For the first time, an MIT team has managed to create three-dimensional “movies” of electron behavior in a topological insulator, or TI. The movies can capture vanishingly small increments of time — down to the level of a few femtoseconds, or millionths of a billionth of a second — so that...

Army vehicle electronics networking is complex and challenging due to vendor- specific devices and interfaces. Military vehicles require 100% network uptime and security. The network must reduce vehicle clutter, focus on saving soldiers’ lives, and provide minimum latency. Battle requirements...

Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, known as WIN-T, Increment 2, is nearing the finish line having undergone its largest operational test back in May. WIN-T Increment 2 is a major upgrade to the Army's tactical communications backbone and provides an on-the-move network that...

Beginning in October, the U.S. Army will begin fielding the first integrated group of networked technologies – radios, sensors and associated equipment and software – that will for the first time deliver an integrated voice and data capability throughout the entire Brigade...

Many companies, including Raytheon and the Israel-based Argo Medical Technologies, have created self-contained, wearable robotic suits to reduce injuries from heavy lifting, for example, and help paraplegics walk again. Ekso, based in Richmond, California, builds a suit without any...

Researchers at Columbia Engineering have developed new software that can simultaneously calculate the carbon footprints of thousands of products.The team used a life-cycle-analysis (LCA) tool and developed three new techniques that work in concert, enabling them to calculate thousands of footprints within...

They’re fast, powerful, and deafening. Furthermore, military jets need to be up in the air in the wee hours over land to simulate their landings on aircraft carriers. But innovations out of the University of Cincinnati’s Gas Dynamics and Propulsion Laboratory are showing promise in reducing the...

For decades, academic and industry researchers have been working on control algorithms for autonomous helicopters — robotic helicopters that pilot themselves, rather than requiring remote human guidance. Dozens of research teams have competed in a series of autonomous-helicopter challenges posed...

NASA's Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) mission will be a complex one for the pilots flying NASA's Global Hawk aircraft from the ground. The mission will be the first deployment for the unmanned aircraft away from their regular base of operations at the Dryden Flight...

At the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, scientists and engineers have been studying how they can make higher-performance materials for soldiers at lighter weights. The challenge has led to the ARL Enterprise for Multiscale Research of Materials, made up of in-house research and most...

Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne master’s student Thibault Kuntzer has focused his efforts on an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope – the most distant photo of the universe ever taken. As part of a semester project, he tested and increased the efficiency of an...

Mikel Abasolo, a researcher of the University of the Basque Country, has built a simplified simulation model for wind turbines. All one has to do is enter the characteristics that the tower and its parts will have, and in a matter of seconds, the model predicts the load that has to be given to each...

A team of experts in mechanics, materials science, and tissue engineering at Harvard has created an extremely stretchy and tough gel that has potential as a replacement for damaged cartilage in human joints.

A team of engineers at Stanford has demonstrated the feasibility of a super-small, implantable cardiac device that gets its power not from batteries but from radio waves transmitted from a small power device on the surface of the body.

Many wireless-monitor products today track daily activity, including a person's steps and calories burned. Wearable sensors, and even internal ones, however, may also be used to monitor one's specific biological processes. "Stretchable electronics," for example,...

Scientists working at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source have captured the first single-shot X-ray microscope image of a magnetic nanostructure and shown that it can be done without damaging the material.This result not only demonstrates the success of a powerful new X-ray technique, but it...

NASA's Mars Curiosity has debuted the first recorded human voice that traveled from Earth to another planet and back. The voice playback was released along with new telephoto camera views of the varied Martian landscape during a news conference at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The...

By modifying the rate at which chemical reactions take place, nanoparticle catalysts fulfill myriad roles in industry, the biomedical arena, and everyday life. They may be used for the production of polymers and biofuels, improving pollution and emission control devices,...

Applied physicists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have created an ultrathin, flat lens that focuses light without imparting the distortions of conventional lenses. At 60 nanometers thick, the flat lens is essentially two-dimensional, yet its focusing power...

Using smartphones' GPS and imaging capabilities, University of Missouri researchers have developed new software that determines the exact location of distant objects, as well as monitors the speed and direction of moving objects. The software could eventually allow smartphone-armed soldiers...

With a whistle and a roar, the "Mighty Eagle," a NASA robotic prototype lander, sailed to an altitude of 100 feet. During the 35-second run, the vehicle was "open loop," navigating autonomously without the command of the onboard camera and flying on a preprogrammed flight profile.Once it reached the...

PML researchers have devised a novel source of portable sunlight that may fill an urgent need in renewable energy research – namely, light sources that generate a near-perfect solar spectrum to be used in testing the performance and efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) materials.The team’s...