Libraries and other archives of physical culture have been struggling for decades to preserve diverse media — from paper to eight-track tape recordings — for future generations. Scientists are falling behind the curve in protecting digital data, threatening the ability to mine new findings from existing data or validate research analyses. Johns Hopkins University cosmologist Alex Szalay and Jim Gray of Microsoft, who was lost at sea in 2007, spent much of the past decade discussing challenges posed by data files that will soon approach the petabyte (1015 — or quadrillion — ...

Here's one solution for all of the conventional TVs that will be cast off during the imminent digital-TV transition.

Testing the toxicity of dozens of nanoparticles en masse may offer a faster track to medical applications.

Researchers with the Brookings Institution have just published a blueprint for tackling what they perceive as a brewing innovation crisis. They propose that Uncle Sam create a federal agency to focus squarely on helping home-grown companies increase their innovation, productivity and profitability.

A more efficient material that converts heat into electricity could make a new kind of solar panel possible. (p. 206)