The Glucose-Monitoring Tattoo

It's a modern medical twist on an ancient art. Scientists at Draper Laboratory, in Cambridge, MA, are developing a nanosensor that could be injected into the skin, much like tattoo dye, to monitor an individual's blood-sugar level. As the glucose level increases, the "tattoo" would fluoresce under an infrared light, telling a diabetic... Read More

Audio Fingerprinting

You’re twiddling your thumbs while waiting in the check-out line at your favorite retailer and you hear a great new song over the PA system. You could turn to the next person in line and ask if they know it—engaging in an impromptu but probably fruitless game of Name That Tune—or you could whip out your smartphone, record a snippet of it, and send it to a music-discovery service. It will report back with the name of the song and that of the artist who recorded it, which album it appears on, what year it was released—heck, with a couple of button presses, you can buy the song right then and there. What technology magic makes such a thing possible? It’s called audio fingerprinting... Read More

Camera Pills, Health Sensors And Ultrasound Maps For Surgeons

Camera pills and ultrasound creating maps of the body: health has become high technology. Here are some of the recent advances in medical technology. For more than ten years, senior medical officer Ronald Mårvik at St. Olav’s Hospital in Trondheim has been collaborating with SINTEF scientist Thomas Langø. Together, they have created a new IT-base window on the inside of the body, a window that makes a patient transparent on a screen when a surgeon inserts operating instruments through small openings in the abdominal wall... Read More

Rocket Scientists Shoot Down Mosquitoes With Lasers (Humans, Butterflies Remain Unharmed)

A quarter-century ago, American rocket scientists proposed the "Star Wars" defense system to knock Soviet missiles from the skies with laser beams. Some of the same scientists are now aiming their lasers at another airborne threat: the mosquito. In a lab in this Seattle suburb, researchers in long white coats recently stood watching a small glass box of bugs. Every few seconds, a contraption 100 feet away shot a beam that hit the buzzing mosquitoes, one by one, with a spot of red light... Read More

Hidden Planet Discovered in Old Hubble Data

A new technique has uncovered an extra solar planet hidden in Hubble Space Telescope images taken 11 years ago. The new strategy may allow researchers to uncover other distant alien worlds potentially lurking in over a decade's worth of Hubble archival data... Read More

Security software that gives laptop thieves an earful

It seems everyday a story makes the news about a stolen laptop containing loads of valuable information.One Colorado software maker believes that the best way to thwart such heists is to give laptops a voice of their own—literally. Front Door Software Corp's $30 Retriever software tries to shame thieves into returning purloined computers by verbally bashing them when they attempt to use them... Read More