It’s stronger than steel and paper thin, but graphene isn’t living up to its promise

If the film classic The Graduate were being made today, it’s likely that, in delivering his iconic line, Walter Brooke would lean into Dustin Hoffman’s ear and offer a new career path: “graphene [...]

Why the next decade’s hot space race revolves around the moon

If China’s just-launched Chang’e 3 lunar probe (quaintly known as the Jade Rabbit) drops its robotic rover down on the Moon’s surface in mid-December as scheduled, it will be the first soft land [...]

How space travel will help broaden your vacation-home options here on Earth

Traveling from London to your second home in Zurich is no longer such a hassle thanks to the advent of suborbital space travel options, say consultants Knight Frank in a new report on property option [...]

The future of US air travel doesn’t look pretty

I had a terrible travel experience earlier this week, trying to get from New York’s LaGuardia Airport back down the east coast to my home airport in North Carolina. And I wasn’t alone. My misery w [...]

10 things that will get even weirder in the next US presidential campaign

As the US presidential campaign of 2012 comes to a close, one indisputable fact is that it has been the strangest in living memory, probably since the late 19th century. As a political junkie since ch [...]

OK Glass? Google gives an augmented peek at a transparent future

Until this week, we’ve mainly had the initial show-and-tell promo, runway shots and some random viewings of street tests to learn more about Glass, Google’s hotly anticipated augmented reality spe [...]

Gesture control: Why 2013 is the year when we stop clicking and start waving

The shot in the gesture revolution was Nintendo’s motion-sensing game controller for the Wii, followed quickly by motion capture with infrared cameras on the Xbox Kinect. Last year, nerds praised th [...]

Samsung ad fail: IT security is hardly chill, bro

Samsung USA hoped to capitalize on millions of eyeballs on last night’s Oscars by continuing a recent campaign for its growing family of Galaxy smartphones, phablets and tablets. Situated in the (ve [...]

Austerity-stricken Brits drown their sorrows in American candy

Cultural exports often take the shape of a nation’s pride, pushing high culture or value-added products to other countries’ consumers. Think high-performance cars from Germany, Danish furniture, S [...]