The problem with cancer surgery, or so we hear, is that it's difficult for surgeons to know if they've removed all of a tumor, especially in late-stage cancers when the edges get indistinct. But a new imaging technology developed at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's Center for Imaging Technology and Molecular Diagnostics in Boston is giving cutters visual cues on just where to aim their scalpels.

It’s not hard to notice when your co-worker is grouchy, your friend is exhausted, or your boss is overjoyed. Without recognizing it, we easily pick up on other people’s emotions by registering certain behavioral cues. In turn, we understand whether we need to back off, lend a helping hand, or, in the case of the boss, ask for a raise. Now comes the question: If we can do this, then why not computers? Why not robots? Indeed, by picking up on some of these same emotional traits, robots today are learning to act more naturally around their human counterparts.

Lost in drive-by country? Look for a cow. It will probably be pointing north—or south.

After analyzing satellite photos of 8,000 cows in 308 different locations, German scientists have found that the milk-makers usually confront the world in a north-south direction. This preference isn’t an indication of the cows sunning themselves, researchers say—it shows that they can sense the Earth’s magnetic field.

The Lions Gate Bridge carries some 70,000 cars almost a mile across the entrance to Vancouver’s harbor every day. In a city polishing itself up for the 2010 Winter Olympics, the bridge is prime postcard fodder.

Engineers at MIT have figured out a way to deal with virus that is better than just killing them: they're putting them to work. The researchers have developed a new technique wherein a key component of a microscopic battery is assembled by viruses, allowing for the cheap and simple construction of very small power sources.

When most people think of gold, they think of Fort Knox, or a phat set of grillz. The exceptionally nerdy -- like some people at popsci.com -- automatically recall gold's atomic number of 79. But no one suspected gold's role as nature's nanotechnological answer for purifying air, except for a team of researchers from the Queensland University of Technology.

Along with flying cars and underwater bubble cities, pills curing every ill are a staple of science fiction. But while aero-autobahns and submerged metropolises have not moved any closer to reality, medical science has advanced to the point where pills once considering miraculous may soon be a reality. Popular Science has a rundown of the top future pills that may one day change your life. Launch it here.

In London, Ontario, a team from the University of Western Ontario is bringing a fairy tale to life at the Insurance Research Lab for Better Homes. They don't have a wolf, but in their "Three Little Pigs" project they are literally trying to blow the roof off, subjecting full-scale houses to pressures that simulate wind forces matching those of a Category 5 hurricane: 200 mph. Researchers are looking to find the sources of structural weakness in house construction in order to improve building design in the future.

The existence of a race of sentient alien robots might be not just possible, but inevitable. In fact, we might be living in a "postbiological universe" right now, in which intelligent extraterrestrials somewhere have exchanged organic brains for artificial ones.

The driving factor is a pragmatic desire to improve mental capacity. Alien beings may have already reached a point in their evolution where, having exhausted the potential of their biological brains, they have taken the next logical step and opted for robotic brains equipped with artificial intelligence.

The world may finally be ready for the awesome taste of calcium.

Chemists from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia have done research that suggests mice may have a specific taste for calcium. Because mice and humans share many of the same genes, the finding suggests that humans may have the ability to taste the elemental nutrient as well.

In the eighties, scientists issued a strange warning: don’t drink grapefruit juice if you’re taking the high-blood-pressure drug felodipine. The study, led by University of Western Ontario’s David Bailey, found that the body’s levels of felodipine mushroomed after people drank the bittersweet nectar. They later identified 50 more medications that exhibited the “grapefruit juice effect,” stamped warning labels on them, and called it a day.

Primate intelligence gives me cognitive dissonance. It’s fascinating that monkeys can recognize numbers, construct tools and even follow to-do lists. But it also bruises my ego, just slightly, knowing that monkeys aren’t that different from my parents, friends or heroes. (Michael Phelps excluded. He’s the übermensch.)

Two years ago, the United States joined Britain, France, Germany and most other developed countries in providing emergency contraceptive pills (ECP) over the counter. But young women in urban areas still lack proper education about the option, according to a study in the August 2008 issue of Pediatrics.