Scientists at the University of Manchester have developed a new type of smart textile that could make its way into adaptive clothing that keeps the wearer cool in warm weather, and vice versa. The material achieves this through the use of graphene which can be tuned to alter the … | Continue reading
Researchers at Empa and EPFL have created one of the smallest motors ever made. It’s composed of just 16 atoms, and at that tiny size it seems to function right on the boundary between classical physics and the spooky quantum realm. | Continue reading
BMW i Ventures, BMW's hybrid venture firm, announced today it is investing in Prometheus Fuels. The Silicon Valley startup is working on technologies for pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and processing it into carbon-neutral gasoline. The investment will help the company as it p … | Continue reading
Japanese Diesel engine manufacturer Yanmar has signaled its intention to bring hydrogen fuel cells to the consumer marine market, collaborating with Toyota to develop the technology and prototype it in a small boat by the end of the year. | Continue reading
Powdery mildew is a widespread fungal disease that attacks many crops. And while it typically has to be treated using fungicides, special ultraviolet light-emitting robots could soon prove to be a better way to go. | Continue reading
Researchers at the University of Bayreuth have created a form of nitrogen that’s never been seen before. Nicknamed “black nitrogen,” the new substance is crystalline, occurs in two-dimensional sheets, and could one day be useful in advanced electronics. | Continue reading
Compelling new research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is suggesting neuronal activity in the hippocampus prior to the delivery of new information can enhance subsequent memory formation. The discovery points to a kind of "encoding mode … | Continue reading
A California company says its new "turbo air-cooled" fuel cell design can deliver three times the power and four times the lifespan of a regular fuel cell, opening the door for high-speed, long-range, hydrogen-powered electric VTOL aircraft. | Continue reading
Batteries that use a sodium-ion chemistry rather than the commonplace lithium-ion could offer a number of advantages, owing to the cheap and abundant nature of the element. Scientists at Washington State University have come up with a design billed as a potential game changer in … | Continue reading
Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany are developing "microbial cyborgs" that generate usable electricity by combining Shewanella oneidensis bacteria with a nanocomposite material. | Continue reading
As readers who live in cold climates will likely already know, winter is not kind to concrete. That could be about to change, though, thanks to a polymer additive that mimics natural antifreeze. | Continue reading
Electric VTOL air taxis are one of the great emerging technologies of our time, promising to unlock the skies as traffic-free, high-speed, 3D commuting routes. Much quieter and cheaper than helicopter travel, they'll also run on zero-local-emission electric power, and many models … | Continue reading
The US Navy has successfully carried out a demonstration of a high-energy laser weapon installed in a warship. On May 16, 2020, the amphibious transport dock ship USS Portland (LPD 27) locked onto and disabled an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with its Solid-State Laser - Technolo … | Continue reading
Brain injuries can vary greatly in their severity, but assessing the extent of the damage is far from a simple undertaking. Scientists in the UK have developed a new AI algorithm that could help narrow the margin for error, with the ability to detect and categorize different type … | Continue reading
China boasts more of the world's tallest skyscrapers than any other country, but this may not be the case in the future following a new policy by the Chinese government limiting construction on new tall buildings. The policy also officially bans the construction of copycat archit … | Continue reading
A Florida team working with the US Air Force claims that it's built and tested an experimental model of a rotating detonation rocket engine, which uses spinning explosions inside a ring channel to create super-efficient thrust. | Continue reading
The best phone cameras can record slow motion with under 1,000 frames per second. Commercial rigs generally shoot with several thousand. But that all absolutely pales in comparison to the new record holder for the world’s fastest camera, boasting a mind-boggling rate of 70 trilli … | Continue reading
If you've ever piloted a drone, you'll know that utilizing a joystick-style controller takes some getting used to. MIT scientists have developed what they claim is a more intuitive control system, that reads the operator's muscle signals. | Continue reading
Lithium-ion batteries are the backbone of modern energy storage in consumer devices, but there are alternatives in the pipeline that could offer us considerable advantages moving forward. Among the candidates are lithium-sulfur batteries, which can hold many times the energy of t … | Continue reading
Psychedelic pharmaceutical company MindMed has announced the development of a novel compound designed to stop the effects of an LSD experience. The compound is claimed to function as an “off-switch” for LSD, allowing clinicians a way to make psychedelic therapy sessions safer if … | Continue reading
A growing body of evidence is forging a stronger and stronger connection between the onset of Parkinson’s disease and the gut. Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have thrown further weight behind this theory, with an … | Continue reading
The US Army is looking into the possibility of adding electric vehicle technology to its fleet of wheeled vehicles. The subject of a draft white-paper proposal by the Army Futures and Concepts Center (FCC), the hope is to simplify maintenance while reducing the logistical problem … | Continue reading
Back in 2016, the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a 20-kW wireless charger for electric vehicles with a reported 90 percent efficiency. That was for passenger EVs, and now researchers have successfully tested a system for a medium duty, plug-in h … | Continue reading
Shifts in culture and lifestyle mean that more couples are waiting until later in life before trying to conceive. But there’s often a feeling of racing against the clock, as the quality and number of eggs declines in women as they approach middle age. Now, researchers at the Univ … | Continue reading
British engineers are developing a modern version of the Negative Pressure Ventilator (NPV), more popularly known as the "iron lung," to provide COVID-19 patients under the care of the NHS with a simple, inexpensive alternative to ventilators. | Continue reading
Auto manufacturers are moving ever closer to building electric vehicles robust enough to quell the public's range anxiety once and for all, but they're mostly doing so by equipping those vehicles with large, energy-dense lithium-ion battery packs. China's BYD is approaching EV ba … | Continue reading
Generally, X-rays are used to examine bones, while MRI and ultrasound are used to look at softer tissues. But an emerging method is adapting X-ray to image soft tissue, so that its higher resolution can reveal tumors or other problems earlier than other techniques. And now, resea … | Continue reading
NASA has released three concept art images showing its X-57 Maxwell all-electric X-plane in its final configuration. The first manned X-plane from NASA in two decades, the X-57 is shown in its Modification iV (Mod IV) form, which includes a high-aspect-ratio wing and 5-ft (1.5-m) … | Continue reading
If you see a drone fly by in the future, it could be looking for evidence of COVID-19. The University of South Australia (UniSA) and Canada-based drone technology specialist Draganfly Inc have teamed up to develop a "pandemic drone" platform that uses special sensors and computer … | Continue reading
As impressive as computers are becoming, they still pale in comparison to nature’s version – the brain. As such scientists have started designing computer chips that work in a similar way to the brain, using artificial neurons and synapses. Now Intel has unveiled its most powerfu … | Continue reading
The Standard Model of particle physics does a decent enough job of explaining the universe, but it still has some holes in it. Now, a new study outlines how one hypothetical particle, the axion, may be the answer to three separate, massive mysteries of the universe – including wh … | Continue reading
Hybrid "power capacitors" that can store as much energy as lithium batteries, but with much higher charge/discharge rates, a huge range of safe operating temperatures, super-long lifespans and no risk of explosion are already in production, says a small Belgian company that's bee … | Continue reading
Research that investigates the mechanisms behind diamond formation, and uncovers new ways to produce synthetic forms of the unique stone, could mean big things, and not just for the coffers of jewelers around the world. A new type of artificial diamond developed by scientists at … | Continue reading
Although so-called superglues can be quite useful, they're typically made from harsh chemicals, plus it's very difficult to "unstick" them once they've set. Now, however, scientists have created a plant-based superglue that can easily be removed when needed. | Continue reading
A highly precise form of reconstructive surgery, known as supermicrosurgery, seeks to connect ultra-thin blood and lymph vessels as a way of restoring them to healthy function. This requires a high level of expertise on part of the surgeons, but they may soon have a new robotic t … | Continue reading
Production of the cement used in concrete is a huge source of CO2 emissions, so the more that we can recycle existing concrete, the better. That's where a new study comes in, which indicates that discarded concrete becomes even stronger than it was before, when wood waste is adde … | Continue reading
A couple of years ago, we heard about a robotic device that was designed to draw blood samples. And while it had only been tested on artificial arms at the time, it's now been successfully trialed on real live humans. | Continue reading
"We are sidestepping all of the scientific challenges that have held fusion energy back for more than half a century," says the director of an Australian company that claims its hydrogen-boron fusion technology is already working a billion times better than expected. | Continue reading
There's an incredible amount we don't understand about the workings of the human body and brain, and consciousness itself remains one of the great mysteries of science. Which is weird, because in some senses it's about the only thing we can be sure exists. It doesn't matter wheth … | Continue reading
Greenhouses and solar panels both need to be placed in areas with a lot of sunlight – so why not combine the two? Semi-transparent solar cells could potentially be built into the glass roof panels of greenhouses, capturing light at wavelengths that plants don’t use anyway. Now, r … | Continue reading
Many guitarists wanting to quickly change the pitch of their instrument without reaching for the tuner will opt for a capo. For those wanting to explore per-string tone changes, 2015's Fretlocks offered a solution. But it wasn't the only way. Tolgahan Çoğulu developed a guitar th … | Continue reading
Back in July 2018, researchers at Purdue University created the world’s fastest-spinning object, which whipped around at 60 billion rpm – and now that seems like the teacup ride at Disneyland. The same team has now broken its own record using the same technique, creating a new na … | Continue reading
NASA and Boeing have released the preliminary results of their inquiry into the malfunctions that forced the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft to return to Earth early during its first Orbital Flight Test (OFT). The joint investigation team found that two software glitches were so sev … | Continue reading
Particle accelerators could be incredibly useful for medicine – if they weren’t so huge. The SLAC accelerator, for example, is almost 2 mi (3.2 km) long, while CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) runs for a stunning 16.7 mi (27 km). Now, scientists at Stanford have managed to shri … | Continue reading
Although snake venom generally has a pretty nasty effect on people, it's also used in the production of life-saving antivenoms, along with various other medications. It could soon be much easier to acquire, as scientists have grown mini venom-producing glands in the lab. | Continue reading
In what seems like a paradox, researchers at ETH Zürich have developed a robotic manipulator that can pick up and manipulate small objects without actually touching them. Using ultrasonic waves, the new manipulator created by ETH Pioneer Fellow Marcel Schuck could be used for han … | Continue reading
A new molecule developed by Ohio State University scientists can harvest energy from the entire visible spectrum of light, bringing in up to 50 percent more solar energy than current solar cells, and can also catalyze that energy into hydrogen. | Continue reading
Lockheed Martin has been awarded US$31.9 million by DARPA for further development of a ground-launched, mobile, hypersonic missile system. The contract will allow the defense company to begin the Operational Fires (OpFires) Phase 3 Weapon System Integration program for the boost- … | Continue reading