High school student builds Fusion Reactor High school student Thiago Olson used parts and materials from the local hardware story and eBay to build a working fusion reactor. A few tiny bubbles in his dosimeter told him that he'd fused hydrogen nuclei into helium in his basement.
A step closer to Sustainable Nuclear Energy In future nuclear reactors will create energy, while producing no nuclear waste, says Wilfred van Rooijen from the Delft University of Technology (Netherlands). Van Rooijen's research focused on the safety of Gas-cooled Fast Reactors.
Quiet Revolution in Wind Turbines Quiet Revolution Ltd has revolutionized the windmill with their new QuietRevolution wind turbine, the QR5. The small and quiet wind turbine has a vertical axis so it can gather power from the changing winds near around buildings.
Elephants Recognize their Reflection Experiments have revealed that elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror, like humans, dolphins and great apes. Researchers exposed 3 elephants to a huge mirror. The elephants didn't behave socially as if their image was another elephant.
Humanity may split in two Evolutionary theorist Olver Curry expects human species will split in two. The human race will decline after the year 3000, due to dependence on technology. People then become choosier about their sexual partners, causing two human sub-species.
Single Pixel Camera takes High-Res Pictures Instead of having millions of photodiodes each scanning one pixel, a newly developed single pixel camera uses one photodiode to scan the whole scene. This does not only take up less power and space, the camera can take night-vision pictures as well.
Some Women can See 100 million Colors Some women can see four distinct ranges of color, instead of the usual three. Besides the blue, green and red, tetrachromats have also got orange cones. They can distinguish 100 million different colors, instead of the usual 1 million.
MIT listens to echoing rocks to find oil With the help of a new $580,000 Dept. of Energy grant, MIT scientists will interpret underground sound of echoing rocks to find natural gas and oil contained in fractured porous rocks in a Wyoming oil field, and determine where to drill wells.
Fastest Bite on Earth Scientists have discovered the fastest bite in the world. The Latin American trap-jaw ants have jaws that reach up to a speed of 145 mph. The American scientists used a high-speed video camera capable of taking up to 250,000 frames per second.
Is Pluto really a Planet? Nearly 2500 astronomers from 75 countries have gathered in Prague, Czech Republic to agree on a universal definition for a planet. Scientists debate whether Pluto - smaller than Earth's moon - and the newly discovered space object Xena are planets.
