Missed calls could soon be a thing of the past. Nokia has filed a patent for magnetic tattoos that vibrate in tune with your phone. The vibrations can be calibrated to distinguish between things like text messages, voice mail, and low battery. "The magnetic field, when detected by the apparatus, will cause a different effect based on its characteristics," the patent states. "For example, the ... [Read More]

Homeless Hotspots are the squeegee men of the information superhighway. Equipped with MiFi, mobile Wi-Fi hotspots, they offered internet access to attendees of South by Southwest (SXSW) for a suggested donation of $2. It was the brain child of Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) Labs, which has been criticized for exploiting the homeless. BBH has no immediate plans to continue the program but insists ... [Read More]

John Hafernik, a professor of biology at San Francisco State University, thinks he knows what's behind the mysterious disappearance of honey bees. The self-described absent-minded professor collected some of the bees to feed to a praying mantis but forgot about them. He returned to find the bees had been consumed from the inside out by Apocephalus borealis (Figure A), a parasitic fly native to ... [Read More]

The tricorder is the Swiss Army knife of the Star Trek Universe, a handheld device capable of scanning and instantly diagnosing a patient (human or otherwise). The earthly applications aren't lost on trekkie Bill Gates. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation & Grand Challenges Canada are investing $38.5 million to replicate a tricorder, which would be a literal life safer in developing ... [Read More]

As part of its effort to become a world leader in robotics, South Korea will start using robot prison guards next spring. Unlike the deceptively cute Jailbot featured in Superjail!, these R2-D2s with smiley faces are genuinely benign. Creator Lee Baik-Chul programmed the robots to monitor inmates for abnormal behavior. “But the robots are not Terminators. Their job is not cracking down on ... [Read More]

It's long been known that the heat from laptops can decrease sperm count but a new study from the Nascentis Centre for Reproductive Medicine in Cordoba says that the electromagnetic radiation produced by Wi-Fi networks could be even worse. Researchers exposed the sperm of 29 healthy men, aged 26 to 45, to a Wi-Fi enabled laptop for 4 hours and found that 25% of the sperm had stopped moving and ... [Read More]

A group of physicians has just released the coffee table book to end all coffee table books. Stuck Up! 100 Objects Inserted and Ingested in Places They Shouldn't Be is a collection of 100 X-ray images showing foreign objects ingested or inserted into human bodies, "accidentally" or on purpose. The photos are accompanied by deep commentary: Patients who suffer from the problem of having a ... [Read More]

A NASA-affiliated scientist is asking: Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? The paper, published in the journal Acta Astronautica, theorizes that extraterrestrial environmentalists may destroy humanity to save the planet. After all, if human tree huggers are willing "to advocate harm to their own civilization by drawing upon universalist ethical principles, then it is ... [Read More]

Normally being called a caveman implies being too masculine, but archaeologists in the Czech Republic have revealed that they also had a feminine side, literally. The team unearthed a 5,000-year-old man buried on his left side, a practice typically reserved for women. "We believe this is one of the earliest cases of what could be described as a transvestite or third-gender grave in the Czech ... [Read More]

University of Washington professor Magnus Feil told his students to "push the boundaries of current upper-limb prosthetic design." Differently-abled The students simulated life as an amputee by taping up one hand and soon realized that their restricted hand was still capable of simple tasks like bracing objects. "That was an important discovery--that it doesn't always make sense to ... [Read More]

Researchers at Harvard have reversed the aging process in mice. First they prematurely aged the mice by genetically engineering out telomerase, an enzyme that creates protective caps on the end of DNA strands called telomeres. The mice suffered from a variety of age-related afflictions such as testes reduced in size and depleted of sperm, atrophied spleens, damage to the intestines, and ... [Read More]

The Science Channel's new series Through the Wormhole looks at life's big mysteries, and what bigger mystery is there than "Is There a Creator?" In this premiere episode, astronomer Rich Terrile takes intelligent design to a whole new level by suggesting that God is a programmer and we are the program. Quantum Mechanics, the branch of mathematical physics that deals with atomic and ... [Read More]

The future is finally here! Inspired by a 2008 exhibition called "Back to the Future" French artist Nils Guadagnin set about recreating the floating skateboard featured in the movie Back to the Future II. Guadagnin calls it "a reflexion on the multiple possibilities of how to give a sculpture full spatial autonomy." That's my kinda sculpture! The hoverboard can only support 2kg ... [Read More]

Scientists have discovered 123 new species of animals, insects and plants in the Heart of Borneo, a protected region since 2007. Among them is the green and yellow colored Ibycus rachelae, dubbed the "Ninja Slug." The name isn't derived from its stealthiness but rather from its martial arts style of love making. The Ninja Slug shoots its mate with "love darts" made of calcium carbonate ... [Read More]

In the classic 80s movie War Games, all that stood between us and global thermonuclear war was a computer's calculation that tic-tac-toe is unwinnable. Well "XXX" your ass goodbye! The iCub, an open source robot being developed across 11 European universities and institutions, just demonstrated its computer skills at the Humanoid Robotics Symposium at the Institution of Engineering and ... [Read More]

"The Great Sperm Race" (link) is a new flash game in which players assume the role of a sperm and must navigate their way through the acid filled hellhole known as the "Vagina" while steering clear of Leukocytes, white blood cells, which eat sperm. Fortunately, unbeknownst to your 8th grade Health Teacher, the Cervix is filled with power pellets that make you invulnerable to these cock ... [Read More]