Techspedia™

Right now, you can’t watch TV or walk into a store without seeing those three dreaded words, “BACK TO SCHOOL.” Their presence can mean but one thing: The summer death knell tolls thunderously.
But, wait—there’s time! We still have a precious few weeks to get out and travel, hit the beach or soak up The Great [...]

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Move over, switchgrass. There’s a new miracle crop on the horizon. Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign indicates that a perennial grass named Miscanthus x giganteus can produce about two and a half times more ethanol per acre than either corn or switchgrass.
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We all know that eating hot peppers can burn your tongue and make you sweat, but up till now researchers thought the process was a result of chemicals stimulating neurons rather than the actually production of heat. But Yasser Ahmed Mahmmoud at Denmark’s University of Aarhus has discovered something surprising—chili peppers can actually turn up [...]

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Ever wished you could have Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak? Science, not magic, could make that a reality. Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have created materials that have the potential to bend light and even redirect it around themselves, cloaking any object behind them. They are metamaterials, materials that gain unusual properties via [...]

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Several Florida residents have reported seeing the Leptotyphlops microsnake long before it was announced as a new species, which herpetologist Blair Hedges named for his wife.
Readers want to know: how can you tell if the new animal or plant you’ve stumbled across is a unique, as of yet unnamed species?
Do you know the answer?
Submit your [...]

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Here we have a clip from the excellent movie adaptation of Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. In addition to engaging and nuanced performances by Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Richard Dreyfus, and Iain Glen, the script is full of thought-provoking metaphysical introspection, and some delightful physics introspection as well. It’s well worth renting.
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PopSci reader VectorAKA2004 raises a good question: “I wonder why batteries are lagging behind portable technologies. We advance cell phones and all kinds of things so far and still barely have the power to run them. We have yet to create batteries that can efficiently store solar energy, or other renewable energy sources.”
What do you [...]

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It’s taken nearly a year, but the inevitable class-action fallout from Facebook’s ill-starred Beacon advertising system has finally begun. Filed in California, the suit claims Facebook and its ad partners violated online privacy and computer fraud laws by collecting and publicly disclosing information about users’ online activities without proper consent. Facebook’s “Beacon” advertisements, as [...]

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Sanyo Katana Eclipse
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

Sprint brought back two popular cell phones for another round on Sunday when it announced new versions of the Sanyo Katana and the Motorola Razr.

Sporting thin designs (of course) with GPS and multimedia-friendly feature sets, the Sanyo Katana Eclipse and Motorola Razr VE20 …
The Rest Of The Story at Popular [...]

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Inspired by beaches, ocean and sun, Pacific! seeks to remind us sonically about the stuff we love scenically. The pair that make up Pacific! are electronic music light bearers who sound more like Daft Punk-loving French producers than Swedes who dream about the sea.
Download
free MP3 now!

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