Cutting Edge

How Steve Jurvetson got first dibs on the Tesla Model S

Steve Jurvetson says electric vehicles are undoubtedly the cars of the future. Not too surprising, given that his VC firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, was an early investor in electric vehicle company Tesla Motors. But to really get an idea of how passionate he is about EVs, you have to hear the story about how he wound up getting the keys to the new Model S -- beating out even Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Musk had been dodging Jurvetson's numerous requests to put down a deposit on the car, saying that reservations for the vehicle couldn't be taken until … Read more

Thermal imaging may help fight obesity

All fat is not equal. Brown adipose tissue, more commonly called brown fat and abundant in both newborns and hibernating mammals, is the good fat, playing a prominent role in how quickly our bodies burn calories.

Brown fat also produces as much as 300 times more heat than any other tissue in the body, according to scientists at the University of Nottingham, so these scientists have developed a thermal imaging technique to measure not only a person's brown fat stores but also how much heat that fat produces.… Read more

Space Shuttle Enterprise goes on display in New York

Several months after its high-profile fly-by of the New York City skyline, the Space Shuttle Enterprise has landed on display at a New York exhibit presented by the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. The show finally opened to the public today.

The Enterprise has found its final home on the USS Intrepid. For now, it's housed in a temporary pavilion; the museum is planning a more permanent structure in the future.

The space shuttle was unveiled as part of Samsung's SpaceFest week at the museum, which also included the "launch" of the company's newest product, the 75-inch ES9000 television.… Read more

Small Japan village goes all solar

Japan's nuclear spring didn't last long. Though the country's nuclear power plants were taken offline following the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, the government restarted a reactor earlier this month.

But that hasn't stopped a small village some 50 miles from the Oi plant from ditching conventional electricity from the grid and going solar.

Sanno in Hyogo Prefecture, population 42, has become the first municipality to rely on solar power.

Residents of the 11 households have an average age over 60, and the village, like many in rural Japan, is suffering depopulation. Costs for maintaining shared … Read more

New tech could target and treat irregular heartbeats

Researchers are reporting that they have found, for the first time, that tiny electrical spinning tops ("rotors") within the heart cause atrial fibrillation (AF), a type of arrhythmia in which the heartbeat is faster and irregular.

What's more, they found that by targeting the so-called eye of the storm, they could actually slow or even terminate the AF, the multidisciplinary team from UC San Diego, UCLA, and Indiana University reports in the July issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Today, catheter ablation is a common therapy used to treat AF, but because the … Read more

Musical glove could improve mobility after spinal cord injury

A wireless musical glove developed at Georgia Tech not only teaches users to play songs on the piano, but may also improve the sensation and mobility of the hands of people who have suffered spinal cord injuries, researchers report.

The Mobile Music Touch (MMT) device, which works alongside a computer and a keyboard, improved rehabilitation even in patients who had sustained the injury more than a year earlier -- a point at which improvements tend to be minimal at best.… Read more

Former Apple executive joins Leap Motion

Andy Miller, Apple's former VP of mobile advertising, is joining Leap Motion as the company's president and chief operating officer starting in August.

Miller will be responsible for guiding the motion-control software and hardware company's growth, including business development, growing the executive team, and leading the development of the Leap application discovery store, according to a press release.

"I've been fortunate to work with some of the most influential figures and companies in the technology industry, and I'm as excited about the Leap as I've ever been about a technology," Miller said … Read more

Soyuz docks with space station, boosts crew back to six

A Russian Soyuz fer