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Japanese scientists are so hyped up on the possibilities of building a real life space elevator that in just two months' time the country is playing host to a conference designed to set a production timetable.
Carbon nanotube technology has advanced so rapidly that a material capable of withstanding the amazing forces in the space elevator cable is almost within reach: according to the chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association it'd only need to be four times stronger than the current strongest nanotube rope.

First there was 3-D, and now there is 6-D, or at least there's 6-D in a laboratory at MIT.

MIT associate professor Ramesh Raskar is explaining his work with 6-D images at this week's SIGGRAPH meeting in a presentation titled "Towards Passive 6-D Reflectance Field Displays." 

The images, which have a full 3-D appearance, also react to their surrounding environments and can produce shadows and highlights, creating an imaging phenomenon he calls "6-D."

"The [image] prototypes physically implement a reflectance field and generate different light fields depending on the incident illumination, for example, light falling through a window," Raskar states in his presentation. "We discretize the incident light field using an optical system and modulate it with a 2-D pattern, creating a flat display. It is free from electronic components."

Lately,IBM has unveiled a software technology created in its Research Labs that uses the images, sounds, and text recorded on everyday mobile devices to help people recall names, faces, conversations and other important information.

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Historic photographs, film and video available to the public.

Nasa is to make its huge collection of historic photographs, film and video available to the public for the first time.

A partnership with the non-profit Internet Archive will see 21 major Nasa imagery collections merged into a single searchable online resource. The Nasa Images website is expected to go live this week.

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U.S. scientists are developing a “Gene Wiki” with the aim of fostering a flexible, organic archive of human genetic information.

The project exists within Wikipedia, and is expected to speed up the process of deciphering genome sequences.

According to Andrew Su, whose report of the project appears this week in the scientific journal PLoS Biology, the researchers were emboldened to develop the Wiki by Wikipedia’s “Be Bold” ethos.

MEYRIN, Switzerland - MEYRIN, Switzerland - The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August.

But some critics fear that the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists' wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump?

Ridiculous, say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN -- some of whom have been working for a generation on the $5.8 billion collider, or LHC.

June 2 - It may be a Great Wonder of the World, but the Grand Canyon could not stop a determined 17-cm robot and a pair of AA batteries.

After a few returns to base camp, a carbon-plastic robot powered by Panasonic's Evolta batteries made the 530-m rope climb in under seven hours.

Dan Sloan reports.

Watch the video on Reuters.

Frighteningly enough, this isn't the first (or second) time that we've seen scientists pat themselves on the back for creating a mind-reading machine, but a dedicated team from Carnegie Mellon has just announced a computer that "has been trained to read people's minds by looking at scans of their brains as they thought about specific words." In a completely unsurprising move, gurus familiar with the development are suggesting that the breakthrough could be used to better understand how the brain organizes knowledge, and eventually, treat language disorders and learning disabilities more effectively. That's all gravy from here, but when this stuff starts passing as evidence in court, you'll know it's time to seriously investigate a relocation to Mars.