Scientists at Harvard have discovered that the proper application of electricity could very well help fight fires.

At the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Washington, Cornell University and Wake Forest University scientists showed off technology that could lead to printing skin tissue.

I start this column with only one aim. I would like to try to impart my love for one of the oldest, and most impenetrable, and aesthetically unattractive, and sociopathic and schizophrenic genres of computer game to a reader who will doubtlessly hate it for all of those exact reasons. I'm talking about rogue-likes, so called because of their ancestry in a progenitor called Rogue. Let's see how I do.

Harnessing the piezoelectric effect, researchers at Cornell propose a wind-power generator that has more in common with rustling leaves than airplane rotors. Videos after the jump.

Tearing down tens of thousands of horoscopes, David McCandless seeks the heart of the Zodiac not in the stars, but in the word-clouds.

Scientists using NASA's orbital Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope find gamma rays and antimatter streaming out of thunderstorms into Earth's upper atmosphere.

An Android-powered projector-in-a-lightbulb inspires images of a world in which every gadget wants a heart�or at least a brain.

Minecraft isn't just PC gamings' trendiest new box of 8-bit building blocks. It's also a solipsist's god sim... with all of the loneliness and pathos that implies.

It's sumptuous and elegant. But what is it�a puzzle or game? A clockwork cribbage player? A static electricity generator? Answer after the jump.

In 'What Technology Wants', author and Wired founder Kevin Kelly elaborates a theory of technology that emancipates tools from the bondage of human hands. In the weeks to come, I'll be blogging my reading of Kelly's challenging and provocative work.