Science

Engineer Ben Kokes is a lot of things. He's an outdoor enthusiast. He's a Bronco mechanic. He's a tinkerer who builds electronic gadgets for fun. He's also in love.

I'll let him tell his story in his own words: "Once upon a time, a boy met a girl. Then a short amount of time later, the boy decided to design and build a ring for the girl, because doing things in the most complicated way possible is just what he does to show the love." To that end, Kokes made a ring. But not just any ring. It's a titanium ring with internal illumination.… Read more

"Star Trek" food replicators will always be the holy grail of space-snack technology, but we could be edging a step closer to the dream thanks to the work of mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor with Systems and Materials Research in Austin, Texas.

Systems and Materials Research recently received a $125,000 grant from NASA to make a pizza. OK, it's a little more complicated than that. Contractor already created a proof-of-concept printer that can print chocolate onto a cookie. His next goal is to print out dough and cook it while printing out sauce and toppings.… Read more

Biomedical engineers are unveiling a new type of fabric that, much like human skin, can turn excess sweat into droplets that simply fall away on their own accord.

"We intentionally did not use any fancy microfabrication techniques so it is compatible with the textile manufacturing process and very easy to scale up," said Siyuan Xing in a school news release. Xing is the lead biomedical engineering student on the project at the University of California, Davis.

An article in the journal Lab on a Chip describes the fabric's microfluidic platform. Multiple woven threads suck droplets of water … Read more

Unlike Acoustic Kitty, the U.S. military's dolphin program, active since the 1960s, has had quite a bit of success. Dolphins, you see, are capable of producing sonar, and have an aptitude for learning commands, proving to be much more useful than machines for aquatic mine detection.

"Dolphins naturally possess the most sophisticated sonar known to man," explains Braden Duryee, operations supervisor for the SSC Pacific Biosciences Division. "They can detect mines and other potentially dangerous objects on the ocean floor that are acoustically difficult targets to detect."

This time, though, two of the trained bottle-nose dolphins have discovered something much more interesting than mines off the coast of Coronado, Calif: a late 19th century Howell Automobile Torpedo, the first self-propelled torpedo in the U.S. … Read more

My high school science project looked at how row covers could help plants grow in cold weather. Not a bad idea, but not nearly as cool as high school student Eesha Khare's science project, the creation of a supercapacitor that could potentially be used to fully charge a cell phone within 20 to 30 seconds.

Khare, an 18-year-old from California, won the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award and $50,000 for her participation in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair run by the Society for Science & the Public. Think of it as the world's largest science fair. Khare took home one of the top prizes for "a tiny device that fits inside cell phone batteries, allowing them to fully charge within 20-30 seconds."… Read more

It sounds like an old black-and-white monster movie. Crazy, tech-nesting ants invade America! That would make for a great matinee, but it's oh so very real. Tawny crazy ants, known scientifically as Nylanderia fulva, are marching into territories once dominated by fire ants -- and they're not being very good neighbors.

While fire ants have made their sting notorious, tawny crazy ants have a propensity to infiltrate unwelcome places en masse. They're making fire ants look positively polite. The South American native ants are attracted to electronics in particular. Once inside, they create short circuits, says University of Texas research assistant Edward LeBrun.

"When they get electrocuted, they release an alarm pheromone," he says, adding that this attracts more ants and exacerbates the problem.… Read more

For diabetics who have to constantly manage their blood-sugar levels, insulin works. The problem is, many people with Type 1 diabetes have to prick their fingers multiple times a day to monitor their levels, and inject themselves with insulin when those levels are too high. And they don't always administer the right amount at the right time.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Children's Hospital hope to automate insulin delivery with a novel nanotech approach that involves injecting a gel that detects blood-sugar levels and secretes insulin when needed -- with a single injection doing do the trick for as many as 10 days.… Read more

Thanks to the magic of dissection, we have a pretty good idea of the changes that occur when a caterpillar spins its chrysalis and enters its metamorphosis -- the developmental stage that sees it move from the juvenile larval stage to the gorgeous adult life of a butterfly.

However, as you might have already guessed, dissection destroys the specimen, meaning that researchers are unable to follow the full development of a creature. We do know that the caterpillar will use enzymes to break down some of its proteins to reform; Scientific American called this a cocoon full of "caterpillar soup." However, scientists have performed research revealing that while some breakdown occurs, the idea of caterpillar soup is mostly wrong (but still gross).

Using micro-computed tomography, or micro-CT scanning, which uses X-ray imaging to re-create 3D cross-sections of the scanned object, Tristan Rowe and Russell Garwood from the U.K's University of Manchester and Thomas Simonsen from London's Natural History Museum have discovered exactly what happens to a painted lady butterfly inside the chrysalis. … Read more

The Kepler space observatory has been a source of great wonder since it first launched in 2009. It has turned its eyes out into the great vastness of space and seen new planetary systems and potentially life-supporting planets. The telescope's original 3.5-year mission was extended into 2016, but that may now come to a halt as serious technical issues take a toll.

Kepler is able to look out in certain directions thanks to four reaction wheels that are used to point the spacecraft. As of Wednesday, two out of four reaction wheels have failed.… Read more