megan miller

The September Popular Science feature "Shock to the System" (on newsstands next week), discusses the hidden danger of brain trauma faced by soldiers exposed to bomb blasts. The article reveals that one in five American soldiers serving in Iraq may be suffering from a brain injury—not from direct contact with explosions, but from the effects of bomb blast waves that can cause life-threatening damage at the cellular level, even from distances previously considered safe.

Back in 2005, Friendster was faced with a really strange problem. Or opportunity, depending upon how you looked at it. See, the social networking site was based in the U.S. and funded by U.S. advertisers, but it turned out that a massive bulk of the site's millions of users were actually based in the Philippines. Friendster execs' hearts—and hopes for financial solvency— sank when they realized they weren't targeting their intended audience. Without a U.S. consumer base, their advertising would dry up.

Two decades ago, "saving the gorillas" became a cause celebre when researchers announced that western lowland gorilla populations in the Congo had dwindled to critically endangered numbers. Our primate relatives were threatened by a widespread outbreak of the Ebola virus, as well as poachers who hunted the animals for bushmeat.

Estimates at the time of the 1980 gorilla census were in the range of 100,000 individuals, but since then experts believed that the number had dropped to less than 50,000.

There was some wisdom behind that stoner pop-culture game you used to play in college, but it turns out the “six-degrees of separation” hypothesis was a few tenths off the mark. According to data gleaned from Microsoft’s Messenger IM service, all human contacts in a social network can be connected in 6.6 degrees.

About to chuck that busted CD? Not so fast, young grasshopper. Web editor Megan Miller demonstrates three ways to resurrect those scratched discs using stuff you probably already have sitting on your shelf.

Perhaps youre the type of health nut who takes four or five different vitamin concoctions each morning to support weight loss, anti-aging, good digestion, clear skin and high energy. Or maybe youre just curious about the medicinal effects of black tea, cranberry juice and licorice. Well, youre in for a treat.

The Web has been abuzz this week with speculation about the company Psystar, which recently appeared out of nowhere offering (for just $399) a PC called the Open Computer that runs OS X Leopard.

Bye-bye, NoDoz.

On this week's podcast, host Chuck Cage, gets the scoop on SXSW Interactive from Web editor Megan Miller. Marvel over the origins of the Internet! Learn how tech can change the world! Catch Jonathan Coulton's live concert! All that and more, on Cocktail Party Science.

When a pile of castor beans and a couple of vials of white powder turned up on Thursday in a room at the Extended Stay America Hotel near the Las Vegas strip, authorities went into panic mode, calling in police, Homeland Security and FBI agents to investigate.

Check out our inaugural episode of Cocktail Party Science, in which host Chuck Cage, senior editor Nicole Dyer and Web editor Megan Miller talk to Eric Hagerman, author of Your Sewer on Drugs. Youll get a behind-the-scenes account of what it was really like to dive into the manholes of San Diego in the name of science.

A couple years ago, a Web sensation was born when a bunch of people started posting photos of cute animals—mostly kittens—doing funny stuff, mostly with computers, and captioning these photos in the weird pidgen of baby talk and IM slang now known as lolspeak."

Usually our 5-Minute Projects involve soldering and LED lights and other such electronic accoutrements, but this week we decided to skip the fancy stuff in favor of an old-school science project: making rheopectic slime from Borax and glue. This is a pretty safe experiment even for kids--just make sure to do it with parental supervision and keep the Borax, slime, and any fingers that have been touching the aforementioned items out of eyes, noses and mouths.

Everyone at some point wishes she could talk with her "future self" and have some insight into how it's all going to turn out. Unfortunately—unless you count Miss Cleo's tele-clairvoyent services—technology hasn't given us a portal to the future yet. But it has improved upon the time capsule.