science

From their hands and feet all the way down to their tails, the gecko is inspiring all sorts of robotics technology.

Researchers around the world are trying to mimic the adhesive qualities of their hands and feet to develop robots that can climb walls or navigate rough terrain. New studies have also shown that the gecko's tail acts as a fifth leg and helps stabilize the animal as it climbs.

News.com's Kara Tsuboi finds out that this discovery could help build more agile robots in the future. Click the image to see the video.

Space scientists and the Mars rover-loving public had quite a scare this week.

On Monday, scientists behind the solar-powered rovers Spirit and Opportunity said that they were planning to put the robots to sleep because of a NASA recommendation to trim $4 million from the program's budget. But a day later, the space agency said in a statement that neither of the robots would be shut down because of budget cuts, according to the Associated Press.

Taxpayer outcry must have been strong.

It's easy to see why: In their four years exploring the Red Planet, Spirit and Opportunity … Read more

An artificial muscle that can heal itself and recharge an iPod at the same time? Sounds ludicrous, but researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles have developed an electricity-generating muscle that might one day be to used to create walking robots or advanced prosthetics, according to Discovery News.

Qibing Pei, a scientist at UCLA and author of the research that appeared in the January edition of Advanced Materials, said his team developed a lifelike artificial muscle by using carbon nanotubes as electrodes. Unlike other artificial muscles made with metal-based films, this muscle can expand more than 200 percent … Read more

Update: The headline on this story was corrected to indicate that the research stems from nanotechnology.

Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Thursday they have developed a more efficient way to generate electricity from heat, a technology that could let product designers harness "waste" heat.

Researchers said the implications of efficient thermoelectric materials could be wide: car electronics could be partly powered by the heat captured from exhaust pipes, for example, and solar electric panels could become more productive.

The thermoelectric effect, known since the early 19th century, is when certain materials convert heat into … Read more

This post was updated at 3:52 p.m. PST with more details.

Science fiction impresario Arthur C. Clarke is dead, according to published news reports.

And as of 3 p.m. PDT Tuesday, the Wikipedia article on Clarke has also already been updated with a banner across the top that reads, "This article is about a person who has recently died."

Clarke was the author, or co-author, of dozens of fiction and non-fiction books. But he will likely always be best known for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he later turned into a landmark film … Read more

Just about every day brings new advances in using computers to customize medical treatments. How are chips and bodies interfacing to change disease treatment, repair damaged brain tissue, and even manufacture micro-specialized drugs to be released directly into the bloodstream?

Read the full story on MSNBC: "The future of biomedicine: virtual humans"

How much is that mastodon in the window? About $115,000, not including shipping.

Odd as it may sound, a Northern California couple has put a 3-million-year-old mastodon skeleton up for auction on eBay. A ranch hand on the Fiddler family's property, which is east of Mount Shasta, found a tooth from the animal in 1997, according to the eBay item listing. Roger Fiddler then had a paleontologist come out to identify the tooth, and a partial excavation revealed a nearly complete skeleton (The animal is missing its tusks).

The mastodon has taken an unusual path since then. It … Read more

You might already know what your DNA looks like, at least approximately, but what about your RNA and the enzyme that crawls along each strand, determining its precise length? Never thought about that, did you? The "Design for the Elastic Mind" exhibit at MOMA in New York did. The program is displaying a handful of new films depicting the micro-details of your innermost cell life. Designed for science classrooms, the films make use of beautifully rendered digital images, and are a mighty far cry from the "film strips" of yore.

Now you can be at least … Read more

Not content with merely mapping the 180-terabyte network of a mouse brain, researchers at Seattle's Allen Institute for Brain Science are going after bigger quarry: mapping the human brain, at least 2,000 times more complex. Their findings will shed light on the biochemistry behind gene expression and brain function.

Funded by software high-roller Paul Allen, the institute also hopes to create a 4D atlas demonstrating the growth of neural patterns over time.

Read the full story on MSNBC: "New brain map on tap"