To Tolkien, the machine represents a means to attain power over others. His orcs -- deformed and ugly creatures, whose hands are sometimes replaced with weapons -- embody this lust for power. LOTR Wikia

By Richard Gunderman, Indiana University-Purdue University

Don't mobile payments make more sense? US Navy

By Ethan Zuckerman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Apple’s product launches are covered with breathless enthusiasm usually reserved for royal weddings and vaccines for dread diseases.

The recent launch of the iPhone6 featured an exciting new technology - ApplePay - which, if widely adopted, will allow Apple’s discerning customers to make electronic payments from their phones in situations where they would have used credit cards or cash.

Okay, but that's not the way to extract it. fabriceh_com, CC BY-NC-SA

By Benjamin Burke, University of Hull

In the development of new drugs, taking something from nature and modifying it has been a successful tactic employed by medicinal chemists for years.

Now, with the help of nanotechnology, researchers are turning once-discarded drug candidates into usable drugs.

The death of a three-year-old child caused by drinking unpasteurized milk late last year invited much commentary about food safety and regulation. But little has been said about the man who gave his name to the process that makes dairy products, and many other foods, safe for mass production: Louis Pasteur (1822-1895).

If we want to maximize creativity, tying cash to creative output is a bad idea. tanakawho/Flickr

By Dan Hunter, Swinburne University of Technology

Imagine you were asked to write a law that encouraged creativity.

What would it look like? Whatever your answer, it’s pretty clear that it wouldn’t look like copyright.

Which is weird, right? Because copyright is supposed to be the law that spurs creativity. The problem, it turns out, is that the central features of copyright are directly opposed to the things that support creativity.