New World Of Revolution

With a computer game application to promote nuclear science, a secondary school team from Malaysia won the international student competition, whose winners were announced at the IAEA’s Third International Conference on Human Resource Development for Nuclear Power Programmes in Gyeongju, South Korea, today.

Scientists have their eyes on a new breakthrough in laser technology. It involves cow eyeballs. Credit: Shutterstock Ordinary contact lenses just moved one step closer to letting you shoot lasers from your eyes. Scientists recently developed the first pliable, ultrathin "membrane laser" that can be fixed to curved or delicate objects. After being charged with blue light, the membrane emits lasers; researchers tested the material by placing it on contact lenses that they then mounted on cow eyeballs, according to a new study.

Humanoid robot Atlas is on the move. Credit: Boston Dynamics You can run from Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot Atlas, but it wouldn't do you any good — the robot can run after you. In  a video  shared to YouTube yesterday (May 10) by the robot maker, the uncannily human-like Atlas demonstrates running ability that is eerily reminiscent of a person's. The robot jogs methodically across an expanse of grass, against a backdrop of trees punctuated by a few isolated buildings.

Scientists melt radioactive waste into glass at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in southeastern Washington. Credit: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Dangerous radioactive waste has been trapped inside solid glass in a first-of-its-kind demonstration, according to a statement from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in southeastern Washington. In the demonstration, scientists at PNNL, a part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), mixed low-activity radioactive waste — that is, waste with very small concentrations of radioactivity — with liquid glass, then let it harden into a durable, solid material. This so-called vitrification process immobilized the radioactive and chemical materials within the glass, the PNNL said.

Credit: Shutterstock A lot can happen in a second; you could meet a stranger, snap your fingers, fall in love, fall asleep, sneeze. But what is a second, really — and is it as precise as we think it is? Right now, the most-precise clocks used to tell global time have an error of about 1 second every 300 million years — so a clock that started ticking in the time of the dinosaurs wouldn't be off by even a second today. But scientists think we can do better. [The 18 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics]

The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider is one of the machine's two big all-purpose detectors. Credit: CERN A few years from now, if a crew of physicists gets its way, a squat building will rise above the border between France and Switzerland. This warehouse-size annex will join a scientific facility so large it crosses national borders. And, if the researchers proposing the construction are correct, it just might find the missing pieces of the universe.

When science-fiction worlds introduce robots that look and behave like people, sooner or later those worlds' inhabitants confront the question of robot self-awareness. If a machine is built to truly mimic a human, its "brain" must be complex enough not only to process information as ours does, but also to achieve certain types of abstract thinking that make us human. This includes recognition of our "selves" and our place in the world, a state known as  consciousness .

One of the behaviors considered to be uniquely human is our creativity. While many animal species create visually stunning displays or constructions — think of a spider's delicate web or the colorful, intricate structures built by bowerbirds — they are typically created with a practical purpose in mind, such as snagging prey or seducing a mate.