This week, we’re looking at the ever-increasing digitization of memory , and indeed, today’s technologies can even access memories stored on the most closely-guarded of hard drives: our brains. In a recent study, MRIs accurately predicted what individuals were remembering. More

Hubble 3D is a pretty simple movie. It’s also one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen in my life. More

Lithium-ion batteries are already close to the 20-hour life promised back in 2007 for laptops, but Lithium-sulphur batteries being worked on at Stanford University may improve battery life by 300 per cent. More

Huzzah! Yet another discovery for us to add to our ever-expanding list of “awesome things that’ll never actually happen!” Ibrahim Abou Hamad and colleagues from Mississippi State University have reportedly devised a method of charging batteries that could hasten the process rather significantly, and better still, it could provide “an increase in battery power densities” as well. The only problem? Lithium-ion batteries have been disappointing tech users for years, and so long as Energizer and Duracell are calling the shots, we kind of doubt a lot will be done to improve the longevity of ‘em. Skepticism aside, the new method involves some fancy black magic surrounding molecular dynamics simulations, and researchers have found a way to boost charging time by “simulating the intercalation of lithium ions into the battery’s graphite anode.” We know we just went way over your heads on a Friday afternoon, but if techobabble’s your thing, all you can handle is right there in the Source link. Scientists discover method for rapid charging Li-ion batteries originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:19:00 EST

Instead of harpooning a whale for samples, wouldn’t it be easier to just collect their snot using an R/C helicopter? More

In today’s Remainders: sights! Visit Paris in your browser with a magnificent 24 gigapixel photograph; behold America, circa 1972, in the EPA’s 15,000 photograph Documerica project, and more. More

Are you real? You may seem real and solid, but you are mostly made of empty space. To demonstrate it, someone enlarged an electron to the size of one pixel , proportionally showing its distance from a equally scaled proton. More

Laser-powered carbon nanotube speakers! They’ll fit in walls and windows, and can noise-cancel ambient rackets. Or blast some music. More

Earlier this week, IBM researchers announced a discovery that could lead to plastics made from plants instead of petroleum. The new plastics will be more energy efficient, more versatile, and infinitely recyclable (until we move to our space colony). More

In yet more research funded by Bill and Melinda Gates (and Intellectual Ventures), Stanford University’s Ken Caldeira explores a mechanically simple ocean pump that could significantly diminish the power of a hurricane. More