Cyborg implants may be closer than you think – “Imagine if you could learn to fly a helicopter by downloading software directly to your brain. Imagine if your eyes could see an object, overlaid with data, miles away in the dark. These science fiction scenes from The Matrix and Terminator movies may be less fictional in the future, thanks to the fascinating science behind medical implants….”

Virgin Galactic’s Private Spaceship Makes First Crewed Flight – “A private suborbital spaceship built for the space tourism firm Virgin Galactic made its first flight with a crew onboard Thursday as it soared over California’s Mojave Desert beneath its enormous mothership…”

Model of Bloodhound supersonic car unveiled – “The British team hoping to drive a car faster than 1,000mph has unveiled a full-scale model of the vehicle. The 1:1 replica of the 12.8m-long (42ft) Bloodhound SuperSonic Car (SSC) is the result of three years of aerodynamic study…”

Top Secret America – “The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work….”

Wi-Fi Without a Base Station – “The recently-announced Ozmo2000 chip is the first device that purports to support the not-yet finalized WiFi Direct standard. WiFi Direct promises to end the dependence of WiFi devices on nearby base stations: instead, they’ll communicate directly with each other, advertising their presence, setting up ad-hoc networks and even hooking up with old school WiFi enabled devices…”

DARPA-funded prosthetic arm reaches phase three, would-be cyborgs celebrate – “DARPA sees $34.5 million worth of promise in their third and final prototype, which will enable the nine pound kit (with 22 degrees of freedom and sensory feedback) to begin clinical trials…”

Windows Phone 7: Don’t bother with this disaster – “Microsoft’s demos of its great mobile hope shows Windows Phone 7 to be only a tepid knockoff of a 2007-era iPhone…” See also: Windows Phone 7 in-depth preview

Android Tablets: What We Know – “We’ve rounded up what we know about upcoming Android tablets to see if any devices will give the Apple iPad a true rival…” See also: How Google is actually holding Android back

Defiant Jobs Stands by iPhone 4 – “A defiant Steve Jobs on Friday rejected any suggestion the iPhone 4′s design was flawed, but offered consumers free phone cases to address reception complaints that have hurt Apple Inc’s image and shares…” See also: Bumper and all, Consumer Reports still doesn’t recommend iPhone 4

RIM, HTC, Nokia want no part of Apple’s “self-made debacle” – “Are antenna grip problems universal among smartphones? Even if they are, handset makers RIM, Nokia, and HTC are not happy with Apple for insinuating that the iPhone 4 isn’t alone in suffering from signal loss when gripped in a certain way…”

When Funny Goes Viral – “One weekend this spring, close to 1,000 people gathered on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to attend a sold-out conference devoted to the question “What is awesome on the Internet?” While the event included presenters and moderators with respectable research credentials from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard and the like, what they had gathered to examine, more or less seriously, is what might be called the ROFL universe. ROFL, which became familiar in the age of texting, stands for “rolling on the floor, laughing” and can serve as a shorthand response to the most ephemeral, silly and frankly unimportant-seeming manifestations of pop entertainment in the early 21st century: absurdly captioned pictures of cats, goof-off remixes of YouTube videos, unlikely Web celebrities, quick-hit visual jokes with unprintable punch lines and sporadic references to Rick Astley…”

Flow-thru carbon-capture filter – “The flow-thru filter is easily attached to the tailpipe of the vehicle. The filter matrix is treated with a basic chemical compound. The vehicle exhaust is then diverted into the carbon-capture filter, which traps CO2 in a flow-by chemical reaction. The filter matrix acts as a carbon sink, capturing harmful CO2. Once the filter is saturated with carbon, after approximately 3500 miles, it can be easily removed from the device and exchanged with a new filter…”

Why it’s increasingly difficult to make discoveries – “If you look back on history, you get the sense that scientific discoveries used to be easy. Galileo rolled objects down slopes. Robert Hooke played with a spring to learn about elasticity; Isaac Newton poked around his own eye with a darning needle to understand color perception. It took creativity and knowledge to ask the right questions, but the experiments themselves could be almost trivial. Today, if you want to make a discovery in physics, it helps to be part of a 10,000-member team that runs a multibillion dollar atom smasher. It takes ever more money, more effort, and more people to find out new things….”

Poachers kill last female rhino in South African park for prized horn – “South African wildlife experts are calling for urgent action against poachers after the last female rhinoceros in a popular game reserve near Johannesburg bled to death after having its horn hacked off…”

Graphene, Graphene, Graphene. Read all about it. – “Graphene could one day replace silicon and improve electronics, displays, and automobiles. There are so many research papers coming about about graphene, even the experts have a hard time keeping up. Its electronic and optical properties, chemical, thermal, and mechanical properties have garnered serious attention from academics and industry professionals alike…”

‘Tissue Paper’ Could Stop Bullets, Harness Solar Energy – “A soft “tissue paper” made from normally brittle germanium and silicon contains individual fibers as strong as bulletproof Kevlar. Woven into traditional fabric or embedded in hard plastics, the new nanowires could stop bullets, harvest solar energy or perform dozens of other tasks…”

Sex, Mating & The Male Brain – “When a man’s visual cortex spots a woman’s hourglass figure or plunging neckline, his eyes zoom in on her breasts, legs or derriere for a better look. As I explain in the “Love and Lust” chapter of The Male Brain, men have evolved to focus on certain features that indicate reproductive health. Researchers have found that the attraction to an hourglass figure — large breasts, small waist, flat stomach, and full hips — is ingrained in men across all cultures. This shape tells the male brain that a prospective mate is young, healthy and probably not pregnant by another male…”

Using computers to teach children with no teachers – “A 10-year experiment that started with Indian slum children being given access to computers has produced a new concept for education, a conference has heard…”

Soon, Google to ‘predict your desires’ – “Google may soon be able to deliver search results to its users even before they know that they want the information. Amit Singhal, one of Google’s veteran search algorithm engineers, wants to develop a search engine that second-guesses users” needs well ahead of time…”

Oakland pot-growing plan worries small bud tenders – “After weathering the fear of federal prosecution and competition from drug cartels, California’s medical marijuana growers see a new threat to their tenuous existence: the “Wal-Marting” of weed. The Oakland City Council on Tuesday will look at licensing four production plants where pot would be grown, packaged and processed into items ranging from baked goods to body oil. Winning applicants would have to pay $211,000 in annual permit fees, carry $2 million worth of liability insurance and be prepared to devote up to 8 percent of gross sales to taxes….”

Rossi debuts Gyroscopic OnBoard camera

Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Foods

Apple’s Antenna Lab – One Malevolent Female Robot Away From Being Portal

‘Sharp’ rocket set to revolutionise space travel – “German scientists unveiled on Friday the key part of a flat-sided, re-usable space rocket they say would be much cheaper and easier to build than NASA’s space shuttles…”

Five Reasons Why Green Tech Has Such a Tough Time In America – “The U.S. has long been a leader in green technologies. It has also long been a leader in fumbling that lead. Look at the historical record:…”

A California Roadtrip – “This was my attempt to find out how good the camera on the new iPhone4 really is. All the pictures and video clips are straight out of the camera and are not retouched. The video was put together on the phone using the iMovie app…”

BP, feds clash over reopening capped Gulf oil well – “BP and the Obama administration offered significantly differing views Sunday on whether the capped Gulf of Mexico oil well will have to be reopened, a contradiction that may be an effort by the oil giant to avoid blame if crude starts spewing again…” See also: Temporary cap in place — now what for the Gulf?

Apps We Wish We Had – “This week, I challenged my Twitter followers (I’m @pogue) to invent iPhone or Android apps that don’t exist but should. I’ll spare you the jokey wishful-thinking responses: “an app that puts my kids to bed at night,” “an app that gives my wife the ‘right answer,’ ” “an app that teleports me to a spot with a good cell signal.” O.K., everyone’s a comedian….”

Schneier on Security – “Last month, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., introduced a bill (text here) that might — we’re not really sure — give the president the authority to shut down all or portions of the Internet in the event of an emergency. It’s not a new idea. Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, proposed the same thing last year, and some argue that the president can already do something like this. If this or a similar bill ever passes, the details will change considerably and repeatedly. So let’s talk about the idea of an Internet kill switch in general….”

Dow May Crash to 7,500 If 10,600 Not Breached – “The crash of the Dow Jones Industrials in 1929 was signaled by the development of a well defined head and shoulder pattern, seen most clearly in its monthly chart. It is a reliable pattern that captures the behavior of investors who are becoming increasingly disillusioned about the future prospects for economic growth…”

To retire comfortably, under-40 workers need to seriously bulk up savings – “If you’re, say, under 40 — and especially if you’re under 30 — you probably have worked only at firms or agencies that offered 401(k)s or their nonprofit cousin, the 403(b). That means that when you finally do retire 25 or 35 years from now, you will be responsible for providing for your own income. No pension for you! “

The night sky on fire: 2,000 firefighters battle inferno that blazed for 15 hours in China after TWO oil pipelines explode – “Firefighters today extinguished a fire that raged for more than 15 hours after two oil pipeline exploded at a Chinese port. An explosion at a pipe transporting crude oil from a ship to a storage tank blew up yesterday evening, causing a blast at a second, nearby duct…”

Record Collapse of Earth’s Upper Atmosphere Puzzles Scientists – “An upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere recently collapsed in an unexpectedly large contraction, the sheer size of which has scientists scratching their heads, NASA announced Thursday…”

Breakthrough Achieved in Explaining Why Tectonic Plates Move the Way They Do – “A team of researchers including Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego geophysicist Dave Stegman has developed a new theory to explain the global motions of tectonic plates on the earth’s surface…”

Look Up! The Billion-Bug Highway You Can’t See – “Step outside on a clear day this summer and look up. What do you see? Blue. And maybe a plane or a bird up there, but otherwise … nothing. Or so you think. It turns out that right above you, totally invisible, is an enormous herd of animal life. There are so many creatures up there, they are so busy, so athletic, so tiny, that we had to fly up and give you a peek….”

Archaeologists Discover Tomb Of Mayan King – “A team of archaeologists led by Stephen Houston has discovered a royal tomb in Guatemala, filled with materials that have been preserved for approximately 1,600 years…”

10 Technologies That Should Be Extinct (But Aren’t) – “Got an urgent message you need to transmit immediately? Sending a telegram is likely not the first option that comes to mind. And when it’s time to boogie down, you probably don’t shove a cassette into your 8-track player or slap an LP onto your phonograph…”

As Facebook Users Die, Ghosts Reach Out – “Courtney Purvin got a shock when she visited Facebook last month. The site was suggesting that she get back in touch with an old family friend who played piano at her wedding four years ago. The friend had died in April…..”

[[[Jump to - Interesting Reading #531 – Packs of quadrocopters, Gravity mystery, India’s population, death by sitting and much more!]]]