Charlie Riedel / AP file |
Click for video: Smarter grids can save money and the environment. Click on the image above to watch a video from NBC's TODAY show.
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Utilities and energy companies are flocking to roll out pilot projects for a smarter electric grid, taking advantage of billions of dollars in federal stimulus money. The idea is to deliver energy more efficiently and cut back on fossil-fuel use.
Great idea ... but just how smart should a power grid get? That's a question raised when you pair the reports about potential electric-grid investments with reports about potential electric-grid intrusions.
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NASA / ESA / STScI / AURA |
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Galaxies swirl in this 19th-birthday picture from Hubble. Click on the image for bigger versions.
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Earth Day is a great day to celebrate our planet, reflect on new ways to protect it - and widen your planetary perspective as well.
To mark the occasion, you can download the latest goodies from the Hubble Space Telescope, send out personalized postcards of our home planet and catch one of the season's best sky shows.
It turns out that the 40th annual observance of Earth Day on April 22 is just one reason to celebrate: Wednesday also marks the peak of the spring season's best-known meteor shower, the Lyrids. Then, on Friday, Hubble officially turns 19 years old - and that's why so many treats from outer space are being made available this week.
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UW-Madison |
Click for video: University of Wisconsin researcher Adam Wilson composes
a Twitter message using a system that reads his brain waves. Click on the
image to watch a video explaining how the message was sent.
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"GO BADGERS" isn't an unusual message to get from the University of Wisconsin at Madison - particularly when it's a status update from Twitter, the texting service that limits users to 140 characters at a time.
The unusual thing about this message is how it got to Twitter in the first place: via brain waves.
University of Wisconsin doctoral student Adam Wilson's cheer for the hometown team is among the first direct brain-to-Twitter messages ever sent - and it points the way to better communication systems for paralyzed patients who have to cope with the conditions faced by physicist Stephen Hawking and the late Jean-Dominique Bauby, author of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."
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Where can you find Stephen Colbert, President Obama, Cleopatra and Leonardo da Vinci all in one place? The Technology & Science section here at msnbc.com, of course. All these celebrities, past and present, were in the news over the past week.
The big question is, why were they in the news? Let's make that 10 big questions. Today, we're rolling out the celebrity edition of msnbc.com's Science and Space Quiz - or the Sci-Q test for short.
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Shawn Allen / NADS / Univ. of Iowa |
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Meiji Zhang tries to use a cell phone in a driving simulator that's designed to work
like a Chevy Malibu. The University of Iowa's National Advanced Driving Simulator
helps researchers safely study a wide variety of driving situations.
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Using gadgets while you're driving can be a very bad thing, but an expert on automotive distractions says using a gadget that watches you while you're driving can be a very good thing.
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