Science

Scientists on Friday confirmed that NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has uncovered ice in the sandy soil of the red planet. "It is with great pride and a lot of joy that I announce today that we have found proof that this hard bright material is really water ice and not some other substance," said Phoenix...

NASA has launched a new mission to unravel some of the universe's most intense mysteries. Scientists sent GLAST -- the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope -- into orbit from the Kennedy Space Center. A Delta 2 rocket catapulted the high-tech scope to its destination Wednesday in a meager 90 minutes...

Google cofounder Sergey Brin on Wednesday became the first person to put down a deposit of $5 million toward a future orbital spaceflight through a new program from Space Adventures. Brin's reservation uses one of six spots initially created in Space Adventures' new Orbital Mission Explorers Circle,...

IBM has designed a new $100 million supercomputer, called "Roadrunnner," that's powerful enough to operate at 1 petaflop -- a cool 1 thousand trillion calculations per second. That's twice as fast as the next closest supercomputer -- the IBM Blue Gene system -- and nearly three times as fast as othe...

A new NASA land use agreement is bringing Google -- and, ultimately, the general public -- one step closer to outer space. Google announced a 40-year plan Thursday to build a massive research and development campus within NASA's Ames Research Center. Google will pay $3.66 million a year for the 42.2

Nintendo's release of the Wii Fit in May brought the up-and-coming gaming genre of exercise gaming, or exergaming, into the spotlight. Suddenly, it seemed, Nintendo was challenging the long-standing stereotype of the out-of-shape gamer sitting on the couch eating potato chips. But is this new trend ...

Last week, President Bush signed into law the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, or GINA, which will protect individuals from employer and insurance discrimination based on the results of high-tech gene tests. Fighting discrimination is a good idea, but the lack of opposition to GINA points ...

Nanotechnology may be considered one of the most promising new technologies emerging today, but it's also the source of considerable concern about potential risks to the environment and human health. A new study published Tuesday in Nature Nanotechnology adds further evidence that there's good reaso...

Google launched the beta version of its Google Health personal health records aggregator Monday. The service, according to Google, will put users in control of their own medical records, giving them 24-hour-a-day access to their health records from a variety of sources. With the introduction of Goog...

Atlantic hurricanes will be fewer in number but more intense as a result of global warming, a new study predicts. In the study, which was conducted by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., researchers performed h...

Fighting the animated powers of evil may be a reward unto itself for some gamers, but it can't hold a candle to finding a cure for cancer. A new game from scientists at the University of Washington, however, aims to tap gamers' brain power to make medical discoveries, with the potential even to win ...

At last week's UCLA Technology & Aging Conference, representatives from Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Toyota and other big-name firms discussed how technology is reshaping lifestyles for older individuals. However, important policy implications directly connected to these new tools went unspoken.

Star gazers and astronomers now have a powerful new tool that will allow them to surf the skies from their desktop. Microsoft unveiled the public beta of its WorldWide Telescope Web application Monday. The software creates an experience that users of all ages will find captivating, said Frank Reddy,...

OPINION

Longevity as a Commodity

Last week, GlaxoSmithKline announced it will buy Sirtris Pharmaceuticals for $720 million, giving weight to the claim that antiaging biotech firms can be a good bet. This is good news for Americans, given that a recent Harvard-affiliated study showed that some parts of the country have seen decline...

Researchers at HP Labs have proven the existence of the "memristor," a component of electrical circuits that could lead to computer systems with memories that never forget, the company announced Wednesday. The memristor -- short for "memory resistor" -- was previously only theorized to be the fourth...

Technewsworld Channels