Kevin is a small-time tech hound, amateur photographer, and a general know-at-least-something of all things geeky hailing from New York. More by Kevin Lee
The company has teamed up with Complubot, the four-time world champions in the Robocup Junior robot soccer tournament, to create a new Arduino robotics kit.The robot’s hardware is completely open source—just like a regular Arduino board—so you can change the software controlling the robot or stack your own hardware on top of it.
Corey Tamas is a communications consultant, a father, and professional musician in Ottawa, Ontario. More by Corey Tamas
Frank Paul, University of Zurich / via NASA
Concerns over global warming and melting glaciers are nothing new, but climatologists are getting some help from NASA that could help them better study the effects of a changing climate.
A study published in the journal Science demonstrates how NASA satellites can tell us about the state of Earth's glaciers, and the startling degree to which they contribute to rising ocean levels. The research, which involved 16 international researchers and several major universities, shows that glaciers are a much bigger contributor to rising seas and a more serious threat than people generally believe.
Kevin is a small-time tech hound, amateur photographer, and a general know-at-least-something of all things geeky hailing from New York. More by Kevin Lee
NanoscribeMechWarrior 3D prints with layers that are thinner than a human hair.
As cool as it is to be able to replicate just about any object you want using a 3D printer, the things you create can still look really rough, because the printers are not high-resolution. That is, the layers of plastic it lays down are not thin enough—think of it a little like the jaggies on a low-resolution computer screen.
Nanoscribe might have the solution in the form of a tiny 3D printer that prints microscopic layers as thin as 30 nanometers (0.03 microns), whereas the best a typical 3D printer can achieve are 16,000-nanometer (16-micron) layers. But that’s not all—this printer molds objects out of photosensitive material using lasers, earning it the name Photonic Professional GT.
Cassandra Khaw is an entry-level audiophile, a street dancer, a person who writes about video games for a living, and someone who spends too much time on Twitter. More by Cassandra Khaw
Turn a corner on the Internet and chances are you'll collide with some news about the Oculus Rift. Almost everyone seems to be working on some way to capitalize on this renewed love for virtual reality. As such, it was only a matter of time before someone (or a team of someones) took it into their heads to combine virtual reality with those coin-operated arcades your parents keep telling you about.
Enter VRcade. Described as the "first Virtual Reality Arcade for the 21st century," VRcade will essentially be a big, indoor space lined with optical motion-capture cameras. It's not open yet, but the VRcade team has constructed a facility of sorts in Seattle, Washington—a prototype for the finished VRcade. It will have sections dedicated to other activities, but all of the gaming will take place in an area known as The Grid.
Jacob Siegal spends a vast majority of his time surrounded with and invested in technology and media, so he decided he may as well start writing about it. You can find more of his writing at Game Rant and his topical tweets @JacobSiegal.
The past few days have been filled with anxiety for NASA scientists. Firs,t an ammonia leak threatened the long-term stability of the International Space Station, and now the team behind the Kepler mission has reported that the space telescope might have been dealt a fatal blow after inexplicably entering safe mode at the beginning of the month.
The Kepler telescope launched in 2009 to begin the search for exoplanets similar to Earth that might be able to support life. The telescope can monitor 100,000 stars at once, all while collecting data from the planets that orbit those stars.
Arduino
Frank Paul, University of Zurich / via NASA
Nanoscribe
NASA