually Looks Like

For the first time scientists used a microscope to see a chemical reaction

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