From the Beacon: What's a 5-letter word for crossword puzzle fans? Books
Did you know that crossword puzzles have been around for nearly 100 years? The first such puzzle, cr

Check out the Red Planet's craziest colors
Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: A picture from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter paints the Red Planet in shades of blue, yellow and green — but there's a method in the madness.

The need for real "rocket science" to solve Russian spaceflight setbacks
The failure of Russia's Phobos-Grunt spacecraft remains a mystery even as some Russian officials suggest a foreign power like America may have had a hand in the spacecraft's demise. James Oberg argues that some rational engineering analysis -- aka "rocket science" -- can shed light on the spacecraft's loss and dispel conspiracies.

The top 50 Android tablet apps
Whether you've got a Samsung Galaxy Tab, Amazon's Kindle Fire or another Android tablet, you'll be looking for some great apps. We've picked some of the best Apple sold 15.4m iPads in the final quarter of 2011, but there is more to the market than one manufacturer and OS. Strategy Analytics estimates that 39% of the 26.8m tablets that shipped that quarter were running Google's Android operating ...

Santa Fe Institute lecture delves into field of culturomics
To borrow from the Bard, what's in a word? When and how often a word is used in literature says a lot about culture, society and trends, claim researchers who created a computer program to analyze words and phrases in millions of books.