Speech technology is advancing quickly; even smartphones offer apps that let you speak commands and perform voice-activated searches. Now, a new app for iPhone and Blackberry can convert spoken Arabic into spoken English (and vice versa).

That Universal Serial Bus port in your computer is about to get an upgrade. You know, the one where you plug in all your external hard drives, digital cameras, MP3 players, thumb drives, and USB heated-slippers? If you bought your computer any time after the year 2000, it probably came equipped with a USB 2.0 port. However, later this year computers will start shipping that include USB 3.0 ports, which can transmit data up to ten times as fast. Here's what to expect.

Jonathan Coulton, PopSci's contributing troubadour and longtime friend, has a new DVD/CD set out titled "Best. Concert. Ever." Leave a question or comment below for a chance to win the goods. We'll announce our ten lucky winners on July 17th. Good luck!

When navigating at night, around dark caves, and through murky waters, bats, dolphins, and whales use clicks and whistles to create a sonic picture of their environment. This ability to see with sound is called echolocation, and some Spanish scientists think they've found a way to systematically teach it to the blind.

Writing in the journal Acta Acustica, the researchers identified a set of sounds that could be used by humans, and codified the training regime needed to let blind people visualize their environment through sound.

Giant particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have become the poster children for big science. Immense in size, cost, and ambition, these gargantuan structures hurl particles at velocities close to the speed of light, in the hopes of uncovering the most basic constituents of matter and energy.

But when Wim Leemans gets his way, particle accelerators will be just another piece of lab equipment, no more obtrusive than a gene sequencer or a desktop printer.

It’s the summer, which means swarms of bugs. And if you keep your window open to get cool summer breezes, it means swarms of bugs in your house. Artists James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau have designed a clock that puts those bugs--and the energy created when they're digested by the group's special fuel cell--to work for you.

Australian scientists have developed a ceramic-like coating that could help virtually any material, such as wood, steel or brick, withstand fires up to 1830°F. Not just that, the toxin-free, inorganic substance is also blast, acid and water-resistant.

Researchers at Yale University have built the first-ever quantum processor using solid state components, and have run basic algorithms to prove how it works. Previous efforts have simulated a quantum processor without using electronic components.

In their tests, physicists Leonardo DiCarlo and professor Robert Schoelkopf demonstrated the perfect example of how quantum computing beats out traditional processing techniques.