NewScITech

The noise of aircraft taking off, road traffic or a booming discotheque often drive inhabitants of the neighborhood to a nervous frenzy. The first-ever windows with active sound insulation offer much-needed relief to local residents in their homes and offices. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone knows children are getting fatter and that both a poor diet and a lack of exercise are to blame. But, what researchers have been unable to discover until now, is exactly how major a role activity plays in the battle to keep obesity at bay. Read the rest of this entry »

The Altair 8800, introduced in the early 1970s, was the first computer you could build at home from a kit. It was crude, didn’t do much, but many historians would say that it launched the desktop computer revolution. Hod Lipson, Cornell assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, thinks a little machine he calls a Fab@Home may have the same impact. Read the rest of this entry »

Video games that contain high levels of action, such as Unreal Tournament, can actually improve your vision. Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved by about 20 percent in their ability to identify letters presented in clutter—a visual acuity test similar to ones used in regular ophthalmology clinics. Read the rest of this entry »

The plant with the world’s largest flower - typically a full meter across, with a bud the size of a basketball - evolved from a family of plants whose blossoms are nearly all tiny, botanists write this week in the journal Science. Their genetic analysis of rafflesia reveals that it is closely related to a family that includes poinsettias, castor oil plants, the tropical root crop cassava, and the trees that produce natural rubber. Read the rest of this entry »

Students who entered college when they were 12 to 14 years old don’t fit the stereotype of unhappy “nerds” who are humorless, isolated misfits, according to a new study. In fact, University of Washington research paints a different and much more positive and multi-faceted portrait of these gifted students. Read the rest of this entry »

A team of researchers led by McGill University psychologist Mark Baldwin has created a video game that it says is not only good for you – it makes you feel good about yourself. Read the rest of this entry »

Kids and adults will stay glued to video games this holiday season because the fun of playing actually is rooted in fulfilling their basic psychological needs. Read the rest of this entry »

The UCSF Sustainability Committee has these suggestions for a more eco-friendly holiday season. Read the rest of this entry »

Can you judge a man’s faithfulness by his face? How about whether he would be a good father, or a good provider? Read the rest of this entry »

How will we enjoy entertainment in the future? Via a high-definition plasma TV screen, computer, cellphone or iPod? Who will create entertainment? Will it be mega studios, independent producers or the whiz kid on his laptop–or a network of whiz kids? And who will watch the result when the audience is also the writer, critic and marketer? Read the rest of this entry »

Before informational input perceived by the mammalian brain is stored in the long-term memory, it is temporarily memorised in the hippocampus. Understanding the function of the hippocampus as an important player in the memory process is a major topic of current brain research. Read the rest of this entry »

The Spaniards may have been right all along — a siesta after a hearty lunch is natural, new research suggests. Read the rest of this entry »

If you want to see evolution in action, check out your local market’s dairy section. One of the bacteria in yogurt is undergoing an extreme makeover. It’s shedding parts of its genetic heritage wholesale as it morphs into an organism that loves to live in — and perhaps can only live in — fermented milk. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the surface of an interactive, 10 meter long bar. Every glass, cup, cellphone, car key, businesscard or even fingers will be recognized. Read the rest of this entry »