Paralyzed woman can now feed herself using mind-controlled robotic arm

The most advanced brain-computer interface for operating a robotic arm has given a woman paralyzed from the waist down a new lease on life. Researchers implanted two chips into the woman’s motor cortex, the part of the brain responsible for body movements. Each chip is connected to 96 electrodes that are wired through the woman’s…

The Chinese lunar orbiter Chang’e 2 has completed a maneuver that allowed a close flyby of asteroid 4179 Toutatis, a five-kilometer (three mile) long space rock that recently had a “close” encounter with Earth. The flyby was made on December 13, 2012. According to Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency, the probe made a close approach…

China plans to build a 120 million square foot city – from scratch. The Meixi Lake Master Plan project will be built in the metropolitan area of Changsha, China and will integrate mountains, lakes, parks, and canals in its architectural design. The city will be built around a 40 hectare lake which will act as…

Is this a hoax or did the guy who hung the Christmas lights for the city of Brighton in the U.K. find a creative way to vent his frustrations with his job. In the video below, you’ll see that certain “hidden” pictures and word phrases become visible when the lights are viewed from a certain…

NASA announced today that its two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) Spacecraft, named Ebb and Flow, are running out of fuel and will be control crashed into a lunar mountain on December 17, 2012 at approximately 5:28 PM EST (Flow will crash 20 seconds after Ebb). The impact area is at latitude 75.62° N,…

Although it doesn’t use true (damaging) X-Ray technology, a microchip breakthrough from Caltech has given device developers the means to introduce T-Ray scanning in devices as small as a smartphone. T-Rays (terahertz waves) fall into a largely untapped region of the electromagnetic spectrum—between microwaves and far-infrared radiation—and can penetrate a host of materials without the…

For the 12th year, Google has updated its Zeitgeist site for the year ending 2012, looking at the most popular search trends of the year. The results are based on 1.2 trillion searches in 146 languages. And without further ado, here is Google’s top searches for 2012.

A newly discovered asteroid, 2012 XE54, and an old-timer, 4179 Toutatis, are buzzing Earth today. Asteroid 2012 XE54 was only discovered a few days ago (December 9) and passed between the Earth and Moon at a distance of 141,000 miles. In a rare event, it was also eclipsed by Earth’s shadow as it passed. The…

The U.S. Air Force is set to launch its so-called secret X-37 Orbital Test Vehicle space plane from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Tuesday for the third test flight of the prototype space craft. The Air Force’s third Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-3) mission is scheduled for lift off from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force…

DARPA funded researchers have developed a new type of expandable foam that can stop internal bleeding long enough to get the soldier off the battlefield and into surgery. The foam chemical is injected into the chest as two separate chemicals. When the chemicals come into contact with each other, they expand, molding itself around internal…