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Video: Computer-Controlled Bacteria Build a Miniature Pyramid
While so many scientists spend their time trying to create nanobots the size of bacteria, researcher at the NanoRobotics Laboratory of the École Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada, decided to simply...
View ArticleElectrical Nerve Hacking Restores Movement To Paralyzed Limbs
When Matthew Schiefer, a neural engineer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, first managed to stimulate the leg of an unconscious volunteer by wrapping an electrode around a nerve...
View ArticleDARPA Chief Testifies That US May Soon Face Critical Nerd Shortage
In last week’s testimony before Congress, Dr. Regina Dugan, director of DARPA, warned the House Armed Services Committee that the US was facing a lack of a critical resource — a lack so severe that it...
View ArticlePyroelectric Crystals Could Enable the First Truly Portable X-Ray Machine
Like many pieces of modern medical equipment, X-ray machines are as bulky and energy dependent as they are vital. Even “portable” X-ray machines remain too heavy to carry across rough terrain, and too...
View ArticleHewlett-Packard Unveils Real-World Memristor, Chip of the Future
In 1971, electrical engineering professor Leon Chua proposed a theoretical basic electronics component called a memristor. In 2008, Hewlett Packard brought the memristor out of theory and into the...
View ArticleTiny Titanium Origami Highlights New Method Of Micro-Construction
While three-dimensional printing has come a long way, engineers still struggle with fabricating objects smaller than a quarter. In those small structures, the upper layers crush and distort the weak...
View ArticleEvidence of First Virus That Infects Both Plants and Humans
From rabies to bird flu to HIV, diseases passing from animals to humans is a well-known phenomenon. But a virus jumping from plants to humans? Never. At least, that’s what doctors thought until Didier...
View ArticleVideo: A Company’s Algorithms Reveal Hidden Connections Among All That Data
Within the vast, undifferentiated torrent of data that courses through the Internet, there hides an intricate topology of information. Decision makers with millions of dollars on the line need a much...
View ArticleWhat the Defense Department Wants For Christmas
When you control a budget that exceeds a trillion dollars, you don’t have to wait until after Thanksgiving to start writing your holiday present wish list. The Department of Defense (DoD) has just...
View Article2012 Military Wishlist Features Smart Wound-Diagnosing Uniforms and...
Even though giant companies like Lockheed and General Dynamics produce the majority of U.S. military hardware, the Department of Defense still turns to small businesses for some of its more...
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Happy 40th Birthday, Internet! Five Milestones in the Ever-Evolving History...
Yes, hard to believe, but it was 40 years ago today that the first two nodes of what would become Arpanet connected, thus beginning the Internet As We Know It. In the ensuing four decades, the...
View ArticleNASA Robotic Rocket Plane To Survey Martian Surface
Since budget cuts and the inability to overcome problems like boredom and high radiation doses have ruled out any manned mission to Mars in the foreseeable future, NASA has shifted gears back towards...
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Video: Improvising Jazzbot Jams With Humans, Really Swings
Advances in robotics have lead to automatons that can do everything from ski to open doors to help the elderly. Now, thanks to the Takanishi Laboratory at Waseda University in Japan, robots have...
View ArticleFind Your Twitter Friends In Real Life With an Augmented Reality iPhone App
Like most Internet applications, Twitter connects you with people who seem to exist in a vast, abstract, cyberspace. Now, a new iPhone app from the French company Presselite uses augmented reality to...
View ArticleNew Artificial Larynx Does Away With Dreaded ‘Robot Voice’
For decades, people with vocal cord problems could only hope to communicate in the cold, robotic voice provided by a mechanical larynx. The search for a more lifelike, and individualized, voice has...
View ArticleGlowing Prairie Rodents Teach Us the Genetics Of Monogamy
Man, those scientists just love their glowing lab subjects. First came mice, and then recently the first primates got some jellyfish genes implanted into their DNA. Now, scientists at Emory University...
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Has Dark Matter Finally Been Detected On Earth?
For the past six years, the CDMS, the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector, sat deep beneath the Minnesotan countryside, watching super-cooled Germanium crystals for evidence of material...
View ArticlePaper-Thin Batteries To Juice Self-Powered OLEDs
Organig LEDs hold large promise for efficient, thin and flexible lighting elements (as well as razor-thin TVs), but low-tech power sources continue to constrain more creative uses of the lights. After...
View ArticleInsurgents Hack Predator Video Feed With $26 Software
The use of drone aircraft for surveillance and bombing has transformed how the US wages war — a fact not lost on our cunning adversaries. Rather than just sit around, waiting for the next Predator...
View ArticleFirst Nanotube Circuit Created, Paves Way For Better Chips
A computer chip using nanotube circuitry can run much faster than a regular silicon chip, for a fraction of the cost, but no one has been able to effectively string together two nanotube transistors,...
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