Self-Righting Thingie

Two lab-coats in Budapest have designed an object that returns to its full and upright position no matter how you set it down. Weird.

Better Use of Bluetooth

Finally, someone's done something with Bluetooth tech besides make cellphone users looks like Lt. Uhura wannabes. An injured US soldier who lost both legs in Iraq has a new pair of prostetic legs that talk to each other with a Bluetooth connetion to stay in step. Here's the story.

Dusty Nuts

Aggies in lab coats are making nut harvesting less messy. I know, not exactly thrilling, but if you live in the San Joaquin Valley like I do anything that cuts the mud-to-air ratio is a very good thing. Also, I may write a story about this...

Dusting the nuts.

Science Brush-Ups

If you want to learn the basics of a particular field of scientific study or brush-up what you've forgotten then try John Wilkins' Evolving Thoughts blog and his "Basic Concepts in Science" series.

Can You Beat the Chimp?

I doubt it. Try your luck!

Dumpster Dashing

It's not new tech, but it's a cool idea:

http://www.garbagescout.com/

When members see an item someone in New York City has thrown out, they take a picture, post it to Flickr and let the folks at GarbageScout know where it is. Anyone interested in diving in dumpsters as a form of recycling can pick it up if they get there fast enough. Kinda gross, kinda cool.

It's Neckware, Jim!

Trekkers (and Trekkies) can carry their passion to the board room now with this line of Star Trek neckties featuring the cast of the original series.

Go boldly where no tie has gone before.

Blacker than Black

Lab-coated geniuses in New York have turned carbon nanotubes into the most light absorbant material ever created. Now they just have to figure out what to do with it.

Here's the BBC News story.

Stressed Blood Used to Repair Heart

Since printing a new heart isn't an option yet, try exposing some of your blood to UV light and ozone then reinjecting it. The damaged blood triggers an immune response that tricks the body into repairing its heart. Cool.

Here's a video link at Science Daily.

3D Tissue Printer

Need a new heart? Print one.

Hubble Will be 90 Times More Powerful

Great news! Not only is the venerable Hubble Space Telescope, source of all those great astro-images, scheduled for life-extending maintenance during a NASA visit this August, it's also getting a pair of new instruments, the Wide-Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, that give the scope the power to look back to less than 1,000,000 years after the Big Bang.

Here's the Space.com story.

"2008 Will Really be the Year of the Spaceship"

That's what soon-to-be space pirate Sir Richard Branson had to say when his partner, Burt Rutan, unveiled the world's first not-quite-finished passenger spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

And right after that Sir Richard announced there won't be any passenger flights on Virgin Galactic until 2009, making that more of the Year of the Spaceship, but, whatever. I still want to go for a ride.

Here's the New York Times coverage of the unveiling, but you'll have to register to read it.

Old Faithful Webcam

I've never been to Yellowstone to see Old Faithful erupt, and now I don't have to! The geyser has its own webcam courtesy of the techno-rangers at the National Parks Department.

Old Faithful Geyser WebCam -- Yellowstone National Park