Posts
April 17, 2013
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2:00 PM | A Single-Cell Genome
Awesome! Now What? Don Farrall/Getty Images AWESOME! Because one cell has so little DNA, scientists typically pool together millions of cells to sequence a genome. Last December, Xiaoliang Sunney Xie and colleagues at Harvard University developed a technique to carefully copy single genes and then rapidly duplicate and sequence them using existing methods. Trumping other techniques for sequencing single cells, the new method covers up to 93 percent of a cell's DNA. NOW WHAT? When scientists
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April 02, 2013
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2:47 PM | Dirt, Uncovered
Soil Before and After Lionel Dupuy, The James Hutton Institute It's not easy to see what's going on in a handful of dirt, so some labs use gels and other substitutes to grow plants when they study them. Unfortunately, roots and most of the organisms that interact with them don't grow as well in fakes. That's why researchers at Scotland's nonprofit James Hutton Institute have developed a transparent soil that more closely resembles the real deal. For the main ingredient, they use small particles
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March 25, 2013
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3:45 PM | Crash Test
Morpheus Down The 12-by-9-foot space lander carries 1,200 pounds of propellant for a 50-second test. Courtesy NASA When NASA technicians saw the navigation system on the Morpheus lander prototype shut off less than a second after liftoff, they knew the craft was doomed. It was August, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the 27th test flight; the previous 26 had gone well. But this time, the 3,400-pound vehicle flew 16 feet high and, without spatial data to guide it, fell to the ground,
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March 07, 2013
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2:00 PM | The Goods: March 2013's Hottest Gadgets
Philips Fidelio PhilipsTiny bluetooth earbuds, a TI-84 calculator fit for 2013, an app that coordinates your phone's audio settings with your daily schedule, and more Click to enter the gallery This month, our top new gadget picks include a smarter bike trainer, a credit-card size USB charger, and a new Arduino controller for serious DIY gamers. Check out the gallery for more great ideas in gear.
February 06, 2013
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Hairy Wood Ant 2012 Changing Views LtdThe project will be one of the largest radio-tagging experiments of its kind. Samuel Ellis, a biologist from the University of York, will tag 1,000 hairy wood ants with radio receivers to find out how they communicate and travel. The multiyear project, which begins this summer in Derbyshire, U.K., will be one of the largest radio-tagging experiments of insects in the wild. Is it difficult to catch a hairy wood ant? No, says Ellis. The
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January 03, 2013
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Razer Ouroboros The Ouroboros wireless mouse is the fastest responder on the market. A laser and optical sensor detect the tracking surface 10 times quicker than competitors. The resulting one-millisecond response rate puts gamers at a distinct advantage. Razer Ouroboros $130 RazerA dozen great ideas in gear, including the fastest mouse on the market, the world's quietest mechanical keyboard, a virtually jam-proof shredder and more. Click to enter the gallery We've picked out several
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December 07, 2012
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Atomic Snapshot Courtesy IBM Research-ZurichA one-atom-wide probe scans a molecule to get the view. For the first time, scientists have used an imaging technique that's so precise that it's possible to see the different lengths of individual atomic bonds. Using a method called non-contact atomic force microscopy, IBM researchers scanned a microscopic probe with a tip only an atom wide over a nanographene molecule and measured the forces between the probe and the sample. In this colored image,
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December 04, 2012
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Elephant Ophthalmology Richard Austin/AP imagesThe elephant, Duchess, goes under the knife, with doctors using custom tools for the rare surgery. Duchess, a 4.4-ton, 45-year-old African elephant at the Paignton Zoo in Devon, England, had already lost her right eye to glaucoma, and cataracts threatened to blind the other. So in September, veterinarians put Duchess under the knife for the second cataract operation ever performed on an elephant. The surgery was similar to the one that 1.8 million
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