Stories by Larry Greenemeier

Going with the Flow: Using Tech to Manage and Protect Dwindling Water Supplies

IBM touts new technology to help water utilities deliver a purer product

Berners-Lee returns to CERN to reminisce on the Web's past and focus on its future

Computer scientists, engineers and journalists converged on the CERN particle physics lab in the suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland, today to pay homage to a piece of paper—several pieces of paper, actually—that together form Tim Berners-Lee's March 1989 proposal that would come to be the blueprint for the World Wide Web...

Remembering the Day the World Wide Web Was Born

What drove Tim Berners-Lee to imagine this game-changing model for information sharing, and will its openness be its undoing?

I-slate: Electronic chalkboards being developed for students in developing nations

In many rural areas of India, schoolchildren use chalk to write on handheld, erasable black slate tablets roughly the size of a piece of paper, because their teachers lack the funding or electrical infrastructure for anything more sophisticated...

Computers have a lot to learn from the human brain, engineers say

The year that the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) first formed (as the American Institute of Electrical Engineers or AIEE), Chester Arthur was in the White House, the Oxford English Dictionary published its first edition, and construction began on the Statue of Liberty on what was then known as Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor...

Canadian gov hands over millions for 16 renewable energy projects

It looks like the U.S. isn't the only North American country planning to pump tens of millions of dollars into developing renewable forms of energy. The Canadian government has announced it will spend $41 million ($53 million Canadian) on 16 projects that promise to deliver new forms of clean energy or to help citizens reduce existing energy use...

Legislation pushes Obama's vision of "green" power lines

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–Nev.) yesterday introduced legislation that would give the feds the authority to build so-called "green" power lines to carry renewable energy, such as solar, wind and geothermal, from remote sources to the nation's electric grid...

Roman Catholic bishops to faithful: Give up cell phone and Internet during Lent

Concerned that Christians are not entering the Lenten season (which began last week on Ash Wednesday) with the proper spirit, some clergy are calling on their flock to nix text messaging for the next six Fridays leading up to Easter on April 12...

"Bionic" eye restores vision after three decades of darkness

When vision fails, it's often the result of damage to the eye caused by an injury or degenerative disease. In an attempt to restore such vision loss, researchers for more than a decade have been working to develop an optical prosthetic that can restore sight by delivering images directly to the brain...

Will a Bendable Laser Scalpel Make the Cut?

Flexible optical fibers would provide access to hard-to-reach areas of the body

New Koobface worm lets hackers play tricks on Facebook, MySpace members

Is there a new generation of the so-called "Koobface" worm that's been plaguing social networking sites?

Apparently so. Rik Ferguson, a researcher with computer security software maker Trend Micro, earlier this week reported on the company's Web site that he had found a new variant of Koobface, which first surfaced in December, after investigating a Facebook message he received that appeared to have come from someone on his friends list and directed him to a spoofed YouTube site...

Preying On a Tumor's Weakness with Nanotechnology to Fight Cancer

Winner of this year's $30,000 Lemelson–M.I.T. Student Prize uses gold nanoparticles to kill malignancies but spare healthy tissue

Bright Lights, Clean Water

Will Facebook let members vote on proposed changes?

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has invited members of his social networking Web site to review and comment on a proposed statement of rights and responsibilities (which will replace the original terms of use) as well as its governing principles (which define members' rights)...

Microsoft Vista voted tech world's top "Fiasco"

It's official, Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system gets the prize for being the most overhyped, underperforming information and communication technology (ICT) project.

Security software that gives laptop thieves an earful

It seems everyday a story makes the news about a stolen laptop containing loads of valuable information. Today, for example, a thief absconded with seven Dell laptops from the Maidstone Borough electoral registration office in Kent, U.K...

In today's computers, energy efficiency trumps speed

Fifty years ago this month, inventor Robert Noyce created the first planar integrated circuit made from silicon—an innovation that allowed multiple transistors to be placed on the same microprocessor and paved the way for the development of ever smaller and more powerful electronics...

Could Radar Keep Birds from Colliding with Aircraft?

US Airways Capt. Sullenberger testifies on Flight 1549's harrowing water landing as Congress mulls airline safety issues

Are laser-powered spacecraft just a shot in the dark?

Nearly a decade ago, Leik Myrabo shared with Scientific American readers his vision for the future of space travel: a "LightCraft" pushed out to the stars by a pulsed infrared laser beam from the ground or pulled into space by a laser beamed down from a solar-powered station orbiting Earth...

Outdated energy infrastructure holds back smart-grid future, report says

Despite the Obama administration's pledge of $11 billion to modernize the nation's electric grid, the implementation of so-called "smart-grid" technology that would enable energy efficiency while bringing renewable energy sources online faces a number of hurdles, including an out-dated infrastructure beset by congestion and bottlenecks that constrain the expanded use of sources such as wind, solar and geothermal power, according to a report issued Monday...