New Gadget 2011

Backing up the iPhone's contacts either requires you to plug the handset into your computer or purchase Apple's MobileMe service. Sure, you could sync everything with Gmail, but in our experience that hardly works perfectly.

We've seen robots that perform brain surgery and lasers that cook tumors, and now a team of researchers are well on their way to bringing mobility to the battle against brain cancer.

To us, Prague will always be the Eastern European capital of roast duck, potato dumplings and tasty, cheap pilsner.

We all know that light can't exactly pass through solid objects -- unless of course, you're using a laser or something. Yes, X-rays allow us to look into suitcases at the airport and broken bones in our bodies, but there's a new kid on the block that claims to have done the impossible in a novel fashion. Jochen Aulbach and his colleagues of the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics out in Amsterdam have developed a technology that allows scrambled light to remain focused as it passes through ultra-thin layers of paint. You see, when light is sent through opaque material, it becomes muddled and lost in the space-time continuum. Aulbach and his crew used a spatial light modulator, or SMT, to control a 64-femtosecond long laser pulse that's passed through a thin layer of paint. The SMT emits pulses that last long enough for only a machine to see and the data is sent to a computer for calibration. NewScientist claims that with this technology, it might be possible to hone in on cancerous cells and blast them to oblivion without damaging the healthy tissue surrounding them.