Technology

Duke University engineers think they've made an important step towards developing robotic surgeons that operate independently. The robot they used in their experiments—which were just feasibility studies, and were not performed on real people—uses 3-D ultrasound as its eyes, and an AI program that processes the 3-D information it gathers to determine the robot's next steps.

In 2009, Canada plans to launch a suitcase-sized spacecraft that will be charged with spotting asteroids that could be on a collision course with Earth. There's already a big ground-based program underway. NASA regularly identifies and tracks asteroids, calculating the likelihood that they could at some point run into our pale blue dot.

Yes, there are some great robot fight scenes, nefarious villains, a few human interest plotlines, even characters that seem like genuine people, but the new movie Iron Man is really about the lab, and its ridiculously cool toys.

Nike is doing it again. In an event dubbed The Human Race, the king of sports marketing is planning a one-day, 10k race for 1 million people (preferably all clad in Nike) in 25 cities across the world. The races will wind across the globe—the first is in Taipei and the last, L.A.—and each is topped off by a concert at the end. So on August 31, 2008 the world (or at least participants in the same time zones) will be running together

You may never forget how to ride a bike, but remembering how it should fit is another story. For competitive cyclists, even minute adjustments to the frame can have a major impact on comfort and performance. Despite this, bike fitting has long been a black art with each technician employing her own method and metrics (plumb bob, video, rulers, etc.). Most methods have been inaccurate, tough to reproduce and based on the static position of the rider (not pedaling). Meanwhile, opposing views on the right fit have been difficult to reconcile without a standardized measurement method. Now Retul has introduced a motion-tracking system that may put those issues to rest.

You heard the hype, you read the astonishing array of perfect-score online reviews. So you bought a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV, sat down to play and . . . what's going on here? How can a perfect game be ticking you off? I'm not saying that GTA IV is less than amazing, but it most definitely is less than perfect, particularly if you're not one of the professional gamers writing those frothing-at-the-mouth-with-delight reviews. Some of the most basic elements in the game are just plain aggravating.

The small airplane is too dirty for an environmentally threatened world. Thats not the view from eco-activists, but from some of the leading lights in general aviation—the category encompassing small planes such as Cessnas flown by citizen pilots. At some point, some environmental group is going to figure out that small aircraft fly leaded fuel, said Mark Moore, NASAs personal air vehicle program manager, to a meeting of engineers, aviation advocates and a billionaire corporate titan with his own private jet. Their goal, however, is not to bury private aviation, but to remake it as the greenest form of personal transit.

Granted, it might not seem like such a big deal when astronomers find some of the missing mass in the universe, since there's very little that isn't missing. Roughly 95 percent of the cosmos is either dark matter or dark energy. About five percent of the universe is made up of the normal mass we're familiar with—baryonic matter. Yet by adding up the known stars and galaxies and gas, astronomers have only accounted for about half of that five percent.

NASA has been catching some extra criticism in the past few days after The Houston Chronicle—Johnson Space Center's hometown paper—ran an expose on credit card abuses at the agency.

The paper reportedly reviewed 451,000 transactions, and among plenty of apparently legitimate purchases, found that NASA employees had also bought iPods, video games and jewelry. The first two you might be able to slide past accounting, if you were, say, an astronaut doing isolation chamber testing, and needed a few gadgets and games to pass the time.

To learn more about how animals communicate, researchers are developing robotic copies capable of signaling real-world creatures, then analyzing how the non-battery-powered respond. Most recently, Hampshire College researcher Sarah Partan, for example, has been working with a mechanical squirrel she calls Rocky.

Yes, it ended well, but the rough-and-tumble landing that astronauts experienced recently as a Soyuz capsule on its way back from the International Space Station missed its landing target by 300 miles sure doesn't sound like something you'd want to do twice.

Post-its are great to jot down quick notes and messages; and important phone numbers; and meeting locations; and the zillions of passwords. Great that is, until they lose their stick and end up buried in piles of work or behind the desk. Now, researchers at MIT have solved that pressing problem with the demoed Quickies, a new application to digitize handwritten sticky notes and allow you not only to browse through an archive of notes, but set up to-do lists, send reminders, and even find that sticky note you lost in the middle of a textbook.

Tomorrow is a special day for spam—its turning 30. Even those despised emails about enlarging certain body parts, discounts on health products, Rolex watches, enhancing your love life have to have an origin.

In fact, spam began inoffensively enough with an email sent May 3, 1978 to about 400 users of Arpanet, (the government-run network that later became in the Internet) from a marketer at the (now defunct) computer company Digital Equipment Company. The first one wasnt the scam- and virus-filled message familiar to todays Internet users—just a friendly email inviting all to a showing of a new computer system.

By the time Lieutenant Colonel Michael Brill touched down after a combat mission over Iraq earlier today, he had broken his own world record for the most hours spent flying the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Brill, a 421st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron pilot, has logged more than 6,000 hours in the F-16.

We give up. Even the animals are doping. A report this week in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo said that bulls fighting next month as a part of Madrids San Isidrop festival will be subject to drug tests if theyre behaving in a suspect way (like running at men holding red capes?). Unlike with humans, these drugs won't be helping the bulls. Corticosteroids or tranquillizers are intended to make it easier for the matador.