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Still unable to resist its techno-philanthropic urges, Google has just unveiled the Web Lab at the Science Museum in London. Paid for entirely with Google juice and constructed in a basement area that was previously used for storage, the exhibition consists of five experiments that help us to "discover the power of the internet while we're on the internet." That might sound cheesy, but we've had a good play with each installation and they're actually very well thought out and accessible -- although, if you're already a hyper-connected nutcase then you might find it more appropriate for friends and family.

We won't give too much away in case it spoils your fun, but you can get a flavor from the attached promo video we saw back at Google I/O, plus our gallery and the PR after the break. In any case, it's safe to say that each experiment involves creating and sharing media in a way you've never tried before. What's more, everything you do is stored in a little personal account in the cloud that you can access using the unique "lab tag" shown in the photo above. (Incidentally, all those symbols floating around in the background represent other individuals who are also currently participating in the project -- which ought to give you some idea of the overall premise.) The exhibition opens to the public tomorrow, is free to enter and follows the same opening hours as the main museum -- although the lab's online dimension will remain active for a distinctly un-British 24-7-365.

Google Web Lab

It's fairly well known that if you want to get ripped, you gotta pump some iron. But what's more of a surprise is that lab-engineered muscle also responds to a workout. Researchers at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center Institute for Regenerative Medicine have been looking at a way to help the body grow new muscle, and found that cells derived from muscle tissue (on a bio-compatible material) responded to "exercise." The research also showed that when tissue was applied to mice with reduced back muscles, those which received the exercised flesh enjoyed significant recovery benefits over those that just received the "sedentary" cells. The scientists who conducted the study suggest that if this was done on an equivalent human scale, muscle would have recovered to 70 percent of the force of native tissue within two months -- what they consider a significant amount. So if you ever need a transplant, perhaps that Thighmaster in the loft will finally come to use.

If you're shopping for your dream wheels, but hate poring over brochures, Audi's got good news: you can now wave and touch to customize your prize ride. The experience starts at the Audi City showroom in London, where you kick off the process by choosing one of the German automaker's 36 models. Then, you can browse the vehicle on a 210-inch HD display with a Kinect to read your gestures as you swipe around to take the tour. From there, a 32-inch 3M multitouch display helps you customize your machine, even letting you use physical RFID-equipped cloth and paint samples to dial in the specs. Once your Teutonic buggy is just so, you can save everything on a USB key, print out a custom brochure and even share the enthralling details on Facebook or Twitter. The company hopes to add 20 similar stores around the world, and if you're near Picadilly Square you can try it out yourself -- just keep one hand on that non-virtual wallet.

[Image credit: Wallpaper]

NASA has already made it clear that the Curiosity's touchdown on Mars is a nerve-wracking experience, what with the seven minutes of radio silence, zero margin of error and all. To drive that point home, the organization partnered with Microsoft to offer Xbox Live players the experience of controlling the nerve-wracking descent. Starting Monday, you'll be able to download the free Mars Rover Landing, NASA's first Xbox Live game. The title uses the Kinect motion controller to simulate the many phases of landing, including dropping the heat shield and deploying the supersonic parachute, with players' movements controlling the speed and direction of the craft as it approaches the Red Planet. You'll get three scores -- one for each of the landing process -- not to mention some newfound appreciation for what employees at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be going through on August 5th.

Summer camp doesn't have to mean poorly ventilated cabins, boring activities and terrible food. In fact, put the concept in the hands of Google and Make, and there's not even a need to leave the comfort of your own home. The two have teamed up to deliver Maker Camp on Google+, a six week summer program designed to encourage kids to embrace their inner maker. The sessions will run every weekday starting July 16th. On Mondays through Thursdays a new set of instructions for the teen participants to tackle will be posted on Google+, then, in the afternoon, a counselor (often one of Make's own editors) will hold a Hangout to discuss the project and let the campers share their photos, videos and thoughts. Every Friday Make will host "field trips" via Hangouts. There's no need to register and no fee, the only requirements are that you be between the ages of 13 and 18, and have a Google+ account. Check out the videos after the break and the source links for more info.

Fire, frenemy of humanity since time immemorial. Typical extinguishing methods have involved water, chemicals and even blankets, but DARPA wanted to see if there was another, more pragmatic way. Starting with the understanding of fire actually being a cold plasma, DARPA then explored fire's electromagnetic and acoustic qualities, and discovered two potential ways to quell the flame, one using electrons, the other, sound. The electron technique creates an oscillating field that separates the fire and fuel dubbed "ionic wind," the other method creates an acoustic field that increases the air velocity (thinning the flame boundary) and causes the flames to widen and drop in temperature, dispersing the fire's energy. The concepts have been proven, but scaling these up to real world solutions is a whole different matter. Light up the videos after the break to see them in action.

Hearing that fuel cells aren't the most efficient thing in the world shouldn't take you by surprise, but a determination by one Alfred Anderson just might. The chemistry professor from Case Western Reserve University is now making a case for using something other than platinum as the "catalyst most commonly used to convert chemical energy to electricity." According to him: "Using platinum is like putting a resistor in the system." To be fair, Anderson still isn't sure which material should replace it, but he's adamant that wizards in the field should be spending their time looking for substitutes instead of tweaking platinum further. Currently, he's working with other researchers in order to find something that'll one-up what we're using today, and if you're into oodles of technobabble, you can dig into the ins and outs of his claims in the source link below.

Lightning doesn't always shoot downwards. Just occasionally, a thunderstorm will be accompanied by a red sprite: a huge, momentary electrical explosion that occurs around 50 miles high and fires thin tendrils many miles further up into the atmosphere. Sprites have been caught on camera before, but a fresh photo taken by arty astronauts on the ISS helps to show off their true scale. Captured accidentally during a timelapse recording, it reveals the bright lights of Myanmar and Malaysia down below, with a white flash of lightning inside a storm cloud and, directly above that, the six mile-wide crimson streak of the rare beast itself. Such a thing would never consent to being bottled up and examined, but somehow observers at the University of Alaska did manage to film one close-up at 1000 frames per second back in 1999 -- for now, their handiwork embedded after the break is as intimate as we can get.

In an effort to recreate the fusion reaction that occurs in start formation, the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, CA has been building up to some extremely powerful laser shots. Back in March, researchers fired off 411 terawatts, and we know that kind of power doesn't come cheap. NIF's latest test shot, fired July 5th, set a new record with 192 lasers producing more than 500 trillion watts of peak power and 1.85 MJ of ultraviolet laser light. Mind you, that's more than a thousand times more energy than the United States uses at any given moment, not to mention a hundred times more power than other lasers can fire consistently. More record-setting shots are sure to come, and in addition to enabling research on harnessing nuclear fusion, NIF's mega-lasers are helping inform the design of new laser facilities being built in China, Japan, Russia, France and the UK.

Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.

While there might not quite have been the epic science news that we had last week, that doesn't mean that there isn't plenty going on in the world of Alt. In this installment we get to see how CERN tricks out its offices, how one farmer tries to keep his flock, and learn about how the military will be high-tailing around the planet in just a few years. This is alt / week.

Yesterday, a solar flare set off from the sun, launching a coronal mass ejection (CME) heading toward Earth, and it's set to make an appearance in our fair skies this Saturday. While the wave of charged particles headed our way is much weaker than the most powerful solar flares (like the X28+ gust from 2003), it ranks in the extreme (X) class, and it's already caused a wave of UV radiation that interfered with radio signals, not to mention an uptake in solar protons swarming around Earth. According to SpaceWeather.com, the flare could cause some geomagnetic storms, which could endanger satellites and astronauts in space in addition to possibly interfering with communication signals. That (relatively minor) risk aside, those of you living up north could be in for a pretty sweet light show, so check the skies for the aurora borealis.

There are few more bizarre or successful pairings in cinema than Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman. Now, the two aren't teaming up again (at least not just yet), but the writer of Adaptation and Being John Malkovich is teaming up with stop-motion studio Starburns Industries on a new project called Anomalisa. The animators, whose past credits include Moral Orel, don't want any interference from the traditional studio system and have turned to Kickstarter to fund the film. The roughly 40 minute feature will follow a motivational speaker whose life has become "hollow and meaningless." Sounds like a right, fun romp! There's little doubt that the movie will get made -- it's more than half way to its $200,000 goal and there's still more than 50 days left to the funding period. Kaufman is hardly the first big name in Hollywood to turn to crowd-sourcing, but he's part of a growing trend of artists bucking the traditional system and sustaining themselves and their craft with direct support from fans. Check out the plea for funding after the break.

Can't unwind without the aid of open spaces? Skippy the robot might be able to help you out. The aptly named bot lets you remotely skip stones across an Idaho pond using a simple web interface. After waiting for your turn in a virtual queue, the machine lets you adjust its aim, tweak the amount of force behind the pitch and dispatch a rock. Best of all, your stone jumping exploits are automatically recorded, letting you show off your skipping prowess. Devised as a way to raise awareness for Idaho's Sun Valley resort area during the summer months, the mechanical projectile chucker seems to be arduino-powered, and operates only during daytime hours. Check out the source to start pelting pebbles, or venture past the break for two short videos of the contraption in action.

Yeah, you love your dog, but is he or she really pulling his or her weight? A new project from Adafruit brings an on-board computer to your roaming canine, tracking the distance to your and your pup's goal with a progress bar. The project is pretty simple, and Adafruit offers up most of the supplies, including the GPS and Atmega32u4 breakout boards -- though you'll have to procure your own fabric to make the big flower and some black nail polish to blot out the bright LEDs. The functionality isn't quite as advanced as, say, products from Garmin -- nor is it going to fill up your Twitter stream, but the collar does have the potential to track your mutt's walks around the neighborhood with a few tweaks.

A couple of months ago, Twitter did a big overhaul of its mobile site. When your service reaches such massive levels of popularity, there's a lot a to take into account with even the most minor of redesigns. Over on its official blog, Twitter offers up a fascinating bit of insight into what goes into such a reconfiguration -- oh, and if you've ever wondered what Twitter looks like on a Samsung Corby, this is the post for you. Check it out in the source link below.

You might pride yourself on your poker face, but there would be no way to hide from a skull-probing EEG helmet being developed by Veritas Scientific. The device takes advantage of a well-known medical response called P300, which causes your brain's voltage to drop a split-second after you put a name to a face or object. Simply by showing you a slideshow of different images, interrogators could tell whether or not you recognize a particular individual -- or maybe that LTE-connected railgun hidden in your trunk. The company is pursuing military contracts and hopes to have a prototype ready in time for this year's war game exercises, but meanwhile you might want to start thinking of a way to install that tinfoil hat inside your skull.

We'd probably all agree the Internet is the real revolution of the modern era, but today marks an older, parallel milestone that also brims with significance. On July 10th, 1962 -- back when JFK fretted over Russian missiles in Cuba and Bob Dylan sang In My Time of Dying -- NASA pelted the Telstar 1 satellite out into orbit, following a team effort by AT&T, Bell Labs and the British and French post offices. Two days later, the world's first transatlantic TV signal made its way from Maine to Brittany, via a quick stop-over in the heavens, and a new age of international communication was born. Kennedy forgot his troubles for a moment to tidy his hair and grin at France, who replied with a chirpy performance by Yves Montand. It didn't last long: Telstar 1 gave up its spherical ghost after just a few months and 400 transmissions, but by then, of course, the message had been delivered.

It's taken more than six years of development, but a new imaging system for the Palomar Observatory's 200-inch Hale Telescope finally started capturing images last month, and promises to aid significantly in the search for planets outside our solar system (otherwise known as exoplanets). With the suitably mysterious name of "Project 1640," the new instrument is the first of its kind that's able to directly spot planets orbiting distant suns -- as opposed to existing systems that use indirect detection methods to determine the orbit of exoplanets. To do that, Project 1640 effectively blots out the light from stars, which allows astronomers to more clearly observe what might be around them, including objects up to 10 million times fainter than the star itself (the image on the right above is a nearby star captured with the imaging system in place, compared to the same star captured without the new system on the left). Those curious can find more specifics on just how that's accomplished in the official announcement linked below.

For anyone raised on the retro-futurist notion of flying cars, this literal-minded, nuts-and-bolts incarnation should make for some incredulous swooning. Looking much like a 1950's interpretation of a subcompact that wandered into the wrong alleyway and wound up in a Wright Brothers-sponsored chopshop, the Taylor AEROCAR -- one of five made -- is a very real vestige of American auto engineering's past and, more importantly, it's up for grabs. At $1.25 million, this relic of a bygone era's mainly an exorbitant lure for the deep-pocketed collector, but as a rare curiosity, it's free for all to gawk. It's a hybrid in the truest sense, melding a cozy two-seater with front wheel drive, a Lycoming O-320 4-cylinder engine and a wingspan of 30 feet, all conspiring to get it off the ground at 55mph and up to a cruising speed of 100mph. Should you want to merely take it for a test spin out on the open road and not accidentally take flight, rest assured, those mighty wings can be folded out of the way with relative ease. But that's not why you'd want to part ways with a cool chunk of cash, if you're so inclined. This bit of memorabilia's a make-good for all those broken, scifi promises from once upon a TV time. This was the future -- as ridiculous as it may seem.

All right, hotshot -- sure, you can trounce your five-year-old niece in a round of Connect Four, but are you ready to do battle with a machine? Łukasz Kaiser of Paris Diderot University in France has detailed a method for teaching computers how to learn relatively simple games like Tic-Tac-Toe, Breakthrough and the aforementioned eternal vertical struggle between checker pieces, using quick videos generally under two minutes in length. "The presented algorithm requires only a few demonstrations and minimal background knowledge," Kaiser explains, in his paper Learning Games from Videos Guided by Descriptive Complexity, "and, having learned the rules, automatically derives position evaluation functions and can play the learned games competitively." Kaiser adds, having taken on the world of Tic-Tac-Toe and other relatively simple games that, "there is strong theoretical evidence that it will generalize to other problems." Now if only we can sum up the world's issues Connect Four-style, we should be covered.