Science

SAN FRANCISCO--Whether you're an adult looking for a cool place to have your kid's birthday party, or a kid wanting to get your hands messy with science, the Exploratorium has been a favorite for all ages since it first opened its doors more than 40 years ago. But it eventually faced a problem: space.

Originally located at the Palace of Fine Arts, the only building left standing in its original location from San Francisco's 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the Exploratorium had outgrown the Beaux Arts house and began planning to move. Now completed, the Exploratorium will reopen to the public on April 17.

Its new space straddles the city and the bay at Pier 15, an overhauled warehouse located near the heart of downtown San Francisco. The hands-on science museum, founded by J. Robert Oppenheimer's physicist brother Frank in 1969, is using its new location to drive its popular mix of art and science into the 21st century. And it's huge. … Read more

At first glance, it's a black dress festooned with colorful embroidery. But Nikki Day had much more than style in mind when threading the intricate pattern into the garment's left side.

The British fashion design and knitwear student researched the morphology of various classes of cortical neurons and then embroidered images to reflect the theory of schizophrenia as a disease of aberrant brain circuit connectivity.

"The dress is tight and slightly restricts movement to reflect the effect these brain cell malfunctions can have in limiting people with the disease in everyday life," she says. "The intricate needlework draws you in and before you know it you are discussing how the cortical neural circuits are formed." … Read more

To date, my method for banishing the dreaded earworm is to sing a song I actually like in an attempt to "trump" whatever piece of pop fluff is driving me batty. Apparently scientists at Western Washington University, led by psychology professor Ira Hyman, have discovered a much better way.

The trick, it seems, is to solve puzzles -- sudoku, for example. But by far the most effective puzzle was five-letter anagrams. … Read more

Hewlett-Packard has been hard at work creating glasses-free 3D technology for mobile devices. That's right, no silly glasses.

Publishing their findings in the science journal Nature today, HP researchers say that this type of technology could transform data visualization, medical training, and entertainment.

The effect is "much like you'd see in the movie `Star Wars' with the hologram of Princess Leia," lead author of the paper David Fattal told the Associated Press today.

Creating 3D for mobile devices is far different than for movies, however. According to Nature, this technology would look like a hologram but … Read more

A year after discovering rockets from the Apollo 11 moon mission on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, Bezos Expeditions has recovered "many prime pieces" of the engines, Jeff Bezos blogged today.

Amazon's billionaire founder and chief executive wrote that the crew of the ship Seabed Worker spent three weeks at sea, working almost three miles below the surface to pull up the various piece of the engines.

"We've seen an underwater wonderland -- an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves … Read more

Two cryptography scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have won the 2012 Turing Award for pioneering ways to make online transactions secure, the Association for Computing Machinery announced today.

Scientists Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali were recognized for laying the "foundations of modern theoretical cryptography," which lead to the development of technology that is now standard in security, like encryption and digital signatures, according to ACM.

The prestigious award, named after British mathematician Alan M. Turing, comes with a $250,000 cash prize provided by Intel and Google. Turing is known as a pioneer of modern computing … Read more

To observers of the papal conclave, one part of the process will probably stand out as the most visible and exciting. Today, all 115 cardinals will isolate themselves from the rest of the world, their only contact with the outside world being smoke signals.

What the fumes indicate is simple: black smoke means there has been no decision on a new pontiff. But if the "fumata bianca," or white smoke, flows out of the chimney, then the world knows there is a new Bishop of Rome. The color has to be just right, or millions of onlookers will be fooled.

But just how does the smoke get its color? … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas -- SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk wowed a capacity SXSW crowd here today with the first public showing of a video of a rocket capable of blasting off and then returning safely and gently to the ground. And he later added he hopes to one day travel (perhaps one-way) to Mars.

The video of the company's Grasshopper rocket, filmed just about a day-and-a-half ago, demonstrates one of SpaceX's key propositions: That it can develop reusable rockets at a fraction of the cost of a traditional NASA mission, and that it can bring them back down … Read more

The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a resolution to create an academic competition that would encourage students to build mobile and computer apps. The Academic Competition Resolution of 2013 is a bi-partisan effort led by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), who represents much of Silicon Valley.

The competition, according to the resolution, "will evolve over time and will challenge students in specialized areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) to ensure maximum participation." The resolution states: "Because of the importance of computer science it would be appropriate to initially challenge students … Read more