Students' robots to race in mock Mars rover challenge

SALT LAKE CITY — What does it take to build and command a vehicle capable of exploring Mars? Ninety students from around the world are about to find out. Next week, in a remote desert in southern Utah, 10 teams from the United States, Canada, India and Poland will compete in the annual University Rover Challenge. The competition is hosted by the Mars Society, a non-profit research organizati...

Xbox? More like Xbody: Future game consoles will get under your skin

Imagine playing through a level of the popular zombie shooter "Left 4 Dead" on a system that tracks your heart rate, eye movements, even how clammy your skin is getting, all to measure just how scared you are.For 250 lucky — or extremely unlucky — test subjects, fear-based gaming was a reality, at least in an experimental program led by the game studio Valve. If the game could sense that a player

Communications satellite launched into space

The Associated PressCAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.— A new military communications satellite has been launched into space.An unmanned Delta IV rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Friday evening. The satellite was the fifth Wideband Global satcom spacecraft to be launched.The satellite, which is being sent into an orbit that follows the earth's rotation 22,000 miles above the equator, w

Mars hit by space rocks 200 times a year

By SPACE.com staffSmall space rocks are carving fresh craters into the Martian surface more often than previously thought, researchers say. A new study finds that there are more than 200 asteroid impacts on the Red Planet every year.These asteroids and comet fragments are usually no bigger than 3 to 6 feet (1 to 2 meters) across — about 10 times smaller than the meteor that exploded over Chely...

Stinky feet? Robotic pooch lets you know

'Facebook Phone' launch canceled in U.K. as Home gets facelift

Plans to launch the HTC First, aka the "Facebook phone," in the U.K. have been indefinitely delayed and pre-orders refunded, according Facebook and the carrier that was to carry the device exclusively. In the United States, after AT&T dropped the device's price, that seemed like confirmation that sales have been nowhere near what was hoped.The HTC First was announced in April; with bold colors...

'Remember Me' is a beat 'em up video game for the Facebook generation

Being perched on the precipice of a new console generation has made video game developers reflect about their own relationship with technology. Ubisoft's new open-world game "Watch_dogs" is at once exceedingly ambitious and cripplingly self-conscious, asking players to live in a world where the tech industry's wildest dreams about interconnected smart devices and augmented reality systems are as u

Celestial show won’t be back until 2015

Cold-loving bacteria offer clues for life on Mars

A microbe discovered in the Canadian high Arctic thrives at the coldest temperature known for bacterial growth.Researchers found the newly discovered bacterium, Planococcus halocryophilus OR1, in permafrost — permanently frozen ground — on Ellesmere Island. The organism thrives at 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 degrees Celsius), and holds clues to adaptations that might be necessary for life on Ma

Big earthquakes create global-scale GPS errors

By Becky Oskin, LiveScienceThirteen years of supersized earthquakes, such as Friday's magnitude-8.3 in Russia, have contaminated GPS sites around the world, a new study finds.The Global Positioning System is a network of satellites and ground stations that provide location information anywhere on Earth. Except for spots in Australia, western Europe and the eastern tip of Canada, every GPS site...

How the smartphone killed the three-day weekend

Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of summer and all it evokes: vacations, slower workweeks, casual dress codes, getting the pool ready and pulling out the outdoor furniture.It would seem an ideal time to take a break, but our ability to unplug and relax is under assault. A three-day weekend? We can barely get through three waking hours without working, new research shows. The average smartp

3-D printer going to space station in 2014

By Mike Wall, SPACE.comA 3-D printer is slated to arrive at the International Space Station next year, where it will crank out the first parts ever manufactured off planet Earth.The company Made in Space is partnering with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center on the 3-D Printing in Zero G Experiment (or 3-D Print for short), which aims to jump-start an off-planet manufacturing capability that co...

iOS 7 likely to be flat ... and black and white?

Apple has scheduled the keynote address for the annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) for June 10. On that day, we expect to hear the latest about the company's mobile and desktop operating system. It's the mobile operating system, or iOS, that has our attention in particular though, because the rumor mills are predicting some dramatic changes.According to 9to5 Mac's Mark Gurman, his sourc

Collapsed I-5 bridge gone from Google Maps — almost as quickly as it fell

On Thursday evening, a bridge along Interstate 5 in Washington State collapsed. Early on Friday, Google Maps already reflected the incident. Google's secret for such a speedy update? An army of volunteers."As soon as the local news picked up on the bridge collapse, someone used the Map Maker tool to go into Google Maps to edit it to reflect the bridge collapse," Google spokesperson Sierra Lovelace

Floating robot tries to save polluted canal in Brooklyn

Pity the Gowanus Canal. A forgotten relic of Brooklyn's industrial past, the garbage-choked waterway is now home to a putrid stew of toxic waste. Where barges once served tanneries and paper mills, all that remains today are high levels of mercury, lead, raw sewage, cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other pollutants. The Gowanus Canal achieved further notoriety in January 2...

Chill, Mom! Snapchat's self-destructing messages are about silliness, not sex

A service that lets you send images that self-destruct after 10 seconds? Why would parents freak out about that? While the initial furor over Snapchat — Young people will use this to sext! Young people don't understand that nothing digital ever truly goes away! — has died down, an increasing number of kids are using the surprisingly addictive service."We send mostly embarrassing things," Beth Hann

ITV news Twitter account hacked by Syrian Electronic Army

LONDON —British broadcaster ITV on Friday became the latest media outlet to have one of its Twitter feeds hacked by anonymous supporters of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, just days after Twitter beefed up security to prevent such attacks. Twitter said on Wednesday that it had started rolling out an optional two-step authentication program for its users to thwart hackers. The Associated Press,

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After months in space, gravity can be a real drag for returning astronauts

Three astronauts who recently spent months together aboard the International Space Station reunited on Earth on Thursday during a Google+ Hangout to talk about their experiences aboard the orbiting lab and the challenge of readapting to life with gravity."It's great to all be back together," said NASA astronaut Kevin Ford from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Ford, who returned to Earth on Mar

Microsoft's Xbox didn't violate Google patent, says ITC

WASHINGTON — Microsoft won a round in a complex patent war on Thursday when the International Trade Commission said the company's popular Xbox entertainment system did not violate a patent owned by Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility. If the ITC had found that Microsoft infringed, it could have barred the Xbox from being imported into the United States. The fight over the Xbox is related to a lar.

TV-related tweets may attract ads with new Twitter campaign

A new advertising method from Twitter will watch for tweets from you about certain TV shows and allow those shows' advertisers to target you. Of course, you can always ignore their tweets the way you ignored their commercials.The new way to target ads was described in a post on the Twitter advertising blog Thursday. It works like this: Suppose a user were watching a sitcom and tweeted about it. An

Private spaceflight study aims for the moon while NASA goes deep

By Mike WallSpace.comHuman exploration of deep space is looking more and more like a tag-team affair, with NASA jetting off to asteroids and Mars while the private sector sets up shop on the moon.While NASA has no plans to return humans to the lunar surface anytime soon, private industry is eyeing Earth's nearest neighbor intently, said Robert Bigelow, the founder and president of Bigelow Aerospa.

Private spaceflight heads to moon as NASA goes deep

By Mike WallSpace.comHuman exploration of deep space is looking more and more like a tag-team affair, with NASA jetting off to asteroids and Mars while the private sector sets up shop on the moon.While NASA has no plans to return humans to the lunar surface anytime soon, private industry is eyeing Earth's nearest neighbor intently, said Bigelow Aerospace founder and President Robert Bigelow."The .

Battle-bruised King Richard III hastily buried

By Stephanie PappasLiveScience The body of King Richard III was buried in great haste, a new study finds — perhaps because the medieval monarch's corpse had been out for three days in the summer sun.The new research is the first academic paper published on the discovery of Richard III, which was publicly announced in February 2013. A team of archaeologists from the University of Leicester found th

NASA unveils winners in space apps contest

By Clara MoskowitzSpace.comAn interplanetary weather app, a spot-the-space-station tool, and a Mars greenhouse concept are among the winners of the 2013 International Space Apps Challenge. The contest solicited mobile apps and technologies that aid space exploration and enrich life here on Earth.On Wednesday, a panel of judges from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and partners announced the

Scientists identify the mystery killer behind Ireland's potato famine

Scientists have finally figured out exactly what strain of potato blight led to the deaths of more than a million people in Ireland during the Great Famine of the mid-19th century — and it's not the usual suspect.For decades, researchers assumed that a particular strain of Phytophthora infestans, known as US-1, made the leap from the Americas to mainland Europe, and then to Ireland in the 1840s. S

Cockroaches cut sweets — thus baits — out of their diets

By Stephanie PappasLiveScienceIn the ongoing battle between humans and cockroaches, the insects have a leg up. A new study finds that roaches evolved their taste buds to make sweet insecticide baits taste bitter. As a result, the roaches avoid the baits and thrive, to the frustration of homeowners everywhere.Plenty of insects evolve resistance to pesticides; they gain the ability to break down poi