Record companies are tracking download and search data to predict which new songs will be hits. This has been good for business—but is it bad for music?

Researchers working on artificial intelligence at Queen Mary University of London have taught a computer to create magic tricks. The researchers gave a computer program the outline of how a magic jigsaw puzzle and a mind reading card trick work, as well the results of experiments into how humans understand magic tricks, and the system created completely new variants on those tricks which can be delivered by a magician.

From foot bacteria to fungal goo, the living things in cheese make it taste wonderful. Veronique Greenwood explores a microscopic world we rarely think about.

This guide outlines the necessity of our reputation-based leveling system, how it calculates and credits XP, and the best ways users can increase their experience levels.

It’s just after dawn at the Dogfish Head brewpub in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where the ambition for the morning is to resurrect an Egyptian ale whose recipe dates back thousands of years. By analyzing ancient pottery, Patrick McGovern is resurrecting the libations that fueled civilization

In 2006, a prominent Israeli psychiatrist named Dr. Nathaniel Laor received a telephone call from American real-estate mogul and philanthropist Leon Charney. Laor, a professor at both Tel Aviv University and at Yale’s Child Study Center, was told that a friend of Charney’s knew a man who had come into possession of a remarkable trove of papers. Would he care to look them over and assess their historical value?

When Josh was 10 years old, he sat cross-legged on the floor in his parent’s neat, suburban home in Australia, enraptured. It was May 1996 and Andy Thomas had just stepped out of the space shuttle Endeavour and onto the tarmac of Runway 33 of the Kennedy Space Center. In his flight suit, bright orange against the blue of the sky, he talked in his clipped and measured British-sounding tones about seeing his hometown of Adelaide from the God-like vantage of space. These TV images would stick...

IBM announced that the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded IBM contracts valued at $325 million to develop and deliver “the world’s most advanced ‘data-centric’ supercomputing systems” at Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories to advance innovation and discovery in science, engineering and national security.” The world is generating more than 2.5 billion gigabytes of “big data” every day, according to IBM’s 2013 annual report, requiring entirely new approaches...

Chinese archeologists say they have discovered another important site of human activity dating back 300,000 to 500,000 years, roughly contemporary with Peking Man.

If you don't think about what kind of box your spaghetti comes in, you should think again. The imaginative power of designers who have invested their talent in the field of brand packaging spans continents and cuisines. Even better, they're committing to a cause we can all support: eating food that looks pretty.

Any serious Bitcoin user will preach the benefits of cold storage: keeping the bulk of your bitcoins offline somewhere, like on an encrypted USB stick, or even printed on a piece of paper. The idea is that by keeping that data offline, it’s far less susceptible to being hacked.

Exercise has innumerable health benefits, but losing weight may not be among them. A provocative new study shows that a substantial number of people who take up an exercise regimen wind up heavier afterward than they were at the start, with the weight gain due mostly to extra fat, not muscle. But the study also finds, for the first time, that one simple strategy may improve people’s odds of actually dropping pounds with exercise.

Even when it's challenged, our brain is probably only processing around 50 tasks at once - but those tasks are a lot more complex than we first imagined, researchers have discovered. The findings could help scientists one day build computer chips...

Spotted these Japanese animated flipbooks at a convention. They let me film some in action.

I have invested in Bitcoin because I believe in its potential, the capacity it has to transform global payments is very exciting.It has been obvious to us all for quite some time that people aren’t satisfied with the business as usual approach adopted by the major payment networks.

Tweet With its batteries depleted and not enough sunlight available to recharge, Philae has fallen into 'idle mode' for a potentially long silence. In this mode, all instruments and most systems on board are shut down.

The A.M.Turing Award is often called the Nobel prize of computer science. Now, thanks to Google‘s largesse, it will be a Nobel-level prize financially: $1 million. The quadrupling of the prize money, announced on Thursday by the Association for Computing Machinery, the professional organization that administers the award, is intended to elevate the prominence and recognition of computer science. The move can be seen as another sign of the boom times in technology.

I always wanted to control a computer with my mind, and this week I got to do just that. I was at the Wadsworth Center in Albany, where brain injury researcher Jonathan Wolpaw is developing a computer-brain interface system that allows people who are paralysed communicate with their loved ones through a computer screen.

The short film tells the story of one of the most important space exploration endeavours of this decade. Just as Gillen’s enigmatic Master encourages Franciosi’s Apprentice to seek out the key to life amidst a rugged alien landscape, ESA has been on a decade-long ambitious journey of its own, to unlock the mysteries of a comet and the origins of our Solar System with its Rosetta spacecraft, hundreds of millions of kilometres from Earth.

Scientists used to think that things were pretty chill over in the south hemisphere of Uranus. In fact, they thought it was one of the calmest regions of any of the gas giants. But in analyzing images taken nearly three decades ago by NASA's Voyager-2 spacecraft, researchers think they've found a kerfuffle of activity — which might indicate that there's something unusual about the planet's interior.

Researchers have gained fresh insights into how 'local' body clocks control waking and sleeping.

The problem is especially bad in the South.

Illicit fishing goes on every day at an industrial scale. But large commercial fishers are about to get a new set of overseers: conservationists—and soon the general public—armed with space-based reconnaissance of the global fleet. Crews on big fishing boats deploy an impressive arsenal of technology—from advanced sonars to GPS navigation and mapping systems...

Roses are beautiful flowers, That come in bright colours and look great in any garden, Roses love coffee dregs from coffee machines, These roses are from my and our neighbours garden, most are floribundas, the fourth one is a rock rose, same Rosa family but different species

In 1991, the multinational Old Mutual investment group approached the Zimbabwean architect Mick Pearce with an audacious assignment. The group wished to construct a retail and office complex called the Eastgate Centre in Zimbabwe’s capital city of Harare that, at 55,000 square meters, would be the country’s largest commercial building. What Old Mutual didn’t wish to do was pay the high cost of air-conditioning such a massive space.

When he was arrested at his Chicago home in 2012 for hacking the website of security think tank Stratfor, the dreadlocked Jeremy Hammond was the FBI's most wanted cybercriminal. Authorities tracked him down with the help of top LulzSec member Hector Xavier Monsegur. But it has never been known how they managed to search his encrypted computer, the lid of which the hacker was able to close as agents armed with assault rifles were raiding his home.

It would appear that there are two ways in which developers launch games with major online components these days. The sort that crash on launch day without much of a word beyond a “we hear you,” and the sort that come with a more elaborate mea culpa. The sort that actually work seem to be too few and far between...

Kim Dotcom is looking for a new legal team in New Zealand after a high-profile lawfirm withdrew its services. However, what's especially unusual is that Simpson Grierson has not only pulled out, but is also removing all references to Dotcom and Mega from its corporate site.

Japanese technology giant Toshiba has unveiled a huge factory farm where it is growing various types of lettuce leaves without sunlight or soil for sale in its new healthcare business. Located in disused 21,000-square foot electronics factory in Yokosuka, Toshiba claims to have created a perfect ‘germ free’ environment where it will grow three million bags of lettuce a year.