A screenshot of the mobile app Lift.Lift has finally gone beta.

The app, which has been in development under The Obvious Corporation’s banner, was announced nearly a year ago. The beta was released Tuesday to a small group to kick the tires.

Lift is a habit tracker. It allows you to enter tasks, such as flossing, showing up to work on time, reading and exercise into a list. Each time you accomplish a task, you get to hit a large check-marked button, reporting to everyone else who seeks to accomplish this task that you have successfully completed it. Meanwhile, meters keep track of your “momentum,” and monthly frequency for each task.

When you’ve successfully completed a task, other users can give you ”props,” similar to the Facebook like function and you can comment on certain tasks.

A soldier cuts open an opium poppy capsule at a poppy field, during eradication supervised by the Mexican Army on the outskirts of Morelia, Mexico, Thursday, March 4, 2010. (Carlos Jasso)

An international team of scientists has discovered a means of curbing addictions to morphine and heroin in mice and rats while alleviating chronic pain.

By targeting a certain type of pain-receptor cell that amplifies drug cravings the team is confident it has found a mechanism in the human immune system that will eventually lead to more effective therapies for treating addictions to opiates.

In this photo taken on Aug. 1, 2012, employees work at their desks at a Sina Weibo office in Beijing. (Alexander F. Yuan - AP)

At a time when most U.S. bank credit cards seem to be stuck in a competitive rut, Sina Weibo, China’s popular micro-blogging site, may have just created, as The Next Web reports, the world's first "social" credit card. able to link a user's online social identity with his or her financial activity.

Bill Gates, right, looks at a device that uses solar energy to treat human waste, as he tours the "Reinventing the Toliet" Fair, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2012, in Seattle. (Ted S. Warren - AP)

Bill Gates wants your ideas — ideas to improve the one thing most people probably don’t like to think about until they have to: the toilet.

The moon rises in Cairo, May 5, 2012. (AMR ABDALLAH DALSH - REUTERS)

LOS ANGELES — Imagine a machine that could build a 2,000 square foot home in under 24 hours. Imagine one that could do that on the surface of the moon?

It may seem unrealistic, but Behrokh Khoshnevis —  an engineering professor at the University of Southern California — has developed a way to do just that. With a $500,000 grant from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts division, Khoshnevis is retooling a construction system he pioneered 10 years ago that will help scientists establish permanent lunar structures.