Stories

More than 10 years ago, U.S. Army researchers saw potential in flexible displays. With nothing in the marketplace, the Army decided to change that by partnering with industry and academia to create the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University. The Army's goal was to get this...

In combat and tactical vehicles, soldiers can access communications systems that display a complete picture of the battlefield. However, these high-tech situational awareness features are viewed through different computer systems, over separate monitors and with little room to spare. Now the Army is...

Car-to car and car-to-infrastructure communication, which uses Wi-Fi and cellular technologies to inform drivers of any obstacles in the road, is advancing. Technologies like V2X can be used to deliver warnings to other drivers if, for example, a car has crashed or broken down in the road....

A new ship makes it easier to find one’s sea legs, thanks to opposing waves created in specially designed tanks fitted in the hull. The ship will house personnel working on offshore installations, and is optimized to provide the best possible comfort when moored adjacent to a platform. The integrated system...

Researchers at Purdue University have shown how to reduce fuel consumption while improving the efficiency of hydraulic steering systems in heavy construction equipment. The new approach incorporates several innovations: It eliminates valves now needed to direct the flow of hydraulic fluid...

Small cubes with no exterior moving parts can propel themselves forward, jump on top of each other, and snap together to form arbitrary shapes.

A government advisory panel urged the Federal Aviation Administration to ease the long-standing ban on using the devices during takeoffs and landings. Since the curbs were put in place, airliners have been made more resistant to electronic interference, and many have their own...

The bad news: the U.S. Government is shut down.The good news: the deadline has been extended to enter the Speed2Design Exploration & Discovery contest for a visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.In August, I was able to attend the Speed2Design event at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, and it was an...

New York, NY – ChemoPatch, a low-cost, disposable, electronic patch-based cancer chemotherapy device designed to be simple, automated, and easy-to-use by cancer patients outside of the hospital, has been awarded the grand prize of $20,000 in the 2013...

Soldiers facing rugged terrain and extreme temperatures are continually searching for ways to reduce the weight of their gear. In a search for solutions to this persistent issue, U.S. Army scientists and engineers have preliminarily demonstrated body armor that is 10 percent lighter through new...

Similar to using Python or Java to write code for a computer, chemists soon could be able to use a structured set of instructions to “program” how DNA molecules interact in a test tube or cell.

In their quest for better helmet technologies to keep soldiers and marines safe on the battlefield, researchers at Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center are making a "HEaDS-UP" play.

In an attempt to build dwellings on Mars, Russian architects, ZA, have proposed a series of robots that would identify weak areas in the Martian soil, carve them out, and then, using a process similar to that of structural 3D printing, create interior structures using the leftover soil on...

Following sea-tests that concluded Sept. 18 off the California coast, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division (NSWCCD) and other partners see a future of predicting the strength and size of the next wave.

Researcher Bart Remes and his team at the Micro Aerial Vehicle Laboratory at the Delft University of Technology have designed, built, and tested the world’s smallest open source autopilot for small unmanned aircraft. A smaller – and lighter – autopilot allows these small...

When Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC) Dream Chaser spacecraft flies through the atmosphere, it will encounter a wide variety of environmental conditions. Any spacecraft traveling at hypersonic velocities must have a robust thermal protection system (TPS) to protect astronauts and cargo from...

A new type of miniature camera system promises to give users a big picture view without sacrificing high-resolution.The new imager achieves the optical performance of a full-size wide-angle lens in a device less than one-tenth of the volume. The technology has a 100x range of focus, meaning it can image...

A team of Stanford engineers has built a basic computer using carbon nanotubes, a semiconductor material that has the potential to launch a new generation of electronic devices that run faster, while using less energy, than those made from silicon chips.

Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories, along with partner institutions Georgia Tech, Bucknell University, King Saud University and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are using a falling particle receiver to more efficiently convert the sun’s energy to electricity in large-scale,...

Researchers at Rice University have come up with a secure way to dramatically cut the risk that an implanted medical device (IMD) could be altered remotely without authorization.

Engineers at Stanford University have devised a new way to generate electricity from sewage using naturally-occurring “wired microbes” as mini power plants, producing electricity as they digest plant and animal waste.

A new bioprinting project, backed by $24 million from the U.S. Department of Defense, will attempt to 3D-print miniature human organs. The 2-inch "body on a chip" will test how the human body reacts to diseases, chemical warfare agents, and new drugs intended to defend against...

Researchers at Harvard have developed a way for photographers and microscopists to create a 3D image through a single lens, without moving the camera. The technology relies only on computation and mathematics — no unusual hardware or fancy lenses. The effect is the equivalent of seeing a...

As smart as the Curiosity rover has been about landing and finding its own way on a distant world, the rover is pretty brainless when it comes to doing the science that it was sent 567 million kilometers to carry out. That has to change if future rover missions are to make discoveries...

SINTEF, an independent research organization in Scandinavia, will work to combine a rover and snake robot for Mars exploration. The researchers envision using the rover to navigate over large distances, after which the snake robot can detach itself and crawl into tight, inaccessible areas.

A team of San Francisco State University researchers is the first to build and demonstrate the ability of two-dimensional disordered photonic band gap material, designed to be a platform to control light in unprecedented ways.

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from the sun.