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The economic viability of US nuclear reactors is worsening, says a report by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. Any additional loss of nuclear capacity, the study argues, would increase carbon dioxide emissions, making it more difficult for the US to achieve its 17% emissions reduction pledge by 2020.

This Brain-Inspired Microchip Is 9,000 Times Faster Than a Normal PC

You’re looking at Neurogrid: a slab of silicon inspired by the human brain, which is 9,000 times faster than a normal computer brain simulator and uses way less energy to boot. Developed by a team of Stanford bioengineers, it’s worth pointing out that this is hardly the first microchip to be inspired by the human…

Urban Birds Make Music With Their Bodies in “Birds on the Wires”

Prepare to be blown away by the beauty found in apparent randomness. Usually birds make music by singing; these birds did it just by sitting. Brazilian musician Jarbas Agnelli took a photo of birds sitting on electric lines and, using the birds’ positions as musical notes, turned the scene into a song. I was surprised…

A scientists puts the finishing touches to a space launcher thrust chamber at EADS Airbus Space Transportation in Ottobrunn, Germany. If it looks a lot like science fiction, that’s because… well, it is. [ESA]

Science’s Dirty Secret: All You Need to Know About Fecal Transplants

This is how far a mother will go. Your daughter has been sick for more than four years with a severe autoimmune disease that has left her colon raw with bloody ulcers. After multiple doctors and drugs have failed, you are frantic for her to get better. Then you send her disease into remission, virtually…

Harper Lee has finally okayed a digital version of To Kill a Mockingbird. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel will be available as an e-book from July 8th, to coincide with the 54th anniversary of the book’s original publication.

This International Typeface Morphs Flags Into Fonts

This typeface is truly international. The 106-character font is based on national flags from around the world, abstracting their symbols and shapes to create an incredibly inclusive set of characters. The brainchild of Luis Fabra and his team of designers, Multinational Typeface has been designed for the Singapore branch of the international advertising firm Grey.…

Yelp now shows the local businesses that let you pay with Bitcoin, if you like your payment methods risky and volatile.

Rumour: A Plastic HTC One Will Match Galaxy S5’s Specs, Undercut Price

Would you be prepared to ditch the superb HTC One M8’s aluminium unibody shell in favour of a plastic one if it meant you’d be able to keep a few more readies in your wallet? If you answered yes to that question, you may soon get a chance to follow through on it — HTC…

Now You Can Get Totally Free Voice, Texts, and Data on Your iPhone

FreedomPop’s crazy free voice, text, and data plan is awesome, but it’s just been limited to Android handsets. Now, it’s added iPhone support to its lineup. Now, you can use an iPhone and still get FreedomPop‘s typically great offering: 200 voice minutes, 500 messages and 500MB of data per month, all for free. If you…

Apple’s Updated Macbook Air: Faster Processors, $100 Cheaper

Apple has refreshed its MacBook Air lineup today, with the super-slim laptops now sporting Intel’s latest Haswell silicon to boost their speeds—and selling for $100 less. Both the 11- and 13-inch entry-level Airs now feature a 1.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, compared to the previous 1.3GHz chip. They still both come with 4GB of…

Not content with original TV, Yahoo is launching a new online channel that will feature one live music show a day for several years. Apparently you can expect “superstars playing stadiums to up-and-comers playing clubs.”

How Many Things Are There?

There aren’t enough humans on Earth to fill the Grand Canyon, and in a lifetime you don’t produce enough saliva to even fill a swimming pool. That suggests that most things around us are countable or measurable: so how many things are there? That question is posed and—kinda—answered in this video by Vsauce. First, though,…

That Moment When We All Realized Judge Dredd Was Not Going To Deliver

Jeez, Judge Dredd is actually worse than I’d remembered. Especially after watching Dredd, which does Mega-City One’s greatest lawman properly. Here’s the scene where you might think, for a second, that this is at least going to be a fun ride. And then… campmageddon!

FINALLY, Once Upon A Time Answers Some Questions

Why is everyone back in Storybrooke? Where did their memories go? Last night, Once Upon Time made big leaps forward in answering the hard questions. Unfortunately, all the answers seemed to be “because magic.” But we’ll take what we can get. First up, Sleeping Beauty and What’s-His-Face finally come clean about selling out Snow and…

What’s More Frightening Than Breaking Glass?

The sheer brittle cascade of “KEYS” by Radio Free Ul-quoma is enough to cement it in memory. It’s like glass breaking in a constant swirl of activity, over two minutes of crackling noise. A deep swell of a drone seems to arise out of the constant activity, eventually subsuming the crackle into its own lulling…

Boosting Brain Power Comes At A Price

Studies show that mild electrical currents can accelerate a number of cognitive functions, such as learning and math. But researchers now say there are mental tradeoffs to doing so. About a year ago, a research team led by Rol Cohen Kadosh showed that transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) makes people better at math. It works…

Tribute video for Breaking Bad makes me want to watch it all again

After seeing this excellent tribute video by Alexandre Gasulla of Walter White, one of the greatest characters ever created, his character’s transformation, one of the greatest stories ever created, and Breaking Bad, one of the greatest TV shows ever created, I want to watch the entire series over again. That might be one of the…

Why You Should Always Bring a Spare Rocket When Exploring the Cosmos

One extraterrestrial explorer gets more than he planned for when an accidental fall into a black hole becomes a time-shifting trip through the dimensional looking glass. Pretty sure his head always looked like a pencil eraser though.

If Jedis from Star Wars fought wizards from Harry Potter, who wins?

Star Wars vs Harry Potter. The Force vs magic. Jedis vs wizards. Light sabers vs wands. People born before 1990 vs the kids who come after. Who would win in this epic battle? In this ridiculously enjoyable video with CGI effects of two friends battling for sci-fi fantasy supremacy, we see a Jedi fight a…