Stories

Blog

Tech Briefs writers and editors share their opinions and find the fun, interesting, and unexpected stories behind today's leading-edge inventions.

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Blog: AR/AI
The desire to understand how the brain generates and patterns behavior has driven rapid methodological innovation in tools to quantify natural animal behavior.
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Blog: Design
NeuroPair’s Fibermag treatment — which aims to help patients of Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) recover — took home the distinguished honor on Friday, November 10 in the heart of New York City.
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Blog: Medical
Robotic prosthetic ankles that are controlled by nerve impulses allow amputees to move more “naturally,” improving their stability.
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Blog: Data Acquisition
Big data and artificial intelligence are being used to model hidden patterns in nature, not just for one bird species, but for entire ecological communities across continents.
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Blog: Robotics, Automation & Control
Taking inspiration from music-streaming services, engineers have designed the simplest way for users to program their own exoskeleton assistance settings.
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Blog: Electronics & Computers
Virtual reality therapy could allow those with hoarding disorder to rehearse relinquishing possessions in a simulation of their own home, which could help them declutter in real life.
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Blog: Robotics, Automation & Control
Researchers have created smart, advanced materials that will be the building blocks for a future generation of soft medical microrobots.
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Blog: Green Design & Manufacturing
This past year’s Technology and Society articles in Tech Briefs magazine describe different ways engineers are making significant contributions to improving our lives.
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Blog: Imaging
A Salk team has created GlowTrack, a non-invasive movement tracking method that uses fluorescent dye markers to train AI.
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Blog: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Researchers have developed a shape-changing smart speaker, which uses self-deploying microphones to divide rooms into speech zones.
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Blog: Power
Researchers combined soft microactuators with high-energy-density chemical fuel to create an insect-scale quadrupedal robot that is powered by combustion.
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Blog: Robotics, Automation & Control
Researchers have demonstrated that their steerable robot can autonomously maneuver the intricacies of the lung, while avoiding important lung structures.
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Blog: Design
Researchers at University of Texas at Austin were able to pull water out of the atmosphere and make it drinkable using solar energy, in conditions as low as 104°.
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Blog: Design
A promising technology that could potentially revolutionize the process of testing bacterial viability in food.
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Blog: Electronics & Computers
The technique has enabled, for the first time, imaging the English alphabet through walls with Wi-Fi, a task once deemed too difficult.
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Blog: Connectivity
The connected factory has a lot to offer, but getting it from the minds of the designers to a working system on the shop floor is not a simple process.
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Blog: Medical
A new material uses Joule heating to decontaminate its surface of coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2 in under 5 seconds, effectively killing at least 99.9 percent of viruses.
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Blog: Energy
ORNL researchers recently developed a Li-ion battery material that not only recharges 80 percent of its capacity in 10 minutes but keeps that ability for 1,500 charging cycles.
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Blog: Design
Researchers have already experimented with using coffee grounds to 3D print jewelry, pots for plants, and even, fittingly, espresso cups. The technique is also simple enough that it will work on most low-cost, consumer-grade 3D printers.
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Blog: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Researchers say that by building a structure out of DNA and then coating it with glass, they have created a very strong material with very low density.
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Blog: Power
Zinc-air batteries have emerged as a better alternative to lithium in a recent study into the advancement of sustainable battery systems.
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Blog: Aerospace
Addressing the challenge of designing and developing a first-of-its-kind handheld controller for flight simulations.
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Blog: Materials
A new potential path toward greener ways to make chemicals: By adapting hydrogen fuel cell technologies, which are already used to power some EVs, laptops, and cell phones.
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Blog: Manufacturing & Prototyping
In the digital-design-engineering world, at the foundation of innovation in advanced manufacturing, AI’s “deep learning” has the potential to transform how the world makes products — in highly positive ways.
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Blog: Electronics & Computers
Imagine an iPad with a surface that can morph and deform, allowing you to draw 3D designs, create haiku poems that jump out from the screen, and even hold your partner’s hand from an ocean away. Such is the vision of a team from the University of Colorado Boulder.
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Blog: Motion Control
Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a robotic gripping device that is gentle, strong, dexterous, and precise enough to pick up microfilms that are 20 times thinner than a human hair.
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Blog: Electronics & Computers
These days all electronics seems to be digital, except for a few exceptions here and there. However, it’s a mistake to write analog off altogether.
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Blog: Medical
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have modified a commercial virtual reality (VR) headset, giving it the ability to measure brain activity and examine how we react to hints, stressors, and other outside forces.
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Blog: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Researchers developed a prototype for the Li-ion battery, which could lead to stretchy electronics or even clothes that monitor health.
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Webcasts

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On-Demand Webinars: Defense

From Data to Decision: How AI Enhances Warfighter Readiness

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