Artificial photosynthesis has yet to be cracked, but electrical engineers in the US think that synthetic leaves could be used to generate electricity in a different way – by sweating. Natural leaves constantly lose water through evaporation in a process called transpiration, which draws water from the roots to the very top of even the tallest trees.

Forget huge, expensive rockets. A plan being examined by a US government panel would allow smaller, cheaper rockets to fly to the moon and beyond by stopping off at an "orbiting gas station". With conventional rockets, many tonnes of fuel are needed on such missions for each tonne of payload. Sending astronauts or the heftiest robotic probes to these distant destinations therefore requires huge launchers.

The traditional barcode lines have always graced the rear of our canned food and other products that used them to identify various product details. However, they seem to be facing extinction in coming days, thanks to a new standard called Bocodes. These are way smaller than traditional barcodes (0.1 inches) and kind of look good too. Dr Mohan, from the MIT Media Lab Camera Culture group said, "It is either bright or dark depending on how we want to encode the information". It?s said that these will be easy to scan using a simple cellphone camera as well. It?s up to us to see how effective it can be against the legacy barcodes. Unlike the old ones which could be read from a maximum distance of one foot, these can be read over a distance of 60 feet as well (in some cases). [BBC]

New laser propulsion experiments are throwing light on how to build future hypersonic aircraft and beam spacecraft into Earth orbit. Indeed, a "Lightcraft revolution" could replace today's commercial jet travel. Passengers would be whisked from one side of the planet to the other in less than an hour – just enough time to get those impenetrable bags of peanuts open. Furthermore, beamed energy propulsion can make flight to orbit easy, instead of tenuous and dangerous.

In what just might be the craziest stunt performed for entertainment's sake, producers of upcoming B-grade action flick Kerosene Cowboys paid the co-pilot was paid to eject from the fighter at mach 2.

A student is combining engineering and nature to design a more affordable and more sustainable lighting source for those living without electricity.

Returning to their ranch-style house in Sacramento after a long summer workday, Jon and Kim Waldrep were routinely met by a wall of heat. He or his wife would race to the thermostat and turn on the air-conditioning as their four small children, just picked up from day care, awaited relief. All that changed last month. "Now we come home on days when it's over 100 degrees outside, and the house is at 80 degrees," Mr. Waldrep said.

Scientists studying the fluid dynamics of jellyfish motion conclude that the collective force of swimming animals in the ocean could have the same scale of influence as the tides when it comes to moving large quantities of water.

After four years of debate, an international team of scientists from 25 institutions has agreed to a good-but not great-standard plant DNA bar code. This metaphorical bar code-a short sequence of DNA unique to every species-could pave the way for a handheld plant "scanner" that could be used to quickly identify species intercepted from illegal logging operations or to identify potentially toxic plants in an emergency situation. It will also make the day-to-day work of identifying and studying new species a whole lot easier.

Since Holland is mostly under sea level, keeping houses from flooding is a constant problem. This concept fixes that problem by just having an apartment complex that floats. The Citadel is the residential part of the "New Water" complex, which tries to embrace Holland's waterworld-ness instead of fighting it. It'll have a floating road to the mainland as well as plenty of boat docks for its 60 units. Apparently it'll also be 25% more energy-efficient than an equivalent complex on land by using the surrounding water for cooling. It looks kind of crazy, but the sort of crazy that could actually work.