Technology

The Solar Impulse, a solar-powered plane, flies over Switzerland. The makers will be journeying across the U.S. this spring, hoping the flight helps challenge assumptions about what solar technology can do.

Solar-Powered Plane Uses Its Lightness To Fly In The Dark

7:54am March 27, 2013

by Steve Henn

Creators of a solar-powered aircraft hope to fly it day and night across the U.S. with no fuel, and eventually around the world. It's a quixotic — some might call it nutty — undertaking. But the creators hope the flight helps challenge assumptions about what solar technology can do.

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Op-Ed: The Battles Ahead Over Driverless Cars

11:03am March 26, 2013

Google's driverless cars have traveled more than 300,000 miles in real world conditions without any accidents. Advances in this technology raise questions about the future of U.S. transportation industries. In the Washington Times, Joshua Jacobs, Conservative Future Project, says a fight lies ahead.

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Future Robot's FURo robot acts as a host.

Science

Four Robots That Are Learning To Serve You

6:34pm March 23, 2013

by NPR Staff

Robots are moving further from sci-fi into everyday reality. They can now assist with doing housework, giving directions and even performing surgery. They're still a few years off, but here are a few robots we may live with someday.

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Grand Central: An Engine Of Scientific Innovation

2:12pm March 22, 2013

In his book Grand Central: How A Train Station Transformed America, New York Times urban affairs correspondent Sam Roberts writes of the scientific innovations pioneered at New York City's Grand Central Terminal, such as electric commuter trains and standardized time.

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Customers at an Internet and multimedia services store in Yangon, Myanmar. The country is working to expand and improve Internet and mobile phone networks nationwide.

World News

Google's Eric Schmidt Heads To Another Isolated Asian Nation

10:55am March 22, 2013

by Jackie Northam

Schmidt, who recently traveled to North Korea, will be the first senior executive of a major U.S. tech firm to visit Myanmar since it began political and economic reforms. Myanmar plans to vastly expand its telecom infrastructure. But sanctions remain against members of the military, many of whom hold positions in the telecom sector.

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Detective Dave Wells plugs his laptop into a car's event data recorder. A large portion of new cars are equipped with the device, and the government is considering making them mandatory in all vehicles. But some say there should be an "off" option.

National

Yes, Your New Car Has A 'Black Box.' Where's The Off Switch?

6:43pm March 20, 2013

by Martin Kaste

Most newer cars have recorders that collect data at the moment of a crash and preserve key information. The data is meant to improve safety, but it's also useful in court. The federal government now wants to make the recorders mandatory on all new cars, but privacy advocates say people should have the option of turning their cars' recorders off.

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Arts

'Bowery Boys' Are Amateur But Beloved New York Historians

4:12pm March 18, 2013

by Caitlin Dickerson

For their popular podcast, two longtime friends sit down at a kitchen table and share little-known anecdotes and historical facts about New York. Its bare-bones production hasn't hurt its popularity — it's been downloaded 5 million times in the past five years.

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News Corp. Education Tablet: For The Love Of Learning?

1:32pm March 18, 2013

by David Folkenflik

The Amplify tablet is specially designed for K-12 classroom interaction. While the company touts the ability to improve teaching and learning, critics have questioned News Corp.'s motives.

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Since joining AARP's dating service, Dina Mande has gone out on a half-dozen dates

National

Seniors Flirt With AARP's Online Dating Service

7:48pm March 17, 2013

by NPR Staff

Here's the plan: Find someone, get married, grow old together. But what if you've done that, and suddenly find yourself back at square one? For those 50 and older, AARP has launched a dating site to help find that special someone.

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Improving Healthcare, One Search At A Time

1:03pm March 15, 2013

By combing through 100 million search queries on Bing, Yahoo and Google, Microsoft Research Lab co-director Eric Horvitz and his colleagues were able to discover a previously unknown interaction between two commonly prescribed drugs. Horvitz says the method might detect dangerous drug interactions earlier than the FDA's warning system.

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