Science

Infographic: the periodic table of smartphones

Apple’s iPhone and other smartphones are full of rare earth minerals China is one of the biggest producers (and consumers) of these rare earth minerals, which are becoming such hot commodities that entrepreneurs and investors are thinking about mining the moon for them.

Something’s gotta give when big data meets broadband

Somewhere in the mountains of Chile scientists want to build a telescope capable of taking roughly 1,400 photos daily of the night sky consisting of 6 gigabytes of information each. But getting all that data off the mountain will require better broadband and smarter algorithms.

Straight outta Stanford, Bina wants to remake genome analysis

Bina Technologies emerged from stealth mode last week and is bringing an Apple-like business model to genomics. The company relies on its Bina Box to make genome analysis faster than ever before possible without the benefit of having a supercomputer and a research network on hand.

How federal money will spur a new breed of big data

By pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into big data research and development, the Obama administration thinks it can push the current state of the art well beyond what’s possible today, and into entirely new research areas. It’s a noble goal, but also a necessary one.

Study: Social networkers have more ethics problems at work

Employees who are super active on social networking sites have a very different idea of what is appropriate workplace behavior than other workers, and run into on-the-job ethical violations more often, according to a new study published this week by the Ethics Resource Center.

From privacy to cake pops: 5 deep insights on big data

Beyond Hadoop, there’s a lot more to think about when it comes to big data, ranging from where companies will actually find workers to how they’ll deal with an impending privacy-policy onslaught. The answers won’t be easy to come by, but they could be critical.

Why the world of scientific research needs to be disrupted

Award-winning quantum physicist Michael Nielsen says that the closed and disconnected nature of most research is holding back scientific progress in important ways, and that we need to help foster a new kind of networked “open science” if we want to make new discoveries faster.

Study: Someday our bodies could ‘talk’ to gadgets

Your body and your smartphone don’t speak the same language: one uses electrons, the other protons to send information. But scientists at the University of Washington are working on ways to help the two understand each other through a new type of transistor.

The Daily Sprout

Obama’s Science Test: Obama has responded to the group’s 14 question science exam. Clean energy research and development feature prominently in his…

Macnification

In my ongoing search to finish the process of making my Mac the only object I need to do anything at all…