Stories

A sensor developed by scientists at SINTEF’s MiNaLab will help to make microphones hypersensitive. With technology of this sort, a microphone will be able to “see” where the sound comes from, pick up the voice of the person speaking, and filter out other sources of noise in the room. The microphone...

Engineers and technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Langley Research Center in Virginia, and Lockheed Martin Space Operations in Denver, CO, prepared unique hardware that was used in a fit check of equipment that will recover Orion upon splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. After...

In June, a radio navigation research team from The University of Texas at Austin successfully coerced an $80 million, 213-foot yacht off its course using a custom-made GPS device.

A small car can't pull a heavy trailer, and sports utility vehicles don't have a compact car's fuel efficiency. A perfect, one-size-fits-all vehicle doesn't exist, and the same goes for unmanned ground vehicles, known as UGVs. Soldiers use UGVs – such as the 40-pound PackBot or...

Military analysts now have a tool that brings together unprecedented modeling and simulation features to help them better choose or build weapons to overpower future threats. Such features allow military researchers to analyze, for example, how a grenade, artillery round or any other...

In the future, Army aircraft may be made of all composite materials, and the Prototype Integration Facility Advanced Composites Laboratory is ready. Part of the Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center's (AMRDEC's) Engineering Directorate, the Prototype Integration...

By figuring out how messed up GPS satellite signals get when bouncing around in a storm, NASA Langley researchers have found a way to do something completely different with GPS: measure and map the wind speeds of hurricanes.

The same 3D printing process used to produce an object can simultaneously generate an internal, invisible tag, say scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research.

NASA engineers at Johnson Space Center have been designing instruments to slightly warp the trajectory of a photon, changing the distance it travels in a certain area, and then observing the change with an interferometer. The team is experimenting with photons to see if warp drive — traveling...

Latest advances in capturing data on brain activity and eye movement are being combined develop a system that can detect when drivers are in danger of falling asleep at the wheel. The technique combines high-speed eye tracking that records eye movements in unprecedented...

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland have shown how to make nanoscale measurements of critical properties of plasmonic nanomaterials — the specially engineered nanostructures that modify the interaction of light...

TCP, the transmission control protocol, is one of the core protocols governing the Internet. One of TCP’s main functions is to prevent network congestion by regulating the rate at which computers send data. At the annual conference of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special...

A NASA engineer has achieved a milestone in his quest to advance an emerging super-black nanotechnology that promises to make spacecraft instruments more sensitive without enlarging their size.

Technologies like Google Wallet allow users to walk into a store and pay for goods with the swipe of a smartphone. Now, some companies, including the Finland-based startup Unqul, are creating payment systems that use facial recognition to handle all kinds of transactions. Instead of...

The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is partnering with Cobalt Technologies, U.S. Navy, and Show Me Energy Cooperative to demonstrate that jet fuel can be made economically and in large quantities from a renewable biomass feedstock such as...

The Clip-Air project envisions an airplane consisting of a single flying wing onto which capsules carrying passengers or freight can be attached. More than a new type of flying device, its innovative concept could revolutionize the airports of the future. Go to the train station to take the...

Scientists now know that thunderstorms, working as powerful natural terrestrial particle accelerators, produce intense flashes of ionizing radiation called "dark lightning." To further their understanding of this phenomenon, researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's...

In May 2013, researchers from UCLA, Iowa State and Princeton found a new way of sculpting tailor-made fluid flows by placing tiny pillars in microfluidic channels. By altering the speed of the fluid and stacking many pillars with different widths, placements, and orientations in the fluid's...

A small team of Monash University researchers working under the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) has developed an ionic liquid-based thermocell.

The blades in compressors and turbines are subject to particularly high levels of stress and strain. The job of the blades is to convert fluid energy into mechanical energy. They ensure that aircraft engines generate the required thrust and that power plant generators produce sufficient electricity.

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed three-dimensional (3D) printing technology and techniques to create free-standing structures made of liquid metal at room temperature.

A Pentagon-financed humanoid robot named Atlas made its debut last week. The hydraulically-powered robot, with its oversized chest and powerful long arms, is seen as a new tool that can help humans in natural and man-made disasters. Similarly, an...

Military analysts now have a tool that brings together unprecedented modeling and simulation features to help them better choose, or build weapons to overpower future threats. Such features allow military researchers to analyze, for example, how a grenade, artillery round or any other weapon performs...

Simulation Helps Solve Mysteries of Water A research team from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the University of Edinburgh and IBM's TJ Watson Research Center achieved a major breakthrough in the modeling of water that could shed light on its mysterious properties.

By the year 2020, the European aviation industry wants to reduce emissions of gases harmful to the climate – carbon dioxide by 50 percent and nitrogen oxide by 80 percent – and also improve the lifecycles of the aircrafts themselves. “Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)” is the term experts...

A team of researchers from Brown University and Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island has developed a new computer-based tool to perform finely tuned acoustic analyses of babies’ cries. The team hopes their baby cry analyzer will lead to new ways for researchers and clinicians to use cry in...