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Jun
13 Laser is produced by a living cell. The technique starts by engineering a cell that can produce a light-emitting protein that was first obtained from glowing jellyfish. »

May
29 Cleaning Up Radioactive Mess with Blue Goo. A clever technology is helping crews in Japan contain and clean up the contamination caused by the ongoing nuclear disaster there: a blue liquid that hardens into a gel that peels off of surfaces, taking microscopic particles like radiation and other contaminants with it. »

May
27 The Art of the Animated GIF. Animated GIFs are like the jazz of the internet: they could only exist, and be created and appreciated, online. Photographer Jamie Beck and motion graphics artist Kevin Burg may have finally found a way to elevate the animated GIF to a level approaching fine art, with their "cinemagraphs" - elegant, subtly animated creations that are "something more than a photo but less than a video." »

May
27 Proof That Einstein Got It Right. Einstein's general theory of relativity predicts that massive, spinning objects like Earth should warp space and time around them, as well as drag space and time along as they rotate - as a dipper twirling in a honeypot would spin honey. Francis Everitt talks about how NASA's Gravity Probe-B experiment has just confirmed both predictions. »

May
27 USB-stick PC could sell for £15. A miniaturised computer could sell for as little as £15 when it is launched next year by veteran computer games developer David Braben. The device, produced by a new group called Raspberry Pi, is approximately the size of a USB memory stick. »

Apr
30 Ultrafast fibre optics set new speed record. Two separate research groups have just set a world record by sending more than 100 terabits of information per second through a single optical fibre. That's enough to deliver three solid months of HD video- or the contents of 250 double-sided Blu-ray discs. »

Apr
23 Dutch To Build Solar Panels Into Their Roads. The Dutch are well known for their ubiquitous bike lanes, to the point where Amsterdam is neck and neck with Copenhagen for the title of most bike-loving capital in Europe. Now, Denmark will have to come up with something big to match the latest plan from the Netherlands - the installation of solar panels in roads, starting with bike lanes. »

Apr
23 Rumor that "God Particle" Has Been Detected. A rumor is floating around the physics community that the world's largest atom smasher may have detected a long-sought subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle." »

Apr
23 Lasers May Replace Spark Plugs. The spark plug's days are numbered though thanks to a new breakthrough from some scientists that have found a way to replace the spark with a laser inside the internal combustion engine. According to researchers, the move to lasers from spark plugs will allow cleaner and more efficient vehicles and with the looming increases in mandated fuel economy, the auto industry will need all the help it can get. »

Music scene

A selection of music reviews to get inspiration on what to buy next!

Rate your music - latest reviews

universaltongue reviews Black Gives Way to Blue by Alice in Chains ª

Rated: 4.0 Stars

I have to admit, I was expecting crap & what I got instead was a friggin' great AIC album. I'm not a purist. I don't really see Staley as the driving force in AIC, so his absence doesn't really bother me here. Why judge a band by the death of its junkie singer? Cantrell, who is unquestionably the band's musical maestro, has put together a fantastic album that pays homage to yesterday and sets its sights on tomorrow and I enjoy Duvall's voice just as much as Staley's. The first half of the album just pummels, while the second half is a little less intense. Prejudices aside, this album should win over any open minded AIC fan. It did this one...

library reviews BCD by Basic Channel ª

Rated: 3.5 Stars

Unlike BCD-2, which maximized minimalism, this one minimizes maximalism, or something, I don't really know. Doesn't matter what fancy words I use, really. What matters is that I dig it a lot, yeah, but it doesn't have the consistency or the sheer violent euphoria of the second one. A lot of these tracks are reminiscent of some of Aphex's early stuff, Tha and Xtal especially.

Fantastic stuff all around, though, really; can't go wrong with Basic Channel it seems.

JasonHernandez reviews Music From the Elder by KISS ª

Rated: 3.0 Stars

Kiss's sword-and-sorcery concept album isn't quite the comedy classic I almost wish it was. It IS a flat-out embarrassment, but it's entertaining. It IS totally idiotic, but some of this nonsense is catchy. Here, Kiss step on a rake, it shoots up, and the handle nails them right in the testicles, but this is still better than Styx.

The concept? It's the story of a 70s stadium rock band trying to stay relevant in the 80s after their last LP proved as popular as a fat cheerleader. And I guess it's also about a kid fighting evil in some cloak-and-tunic Sir Lancelot Dungeons & Dragons world. (This album was made at the same time that the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game was both popular and controversial due to unstable geeks committing suicide over it.) Yeah, there's an orchestra. Yep, there's a choir on one song. Yup, there's a song that sounds sort of like "Greensleeves". Yes, there's a gatefold with liner notes that roll out the prelude to the album's storyline. And yea, verily, Paul Stanley does sing lyrics like "On a mountain high somewhere, where only heroes dare/ Stand the stallion and the mare." Consider yourself warned.

Kiss muscle in on Kansas/Supertramp/Styx/Rush territory here, but I prefer Kiss's "prog" to those bands because you can tell that Kiss don't really mean it. After this LP bombed, they went back to making headbanger music.

library reviews BCD-2 by Basic Channel ª

Rated: 4.5 Stars

This does everything I never expected electronic music to do, and that's coming from a long-time subscriber to the whole Autechre/BoC/85-92 thing. Y'know how when you listen to the best works of jazz, or rock, or hip-hop, or classical, and they not so much raise the bar as set the bar on fire and destroy any concept of improvement? That's Basic Channel. It all seems so simple, so easy, but its ten times ahead of anything else in its genre and just bursting with life and fresh excitement. See, there are all these indescribable things just let loose in there and they relentlessly push abstraction in x directions and completely deteriorate the concept melody. That's right! "Melody" as we think of it is replaced by all this stuff just movin around in the track. All this while staying completely within the parameters of 4/4, no less! This is innovation, this is artistically relevant music, friends.

I don't think my words will ever do this proper justice (plus I really don't know what I'm talking about), so just listen to this if you have even a remote interest in electronic music, alright? IT RIPPED MY HEAD CLEAN OFF and I'd do it again and again.

Batimohn reviews Cryptograms by Deerhunter ª

Rated:

A punk album that caught the flu, stuck in a hospital reflecting on its past, masturbating as its face melts off. Cry pot grams.

Basically a sequence of emotionally draining and beautiful songs/ambient sketches about disorientation, loneliness, wasted youth etc. My favourite album. Music from what feels like way back, when Deerhunter was kind of upset and people didn't know what to think when Bradford would turn up to live shows in a dress.

EDIT 9/23/09
III WAAAS
SIX
TEEEEEEEEEEEN

sometimes this whole album feels like it should be the everyday soundtrack for a generation of over nurtured introverts who would go down like a sack of shit at the slightest touch, plus it has that subdued anger that comes with being a 'good' 'kid'. I mean this all affectionately and of course its just bullshit but its my damn review alright.