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Take a deeper look at how Walmart plans to leverage the social data and connections of its massive customer base through its @WalmartLabs. Don’t know what to get your co-worker this Christmas? If all goes well at @WalmartLabs, Walmart may be able to suggest exactly what you and he and the neighbors and friends you both share are into.

The oil and gas business never changes! You get oil out of the ground, turn it into gas and put it in your car. Nothing ever changes, right?

Whether you have a few company cars or a fleet of several dozen trucks, you can save money on fuel by making minor changes to your operations and driving.

Do Astronauts Dream of Electric DEXTREs? Potentially evoking creepy memories of external circuit failures from the film 2001, an important circuit breaker aboard the ISS recently popped and had to be replaced. The thing is, it sits in an electronics sled outside the ISS, and would've necessitated an astronaut to perform a spacewalk to fix it--but this time the Canadian-made DEXTRE performed the task entirely by remote control, with mission controllers runnning the operation from Houston while the astronauts aboard the station slept

Here comes the next generation of innovators revolutionizing batteries. Per-Ivar Sellergren is helping Volvo put energy storage--both batteries and high-power supercapacitors--in the body panels of cars. Photo by Christian Aslund Per-Ivar Sellergren Senior Research and Development Engineer Volvo Car Corp., Goeteborg, Sweden Sellergren, 60, is helping Volvo put energy storage--both batteries and high-power supercapacitors--in the body panels of cars

The QR code is an acquired taste. But just as the tech is primed to be overtaken, America is going nuts for all things QR.

Two months after al Qaeda terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan on September 11, 2001, analytical chemist John Butler found himself working late nights in his lab, developing DNA assays to identify 911 victims from the tens of thousands of charred human remains recovered at Ground Zero. Thinking back, he still clearly remembers the sense of rising to a national need that was shared by dozens of researchers recruited to the same difficult problem.

The battle over "platforms" is as frenzied and vital as a presidential campaign. .caption {color:#666;font-size:11px;"} .caption img {padding-bottom:2px;} Illustration by I Love Dust It has become impossible to escape the smartphone wars

One of the first questions people ask about a new idea or venture is: Who is the competition? Who else is doing this? The worst rookie mistake in the world is to answer: No one

Responding to criticisms that its ratings can be meaningless and easily gamed, the USGBC is introducing new rules so buildings must continually recertify and measure their energy use against their neighbors.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Thanks to advances in experimental design, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have achieved a record-low probability of error in quantum information processing with a single quantum bit (qubit)—the first published error rate small enough to meet theoretical requirements for building viable quantum computers.

There aren't very many hydrogen cars on the road these days, but there might be soon. And when there are, it will be possible to take the dirty water from your toilet and turn it into fuel. Wastewater--the stuff that goes down the toilet when you flush--is often treated and used for everything from creating artificial snow to watering golf courses.

Three-dimensional television and the like got a major marketing push nearly two years ago from the consumer electronics and entertainment industries, yet the technology still has major limitations. Whereas glasses-free 3-D on television screens and computer monitors is seen as crucial to generating widespread interest in new consumer electronics, for the most part, viewers still need to wear glasses to experience stereoscopic 3-D images, although glasses-free TVs are starting to hit in Japan

The general public has no idea how much they pay for electricity or how to use less, undermining the central premise of smart meters and hindering their adoption. Smart power meters are, in theory, supposed to help with everything from electric vehicle adoption (low electricity rates encourage people to charge up at specific times) to bringing more renewable energy on the grid (pricing will vary based on when it is available). But smart meter implementation hinges on the idea that consumers actually understand their electricity use.

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